Abdul Aziz explores his vision of a shift from the mechanistic “You or Me” operating model to one of “You AND Me”. He argues that most organisations have both an organising logic and a structural reality and almost none manage the methodological and political gap between them. The structural model embeds power, asserts ownership, and creates the illusion of control in ways the organising logic never sanctioned.
Abdul proposes instead The Viable Operating Model (VOM), a mediating methodology grounded in Beer's Viable System Model, Maturana and Varela's organisation/structure distinction and Kauffman's constraint closure. It is designed to hold organising logic and structural realisation in continuous, productive tension as a perpetual practice.
New Space is primarily defined by the commercialization of space activities at scales unanticipated by the foundational treaty regime, with private actors now occupying roles in launch, Earth observation, communications, and exploration that were once the near-exclusive province of states. This paradigm shift unfolds alongside dynamics that complicate its landscape. The militarization of the domain has intensified amid hybrid warfare, with commercial constellations now embedded in active conflicts and the dual-use distinction increasingly difficult to sustain. Concerns over the long-term sustainability of orbital activities have mounted as mega-constellations and debris populations strain the carrying capacity of low Earth orbit. A growing set of unilateral and plurilateral arrangements is shaping the interpretation of the foundational principles through coalitional practice rather than through the multilateral fora that those principles presuppose. These dynamics do not unfold within a single governance architecture. They pull in different directions, at different speeds, and draw on distinct sources of legitimacy. This conjuncture poses the following question: how do we constitute a metasystem to govern it?
