> Are you're saying that yes, I can draw a spark from the exterior of a perfect, unbroken, hollow metal sphere containing a van de Graaff generator and some bat

> Are you're saying that yes, I can draw a spark from the exterior of a perfect, unbroken, hollow metal sphere containing a van de Graaff generator and some batteries, or otherwise detect that there's any electrostatic activity inside the sphere whatsoever? I prefer to reason about the simplest cases but since you asked again: if the total charge inside an unbroken ungrounded conducting sphere is zero the field outside it will always be zero, no matter how many VdGs are inside it.