Mic Drop: Guardians of the Galaxy are sitting in Colorado Springs

Summary

Podcast Summary: Click Here – "Mic Drop: Guardians of the Galaxy are Sitting in Colorado Springs"

Release Date: July 4, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Producer: Recorded Future News

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Mic Drop: Guardians of the Galaxy are Sitting in Colorado Springs," Dina Temple-Raston delves into the critical and often unseen world of space weather and its implications on national security and cybersecurity. The episode explores how solar flares and other celestial phenomena are becoming strategic tools for adversaries in the realm of digital warfare.

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The Invisible Battlefield: Space as a Digital Frontier

The podcast opens with an evocative description of the Space Watch Center in Colorado Springs, a hub where officials monitor space weather and potential threats that are invisible to the general public. Dina sets the stage by highlighting the increasing significance of space as a battleground in the age of digital warfare.

Quote:
Dina Temple-Raston (00:02): "We're inside a nondescript building. A small group of officials spend their days tracking what the rest of us can't see. Solar flares, rogue satellites, the occasional asteroid. And sometimes something a little more human."

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Understanding Space Weather and Its Impacts

Dina provides a foundational understanding of space weather, emphasizing the effects of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on Earth’s infrastructure. CMEs are massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona or being released into space.

Key Points:

• Auroras and Geomagnetic Storms: CMEs can produce stunning auroras visible far from the poles and trigger geomagnetic storms that disrupt power grids and communication systems.
• Technological Vulnerabilities: Critical technologies such as the Internet and power grids are susceptible to disruptions caused by space weather events.
• National Threats: In 2019, FEMA listed severe solar storms as a significant threat capable of paralyzing the nation, underscoring the urgency of addressing space weather.

Quote:
Dina Temple-Raston (03:21): "Solar flares, these waves of particles are what cause people like Mulraide to lose sleep because they can disrupt radio communications by absorbing or reflecting certain frequencies."

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The Role of the Space Watch Center

The Space Watch Center in Colorado Springs serves as a pivotal element in monitoring space weather and coordinating responses to potential threats. Deputy Director Mowrad Levinson provides insight into the center’s operations and its strategic importance.

Key Points:

• Information Sharing: The center is part of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC), which facilitates collaboration between government agencies, private companies, and international partners.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Utilizing a bank of large screens, the center continuously tracks satellites and solar activity, allowing for immediate analysis and response.
• Adversary Tactics: During space weather events, adversaries may exploit reduced visibility to conduct nefarious activities, such as manipulating satellites or launching cyberattacks.

Quotes:
Mowrad Levinson (01:47): "It's pretty accurate to say that our adversaries are ready to take advantage of any situation that is going to cause us to have less of an understanding of what's going on on orbit."
Mowrad Levinson (05:44): "What we're really looking for is what are the impacts, what are the impacts to satellites? What are the impacts on the terrestrial layer? And, and will the adversary take advantage of it?"

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The Interplay Between Solar Storms and Cybersecurity

Dina and Mowrad explore the intersection of space weather and cybersecurity, illustrating how solar storms can create vulnerabilities that adversaries might exploit. The timing of such events can coincide with cyberattacks, amplifying their impact.

Key Points:

• Distraction Tactics: Just as hackers may launch attacks during holidays or weekends when monitoring is reduced, solar storms can serve as natural diversions, masking cyber intrusions.
• Satellite Manipulation: Increased drag from geomagnetic storms can alter satellite orbits, potentially allowing adversary satellites to approach and interfere with critical assets.
• Information Gaps: The Space Watch Center aggregates and disseminates information to close gaps in situational awareness, ensuring that both governmental and private entities are informed and can act swiftly.

Quote:
Mowrad Levinson (10:15): "You can physically see the two birds, the two little white dots on the globe kind of maneuvering closer together. Yeah."

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Collaborative Efforts and Future Preparedness

Since its inception, the Space Watch Center has seen over 100 entities join its network, including major corporations like Microsoft and Lockheed Martin, universities, and foreign space agencies. This collaboration enhances resilience and preparedness against both space weather and cyber threats.

Key Points:

• Enhanced Resilience: By sharing information and best practices, members can better protect their assets and respond to incidents more effectively.
• Proactive Monitoring: With the sun currently in its solar maximum phase, the frequency of space weather events is expected to increase, necessitating heightened vigilance.
• Policy and Innovation: The Science and Technology Partnership Forum continues to advocate for policies and technologies that bolster space sector defenses.

Quote:
Dina Temple-Raston (12:03): "The ISAC is tracking some 100 attacks against critical infrastructure related to space systems. And now we're about to hit a long stretch of bad solar weather."
Mowrad Levinson (12:32): "We have our finger on that pulse."

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Conclusion

"Mic Drop: Guardians of the Galaxy are Sitting in Colorado Springs" provides a comprehensive look into the critical, yet often overlooked, nexus of space weather and cybersecurity. Through detailed discussions and expert insights, Dina Temple-Raston underscores the imperative of collaborative defense mechanisms to safeguard our digital and physical infrastructures against emerging celestial and human threats.

Closing Remarks:
Dina Temple-Raston emphasizes the importance of vigilance and information sharing, reiterating the role of the Space Watch Center in maintaining the resilience of space-dependent systems.

Quote:
Dina Temple-Raston (12:33): "As the attacks increase, we're going to have our finger on that pulse."

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This episode serves as a compelling reminder of the complex and intertwined challenges posed by our expanding digital and space frontiers. For listeners interested in cybersecurity, space exploration, and national security, this episode of "Click Here" offers invaluable insights into the hidden battles that shape our modern world.

Transcript

[Dina Temple]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here. It's Dena. The Click Here team is taking a short summer breather, but we wanted to return to a story that kind of stuck with us today. We're heading back to Colorado Springs. We're inside a nondescript building. A small group of officials spend their days tracking what the rest of us can't see. Solar flares, rogue satellites, the occasional asteroid. And sometimes something a little more human. Because in the age of digital warfare, space isn't just a frontier, it's a battlefield. Take a listen if you've ever wondered what a storm sounds like on the sun, it sounds a little like this. Seems like a Robot sound like R2D2, but under great duress. Until the 19th century, space weather didn't have much of an effect on our day to day lives. But now we can't ignore it because a roster of critical technologies are vulnerable to these kinds of storms because their magnetic fields have the potential to take down the Internet or to short out power grids. In fact, back in 2019, FEMA made a list of the kinds of calamities that could paralyze the nation. And at the top of the list was a pandemic. And not too much further down was a severe solar storm. And it turns out our adversaries have gotten wise to this and they take advantage. Do adversaries just lie in wait waiting for a storm?

[Mowrad Levinson]

It's pretty accurate to say that our adversaries are ready to take advantage of any situation that is going to cause us to have less of an understanding of what's going on on orbit.

[Dina Temple]

Foreign from recorded future news, I'm Dina templewest and this is Click Here's Mic Drop. Today we take you to a place where space weather is top of mind. The Space Watch center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

[Mowrad Levinson]

All right, so we are walking into the Watch center. Follow me.

[Dina Temple]

And one of the things they do is track space weather and how adversaries like Russia and China are increasingly trying to find ways to leverage them.

[Mowrad Levinson]

You might not realize that what you're seeing is actually adversary activity because it's being shielded by a space weather event.

[Dina Temple]

Stay with us. Click here is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary on how you buy.

[Unknown]

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[Dina Temple]

From Recorded Future News, this is Click Here's Mic Drop. Welcome back to our special coverage of.

[Unknown]

The extreme solar storm now crossing North America.

It's the stunning and rare skyshow captivating the nation from coast to coast.

[Dina Temple]

I can't believe what I'm seeing. Periodically, the sun emits these explosions of particles known as coronal mass ejections. Or CMEs. Basically, they're a giant release of plasma and magnetic fields that go out into space. CMEs can travel at speeds of thousands of kilometers per second, and they contain billions of tons of material. When a CME reaches Earth, it typically does two things. One, it creates amazing, colorful auroras like they did last May, bringing something that looks like the northern lights to places that typically don't get them. And two, set off geomagnetic storms that can mimic a lot of the things we're seeing hackers try to do these days, like mess with power grids or tweak satellites in orbit. And when these storms happen, Mohread Levinson, the deputy director at the Space Watch center, is always working overtime.

[Mowrad Levinson]

What we're really looking for is what are the impacts, what are the impacts to satellites? What are the impacts on the terrestrial layer? And, and will the adversary take advantage of it?

[Dina Temple]

The Space Watch center is part of a broader effort to get government agencies and private companies to share information. They're part of what's called the Space isac, which stands for Information Sharing and Analysis Center. All kinds of critical sectors of the economy have stood up. Similar ISCs like there's a water ISAC and a health ISAC and a financial services ISAC. And they collect, analyze and share information about threats, vulnerabilities and incidents. It's one of the ways we guard against cyber cyber attacks aimed at critical infrastructure. If a member of the ISAC sees something weird in their networks, they let everybody know. It's kind of like a neighborhood watch. And the Space ISAC does that for space. So when solar storms Started raging in May and then again in October. The space ISAC went into a kind of hurricane watch mode. The sun was burping out all these fiery magnetic particles, and Mowrad and her team were gathering data on its effects from partners all over the world.

[Mowrad Levinson]

So as that situation was unfolding, not only were we aggregating all of the available information that we could find and sending those push alerts to our members through the storm, we were also getting requests for information out to our members. What are you experiencing? What are you seeing? Has this affected your assets? Are you seeing communications breakdown? Even the smallest bit of information helps when it comes to creating that picture of what's going on.

[Dina Temple]

The watch center looks like something out of Dr. Strangelove's war room. Gentlemen, you can't fight in here.

[Unknown]

This is the war room.

[Dina Temple]

It sits on the ground floor of a nondescript office complex not far from downtown Colorado Springs. It's the size of a large classroom and it has no exterior windows. It's announced by a bank of big screens that run the length of one wall.

[Mowrad Levinson]

Some days you walk in here and you could hear a pin drop because everyone's got their headphones in and you can see that they're either monitoring for something on their screen or they're writing a report.

[Dina Temple]

When the watch center isn't giving tours, the screens are filled with real time images of space. But because we're there, the screens are populated with relatively innocuous images. A list of satellites on one screen, an image of a solar flare on another.

[Mowrad Levinson]

So what you're looking at is more space weather visualization.

[Dina Temple]

What's that brown one?

[Mowrad Levinson]

That is solar flare activity.

[Dina Temple]

There was a bright explosion of yellows and oranges and browns on the screen. Wow.

[Mowrad Levinson]

Yep. Okay.

[Dina Temple]

Yeah, that's very cool. Solar flares, these waves of particles are what cause people like mul rate to lose sleep because they can disrupt radio communications by absorbing or reflecting certain frequencies. And as we mentioned before, they can damage power grids and endanger electronics. They can even cause satellites to short out or move more slowly.

[Mowrad Levinson]

It really can vary pretty significantly. I mean, there's some charging, low level charging impacts that can happen on a satellite. So that could affect their functionality in some way. Not to. To get too in depth on that.

[Dina Temple]

Sort of like a blackout during a thunderstorm.

[Mowrad Levinson]

It's similar. Yes. But also you can see some of the mechanical components experience difficulties after a solar event.

[Dina Temple]

Because it's magnetic.

[Mowrad Levinson]

Yes, got it. And so you can see increased drag on satellites as well. Sometimes it doesn't mean too much.

[Dina Temple]

What is increased drag on the satellite slowing up?

[Mowrad Levinson]

Yeah. The way that I think about it is the way that they're maneuvering through orbit.

[Dina Temple]

Which adversaries could see as the perfect opportunity. Ma Raid has seen a satellite cozy up to another satellite under the assumption that the storm will be hiding what they're doing.

[Mowrad Levinson]

You might see an adversary satellite buddy up nice and close and just be within a uncomfortable distance of your satellite. So maybe they're listening. Maybe they're just trying to hear and understand. Maybe it's an aggression tactic.

[Dina Temple]

And if this was a. Once this is up and you have the satellites up on your screen, would you be able to see an adversary satellite getting closer to yours?

[Mowrad Levinson]

You can, yes.

[Dina Temple]

No way.

[Mowrad Levinson]

You can physically see the two birds, the two little white dots on the globe kind of maneuvering closer together. Yeah.

[Dina Temple]

That's crazy. They've used solar storms to act as a kind of cosmic diversion.

[Mowrad Levinson]

There are other things, more on the cyber side of things where an adversary might look, look to get into your system during an event like this because they know that, A, you're not paying attention, or B, you don't have as much awareness of what's going on with your asset because of external events that are happening.

[Dina Temple]

This happens a lot with cyber attacks, too. Adversaries strike during a long weekend or when the office is closed in hopes the skeleton crew there to monitor things over the holiday might be too busy to notice some unusual behavior in a network. The Science and Technology Partnership Forum, an interagency group at the White House that works with NASA and private companies, tries to stay ahead of technologies and advancements and does studies and sets policies to help them. It suggested setting up a Space Watch center back in 2017, and the study.

[Mowrad Levinson]

Essentially showed that the gaps in information sharing in the space sector, we're just far too great.

[Dina Temple]

Since the Watch center opened its doors a little over a year ago, more than 100 entities have joined. Companies like Microsoft and Lockheed Martin and universities and even foreign space agencies are all working together, trying to make our assets in space that much more resilient.

[Mowrad Levinson]

I think the more information that we get and we digest into the Watch center, not only will we become more and more aware of these, but I think as the attacks increase, we're going to have our finger on that pulse.

[Dina Temple]

Mulraid said the pace of attacks against space systems is already picking up nearly every week. The ISAC is tracking some 100 attacks against critical infrastructure related to space systems. And now we're about to hit a long stretch of bad solar weather. According to NASA, the sun is at something called its solar maximum period. Every 11 years, the sun releases these massive explosions of light energy and solar radiation and its magnetic poles.

[Mowrad Levinson]

Flip.

[Dina Temple]

What that means is for the next year, space weather events will likely become more frequent, and Mulrade and the Watch center will be keeping a close eye From Recorded Future News this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers and Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch, Lucas Riley and me, Dina Temple. Rest. It was edited by Karen Duffin. We'll be back on Tuesday. Have a great weekend.

[Unknown]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click Here, Then check out our sister publication the Record from Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others. And you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.