Today’s (10 Sept 2026) Mumbai edition of the Times of India featured two intriguing items concerning Artificial Intelligence. The first involved an AI safety researcher warning that developers in leading labs fear advanced systems could pose an existential threat before the end of the decade. The second reported ambitious claims regarding AI systems tackling major mathematical milestones, such as the Millennium Prize Problems
These two narratives illustrate diametrically opposed visions for humanity’s future. Before addressing them, one must keep in mind that roughly 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. There is no biological reason to assume that humanity is exempt from this rule. Charles Darwin never suggested that evolution culminates with human beings; he viewed humanity not as nature’s ultimate product, but merely as one branch among countless others.
The formal discipline of Artificial Intelligence emerged after British mathematician Alan Turing published his seminal paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in 1950. In 1955, John McCarthy coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” in his proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project. McCarthy also created the Lisp programming language in 1958. Practical robotics followed swiftly: General Motors introduced the first industrial robot, Unimate, to its assembly line in 1961 to handle hazardous die-castings and spot welding. In 1979, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence was founded; it has since been renamed the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
Data aggregated by Our World in Data tracks how modern AI benchmarks against human performance across several domains. Between 2010 and 2024, AI systems reached or exceeded human parity in six key capabilities: handwriting recognition, speech recognition, image recognition, reading comprehension, language understanding, and predictive reasoning.
AI has steadily automated routine decision-making across numerous sectors. Algorithms now routinely manage passenger airline ticketing, loan eligibility evaluations, and initial resume screenings. Recommendation engines, such as YouTube’s, dictate viewer feeds based on behavioral history. In healthcare, computer vision aids diagnostic imaging, while robotic platforms assist surgeons with high-precision procedures.
Beyond data processing, machine learning has begun to assist pure mathematics. Rather than merely calculating known values, systems are beginning to assist in formulating novel conjectures. Projects like the Ramanujan Machine uncover algorithmic patterns and propose continued-fraction conjectures for fundamental constants, which human mathematicians subsequently formalize and prove. When AI systems map complex logical spaces, they inevitably highlight unproven edge cases and structural anomalies, generating new avenues for mathematical research.
Monopolies and the Enclosure of AI Research
A major barrier to realizing AI’s potential is the paywall infrastructure maintained by commercial academic publishers. Media theorist Howard Besser observed that just as economic forces drive the gentrification of cities and erode physical public spaces, commercial interests have enclosed digital information spaces. Economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine examined this phenomenon in Against Intellectual Monopoly, arguing that broad IP protections frequently hinder innovation rather than foster it.
This issue was central to Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., regarding copyright enforcement on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In an amici curiae brief, prominent computer scientists emphasized that open interfaces are fundamental to computational progress:
“Excluding APIs from copyright protection has been essential to the development of modern computers and the Internet. For example, the widespread availability of diverse, cheap, and customizable personal computers owes its existence to the lack of copyright on the specification for IBM’s Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) for the PC.”
If knowledge silos and aggressive IP claims restrict access to training architectures, development will consolidate within a handful of corporate monopolies.
Evolution on Earth began approximately 3.8 billion years ago, progressing across biological substrates and now extending into technological ones. While alarms over imminent extinction may often carry rhetorical hyperbole, ungoverned deployment of autonomous systems remains a genuine risk. Isaac Asimov’s classic “Three Laws of Robotics” offer a foundational philosophical reference for safety and human alignment:
The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
To reflect on the twilight of our biological primacy, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End provides a haunting portrait of species-level transition:….
“There was nothing left of Earth. They had gone over it like a light that illuminates and consumes. They had left nothing behind them, and they were gone.
…
Jan Rodricks stood alone upon the dying planet… Earth was no longer his home, nor the home of man. It was only the launching pad from which humanity had leapt into the stars.”
References:
Boldrin , Michele and Levine David K , Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation? In Review of Law & Economics, 2009
Howard Besser, Intellectual Property: The Attack on Public Space in Cyberspace, http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Copyright
Julie P. Samuels, Attorneys for Amici Curiae Computer Scientists, Brief of Amici Curiae Computer Scientists in support of Defendant –Cross Appellant and Affirmance
Science has always been a double-edged sword – creating knowledge that can contribute both to the advancement of humanity and to its destruction. Nuclear weapons are perhaps the clearest example. The United States announced its emergence as the pre-eminent status in the post-war international order when, on August 6 and 9, 1945, it dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed more than 200,000 Japanese citizens. This brought an end to World War II
Power always begets another countervailing power. Consequently, soon after 1945, several major powers entered a race to acquire nuclear weapons. Mutual destruction capability is the best insurance against a nuclear attack by another country. From a different perspective, nuclear power can also become a strategic energy asset for economic stability, energy independence, and climate management. Nevertheless, doubts persist about whether the pursuit of a civilian nuclear program could eventually become the first step towards developing nuclear weapons. Recognizing this ambiguity, the international community adopted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968. Although the treaty eventually received the support of most countries, critics have described it as a flawed “grand bargain.” In their view, while the treaty sought to prevent additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons, it did not impose an immediate prohibition on the vertical proliferation, expansion, or modernization of the arsenals already possessed by nuclear-armed states, since vertical proliferation and modernization by those states were treated as secondary concerns.
The present war involving Iran and the United States has brought this fundamental ambiguity into sharp focus. Without entering into a debate about the merits of the opposing parties’ positions, we wish to examine two sharply different predictions concerning the future direction of the war.
The first prediction is that there is a significant possibility that the United States might use a low-yield nuclear weapon against Iran. Proponents of this view invoke the concept of a tactical nuclear battlefield weapon. In simple terms, a tactical nuclear weapon is a relatively low-yield nuclear device intended for use against specific military targets—such as troops, vehicles, artillery positions, airfields, or command centers—rather than against major cities or strategic targets deep inside an adversary’s territory. Aircraft, short-range missiles, or artillery systems may deliver such weapons. Their explosive yields can vary considerably and, in some cases, may overlap with those of weapons classified as strategic.
The United States used a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, a weapon that falls into the category of “strategic nuclear weapons,” which are designed to strike major enemy targets deep within their homeland. Thousands of innocent civilians can be killed by a single such nuclear bomb. The primary targets of tactical nuclear weapons are enemy troops, artillery, and command posts on the frontlines of a war. These weapons operate at short range and are delivered by artillery, fighter-bombers, or short-range missiles. Their yield, or explosive power, can range from 0.1 kiloton to 50 kilotons.
The first prediction is that there is a significant probability of a limited nuclear bombing by the United States on Iran. The protagonists of this view invokes the concept “Tactical Nuclear Battlefield Weapon”. Wikipedia gives the simplest explanation of this term.
A tactical nuclear weapon is a small, low-yield nuclear device designed for use on a military battlefield to destroy specific enemy troops, vehicles, or bases rather than whole cities.
The United States used a 15 Kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, which falls in the category called “Strategic Nuclear Bomb” which is designed to strike major enemy targets deep within their homeland. Thousands of innocent citizens can succumb to one such nuclear bomb. The primary target of Tactical Nuclear Weapons is enemy troops, artillery, and command posts on the frontlines of the war. It works at a short range, delivered by artillery, fighter-bombers, or short-range missiles. Its yield or explosive power can range from 0.1 Kiloton to 50 Kiloton.
In a very recent speech, US President Donald Trump claimed that the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Iran, is United States territory—a move widely seen as a violation of international law. Merely declaring a foreign territory to be one’s own, however, cannot create a legitimate right of self-defense in relation to that territory. This declaration could be a “testing the water” exercise for a possible usage of a Tactical Nuclear Battlefield Weapon against Iran. Article 51 of the UN Charter states that a state can use necessary and proportionate force to expel an invader from its sovereign land. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in its 1996 Advisory Opinion that the threat or use of nuclear weapons must strictly comply with the rules of armed conflict. Some experts with a military background are predicting that this speech is intentional. It will clear the way for the immediate use of tactical nuclear battlefield weapons to open up the Strait of Hormuz for all. Analysts suggest that designating the strait as U.S. territory could be a legal pretext for using tactical nuclear weapons to reopen the waterway.
The second opinion is more nuanced and qualified. It predicts that use of any nuclear weapon, even a small tactical one, would break an 80-year-old norm. A unilateral U.S. declaration of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. territory does not change its legal status under international law. The strait is a critical international waterway, and the right of “transit passage” for all nations is protected under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The global consensus is that this would set a dangerous precedent, potentially providing other nations, such as Russia, with a justification for using tactical nuclear weapons in their own conflicts. Experts warn that lowering the threshold for nuclear use would undermine global stability and fuel a new arms race.
There is widespread concern that the use of even a tactical nuclear weapon would create a dangerous precedent. Other nuclear-armed states, including Russia, might invoke such an incident to justify the use of tactical nuclear weapons in their own conflicts. Lowering the threshold for nuclear use would therefore undermine international stability, weaken the global non-proliferation regime, and potentially fuel a new nuclear arms race. Although a one-kiloton nuclear weapon might be described as “limited,” Iran and its allies would almost certainly regard its use as an exceptionally grave attack. It could trigger a much wider conflict and begin an escalatory process that none of the parties could reliably control.
Prof. Theodore “Ted” Postol is a highly respected retired professor of MIT. He also served as a scientific adviser to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. He has now claimed that Iran has the capacity to build 10–12 nuclear bombs within weeks. This conclusion is based on standard technical uranium stockpile and centrifuge cascades. However, we need to recognize that there is a significant difference between the technical reality of breakout time and actual weaponization. Obtaining assessments of Iran’s enriched weapons-grade uranium is not the same as having a deployable nuclear device. Fabricating the fissile core, designing an implosion mechanism, fitting it into a warhead, and testing it generally require additional months of technical work. Thus, while the “breakout time” to produce enough material for 10 bombs is a matter of weeks, assembling 10 functional, missile-ready warheads within 10 weeks assumes Iran has already completed all non-nuclear weaponization preparation in secret. Therefore, any claim that Iran could field multiple ready-to-use bombs within weeks is a highly subjective guess unless supported by additional intelligence.
As for Israel, it is widely assessed in open-source literature to possess nuclear weapons, although it maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity. Open-source estimates generally place its arsenal in the range of roughly 90 to 200 warheads, but such figures should be treated as approximate. What matters more for strategic analysis is not the exact number, but the credibility of Israel’s deterrent and the survivability of its delivery systems.
As regards the USA, it is the second-largest holder of nuclear weapons- approximately 5000 as against an estimated 5500 warheads of Russia.
The central political question is not whether a nuclear capability exists, but whether nuclear weapons could be used. Countries build nuclear bombs as a strategic deterrence, to prevent other major powers from attacking their homeland or vital interests. Since 1945, there has been no direct military conflict between the USA and other major countries because of the existence of this deterrence. USA could run over Venezuela without any resistance, but India had to retreat from a full-fledged attack on Pakistan, a nuclear-weaponized country, because of this Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) possibility.
USA and Israel are only interested in preventing Iran from acquiring entry into this MAD group of countries.
In summary, the most defensible conclusion is not that nuclear conflict is imminent, but rather that the risk of escalation has heightened. Both the United States and Israel remain at a loss regarding how to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear capabilities.
While on this apocalyptic subject, I recall a poem on the subject of Existential Stakes that human beings, at least a significant segment of humanity, face now:
To say the things he truly feels And not the words of one who kneels For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught
Gold has fascinated human beings for millennia as a dependable store of wealth. A common saying captures this relationship: “Where there is wealth and geopolitical instability, gold shines.” Many Germans, having experienced severe economic dislocation after two world wars, came to regard gold as a particularly reliable safeguard for private savings; this historical experience helps explain Germany’s strong cultural preference for gold.
Although India ranks eighth in official gold reserves, with about 880 tonnes—compared with the United States’ holdings of roughly 8,133 tonnes—Indian households and temples hold an estimated 25,000 to 34,600 tonnes of gold, accounting for roughly 11%–16% of all global gold ever mined. This aggregate makes India the largest “gold vault” on Earth. However, India’s gold holdings are largely imported and are a major contributor to the country’s trade deficit. In 2024, India exported only $463 million in gold‑related products but imported $58.5 billion in gold. Gold imports increased by 24% to an all‑time high of $71.98 billion in 2025‑26, compared with $58 billion in 2024‑25. However, in volume terms, gold imports declined by 4.76% to 721.03 tonnes from 757.09 tonnes in 2024‑25. In FY26, India’s trade deficit jumped to $119.3 billion from $94.6 billion in the previous year, mainly due to a significant increase in gold price in rupee terms.
Apart from households, Hindu temples in India hold a substantial amount of gold, estimated at between 3 and 5 thousand tonnes, received as donations from their devotees. Most of these inventories remain unused and kept in hidden underground cellars for centuries. Such a hidden treasure of the Padmanabhaswamy temple of Kerala was revealed in 2011 when the Supreme Court ordered an inspection of these underground cellars. Of the six underground vaults identified at the start of the inspection, only five were opened; Vault B remained unopened due to an injunction, again by the Supreme Court. Based on the inspection of the opened underground cellars, the estimated value of gold coins and jewelry was around $22 bullion (roughly 1300 tonnes).
The Indian gold Jewelry market is highly concentrated in South India, accounting for 40% of the country’s gold jewelry demand, followed by the West (25%), North (20%), and East (15%). Similarly, Hindu temples in South India are the largest holders of gold in India.
This extraordinary attachment to gold among the majority of Indian households is less a product of social and cultural practices of people than a historically rooted strategy for protecting wealth against external predation. Over two millennia, successive waves of foreign invasions and rule often entailed the systematic extraction of precious metals and other valuables, incentivizing households to hold a substantial portion of their savings in the form of gold, which is easily concealable and transportable. Gold became the preferred vehicle for wealth accumulation not only for its intrinsic value but also for its unique physical properties: it is highly divisible, easily concealed, and provides a degree of liquidity decoupled from the stability of a central state.
Across two millennia, the Indian subcontinent experienced recurrent cycles of foreign incursions and colonial hegemony, regimes often defined by the aggressive extraction of liquid assets and bullion. In response to this persistent threat of “external predation,” households adopted a defensive financial posture. Gold became the preferred vehicle for wealth accumulation not only for its intrinsic value but also for its unique physical properties: it is divisible, easily concealed, and provides a degree of liquidity that is independent of the stability of a central state
The early Indo‑Aryan groups (c.1500-500 BCE) migrating into northwestern India had a pastoral economy in which cattle and other livestock were regarded as the principal form of movable wealth, as reflected in Rigveda. However, many indigenous (pre-Indo-Aryan, including some Dravidian-speaking and Austroasiatic) communities of the Copper Hoard and South Indian Neolithic cultures placed greater relative emphasis on metal wealth, including gold ornaments and copper hoards. However, over time, gold increasingly served across India as a durable, relatively safe asset (particularly for women and displaced groups), while cattle remained important for subsistence, status, and ritual. In this respect, the concept of Stridhana (literally “woman’s wealth”) plays an important role in creating demand for gold jewelry. Gold ornaments emerged as a sophisticated legal and moral instrument designed to mitigate systemic gender inequality. In a societal structure characterized by patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal residence, strīdhana functioned as a personal property of the woman, immune to the claims of her marital kin.
By recognizing that ornaments and other movable assets gifted to a woman at marriage remained her personal property, regardless of marital status, strīdhana functioned as an informal insurance mechanism and a hedge against widowhood‑related destitution. In this way, the valorization of gold jewelry was not merely symbolic or ornamental but became an institutionalized means of stabilizing household welfare in the face of recurrent political and military shocks. It then follows that the patriarchs of a household cannot unilaterally use a mother’s gold as strīdhana for her daughter. So the demand for gold continues, and so does the import of gold. Furthermore, two major forms of gold ownership, leaving aside the central bank’s gold reserves, that is, the gold reserves of temples and strīdhana maintained at households, do not provide much scope for a long-term policy of strictly tightening gold imports by jewelers and gold merchants through very high tariffs. The Government of India can also consider the following treatment of gold:
Gold in any form should be considered as a property, and above a reasonable threshold in terms of volume, must attract property tax.
Data:
WORLD OFFICIAL GOLD HOLDINGS
Country
Tonnes
% of reserves**
Holdings as of
United States
8,133.5
84.8%
Feb 2026
Germany
3,350.3
84.6%
Feb 2026
IMF
2,814.0
82.0%
Feb 2026
Italy
2,451.8
82.0%
Feb 2026
France
2,437.0
82.5%
Feb 2026
Russian Federation
2,311.0
48.1%
Feb 2026
China, P.R.: Mainland
2,308.5
10.0%
Feb 2026
Switzerland
1,039.9
15.6%
Feb 2026
India
880.3
19.8%
Feb 2026
International Financial Statistics, April 2026
Gold Usage Type
Tonnes
Percentage
Jewelry
97645
44
Bars and coins (including gold backed ETFs)
50978
23
Central banks
38666
18
Other
32602
15
Total
219891
100
EWN Database (External financial assets and liabilities)
A recent Nature report (April 28, 2026) highlights China’s aggressive strategy to bridge the gap between research and industry. WIPO statistics underscore this dominance: China holds 5 million of the world’s 18.6 million active patents, outpacing the U.S. (3.5 million) and Japan (2.1 million), while India remains a distant follower.
Quantity, however, is not a direct proxy for utility. Since patents require public disclosure and offer only a 20-year window of protection, trade secrets are often a preferred alternative for preserving competitive advantages. Yet, patent volume remains a credible barometer for a country’s technological “bench strength”—its capacity to innovate and re-engineer products more cost-effectively. From this perspective, China’s vast patent reserves signal its potential to redefine the global center of innovation.
Towards this goal, China began a comprehensive screening of over 1.3 million patents held by universities and research institutions nationwide in 2023. The objective of this screening was to identify the commercialization prospects of each patent. This screening identified approximately 68,000 patents with the potential to become successful market products. At a press conference, the deputy commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration informed the public that, by the end of 2025, the rate of patent commercialization had reached 10.1 percent for universities and 17.2 percent for research institutes.
This initiative demonstrates that the current Chinese leadership has moved beyond rigid ideological dogmatism regarding state-controlled power. Simultaneously, the leadership maintains a pragmatic distance from the “intellectual allure” of the Western market economy. By navigating between these two poles, China is attempting to forge a unique developmental path that discards prevailing global economic orthodoxies. The success of this hybrid model—balancing state oversight with aggressive commercial innovation—will be of immense significance to the global economic order.
Patents in Force-2024: World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025
Country
In Force 2024
Change over previous year
China
5,688,867
+698,234
United States of America
3,519,879
+64,659
Japan
2,085,215
+21,539
Republic of Korea
1,312,294
+40,535
Germany
963,941
+35,835
France
757,026
+21,972
United Kingdom
744,130
+45,986
India
228,402
+39,617
Country
Total applications processed
Granted
Rejected
Withdrawn or abandoned
China
1,678,008
1,044,777
496,733
136,498
United States of America
444,743
324,112
22,121
98,510
Japan
243,732
183,949
55,807
3,976
Republic of Korea
167,790
122,382
39,761
5,647
Germany
45,249
23,944
8,178
13,127
France
12,225
9,579
1,526
1,120
United Kingdom
…
8,228
…
10,094
India
82,591
64,941
10,189
7,461
Mohana Basu: China’s latest push to commercialize research: match 680,000 innovators with companies: Nature News 28 April 2026
Xinhua Editor: huaxia : China completes patent screening at universities, research institutions to enhance commercialization
On January 20, 1920, the League of Nations was founded by the victorious nations of World War I to usher in an era of permanent global peace and security. However, within just 19 years, World War II began, effectively bringing the League to an end. At the conclusion of that war in 1945, the United Nations was established with the primary goal of “to maintain international peace and security,” as stated in Article 1 of the UN Charter. Now, 81 years later, the possibility of a third world war is being discussed by none other than the president of the world’s most powerful nation. It is an accepted fact that both world wars were fought to gain territory and control vital resources—land, water, and minerals. Crucially, these were all terrestrial resources rather than extra-terrestrial ones.
The Covenant adopted by the League of Nations dealt only with terrestrial issues such as national sovereignty, disarmament on Earth, the treatment of colonies, and the resolution of international disputes on the ground. There was no mention of any outer space issue that could lead to a conflict between nations. The UN Charter also did not mention outer space.
In 1962, the General Assembly of the UN adopted a “Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space,” which incorporated the following three principles:
The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried on for the benefit and in the interests of all mankind.
Outer space and celestial bodies are free for exploration and use by all States on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law.
Outer space and celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
The lofty ideals enshrined in such declarations notwithstanding, outer space became an arena for rivalry after the erstwhile USSR launched Sputnik in 1957, and the first human being was sent into outer space on April 12, 1961. On 3 February 1966, Luna 9, launched by the USSR, became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft moon landing. The USSR’s initial success in developing cutting-edge technology to navigate outer space rang a warning bell for the USA, the world’s most developed and richest country. Taking up the challenge, the US initiated the mission to put a human foot on the moon. President Kennedy set the ball rolling with his famous speech on May 21, 1961, urging Congress to accept that moon landing was an “urgent national need.” He said, “If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny; if we are to win the battle for the minds of men, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957.” The sentiments of the US military were quite clear about the importance of exercising hegemony over the moon to maintain US hegemony over Earth, as reflected in a speech given by decorated Brigadier General Homer A. Boushey in 1958: “Whoever controls the Moon controls the Earth. The Moon offers a retaliatory base with unparalleled advantage.”
Luna 2 was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon, but it was designed to crash on the Moon’s surface.
The USA began its Apollo program in 1961 to land a human being on the moon, and the goal was achieved when Apollo 11’s Lunar Module landed safely with three astronauts on board on July 20, 1969. Subsequently, five Apollo spaceflights took 12 astronauts to the moon between 1970 and 1972. The Apollo program ended when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon in December 1972. After the closure of the Apollo program, expenditure on the space program declined from about 4% of the federal budget to 0.4% at the end of 2023.
In the meantime, on July 3, 1969, the Soviet Union made a second attempt to launch its moon rocket N1 and met with a devastating failure, bringing an end to its moon expedition program.
Despite the intense political rivalry of the Cold War, both the USA and Russia did not refrain from scientific cooperation, particularly in lunar missions. In the early stage of the space race (1957 to 1970), cooperation was minimal and largely symbolic. In 1972, the U.S. and USSR signed the Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes. This agreement led to the creation of joint working groups to share data on space medicine, satellite communications, and planetary exploration. This collaboration culminated in the first joint lunar mission in July 1975, when two space vehicles—NASA’s Apollo spacecraft and the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft—docked in orbit and American astronaut Thomas Stafford and Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Leonov had a symbolic handshake in space. However, this détente collapsed when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. When Ronald Reagan took over the US presidency in 1981, the Cold War between the two space giants resumed with full force.
The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 precipitated a huge economic crisis across all newly created independent republics. Transition from a state-driven planned economy to a market-driven economy was neither smooth nor immediately productive. A rapid and poorly managed privatisation process created a new class of robber barons with no history of creating wealth through innovation and productive competition. The population of the new Russia was half that of the erstwhile USSR. For Russia, keeping the race to the moon alive in the early period of its new incarnation became financially and organizationally difficult. As a result, the USA had no more compulsion to remain engaged in a one-nation race to the moon. Apollo was wound up because the political reason vanished.
However, by the end of the 1980s, the exploration of outer space had ceased to be a purely scientific endeavour and emerged as a new arena of geopolitics. The technologies underpinning space navigation are closely intertwined with advanced military capabilities and modern communication systems that have become integral to everyday life. Research in rocketry and satellite technology not only facilitated the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles but also enabled the development of global positioning systems (GPS) and worldwide communication networks. Today, financial and economic infrastructures are critically dependent on internet-based applications, and the global system would be severely disrupted if the internet were to cease functioning. Indeed, the history of human civilisation over the past 5,000 years suggests that the pursuit of power has been a primary driving force behind the quest for new technologies.
Interest in the Moon was revived following the discovery that it contains a resource crucial for establishing a permanent human presence—namely, water. Chandrayaan‑1, India’s first lunar probe, launched in October 2008, was the first mission to report the widespread presence of water molecules in the lunar regolith. Subsequent studies have identified significant permafrost deposits—frozen water—near the Moon’s south pole. This region is also characterised by abundant solar energy in the form of near‑continuous sunlight, further enhancing its suitability for sustained human activity.
In addition to water and solar energy, the Moon is believed to contain deposits of Rare Earth Elements (REEs), a group of minerals essential to several strategically important sectors of modern manufacturing. REEs are critical for the production of high‑performance permanent magnets used in communication devices, computing systems, and military surveillance technologies, among other applications. Although these elements are relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust, they are seldom found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), while most lunar rocks exhibit low concentrations of REEs, a distinct category of lunar material rich in potassium (K), rare earth elements, and phosphorus (P)—collectively known as KREEP—contains comparatively high concentrations of these elements. Data obtained from orbiting lunar satellites have identified locations where substantial KREEP deposits are likely to exist.
The availability of the three above usable natural resources, particularly water, makes the Moon the nearest extraterrestrial base for future missions to Mars and other planets. This has triggered a new race to the Moon. This race is not merely for landing on the Moon, but for the long‑term occupation of those regions that are rich in the three resources mentioned above. Once countries on Earth begin using lunar land for the extraction of natural resources, a crucial question will arise: whether the Moon’s land will be demarcated into “national colonies” or remain the common property of all humankind.
Based on the 1962 UN Declaration (cited above), the Legal Subcommittee of the UN prepared the Outer Space Treaty in 1966, which came into force in October 1967. The first three principles of the Outer Space Treaty, quoted below, give clear directions about the use and ownership rights of any occupied segment of outer space:
The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.
Outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States.
Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
These principles were laid down when the true, usable value of the Moon, the Earth’s only natural satellite, was unknown to the dominant powers of that period. Furthermore, the composition of power across nations has also evolved—“silently shifting into the hands of those who control data, belief, attention, and innovation. … real influence today lies in algorithms, not armies.” In other words, corporates who now control a big slice of power on Earth will also demand a similar distribution of power on the Moon. In recent years, several nations, including the United States (2015) and Japan (2021), have introduced legislation that explicitly authorises the commercial use of space resources, signalling a transition in which terrestrial corporate economic dominance will also be replicated in extra‑terrestrial environments. The integration of market‑driven entities into future human habitations is no longer a theoretical abstraction; rather, it is a tangible development reflected in contemporary U.S. space exploration paradigms. According to Sci‑Tech Today, in the year 2023, the “commercial sector accounted for 85% of all satellite launches by volume in 2023, highlighting the growing role of private enterprises.” Of all satellites launched in 2023, 94% were classified as small satellites (mass < 600 kg), largely driven by commercial constellation deployments.
Although Russia is a “nuclear‑weapons state,” it is not rich enough to engage with the US as an independent contender for a seat at the high table of the space race to the Moon. The only real contenders to join in the race to the Moon are, as of today, the USA and China. The story of China’s rise as the only contender to the USA in the race to the Moon is not just a story of a race to become hegemon of the solar system but also a race between two ideas of societal arrangement of power—one involving a continuous balancing between political power and the power of wealth, and another involving power struggle mainly within a political bureaucracy with only a supplementary involvement of wealth.
China’s goal is, in the words of President Xi Jinping, to “explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power—our eternal dream.” In January 2022, the Chinese government published its vision for the future space program. The document clearly lays out China’s ambitious space program to be on par with the USA. Building a space laboratory, keeping astronauts on long‑term assignments on the Moon, and building an international research station on the Moon were all part of this ambitious program. The relative spending on space programs shows how China is gradually becoming the only contender to the US in the race to the Moon.
Table 1: Country-wise Governmental Spending on Space Programs
That China is the most important as well as the more resourceful contender to the USA has been recognised by the US itself. The Wolf Amendment of 2011 imposed legal restrictions prohibiting NASA from engaging in scientific collaboration on space projects with China without congressional approval. In its 2019 report submitted to the US Congress, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) had two chapters with the following headings: Chapter 3: China’s Ambitions in Space: Contesting the Final Frontier; Chapter 7: The Final Frontier: China’s Ambitions to Dominate Space. This report identified three areas of contention between the two powers—one already established and another emerging. These are: Military Vulnerability, Economic Displacement, and Loss of Strategic Autonomy.
Finally, it is certain that by 2035 the two contending superpowers—the US and China—will start using a permanent lunar outpost each. It is also possible that some corporations participating in either the Artemis or ILRS program will build their own outposts. The question of ownership of these outposts will be a contentious issue and will call for a solution acceptable to all. The applicability of the concept of sovereignty in space has been denied in the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Since current international jurisprudence denies any existence of “Space Nations,” the only framework that can be meaningfully applied to extra‑terrestrial bodies will be the one now applied to the high seas—no restriction for use but no ownership by any body. But the political system of the USA is not ready to accept this approach to extra‑terrestrial bodies. Without formally discarding the OST, the USA has broached the idea of “functional sovereignty.” The Artemis Accords have introduced the concept of “safety zones,” which nations outside the sphere of the accord consider a violation of Article II of the OST.
Article 7 of the Artemis Accords gives the following definition of “safety zones”:
“In order to implement their obligations under the Outer Space Treaty, the Signatories intend to provide notification of their activities and commit to coordinating with any relevant actor to avoid harmful interference. The area wherein this notification and coordination will be implemented to avoid harmful interference is referred to as a ‘safety zone’. A safety zone should be the area in which nominal operations of a relevant activity or an anomalous event could reasonably cause harmful interference.”
This definition leaves the right to declare a specific part of the Moon under its usage for some purpose as a “safety zone” to individual signatories and not to an international body. There is no mention of permissible access to the “safety zone” to view and understand the nature of the activities underway. A “safety zone,” thereby, becomes an area under a sovereign, thus…
Finally, accords like the OST and Artemis were prepared when AI was in a nascent stage of development. For example, if robots are sent to the Moon to establish a colony for REE mining, how easy or difficult will it be to create a safety zone for them? Will it be possible to imbibe a national spirit in the robots so that they cannot be manipulated to work for a rival nation? Space exploration by Homo sapiens is now at a very nascent stage—a child’s play—and its future will most probably follow a path that Carl Sagan forecasted:
“It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses … more confident, far‑seeing, capable and prudent.” — Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan
Neither Trump nor Xi Jinping will be able to take one small step toward this destiny of ours.
China’s Vision for Space: Interview with Khyle Eastin: November 21, 2023; The National Bureau of Asian Research
2019 Annual Report to Congress produced by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). Author: U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC)