Space is crowded. Again.
A new batch of San Francisco startups are scrambling. They see a shift. Satellite tech has gotten better, cheaper, faster. They want the data. They want the comms bandwidth. It is the Great American Satellite Age. Or maybe just a really noisy one.
### Things That Are Too Close For Comfort
Look up. May 18.
Asteroid 2026 JH12 is coming. It isn’t hitting us, don’t panic. It will fly by at a distance four times closer than the Moon. About the size of the bean sculpture in Chicago? Yes. Cloud Gate. Imagine that rock hovering just inside our protective bubble. Terrifyingly close, technically safe. We’ll keep staring at the sky anyway.
### Borders, Identities, and Government Overreach
Things on the ground are heating up. Literally, maybe not. Digitally, absolutely.
DHS is running an experiment this fall. Reconnaissance drones along the US-Canada border. Ground vehicles too. They stream what they call “battlefield intelligence.” Over 5G. Bilateral. It sounds like a video game until you remember it’s our neighborhood. Who watches the watchers? Probably algorithms.
Inside the beltway, a DOGE affiliate named Greg Hogan takes the reins at Login.gov. He’s merging driver’s licenses and passports. One system. Insiders whisper the phrase “national ID.” Not directly, but close enough to make your skin crawl. Convenient? Maybe. Dangerous? Almost certainly.
In Europe, the rules change again. Every car sold must have a breathalyzer hookup. The goal is zero drunk deaths by 2050. Noble? Yes. Feasible? That’s the debate.
### The Internet Race
Russia doesn’t like being left out. Enter Rassvet. Think Starlink, but Moscow. They launched the first 16 sats. The goal is country-wide coverage by 2030. Ambitious. Hard. They are trying.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the money flows.
SpaceX filed its IPO papers. Big secret revealed? Anthropic is paying $15 billion a year. Just to use their GPUs. Access to the compute clusters is the new gold. The AI wars aren’t fought with bullets. They are fought with bandwidth.
The Gulf Coast is struggling too. An AI boom creates an infrastructure problem. Undersea cables. Hyperscalers demand more. When lines go down, the cost skyrockets. They are forcing a rethink. Not pretty, but necessary.
### Cars That Drive Themselves
Beijing 2026.
The show floor looks like the future arrived early. 19 models stood out. China isn’t playing catch-up anymore. They are leading in electrification and intelligence. The cars are smarter than our phones. The market is moving fast. We are still arguing about parking spots. They are arguing about sensor fusion.
### Planetary Mechanics
Mars and Earth share a problem.
On Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover got its drill stuck. Jammed on a rock. First time this has happened. They spent a week freeing it. Gentle nudges. Precision. It works, barely.
On Earth, Mexico City is sinking. Not gently. A NASA map shows the truth. Some spots drop 2 centimeters a month. Unevenly. The ground gives way. No engineering trick fixes that yet. We just build on top of it.
And back to the Moon?
NASA has a plan. A base. At the south pole. Permanent. Detailed. They say it is happening. It feels distant, even as we talk about breathalyzer cars in Brussels and drones in Ottawa. The world gets smaller, but space feels just as big. Maybe bigger.
