The Space (Topic) Review: Policy Neg

1AC Contest Cleanup

Space Elevator beats NTP 48 to 27. Bogota beat Solar Shield 42 to 31.

​Let's wrap this up with a little rank choice voting. 

On to the Neg fun. 

​
​Rona Impact Turns
We know someone was going to try to solve it or read it as a politics DA or something. That part is elementary. The real question is who had the best impact turns?

 I rest my case.
 
Russia Politics
Everyone seemed to think econ-based impacts were better than not. Didn’t understand it. Belarus >>. Japan >>>>.
 
Unilat, What Happened?
This didn’t really go down the way I thought it would. People were overly engrossed with hotlines for some reason. Ass. Were hotlines better than regular impact defense? No. Did people think so because CP’s must have magical powers? Seems like it.

Unilat did seem to successfully dampen enthusiasm for deep space and SPS.
 
But what was somewhat surprising was how people didn’t use the Unilat CP to bolster a space leadership/dominance type argument very often. When we consulted field experts on space they were very dismissive of Aff notions. They just said the US should win, the US should lead, Russia and China are very hard to cooperate with/not very interested in it. This notion did not really translate into debates clearly.
 
T-Areas, Overperformer
I thought it was going be impossible to win on T-Areas cause the Aff could say they’re in all of them and the Neg has to win they’re in none.
 
But look at T-STM in the Wake Octas, T-arms control is quantitative, and T-deep space. People did better than I anticipated.
 
Link Uniqueness
Ugh, we devolved into a high school topic this year where so much talk revolved around link uniqueness. Yuck. Aff reading at least 5 cards about this (most of the time starting in the 1AC) then the Neg just folds. Boring.
 
The Neg did three main things to resolve this issue. First, they ignored it, went for a generic DA and lost. Second, they would try to read links about the plan but would fail and read some generic crap. Third, they would try to CP out of the issues, but didn’t think far enough ahead to answer perms, got confused, then lost.
 
That last one is where the most hope for the Neg was. They could have CP’ed new space policies that got derailed by cooperating (particularly against China where the espionage DA was better). They could have read links about mixed signals to answer the perm.
 
This also led people to veer, quite aggressively, into a swamp of process CP’s and internal net benefits. An unfortunate development, but it seemed like teams felt their hands were forced.  
 
A revolutionary idea is they could have tried to read more DA’s to the plan. I will admit, this was impossible in some cases. But more possible then what happened.
 
No one really tried to impact turn relations and/or CBM type arguments that I recall? These kinds of turns are a bit speculative. Maybe people were self-deterred because they thought the Aff and Neg cards would sound too different. But definitely something worth trying given the dilemma the Neg was in. 
 
Tankiest Generic Positions
1. the Multilat CP
2. the Japan DA
 
I do not know if there is a third argument. If you never gave a 2NR on these, what were you doing?
 
Worst positions to win a debate
These are in no particular order:
 
NSP 1.0 and agenda politics
 
Shunning
 
Libya diplomatic capital
 
Juul DA (I understand getting seduced by a card that actually says cooperation is bad, but the position as a whole sucks)
 
Text only constitutional convention 1NC and space weather bipart DA after impeachment
 
Revisionism DA (is it a DA or merely an observation? What does it prove? Particularly concerning the plan being bad? No one knows, no one ever knew).
 
Record vs New Affs
This is one of the best metrics by which to judge your preparation. Beating a new aff is the pinnacle of performance. The main enjoyment I get out of topics is trying to pre-empt people’s new affs.
 
I believe Kentucky EH had the following experience with new Affs:
KY RR—NU JW breaks LOAC—EH wins
KY RR---Emory breaks planet defense---EH loses
Harvard elims---Michigan PR breaks exotic weapons---EH wins
Wake elims---Emory CM breaks ISS---EH loses
Indiana prelims---Minnesota breaks something about missile defense---EH wins

3-2. Not bad. Obviously the NDT is where the real new aff fireworks fly.

How would you have fared at the NDT?
How were you against deep space? What about arguably deep space like the Moon affs from the other day (but they might claim to be all the areas, who knows)?

Did you know about NTM? It was an aff most likely to be read by several schools.
 
Did you ever get a handle on planet defense? Cyber? Hypersonics? Known quantities with new touch up jobs come NDT time.

What was your fall back position if all else failed? Did you write new impacts to old DA’s? Did you have new generic arguments?
 
Did you find this card?

I think a lot of people really focus on the Aff come NDT time. They do this with varying degrees of success (mostly throwing up poop that’s only supposed to last one debate). I can see how that would warp or disincentive Neg prep. It feels like sometimes the Aff should run into a buzzsaw (breaking an aff into a prepared negative team or whiffing on a new generic being read against them), but it seems this doesn’t happen very much. Strange. 
​
Best (policy) debates of the year
Some options:
 
a. Finals of Georgetown---NU JW vs Cal FG---NU JW breaks 5G and Cal beats them breaking constitutional convention with a new internal net benefit.
 
b. Harvard Octafinals---Michigan PR vs Kentucky EH---Michigan PR breaks exotic weapons. Kentucky EH breaks the multilat cp, the India DA, the flags of convenience DA and a Kuril Islands impact to Russia politics. Kentucky wins on multilat. It goes on to be a season defining generic argument.
 
c. Texas Prelim---Michigan PR vs NU JW---Michigan PR reads LOAC, NU reads a DA about commercially hosted military payloads, Michigan straight turns the Japan DA, wackiness ensues.
 
d. Texas Prelim---Cal FG vs NU FL--- a hearty ASAT ban vs BMD throwdown all around.
 
e. Gtown Octas---Michigan JS vs Kansas MM---Kansas says asteroid mining. Michigan impact turns with the minerals cause catalytic converters which are bad. Kansas wins 3-0 on not our catalytic converters. A back and forth affair every speech according to those in the room.

The Only Neg Evidence Contest That Matters
I want to see your best CP/DA generic strategy that involves a middle power/intermediary. This is the gold standard of NDT preparation. You will not be able to light a candle to Kentucky’s submission in this category.