Source Review: CSIS Miller 2026 — Cracking the Code

Overall verdict: mixed Two-sentence summary: A policy-advocacy piece arguing for an international Lunar Development Authority modeled on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey or CERN. Useful for institutional framing but offers no direct lunar-capex numbers; the benchmarks given (Earth real estate $400T, global construction $15T/yr, PA-NYNJ $9.4B, Houston PW $3.5B) are scale-anchors, not capex projections.

Key claims

• "Lunar Development Authority modeled on PA-NYNJ and CERN" — Consistent (institutional structure). Aligns with our calc's framing of the lunar economy as multi-party / multi-decade — the LDA structure is the institutional plumbing for a $72-88B all-party cumulative spend.
• "Annual global construction spending exceeds $15 trillion" — Consistent (benchmark). Useful as scale-context: a $20-200B lunar-buildup over a decade is small compared to global construction; the question is "what makes lunar work different," not "is lunar economically too large."
• "PA-NYNJ annual budget: $9.4B; Houston PW: $3.5B" — Consistent. Direct evidence that the institutional precedent (a port authority) operates at a similar dollar scale to what we'd need for a lunar infrastructure authority.
• "There have yet to be significant nongovernmental revenues for lunar activities" — Consistent (with MacDonald CSIS view). Reinforces the pessimistic-commercial-revenue framing.
• "The Moon as a real estate development project anchored by public-private partnerships" — Merits investigation (frame). Useful framing but not a capex estimate.

Cross-reference

• Miller is a borderline tier-B public figure (former NASA Landing Team head, Lynk Global founder); not promoted to a separate figure card for this run because his statements here are primarily institutional advocacy rather than engineering economics.
• Pairs with csis-macdonald-2026-economics (also CSIS, different author, similar framing) and csis-swope-2024-cislunar (different CSIS author, more skeptical).
• Codex anti-hallucination check: all quoted text appears in extract.md.

Abstract

A CSIS analysis arguing the US should treat the Moon as a "real estate development project anchored by public-private partnerships and an international Lunar Development Authority (LDA)." Miller proposes the LDA be chartered and led by the US, modeled on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA-NYNJ) and CERN. The piece emphasises that to be enduring, lunar presence must be independent of US taxpayer reliance. Comparative scales offered: Earth's real-estate value ~$400 trillion; annual global construction spending exceeds $15 trillion; PA-NYNJ's annual budget is $9.4 billion; Houston Public Works' annual budget is $3.5 billion. These benchmarks are presented to show that lunar economic scale is plausible relative to specific terrestrial precedent. The analysis is institutional/structural rather than capex-quantitative.

Key quotes

• enduring-not-fragile: "If our presence in space is to be enduring, it cannot be fragile. We must build an orbital lunar economy independent of taxpayer reliance."
• lda-recommendation: "The United States should charter an 'international lunar authority,' modeled after a combination of the best features of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)"
• commercial-driven: "To build a sustainable lunar economy, the United States must move beyond government-led models and adopt a commercially driven approach"
• real-estate-framing: "Moon as a real estate development project anchored by public-private partnerships"

Key claims

• earth-real-estate-400t: "Earth's real estate value: approximately $400 trillion"
• annual-construction-15t: "Annual global construction spending exceeds $15 trillion"
• pa-nynj-94b: "Port Authority of New York and New Jersey annual budget: $9.4 billion"
• houston-pw-35b: "Houston Public Works annual budget: $3.5 billion"

Reviewer notes

CSIS-credentialed think-tank analysis; Miller is a tier-B public figure in his own right (former NASA Landing Team head, founder Lynk Global). For q5: useful for institutional framing and benchmarks (lunar economy plausibly on the scale of a major port authority); not useful as a primary capex source because no dollar figures for lunar buildup are offered. Treated as Tier A because of CSIS credentialing + Miller's mainstream credibility, but flagged: this is policy advocacy, not engineering economics. Miller's own quotes flow into figure-miller candidate if we choose to expand the tier-B figure list (he's a borderline case — not yet promoted in this run because not as widely-cited a lunar capex figure as Metzger/Sowers/Musk).