Boeing, Bayraktar, and Bibi: "The Future Is In The Skies" Versus "Cyber Is A Real Instrument of Power"
In America we need a lot more competition -- and a lot less compromise
Some years ago I wrote a paper for the National Security Council called Information Hegemony: From The Cells to the Stars. In that paper, I laid out a few planks of American dominance from the microscope to the satellite constellations. The next century of American power would be found in mastering these domains. It’s also my investment thesis. Shhhh!!!
I have become the CEO of Traitwell only because I see the cellular space as the most promising for human flourishing. This future of everyone being sequenced is coming notwithstanding the efforts of Likud fronts like The Atlantic to scare us against genomic sequencing with tales of incest or Chinese fronts trying to compromise genomic sequencing companies like Illumina.
We’ve been on this stuff, naturally, and it looks like we’re being listened to — at least partially. Good. Keep paying attention.
You can think of Bidenworld moving from the cells to the stars as they address consolidation and its attendant compromise.
My least favorite American city is Seattle and try as I might it’s dour character left something to be desired. A friend of mine calls the Pacific Northwest “Monopoly Factory” and he points out the improbability that, until recently, the world’s first (Jeff Bezos) and second richest men (Bill Gates) lived in the same Seattle suburb. True to form, Bezos of Blue Origin fame is also the largest donor to the Udvar-Hazy Museum. He gave $200m to revamp the National Air and Space Museum in 2021.
Walking around the Museum you’re forced to recognize that the French are all over the early days of aviation, including especially ballooning.
We’re Francophiles here at Thoughts and Adventures and we wonder if it wouldn’t be so bad to let our French allies take the wheel on commercial passenger flight. The French have much more savoir faire when it comes to managing a state-planned economy. Good for United for abandoning Boeing for Airbus.
To be honest I’m not even that mad about (allegedly former) Airbus executive Jean-Paul Gut spying on Umbra, the U.S.’s leading SAR satellite company, in which I am an investor. The French are particularly good at espionage and at these big state technology projects.
I’m not entirely sure how Qatar plans to deploy €10 billion in the French economy but I have some suggestions beyond the weapons industry. For example: Pour more money into I-Pulse and Robert Friedland. Put no money behind SpinLaunch which is some kind of elaborate Russian-Jewish cult fraud. More on that later. Be careful, Deputy CEO Mohammad Al Marri of Brazen Holdings. You really don’t want to be in business with the Yaney brothers given their history of criminal fraud.
This is the Doomsday cult in which the Yaney brothers were raised.
And here’s a bit on their parents woes with the IRS.
“Türk Havacılığının Altın Çağı” (The “Golden Age of Turkish Aviation”)
National championship only works if you have a real sense of your nation. “The future is in the skies. Nations that cannot protect their skies can never be sure of their future,” said Mutafa Kemal Atatürk. If Turkish drone company Bayraktar is any indication Türkiye can be sure of its future and so, too, can the countries who are leasing or purchasing their drones.
Ukrainian drones have won the fight for the Black Sea — and have even begun selecting targets throughout Russia, including mining infrastructure said to belong to Turkic oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
In America we need a lot more competition—and a lot less compromise. Whenever an American drone company emerges it’s quickly backed by foreigners. This is how Texas-based Martin UAV became Shield AI, backed by two “Taiwanese” brothers.
It should be an embarrassment that Loretta Lynch — a former Attorney General no less — continued to represent a foreign monopoly — DJI.
Why is an American attorney general — Loretta Lynch — defending DJI? Probably because another American attorney general — Bill Barr — made it a standard practice of acquiring Chisraeli technology.
Congressman Matt Gaetz — who first highlighted this danger as a member of the Armed Services in 2020 — found himself targeted by DJI’s lobbyists and compromised journalists.
You can watch Gaetz discuss the DJI problem with Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery.
Rather than be applauded for his foresight on this issue Gaetz has even been threatened by House Ethics whose chairman has his own ethics issues, like insider trading, a common tactic by which the Israelis (and other foreign powers) reward their assets.
Gaetz’s advocacy against Chinese drones has been controversialized by the fact that his brother-in-law, Palmer Luckey, is a cofounder of Anduril. Never mind that Anduril doesn’t manufacture a competitor to the DJI drones. In fact, with 80 percent marketshare — Chinese-manufactured Autel has an additional 15 percent — DJI doesn’t really have any domestic competition.
We’ve already explored the role of that Judge J. Michael Luttig in the scandal around Boeing’s collapse but what we haven’t done is focus upon how a federal judge winds up working for Boeing in the first place — greed.
Luttig was recruited to the Board of Boeing by none other than fellow Boeing board member Kenneth Duberstein, the first Jewish chief of staff for an American president — Ronald Reagan — and a Washington fixer for the Israel lobby before he died in 2022. Duberstein had been Boeing's longest-serving lead director, naturally. Duberstein was a part of the team that brought in Israeli and Indian programmers to build Boeing’s software.
Here’s how Nina Totenberg described Duberstein’s “recruitment” of Luttig:
Luttig was recruited for the Boeing job by the company's lead board member, Kenneth Duberstein, who'd known Luttig when Duberstein served as White House Chief of Staff in the Reagan administration and Luttig served in the Justice Department. Boeing officials were impressed when Luttig insisted on paying his own way for meetings in Chicago, telling the Boeing brass if it didn't work out he didn't want to have accepted anything of value while a federal judge.
In other words, Luttig needed the job.
Luttig, who had served on the Fourth Circuit, had been passed over again for the Supreme Court — and had ruled against the Israeli lobby in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) when he argued — correctly — that American citizens picked up on the battlefield had rights. Getting rid of Luttig allowed the Bush Administration’s Israeli friends to replace him with someone more compliant with their erosion of American civil liberties.
At Boeing, Luttig was a part of the massive outsourcing of technical know how to India and Israel. When the $9 an hour Indians and later the Israelis worked on the software for Boeing the compromise was complete.
Netanyahu warned us in a 2019 speech on cyber technology — and Boeing stupidly cut a “cyber security” deal with Boeing in 2022 even after Netanyahu had cut a Boeing-Israel project in 2020.
Take Bibi seriously when he says the following: “I believe that civil aviation is one area that requires the most immediate treatment for cyber defense but it’s one of hundreds.” Believe him when he says that Israel should be the “second eye” standing against Five Eyes.
The reason you are seeing so many Israeli influence agents and chaos actors complain about Boeing right now is that Israel is complicit in fucking it up. “Cyber is a real instrument of power,” says Netanyahu, and so are the psychological operations running on our platforms.
The Israelis know where the proverbial bodies are buried because they helped bury them. Recently disliked in Beijing, the Israelis can make themselves useful once more by roughing up Boeing, a company that Beijing’s C919 has long sought to replace.
If you can short Boeing on a flood of press on false safety issues and use the DEI wedge to boost U.S. domestic inclinations toward Likud policy, and then buy the dip and induce a bunch of orders. That’s money and policy. For all its faults Boeing is a vital US interest. Damage Boeing and you harm the U.S. in many ways, all of which are curable. This effort makes it a tool for leverage.
Auto represents mid-tech industry. Commercial aviation represents high-mid tech industry. Any nation state or states which can produce safe and efficient commercial aircraft to scale has a base industry that can manufacture to aerospace specs on scale and deliver innovations to military innovation as well as low earth observation.
France wouldn’t dare let any foreigner mess about with Airbus, whose investors are states themselves — Germany, France, Spain — and who would quickly put an end to any such problem.
In America we’re going to have to go back to the golden age of innovation by letting a thousand drone companies bloom.
To be sure there have been attempts at this future of decentralized air travel before — Reid Hoffman’s Joby Aviation comes to mind — but the Federal Aviation Administration is unlikely to let the skies become a free-for-all. “The future is in the skies” and in space but only a prudent and competent regulatory approach will convince lawmakers and bureaucrats that the future is nigh — or now.
If I had to guess I suspect we will see the same sort of solar-powered mobility in the air that we do on land. Think a flying Aptera, patiently, quietly staying aloft as it monitors the world’s methane production.
Any recs on the decline of the SoCal aerospace industry? I'm buying some Peter J. Westwick at the moment.
Also, what are your opinions on Anduril? Is it a company worth striving to work for? It aided in the Ukraine effort, so it seems US-aligned? I was hopeful in Anduril reviving some interest in defense-tech -- especially since Palantir (which had top talent) is compromised.
SF tech seems like another clown show with the Cerebral Valley vaporware hype.