Satellites, Supercomputers, & Silicon Stakes

📡 Radar

🏭 Anduril's Billion-Dollar Bet on Long Beach

Defense tech upstart Anduril is dropping $1 billion on a new Long Beach campus to build drones, missiles, and autonomous fighter jets. The facility will employ 5,500 workers and joins other aerospace companies breathing new life into the city's historic defense corridor. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson is already pitching "Space Beach" as the next big aerospace hub. LA Times

🚀 SpaceX Eyes July IPO to Fuel AI Ambitions

Elon Musk is accelerating SpaceX's public debut, targeting a July IPO to fund a wild new venture: solar-powered AI data centers orbiting Earth. Fresh off a $20 billion funding round for xAI, Musk is pushing to catch up with rivals like OpenAI by tapping SpaceX's expected $1.5 trillion valuation. The move marks a sharp departure from his previous "wait until Mars" stance on going public. Yahoo Finance

🛰️ Bezos Takes Aim at Starlink with TeraWave

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin just announced TeraWave, a satellite network designed to compete directly with Musk's Starlink. The network will deploy 5,408 satellites starting in late 2027, promising data speeds several thousand times faster than typical home internet. With Amazon's own satellite network also in play, the battle for space-based internet is heating up. Forbes

🤖 Claude Gets a Constitutional Update

Anthropic released a revised 80-page "Constitution" for Claude, detailing the ethical principles guiding its AI chatbot. The update emphasizes safety, ethical practice, and helpfulness while ending on a provocative note: questioning whether Claude might have consciousness. The release came alongside CEO Dario Amodei's appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. TechCrunch

⚡ xAI Powers Up While X Opens Its Code

Elon Musk's xAI just brought Colossus 2 online, the world's first gigawatt-scale AI training cluster that already exceeds San Francisco's peak power demand and will expand to 1.5 GW by April. The supercomputer trains xAI's Grok language model and was built faster than any competing AI infrastructure, backed by a fresh $20 billion funding round. Meanwhile, X released its algorithm to GitHub, revealing how Grok powers content recommendations and giving developers a rare look inside the platform's machine learning systems. Teslarati / TechCrunch

💻 Reflection AI: Coding That Codes Itself

Reflection AI is using reinforcement learning to automate software development with minimal human input. The platform combines self-learning AI techniques similar to AlphaGo to generate and optimize code autonomously. Early adopters see potential for faster development cycles and lower costs, though it's still early days for this level of AI-driven coding. Trendhunter

💬 Prompt

What can I help you with?

I am considering taking [specific action].

Describe the immediate outcome, then ask:

-What happens as a direct result? (second-order effects)
-What happens because of those? (third-order effects)

Map this chain at least three levels deep.

At each level, identify:

-The incentives created for each stakeholder
-The likely behaviors in reality (not what I expect)
-Any feedback loops or unintended consequences

Finally: If this continues logically, where does it end? What system does this action ultimately produce?

Don't optimize for optimism. Optimize for realism.

🧠 Content

🎤 Elon at Davos

Elon sat down at the World Economic Forum yesterday and laid out timelines most wouldn't bet on. AI smarter than humans by end of year, robots outnumbering people soon after, and Tesla FSD approvals coming to Europe and China. Worth the full watch.

⚔️ The 48 Laws

A book we keep coming back to. Pages marked up, spine cracked, always within reach. All 48 laws in one frame.

📚 Google's Learning Tool

Google Research launched "Learn Your Way," an AI tool that converts any PDF into five personalized learning formats. Students using it scored 78% vs 67% on retention tests. If you have a student in your house, give it a try.

🤝 Get in the Room

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