All right, good morning everyone. If you have everyone please take your seats. We're gonna move on to our second panel of today. Hello, my name is Brian Whedon. I'm the director of program planning for Secure Row Foundation. And for the next hour, we are going to be debating whether it should be called space traffic management or space traffic control or space traffic coordination. Nobody wants to talk about that. It's gonna be a fascinating subject. We're actually hopefully not gonna do that. But we are gonna spend the next period of time talking about what is going on with the topic of space traffic management, which is my preferred term to call it. This is something that's been debated in academic circles for decades, but really didn't become a salient public policy issue until 2010 when the Obama administration quietly started a formal interagency working group to talk about what the United States should do on space traffic management. They met privately and quietly over the next six years and laid some of the key foundations we'll talk to in a minute, but did not reach a conclusion on what space traffic management would look like. It did become a very public issue in June of 2018 when the Trump administration announced Space Policy Directive Three, which was the first US national policy on space traffic management. And it made the Department of Commerce the focal point for space traffic management. But it also kickstarted a renewed international discussion on what the proper approach should be and the balance between national efforts and international efforts. And that debate also included activities in Europe. And just in the March of this year, the European Union announced their approach and their strategy to space traffic management, which is billed as being somewhat different from the US approach. So what we're gonna be talking about over the course of this panel is how this issue of space traffic management has evolved over the last several years. What the right balance is between national level efforts, international efforts. Do we need multilateral agreements? Can things be done voluntarily? What is the role for industry? What is the role for standards? How do we get to something like a coherent space traffic management regime? So I'd like to welcome our distinguished panelists that will be joining you for this discussion. Starting on my far left, Rodolf Munoz. He's a legal officer for the European Commission within the Directorate General for Defense, Industry and Space, where he works on space policy issues, including space traffic management. Next to me, Dr. Mario Borowitz, Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. Her research deals with international space policy issues, including international cooperation on Earth-observing satellites, satellite data sharing, and also space security and space situational awareness. Next to me, we have Brian Fwelling. He's an innovation boffin. Love that, love that, great. At XoAnalytic Solutions, one of the leading commercial space situational awareness providers. Brian does theoretical and applied research and advanced modeling of the space domain to enhance space situational awareness. And on my far right is Artie Hallamani. She's the Secretary General of the Global Satellite Operators Association, a trade association representing 28 global and regional satellite operators. She works with her member CEOs to lead the effort to showcase the benefits of satellite communications for a more inclusive and secure society. Now I'm gonna mention up front that we don't have someone on the panel representing the U.S. government. The new face of space traffic management in the U.S. government is Richard Dalbello, who was recently announced as the new director of the off-space commerce. Rich was unable to be here in person, but he will be giving a virtual keynote following lunch. So with deference to Rich, I'm gonna try and fill in some of the details of current U.S. policy where I can. And if I say something opposite of what Rich says, just ignore me and please go with whatever Rich says. As a reminder, as we did with the first panel, we're gonna be using the Huvva app for questions. And the key here is to go back to the list of sessions and then go into this session. Because if you drop questions into the previous session, I'm probably not gonna see them. So please make sure that you transition over to the session on space traffic management, dropping your questions, voting the ones in there, and I'm gonna work those in as best I can throughout our discussion. So, Mario, to get us started, I mentioned the space policy directive three that was issued in 2018 as the first U.S. policy on space traffic management. Can you kind of just give a general overview of what it laid out and what sort of the big things in there that it decided? Sure. So I would say that actually a lot of what's in SBD three is more on the space situational awareness side than necessarily getting into space traffic management. So a lot of it talks about, one, this transition from managing SSA capabilities on the military side and transitioning that over to a civil agency, which we are still in the process of trying to make happen. So there's that transition. There's also an assurance in there that the U.S. will continue to provide a free access to collision warnings or conjunction warnings for objects in space. So to continue to do that analysis and make that freely available for all users. Although, again, this is something where the details of exactly what that'll look like, what level of quality, that's something still being debated. Let's see, I think those are two really big things that are in there. All sorts of detail about other information that could be collected, that could be shared. Working with other nations is the idea that we need to have international cooperation is mentioned in there. But I think those are the key elements. And I think it also mentioned that when it comes to creating space traffic management rules, and I'll use that word in quotations. We'll talk about that when we go along. They were gonna base that on industry develop standards and best practices, which is a strategic choice, right? So instead of the government dictating how to do things, they were looking to what industry was doing and sort of had said, this is our standardized way, yeah. So Bertolphe, back in February of this year, the European Union issued a joint communique outlining its strategy on space traffic management. Can you talk about what was in it and sort of what is the emerging as the European approach on STM? Yeah, of course. So first, thank you for the Secure World Foundation for inviting us. This, indeed, this STM communication is a joint communication between the Commission and the EAS, because indeed, the idea of this communication was exactly to try, because of course it's not perfect, but to try to have an holistic approach. We try to bring together all the elements linked to space traffic management. And indeed, we face exactly what you said. How do you define space traffic management? It was a nightmare, because of course, and this is normal at the commission level, we listen member states in this field very carefully. So we had to discuss what do you have in mind. And when you look for a definition, the definition will vary according to whom you will ask that question. If you ask to an engineer, to a lawyer, to a scientist, to a political scientist, to a diplomat, it will have a different definition. So here, what we try to do is to give, first really, a working definition. It's not perfect, but at least a working definition, very modest definition. But then, I think more importantly, we try to bring together all the elements that should be bring together in order to develop a real space traffic management policy. And this a bit echo the previous panel, where it was said that indeed you need to bring together the engineers, the economists, but as well the lawyers. And basically we have four avenues. The first one is the development, or the look for STM requirements on the side of the civil, but the military as well, because it's very important. The user space by the military is more and more important. Then the second avenue is really more about the capabilities, what you can see, how you can see collision avoidance, reentry, fragmentation, all these elements, involvement of the industry as well, very important. Then the third element is linked to the regulatory part, where we try to look about standards and guidelines. How could we promote more the use of these standards and guidelines? And what is a bit innovative is the willingness eventually to develop some legislation at the EU level in order to tackle the issue of space traffic management. Finally, the fourth avenue is toward the international aspects, because of course, if you are trying to tackle this issue only with national or for us as a regional perspective, this will be useless, because space by definition, you don't have borders, though you need to work with everybody on that. And there I think the most important message is, of course, we are willing to work actively with the UN and we will do it again, but we really have in mind of trying to push for the development of different regional approach, different hubs, and to make them cooperate. In a nutshell, this is what you have. Great, thank you. Then I think there's several interesting details that I'd like to unpack as we go further through the discussion. Artie, I'd like to turn to you. You work with, as I mentioned, dozens of satellite operators in US, Europe, as well as around the world. How do the operators see the situation? Are they in favor of an international space traffic management system? Do they see the current efforts from the US and Europe and other countries as positive, kind of in general, how do they view this issue? Definitely, thank you so much for inviting Giselle to be here today. I'm delighted to be here. Absolutely, Giselle members take STM extremely seriously, even if, between our 29 operators, we may have differing approaches to how to go about it, but it doesn't mean that any one of them takes it less seriously than the other. I can't comment too much on the US position. I don't know enough about it. However, I would definitely say that Europe has an extremely important role to play in convening public and private sector stakeholders around this, and my view is really that, being a regional group, I hope that the member states of the European Union can realize that they stand before an opportunity and they're not actually hampered by the broader geopolitical differences that prevent consensus at an international level, at a global level. And of course we have great activities already going on in the EU with there's a bunch of studies going on right now. We have the ECSS for the European standards, we have the EU SST, and I think if member states can really pull in the same direction and try to accelerate some of the work that's going on, I think they can make a difference. One of the areas where I think we need the EU to do more is to support fundamental improvements in SSA data collection, whether it's through sensors, whether it's through a broadening of the EU SST and so on. I mean, of the 1,300 odd objects which are up to 10 centimeters and above, even the 18th only tracks, I think it's about 24,000, something like that. So if the EU SST can not limit itself only to European players, if it can strike partnerships with others, and if the European Union can help mobilize more funding and so on for additional sensors and so on, I think we stand a good chance of working towards a multinational system of systems which really combines SSA sensors and the analysis capacities that fuses data through open interfaces to improve the overall awareness. But I know you're asking about STM, but I think STM alone is not gonna help address the pending crisis. And I do think we need to remember we are trying to define norms for what is essentially a moving target. And even though you could say, well, with a moving target, you don't know what you need to do, we can work on gaining a better understanding. And I think we need to do that. And again, that's an opportunity for the EU to drive. We need to understand a lot more like how many satellites and systems can safely share Leo. Where are we with respect to that? I don't know if it's an easy question to answer, I know it's not an easy question to answer, but is it even possible to answer that question? The last panel showed that it's not an easy question to answer, right? Yeah, but I mean, still, we should try to have some kind of analysis around that. We still don't know what is an appropriate post-mission, the orbit timeframe. We don't know what the minimum reliability requirements, metrics should be that satellites should be built to and so on. So I think there's a lot of important work that needs to be prioritized so that we can know what norms need to be put in place. Is it best practices? Is it standards? Is it regulations? And how effective will those norms then be? And I think something I want to come back to later in the discussion is how much of this is voluntary norms versus mandatory rules and what is that balance? Because I think we're going to find maybe a little bit of both. But I want to pick up on the data question and turn to you, Brian. Part of your job at ExpoAnalytic is thinking very deeply about the quality of data, how to improve our knowledge. And ExpoAnalytic is one of the leaders in doing that for the deep space geostationary world. How is the conversation going with governments about their leveraging yours and other commercial capabilities when building these national STM frameworks? I think there was a prudent phrase in the last panel that was, it's complicated. There's a lot of different equities to represent in terms of standing up a space traffic management function for the government on the civil side. And I'm not going to speak toward where they're trying to go. We're really excited to work with where it seems civil space traffic management is going with Richard Dalbello taking the helm now at the Department of Commerce. I think importantly, we've done our best over, since beginning to fly satellites to quote unquote manage space traffic, right? When Charles Lindberg crossed the Atlantic for the first time, air traffic control wasn't really a huge driver at the time. There weren't a lot of collisions to worry about. But as that traffic regime grew in complexity, it became a necessary capability and it went to evolve toward data-driven decision-making to make sure that the updates and the required data to support the questions that are had by the operators was readily available. So I would say that's kind of our role in all of this is to ensure that as we begin to formulate a new formalism for space traffic management, that it is again a data-driven decision-making process like any other business process as one of the panels. Again, previously was talking about the economic drivers, right? How do we enable those economic levers to be pulled for those that are going to be operating in space and how do we enable regulators to be informed so that that dialogue isn't one-sided or simply a debate of opinion? So we observe most frequently at GEO, but certainly in all orbit regimes, we have capacity to contribute collection and information to include events in Leo, to include recent events that have made the news in GEO, and then extensions of those as we're looking at expanding the economy even beyond GEO into this lunar space. We are dialoguing where it makes sense to interact with the government right now on that, but also with those who would be executing those operations and saying, what do you need to be successful?  I hear about this rapid exponential growth, even in Leo, or especially in Leo, of the number of space actors. That means you have an increase in the rate at which you need an update to the information you're receiving. Are you asking for it? Do you know that you need it? How does that drive your decision-making to achieve safer operations in that evolving regime? And that's going to come to other places in space as our activities begin to evolve and expand. And so again, that's where we're coming from at Exoanalytic is to say, how do we bring our technology and our capabilities to provide the infrastructure to do the data collection and to provide that data exploitation and a timeliness necessary to support those processes so that they can be done safely and effectively. So it's not just theory from the research side talking in its own circles, what else, an inclusive and diverse discussion that includes everyone that brings something to the table on how to do that correctly. But I think we've reached a time where that discussion can't happen if it's not driven by observation and by data today. And that's part of what makes this discussion of space traffic management so challenging is, A, we have the debate over what it means, let alone what to call it. There's the data piece of it. There's the government oversight regulation piece of it. There's the national framework. There's the international coordination. And we're sort of trying to figure out what all that looks like in space while we're already using it and flying over the constellations. And so, Marilyn, I wonder if you could pick up there. You've done some work looking at how other domains have addressed traffic management and may have tackled some of these same issues. What hope is there? What kind of lessons can we maybe take from those other domains, right? Sure, so I think there's lots of different analogies people have looked at and it's always a good way to try to think of solutions and see what's out there. The one that I find really useful is looking at the global weather community. And there are kind of four similarities and four areas where I think we can really draw lessons from that experience which goes back more than a hundred years. So one is the inherently international nature of this activity. So when you're doing weather monitoring you really need to have global data, you have global forecast so that you can really understand how the weather affects everything else on the earth, right? And so all they're monitoring data collection, data sharing has a global element to it, international element to it. And that's the same for space traffic management or space situational awareness. The data you collect, the products you're creating, they have value outside of national boundaries. So I think at looking at things like the World Meteorological Organization and the way that the global weather community has coordinated together, that's one way we can learn from that community. I think also looking at how they deal with data. They've had a lot of discussions over decades about what weather data needs to be openly available. What weather data can be sold? What is the responsibility from an ethical perspective, from an economic perspective? And I think we're wrestling with those same issues with space situational awareness and space traffic management. What data do we want to make openly available? What's gonna be the impact of doing so? Working with the commercial sector, so very closely related to these issues of open data. That's another area where the weather community has decades of experience and reports and all sorts of things written about how to do that. And so what we see today is there's a huge value added commercial weather sector. And that's what we'd like to have in SSA and space traffic management to have this really active, successful commercial sector. But how do we do that? And how do we balance that with the responsibility of the government? So again, I think there are lessons to learn in that area. And then lastly, the fourth area, I think specifically thinking about warnings. So the weather community of course with severe weather warnings, severe weather watches, that's something there's lots of experience with what level of quality do you need for those? What kind of communication capability do you need for that? What are your ethical responsibilities with respect to these? We always talk about this back and forth between ethics and economics and how you make them work together. We want to have a large commercial sector and you can sell severe weather warnings, for example, and lots of people would buy them, but we don't do that for ethical reasons. We believe that everyone should have access to those. And so there are things like that that we can translate over to space traffic management as well and thinking about what we want to make available, what these services need to look like, what's the responsibility of government versus commercial, all of those types of things. I think there's a lot of possibility there. Yeah, absolutely. I like the fact you mentioned weather because all too often we jump to air traffic or we jump something like that, but there are lots of other domains and lots of other examples for that. I think it's a good example for the data sharing and commercial public sector issues. Rodolfo, I want to turn back to you. When the United States announced Space Policy Directive 3, there was some international concern. This was the U.S. trying to set the rules for everybody else. And when the EU started working on space traffic management, there was some sense that it was framed as trying to come up with an alternative approach to what the U.S. was doing. But as you just talked about and what's in the joint communique, there's quite a lot of overlap between the approaches. So I guess the question is, do you see this as an area where countries should be or are trying to be competitive or is it more of how different regions and countries are just trying to figure out their piece of it and then how to cooperate, right? Thank you for the question. I think, and it's very important here, to stress that there is no competition in this field among the nation. Of course, what the U.S. is capable today is impressive and there is nobody can say the contrary on that. We are working definitely with the U.S. in the more technical aspects with EU SST, for example. And the idea is more an idea of burden sharing because today you have indeed more or less several thousand satellites. But if the hundred thousands are in the end coming into Leo and one day we will have more use of Leo, then we will need to have a burden sharing and I think the idea is more an idea of cooperation. It's why I think we are not competing and we should need to cooperate more in order to avoid what, duplication. Because of course, monitoring space has a cost and there we need to work together and this is the idea of this communication because basically we are looking for the same aim. I think everybody want to use space in order to produce services, to produce for the common goods. We want as well as a name to avoid to beat history because this will be another tragedy of another common, basically, space. I mean, this was announced for environment like 50 years ago and we are repeating that now. So we need to work together and the idea as well is with the industry and I think nobody will dare to say that we can do it without the industry. Without the industry we will be blind because of the sensors, we need the software, we need the data, we need, so all this is very, very important to us and I guess as well to what I understood to the US. And when you look in the final part of the communication you see that we are basically saying let's discuss about it what can be done but indeed everybody need to reflect at its level. It could be a nation, it could be a region because in order to discuss about solution you need to make sure that you agree about what you are talking about with your own region or nation or agencies. So this is the idea behind. It's why we started this work hands-to-hands with all member states because this communication is a result of a two years discussion with a member state. This is very important to stress. So the idea is to reflect on it, try to develop some aspects but of course not doing it alone but doing it while thinking that it's necessary one day and the sooner the better to act collectively. And as I pointed out, it took the US the better part of 10 years to come up with what their approach is so you guys move pretty quick if you're going across the whole European Union but just to put another finer point on it part of this is the collaboration but part of this is also the oversight framework. And that has to be done at a national level in some cases. So you're looking at not only what is the sort of the EU approach but at some point I think you're going to be also talking about how each country is going to be perhaps putting those requirements norm standards into their national licensing frameworks, correct? Yes, but I think we can agree to, I will say minimum rules. Today if you launch a satellite and you have no collision avoidance, is it normal? And you can compare with the car industry at the beginning cars were sold without a belt. It was normal. Nobody cared about security. Today if you don't wear your belt at least in most of the countries not of all the countries, you will get a fine. So this is the same idea today with all what has been said by the previous panel they very well explained that we reach a sort of tipping point where we need now to agree on these minimum rules. I don't see that we have a huge discrepancies on this list of minimum rules. There is even I'm sure a consensus about it and indeed these rules should be minimum and they should work with what? With a set of standards as well. So the rules they don't need to develop every single aspect on the contrary. I mean it would be ridiculous to have a very detailed rule. No, but to set the minimum rules of the game when you go up there. So picking up on that, both, as I mentioned earlier the US approach ends with the EU approach talk about leveraging standards, operator led practices as the sort of the baseline rules. For anybody else, but me I'll ask Artie to start with, I know she's been involved in some of this, how successful has the private sector been in trying to come to agreement on those baseline standards, rules, norms and are there areas where that's going really well and are there areas where we're struggling a bit? So maybe Artie if you wanna start and then I'll go to Brian. Industry definitely has the ability and the incentive to come up with whatever best practices and things that it can. And I think the SDA is a great example, I know I always talk about the SDA, but I really think it's a great example of what can be achieved when operators come together to follow in common interests. The good thing about that is that even though it was private sector led, they managed to win the trust and the confidence also of public operators. So that's when you saw NASA, NOAA, UMSAT, et cetera also all joining the SDA. But it has been very successful, but I think, yes it overcame the need for ad hoc coordination, it provided clear points of contact and all of these things. However, it's unclear to me whether this kind of system can really scale up to cope with the mega constellations that are gonna be launched without public support. And I think it's a shame that it's always seen as oh that was a private sector initiative and we shouldn't just trust the industry. Because on some things, like the SDA, you really can. You really can, it has a proven track record and it has consistently increased its membership. But I think that the public sector, like the EU for example, should really look at that, look at the integrity and the reliability of the data that it has, look at its track record and support it with resources to help it scale up. And I think that's one of the difficulties that lies ahead. Brian? I might come at that question from a slightly different angle. I think the SDA is a great example of private sector collaborating on the data side. And so I'll leave that where it is. I'd like to mention CONFERS, which we joined recently, which is dedicated to industry-led efforts in developing standards for on-arbit servicing and maintenance, which the national strategy in the U.S. has come out for in-space assembly, maintenance and manufacturing or something like that. I see them. We have equities in that, in that the information services we provide help ensure the safety and assurance of those types of operations as more ambitious things are being done with spacecraft to include space logistics and stepping into deep orbits and things like that. So we thought it was worth being a part of that dialogue as the industry starts figuring out those things that they want to achieve. How is it that those information services play a role? So there are the kind of self-surveying, that's kind of quite the right phrase, but the kind of myopic view of this is what we do and so we should define our standards within our own box for how we should do that best. But there are also the secondary roles of because we do these things and they have a benefit and these other areas, how do we get involved in that discussion so that that cross interaction is occurring wealth within industry and public operators. And just to add to that, so full disclosure, a secure role is involved in this thing called Confers, which as you mentioned, a consortium of companies doing rendezvous, proximity operations, satellite servicing on orbit and they're trying to develop standards for how to do that. And it's one of these areas where there aren't a lot of existing government frameworks and license frameworks that says, this is how you will do this particular operation. So the industry and the governments are trying to figure out what the norms, what the standards should be for those kinds of activities. And it's difficult because there's not a lot of experience. We're talking about refueling satellites. However that happened, none, as far as like robotic to robotic refueling. Satellites, robotically docking to other satellites for life extension, well there's two of those examples, right? So it can be challenging to develop the standards from that limb experience. You know, we supported both of those examples directly. And so I'll just make the point that, you know, the ones that we advocate for are to the maximum extent practicable, integrate these available information services, whether that's for the training of onboard autonomous control systems that people are developing today. There's a lot of promise of technology out there that hopefully has the opportunity to bring revolutions to this field. But coming back to that original point of data-driven decision-making as we do things here, we make sure that as we interact with these groups that we're advocating for that to be made available so that we aren't trying to kind of fill the gaps with other logic that could be ill-founded. Anything else to add? Yeah, I'll maybe say something. So, you know, I think having industry-led regulation makes a lot of sense in this area, right? There's a lot of specialized knowledge, there's a lot to be gained from that experience and being able to leverage that when you're making these regulations. But also to keep in mind, you know, it's not industry-only regulations or industry on its own, right? So I think there really is still an important role for government there to be representing the public, to be representing the long-term sustainability of space, thinking about, you know, these other equities, right? And how they should be represented within this forum. And I think sometimes there's so much specialized knowledge and so much, especially in the U.S., desire to really support the commercial industry and its growth that we can sometimes lean too far that way, you know? And I think, for example, the, you know, NASA has this agreement with SpaceX about how they're gonna manage conjunctions and, you know, just reading that agreement, there's a lot of, you know, when there's a conjunction, it's really NASA's trusting SpaceX to do those maneuvers and there's not information in the agreement itself about what the threshold is for that, for example. So it may be that that's being negotiated, you know, on the sidelines and it's just not in the actual agreement.  So the highest voted audience question is the China question. Noting that China currently has the second most satellites in orbit. It has several constellations of their own planned. And it gets to the question about how countries can work together with China, but with other countries, both on the data sharing, but also on coming up with these, you know, hopefully standardized norms or rules for how we're all gonna manage traffic together in space. So that's open for anybody who would like to, you know, address it, to comment on it, because it touches on, so we hinted at earlier, this is not a problem that any one country can address by themselves. Each country is responsible for their own national activities and it's gonna have to put in place something to oversee them, but it's gonna have to coordinate with anybody else. So thoughts, comments on how countries or companies can at least operate together with others? Yeah, I'll just, I'll come at it from the data angle, right? Earlier this year, we reported on the activities of the SJ21 spacecraft in Geo, removing a defunct navigation satellite, which on its face is actually an outstanding result, right? Removing defunct mass from a very fragile part of the geo ecosystem is commendable. Doing so with sufficient transparency would make everyone in the global community much more comfortable. In terms of being able to communicate, this is what we intend to do, this is the data we're using to support how we're going to get that done. You can go confirm with your own data sources how that's happening, which is a little bit different with in terms of supporting the MEV1 and MEV2 operations, where that was much more communicated over the on and often, but this is something I think the world is learning how to do more effectively today. All sensors have biases and features and various things that, you know, you don't trust any of those. You don't just trust your onboard GPS, right? You work with third party pieces of information to make sure everything is operating as expected. The same kind of things here where if we really mean we're moving towards a transparent data solution here that globally can be exploited to support our decision making, then it's similar to cyber and other domains where you start with the zero trust model and you build the trust up over time. You build it up over use and you start letting the policies internal to that system begin to dictate what is reliable sources of information and what is not, but certainly being inclusive of those data sets and providing that opportunity to communicate intent has ramifications in both the civil, military and industrial spaces. Anything else? I'll come in number. I mean, I completely agree. I think data sharing is one of the most obvious areas for countries to participate, sorry, partner with each other and we should definitely work to see more of that. And I think governments, even though it's hard to find answers to this, they mustn't stop. They egg each other on. They need to continue to show that this is an absolute priority topic and maintain pressure on each other but also be a model for countries which haven't yet become space-faring nations and tell them that before you go into this, you need to know this is something which the international community is looking really seriously at constantly. And it's really important because that also mobilizes the funding to do some of the research that we need to get a handle on to better understand this. But as you said, Brian, ultimately it's down to individual governments, national governments, because they're the only ones who can enforce. Now, I'm not a fan of the race for space or the race for 5G. We work a lot on digital. So I really dislike that because I think it's just about geopolitical positioning. But when it comes to space sustainability, I wish there was a race, because that's where we really need one. And it's really analogous to climate change. In the absence of it, if you allow an operator in your jurisdiction to behave irresponsibly, then why should I take care of mine? I mean, it's exactly the same kind of blame game that we see in climate change. But we should be learning the lessons of that because we know where that goes. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anything else? Yeah, I would just say with respect to China in particular, I think one of the things that gives me hope, you mentioned that they have the second most number of objects in space back. So there's a lot of self-interest there, right? And creating a sustainable environment and creating something where we can make sure we're operating safely over a long period of time. I think one of the things that for me, and hopefully for the broader community, demonstrated the need for more data transparency and coordination on the international level was this interaction between the US and China that happened kind of the turn of the year around December, January this past year, where China had provided a note of all to the United Nations saying that there was a close approach of a Starlink satellite near their human-tended station. The US then responded, I think a month or two later, with a note for all also saying, no, there wasn't basically, right? That they didn't think the close approach had happened. And I think maybe there's certainly some political element happening there as well, right? But I think a big piece of that could be just different data sets and different algorithms, right? Different ways of determining what counts as a close approach. And I think hopefully that helps to illuminate for people a concrete example of why we need to have better data sharing, better data transparency. So we are on the same page about where these risks are happening and where they are. Because we've seen that happen between commercial operators, right? Where there was a fascinating incident between two operators about a year and a half ago and there were four different data providers in the discussion. All four had a different estimate of the collision probability. And all four of those estimates changed over the course of the three or four days leading up to the actual close approach. So then you factor in different levels of risk and it makes it very difficult to have a unified picture, right? Which is why the discussion, Rolf? Yeah, indeed. And this is, I mean, with the example that we have at the EU level with EU SST, just to merge the data of 40 different sensors. You need to calibrate, you need to have the same quality unit. It's a huge work. And I think where we can work, we can work with the other nations in two ways. First at the technical level, meaning the standardization bodies in order indeed to qualify what is data with a certain quality, which type of data, if it's coming from a telescope or radar or laser, all these elements are very technical and I think everybody can work on it. And on the other side is why we really think that of course the best option would be a UN approach, due to the fact that STM touch as well to the involvement of some military sensors and has some eco as a strategic element. It seems difficult today. So this regional approach is one possibility. Like we have actually something forming similar with space weather, with ICAO, with this regional approach trying to have regional centers. Why not? Brian, can I just tell you? I mean, from an operator perspective, the last thing that any operator wants, whether it's to do with spectrum, whether it's to do with different regulation is a patchwork of different norms. Yet at the same time, as Rodolf just said, we can't wait for a harmonized international level framework to be put in place. So what is the view we should take that a patchwork of norms is not a good thing or that in fact, collectively, all the different rules and best practices and whatever comes into place is going to actually move the needle. I don't know. I think there's a way industry contributes to that actually in that one of the practices, I won't necessarily debate whether or not it's a standard at this point is to demonstrate your awareness that you've derived from your data. Just demonstrating what you do have in a open and potentially international forum allows you to lay your data set next to someone else and say, where do we agree? Where do we have discrepancies? Is that an uncertainty in your process? Is that an uncertainty in my process? How do we account for that? And continuously having that dialogue. So it's one of those things where if you wait for the top down, consensus driven kind of state level international processes to produce the product, you will probably wait a long time based on lots of contributing factors to that. If you also do the bottom up approach of what can we derive from the data? What can we conclude and put in front of our respective countries that is irrefutable just from a data perspective? That will at least inform that dialogue as the international and other policy discussions are being had. And I was just to point out that if your answer is, well I have no uncertainty in my data, you've got a problem because you assuredly have some uncertainty and you better understand that before you can go talking to other entities. Rodolphe, there's a question here for you. When the European Commission talks about standards, how are you defining that term? As you're talking about technical design standards, you're talking about standards of operational behavior, you talk a little bit about how you're approaching that? For us, a standard is coming from a standardization body. So it can be ISO, of course, at the international level or at the regional level for Europe would be the sense and elect, for example. So what we call standards is really by a recognized standardization body. And I think today in space, you have a lot of guidelines, very good one, in the 21 LTS guidelines. It's a beautiful piece of work, it's impressive. The IIDC produces, as well, some guidelines. You have some standards. But at one stage, you need to have, indeed, perhaps some binding rules in addition to these rules. And this is what we are looking for. We are just at the beginning and we will launch, of course, a process of discussing with Member State but as well with industry because this STM communication was built on several studies where we involve, of course, industry because once again, without the industry, there is no STM. And from my reading of the communique, at least at this stage, the European Commission is not looking to implement regulatory rules for operations but you are considering regulatory measures to incentivize behavior. Is that my understanding of it? Yeah, you have, in fact, two elements. The first one is to say, well, for companies which are following these standards because, of course, a standard pair definition is non-conversory. You can decide to follow it or not. And then for the companies following the guidelines. I mean, today, why a company will do that? Well, you have what is called in other field the Californian effect which is, of course, you cancel to your investor or to your customer, I am protecting space sustainability. Is it working or not for consumers? Perhaps for investors, maybe, if you have, because you have a raise for this, of course, looking for money. So the idea what we have in mind is to find ways in order to give a bonus to these good players. Why we should not find a way to give a bonus, to find a way to incentivize exactly and to say to the good people of the class, yes, you are playing by these non-binding rules, which are rules in order to have tomorrow the possibility to use space. So you need to have a bonus on the other side. If I think if the communication had stopped there, it would have been already very good, but you need as well to develop some, as I said, basic rules, at least now. We reach this turning point where we need to have these basic rules. Brian, there's a question here about the business case for commercialization of space traffic, coordination, management, awareness. I'll frame it a couple of ways. One, we're talking about analogies earlier. In the air world, there are countries who have chosen to privatize air traffic management, Canada's one example. Mary mentioned earlier, there's also the weather world where there's both publicly provided data, but also commercial data and paid for commercial and local solutions. How does that inform how you guys are thinking about the commercial model for what might be SSA or STM? I might take your point about a patchwork of regulations and strategies. A patchwork of approaches, it makes planning difficult. Certainly going private in this way and challenging industry to bring the information services to bear is an option, but it's ultimately up to governments how they're going to consume and ultimately employ this information to regulate the operation of space systems. So I'd say our approach is by just necessity varied to reflect those signals that we're getting from both our government and our commercial customers. The degree to which what we can do can directly affect the success or failure of the on-orbit operations of private systems. There is a commercial business case for that. The degree to which that now supports all of this broader discussion requires us to figure out and maintain a dialogue with our government customers and what do you believe is inherently governmental? What do you reserve for within your approved roles for being able to go do this and then where is it that we can bring data and information to bear to support your process and decision-making? And sometimes also we have a part of our business with an exo-analytic that does do studies. We will go do modeling and simulation. We have digital engineering technology. We'll go do those things, but I will say, I kind of have this overall reaction lately to the word to study in general because it usually means let's kick the can for a year and a half. And go talk to everybody who does this for another year. I will tell you our perspective paraphrasing in my own words here would be a data set derived from a carefully derived experiment is worth its weight in a thousand studies, right? Learn by doing, right? You should be able to study the problem by executing operations, by actually exercising the processes which we claim to be researching. All too often I see that approach of, we'll learn about it some more this year and maybe next year we'll go do some things. And there are going to be economic consequences to taking that approach long term. So I would just advocate, I hope that we move to a paradigm very quickly where when we say study what we really mean is let's get the data together, let's get the right people in this very diverse conversation in a room and go figure out how we need to do this and learn it by doing it together. I would just add on the commercial question. There's always a cost associated with this. Even those companies or entities which are members of SDA pay for the service. Now of course industry might be better placed to provide more data and a better service than what is currently freely available. But as I said to scale that up, it needs more resources. Rodolf explained the complexity of this, right? And it mustn't come to a point where there's, where cost becomes a barrier to sharing data or sharing information. Or to operating responsibly and safely, right? That's ultimately the goal to be able to do that. Merle, there's a question here. We talked a little bit about knowledge of other domains. There's a question here specifically what can be learned from what IKO was done doing, how they've evolved international maritime organization. So anything else you wanna add in about lessons from the maritime and air domains for space? Yeah, well I'll say I'm not an expert in IKO and the processes there. I mean, I think there certainly are lessons to be learned from both those areas, from maritime and from air. But I think one of the things we have to be careful with the mention of IKO for example is, and this applies actually in the weather. I mentioned the World Meteorological Organization. In those cases, we had representatives nationally that were pretty clear, you know, this is the head of the agency that monitors weather for the nation. This is the head of the agency that deals with air traffic, right? That we could then send to an international body to represent each of the national positions and kind of move forward. And I don't know that we really have that in space traffic management. You know, if you think about where, who is the individual at that country who is the clear leader of those activities, a lot of times they're spread out in different places, right? Or they're kind of buried within other organizations. Or undefined in a lot of countries, right? Or undefined, right? And so I think that, you know, just as a starting place of how do you come together internationally, how do you organize, I think is a challenge that we have not yet addressed. Yeah, absolutely. Plus also the challenge of, you know, airspace. There are some national airspace boundaries and maritime. We have, you know, sovereignty on parts of the oceans. That's an issue for the space world. So we're down to the last couple of minutes here. I'm gonna give each of you a chance to very briefly, as the European Union, as United States, as other countries are thinking about this from the national level and putting together stuff, what would your sort of one piece of advice be that they should be doing in the near term to help get towards what we all have been talking about, sort of this coherent framework for how everyone can operate in space. So I think I'll start on this end, Adolf. Any sort of thing that pops out is what is the real priority to focus on, sort of in the very near term? Well, I think we need to start discussing, really, on this, perhaps, minimum rules that we could agree. But once again, respecting each other, because we have a different approach. We have different paths. We have, and indeed, even if STM is not new in itself, it's due to the new developments and the increased number of satellites, that now it becomes a reality and a need. But the idea would be, really, that we need to discuss and we have the chance to have, at the copious special working group, which has been established in order to look for the implementation of the 21LTS guideline, for example. This is a good place where, indeed, we try to find an answer to exactly what you said, to whom we could talk about. So, Mariel? Yeah, I would say we need to move forward in parallel paths. We've had some of this discussion about international first or national first. I think they've got to both happen. We don't have time to do one before the other. So I think in the US, we need to get this transition to civil happening so that that can really get rolling, start providing, figure out how they're gonna provide data, what kind of data they're gonna provide, how they're gonna interact with the international community. So we need that on the US national side. And then on the international side, I think a priority is figuring out even the process to have this coordination and really improve that transparency in the near term. So I think these issues of who needs to be at the table, what can we actually do to improve transparency? Because I think it's such a pressing issue, and it is a precursor to really being able to have space traffic management agreements. The gentleman from ViASAT on the previous panel made an excellent point about requirements and the way we do things being derived for a different time in the past. And I think doubling down on that, doing our own form with all different equities involved, the market research of what actually is our requirement today? What do I need for my information services? What do I need for my government to tell me in order to support my missions? What value does that have for me? What risk might that mitigate for me? How does that support my decision-making processes? Are my updates rates now faster than they would have been before and do the way that they're being published that they meet my needs? And if there are gaps, then we can have clear demand signals for needing to go scale in the right places. Simply concluding that the way we've always done things will scale in order to keep pace with the way. It was called out in SPD3 that that was already a failed strategy. So doing that analysis today and coming out with a clear message to our respective bodies that are trying to figure this out, I think it's probably going to drive a lot of meaningful vision for how to address this problem for today. Artie? I think we talked a lot about data sharing and when we talk about that, you're basically just talking about how do we deal with the problem that exists. The point is we need to help prevent the problem being exacerbated. So, I mean, prevention is far better than cure. So I really think we need to invest more in trying to answer some of the open questions out there. And it's all very well saying we need to change rules. But for example, if I make an analogy with what the European Commission did, Rodolphe, don't take this personally, it wasn't DG Devices, DG Connect. But in the field of digital, in 2013, they said basic broadband for all. By 2020, it had to be 50 megabit per second for all. By 2025 it's 100 and by 2030 now it's gigabit connectivity for all. We've still got a digital divide. I mean, so when you bring that back to space sustainability, you've got your 25 year rule, we know it's too long, but we can't even achieve that. So, is changing it going to help? Maybe, maybe it puts more pressure. Maybe it sends a signal that drives change. I don't know. But I think we need to invest a lot more into answering some of the open questions so that we start working more on prevention rather than cure. Okay, thank you. Well, please join me in thanking my panelists.


Good afternoon, Your Highnesses, Your Majesty, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for being with us on this very important session about the Middle East. Meeting Point or Battleground? I'm honored to be moderating this session. My name is Mina Al Arabi. I'm the editor of The National based in Abu Dhabi. And The National is proud to be working with the World Economic Forum on this session. Welcome to those of you here, but also those of you online following us. If you would like to comment on social media, please use the hashtag WEF23 and we'll get your feedback. So it is an interesting time to be meeting and discussing the Middle East. Often when we come here to the World Economic Forum, we're usually talking about the problems of the region and they haven't gone away. But it has been interesting during the time of the pandemic and immediately after where things seem to be at least simmering down. The heightened tensions of the last few years have simmered down, but they haven't gone away. Conflicts remain. Suffering remains in a number of countries and ultimately that's what matters. How can we alleviate the suffering of those who are not here, who cannot give us their voice? But how can we come up with solutions? And we have 45 minutes to try to move on a couple of these issues. For me as an Iraqi, what's on my mind is 2023, marks 20 years since the Iraq War. And for many, this is a significant milestone to assess what's happened in Iraq, in the region, but globally, geopolitically, what's happened. And so we also meet at a time of global polarization and concerns about the economic welfare of the world. We as a region are not disconnected. We are affected by what happens and we also influence what is happening, both in terms of energy, people flows, knowledge flows. And perhaps we can hopefully bring some peaceful resolutions that can be replicated in other parts of the world. And so for this panel, I have an incredible lineup. His Highness Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Saudi Arabia, his excellent Deputy Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq, Mr. Fouad Hussain, and her Excellency Kaisa Olingan, Minister of Defense of Netherlands, and his Excellency Minister Mohammed al-Assad's Minister of Finance of Jordan, and UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grunberg. Your Highness, I want to start with you. We have seen a smirking down of some of the conflicts of the region. There are moments of reconciliation, some conflicts remain. How would you assess this moment in the Middle East? Well, I'm going to choose to be very optimistic about this moment in the Middle East, and on the theme of this session, battleground or meeting space, I think the Middle East is proving to be very much the meeting space of the world right now. We are in the intersection between East and West. We have clearly taken a decision to be a bridge for the East and the West, and there is a lot of positive activity going on in the region, even with some of the challenges that we continue to face. We have the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for instance, is the world's fastest-growing economy in this year, but beyond that, what we are doing with our partners, among them, for instance, Iraq, Jordan here at the table, but others, in working on interconnectivity, whether it's on electricity, whether it's building trade, investment, et cetera, there is a true spirit of cooperation building in the region, and I think that spirit of cooperation can be infectious and can also help to resolve some of the still-existing differences and conflicts in the region and beyond. So when we talk about our relationship, for instance, with some of our neighbors, we always say we are focused on investing in our future, in building our developmental path, in building a pathway to sustainable prosperity, not just for the people of Saudi Arabia, but for the people of the region, and that's why we want to work with everybody in the region in that direction. And the sense I get when I talk to my colleagues and when I talk to even people in business, et cetera, is that there is a real energy in the region, and that energy is, I think, noticed also by the wider international community, and that's why you see engagement from countries all over the world, from multinationals all over the world, trying to be part of that energy. So I think we are at a very important moment in our region, and I'm gonna say a very optimistic moment for our region. Now, that optimism, as your Highness said, is also built on the idea of projects, to have joint projects, to have things that allow us to have a future together. What projects are you most excited about that make you optimistic? So obviously I'm most excited about Vision 2030, because that's our national vision, our national reform program, but in the context of the session, one of the key elements of Vision 2030 that we're working on is building the economy of our region, not just of Saudi Arabia. So when we talk about what we do with our neighbors, it's all about investing, it's all about building sustainable economic growth in our region, first because that secures our own national security, it's in our national interest, because if we have a secure stable region, it allows us to focus also on our developmental path. But if we are able to help our neighbors to build strong economies with strong markets, that also then will feed our economic prosperity. So we are very, very keenly focused on any number of things. So we have with Iraq, with Jordan, with all of our neighbors in the region, joint committees where we work on clearly defined goals. So one of the things that the leadership in the kingdom is very keen on is, let us not work on slogans or on broad ideas, let us work on specific targets, let us identify projects and work through those projects. And with every country in the region, the kingdom has projects. And also you can see, so in the Jordan and Iraq and Egypt work together on a trilateral cooperation mechanism. And there are other examples. So there's a lot of activity in the region on focused on working together on building a resilient economic pathway for all of us. Now an important neighbor, of course, is Yemen. And the war in some ways has gone into a lull. There was a truce. Even if it has not been renewed, there's a sense of a truce. Yemen would be an important part of that economic integration if there was a solution. How can the war end? Well, the war can end, it must end through a negotiated solution. That is the only way out, and that is our focus right now. We are working, you know, the UN special representative for Yemen is here with us on the panel, and I'm sure he will do that. But we're working with our partners international community. We're working in any number of ways to find a pathway to a negotiated solution. The government of Yemen is also very focused on finding a pathway to agree with the Houthis on an extension of the truce and then eventually a final permanent ceasefire and a political settlement. The conflict is only going to end through a political settlement, and that needs to be the focus. And I can say that we are making progress, but there's still work to be done. How far is the progress? Can we be optimistic that we'll see an end to this war soon? It's a very good question, and it's a difficult one to answer because you predicting the future is something that one, especially someone in my field of work needs to be very careful about. I just want to say, before going into answering that completely, I just want to thank you for allowing me to be on this panel because as you know, and I'll allow myself to be a bit personal, you know that very well that I am someone with a great level of affinity and love for the Middle East. It's a region that I truly believe in, and the title of this session I think is about whether the Middle East is a battleground or a meeting place. I believe it can be much more than a meeting place. It can be some, there is potential in the Middle East that it can be unleashed. Obviously, there are still conflicts as we noted, and as you're already having us also, I went into the other conflicts. Yemen is one of them. Yemen needs to be settled. You ask, can we see and what are the challenges? Can we see a positive development there or not? I think that what we have seen for the last nine months is a serious development in a good direction. The establishment of the truce on the 2nd of April last year is a significant change. One shouldn't fool oneself and believe that it's the end. It's a first step, but it's a significant step because the truce allowed for the last nine months for the violent exchanges between the boring sides to wind down. We haven't seen full military activity as we have seen before. There are still exchanges, but it's moving in the right direction. More importantly, it has allowed the Yemeni population to feel that the possibility of an end of this long conflict is real. That I think is critical. And therefore, if there is one thing I also want to underline here is the gravity of the moment. The possibility that we have at this moment to take this conflict to an end. And there I am grateful for the cooperation that I have with the Yemen's neighbors, of which Saudi Arabia is one, but also there are others. And those of you who listened to my briefing to the Security Council a couple of days ago will have heard me expressing my gratitude not only to Saudi Arabia, but also to Amman in the intensified efforts that we have seen lately. And in order to take Yemen forward towards what it needs, which is a comprehensive, inclusive political process that leads to the end. But I can also not only stop there, I also need to express my gratitude to the Kingdom of Jordan, which also in my work has also been a serious and an important ally in the work that we have done. And that is also something that I often come back to. But coming back to what you said, I think that believing that ending the war in Yemen is going to be easy. I think one should not fool oneself. It has gone on for almost eight years. The level of mistrust remains. But there are serious steps have been taken lately. And that is something that we all need to build upon right now. Do you mind if I just quickly follow up, I think, just on that point? I mean, we have a truth that's in place, but it's de facto in place. It is actually expired. What we need now is we need to find a way to get that truth back reinstated. So getting that truth in place was real progress. But we need to work to transition that truth into a permanent ceasefire. Is that going to happen? It's not clear right now. There is significant obstacles in the way. But if we can convince the Houthis and the government of Yemen to reach a permanent ceasefire, obviously the coalition will completely support that. And that then can open the way for political progress. Now, the UAE marked yesterday one year since the terrorist attack on the UAE. And it was quite a moment where actually, when I think back a year ago, we thought there was going to be an incredible escalation. And yet from that moment of difficulty and hardship and loss of life, there was also a push towards let's de-escalate. So I want to ask you about the regional impact of Yemen. And in your work, you do not just speak to the Yemenis and the Saudis speak to many in the region, including the Iranians. And so is there a sense that from all the parties in the region, including the Iranians, and I respect that, of course, as a UN employee, you won't divulge what they say to you in private, but a sense that this moment of optimism is actually shared across the region? I truly believe that there is an understanding among all countries in the region, all countries on the Arabian Peninsula and also on the other side of the Gulf that the conflict is not to the benefit of anyone. It has brought pain and misery to 30 million people and needs to come to an end. And there is no way that this conflict can, in any way, represent anything beneficial for the region, regardless of where you watch Yemen from. And there I think I have, during the, since I began my tenure, managed to establish good and healthy relationship with all countries that are neighboring and also others that are engaged on settling the conflict in Yemen. And I think that we are in a moment where there is an understanding on how that the conflict needs to end. Then there will always be differences on how and what and the details will have to be negotiated. But the support of the region and the support of the broader international community, and I cannot also forget the broader one, including the Netherlands, that has also an active role playing also on some particular fights related to Yemen, is absolutely critical in the work that I do. So I want to now change focus and look at Iraq. Also the sense that there's a shift. Iraq started to host regional meetings. We know that there have been a series of meetings between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also the wider Baghdad Forum and the second iteration was just held in Jordan recently. So, Your Excellency, I want to ask you about Iraq's regional role, but also how it's building its foreign policy, continues to build its foreign policy at a time when neighbors still cause difficulties? Iraq since 2003 became a democratic system and it is an open society. And of course, being an open society and democratic system, it brings with it also some problems. There is a big interaction between the internal politics and external politics. In this case, I'm talking about regional politics. To deal with the internal politics and sometimes conflicts within the Iraqi society, Iraqi politics, we were thinking how we can manage this. So in the first place, we were thinking about how we can manage the problems inside Iraq. So at the end, after discussing and studying this situation, we have seen that the link between the internal politics and regional politics. And there is a huge interaction. So we started to manage also the internal politics outside the border. And to deal with regional politics, dealing with the regional politics, there were many tensions. It is true now, it's less. But there was tension among various countries. And Iraq, because of the fact that Iraq has good relationship almost with all neighboring countries of Iraq. So it was possible for Iraq to contact all these countries. And at the end, to bring them together and to have discussion. First, on bilateral level, and then we had the form version one. We call it Baghdad form. In Baghdad, and then the second meeting was in Amman. The security of the region is interlinked. And there is an interaction. So security inside Iraq needs also security in the region. And security in the region needs security inside Iraq. We have seen it during the attack of the terrorists in Iraq. And at the end, occupying one third of the Iraqi territory and about 50% of the Syrian territory. It was not only a threat to Iraqi society and Iraqi political system. It was a threat to the region, but it was also a threat to international peace. So we need a regional security, in fact. To have regional security, we need dialogue. That's the only way. And we need less tension. And Iraq was able, and is still playing this role, in bringing all these countries together. And we are happy about this role. And the meetings are significant. But often you'll have cynical journalists like myself who will say meetings are great, photo opportunities are great. But then what happens? And you're right to build trust. You need connection. You need this conversation. But then you need the next level. Because Iraq continues to suffer. Be it to drone attacks, be it water resources being cut off and others. So how does that relationship building then develop into securing Iraq further? The relationship between Iraq and Turkey and the relationship between Baghdad and Tehran has to do with the geography. But it has to do also with history, as well as culture and economic interests. So when there are some problems, the question which we raise for ourselves, how are we going to deal with these problems? When we look to the history of the Iraq and we have seen it, that Iraq was in war, internal fighting but also external wars for about 50 years. So that's why in principle, we are against any kind of wars. But at the same time there are conflicts and we have got some problems with Turkey when they attack Iraqi territory as well as Iranian. So how are we going to deal with this? We recognize that there are some organizations inside Iraq, political organizations, which belong to Turkish society or Turkish politics. And they are functioning or they are in no position against Turkish state. At the same time there are some organizations inside Iraq which are against Iranian. And our constitution, constitution, Iraqi constitution doesn't allow us to have organizations on Iraqi soil and operating against our neighboring countries. So we have our own duty. But at the same time attacking another country, this is against international law as well as against the Iraqi sovereignty. So in this case we are in discussion with both countries to be honest with Tehran and Ankara how to stop these attacks in the first place. And how to solve these problems of these organizations which belongs to Iraqi, Iranian opposition and Turkish opposition, how to solve these problems. Once again we are coming back to dialogue. Without dialogue we cannot solve it. These problems are internal problems inside Iran. And the groups which are from Turkey or opposition they are in the opposition against Turkey, they are internal problem inside Turkey. So part of it they must solve it. But part of it we can deal with it but in cooperation with both countries. So we need to have intensive dialogue and real dialogue about solving these problems with both countries. I want to turn to you, your excellency because of course the Netherlands is among the countries that maintains military presence. You were in Iraq recently. And I'd like to ask you about how you assess the security dynamic in Iraq because as Minister Fouad Ahsen just said Iraq's security impacts the region and the world. How do you assess it today? No, absolutely, that's true. I just visited Iraq and what I heard there and also what I'm hearing here today is does give reason for optimism. So I share the optimism that I hear here today but we also have to be fair. There are tensions, there are problems that should be solved by dialogue by resolve also I think to continue. You have a momentum now, a momentum for stability, a momentum for regional cooperation. We always say in the Netherlands it's better to have a good neighbor than a distant friend. And I think that is what we're seeing now. The Middle East is such an important region for the world and stability in the Middle East. It is in our best interest. And while there's so much going on in the world and people think perhaps that we in Europe are now so much focused on the war in Ukraine and yes of course we are but we're not forgetting about the Middle East. Middle East is, we have our partner chips there as well. So if you take Iraq for instance where we were in the fighting mission, fighting dash in the alliance led by the Americans, we are now in a completely different phase where we try to support stabilization and more and more focus on helping the Iraq security institutions, so also the armed forces of course to improve and to professionalize and that is our role. So it's completely different but we don't want to leave and say so the war is over it's stable now, we have other priorities. We want to be a partner. We want to share in the professionalism that we're seeing being built there because it's so important for us. And I think you have to be there for the long run. It's not up to us. It's of course it's up to Iraq and Iraq authorities how this cooperation is taking form and how long we will continue with the cooperation but we are there in friendship because we believe it is important to show that partnership. Dash, how much of a threat do you still see it? Well, it's still a threat but it's not in the same way as it was before. I mean the war against ISIS you could say is one but of course there are still cells, there are still attacks, there are still terrorists there and that has to continue and I think that the Iraq security forces are also doing a good job in dealing with this. If you allow me to react on this issue, in the first place I would like to thank the Dutch government supporting Iraqi security forces as part of the larger alliance against ISIS. They did the excellent job during the fight against ISIS and now giving ISIS to our security forces but also giving training to our military and other security forces. As for Dash, the threat is different of course. The Iraqi forces were able to destroy the so-called Islamic State. The terrorist organization went back to, it is original activity as a terrorist organization. Having said that, there are some threats especially, there are various camps inside Syria and there are various terrorist organization inside Syria including ISIS and as you know it is easy for those terrorists to cross the border and coming from Syria to Iraq. The other aspect of this organization, I mean ISIS, has to do with the ideological background. It is a fact that military-wise they have been defeated but ideologically we must do a lot of work because it is possible for them once again to re-establish themselves and re-organize themselves and once again they will be dangerous not for Iraqi society but for the whole Middle East. So it is important to continue this cooperation. It is important to continue the fight against ISIS in various fields. You raised the fact that the threat is still there ideologically but also there are certain grievances that will remain and there are certain issues to do with economic situations, vast unemployment. Iraq just recently released its numbers of population, 40% of Iraq's population is under the age of 15. We have economics, now that's just Iraq when we look at the region, youngest region in the world. So here we talk about money, not only money but development opportunity, creating opportunity. If we see a momentum here, how do we then translate that? So people on the street feel that there's a difference when conflicts calm down, when people are not thinking not only about extremism but raising arms for whatever it is. So I turn to Minister Al-Assas and I want to ask you about, we have this global fragmentation, we have concerns economically, perhaps the region is not as badly hit as other regions but it's unfortunately looking like it will come to us. How do you deal with that from a financial and economic point of view? Thank you, Mina. I think I'd like to revisit the premise itself, meeting point, conflict point, for whom? I think we need to start to think of the region as an end in itself. Even our name, the Middle East, we used to be the Near East when the center of gravity used to be the old empire, it shifted to the new empire as we became the middle. I think the region needs to be approached indigenously as an end by itself. And I like the momentum that's taking place in the region these days. We are moving towards stability, we're moving towards an era of owning our own future. You know, 10 years ago, you and I were here at the web talking as the conflict shifted from inter-states to intra-states. Well, now we're carrying the scars of both and we're moving forward. Then there was COVID, Stagflation, Russia, Ukraine, and we're still carrying the scars of all and moving forward. But I think we need to be very vigilant as the global economy has become so, I think we used to think of black swans as tail end events. Well, now they're the norm. We've gotten three massive shocks back to back economically globally, which we're still witnessing. And I think we need to start preparing ourselves for these shocks as the norm rather than every blue moon. If you connect all of the above, we kept the economy for the end. I think that's the problem. The problem starts with the economy. The challenge in the Middle East is an economic challenge as much as anything else and that's translating into a political fragmentation. As a minister of finance, through the era of COVID, Stagflation and what have you, my focus is macro stability. And we used to always think that macro stability will yield micro stability. As a byproduct, I think there lies the fault. I think we have to treat it as a prerequisite for macro stability. Households need to believe, genuinely believe in the Arab world that the standard of livings of their children will be better than their own. And it's this deficit of hope that denied the region a lot of its potential that made us stop from dreaming of a better tomorrow. And I think we need to regain the momentum of owning a better future. And it starts with thinking indigenously. Yes, we're in the same body of water, but we're in different boots. There are oil exporters, there are oil importers and within oil importers there are countries which front-loaded reform before the storms hit, like Jordan. We got upgraded at a time when many countries in the world are getting sovereign downgrades and there are countries which haven't. And I think we need to differentiate and vote with our own investment money. What model does the region deserve to have? And that's our starting point. Now, I want to follow up with you, but I'm also cognizant that we're going to run out of time, so I want to open the floor for questions. Please, if we can get a mic here. And if you could kindly identify yourself and who your question is for in the panel. Thank you. Ishan, the ruler of the Washington Post. Good to see you all. Thank you all so much for being here. This is a question I suppose I would direct to the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. In Washington, there is a great degree of enthusiasm about the Abraham Accords and what has been seen as a real changing shift in the region vis-a-vis Israel, especially from the Gulf states, the states that have recognized or created relations with Israel, and those that are warming to Israel in certain ways. How does the new government that we see in Israel, one that includes incredibly extreme figures in its top ranks, affect this changing trend? I mean, look, Palestine remains an incredibly important evocative issue in our region. It remains to be, it remains incredibly consequential and remains unresolved. And the focus really needs to be on a pathway to resolving this conflict. And that's only going to happen with negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the spirit of reaching real agreements and reaching, in the end, we believe, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. And that should be the priority and that should be engagement that we're doing in the international community. The new government in Israel is sending some signals that maybe are not conducive to that. I hope that in the end, they will see that it is in their interest, not just their interest, but the wider region that they engage seriously on resolving the Palestinian conflict because if we resolve that conflict, if we are able to find a resolution that gives the Palestinians dignity, and I like what Mr. Saves said, just like hope, hope is the key. We need to be able to give the Palestinians hope and the only pathway to hope is a state and dignity and sovereignty for the Palestinian people. If we can do that, that removes a huge drag on the entire region, a source of potential conflict that is always going to be there if not resolved. So that needs to be the focus and certainly that's what we feel is the priority. Any further questions? Wonderful, then I will follow up with you on the point of the deficit of hope. I think some people in the region are too scared to hope, especially those that have been conflict-ridden. And so there is a sense of let's try to get by as much as we can and then you have other countries that have incredible visions and there's prosperity and you have excitement and momentum. So how do you bridge that? And you said investments, I think that's quite important, but if you can drill down more on the economic side and the financial side, what you're looking for? What do you think other countries, private sector should be doing? I think we need to regain the momentum to believe in our ability to move forward. We need to start throwing in a direction that gets us forward rather than balancing the boats from every wave that hits us. And to do that, I think first of all, we need to bridge few gaps. Number one, the gap between intellectual policymakers pontificating here in Davos and reality on the ground where households are really hurting, where unemployment is genuine, where inflation is real, and we need to start giving them a belief that we are working with an understanding of what they're going through. That's one. Second, globalization's benefit did not get distributed in a way that built momentum to maintain it. And I worry about the fragmentation that we're in because we know that globalization is the way to move forward. But what we've seen, beware the eyes of the globalization. And that's the reality. And COVID hit countries in a way that made them look onwards. And we need to make sure that that onward look is not there to stay. Third, I think our youth stopped waiting for the state to come to build their dream. But at least we owe them as a state to stop blocking their dreams, to stop putting bureaucratic obstacles in their dreams. The least we can do is to be enablers or at least to give them a chance to build a future better than the one they grew up in. Saudi is launching its vision. Jordan, we took opportunity of the challenges and we pushed three very deep reform plans. Political for democratic governments to be voted into position. Economic vision for the next 10 years to get our real growth to 5.6 and to create a million jobs. And then an administrative reform program so that we can stop being bureaucratic obstacles in the way of youth. I think the path forward has to be focused on enabling the youth to build the bridge towards calling their own destiny. And that destiny has to stop relying on the state coming to aid them, but rather we need to facilitate entrepreneurship in a time of uncertainty globally. The region for a first time in a while is providing some stability. Stability at the macro economy, at the fiscal stability, at the monetary stability. If we don't capitalize on that to start bringing investment into the region to start creating jobs, I think that would be a very wasted opportunity. Yeah. Just to add because I think that sounds hopeful. That's good. And especially because you have such a young population it's extremely important.  So while building on this future, it has to be the new future and the new economy. And I think that because as a defense minister, it's not perhaps what you expect me to say, but I think one of the security things is exactly that, but you succeed in tackling that now and making that transition at the same time by giving the hope to the young people, then it's one less concern for our sector, for the security sector. Can I just have a quick follow-up? The changes in climate can provide a real opportunity for the region in different ways. Jordan can be one of the best spots for solar generation, for green hydrogen export to Europe. It can turn a country like Jordan from a net energy importer to potentially an exporter. That depends on our creativity in capitalizing the moment. I think the global atmosphere we're living in creates challenges, but there are opportunities. But it's on us to actually turn these opportunities to a reality where we failed before is we failed to actually implement. We need to start hearing implementation very quickly. But that point about this is a moment particularly on the issue of climate. And of course, Egypt just hosted COP 27 and the UAE will host COP 28 that many people are excited about, particularly because of the energy question that you can actually bring it together. However, with due respect, we know a lot of this stuff. And as you said, we have these conversations. We know that regional cooperation can bring us much further than where we are now. There are countries that need more people and more employees, and there are countries that have high unemployment. So what stops that? If the solutions are there, people talk about all sorts of possibilities of solutions, regional cooperation. What stops it? I think we need to get out of the mentality of malaise that we've been stuck in for decades that has been prescribed to us by ongoing conflict. Listen, for the first time conflict is not in the Middle East now. And climate change could be actually a position which by countries can actually capitalise on it because it affects our daily life. For us, we're launching a desalination water project in Jordan, not because we want to be trendy, but because it's literally life or death for us. I think we're at an inflection point whereby inaction is no longer tolerated. And I think many of the countries represented on this terrific panel are coming together to build that reality. The challenge really is getting out of the previous mentality. And I believe being here today, listening to these wonderful experiences all across, tells us that it's a situation where all boats must rise. It's going to be very hard to imagine in the Middle East where one country is thriving and the other is suffering. I think the past decade taught us that the spillovers of insecurity in one area spreads very quickly to the other, and we all stand to benefits from ensuring that the future is brighter in all spots in the region. Yemen, before the takeover of the Houthis in Sana'a, the Ku'un Sana'a, and then the war, was the example of the World Bank had billions set out, Saudi Arabia had huge projects. I remember writing about it at length. There were all these great projects that were going to bring people together and so forth, and then the politics got in the way. Is there a way out for Yemen that is based on projects, on economic prosperity, giving people something better to look forward to? No, well, first and foremost, I think what you have said until now, as a communist, it's fascinating because what you talk about, if I may translate what you said and then you have to correct me if you don't agree, but what you're saying basically is that there is a commonality within all countries and that is the need for hope, and that then can be translated into building yourself out of the challenges, the inherent challenges and the different challenges that all the different countries in the Middle East have. There obviously, Yemen is one of the countries with the most severe challenges, and there I think that responding to your question, I think that when I speak about a potential end of the conflict and when I speak about important steps that have been taken the last nine months, the average Yemeni will not have felt that in his or her pocket. There is not going to be more money in the pocket of an average Yemeni just because the fighting has ended. The economic challenges that the Yemenis are facing remain difficult and will have to remain in focus of the international community. There needs to be an understanding that, but to answer you, I believe that Yemen has potential. I believe that with Yemen that has gotten rid of the internal or the difficulties, the violent difficulties that it is facing right now has a potential of redeveloping and taking path that could lead to a more thriving society, but we're not there. And that we shouldn't run too quickly. We should take one step at a time, build on the steps that have been taken right now, and not run forward too quickly believing that we're further than we are. There right now some steps have taken, been taken, but it's very easy for those to wither again.  So here, from my point of view, I will take one step and we have been in different discussions talking about that, is taking a step consolidating and then taking the next step and then consolidating so that you don't rush forward too quickly. That I think is critical. And then as a plea for all of you that represent different entities from the international community, make sure that you stand ready to support Yemen when it will need it. Because it will, if the work that I do together with the Yemenis and together with the regional countries actually bear fruit, then Yemen will need support. And that support is going to be more important than ever. Okay, we're running out of time, but I want to close and ask you each to give me a word or two about in the year 2023 to maintain this cautious optimism, but hopefully see next year's discussion that was even better. What's the one element development issue in the region that we should support and we should root for?  Further integration and implementation of all the plans that we have announced? For Iraq fighting unemployment among the youth that you mentioned, and for the region more security. Yeah, it's security cooperation. So cooperation in general integration, but security cooperation, maintaining the good cooperation that you have with your international partners in the region, I think it's crucial. And continuing to pointing out that for everybody, no matter what specific interest you have, stability is in everyone's best interest. And I can, obviously I can only mention Yemen and the hope I have that 2023 will represent the year when Yemen will take decisive steps towards a political process that would end its conflict. And there the plea, as I mentioned, is for the broader international communities continued attention to the conflict and support and so that we all move forward jointly in helping the Yemenis build a better future. I think times of global uncertainty mean our good times for us to reassess old paradigms that have paralyzed us for so long and held us back. I think we need to keep pushing forward with the reform momentum. Hold no hostages, keep moving forward. The youth of the region deserve for us to really hand them a better tomorrow. Thank you. Well, I thank you all. Insha'Allah next year we'll have more good news to report, but also not to forget those conflicts that continue. Be it Palestine, be it Syria, be it Libya, it's always difficult in this very limited time to give credit to all those who deserve credit, but credit to the forum for maintaining its interest and importance of the Middle East. And Insha'Allah next year we'll have better news. Thank you all for attending and thank you for tuning in. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.