11 Nov 6th Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Who Can Speak for Earth? Representative Authority and First-Contact Governance in The Three-Body Problem
[Shaoxuan Xu is a PhD student in international law at Fudan University Law School and holds an LLM from New York University School of Law.]
When Ye Wenjie receives an extraterrestrial warning, she already has the means to answer. The warning tells her that replying will let the Trisolarans locate Earth and bring conquest, yet she responds. Later, Mike Evans finances a second communications base aboard Judgment Day. Control of the channel allows two people to make choices whose consequences extend far beyond themselves (chs. 24 and 29). Read alongside public governance documents, these episodes from the trilogy’s first volume raise a question that precedes the invasion: how does control over communication acquire the appearance of authority to represent everyone affected? I argue that first-contact governance must address both representative claims and the conditions for collective decision-making. Even a sender without authority can alter everyone else’s circumstances. Scrutiny of representative claims must therefore accompany procedures that preserve an opportunity for collective consideration before transmission changes the choices available.
Permission to Transmit and Authority to Represent
Although Red Coast gives Ye the equipment to receive and answer signals, receiving a signal, authorizing transmission, choosing its content and claiming to speak for humanity remain distinct decisions. Scientific verification assesses a signal’s extraterrestrial origin, while an equipment license permits specified activities under the relevant rules. Neither determination alone establishes who may choose a reply or whose position the reply expresses. Even where one institution performs several functions, authority for one task does not automatically extend to the others. The distinction between privilege and legal power explains why. A privilege denotes the absence of a duty not to act in a particular legal relationship; a power is a legally recognized ability to alter legal relations. Equipment ownership, technical ability and permission to operate therefore cannot be treated as interchangeable with representative authority. A license concerned with technical compliance does not itself establish a mandate to make political commitments. Constitutional reasoning directs attention to the source, subject matter and limits of that authority: who conferred the power, what decision does it cover, and to whom must its exercise be explained?
Replacing an individual with a state does not settle the scope of representation. Under Principle 4 of the International Law Commission’s Guiding Principles Applicable to Unilateral Declarations of States Capable of Creating Legal Obligations (2006), a declaration binds a state only when a competent authority makes it. Principle 9 prevents one state’s declaration from imposing obligations on other states without their clear acceptance. These rules provide a structural comparison about authority among human actors; they do not determine the legal status of extraterrestrial communication. Authority to speak for one state cannot simply expand into authority to speak for humanity. The inquiry must identify who instructed the operator, what mandate the sending institution holds, and whom the final message represents. A signal’s physical reach answers none of those questions. Even a message addressed to the universe can express only a limited institutional position. Reaching a wider audience does not enlarge the constituency on whose behalf the sender is entitled to act.
Consequences Without Representative Authority
Even if Ye expressly disclaimed speaking for anyone else, her reply would still affect others’ circumstances. Misrepresenting a collective position and imposing consequences through individual action pose different problems. A sender’s lack of representative authority cannot, by itself, justify prohibiting transmission, since private actors routinely act without representing others. The case for prior procedures must explain what makes a particular act consequential enough to require collective consideration. Where credible evidence indicates that a reply could expose others to serious, difficult-to-reverse consequences, those affected cannot necessarily avoid them by declining to participate. Transmission changes what the recipient knows and can do. Later discussion may shape the response but cannot restore all the choices available beforehand: the question shifts from whether to reply to how to address a reply already sent. Losing that opportunity supports requiring that affected interests receive consideration before action. Equal consideration of those interests provides the justification when an actor proposes to expose others to serious, difficult-to-reverse consequences. Possession of equipment supplies no sufficient reason to exclude them. Representative institutions and opportunities for public submissions can organize participation without giving every affected person an individual veto. Relevant interests must be capable of influencing the decision, including through reasoned challenges to the sender’s preferred course. The constitutional concern is the distribution of effective decision-making power. An operator can leave everyone else formally free to disagree while making their disagreement practically irrelevant to the initial choice. A later endorsement may support continuing the relationship, but it cannot give excluded participants the opportunity they lacked before the reply was sent. Where no collective procedure exists, preserving that opportunity becomes a task of institutional design. Such procedures can be developed without treating humanity as an already constituted political community with a single authorized voice.
Suppose Ye’s reply ultimately brought peace and technological assistance. A favorable outcome would improve the assessment of the reply’s consequences but would not establish that she possessed a mandate when she acted. Otherwise, authority would depend on events knowable only afterward, and any operator could justify acting first by invoking expected benefits. Ye’s conviction that outside intervention could transform human society does not explain why she might choose that transformation for others. Procedures allow affected people to contest which benefits matter, which risks are acceptable, and which options should remain available. Their value survives a fortunate outcome.
As communication continues through Evans’s facilities, control over information poses an additional obstacle to collective judgment. His faction withholds communications from other members of the Earth-Trisolaris Organisation, including Ye herself. Recovering the records aboard Judgment Day becomes an objective in its own right (Liu, Santi, chs. 29, 31, and 32). Ye’s exclusion matters because even an organization’s recognized leader cannot evaluate its external dealings when another actor controls the relevant information. An operator who controls the evidence can shape the premises of consultation as well as the outgoing message. Participants who see only selected material cannot independently assess the need to reply or determine what has already been communicated. Preserving records and allowing independent examination thus protect the conditions of judgment. Ye’s transmission shows why collective consideration must precede the loss of options; Evans’s archive shows why participation also requires access to evidence.
From Consultation to an Authorized Decision
The International Academy of Astronautics’ Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) (2026 Update) provides a timely starting point. Principle 7 calls for international consultation on whether to respond to a confirmed detection and what the response should contain. Pending the outcome of those consultations, no reply should be sent. Consultations should proceed through the United Nations and other broadly representative international bodies, with specific procedures left to a separate arrangement. The Declaration does not address messaging before confirmed detection (p. 4, n. 2), making Ye’s reply to a received warning the relevant narrative comparison. This professional guidance recognizes the need to preserve time for deliberation; it does not itself establish an enforceable global approval system.
Even when consultation brings different views into the discussion, rules must still link that discussion to an authorized decision. Attending a meeting does not establish agreement to reply, and agreement in principle leaves the final text unsettled. A representative forum does not gain power over every transmitter simply by assembling diverse views. Nor does a state’s authority to regulate facilities within its jurisdiction establish a mandate to represent humanity. Subsequent arrangements must identify the deciding body, its legal authority, the procedure for adopting a decision, and the obligations imposed on operators. Broad participation and lawful competence address different questions, and both are necessary to assess a proposed collective reply. Institutions can perform different functions within those arrangements. Scientists would verify evidence, a designated forum would consider the proposed reply, and authorities with jurisdiction over facilities would implement applicable transmission rules. Each function needs a specified legal basis, including any additional powers or agreements required. National controls could preserve time for international deliberation without authorizing any state to appropriate humanity’s voice. The practical priority is to prevent operators from treating an unfinished consultation as permission to proceed on their own.
I propose four safeguards: a recorded mandate, public reasons, preservation of communications and decision records, and an express limit on representative claims. For a proposed collective reply, the recorded mandate should identify the authorizing body, its legal basis, the scope of approval, and the approved text. A record allows others to examine authorization; it cannot cure a lack of authority. The message should identify the institutions or states whose position it expresses and acknowledge relevant disagreement. Without a legal basis, non-participation should not be presented as assent. These limits also make clear that support for a scientific project does not necessarily authorize every message its operators wish to send.
To make the decision open to scrutiny, decision-makers should explain why they favor replying now, why they selected the proposed content, and how they evaluated waiting, revising the text, or withholding a reply. They should also address substantial objections so participants can judge whether their submissions influenced the decision. Principle 4 of the Declaration already calls for preserving and sharing scientific evidence, analysis methods, and code. My proposal extends the documentary record to include draft replies, revisions, authorizations, and reasons. Scientific records allow independent examination of a detection; decision records allow examination of the authority and reasoning behind a reply. Together, the two sets of records reduce dependence on the operator’s account. Where technical information requires restricted access, the restriction should have a stated basis and remain subject to appropriate independent scrutiny.
Before a signal is transmitted, these safeguards must already be in place. Later disclosure can support accountability but cannot retrieve a signal. Implementing the waiting requirement therefore requires rules specifying when review begins, who convenes participation, and how a decision is reached. Continued delay should require reasons and periodic reconsideration. Expiration of a review period should trigger a reasoned decision on whether to permit transmission or extend the pause. Permission to transmit would still not establish authority to represent humanity. Defined urgent procedures can accelerate a decision while preserving a record, reasons, and subsequent scrutiny.
She acts before others can decide whether to enter the relationship she initiates. Evans later controls the information needed to understand that relationship. Together, their actions expose a constitutional problem in first-contact governance: technical control can determine collective circumstances before public authority has been established or exercised. International law must distinguish whose position a message expresses, while institutional arrangements preserve a meaningful opportunity to decide whether to send it. A sender should explain whose authority the message carries. The institutions supervising that sender must be able to explain their own.