A “Limitless Frontier”? Neoliberalism, Silicon Valley, and the Commercialization of Space

Over the last forty years, analysts at American and British neoliberal think tanks have published a plethora of reports and commentaries celebrating the commercialization of space. This article examines why neoliberal think tanks have developed such a long-term idiosyncratic interest in space policies. I argue that space acts as an affective mobilizer that enables neoliberal ideologues to reactivate their historical ideological struggle against collectivism while simultaneously helping them to rescue the neoliberal project from numerous epistemological threats plaguing it. I first analyze how think tanks’ space activism operates in the context of their concerted struggle since the 1980s against “collectivist” international law. Second, I examine how they use the myth of the space frontier to revive the legitimation of private property as a core pillar of neoliberal thought. The last section analyzes how neoliberal think-tankers have come to offer space as the ideal solution to pressing environmental problems.