AST SpaceMobile Just Got US State Department Backing

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[00:00:45] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: What if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over? Ready to go with extra bedding and towels. From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust, Wayfair delivers. Everyone, thanks for joining. I wanted to fire up a space to talk about some recent events for AST SpaceMobile. And, um, yeah, I'm just gonna go through them one at a time. And, um, yeah, it's refreshing finally for the stock price to reflect some level of fundamental news and events here. Although the market, after a strong open, at least the Russell 2000 and, you know, the indexes are off, but it looks like the market is doing its best to sell down risk. But anyway, let's not talk about that since we've been talking about the macro environment for the last several weeks. Let's get down to important matters for fundamentals. So for AST SpaceMobile, last week, I guess it was Friday, we had our friends at PC Magazine point out that T-Mobile scrubbed their their T-Satellite website, they scrubbed it and they removed any references to Starlink, which I think is a pretty big deal. This happened on Thursday. And so as some of you may recall, the telecom joint venture with AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile was announced on Thursday. And so magically any reference on the initial webpage for T-Satellite on the T-Mobile website any reference to Starlink was removed. This is a really big deal because if you go back to the DNA of T-Mobile, when the company finally turned itself around, T-Mobile had always been a small 2-bit player in the US market, and it wasn't until famous and legendary John Legere, who came in as a CEO, his His biggest claim to fame was just being a successful and very impactful marketer. So when he came in to take the helm of T-Mobile as CEO, that's when they pulled off the MetroPCS merger, and then they did the large Sprint merger. As part of that, he rebranded T-Mobile to be more market-oriented, marketing-oriented. So they became the uncarrier, Through his leadership, they were able to take significant market share from AT&T and Verizon by coming up with innovative marketing programs. They bundled different packages like Apple Music and they looked— well, back then, they looked to simplify customers' bills and they reduced the number of plans that they offered and they gave people much more value. So with that marketing bend, T-Mobile was viewed as the disruptor of the— was viewed as a very tired and non-dynamic industry. So fast forward to 2022, when this is by that time, John Legere had retired and Mark Sievert had come in as CEO. He thought, hey, I'm going to take a page from John Legere's playbook, and I'm going to partner with SpaceX and Starlink and use their marketing name and the brand associated with them to really show that we're innovative and we're going to disrupt the industry. And so at that point in time, as folks will recall, AST was working with AT&T, had been working on direct-to-device technology since 2017, and so by that time it had been 5 years. So Mike Sievert was enticed by Elon Musk, and he's like— Elon Musk said to him, hey, if you let us have some of your terrestrial spectrum, which at that time Starlink did not have any spectrum that was usable for mobile handsets, but at that time he convinced T-Mobile to partner with him. T-Mobile basically gave away the keys to the kingdom because T-Mobile gave Starlink this spectrum in the 1.9 gigahertz mid-band that was already compatible with existing phones. And so through that relationship, Starlink was able to test and iterate its satellites. And that laid the groundwork for ultimately what we see today, where they've said, hey, actually we're not gonna partner with you, we're here to eat your lunch. And so, Obviously, that was a huge strategic mistake, and so T-Mobile has had to live with that decision and that partnership until recently. It wasn't until, I guess it was May of this year when, and of course discussions happened earlier than that, but John Stankey, already working with Verizon on a joint venture to work with AST, decided to extend their hand to T-Mobile and invite them to this partnership. And as a result of that, T-Mobile has now been sitting uncomfortably working with Starlink, knowing that Starlink is going to come and compete with them directly. But in the interim, they've had to maintain this product, right? Which at some point, once AST comes up for beta, maybe it's at that time, or maybe full commercial service, they can they can yank, basically rug Starlink, right? Because for all intents and purposes, if T-Mobile decided to stop working with Starlink, Starlink would have no spectrum to deliver its service, number one, to mobile phones, and number two, it wouldn't have a distribution channel to do so. So this is a pretty big deal now that T-Mobile has scrubbed the Starlink name from its website. Now, obviously, they're still using the service and they're probably going to continue to do that until AST is signed on as a partner, and then ultimately once AST's services launch, and from an antitrust point of view, T-Mobile may decide to just keep offering Starlink, but it's probably gonna deemphasize it. And so some people have pointed out, well, if you look at the support pages or FAQs, they still say Starlink. Well, yeah, I mean, they're still using the service, so if there's an issue, they need to say who it is. But I will say, For AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile in the future, in an ideal world for them, they will not mention AST SpaceMobile because AST is really the background partner that's providing the infrastructure. There's no need to say powered by AST or refer to it. If AST is doing its job, no one will be the wiser that they'll even know about AST because it's the carriers who actually control the customer and they're the ones who deliver the service. And AST provides the infrastructure. And that's always been the model, right, as a super wholesaler. With that comes benefits. You have a customer that already exists. You don't have to worry about customer acquisition costs like Starlink when they go after a new fixed wireless customer, they have to go spend marketing dollars, which in the mobile phone business to acquire a customer is several hundred dollars, maybe $700, $800 to acquire a customer based off of marketing and incentives. AST doesn't have to do that. It just needs to provide the infrastructure, which is the constellation and the integration, and then the MNOs provide all the customer acquisition, the customer support, marketing, billing, all that stuff. They provide the spectrum too when it comes to low-band, which is for this service, the best spectrum to have. And in that model, you have the 50/50 split, but Importantly, uh, and there was a book—
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[00:09:27] Speaker B: Actually, I need to go order it. Um, there was a book that, um, one of the Space Mob had pointed out that was just published back in— I think it was May of this year— that they ordered, um, that actually talked about this specific point, which is that the fact that unlike other services that had come before AST, AST already has a built-in install base of mobile phones, any 3GPP-compatible device that can work with the service. And so the game-changing approach that AST had is because of that phone is architected to work with terrestrial towers, the only way to connect to those phones is to build a really large phased array out in space that's very powerful, that can send signals and also receive signals. And so that was AST's model. Leverage an existing install base of mobile phones around the world, or any 3G PPE device, and leverage MNO partners to get you through regulatory approvals, to provide you with the spectrum, to sell the service to their customers, which if you're an AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone, whoever it is, customer, you can either just automatically get the service as part of a premium plan, or you get a little text message when you're in an area that doesn't have coverage that says, hey, do you want to turn this on for a day, a month, or just add it to your plan? Which is very simple. But yeah, this move by T-Mobile was big because as I mentioned before, they are very market-oriented. So I don't think executives internally took it lightly that they scrubbed Starlink from the webpage. And if you look at the old T-Satellite commercials back in August and September of last year, it was Starlink splashed all over T-Mobile's commercials. T-Satellite powered by Starlink. And so I think this is a pretty big shift in their strategy and it just kind of hints at what the future's going to be. And so I think before I would've said that an MOU at least, and then a definitive commercial agreement between T-Mobile and AST was probably off by some period of time. Maybe we're talking months or quarters, but who knows? With this shift from T-Mobile, I think maybe perhaps something could come sooner, especially now that the JV has been inked and now that process has been put in place. So I think this is a big shift strategically. And as I've mentioned before, I don't think the market is pricing this whatsoever. Whether— sorry, I got to turn off this Bloomberg squawk. Anyway, but I think for the market, I don't think anyone's pricing this in. There's only one analyst who actually talks about potentially the idea of T-Mobile working with AT&T, and that's Berenberg. Otherwise, there's been no ink spilled on this. And the skeptics and bears would tell you that even if T-Mobile does work with AST, that somehow the US market is going to be smaller than the size of Mongolia's market, which is— it's just laughable, right? The mental contortion that some of these clowns these permaclowns do is quite next level. If you're somehow arguing that the US telecommunications market, and in particular direct device in the US, is going to be smaller than that of Mongolia, I think you're hopeless. I don't know what to say to you. But anyway, moving on to the next point. So I did write that Canada is asymptotically going to approach 100%, and what I meant by that is 100% market share for AST. And so we saw another point of validation where TELUS had completed integration testing with AST. And this follows on what had already been reported by Bell Canada. If you guys recall, Bell Canada had done successful— had executed successful voice calling and video calling. They've already stood up their gateways in Canada, and now you're seeing TELUS do that as well. And by the way, TELUS is also a strategic investor in AST. Now, it's not a massive amount, but they did buy shares issued from the company so that they could have skin in the game and say that they are a strategic investor. Both Bell and TELUS are strategic investors in AST, and both are working with AST. For those that are in Canada, you guys will know that it's a 3-player market. There's TELUS, Bell, and Rogers. I do think Rogers is laying the groundwork to move away from its relationship with Starlink. By the way, When Rogers initially announced that they were working with Starlink, they also announced another partnership, this little company called Lynk. So it was kind of funny because I think the Starlink bulls were saying, oh my gosh, Rogers is working with AST. And then that same day that they announced— sorry, Rogers is working with Starlink. And that same day, Rogers also announced that they were testing with Lynk Mobile. And for those that— some of you that know, Lynk is a very small Startup company. They've been trying to compete and do the same thing as AST for a number of years. They actually have a similar architecture to what Starlink does. They put the eNodeB in the satellite. They have these small pizza box-sized satellites that supposedly can beam down service to unmodified mobile phones. They've demonstrated some level of texting, but yeah, it's been, I don't know. see, it's been 5 years that they've been— they tried to go public via SPAC. They also tried to raise funding. I actually met with the CEO at one point and listened to the pitch, and I didn't invest because it didn't make sense to me. But yeah, so Starlink— Rogers did work with both companies and obviously dropped Link because there was nothing going on there. They have been carrying Starlink service for, I guess it's been 2 years. Interestingly, the CEO of Rogers recently said that while Starlink was one of their partners, they were open to working with others, because I think clearly Rogers sees what Starlink is doing around trying to go directly to consumers and develop their own mobile service. Quite candidly, they probably aren't happy with intermittent texting and spotty satellite service. So I do think that eventually you'll see Canada go similarly to the way that the US is, where all 3 carriers are going to end up working with AST. And so it's a matter of when, not if. And of course, we also have Ligado spectrum in Canada. And so the coverage there is going to be great because not only will you have low-band spectrum that's lit up by AST's Block 2 Bluebirds, but once the Block 3 Bluebirds are launched, they'll be able to deliver even greater capacity and coverage by leveraging Ligado spectrum that we have in Canada. And so finally, I did want to talk about yesterday's State Department announcement, which is pretty insane. I think for all the skeptics and bears, they all would point to or make some type of argument that maybe, I guess, Actually, I don't know what the argument is, but yeah, I'm not sure what the argument is for bears when it comes to US government work, because we've demonstrated, I think we have a running tally of 15 contracts, whether with the DIU, SDA, Space Force, Department of War, Navy. We're also working with NATO. And so a bunch of Alphabet too, but we're doing a lot with the US government and allies. last night was pretty huge, right? So there was this announcement from the US State Department talking about the governments of Japan and the US working close together in cooperation around the development and deployment of various technologies, which are going to be absolutely critical to the future, not only in terms of innovation, but also for national security and defense. And so specifically, They talked about AI, advanced communications, 5G, 6G, space, quantum research, security, securing strategic technology supply chains. And in that, they talked about— and here, I'll just read it. They welcomed Japan's Rakuten Group and the US-based AST SpaceMobile cooperation for the development and deployment of low Earth orbit satellite infrastructure. And so these 2 companies were the only private ones that were named in this joint statement. I mean, this is the US and Japan. It's not the US and the island of Micronesia or something. This is 2 of the most important economies for Western liberal democracies. And so this was a huge statement, because I think for AST and Rakuten to be called out, and let's talk about it specifically for AST, this is a big deal. So if you think about the US and Japan, how they're advancing digital connectivity across the Indo-Pacific region. They're talking about security, countering China, all these things. This is an important statement. I know in Japan, the MIC, which is the equivalent of the FCC here, they have been discussing direct-to-device and the technology around the $1 billion joint venture between Rakuten and AST to launch a sovereign constellation. They've been talking about that and leveraging the technology around Japan's self-defense forces, right? So introducing more connectivity and providing sensing, radar, all these things to better protect the island. And so yeah, this is a big deal. And I think one of the things that has really stood out for me is the fact that, well, one, so let's talk about the joint venture. Rakuten and AST formed this joint venture. They went to go pursue the J-LEO project in Japan, and the government awarded it to them, and they're giving them $1 billion of money to help build this constellation. It's going to be a sovereign constellation. It'll have its network control center in Japan, the KILSA, which will be in Japan, These will be Bluebird satellites. However, even though they are solely controlled and operated from Japan, they will be part of this federated network constellation for AST, where AST will then, you pick the model, but they'll lease capacity and use those satellites elsewhere. But what I think is really interesting about this development is the fact that the US has not made, they've not They've hinted that they are inviting, whether it was Canada, some initial talks, Europe, Japan, they do want to invite allies into the potential of working together on a solution similar to Golden Dome, or it is Golden Dome, right? And I think it's important to understand that the biggest issue that we have from a national security, a military perspective, and this is, I think, Thank Cook for introducing me to the book. For those that haven't read it, and by the way, I'm only in the beginning part of it, but I've started to read The Kill Chain, and it's something that I highly recommend for people. The initial premise of the book is that during this period of peace that we had when Russia fell and the US was cutting back on spending and asked all these primes to consolidate, Because the view is that, okay, we're going to try to shape China into more of our mold and become more democratic and capitalistic, and Russia is now, hopefully we can make them more of an ally. And we basically wimped when it came to spending, we consolidated our spending into these exquisite high-end platforms. And so whether it's the F-22, F-35, any number of military platforms where we thought, okay, the old way of doing things, we just need to make these platforms better, or we'll extend old platforms. or we'll make some really nice bespoke, small quantity new platforms, and we'll just, that will be our threat deterrence. However, whether it was the Russians or the Chinese, they started moving towards a full, more fully connected, 'cause they saw what we did in Iraq and some of these other theaters, but they went towards a more mobile, higher number of whether it's drones or whatever vehicles, but a battlespace that's more connected, that's networked, and that's something that we didn't do. So for example, the F-35 and the F-22, there's no way for those 2 planes to talk together or to be networked. For them to coordinate, pilots have to speak to each other verbally because those 2 platforms are not compatible. That's actually throughout the entire US military as of when this book was written. So now, when you read read that type of book, you start to understand why Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration have been pouring a bunch of money into the military to modernize it, to move towards drone warfare, to deploy more connectivity, and basically be able to meet the challenges of what China and Russia and other adversaries are going to throw at us. I think in particular in Ukraine, the advent or the deployment of drones and electronic warfare and jamming, that's been a huge eye-opener for the US. And so that's why we're making all these moves to catch up very quickly. And so I think in the context of Japan and Europe, what AST is doing is actually laying the groundwork for a more connected network between allies, right? And so if, for example, if AST is deploying a sovereign constellation for Japan, it's also doing so for Europe, guess what? We can all communicate because we're all utilizing the same technology. And yes, those allies will have control of those constellations, but in effect, those Bluebirds are going to be compatible with the ones that we use. They can be used together if need be, they can collaborate. And so I think we're seeing some of these initial steps, and it just makes a ton of sense. Now, some of these governments, you could argue, well, why aren't they using Starlink? Well, they have an issue because the principal of Starlink and SpaceX is a bit, I guess, political. And so those folks don't want to be dependent on that particular company, and so they're looking for alternatives. And so here in this US joint statement with Japan, they're talking about AST SpaceMobile and Rakuten and the work that they're doing. And I think you're gonna see more of this, right? And so here, the ability to communicate and interoperate is very important. Like you can maintain your sovereignty, but for Japan and Europe, it also allows for easy integration with the US. And so when this administration or future administration talks about inviting Japan or Europe to Golden Dome and contributing to that, it's going to be a lot easier because some base layer in the framework that you're using is compatible. I think that's where AST helps solve this when it comes to Golden Dome and other initiatives. I did tweet out earlier about how because the US government is focused on space as an area that can determine superiority on the battlefield. I think it's important to highlight the fact that AST is ramping up production capacity. They want to get to 12 satellites per month now. Yeah. Who knows when that will happen, but they've got the square footage to do it. And for Europe, for example, if you need satellites that are built in Europe, we have a large facility in Barcelona that we're probably going to expand. We've got an HQ based in Belgium, but the satellite operations and the kill switch and all that stuff, that's the constellations flagged in Germany. And so yeah, it's kind of funny 'cause it's people complain about the stock price. No one's really paying attention to all the stuff that's going on in the background. But here for AST in particular, for government applications, we know that connectivity is important. The warfighter, all the developments around that about connecting soldiers, assets on the ground. In a contested environment, you're gonna need resiliency, you know, whether it's coming from an AST satellite, a Blackbird satellite, or it's a Starshield satellite or some other constellations, even Iridium, right? You're gonna need multiple constellations to make sure that if the adversary is able to jam or contest one constellation, you've got others to fall back on.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: And then, as we know, for AST, they are testing with the, with Space Force and Department of War around sensing and radar, which, you know, we've talked about quite a bit. That's gonna be very important in terms of being able to locate missiles that are launched against you or stealth aircraft. There's a lot of interesting things that you can do with satellites in order to triangulate and find those things. And then one area that we don't talk about as much, but is something that the market probably doesn't understand too, is electronic warfare. And so when you have the largest phased arrays in space, you can do pretty interesting things with them. And so just, I mean, as a very simple example, if you had to go and, you know, let's say if you wanted to go go capture Osama bin Laden, one of the things you'd want to do is you would take down the cellular networks in and around that area for some, I don't know, 30-mile radius for some period of time. These satellites could probably do that. Now, I'm speaking out of speculation, but when you have high power that can transmit frequencies in the cellular range, you can probably disrupt people's networks pretty easily. You don't have to cut wires or hack someone's network. You just flood it with noise. And so that's something else that you can do. There's also PNT. As we all know, AST filed with the FCC around their emerging PNT, their ability to do position navigation and timing, which is critical for any military asset. And then, as I mentioned before, resiliency, that's key, right? And so it's not just gonna be one constellation. You're gonna need 4, for these contested theaters, you're going to need multiple constellations. And so it's not just a winner takes all. It's going to be one where everybody has to be leveraged because you need redundancy. And in a situation where an adversary like Russia is trying to utilize different— jam certain frequencies, you need to be able to fall back on multiple ones. So yeah, I think Most bears focus on just the commercial side of the business and no one even values the military side of the business. But I think today just highlights the importance of that because the State Department announcement with Japan, that's not really the commercial business at all. They're not talking about Rakuten Mobile. They're talking about the JLEO project and what that means for creating the equivalent of FirstNet in Japan. So for safety and disaster response, that's what that constellation is gonna provide on the one hand. And then on the other hand, it's gonna have defense use cases where the MIC again is talking to the Self-Defense Forces in Japan about utilizing it for radar sensing, coordination of assets in the event of attack, or I guess maybe at some point in the future, if Japan had to go on the offense. But anyway, those are kind of the key points I wanted to make. I'm going to pause there and just see if people have questions. Let me just take a look here. But yeah, we've been talking about this. I think the market has been kind of one way with obviously people focused on rates that are now at multi- multi-decade highs, and there isn't really room for fundamental news or catalysts to move stocks, but fundamentals don't matter until they do. And so I think with today's announcement, we get a little bit— or last night's announcement, we get a little taste, but I think there's quite a bit more to come, which people are not paying attention to until it's too late. Let me just take a look here. Let's see. Hoping you can elaborate more on Canadian market share. I know Rogers is the large telecom that is not signed with AST. Also wondering if you heard about LEO government contract given to Telesat. Carney and Telesat have deep ties. Thanks. Let's see. So Canadian market share, I mean, I think the market is pretty close to a third, a third, and a third. They may be off by certain percentages, but AST has 2/3 of the market, right? It's got TELUS and Bell, and Rogers has pretty much indicated that they are open to working with others, which tells me that they're gonna drop Starlink like a bad habit, right? So if they do that, then that's 100%. LEO government contract given to Telesat. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a paper satellite idea. I haven't dug into it too much, but people will kind of choose their own paths, right? And so Canada might be going a different way, but I guess I would say that, It's kind of tough to develop a standalone constellation just for a particular country, especially when your MNOs are supporting an alternative solution, right? And so can Canada launch a separate LEO constellation to serve them properly? Sure. And Telesat, you know, it seems like a decent operator, but you've gotta develop the technology, then you've gotta get launch capacity. I mean, we all know about that. You got to produce the satellites and you've got to get spectrum from somewhere. So yeah, actually, you know what, I need to dig into that more, but thanks for putting that, bringing that to my attention. All right, let's see. Is the amount— someone's saying, is the announcement needed to get the approval of the US government for the JLEO contract in Japan? I don't know what that means. The JLEO contract, that has been awarded to Rakuten. There is some back and forth around finalizing and formalizing that, and once that happens, the other thing that has to occur is the joint venture between AST and Rakuten has to get inked and go definitive, which that has not been done yet, right? These joint ventures, by the way, are quite complex, and so just like a marriage, you've got to— or not like a marriage, but you've got— well, it is a marriage. You've got to figure out all the details and hopefully align both parties so that they work together in a cooperative and productive and economic manner. And so that joint venture hasn't been inked yet, but once it is, we will see that news announced. But yeah, there's no— well, this question does bring up a good point. They said, does the JLEO project need to get US government approval? The answer is probably no. But by their nature, that this joint venture is being touted by the US government just shows that from a regulatory standpoint, AST has support, that they have support of the US government, the State Department. That probably means the FCC, Department of War, And it's probably being looked at as a framework for AST to work with other allies around the world, right? And so that's a good place to come from, right? Versus something that might be controversial or that the US government doesn't like. The fact that they put this in a joint press release highlighting 7 areas of technological development that these 2 close allies are working on, means that they are both supportive of it. So that's good. How many more rounds of dilution do you think we will need with the current cash burn and lack of near-term revenue? I think we'll see at least 3 more offerings until the start of service in late '27, early '28. Yeah, there might be more offerings. It takes money to make money. And so one of the issues that you have if things get delayed is that your timeframe gets stretched and then you might need more money. other thing though is that you may need to raise money to go pursue more opportunities. And so the last offering was partially due to fund the expansion of production capacity to pull forward production, and then of course to serve the US government as well. That investment, by the way, also kind of paid some level of dividends, meaning The fact that you are going to work on another constellation for Japan, Japan's like, hey, here's a billion dollars. And so I think you're going to see more of that where some people may question, well, why do we need to raise money? Well, you've got to invest money to make money. And I think when some of these government programs go from a few hundred million dollars to billions of dollars, then I think it's going to become more clear as to why we're making those investments. But yeah, service starting in mid to late 2027 when revenue starts ramping up, there may be some additional need for funding or maybe not. There might be more non-dilutive sources of funding like Japan. I wouldn't be surprised to see funding come from the US. And the other thing I would mention, so I guess it was a year ago, I talked about the idea that perhaps the US might make passive investments in strategic industries. And this was an idea that kind of stemmed from the initial investments that the US made in MP and Intel and some of these other companies. But if you track this administration and focus on where they want to have superiority, of which space superiority is absolute paramount, for a working military that's connected and networked and has capabilities to project power all around the globe, then space is a very strategic industry. And so I think I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think it's likely, but I wouldn't be surprised if the US government does take some passive stakes in companies like AST. And so if they were to, I don't know, just invest in straight equity or some type of equity-linked instrument for $1 billion just to show support. I guess, what would that do to the stock price and more importantly, the cost of capital? Because once the government gets involved, if your stock price doubled, then your cost of capital just got reduced significantly and your ability to raise debt and other things. in essence, you've become kind of too big to fail or de facto government supported, which some people would push back and say, well, why don't they do that with the primes? Well, the primes are— they already are government supported. The primes— In the book, The Kill Chain, I think there used to be like 10,000 companies focused on serving the US military, and then that got consolidated down to now what is 3, or sorry, 4 or 5 large primes. And so the US, as we've seen with, for example, Palmer Luckey being added to this new research group for the US military and thinking about the future war, you're now seeing private industry step in and really innovate, which is why now you're seeing these new companies, whether it's in space, but also on the defense side, like Shield AI or Anduril, are all doing well because they're innovating and they're doing things that the old primes can't in a cost-effective way where the US doesn't have to fund that upfront. It's actually the private sector doing that and innovating, and as such, delivering some of these solutions in a much faster and cost-efficient way. But anyway, but yeah, I do think there's always the possibility of more funding any growth company that's pursuing opportunities that are worthwhile will need funding, right? And for some period of time, the ability to fund that growth until it, you know, you've got to raise outside money until you generate enough profitability to do that internally. So yeah, so I do think there is a possibility, of course, more funding, but we'll see. I think that's mostly it. So Let me just see. Oh yeah, so someone's asking the book that you're talking about. I heard Cook mention it too. Yeah, the book is called The Kill Chain. You can find it on Amazon. Here, let me just look it up. I'll just tell people specifically. I will say, when you start reading this book, it is a little depressing because it talks about how the US has fallen behind China and Russia and other adversaries. But, but it's very informative, and once you read it, you'll understand why the military and this administration is doing everything it has been doing to fix these problems. But it's The Kill Chain. It's Defending America and the Future of High-Tech Warfare, and the author is Christian Brose or Brose. Let's see.
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[00:41:27] Speaker B: I think that's about it. So, yeah, everyone, thanks for joining. I do think, yeah, I pointed this out earlier in a tweet. Let me just read it. The U.S. State Department just highlighted AST SpaceMobile and Rakuten's work in deploying a new $1 billion, which is actually not $1 billion. That's what Japan has funded. It's probably going to end up being a total of $2 billion or more, but a new $1 billion sovereign constellation funded by and for Japan that will be integrated into the federated AST network. Constellation will likely be leveraged for Golden Dome across both countries. And then I question, and you're short the stock, which, yeah, I think for people who are short the stock, and there's, by the way, there's like new guys who have shorted the stock in the hole. I was joking about with some friends where the stock is what, 50%, 60% off its all-time highs, and guys are looking to lay out new shorts. What are you doing? If you're shorting a stock that's 60% in the hole and has tremendous opportunity and upside, the strategy of short low and cover high, yeah, it's not a good strategy. So I guess I'll leave it at that. But Anyway, thanks everyone for joining. Yeah, it's exciting times ahead. There's a lot of great developments that are going on, and just to see it crystallized and acknowledged by the U.S. State Department and the governments of the U.S. and Japan just highlights that, yeah, there's a lot of things that are cooking behind the scenes. And the opportunity ahead, I've never been More bullish. So with that, I'll end it. And everyone, thanks for joining.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Take care.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mover podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast. please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: Hey y'all, Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. I know holiday magic It starts at home, so I tend to go a little overboard. The twinkling lights, the trees, the cozy blankets. But the thing I love even more than decorating is having everyone over and knowing my home is ready. With Wayfair, it's easier than ever to make holiday magic at home. Ooh, I think I found room for one more wreath. Don't wait. Head to wayfair.com and get your home holiday ready today. Wayfair.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Every style.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: Every home.
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[00:45:00] Speaker A: Savings compared to renewal price. Void in Florida.