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My next guest is Josh Hartman. Josh is a former
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satellite program manager with the US Air Force. He's a
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former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Intelligence.
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Until recently, he ran a technology company that builds the
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kinds of sensors that will likely be used in the
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Golden Dome project, and currently he's a private equity investor
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in the Defense and Intelligence Community Industrial Base. Actually, Josh
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and I are both investors in a particular company that
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I won't name, and I will just say for full disclosure,
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Josh is a great friend of mine and I'm really
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happy to have him on the show. I think he's
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been on with me once before. All Right, Hi Josh,
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thanks for being here.
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Hey Ross, are you good? Good?
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Thanks for doing this. I want to just jump right
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in with some stuff about Golden Dome, because I knew
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you would be the guy who who knows so and
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you can kind of weave in and out a little
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bit and you know, answer what you think I should
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have asked. So my first question, though we've seen Iron Dome,
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you can talk about that a bit with in Israel.
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Is Golden Dome technologically feasible? And what I'm talking about
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now is not so much whether you know a rocket
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can hit another rocket, but I'm talking about the scale
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of the continental United States or North America.
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Yeah, I think.
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I mean, just for context, the Iron Dome is something
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that was jointly developed between the US and Israelis to
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focus on regional defense short range missiles, and it's done.
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An effective job.
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What we're talking about is an order of magnitude much
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larger than that, much more complex. The concept is feasible,
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but it's really a proverbial wicked problem or a Gordian
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not and it's all about defending you know, could be
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hundreds of inbound missiles and coming from long range. To
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break it down, there's probably really three areas that require
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focus from a defense persons efective and this is I
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think we're Golden Dome. Actually I know this where Golden
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Dome is focused on. The first is population centers in
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the US, The second is strategic government sites, you know
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like military bases and other continuity of operations for government sites.
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And then the third.
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Credit clubfrastructure like the industrial base, internet connectivity utilities, nuke sites,
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et cetera.
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The problem is not a new problem, though, it's.
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Something that the country has been working on since nineteen
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seventy four when they created the Blistic Missile Defense Office.
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The thing that has changed is the focus on hypersonicsion missiles,
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which are remarkably different than the traditional inner continental balistic
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missiles that we're used to seeing. They're really fast and
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they don't create a lot of heat, which is what
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we've used in the past to detect them and then
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track them and then ultimately defeat them.
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Is this basic? Is this a.
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Continue of Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan's vision of SDI that
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the detractors at the time called star Wars, although I
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use the term affectionately.
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Yes it is.
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It's I mean, it's a direct evolution of that. It's
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the next step. The Missile Defense Agency, which came out
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of of that that effort, has been investing for the
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last couple of decades in defeating inbound missiles to the homeland,
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not just inbound missiles of the homeland, but they have
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responsibility for forward operating bases. But this is truly a
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homeland defense kind of a construct, and and it's it's
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just pushing things into the new technology era. It was
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really it was really killed back then because of the
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of the cost it was too expensive.
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The end of the Cold War also helped that discussion.
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But with costs that that have come down because of
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new tech evolutions, Uh, there's there are better ways to
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do it, And I think there's a question on how
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much we might be willing to pay. But that'll be
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a hard conversation I think at the national level about
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how much damage and loss of life we might be
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willing to accept in the homeland versus putting a lot
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of money out on the table to be able to
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try to solve this very difficult problem.
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So when I first brought this up a couple of
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days ago, just after maybe it was the same day
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that President Trump was in the White House with heg
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Seth and all those senators talking about this. My producer
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at the time asked me a question that I will
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sort of rephrase to you.
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Is the threat that this aims.
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To deter or eliminate a real enough threat that it's
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worth spending whatever this would cost, assuming it can be done.
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Yeah.
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I think it goes back to what part of what
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I was just saying, we know the same people who
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have nukes are the same folks who who have the
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technolog bill launch it at long distances, and so in
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the past, we had decided that as a country that
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defending against nuclear weapons was something that we wanted to
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do almost at any cost. We're not necessarily talking about
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only nuclear weapons now, we're talking about maybe just normal
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kinetic weapons that that have tremendous damage capability, but aren't
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going to destroy an entire city with one bomb.
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It It is.
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Is as I mentioned earlier, it's something that we should
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think about and discuss whether or not it's worth the cost.
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It will be a lot more than one hundred and
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seventy five billion dollars that has.
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That has been offered so far.
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But we've been spending billions, frankly, in this effort to
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keep pace with technology and to keep pace with our adversaries.
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We know that the Chinese and the Russians are both
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positioning themselves with hypersonic missiles and and in to be
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able to take out our homeland defense capabilities.
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Let's talk about space a little bit.
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You know, for many years, all the conversation in the
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United States, going back to when I was in college
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and I studied nuclear strategy and national security, I don't
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even know if you knew that I studied that, but
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I did, and you know, at that time and still now,
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there's all this talk about the American nuclear triad and
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I get it, But it seems like the new frontier
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is space. So talk to us a little bit about
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the militarization of space, who's doing it, what should we expect,
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and maybe including your answer very specific mention as to
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whether there already are or will soon be, or will
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be but not soon nuclear weapons that could be launched
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from space. Yeah.
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Good question.
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So so militarization of space, I'll try to unpack that.
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I would say there's two buckets of what that means.
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The first is is the military operating in space? And
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the answer is yes. For decades, our military and other
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militaries have been operating in space.
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The GPS system is a military system.
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We've found lots of other commercial applications for it, but
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military also has their own communications infrastructure that looks like
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some of the companies like Intel SAT or even Starlink.
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We also have missile warning, so we're in space. Space
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is militari it's been militarized. The second bucket is really
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the more important question. I think that we're starting to
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evolve the debate to and that is warfare in space,
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Does that exist and what will it look like? And
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we are seeing we can read articles in the press
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they talk about the evolution of China and Russia's position
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in space and the kinds of operations that they're conducting,
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whether it's blowing up satellites from the ground or it's
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bringing in what we call snugglers, which are a co
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orbital threat of basically a sneaky satellite that comes up
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behind our satellites and either starts collecting the data from
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it or is posed to be able to take it
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out with either some with many different options of a
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potential weapon. One of those weapons could be eventually a
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nuclear weapon.
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The problem.
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So there was an article that was written over the
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last I think year and a half or so one
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of the Congressmen who are on the Armed Services Committee
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argued that the Russians are building a nuclear system in space.
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There's been no confirmation for that. I think there's a
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lot of interest in trying to determine if what is
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this unknown object that's flying around in lower orbit. But
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if it is true that it's a nuclear weapon, then
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that's a a whole new threat space that we haven't
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really thought about, and it's not so much about dropping
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a nuclear weapon on the Earth somewhere on the ground.
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It seems as though that that kind of a weapon
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would be used against other space assets, which would have
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a fairly devastating effect. In low Earth orbit is a
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lot of a lot of the satellites that we use
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in a commercial basis from a day to day perspective,
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and blowing up a nuke and space would take out
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all of the satellites in the immediate area, and then
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over time would the radiation that comes from that nuclear
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weapon would degrade that most of the rest of the
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satellites in low Earth orbit, causing trillions of dollars of.
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Direct and indirect economic impact.
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We're talking with Joshua Hartman, former satellite program manager with
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the US Air Force and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
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Defense for Space and Intelligence. Josh if the scenario you
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just described played out with a nuclear detonation in low
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Earth orbit, that is and time intended to take out
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American or non American satellites, would that be likely to
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give us the you know, the one second after scenario
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of an e MP that takes out an immense amount
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of stuff down here on the ground.
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So I don't know that it would cause an effect.
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It depends upon the altitude there. There have been a
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number of congressional investigations into and and some some other
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technical investigations outside of the national labs that suggest that
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we would have an e MP effect on the ground.
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It would take out most of the you know, the
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electronics systems that we have across the United States. The
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same that that initial shock would would in space would
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also be an e MP effect knocking out a bunch
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of the electronics that sit on the satellite. So I
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don't smart enough to know if it actually how what
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the impact would be on the ground, depending upon the
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altitude of that nuclear detonation.
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So when when President Trump was talking about Golden Dome,
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there was one kind of line, or maybe two lines
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that he gave that I thought were so silly that
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I think I may have actually laughed out loud. And
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that was when he said it would be operational during
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his term as president, like within about three years, and
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that it would cost one hundred and seventy five billion dollars.
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Now I know I didn't mean I laughed out loud.
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I don't mean that as I, you know, just jabbing
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at the president, but I just think those are both ridiculous.
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What do you think?
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I agree, So it's not possible to spend I don't
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think that the the entities that would spend money, the
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Missile Defense Agency, the Space Development Agency, could spend one
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hundred and seventy five billion dollars in three years.
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Effectively, that would be a lot of fraud and abuse.
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Frankly, the idea that we could build a system from
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scratch in three years also just not possible. The reality is, though,
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that before the idea of Golden Dome was created, there
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were government agencies who were working on this concept and
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have been investing. The Space Development Agency, for example, has
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been investing. They probably invested about fifteen billion dollars over
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the last eight years, seven or eight years on the
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space architecture of this alone. There has been investment in
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the services, on the command and control necessary to bring
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all these systems together in an autonomous capacity.
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So there's work that's been going on.
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I think the next three years will be about integrating
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those systems, deploying the things that are already being built,
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probably renaming them in a marketing construct under Golden Dome
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to show our resolve against these hypersonic missile threats.
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Let me get a couple of listener questions in how
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did the US fall so far behind Russia and China
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and hypersonic missiles, which I suppose assumes that we have
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fallen that far behind, but that does seem to be
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the conventional wisdom.
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Yeah, I don't know that we per se fell behind.
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I mean, that's that's a separate question than this. We
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there's some argument about US falling behind in hypersonic performance,
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and we're investing a good amount.
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We haven't had the same I guess success that.
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We've been looking for that maybe some of the Chinese
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have had. But I wouldn't say they're all that far
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ahead of us. If they are and all ahead of us,
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I think the question here is how do we fall
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behind and being able to detect and defeat hypersonic weapons?
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And I think the answer that is we didn't. We
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didn't understand the implications of hypersonics and how it would
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impact homeland defense or even in our you know, forward
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operating defense of troops and conflict.
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I think also we didn't expect the.
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Chinese, in particular to move as fast as they have
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public she publicly published intelligence reports have suggested that in
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various areas that the Chinese would be, you know, ten
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to fifteen years out on this kind of capability, the
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same with their their space offense capabilities. We expected that
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it would have taken another ten years, but they somehow
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have really accelerated and shown results in a lot less
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time than we expected.
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And that's really what caused by surprise.
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All Right, we've got about one minute left, one more
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listener question, and then one last question from me. Given
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our geographical position, drone attacks on the US are not
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very likely, but stick with me for a hypothetical, right amy,
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an enemy brings up a submarine and launches five hundred
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drones from it, or an enemy makes their way through
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South America in New Mexico and launches hundreds or thousands
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of drones at US. Would Golden Dome in theory protect
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against that kind of thing?
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So I think it could eventually, but I envisioned that
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to be down the road a bit.
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I don't.
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I have not heard or been part of discussions about
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deploying counter drone systems as a part of homeland defense
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in population centers.
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I think this is this.
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Golden The first phase of this Golden Dome effort is
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focused on the strategic more strategic threats of intercontinental hypersonics
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or as sort of you were starting to get to
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hypersonics that are sitting up loitering in space and then
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decide to come down in the United States.
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All right, last question for you.
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If you were Secretary of Defense, and maybe you will
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be one day and a president asked you Golden Dome,
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do it or don't do it, what would you say.
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I would say yes, I would because I think enough
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work has been done to move this forward. And you know,
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some of this is politics. It's helpful for a president
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to regardless of party, to offer a vision on that
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people can understand and get behind. And this is a
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defense initiative that gives good unity and focus of the
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defense community. You know, you could argue that over the
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last fifteen years and really after the Cold War was over,
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we've kind of wandered. We did a counter terrorism effort
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that was much needed, but we've once the counter terrorism
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enemy has sort of waxed and waned.
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We're kind of wandering on.
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Really what is the strategic focus of the US military,
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And this is I think a good first step to
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get them realigned and oriented around what is an important
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threat to deal with.
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Josh Hartman is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
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for Space and Intelligence. Currently, he's a private equity investor
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in the defense and intelligence community Industrial Base. Josh, thanks
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for your time. As always, that was a great conversation.
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My pleasure, Rosson and I hope the listeners enjoyed it. Yeah,
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I'm sure they did.
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My next guest is Josh Hartman. Josh is a former
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satellite program manager with the US Air Force. He's a
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former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space and Intelligence.
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Until recently, he ran a technology company that builds the
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kinds of sensors that will likely be used in the
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Golden Dome project, and currently he's a private equity investor
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in the Defense and Intelligence Community Industrial Base. Actually, Josh
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and I are both investors in a particular company that
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I won't name, and I will just say for full disclosure,
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Josh is a great friend of mine and I'm really
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happy to have him on the show. I think he's
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been on with me once before. All Right, Hi Josh,
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thanks for being here.
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Hey Ross, are you good? Good?
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Thanks for doing this. I want to just jump right
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in with some stuff about Golden Dome, because I knew
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you would be the guy who who knows so and
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you can kind of weave in and out a little
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bit and you know, answer what you think I should
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have asked. So my first question, though we've seen Iron Dome,
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you can talk about that a bit with in Israel.
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Is Golden Dome technologically feasible? And what I'm talking about
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now is not so much whether you know a rocket
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can hit another rocket, but I'm talking about the scale
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of the continental United States or North America.
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Yeah, I think.
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I mean, just for context, the Iron Dome is something
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that was jointly developed between the US and Israelis to
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focus on regional defense short range missiles, and it's done.
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An effective job.
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What we're talking about is an order of magnitude much
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larger than that, much more complex. The concept is feasible,
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but it's really a proverbial wicked problem or a Gordian
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not and it's all about defending you know, could be
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hundreds of inbound missiles and coming from long range. To
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break it down, there's probably really three areas that require
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focus from a defense persons efective and this is I
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think we're Golden Dome. Actually I know this where Golden
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Dome is focused on. The first is population centers in
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the US, The second is strategic government sites, you know
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like military bases and other continuity of operations for government sites.
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And then the third.
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Credit clubfrastructure like the industrial base, internet connectivity utilities, nuke sites,
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et cetera.
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The problem is not a new problem, though, it's.
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Something that the country has been working on since nineteen
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seventy four when they created the Blistic Missile Defense Office.
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The thing that has changed is the focus on hypersonicsion missiles,
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which are remarkably different than the traditional inner continental balistic
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missiles that we're used to seeing. They're really fast and
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they don't create a lot of heat, which is what
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we've used in the past to detect them and then
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track them and then ultimately defeat them.
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Is this basic? Is this a.
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Continue of Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan's vision of SDI that
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the detractors at the time called star Wars, although I
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use the term affectionately.
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Yes it is.
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It's I mean, it's a direct evolution of that. It's
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the next step. The Missile Defense Agency, which came out
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of of that that effort, has been investing for the
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last couple of decades in defeating inbound missiles to the homeland,
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not just inbound missiles of the homeland, but they have
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responsibility for forward operating bases. But this is truly a
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homeland defense kind of a construct, and and it's it's
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just pushing things into the new technology era. It was
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really it was really killed back then because of the
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of the cost it was too expensive.
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The end of the Cold War also helped that discussion.
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But with costs that that have come down because of
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new tech evolutions, Uh, there's there are better ways to
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do it, And I think there's a question on how
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much we might be willing to pay. But that'll be
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a hard conversation I think at the national level about
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how much damage and loss of life we might be
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willing to accept in the homeland versus putting a lot
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of money out on the table to be able to
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try to solve this very difficult problem.
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So when I first brought this up a couple of
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days ago, just after maybe it was the same day
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that President Trump was in the White House with heg
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Seth and all those senators talking about this. My producer
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at the time asked me a question that I will
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sort of rephrase to you.
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Is the threat that this aims.
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To deter or eliminate a real enough threat that it's
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worth spending whatever this would cost, assuming it can be done.
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Yeah.
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I think it goes back to what part of what
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I was just saying, we know the same people who
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have nukes are the same folks who who have the
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technolog bill launch it at long distances, and so in
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the past, we had decided that as a country that
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defending against nuclear weapons was something that we wanted to
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do almost at any cost. We're not necessarily talking about
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only nuclear weapons now, we're talking about maybe just normal
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kinetic weapons that that have tremendous damage capability, but aren't
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going to destroy an entire city with one bomb.
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It It is.
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Is as I mentioned earlier, it's something that we should
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think about and discuss whether or not it's worth the cost.
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It will be a lot more than one hundred and
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seventy five billion dollars that has.
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That has been offered so far.
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But we've been spending billions, frankly, in this effort to
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keep pace with technology and to keep pace with our adversaries.
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We know that the Chinese and the Russians are both
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positioning themselves with hypersonic missiles and and in to be
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able to take out our homeland defense capabilities.
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Let's talk about space a little bit.
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You know, for many years, all the conversation in the
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United States, going back to when I was in college
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and I studied nuclear strategy and national security, I don't
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even know if you knew that I studied that, but
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I did, and you know, at that time and still now,
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there's all this talk about the American nuclear triad and
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I get it, But it seems like the new frontier
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is space. So talk to us a little bit about
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the militarization of space, who's doing it, what should we expect,
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and maybe including your answer very specific mention as to
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whether there already are or will soon be, or will
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be but not soon nuclear weapons that could be launched
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from space. Yeah.
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Good question.
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So so militarization of space, I'll try to unpack that.
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I would say there's two buckets of what that means.
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The first is is the military operating in space? And
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the answer is yes. For decades, our military and other
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militaries have been operating in space.
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The GPS system is a military system.
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We've found lots of other commercial applications for it, but
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military also has their own communications infrastructure that looks like
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some of the companies like Intel SAT or even Starlink.
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We also have missile warning, so we're in space. Space
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is militari it's been militarized. The second bucket is really
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the more important question. I think that we're starting to
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evolve the debate to and that is warfare in space,
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Does that exist and what will it look like? And
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we are seeing we can read articles in the press
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they talk about the evolution of China and Russia's position
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in space and the kinds of operations that they're conducting,
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whether it's blowing up satellites from the ground or it's
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bringing in what we call snugglers, which are a co
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orbital threat of basically a sneaky satellite that comes up
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behind our satellites and either starts collecting the data from
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it or is posed to be able to take it
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out with either some with many different options of a
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potential weapon. One of those weapons could be eventually a
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nuclear weapon.
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The problem.
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So there was an article that was written over the
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last I think year and a half or so one
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of the Congressmen who are on the Armed Services Committee
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argued that the Russians are building a nuclear system in space.
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There's been no confirmation for that. I think there's a
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lot of interest in trying to determine if what is
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this unknown object that's flying around in lower orbit. But
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if it is true that it's a nuclear weapon, then
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that's a a whole new threat space that we haven't
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really thought about, and it's not so much about dropping
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a nuclear weapon on the Earth somewhere on the ground.
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It seems as though that that kind of a weapon
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would be used against other space assets, which would have
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a fairly devastating effect. In low Earth orbit is a
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lot of a lot of the satellites that we use
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in a commercial basis from a day to day perspective,
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and blowing up a nuke and space would take out
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all of the satellites in the immediate area, and then
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over time would the radiation that comes from that nuclear
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weapon would degrade that most of the rest of the
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satellites in low Earth orbit, causing trillions of dollars of.
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Direct and indirect economic impact.
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We're talking with Joshua Hartman, former satellite program manager with
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the US Air Force and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
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Defense for Space and Intelligence. Josh if the scenario you
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just described played out with a nuclear detonation in low
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Earth orbit, that is and time intended to take out
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American or non American satellites, would that be likely to
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give us the you know, the one second after scenario
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of an e MP that takes out an immense amount
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of stuff down here on the ground.
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So I don't know that it would cause an effect.
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It depends upon the altitude there. There have been a
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number of congressional investigations into and and some some other
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technical investigations outside of the national labs that suggest that
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we would have an e MP effect on the ground.
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It would take out most of the you know, the
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electronics systems that we have across the United States. The
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same that that initial shock would would in space would
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also be an e MP effect knocking out a bunch
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of the electronics that sit on the satellite. So I
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don't smart enough to know if it actually how what
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the impact would be on the ground, depending upon the
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altitude of that nuclear detonation.
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So when when President Trump was talking about Golden Dome,
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there was one kind of line, or maybe two lines
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that he gave that I thought were so silly that
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I think I may have actually laughed out loud. And
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that was when he said it would be operational during
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his term as president, like within about three years, and
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that it would cost one hundred and seventy five billion dollars.
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Now I know I didn't mean I laughed out loud.
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I don't mean that as I, you know, just jabbing
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at the president, but I just think those are both ridiculous.
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What do you think?
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I agree, So it's not possible to spend I don't
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think that the the entities that would spend money, the
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Missile Defense Agency, the Space Development Agency, could spend one
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hundred and seventy five billion dollars in three years.
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Effectively, that would be a lot of fraud and abuse.
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Frankly, the idea that we could build a system from
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scratch in three years also just not possible. The reality is, though,
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that before the idea of Golden Dome was created, there
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were government agencies who were working on this concept and
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have been investing. The Space Development Agency, for example, has
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been investing. They probably invested about fifteen billion dollars over
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the last eight years, seven or eight years on the
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space architecture of this alone. There has been investment in
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the services, on the command and control necessary to bring
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all these systems together in an autonomous capacity.
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So there's work that's been going on.
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I think the next three years will be about integrating
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those systems, deploying the things that are already being built,
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probably renaming them in a marketing construct under Golden Dome
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to show our resolve against these hypersonic missile threats.
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Let me get a couple of listener questions in how
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did the US fall so far behind Russia and China
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and hypersonic missiles, which I suppose assumes that we have
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fallen that far behind, but that does seem to be
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the conventional wisdom.
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Yeah, I don't know that we per se fell behind.
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I mean, that's that's a separate question than this. We
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there's some argument about US falling behind in hypersonic performance,
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and we're investing a good amount.
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We haven't had the same I guess success that.
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We've been looking for that maybe some of the Chinese
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have had. But I wouldn't say they're all that far
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ahead of us. If they are and all ahead of us,
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I think the question here is how do we fall
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behind and being able to detect and defeat hypersonic weapons?
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And I think the answer that is we didn't. We
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didn't understand the implications of hypersonics and how it would
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impact homeland defense or even in our you know, forward
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operating defense of troops and conflict.
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I think also we didn't expect the.
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Chinese, in particular to move as fast as they have
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public she publicly published intelligence reports have suggested that in
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various areas that the Chinese would be, you know, ten
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to fifteen years out on this kind of capability, the
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same with their their space offense capabilities. We expected that
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it would have taken another ten years, but they somehow
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have really accelerated and shown results in a lot less
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time than we expected.
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And that's really what caused by surprise.
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All Right, we've got about one minute left, one more
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listener question, and then one last question from me. Given
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our geographical position, drone attacks on the US are not
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very likely, but stick with me for a hypothetical, right amy,
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an enemy brings up a submarine and launches five hundred
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drones from it, or an enemy makes their way through
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South America in New Mexico and launches hundreds or thousands
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of drones at US. Would Golden Dome in theory protect
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against that kind of thing?
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So I think it could eventually, but I envisioned that
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to be down the road a bit.
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I don't.
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I have not heard or been part of discussions about
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deploying counter drone systems as a part of homeland defense
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in population centers.
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I think this is this.
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Golden The first phase of this Golden Dome effort is
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focused on the strategic more strategic threats of intercontinental hypersonics
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or as sort of you were starting to get to
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hypersonics that are sitting up loitering in space and then
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decide to come down in the United States.
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All right, last question for you.
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If you were Secretary of Defense, and maybe you will
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be one day and a president asked you Golden Dome,
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do it or don't do it, what would you say.
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I would say yes, I would because I think enough
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work has been done to move this forward. And you know,
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some of this is politics. It's helpful for a president
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to regardless of party, to offer a vision on that
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people can understand and get behind. And this is a
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defense initiative that gives good unity and focus of the
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defense community. You know, you could argue that over the
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last fifteen years and really after the Cold War was over,
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we've kind of wandered. We did a counter terrorism effort
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that was much needed, but we've once the counter terrorism
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enemy has sort of waxed and waned.
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We're kind of wandering on.
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Really what is the strategic focus of the US military,
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And this is I think a good first step to
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get them realigned and oriented around what is an important
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threat to deal with.
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Josh Hartman is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
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for Space and Intelligence. Currently, he's a private equity investor
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in the defense and intelligence community Industrial Base. Josh, thanks
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for your time. As always, that was a great conversation.
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My pleasure, Rosson and I hope the listeners enjoyed it. Yeah,
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I'm sure they did.
