America’s Over-the-Top Aircraft Carrier. A Floating City

The price of a modern aircraft carrier is astronomical. America’s latest carrier class, the Gerald R. Ford, costs $13 billion per unit. And so far, the entire Ford program has cost taxpayers $120 billion.

That’s a lot to pay for a boat. But, of course, the modern aircraft carrier isn’t exactly just a boat; a modern aircraft carrier is a floating city with a variety of complicated subsystems, capable of projecting air power around the globe.

To say that an aircraft carrier is a floating city is not an exaggeration. An aircraft carrier hosts upwards of 5,000 sailors at a time.

So, the aircraft carrier must be equipped to house, and feed, and clean, and entertain those 5,000 sailors.

Accordingly, an aircraft carrier is equipped with multiple galleys and mess halls. An aircraft carrier needs to be able to provide as many as 18,000 meals per day.

Now, providing meals isn’t necessarily a novel technology. But the meal service speaks to the scope and complexity of running – and paying for – a modern aircraft carrier.

All the meals and all the sailors are really about one thing: projecting air power.

The entire city/aircraft carrier exists to project air power. And to project air power the aircraft carrier features a unique structure and a unique series of systems.

To support flight operations, the hull of an aircraft carrier “is made up of extremely strong steel plates, measuring several inches thick,” How Stuff Works reports.

“This heavy body is highly effective protection against fire and battle damage.”

#aircraft #carrier #technology

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📰 Innovation Olympics: America Invents, China Executes, Singapore Governs — and Europe Watches

💬 "What’s the point of leading the world in AI if it’s used to sell more cat food?"

— Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg Opinion

🚀 America: The Startup That Forgot What It Was Building
• The U.S. still churns out the big breakthroughs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia — all running on infinite venture capital and caffeine.
• But while Silicon Valley polishes its next billion-dollar exit, its AI is optimizing memes and delivery apps.
• Even insiders like Palantir’s CEO are asking: Are we just rearranging gigabytes on a sinking ship?

🛰 China: From Fast Follower to First Deployer
• Beijing doesn’t need to invent — it executes at scale.
• Driverless taxis swarm Shanghai. BYD outsells Tesla. DJI dominates the skies.
• Forget proof of concept — China skips to proof of dominance.
• As Gul puts it: America may dream it, but China installs it in the street.

🏛 Singapore: Leviathan-as-a-Service
• Singapore turned its government into a startup — and it works.
• SNDGG isn't some consulting front — it’s Google in uniform, optimizing lives, not ad clicks.
• Elderly care by sensor, traffic by algorithm, and policy by real-time data.
• It’s Hobbes meets high-tech, and unlike most governments, it doesn’t just surveil — it serves.

🔩 Europe: Civilization Without a Platform
• Germany’s mittelstand builds perfect machines no one tweets about.
• Switzerland gives us CERN and railways that run like atomic clocks.
• But without tech giants to embody its values, Europe fades into boutique relevance.
• It’s ethical. Sustainable. High quality. And — geopolitically — invisible.

🤔 Who’s Really Winning — and Who Gets to Define the Race?
• Is it the country with the shiniest IPO, the fastest chip, or the longest high-speed rail?
• Can you “lead the world” in innovation if you can't deploy it — or if no one cares?
• And when the future is built by autocracies and the past maintained by democracies, which model survives the crash?

#innovation #usa #china #singapore #europe #AI #startups #governance #technology #softpower #deeptech #palantir #nvidia #BYD #OpenAI #geopolitics

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Musk Touted His XX Deal


The acquisition of xAI by SpaceX is a typical Elon Musk deal: big numbers backed by big ambition.

As well as extending “the light of consciousness to the stars”, as Musk described it, the transaction creates a business worth $1.25tn by combining Musk’s rocket company with his artificial intelligence startup.

It values SpaceX at $1tn and xAI at $250bn, with a stock market flotation expected in June to time with Musk’s birthday and a planetary alignment.

However, there are questions over the deal, such as whether it is good for SpaceX’s non-Musk shareholders and whether the technological premise behind it can succeed.

For Musk, a key part of the deal’s rationale is to move datacentres – the central nervous system of AI tools – into space.

AI companies are too dependent on earth-bound datacentres that carry immense energy demands, Musk argued this week.

The solution, he says, is to put as many as a million satellites into orbit to form vast, solar-powered datacentres.

Prof Julie McCann and Prof Matthew Santer, the co-directors of the school of convergence science in space, security and telecoms at Imperial College London, say solar-powered datacentres could be a future option for AI companies.

However, there are limits to how much compute power can be mustered by current satellites, they say, so it would need a “planet-wide distributed computer composed of many satellites” – as envisioned by Musk.

But even executing the concept might be affected by the quality of connection between the orbiting devices, which will need to operate in tandem in order to replicate terrestrial datacentres as they beam their outputs down to Earth.

Musk talks of these datacentres adding 100 gigawatts of AI capacity annually – current global datacentre capacity is about 59GW – so his vision is ambitious.

The world’s richest person believes a merger of rocket hardware and AI software is a winning combination and, in a message to employees, said it would create the “most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth”.

“This merger is aimed at creating a new path to generate a low cost of generating AI compute within the next two to three years by bringing together the top internet/space exploration company with top datacentre builders,” says Dan Ives, an analyst at the US financial services company Wedbush Securities.

SpaceX’s technology is complex but it is a straightforward business. It generates revenues from deploying reusable rockets for missions such as launching satellites and restocking the International Space Station.

It also operates the Starlink satellite high-speed internet service. SpaceX made about $8bn in profit on $15bn to $16bn of revenue ​last year, according to Reuters.

The addition of xAI adds narrative complexity to the SpaceX story, says Michael Sobel, the president and co-founder of Scenic Management, which buys secondary stakes in privately held companies and has invested in the AI company Anthropic.

Musk owns about 44% of the newly enlarged SpaceX business and 17% of Tesla, where he is the chief executive. Is the next step a combination of the two?

Ives believes there is a “growing chance” that a one-stop shop for investing in Musk businesses will be created.

“Musk wants to own and control more of the AI ecosystem and step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla,” he says.

#musk #spaceX #tesla #technology

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Manitoba Moves to Ban Social Media and AI for Youth

Manitoba is moving to ban minors from social media and AI chatbots, and the pitch is straight out of the anti-platform playbook: these tools are built to hijack attention and monetize kids for tech oligarchs.

The province has not yet said what ages the ban would cover or how it would be enforced, which means the headline is ahead of the machinery.

But politically, the point is already clear: Manitoba wants to look tougher than Ottawa and cast itself as the first jurisdiction in Canada willing to tell Silicon Valley to back off.

That makes this less a tech story than a values story. Kinew is framing the issue as a defense of childhood, while critics will immediately note the obvious hypocrisy of a politician denouncing viral platforms while still using them to build a political brand.

The bigger trend is that the backlash against social media is moving from complaint to law.

Australia has already legislated an under-16 ban, France is pushing restrictions, and Canada’s federal government is also considering age limits, so Manitoba is not inventing the idea — it is trying to claim the first real provincial move.

And AI makes the whole debate sharper, because the target is no longer just feeds and filters but conversational systems that can mimic attention, authority, and companionship.

That means the coming fight is not only about screen time; it is about who gets to shape young minds — parents, provinces, or platforms that never sleep.

#Manitoba #Canada #socialmedia #AI #kids #technology

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#defense #technology #warfare #michael

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