Thinking about piracy in space means building scenarios and then subjecting them to reality checks. It helps to go for extremes and come up with outlandish ideas. You can always bring them back down to earth, so to speak. In our exploration of the potential for space piracy, we consider the question of whether there would be privateering in space. After contemplating the question and seeking expert opinion, the answer seems to be an intriguing “maybe.”
For context, a privateer is a pirate working with permission from a sponsoring nation. During the American Revolution, an American privateer could obtain a “Letter of Marque” from the US Congress and take that as license to raid British ships and steal their cargoes—keeping the proceeds for themselves while helping the war effort by denying supplies and treasure to the British.
American privateers had more than a little to do with the formation of the US Navy. Captain David Hawley (1741-1807) is one example. He was an officer in the Continental Navy, the forerunner of the US Navy, during which time he engaged in privateering on Long Island Sound. He took British ships he captured, known as “prizes,” to ports in Connecticut to liquidate their cargoes and sell the vessels for profit.
Remarkably, you can still apply for a Letter of Marque from the US Congress. It’s very unlikely that they’ll grant you one, but it never hurts to ask, right?
Will this happen in space? While it’s tempting to be drawn into a romanticized rewriting of pirate history and misapplying a 17th century notion of privateers in space, this type of activity could very well take place. Today, however, it’s unlikely that a legitimate nation state would publicly declare that it is engaging in privateering.
We asked Professor Margaret Sankey of the Air University, author of Blood Money: How Criminals, Militias, Rebels, and Warlords Finance Violence (Transforming War), who has studied the relationships between criminal groups and non-state actors in geopolitics. Her response was, “Oh, absolutely. There will be the kind of arrangements where a country might, on the downlow, use a non-state actor that they have a relationship with to damage another country’s space assets—just to obscure their own culpability. That’s certainly a possibility. It would work the same way as using a proxy group on Earth.”
Namrata Goswami and Peter Garretson allude to this kind of scenario in Scramble for the Skies: The great power competition to control the resources of outer space. They describe “Piracy” as a “Situational Scenario” in space conflict, wherein, “Individuals from one state might choose to conduct illegal seizure for private gain, which would necessitate intervention by another state against the first state’s citizens.”
The murky world of global finance could potentially provide a means for space privateers to operate. In earlier times, privateers got financial backing from wealthy individuals in their home ports. They would spend those funds on innovative ship designs. Indeed, privateering and piracy drove advances in nautical technology. The same could happen in space, with opaque international venture capital funding the creation of spacecraft designed for plunder.
So, our best guess is that, while the US Congress probably won’t be handing out any space Letters of Marque, there could be privateering situations elsewhere. These would be situations where a nation state wants to disrupt or destroy an adversary’s military space capabilities or space industry, but do so through a deniable privateer.
Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-pirate-ship-sailing-on-sea-during-golden-hour-37730/
Space Piracy Blog © 2024 by Hugh Taylor and Marc Feldman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0