Transcript: Space Debris: How Can the U.S. and China Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons

A Conversation with Schwarzman Graduate Nainika Sudheendra

Listen to the audio in the embedded player above, or read the complete transcript below. Thanks to the great folks at CadreSripts.com, to intern Keya Zhou for the image, and Lili Shoup for checking and formatting the transcript and inserting all the links!

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we’ll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to the way we think and talk about China. I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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Now, if you heard the show two weeks ago with Olivia Fu, you know that I’ve been featuring some of the more impressive capstone projects produced by the most recent class at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a highly selective one-year master’s program there. This week, I am delighted to be joined by the author of what was easily among the most impressive of the capstone projects presented at the showcase this past June. My fellow judges, David Moser, Iza Ding, and Melinda Liu, all very much concurred. Not only was the topic fascinating, but the depth of the research, the sheer number of interviews conducted, the sensibility in the set of recommendations that she offered on how to address the issue that she tackled were just mind-blowing. That issue is space debris. And the capstone project was called “Beyond Tragedy of the Commons: Space Debris, Non-Proliferation, and Decommissioning Incentivization Between the U.S. and China.” And the author is Nainika Sudheendra. She joins us from Beijing, I believe, is that right, Nainika?

Nainika Sudheendra: Yep.

Kaiser: So glad that we could finally make this happen. And welcome to Sinica.

Nainika: Thank you. Thanks for having me and for that wonderful introduction.

Kaiser: Oh, you’re very much deserving of it, and more. Nainika, we had the chance to chat briefly after your presentation. And one thing I do remember you telling me is that prior to Schwarzman, you were working on the drone delivery program for Walmart. Do I have that right?