00:00Let's start just with the details Bloomberg's reporting, because this is an important story.
00:04It is. It's important because Golden Dome is one of the president's signature initiatives when it
00:09comes to protecting the U.S. against the ballistic missile attack. It's worth $185 billion over the
00:16course of the program so far. And SpaceX will be providing, together with other companies,
00:22a critical component in it. Think of it as the glue that holds all these networks together.
00:27It will be essentially the operating system that helps to govern military operations once this
00:32thing gets up off the ground. And it is an expansion of the role that SpaceX had already been playing
00:38in the project. It had been building satellites through its Starlink platform, and it had also
00:44been developing a military communications network through its StarShield technology, and that is a
00:51classified version of Starlink that offers encryption, especially for military use, Ed.
00:58Mike, where are we with the vision and then the action towards Golden Dome, and really what the
01:06other puzzle pieces are that need to be put in place?
01:09Well, Cara, if you want to think of it as a puzzle, there are still a lot of pieces
01:13to the side looking to be placed in the right spots. There is a long way to go before this
01:20thing
01:20actually becomes, you know, in place and an effective defense against the kinds of missile
01:27threats that have been warned about for years from China, from Russia, and now even from Iran.
01:33There are questions about, you know, the extent to which U.S. adversaries could try to strike the
01:40homeland here, and this is the reason why the U.S. has moved in this direction, and it has turned
01:45to
01:46one of its most reliable space contractors, SpaceX, to really help get this up off the ground. And
01:51SpaceX is working with a couple of other signature names who have taken on increased roles in working
01:57with the government. That includes Anduril Industries and Palantir Technologies as well on developing
02:03this communications and this operating system that we've been reporting on today.
02:09You know, that last point is so crucial. SpaceX has this legacy with the U.S. government, which is about
02:1410 to 15 years in duration, hundreds of millions, billions in contracts, NASA and the defense apparatus.
02:21But if you look at those other names, Anduril, Impulse, we're talking much smaller contracts, right, in the
02:26context of this broader story.
02:29That's right. They are much smaller contracts, and yet they are part of this larger ecosystem.
02:34Ed, and when you turn the focus back to SpaceX, also, we do see this company on the move.
02:40They are getting ready for an IPO later this year that could value the venture at almost $2 trillion.
02:46And they are also making moves in other directions to shore up other parts of the product line that could
02:51help in this venture, too. They have reached an agreement, or at least to have the rights to acquire
02:57cursor AI for up to $60 billion. And the idea would be to use its coding and debugging ability
03:03to help the XAI segment of SpaceX in its development and advancing its products.
03:11And you could see very easily integrating those artificial intelligence capabilities
03:15capabilities as well into this kind of operating system we've just been talking about.
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