There are a lot of activities in outer space that are ambiguous. We don't have tacit agreements on some of the more important ones that are happening, such as satellites that get up close and inspect, image or creep up. We're not really sure what other capabilities they have. Do they have eavesdropping capabilities? Do they have a jammer? Could they have a laser capability? Not knowing causes escalatory responses. The noise we're hearing from the United States on this suggests there are no tacit agreements on safe distances and on how to engage in these practices.
I think the way to mitigate this is to start having better transparency practices that can make some military activities safer, such as, for instance, if you're trying to inspect another satellite, giving prior notification so that you don't have an accident and the other operator doesn't respond in a way that increases the likelihood of an accident. Again, things are moving very quickly, and if you have uncoordinated, close-proximity activities in space, you can easily collide. You can also have misperceptions about certain sensitive capabilities. I think other states understand which satellites are particularly essential to defence. Professor Fergusson mentioned the DSP.
Early warning capabilities are a great example, so you don't get up close and personal with some of those really sensitive capabilities when the reaction might be quite drastic on earth. There's a lot we can do. It will take time, in particular because some of these are new capabilities. How they work in practice takes time to sort out.