Odds & Ends

U.S. military bans Chinese EVs on Okinawa base
The U.S. military has banned electric vehicles manufactured by Chinese company BYD from its air base in Okinawa. The Pentagon blacklisted BYD because of its ties to China’s military and the CCP. These vehicles have sensors, cameras, and Internet capabilities designed to gather information and send it to other destinations, including, most likely, the CCP. Norway was the first to notice that these current-gen vehicles had capabilities that presented privacy concerns. Other EU nations have warned against connecting phones or inputting personal information into Chinese-manufactured vehicles. BYD is one of nearly 200 companies listed by the Pentagon as supporting the Chinese military.
 
FORTRESS initiative
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell, who is leading the Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability (FORTRESS) initiative, says that every major military installation in the U.S. will be expected to operate independently of civilian infrastructure for at least 90 days, including access to electricity, water, fuel, and communications. The new requirement is part of a broader shift to prepare for threats to the American homeland that could involve major disruption to infrastructure. Parnell noted that homeland defense was built “around the antiquated assumption that two oceans would protect us,” and that world is gone. FORTRESS will use portable nuclear reactors, large-scale battery storage, and microgrids, which enable military installations to operate during prolonged power disruptions and reduce dependence on civilian power grids. The initiative also requires reserves of munitions, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts, and medical supplies.
 
When government regulators talk about scaling to ten thousand rocket launches a year by 2035, the natural assumption is that they mean across the entire United States—pooling Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, Starbase Texas, Wallops, and every commercial spaceport in between.
Elon Musk’s latest clarification completely flips that scale on its head.

Ten thousand flights a year isn't SpaceX's target for the entire country; it is the planned operational throughput for Starbase Louisiana by itself. Sited along the coast in Vermilion Parish, the proposed hundred-billion-dollar megasite is being engineered not as a traditional launch pad, but as an interplanetary spaceport running on the cadence of a major international airport. With plans for up to a dozen launch and catch towers, dedicated deep-water docks, and massive cryogenic fuel plants, the site is designed to support roughly thirty Starship launches and reentries every single day. If humanity is going to assemble orbital propellant depots and send thousands of tons of habitats and hardware to Mars during narrow planetary alignment windows, launching once a week is a non-starter. Real interplanetary logistics requires an industrial machine that treats rocket departures like scheduled commercial cargo flights.
 
Bolsonaro flees corrupt government
Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, unexpectedly lost in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election this week and then suddenly vanished. After highly irregular election interference by the Brazilian Supreme Court, the court ordered Bolsonaro to surrender his passports, citing the risk that he would flee the country. His lawyers reported that they couldn’t find him to hand over the passports. Brazilian media reported that Bolsonaro slipped across the border into Argentina and fled to America. Indeed, video showed him landing in Miami this morning. U.S. officials have confirmed that they would grant him a visa.
 
Back
Top