Uncle Sam: Rest of the world would love to steal our space blueprints – don't let 'em

With America outspending the rest of the world on space technologies, those systems and their blueprints are a highly alluring and lucrative target for sticky-fingered spies, Uncle Sam has reminded industry. As such, organizations designing and building hardware and software for deployment in orbit and beyond need to safeguard …

[martinusher]

Its starting to sound like healthcare

We in the US outspend the rest of the world on healthcare by a wide margin. Does that mean we get better outcomes? Does that mean that a greater percentage of the population have access to advanced care? Does that mean our system is automatically better?

Of course not. It just means the people involved have found a way to make lots of money. Usually by exploiting a monopoly.

China's put a lander on Mars. India's put one on the Moon. Does that mean that they could only do this by 'stealing' our technology? We might spend a lot of money on space but I'm not sure we actually spend value, just money (profits, again). Sometimes the projects are worth the investment -- the James Webb telescope, for example -- but even then this isn't an exclusively American project, it required input from numerous people around the world (and you can bet that any follow up is definitely going to need global cooperation to make it happen).

The US has been a leader because it had the size and organizational skill to pull together large scale projects. If it fails to maintain that capability then its going to be replaced just because things need to get done. There's no point in sitting on the sidelines grumbling about how its "our " technology that's being "stolen". (There might be a bit of that going on but then historically we've done our fair share and then some.) The world is trying to move on from the Cold War, we need to do so as well.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Its starting to sound like healthcare @martinusher

Remove wars from the equation, and who provides the money and ideas for populations and what does one do with all of those businesses and personnel that depend upon wars to be invented and fought in order to survive and prosper/be employed and exploited?

Are there any such leaders ready, willing and able and available out there?