Shawn Ryan Show
#202 Steve Kwast – How China is Mining the Moon and Weaponizing Space
Thu, 22 May 2025
Steven L. Kwast is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General and the Co-founder and CEO of SpaceBilt, a company reimagining the entire spacecraft lifecycle to enable scalable, sustainable space infrastructure. A 1986 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate in astronautical engineering, he served 33 years, commanding units like the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing in Afghanistan and the Air Education and Training Command. A combat-tested F-15E pilot with 3,300+ flight hours (650 in combat), he also holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard. A key advocate for the U.S. Space Force, Kwast now leads innovation in space technology and speaks on national security, space policy, and economic development beyond Earth. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://uscca.com/srs https://www.betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://www.meetfabric.com/shawn https://www.fastgrowingtrees.com - USE CODE SRS https://www.shawnlikesgold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://www.helixsleep.com/srs https://hexclad.com/srs https://www.paladinpower.com/srs https://www.patriotmobile.com/srs https://www.rocketmoney.com/srs https://www.shopify.com/srs Steve Kwast Links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-kwast-362a3a15 Skycorp Incorporated - https://www.skycorpinc.com SpaceBilt - https://www.spacebilt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does Steve Kwast believe about energy and innovation?
Right. And if we were all angels and nobody was weaponizing space, that would be true. But just because we have a 1967 Outer Space Treaty that states those very words, we have... great powers that are doing things in space that are going to threaten America and other countries as well. So we have to be open-eyed.
It would be like discovering an ocean and saying, we're not going to have any fighting on the ocean. And then we don't build a Navy and everybody else does. And we're the only victims of it.
Who are the... I 100% agree with you. I wasn't saying we shouldn't be doing anything.
It's a good question, though, because we want peace, and we want a future that trends with less violence. But the way to do that is not to ignore a new domain and new technologies. The way to do that is to usher in peace through strength that is consistent with human nature and history and culture.
Who are the major players in space? other than the U.S.?
Right. Well, like all new technologies, it is those countries that have the resources and the will to develop capabilities. Every country that is paying attention to these trends of technology and change are investing in space. If they don't have the money or the will, they aren't, but those are very few and far between.
But as I talk to leaders in countries around the world, they understand the power of space. It would be like a country not having an air force, and everybody else does, or not having a navy, or not having an army. It doesn't mean these things are built to perpetuate wars. We want them to be there to prevent wars.
And so, you know, you have India, China, Russia, America, Japan, you know, you just go down the list of nations that are investing in space. And it's not a bad thing. This is about evolving because of what space will be able to do to uplift the human condition.
But if we don't pay attention to it and design it with the wisdom of what we have learned about how humans evolved into a new domain, we will repeat the sins of the past. This is about understanding ourselves, understanding human nature, understanding technology and culture, and then ushering in a geopolitical evolution of nations that all benefit from what space will do for our economies.
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Chapter 2: How is space technology evolving?
We don't know what they're doing because we don't have infrastructure up there to even see what's going on, but we do know they're mining helium-3.
We legitimately don't know what China is doing on the other side of the moon?
No, we don't. Because the other side of the moon, most people may not know this, but you only see one side of the moon in the way that it rotates and orbits around the earth. It's a very interesting phenomenon in orbital mechanics. And so unless we have a constellation of satellites flying around the moon that can see and understand what's going on, we're blind.
And that's one reason they're over there. But let me give you a commercial. I'm getting real upset, Steve. I'm getting real upset. So this goes back to a strategy and why I'm in the space business. Because space is the place where if America does not change our strategy and how we're investing in space, we will become victims to others that use space as a way of dominating technology.
The energy market, but also the information market. So here's an example. About a month ago, Microsoft announced their quantum computing capability, which is just next level and awesome. But they need to cool it down to 80 millicalvin, which basically is almost down to the point where the molecules don't even move. There's really no way to cool it efficiently down to that level.
Hydrogen would only get you down to maybe one Kelvin. You need to go much lower than that. Helium-3 can do it like that.
So let's take a scenario where China now has enough helium-3 as they're mining it on the moon and bringing it back to Earth to be able to power the entire world for thousands of years, and they are the ones that can actually operationalize quantum because they can cool it down to the temperature it needs to actually operate. Now quantum sensing, quantum communication,
When you start looking at quantum computing, when you start combining those three quantum capabilities, sensing, computing, communication, and you can affordably cool it down to the levels where it can be operationalized, Now you've broken every code that ever was. I don't care how good your encryption is, they see every secret, every code, everything.
From Bitcoin to things like the techniques of blockchain. Forget it, it's all gonna change. And so there's an example of why not being in space with logistics and infrastructure to be able to move, to see, and to operate It can make you vulnerable.
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Chapter 3: What are the risks of future space conflicts?
And all these knots we are tied into geopolitically goes back to innovation, culture, technology, and America being willing to take the risk to be bold and usher in a golden age of peace instead of perpetuating decades of war and industrial age grinding to a halt of innovations that can uplift the human condition. We are all slaves to a global cabal, if you will,
of a small number of people getting rich and powerful and controlling at the cost of innovation and the enslavement of people that should be free.
Thank you for saying that. What is Russia doing in space?
Yeah, so Russia is innovating. And what they're doing is they are looking at what America has done, where we have elegant satellites and we are doing amazing things to look down on the Earth and help the operations that are going on on the Earth. And they are looking at the cost differential where we can invest so much more in our military strength than they can.
So they have developed these mesospheric supersonic weapons. So basically they can launch from space or from the land something that can maneuver at Mach speeds in the area where there's almost no air. And it is designed to be able to get through our defenses and kill anything they want to kill within minutes.
So if they see a ship they don't like there, they could kill it and it maneuvers so fast. And our systems are designed to kill other things that are more predictable, like a parabolic curve, not something that moves at those speeds and can maneuver. And so we have to counter that now, okay?
Because this is the tit for tat of competitive advantage, both in business and in warfare, where if your enemy develops something that's really cool that you can't afford, you find something that cuts its feet out from under it at a fraction of the cost. That's what they've done.
Wow. Is this up and running?
Yeah, they've done it. It's in the news. About a year ago, I think, is when they launched the first one that was a shot across the bow for America. What the hell are we doing? Wow. And again, you know, President Trump knows these things and he you know, so thank God he is back in because again in in the last administration these innovations were in idle and Now they're an afterburner
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Chapter 4: Who are the major players in space technology?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So that's why, you know, for both of these companies, Genesis Systems and Spacebuilt, we've been in stealth mode until we felt like we were strong enough to come out because the attacks. And the biggest risk is our government.
What a shame.
That is the biggest risk. These companies will adapt to it, and they will buy it and invest in it if they see that it gives them a future revenue stream. But the government will say, we're going to shut you down and do a study for 10 years. as other countries beat you to the punch.
Man, man. I saw another clip, too, that I want to ask you about. This was on April 14, 2025. Michael Kratz, I can't pronounce his last name, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stated, Yes. They leave distance annihilated because things grow and improve productivity. What does he mean by that?
Our passenger planes are slower than they used to be. Our trains crawl compared to those in other parts of the world. Our cars do not fly. Advances have not stopped, but something has gone wrong. Stagnation was a choice. We have weighed down our builders and innovators.
The well-intentioned regulatory regime of the 1970s became an ever-tightening ratchet, first hampering America's ability to become a net energy exporter and then making it harder and harder to build. We seem to have lost focus and vision, to have lowered our sights and let systems and structures and bureaucracies muddle us along. But we are capable of so much more
Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow and improve productivity.
Yeah, so what I think he's referring to is quantum. So let's spend a couple of minutes on quantum because it's a fascinating topic. And I'll start by telling you what I think is the ultimate outcome of quantum for me. It is the evidence of God. And it's the evidence of the fact that we totally misunderstand and do not know even the beginnings of the complexity of the universe we live in.
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