Victoria Samson
01:10:27
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Show Notes
Space security shapes everything from global stability to everyday life on Earth, and it needs leaders who can bridge disciplines and drive collaboration. As part of our Space series, Victoria Samson, Chief Director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, shares her unconventional journey from international relations to space security. She reflects on her path to space policy, from war-gaming scenarios to leading global counterspace threat assessments and launching the Space Boot Camp for nuclear security professionals. Along the way, Victoria offers candid career lessons, practical tips for navigating the evolving space landscape, and insights on perseverance, diversity, and building a sustainable future beyond Earth.
About Victoria Samson
Victoria Samson brings over 25 years of expertise in military space and security issues to her role as Chief Director of Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation. Her extensive background includes senior analyst positions at the Center for Defense Information, policy work with the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, and research for the Missile Defense Agency's Directorate of Intelligence at Riverside Research Institute. A recognized thought leader in space security policy, Ms. Samson actively contributes to international space governance through her role as the International Astronautical Federation's Security Task Force chair and participating in the Space Security Working Group of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on International Security and Arms Control.
Ms. Samson holds a B.A. in Political Science with a specialization in international relations from UCLA and an M.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Transcript
Pioneering Women In Space: A New Frontier
Welcome to the show, where we chronicle women's journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond, and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers, women law students, and women in space. This is part of our continuing highlight of leading women in space, some of whom are lawyers, some of whom are not, but all of whom are informing humanity's future in space. I'm very pleased to have joined us by Victoria Samson. She is the Chief Director of Space Security and Stability for the Secure World Foundation, which is a leading nonprofit in this area. Welcome, Victoria.
Thank you for having me.
Part of my joy in having the space series is featuring amazing thought leaders in the space like you. There's such an important role, especially internationally, for nonprofits like Secure World Foundation to create some of the dialogue and some of the thought leadership internationally, and how we look at questions of space law and space policy. That's not something that we generally have domestically in the same way, like having a seat at the table and having a role in setting international law and international policy standards. I wanted to start out first with how you get into space and how you got into space security, and where you are now.
I am an anomaly in the space community. Many people in the space sector are there because they love space, they dream of space, and they used to look up at the stars and wish they could go out and visit. Not me. In fact, I have a recurring nightmare where I'm in space in a satellite. It's terrifying. I came at it from going through international elections. My high school did not have a debate team. I like to talk, but they did have a model United Nations team.
I was like, “This is it. This is what I'm going to do.” That was interesting because I got to learn a lot about the world. We got to go visit the United Nations, went to competitions, etc. I loved it so much that when I went to undergrad, I studied Political Science with a specialization in International Relations. Some friends and I from high school started a multi-united nations club at that school, at UCLA. We were committed to getting there.
My grad school, Master's in International Relations, again. Coming out of grad school, a lot of my classmates either went to work for the State Department as Foreign Service Officers or they went to work for the World Bank. At that point, the World Bank was undergoing a hiring phase of Americans. Frankly, economics was never my strong suit. I thought, “State Department is great. I want to be a Foreign Service Officer. This would be great. I can see the world,” etc.
It turns out you have to pass a test to get into the State Department. I would pass the written and fail the oral. I did it a couple of times. I had to be like, “Let's move on now.” I think I would do better now, but I did not pass at that point. I'm like, “Defense contractors are always hiring.” I applied for a job where I ended up being a sub for Booz Allen Hamilton. I was scripting wargaming scenarios for what is now the Missile Defense Agency from the red or the unfriendly perspective.
I did not know a thing about it before I got started. In my first week on the job, they're talking about blue team, red team. I'm like, “What's going on here,” but you learn. It was interesting and educational, and I absolutely hated it. A lot of my colleagues were much older than me. I'm straight out of grad school in my mid-twenties. I'm a Democrat, I'm female, I have no military experience, and I live in the city. A lot of my colleagues were retired military officers, Republicans, and men who lived in the suburbs. It wasn't a good cultural fit.
I did it for a couple of years. I always like to say that I switched to the light. I switched teams. I went over into arms control.” I worked for a consortium of arms control groups here in the DC area. After September 11th, I was jettisoned due to financial reasons. I was picked up by a think tank that no longer exists, called the Center for Defense Information. They were founded by US military officials in the 1970s who were against the Vietnam War. It used to be screamingly left-wing. By the time I was there, it was more progressive. That was interesting.
My boss there was a man named Phil Coyle who had been the chief weapons tester for the Pentagon. He was interested, but he did it from the operational perspective. They would have situations where they would build them weapons, put them out in the field, and there would be a problem with them, and they would blame the operators. If you're the engineer, you know how the system's supposed to work, right? They create the operational test and evaluation program. The idea was that they were going to have the operators work with it.
Phil used to say, “Oftentimes they say it's operator error, but it's bad design.” I think about that a lot when I'm out and about. Anyway, he was interested in weapons. I did missile defense. I worked on nuclear proliferation, UAVs, manned air vehicles, drones, and things like that, chem bio. Space was an offshoot of missile defense in terms of space-based interceptors. This is during the George W. Bush administration, and they were looking at maybe doing some research into that. I got to learn about space-based interceptors as part of that.
Drones were also not yet quite connected with space.
No, they're not. They were air-breathing. Space only. My current organization, Secure World Foundation, wanted to establish a DC presence. I had moved for personal reasons to Texas. I wanted to get back, and they knew me from my work writing these space security updates. They said, “Do you want to apply for the job as a Washington office director?” I'm like, “I absolutely do not,” but I wanted to get back to DC. I figured, “I'll apply for the job. If I get it, that gets me back to DC. I can refresh my contacts, and I can jump ship in a year or two.” That was several years ago. I only dug myself into a nice rut. I love it. I never would have anticipated how much international relations has a strong effect and shapes space policy decisions and space security decisions.
That's amazing. There are so many different things in there. I was thinking that the beginning was the part where you realized, “This is not the place for me.” Several of us have had that experience, I'm sure, throughout our lives. I have certainly. Sometimes, within hours of arriving at a place, you realize, “This is not a match, but I will be here for a while, and I will learn things.” That's a good reminder for people that it happens to people. You gain your skills, and you move forward. At the back end is the “I'll try this out and see what happens.” It turned out to be a great match. You never know.
You don't. That's what I always tell when students or young people come asking for career advice. I'm like, “You can't plan these things out.” It's good to have some thoughts and work towards these things. Oftentimes, particularly in your early career, what you're doing is finding out what you don't want to do. That can be even more helpful as opposed to saying, “I'm going to do this. I'm going to commit to it.” You get there and you find out you absolutely hated it.
Oftentimes, particularly in your early career, you're finding out what you don't want to do, and that can be even more helpful.
I had an internship at the US Embassy in Paris when I was in grad school. I was in the ambassador's office, but they didn't have an ambassador because the ambassador had died a few months earlier. They hadn't replaced her yet. It was interesting. I got to see how the embassy worked, but I spent a lot of time being bored stupid. I thought, “I do not want a job that's going to get me bored. I have to spend 40-plus hours a week there. I want something that's going to keep me on my toes, that's going to keep me interested.” That's a good thing to learn earlier on. The same thing with the job, with the defense contractor.
After a couple of months, I started thinking about it, and I asked my friends who were also in the workforce. I'm like, “Do you guys like your jobs? When do we start liking our jobs? What's happening here?” Some of them did like their jobs. I'm like, “That should have happened for me by now, I think.” It was one of those things when I was applying for jobs, I was looking for anything. I was reading an article in the Washington Post, and they had something about nuclear nonproliferation. They cited a man whom I said, “This guy sounds reasonable. Where does he work?”
I looked at his organization, and look at the website. On the website, they had a job posting, and the cut-off date was maybe two weeks prior. I thought, “One of two things has happened here. One, they forgot to update the website. It looks like a small organization. That's entirely possible. Two, they put the job posting out there, didn't get someone that they liked, and they're keeping it open.” I thought, “I'll apply. Why not?” I got the job. I was pleasantly surprised. It was funny because my colleagues were suspicious, like, “Why are you coming to work against missile defense when you used to work for, at that point, it's a ballistic missile defense organization?” I was like, “It was not for me. I like what you guys are doing much more.”
Seizing Opportunities: The Power Of A "Why Not?" Attitude
I think that says, I don't want to say entrepreneurial spirit, but there's a fierceness in that because there are people who would have looked at that and said, “It's closed. It's too late. I'm not going to apply.” You're like, “It could still be open, even though it has that date and taking that chance that that could have been the case.” A lot of people can’t do that.
I can’t say I always do that. Particularly for women, oftentimes, we tend to talk ourselves out of things or preemptively say no. I've been guilty of that many times. It's important to say that it's going to be a no if you don't do anything at all, so shoot or shoot. That's the way I say it.
That's so true. It's 100% going to be a no if you never ask because it's not going to happen. That's also true about how things work. When you said it's a small organization, who knows, either they haven't updated it, or it's like the quiet way of saying, “We haven't found anyone that we like yet. If you'd like to apply, go ahead.” Having that approach to things is important, especially as women, as we gain that over time. It's not just confidence in yourself, but also the sense that we like to say there are ten criteria for the job, and we only have eight, so we’re not sure we should apply. You might not get it, but college should apply. That's not often a response that men will have to that situation.
Definitely not. I remember reading an article years ago, and this was an op-ed editor. Oftentimes, their experience was that if they asked a woman to write on an article or on a topic, they'd say, “I don't know if I'm the best person. I know it, but it's not my strong suit. Maybe let me have a think about it or anything.” If you ask a man, they're like, “When do you want it by?” Not to overgeneralize, I think that's changing. It's getting better, but it does tend to have some residual stuff.
Remember how I said that Economics is not my strong point? When I was living in Texas, I taught Economics at a community college. I taught both macroeconomics and microeconomics. It was terrifying, but I wanted to have a job doing some teaching. I thought it would be interesting and maybe help my career path. We had a connection at that school that got me an interview. They said, “It was my degree, actually.” It was a Master's in National Relations and a Master's in International Economics. Technically, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. They do both.
I was not good at it, so I had to learn. The only thing that got me in the classroom is that I need to know more than these people, and I will have taught them. That has been my modus operandi for a lot of stuff when I talk to reporters or give speeches or conferences. You can very easily intimidate yourself and maybe talk yourself out of something. I'm like, “As long as I bring something to this conversation, I will have done my job and hopefully helped out.” That's how I look at a lot of stuff.
You can very easily intimidate yourself and talk yourself out of something.
That's a good way of thinking, especially of teaching, because I teach as well. Especially if you're teaching a new subject that you haven't taught before, you’re like, “I need to dig in and figure out all this stuff.” You do, but that's right. If you think about your perspective, if you're in the audience or a student, usually it's like if I learn 2 or 3 new things or had one epiphany, that was a successful learning session. You're like, “If that is what I'm providing, it might be different things to different people, then I still added value to this scenario.”
I hope so. Back to when I taught for 3 or 4 years, and honestly, it's a learning curve. In my first semester, I feel like I owe those students an apology in terms of what I was able to bring, but they got exposed to the topics. Hopefully, it didn't turn them off entirely. As I said, it's something that you learn how to do the hard stuff sometimes.
Also, outside of your comfort zone, and different kinds of opportunities. It also helps in skill-building. You talked about that when you said, “I got these skills. It may not have been my lifetime position, but I got these particular skills from this.” You get certain skills from teaching. All of these skills together build on each other, and building those skills creates even more opportunity for you to add value.
There aren't many people who may have all the stack of 10 or 12 skills that you have from your various experiences. It adds to what you can contribute to the world and what kind of job you can have later. A helpful way of looking at those, the way you described it, is having skills. It's like, “I got good skills.” Great. Sometimes that's what you get from a position. Not more than that, but good skills. You move forward with those skills, which you never would have had. I like that framing of it, a positive framing.
Thank you. It allows you to recognize opportunities and put stuff together you might not have been able to otherwise later on. No knowledge is ever wasted in the grand scheme of things.
The Unconventional Expert: Diverse Perspectives In Space
Particularly in areas where there needs to be some level of creative or outside-the-box thinking. That is very helpful to have a variety of experiences that you can bring to it because you have different lenses through which you see problems. I've certainly seen that in studying space law in that LLM, that there are people with very different backgrounds. Maybe they're in the military, maybe they're like me, it's a totally different branch of law that they're working on. Bringing those things that may be second nature to you, because that's what everybody knows in your area. Bringing that to the questions in new developing areas like space can be helpful. It can break out into new ideas.
I like to think so. For example, my focus is on space security and stability. Most of the people who work on those topics are either current or former military, defense contractors, or what have you. As I said, I had those three years in my work for a defense contractor, but that was it. Sometimes it's not helpful because the lingo doesn't come as easily to you. I still have people talk about where they are, and they give me the position with the Pentagon.
I'm like, “I have no idea where that is, but okay, sure.” What I can bring is, I know that, for example. India has had a history of counterbalancing between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's going to affect how they look at things currently in the current space environment. Having that background helps in terms of being able to do geopolitical analysis and things of that nature.
Yeah, because space isn't just about space. Everybody brings themselves to that equation and how they see the security implications or national interests. That's important to understand that history, as well as the lens through which they're looking at it.
These politics replicate themselves in space. They're not coming out of nowhere.
That could be an extension of whatever they're doing here geopolitically. It's an extension of that. It's important to understand that when you're trying to make policy around that. Tell me now about some of your work at Secure World. I did notice that there is a new initiative with the Carnegie Foundation around the nuclear question, which I thought was interesting because there's a lot of discussion now about nuclear power and how we'll need that to explore further into space and even cis-lunar, but there's also the security side of that question. It looks like you're working with Carnegie on keeping that discussion front and center, too.
It's more from the nuclear nonproliferation perspective. My organization, the Secure World Foundation, is a nonprofit that focuses on the long-term sustainable use of outer space. We promote best practices, norms, and behavior that make sure that the space is accessible to and usable for all in the long term. Various issues affect space sustainability. I'm on the security side of the conversation. We started that project you mentioned. It's funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and it's looking at the space nuclear nexus.
There are two parts to it. The first part is the idea that we're going to be having what we're calling a space boot camp for nuclear security professionals in their early career, with the thinking that these people who work on nuclear nonproliferation issues don't know a lot about space. A lot of times, they are coming at it, like me, with degrees in Political Science or things like that. They don't have a strong technical background, but space has a crucial role in nuclear nonproliferation and strategic stability.
It's going to be something they're going to need to know about. The thinking was that if we can get them in their early career, two decades down the line, when they're the ones having negotiations and discussing these things, they'll come at it from a more informed and well fleshed out perspective. The thinking is that we're going to bring a couple of dozen nuclear security professionals from within the United States to DC and have a week-long series of discussions.
Lectures talking about various issues about space, like “What is space? What is an orbit? Here's the space legal regime. Here's how space commerce works, and here's space security,” and things like that. Just to get them a sense of what it is and what's relevant to their work. We're going to have a tabletop exercise that's going to allow them to put in place some of the stuff they've learned. Because it's DC, we're going to go on a field trip to see some of the space stuff right there to give them a good sense of it. That's one half of it.
The other half we're working on is with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. When you talk about space and nuclear strategic stability and how they interplay, typically, people think there are satellites out in geostationary orbit. They're the ones that are used for nuclear command and control and for intelligence gathering. Those are the ones that affect nuclear and strategic stability.
As we're having more military satellites being put in low-earth orbit, and as we're having more commercial actors in low-earth orbit, there's a possibility that you could have an action by a commercial actor in space affect strategic stability. They may need to be aware of nuclear proliferation concerns. The thinking is we wanted to have a dialogue where we bring together nuclear security professionals from a non-proliferation perspective, space security professionals, and commercial space folks to understand what it is that the other one does, and then how their work shapes and is shaped by strategic stability.
They'll get to know each other and maybe have a continued discussion later on. We're going to have two of those, one of them in the United States in DC next year. That's the proof of concept one. The next one will be the year after that. We're going to have an international meeting and maybe get some potential rivals in the room as well to talk about the discussions. It's not intended to be a one-and-done type thing, but looking at what did we learn? What can we do in the future? Get some reports out. That's one of our big projects right now.
The other main thing that I work on is that every year, my organization puts out what we call a global counter-space threat assessment. The idea that as space becomes more important for national security missions and how economies function, how societies function, there's more and more incentive for rivals to deny, degrade, disrupt, destroy, and interfere with your access to or use of space capabilities. We call that counter space capabilities. We started that eight years ago.
The reason why we started it is that we would be reached out to by reporters who would say, “We saw a news story that China or Russia is doing X, Y, Z. As the world falls, what does that mean?” We'd read stories about that. There would be Western government officials being cited talking about these things and saying, “I can't tell you specifically because it's classified, but if only you knew. We can't tell you, but if only you knew, you'd be very concerned about what they're doing.”
We thought, “We don't have clearances. What can we find out in an unclassified context about these capabilities? How do they compare against each other?” You want to have some context, because if you read about trying to do something and you're like, “Is that new? Is that old? Does the United States have that capability?” You can't make a good decision. We said, “We will do this, and we'll see what we can find out.” We do five different counter space capabilities that we look at policies and budgets.
We started with six countries, and we did include the United States as part of that the first time around. We had a big discussion internally about whether we should because there was some concern that maybe it would not be well received by people here in the United States. We thought, “You know what, if we have to have a holistic conversation of what's going on, you cannot leave the United States out of this discussion. You're talking about stability of the space domain.”
We started with six countries with about 150 pages. The report always comes out in April. This 2025, the report covers twelve countries and about over 330 pages. It keeps growing. We have a 13th country we're going to be adding. It's been very interesting to see how much we've been able to learn. I won't say forced, but we're talking about these things openly. When the US government folks are making the argument about we want to try and declassify something, they say, “Why can't we talk about it when it's in this report that anyone can have access to?”
I've also presented it at the United Nations and internationally. Even though I'm an American and a US organization, etc., it is perceived as being relatively objective because we do include the United States. I remember one time in a UN session where the US delegates were shaking out the Chinese delegate, saying, “You're doing this here.” The Chinese delegates were shaking at the US delegates, saying, “They say you're doing this here.” Both sides are finding something that they enjoy. We’re doing our job right.
Transparency and Policy: Illuminating Global Space Threats
It's useful for all. It is helpful too because transparency is important to the extent that it's possible. Also, perception is important. You're showing, “Here is what’s publicly available that people can base their perceptions on, even before we put them together in terms of how they interact with each other and what choices they're going to make.” It’s an important key illustration of the growth of countries and companies that are involved in space, and so many more who want to be involved in different ways. Those development capabilities and showing the breadth of them illustrate that we have definitely gone well past a few spacefaring nations.
For sure. I would say sunshine is the best disinfectant. It's important. You can't make good policy if you don't have good input. If you're making input based on fear or incomplete information, you're not going to make good policy. That's here in the United States, and that's internationally. That's what we hope to prompt these conversations.
Sometimes it was almost like you talked about this issue, but like, “You didn't quite get it right here. Here's some information. Fix it.” “Thank you. That's great. I love it. Tell me what I left out. I'm happy to fix it.” That's been a good experience. Again, it’s something I would never have thought I would be working on. I never thought I'd be getting in the weeds talking about satellites, moving around in space, and trying to keep track of them in orbit and things like that.
I was never interested in Star Wars. I was into Star Trek. I would have assumed that would be something you would need with an engineering degree or a science degree or things like that. A few years ago, my organization had an event talking about jobs and space policy. We called it It's Not Just Rocket Science, with the idea that everyone has something to contribute to space, whether it's lawyers, policymakers, artists, writers, engineers, or scientists, of course.
It's interesting. I don't know if you've seen or read this book called Space Piracy by Marc Feldman. It's more like a for-general-consumption, fun, what-if book. Those authors put a think tank together associated with that, saying, “What else can we think about that could happen in space?” Among the people that they have in their think tank are science fiction authors, for this reason like, who are thinking about putting these things out there as to what maybe this could happen. Is that something we should consider thinking about policy-wise? How likely is that to happen? That creative mind of thinking outside the box about what could happen and spinning their stories is something that can be a contribution to these discussions and thought leadership, too.
Absolutely, it can be. It takes all kinds.
I'm glad you guys have that program called It's Not Just Rocket Science. I like the title. Let's talk about this a little more. Space itself has a major impact across people's everyday lives to which they may not recognize, from their cell phones to various other items that have either come from space exploration or from space technology that's out there right now.
With all the new hope for pharmaceutical development and medical work, and healthcare-related stuff in space, that clearly would impact everyone here on Earth. There are so many different ways that space impacts people that they're not aware of. This geopolitical aspect is one of them, thinking about policy and how it plays out in space, as well as terrestrially, and how they're interconnected. I'm thinking about a secure world. What would make the world secure? What is space security?
Defining Space Security: Navigating The Geopolitical Landscape
There's no endpoint where you took all these boxes and “Boom,” you're secure and you're good. It's always going to be a constantly moving goalpost, and the same thing for space sustainability. We said we work towards sustainability because it's always moving in the background. As long as there's progress, that's a positive step. There are a lot of discussions about the idea of how to determine what is responsible behavior in space. There's no general agreement at this point. There are discussions at the United Nations about this. Having a common lexicon for that and a common understanding will be helpful.
The due regard discussion, right?
Not deliberately creating debris in orbit. When you're doing movements, rendezvous, and getting up close to other country satellites, rendezvous and proximity operations, what should be expected in terms of communication? If anything, how do you communicate across different languages and stuff like that? All those things are going to be helpful moving towards it. It's also going to be an idea of what the approach those countries have to space is. Do you see it as a place of competition? Do you see it as an operational domain?
The US Space Force talks about space being a war-fighting domain, which is not what other countries have called it. That does shape how you view these things. For me, that's a concern, particularly as we're going towards the moon and doing more activities there. We do not need to speak these things into existence. They are not guaranteed that there's going to be conflict. It does not have to be like that. When you use language that is aggressive or things like that, then you're shaping the conversation already in terms of that. I don't think that's very helpful.
There has been an increase in that language and discussion, which may have been had previously, but not so publicly. I think people may have thought that, but not so publicly. That, together with the changing role of commercial actors in space, and also the increasing dual use or dual purpose of different space objects, all of that together could create some entropy. Let's put it that way.
It's a real challenge. As you said, during the early part of the space age, the major actors were nation-states. The private sector has always been part of space, but oftentimes more in support of what nation-states were doing. The space governance regime was set up to deal with nation-states. Now, we have the primary actor as not even one nation-state, but one commercial actor like SpaceX.
It's a complication because you're trying to figure it out. You have the space governance mechanisms that have been in place for decades now. How do they evolve to bring in these discussions? It's a challenge. It doesn't mean it's impossible. For example, the United Nations divides space between civil space and security space. Civil space is discussed in Vienna, Austria, at the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or COPUOS.
Security space is discussed mostly in Geneva at the Conference on Disarmament. It's a challenge because bringing in private actors to cope with us is possible. They can be observers, maybe, or they can be on their country's delegations. It's still a bit of a challenge because a lot of countries are highly suspicious of commercial actors. They say, “We're the United Nations. There should be nations discussing.” On the security side, it's even more challenging. We need to have them there because what they do affects the redux ability.
That's a challenge that needs to be met because the value of those UN places, they're vessels for this discussion, where everybody can at least come to have these discussions. The fact is that not everybody who's acting in space is at those tables or is at those discussions. How can you have a workable framework when people who are major actors are not part of that discussion? UNOOSA is trying to do that. They have some conferences where they're trying to engage commercial actors in the discussion, at least, even if they don't have a particular set role at COPUOS, but that's a worthwhile effort, I think.
I think the UNOOSA has been very forward-thinking. The new head there comes from a commercial background. That way, it's easier to think about. The National Telecommunications Union, or the NTU, is trying to look at things like space sustainability. Right now, they do spectrum allocation. They look at space sustainability from a spectrum perspective. It's interesting because commercial actors are members of the NTU. That is part of how it's built. It's a different vibe. How do you figure out how you have these discussions where you're not having the same conversations in NTU that you're having in COPUOS, but working together and hopefully having no gaps in those possibilities?
Also, at least from a legal or policy perspective, having some of the newer commercial space companies also recognize the importance of those bodies to their business. It can be hard because there’s a policy now. Everybody knows domestically that's important. How are these international obligations going to stream down into domestic regulations for us? I think it's rare. Space is unique in that way, in that it is highly directly relevant to what is going on at the international level. From there, the domestic must be in total alignment and flowing down from the international. I don't know how to get the message out, but it's important. If you're invited to a seat at the table, you should pull up a chair to those venues.
Non-Profits As Bridge Builders: Connecting Stakeholders In Space
That's part of where the role of a nonprofit can be helpful because you can cut across these various stakeholders. A lot of what I say our job is doing is translating for the other side about what's happening. We were not members of the US government, nor representatives. We're not representing the United States internationally. When we go overseas, we're Americans. I live in DC. People want to hear, “What's the thinking there, and so we can share.”
Here's how the US commercial space sector looks at these things. Here's how the US government talks about these things. When we talk to US government folks, we say, “There's all this stuff happening in the United Nations that is directly relevant to your work. You should be aware of this.”
We’re talking to the commercial actors. As you said, it's a challenge. Historically, a lot of commercial actors looked at international policy discussions as, “We're here to make a buck. This isn't relevant to us.” Who are we, simple folk, to have input on international security reasons? That's not us, but understand that these security considerations can have an effect on them. The example I like to give is that in November 2021, Russia conducted a direct descent anti-satellite test, which meant they had an interceptor launched from the ground to hit a satellite, to blow it up.
It was one of theirs. They blew it up, creating a lot of debris in orbit. Debris is agnostic. It does not care who you are. It's going to do what physics calls it to do. There was a lot of debris that made a lot of close approaches and threatened commercial actors for about the first year or so afterwards. It was important for them that these international policy discussions have a direct impact.
Debris is agnostic; it doesn't care who you are. It will simply do what physics calls it to do.
As companies are investing in very expensive technologies and that sort of thing, you want to make sure you have a stable, predictable domain that you're operating in. Otherwise, that's going to harm your investment. That's the argument we make for why sustainability is relevant and why security is relevant. Also, on the other side, internationally, making the argument to countries that space security is relevant to them personally. A lot of countries don't have space programs. They don't have satellites.
They say, “We are in the space for agriculture, disaster management, telehealth, and telemedicine.” They say, “That's all civil space. We don't need to worry about security space.” No, every single person on this planet is a user of space data and services in some way, shape, or form. If there's an interruption or harm to those data services, that's going to affect you. That's where space security comes in and is relevant. We're starting to see a bit of a shift internationally. The smaller countries are starting to say, “I think we should be part of this conversation,” which they should be. It represents them as well.
Every person on this planet uses space data and services. If there's an interruption or harm to those services, it affects everyone. That's where space security becomes relevant.
You see that on the civil side. There's more interest in going to Vienna and being part of UNOOSA's activities. A lot of countries are creating their space laws, and they want to be part of the future in one way or the other with regard to space. Also, whether or not they're doing that, the security aspect is absolutely important for all.
We've had a series of regional dialogues in the ASEAN area, Asia Pacific, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, to try and say, “Here's why space is important. Here's why space security is important. Here's why it's relevant to you particularly.” This is one of those things where there’s so much policy work. You're seeing the ground. You hope it pays off years down the line. That's always a challenge for a nonprofit. We were trying to say, “How can you demonstrate you had an effect, and you have to take a long-term view of the situation?”
Fortunately for us, we have an endowment as an organization. We don't have to be constantly fundraising and going out, and that sort of thing. We're trying to bring in more money, obviously. We’re happy to take anything people want to give us, but it's better. We don't have to say, “We did this and this policy happened.” It’s like we did this, and 5 or 6 years down the line, we started to hear people use language that is similar to ours, and they started to shape policies accordingly. You have to say, “We'll take it.”
I was going to say that's exactly what success can look like. That's a pretty short ramp. Sometimes it's longer, but it's exactly that. It’s circulating, and then people are now recognizing this is an issue, and they're using the terminology, or what have you. Now, we're reaching a point where people are going to make some decisions around this that they think are important enough to create some policy around it. That is very hard to trace, but in some ways, sometimes not. When you're involved in it that long, then you can see the discussions germinating and reaching a critical mass.
That is how it works, whether you're in policymaking or whether you're in an international court. It's so long-term. You're like, “This is just one piece of the puzzle, and we have to put all those building blocks together to get to a point.” Whereas I think, domestically, we're so used to in the United States to a court issuing the opinion, and everybody automatically follows that this is the law, and now this is what we're going to do, or we might appeal it. It's all very clear, and we're going to move forward with that. It takes one action by one court, and everything follows, but that's not how it works in the international system at all.
Not at all. Even domestically, it can take a while, too. There's this conference called the AMOS Conference. It's a space station awareness conference that's held in Maui every September. It's a highly technical conference. They have it because they have a telescope there and they collect data, but they want to have a policy forum. We got involved in it and worked on the policy for it, and thought about setting topics, etc.
We had our first one in 2013 or 2014. The next year, we had a policy forum again. I was sitting in the back during one of the sessions. It wasn't my panel that I was moderating. I got these guys in front of me who were talking. They said, “Did you come last year?” The other guy said, “Yeah, I did.” The first guy said, “Didn't they talk about this policy last year?” The guy was like, “I think they did. Why didn't they fix it?”
It’s very much like an engineering mentality, where you identify the problem, and you get the solution. Fix it. That's not how this works. I'm sorry, I wish it did. Sometimes it is frustrating. You're like, “How long are we going to discuss this topic?” You're slowly filling in details and thoughts and flashing them out. You're working on it with a goal that when the circumstances are right, you will have done all the groundwork and preparation so that it can succeed.
The Engineer's Frustration: Why Policy Takes Time
That's so true. I've seen that even in the last few years in proceedings at the UN, where you see things sprinkled and then suddenly, “Here we are.” It took that level of familiarity and discussion, and it's a very slow germination. It reaches that critical mass at some point, and off it goes. People start focusing on solving the problem. There you go. That is funny that different perspectives, or the engineer's perspective, like, “What? We identified this problem. We would fix it. If our object wasn't working or whatever, we fix it and move on.” Unfortunately, it takes more than just a small team of engineers to fix that problem. That's the challenge. It’s political will and all that stuff.
What kind of suggestions would you give to those who might think they have an interest in contributing to space policy? Maybe they're still in college or even at the beginning of another career, but there's a lot to still be done that younger folks could contribute to. What advice would you give to folks who are interested in that or exploring that?
I can see how it would be intimidating thinking these are all rocket scientists, and if you're not a rocket scientist, that can be a lot to take in. As you said, there's stuff everywhere. I'd recommend, first of all, that people read about what's going on and learn about what the major news stories are and what the major categories are.
Things that are affecting what's going on, whether you're interested in the security side, the commercial side, the environmental side, the international side, or what have you. Follow what's going on, and get an idea of who the major players are. These can be things like signing up for newsletters. If you're on social media, follow the people who are talking about these things. I find that one good way to do it is to look at the reporters who are writing about this and follow them and follow their organizations.
If you see someone having an event on this topic, who are the speakers? Maybe look them up, follow them, or read about their stuff. It's a matter of piecemeal writing and then getting a sense of what the community is focusing on. One of the nice things nowadays is that when I first started working on these issues, nothing was online.
There's a lot online, especially in this arena, because of the international aspect. There are a lot of things that are accessible.
The bar is a lot lower. Maybe start showing up at stuff and reading about stuff, or get listening to conversations, asking questions when you can to insert yourself in the conversation. Those are things, like building your way in and wedging your foot in the door. All of a sudden, you may see an opportunity you didn't realize was there that would be perfect for you, or that you could bring a lot to.
Again, networking. I know a lot of people look at networking as something you have to be an extreme extrovert to do well at, or it's only shallow discussions, or what have you, or people are doing it to know who's important so they can only ignore the unimportant people. There is that element to it, absolutely.
In the grand scheme of things, networking is connecting with other people and learning about them and what they work on and who they know and saying, “I work on those issues too,” or “I'm from Los Angeles as well,” or what have you. Once you've made that connection, you never know, it may pay off, it may not, but at least you'll have that. That's a good way, if you get opportunities to do that thing, to take advantage of that and try to go to events and talk to people if possible.
Networking is simply connecting with others, learning about their work, and discovering who they know.
I also think so much of that is about connecting others, like opportunities to connect with other people, where you see connections between them. Sometimes people think about what connections can go my way to help me. Of course, people think about that too. It's natural. People notice when people are clearly doing that as only a one-way street, as opposed to “I'm thinking about things that could help you,” or people whom you might resonate as well. Some people are more natural about that, and others aren't. That might take the ickiness out of the networking field that some people have, like, “If I am helping people and connecting them, that's totally different.” That might help.
Also, this sense that you are a super extroverted person who loves to go to big events and work the room and all of that stuff. That's one form of networking. If you like it and you're good at that, that's great. There are other kinds too that may not be as being such big a personality or whatever in a big room. It’s thinking about that and doing something true for you and your work.
Building A Space Career: Advice For Aspiring Professionals
I've reached out to people and cold-called them. People reach out to me on LinkedIn or what have you. Everyone loves to hear, “I heard you talk, and I thought that made a lot of sense. Thank you.” Even for me, the job I had before the Center for Defense Information, when I was working for the Armed Control Consortium groups, I got let go because of September 11th. The funding was an issue. I thought, “I need a job.” Because it was a consortium, I was fairly new. I'd only been there for about 7 to 8 months, but I had met a lot of different organizations.
I started reaching out to people and saying, “Would you mind? I'd love to get a cup of coffee and talk about your experiences and how you got to where you are, and learning more, not even asking you for a job, just learning about your background and how you got there.” As you know, people love to talk about themselves. It was great. It was interesting. I thought I should have done it. I know that could be a little bit of a challenge, but I'm like, “I should have done this at the beginning anyway, not because I need a job. I should have been doing this.”
It's like, “It's so interesting. I should have done this.”
I'm sympathetic whenever any person reaches out to me and says, “I'd like to learn more about your career path and how I might build these things along the lines.” I make a real effort to talk to them because I understand it's hard, but it was interesting for me to learn from others. Hopefully, that will help them out or identify issue areas or things like that.
As it turned out, I did get a job offer out of that through one of the people I reached out to. It was a Hail Mary pass, Phil Coyle, the director of operations, test, and evaluation. I knew he lived in California. I had met him at a conference here in DC during a coffee break. I thought, “He's never in DC and he's so important. Maybe at some point, he'll be in DC.” I reached out to him. He said, “I'm actually going to be in DC and I'm looking for a research assistant. Would you be interested in talking?” “Yes, I would.” I didn't anticipate that.
You never know what's going to happen. Maybe jobs will come out or what have you. Also, you don't know who you're going to connect with. Some people that I reached out to, I still talk to today. Some people reached out to me. They turned out to be important people in the space field. It's nice to think that maybe you had a very small part in helping them get to where they are.
That's a nice thing to mention as well in terms of the psychic benefit of helping other people in the long term. That's part of why I like to teach. I like to see the students blossom and become the best that they can become, and use any of the skills that they gained from my class or my clinic, and help them down the line. It's cool to see that. It's cool to see people do well and to be part of building their skills to move forward with that.
Yeah, absolutely it is.
It's neat. As you said, in talking with people and meeting with people, maybe you gave them some insight or idea that they hadn't thought about or were even thinking about networking. In the space community, it is still pretty tight. Trying to feel like it is still dependent on talking to the right person at the right time, who knows about some opening somewhere. I still see that being an important thing. It's important in a lot of industries, but particularly in space.
It's a small interior community. With everything going on nowadays, there are fewer and fewer jobs, and more people are looking. It's helpful to know people and understand things. On the security side of things, there aren't as many women working in space stuff. It's nice to bring other women involved to space security discussions to try and expand that, at least give them pathways for doing that.
I'm at this stage now where there's a next generation coming in, and I learned so much from them. They do not put up with stuff that I put up with when I was newly in the workforce. I'm like, “Hats off to you guys. That's great.” Thinking about work-life balance is much better at making that line known. That's something I need to work on. That's great. It's helpful to be able to have those discussions and those inputs from everyone.
It's a different approach, a different attitude to things. It’s different from what we thought we could do when we were starting out. Maybe it'll change things and having that attitude.
Hopefully so.
It'll be good for all if that happens.
Advocating For Inclusion: Diversifying The Space Dialogue
There's still a lot of work to be done. We still have mantles. We still have a preponderance of White people discussing these things, a certain economic class. You still have to call these things out and identify them and say, “This is an issue and you need to actively take steps to work on this because it's not going to fix itself otherwise.” One of my things my organization prides itself on is that we work hard to bring diverse viewpoints to our discussions when we have these events.
We try and make sure we have tons of different perspectives, backgrounds, generations, and things like that. Otherwise, it's going to be the same old conversation with the same old people who have the same discussion over and over again. I remember when I was early at Secure World, I was asked to speak at an event. The moderator was an elderly gentleman, a retired military officer. He went down the line, and I was one of four.
He said, “We’re talking about X, Y, Z. He’s great. He and I worked together for twenty years. Fred is from the Army or the Navy. Ted is a well-known scientist. He’s done so much work in research that is so relevant to everyone here today.” He got to me, and he was like, “Victoria seems very qualified as well.” I have a poker face, and I'm like, “You have to go flat.” I could not believe it. There's still a lot of that thinking. Even a few weeks ago, I was reading about a conference in India. I counted that there were 83 speakers, and 4 were women. I'm like, “Come on, guys. Work on the tool.”
I saw that. It was amazing.
It was wild. That happens in the United States as well, I will say. There are so many times where I'm starting to reach out to organizations and say, “I'm not trying to get myself on your panel, but I am surprised you have 25 people speaking and no women or one woman. Maybe think about that. I have people I could recommend if you're looking.” Usually, that shames them into either taking down their website and then not updating again until they get more people or getting more speakers. It's one of those things where I was going to an event where they started these military conferences, and they start so early. It was like a 7:30 start. The first woman didn't take the floor until 3:00 PM. I mentioned it to the organizers, like, “This is a surprise that you had this issue.”
People are heading out, or they're on their coffee break or whatever it is, taking phone calls, and not necessarily there.
Clearly, it did not even occur to them that they needed to have diverse viewpoints. I understand that sometimes you're stuck with the military. It's hard to get officers, sometimes with different backgrounds. This is where you think creatively. You say, “Who can we get that can be part of this conversation? What's the look here?” Things like that, as opposed to being like, “No one came to mind. We're the same people talking over and over again.”
I think for discussions like we were saying, these are longer-term discussions. You're going to be having some of these over several years. It does seem like at some point, from the standpoint of we'd like to hear a little different perspective on this because we've heard the same thing. How are we going to break the long jam or come to some kind of consensus or a different approach to this scenario if we don't have different perspectives brought to that? That is helpful.
One would think, yes.
That's for sure. I appreciate asking the questions because that has happened. In the legal profession, there have been discussions of, “Let's look at the folks we have on panels, and could we have a different perspective, or could we expand that?” It's good to ask those questions.
Things aren’t going to change without taking active steps.
I appreciate your taking them affirmatively yourself when you've reached a point where you can do that. I appreciate the “Here's some names,” because that's often the “We don't know anybody.”
This is something that, earlier in my career, I would not have been confident enough to be able to do. That's something, as you get older and you know more people and you feel more secure in yourself and where you stand, then that's your chance to get a hand up to other people, because I would not have been able to do it, I don't think 15 or 20 years ago.
Desired Talents And Favorite Authors: A Glimpse Into Personal Reflections
It's good to give back in that way. I usually end with a few lightning round questions. I'm going to ask a few. Which talent would you most like to have, but don't?
Spatial reasoning. I'm so bad at that.
You're so cute. I know this one. Who are some of your favorite writers?
The one I would like, whom I read anything he writes, is Kazuo Ishiguro. He wrote a book called The Remains of the Day. I read it when I was in grad school. My first year was in Bologna, Italy. This was long enough ago that it was not pre-internet, but almost pre-internet. If you wanted any media to consume, you had to go to the one foreign language movie theater, the one foreign language bookstore. I was stuck like, “What do you have in English?”
I saw this cover and I said, “I remember that movie that came out. I remember liking it. I'm going to read the book.” It first resonated with a couple of things. One, I was taking a class on that point in European history. The things in the book talked about things I'd been learning about in my class. I was like, “This is neat.”
The main theme of the book, a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read it, is about a man who is a butler to a wealthy Englishman. He basically sacrifices a lot of his personal relationships and who he is because he thinks that by helping this English gentleman, who's conducting diplomacy in his living room, he's going to help out the world and do things that are going to help humanity.
It turns out that during World War II, the English gentleman was a Nazi sympathizer. It didn't do what the main character wanted. The book takes place ten years after World War II ended, where he's going back and thinking about his life and feeling like he wasted his life because he sacrificed things for something that turned out to be nothing. It's a devastating book, beautifully written, and well done.
That message of not giving up on yourself and for your work is a good lesson to learn early in your life, early in your career. That was my main takeaway. It’s that things are important for your job and work, but you cannot sacrifice personal relationships in the hopes that it's going to make your career go further, because that's not going to get you in a good place at the end.
While career is important, don't sacrifice personal relationships; it won't lead to a good place in the end.
That’s a little meditation on meaning, too. Everyone wants to have a meaningful life. What does it mean? As we go through different decades of our lives, we might have a different perspective on that. Maybe we had wished earlier that we had this broader perspective. It's not just a tunnel vision of career and things like that. It's beautifully written. It's rare that you have a beautifully written book and a great movie too. Usually, you don't have both. That's cool. Who is your hero in real life?
I state the obvious. It has to be my parents. They're both gone now. My mom was a real force of nature with a strong personality and was very loving. She was an educator as well. She taught music to elementary, middle school, and high school students, so younger kids. She had a voice in music. She was a band and orchestra director. She had such passion for music. She loved teaching. She loved kids. She was strong. Everything she did, she did so well. It was inspiring to see how she was able to talk to anyone, be charming, smart, and do all these things. That was something.
My dad was her opposite. He was an engineer. He worked on aerospace and space stuff, but he was very methodical, thoughtful, kind, and ethical, which maybe it's misperceived these days. One thing I always think about is when we were kids and we were going on our summer vacation. I was one of the three. My parents would pack us up in the station wagon. I'm from Southern California, the LA area.
We drove up the coast of California. My parents were not paying for plane tickets for these kids. We're going to drive around and stay in a hotel with a pool. We were driving up the coast, and we had to stop somewhere to get lunch. My mom, a child of the Depression, never spent money she didn't have to. She had packed a lunch.
We're pulling into this little campsite to be able to get out of the car and eat our sandwiches. There was a gate that was up, but they also had a box that said payment required $5 or something, but there was no one there. Most people, myself included, would have been like, “There's no one here. We're just going to drive in, drive out. It's not going to hurt or anything.” My dad very carefully takes out his wallet and pokes the $5 in because it was what was responsible and what needed to be done. I always think about trying to live my life so that he would think I was acting ethically.
I think about that too. That's so funny. My dad was the same way. He was like, “Do the right thing,” just very good ethics. I think that's such a great framework to grow up with because it instills in you interests by seeing that. It can reflexively work that way. That's the framework that especially dads provide, that good ethical framework. That's cool. That's a good illustration of doing the right thing when nobody is watching, literally.
I was lucky to have parents who could provide the framework, the love, the certainty, and the stability that allowed me to spring out into the world. Not everyone gets that, and I recognize how fortunate I was for that.
I suppose this might be a similar answer to this one. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
Gratitude And Advocacy: Lessons From Life's Challenges
I think what we talked about in terms of having a strong family relationship growing up. I have a daughter. Not surprisingly, she is the greatest kid in the whole world. I had the prettiest cat in the world. I'm so grateful for her, my daughter, my friends, and my family. The fact that I do have work that I'm passionate about, I do consider myself incredibly lucky that I have something that I think is important, and that I think I can contribute to, and that I'm allowed to.
My daughter was born premature and she was medically fragile for the first year of her life, has had a lot of health issues, and spent a lot of time in pediatric rehab, where you have a specialist and things like that. I was grateful that I had good health insurance that covered that. I'm grateful that we lived in a place where she could get help. They lived in a time when she could get help. Luckily, she responded to all this stuff. She's doing great now, but you never know. I'm grateful for all that, and that we were given this opportunity.
I learned from having watched my mom's health deteriorate before my daughter was born. I recognize that a lot of medicine, you have to be an advocate for yourself, and you have to be able to talk to yourself and call out for things. I was in practice with my mom, where we had learned about all these things as she dwindled to the end of her life. I was able to put that in a place for my daughter, and I was able to advocate for her and talk to other people.
One thing I learned is that anytime we met with a medical professional for the first time, I would come in my work attire with my work bag to send the message that I am a professional. I am an educated person as well. You will treat me as a peer, and you will act like that. You shouldn't have to, right? You should not have to do that sort of thing, but this is how our health system works. It's like, “This is what my kid needs. This is what she's going to get.” I’m grateful for that. Let's do another hour. I'll talk about all the things I'm grateful for my daughter.
That's important. That advocacy thing is so important. You're right. You see it especially as we're in that phase of life where we’re in both ends, the parents and the children, and various needs are going on. You do have to be an advocate either for yourself if it's you, for others, or for family members. It's unfortunate, as you said, “I have to dress up professionally so people treat me seriously.” That's no joke. You need to present yourself in a certain way and in a thoughtful way to be a good advocate for others. It's necessary.
I was going to say this is one example I had of that with my mom, near the end of her life. I was visiting her in Southern California. I happened to take her to a neurologist appointment. It was hot, so I was wearing a sundress. I was talking about things with my mom. I noticed that her aphasia is getting worse. The doctor was like, “Aphasia is a big word. How do you know it?” I'm like, “Oh my God.” My mom immediately starts being like, “She's very smart.” I said, “I research things for a living. I researched what's going on with my mom, and I'm not a medical doctor.” That was the thing where I'm like, “This is how it is. This is what I'll do.”
You're right. The first thing we do is research something. What are you talking about? That's what I do. It doesn't have to be legal to go, “I'm going to find out.” Everything we have to find out. That's how we are. That's where we live. That's where we're going first for answers. Given the choice of anyone in the world, with us or not, and it could be more than one person, who would you invite to a dinner party?
I know this is where I'm supposed to pick some intellectual person to have a key debate about policy and discuss things, but it's a dinner party. I want to have a good time. There's this comedian I follow on Twitter, Gianmarco Soresi. He is hilarious. One of the things he's well known for when he does his sets is he does crowd work. He'll ask questions and talk to audience members, and get a conversation going with them. The stuff he pulls out of people, you could not get that out of me with a gun to my head. How are you getting this out of someone? I think it'd be a fun conversation, and it would be an interesting party. That's my person.
That's awesome. You're looking for the full experience.
An interesting conversation, absolutely, I would.
Last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
I would say two, but they're both sides of the same coin. One of them is “I can do hard things,” which I tell myself sometimes when things are rough, like, “Take a breath. You can do hard things. You can do this.” That helps a lot. The other side is “The only way out is through.” In a lot of things, sometimes you have to suck it up and get through it, whether it's dealing with medical issues or being on a plane that's delayed or having to write something you're not happy about, you promise you'll get it done, and it's your job.
Take a breath. You can do hard things. You can do this.
That helps me sometimes because you think, “I’m just going to have to get through this.” Sometimes you can work yourself up a lot about stuff and about what you shouldn't have to be doing. You shouldn't have to be dealing with this. It's not fair. I don't want to downplay that, but sometimes it's just like, “Take a deep breath. You can do the right things. You will get through this.” That's how I look at that.
Just have some grit and go through it. That's true. You're right. Sometimes you can make it worse for yourself because you're getting all Twitter about it. You're stepping back and going, “Is that helping at all?” “No.” “Am I still going to have to get this done?” “Yes.”
Don't get me wrong. I love getting spun off about things. That is one of my favorite things. I love to complain. I can be petty, but sometimes for some stuff, you have to be like, “We're just doing this.”
Yeah, put your head down and work through it. Victoria Samson, thank you so much for joining the show and having a very wide-ranging discussion that we had. I'm sure that you will inspire others to think about contributing to space in some ways they may not have thought about before.
Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it. This is part of a broader conversation. Hopefully, we'll get more people in. Everyone can benefit from space, so let's get everyone involved in it.
Thank you so much.