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Has A.I. gone sentient? Microsoft Bing is sending it’s love and Dennis isn’t sure he wants it.
Our guests this week are Phantom Space founder Jim Cantrell about seizing the high ground – the really high ground of space – for both commerce and military advantages. What are the Chinese doing and what should we be doing to counter it? Then our favorite wealth manager Ed Butowsky drops in to talk about the markets and give Dennis a little advice.
All that and the Parting Shot.
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Dear Dennis, great discussion with Jim Cantrell! I learned a few things. The biggest items:
First, he mentioned something regarding the first Chinese balloon that traversed the continental US that has had me scratching my head since the balloon was discovered. This balloon traveled a very strange but in what appears to have been a deliberate path across many military sites from China to Guam, Hawaii, then north to Alaska, then followed a trajectory that carried it across the US mainland locations of our ICBM launch sites, before ending up passing over the general area of our major Army and USMC bases near the East Coast (at least, this is what I’ve seen reported). This is fascinating, since anyone with a passing familiarity with their history knows that balloons follow the wind, and that there is essentially no ability to direct the course that they’ll follow. So when Jim mentioned that he worked at a company that invented the technology that provides the capability to fly balloons that vary their altitude in the same altitude range (60K ft, where this Chinese balloon traveled) that allows them to be steered, it was an “aha!” moment for me.
Second, Jim’s information about the National Reconnaissance Laboratory’s space program, involving secret military manned missions, was also news to me. I remember hearing about the Air Force unmanned shuttle, which has been reported to have had missions in space lasting over a year, but that’s the extent of what I’ve heard reported.