Thinking On Paper ask who owns the Moon, whether the Outer Space Treaty still holds, why 80% of space investment is defence, what the Wolf Amendment did to US-China relations in orbit, whether asteroid mining legislation was written by the companies who'd profit from it, and why the book Space to Grow ends on a warning about war, not wonder. Watch On YouTube: https://youtu.be/MVBxjZCGfxY--The space race between the US and China has never been about exploration. 80% of current space investment is defence-related. In the final episode of the Thinking on Paper Book Club series on Space to Grow by Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau, Mark and Jeremy trace the politics of space ownership, space law, and who owns the Moon.From the 1967 Outer Space Treaty through Planetary Resources and asteroid mining legislation, the Wolf Amendment that banned NASA from collaborating with China, China building its own space station in response, Trump designating space as a theater of war in 2018, and the Rumsfeld Commission warning of a "space Pearl Harbor." The episode covers John Locke's labour theory of property and how it applies to mining asteroids worth 100,000 times global GDP, the prisoner's dilemma between the US and China, why there would be no space industry without national security, and Neil deGrasse Tyson on the absurdity of claiming ownership over atoms forged in dying stars. 59 active conflicts currently on Earth as of the 2025 Global Peace Index. The book's final chapter asks whether humanity can reach space without turning it into another battlefield. --Chapters(00:00) Global Conflict and Space Resources(02:04) Human Nature and Space Exploration(03:28) The Economics of Asteroid Mining(05:53) Legal Frameworks for Space Mining(11:05) The Space Resource Exploration Act(13:01) International Reactions to Space Mining Legislation(17:19) Philosophical Perspectives on Space Ownership(20:14) The Role of National Security in Space(20:40) The Role of Government in Space Innovation(21:34) National Security and the Space Industry(23:10) Weaponization of Space: A New Era(24:47) The Prisoner's Dilemma in Space Cooperation(26:40) Humanity's Moral Compass in Space Exploration(27:03) The Future of Humanity in Space

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