Kook's Weekly - February 9 - Smoothies, Strokes, and SpaceMobile

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: We will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: Thanks for joining. I know it's late notice. I just popped some food in the oven and figured out that I'd knock a Spaces out just to keep with the tradition. Just as a quick public service announcement, what happened to me this weekend is truly remarkable. And Panman and Tut were just thinking like, this guy. But I'd been seeing a functional doctor And just, you know, 2026 is gonna be a year of health for me. And I'm already a pretty healthy guy. Like I don't drink, I exercise a lot, but I wanted to go that next level. So I started doing peptides, but not the, the Temu peptides. I'm not, there's no way I'm doing that. But so I was going, am going to a real MD and, uh, and it's fine. I've been doing it for a month. Feel like it's made a difference. Not, you know, who knows. But on Saturday I just, I kind of got to the bottom of it just now in Gemini cuz I just got my MRI results back.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: I basically created a perfect storm of a smoothie. What's so— it's always a Bryan Johnson story of a guy that invests $2 million a year to live forever and he's like killed by a freaking fruit. That's my story. I had a smoothie that I put protein powder in it and the ingredients were a cucumber and a lime and an avocado. And the lime is what did me in because that interacted with the protein in my stomach to create like sludge. And then when I did the peptide, that caused rapid dilation of my arteries, but then the Lyme being acidic was contracting the arteries. And then of course I had to do the ASTS pushups. So I had broken in, I'd broken Fridays up into one set on Friday and then I was gonna do another set on Saturday, which I did. So that created then like rapid exertion. So then the triple threat of those 3 things basically caused a a stroke, which is pretty remarkable. But as Gemini says, I created a, a perfect storm to create a massive metabolic crash. So I still feel awful, but that apparently is normal too when you basically rev and then shut down the engine at the same time. But I guess the PSA is if you're doing peptides, be careful. Definitely do it under a doctor like I did. So I was able to immediately get a stat MRI to make sure I hadn't had a brain hemorrhage, which is pretty scary. At some level I thought, well, at least, at least I completed my work with ASTFs, but this whole dying young thing kind of sucks. And anyway, that's my PSA today is don't do what the internet says, which is order peptides online. So let's do a recap of things not to do. Don't use margin, don't use short-term options for your core position, and don't do Temu peptides. So I hope everyone has a nice, healthy, profitable life after listening to Cook's Weekly. Thanks for joining. But anyway, in all seriousness, holy crap, that was super fucking scary. And the scariest thing is at 3 AM when I thought I was going to die, I had to make the choice. Do I call 911? Oh, it was my son's birthday the next day too, of course. So if I call 911 and wake up my wife, she's going to go to the hospital with me to make sure that I actually die. Because if I ended up being fine and I had an ambulance show up at 3:00 AM and ruin my son's birthday party, she would have finished the job that the Lyme started. So I decided that I had to just sit in bed and die in my bed if that was what was going to happen, because otherwise my wife would never forgive me. She'd never believe that the probability of events of the night before my son's birthday, this happened, then she would assume that— I don't know what she would assume, but she would have executed me. So, um, yeah, anyway, be scared of your wife is also— and she agreed with my logic. I told her today, I was like, I was scared you were gonna kill me. She's like, you made the right call. She was, I think, happier for me to suffer. Um, she's actually calling me right now. I hope she can't hear me. Um, okay, so let's do a quick recap of last week, um, knowing that I have to start getting to work on this week. But last week was pretty nuts. You know, at first the market fell apart, which wasn't a huge surprise. AI, AI. And then people seemed to get the idea that the space stuff with AI data centers applied to us. So then we ripped and then we got smoked because Amazon came out with a fixed wireless constellation to compete with SpaceX. And then people realized that wasn't competition. So then we went back up. So holy moly, this is why, again, if you trade the vol, this is a great stock for you. And that's what I'm trying to get better at by learning from people like Matt who does TA, Reformed Traders who does TA, the guy, the Singaporean guy who I don't know if I can really say his name, but he has all the card symbols in his name. And so they're interesting, you know, to have a little trading position if you want to entertain yourself. I can't resist. But for core positions, obviously the better thing is just to sleep, which is a funny story. I just got off the phone with my real estate agent who I'd gotten into ASTS. I never really knew what he owned, but I asked him because he was like, yeah, this is crazy. I'm losing like $300,000 a day. And I went, how much do you own? And I've made my real estate agent more money than he, I think more money than he's cumulatively made in his career, which is just cool because he's a really wonderful person. Really love his family. And so that's just a really great story. And I know there's a lot of people on this call that have had the same outcome. It's just super cool when that happens to people. And he's the type of guy that has no idea really what's going on. He's not a finance person, so he just kind of checks in from time to time. He's like, hey, Kook, did you sell? I'm like, nope. All right. And he goes and does his life and he's compounded very well. So that's a cool story. I know I see one of my Italian friends on this call who's doing the same strategy of just You know, damn the torpedoes, I'm rebuilding the Roman Empire. And that's a millennium type of exercise. And so the long view has been good on this stock, especially when trying to navigate weeks like last week. So what did we have in terms of the fundamentals? US testing began. That's exciting. It's also proof positive that we're having that FirstNet spectrum. The international spectrum is a go. That's great. We had an FM-1 sighting on visuals. We think it's a little hazy. I still, um, when I look at the data— I actually don't have it up, um, I didn't— I checked it last night. But when I'm looking at the satellite on my data, let me just pull it up now while I do it. I still think that they probably unfurled, and I don't know why they wouldn't announce it, but I could also see the argument of Why announce it? Because if I were Scott, I would always think about conditioning my audience. And so by giving little small details all the time, you start to condition your audience toward information overload. And, and that can come back to haunt you down the line. And because it ties you to effectively a form of disclosure. So I can see it both ways. There's, 3 logical outcomes. One, that it did not unfurl. 2, that it has unfurled, but they decided not to announce it because they want to package everything together. Or 3, they, it unfurled and they didn't announce it because we already did the work. And so it's quite possible that they're just saying, well, Space Mob kind of announced it and by doing micro announcements, we sort of become a microcap thinking stock versus a big company wouldn't necessarily give all the details. So we'll find out in hindsight, we'll be able to correlate whether or not we're right or not. I'm looking at this right now. The drag spiked, went down. I had a little bit of a hiccup. I've got another monitor that tracks everything together, but otherwise the satellite looks like it's, you know, pretty controlled and it's It's, it's there. So that's all we could ask for. And then FM2 is on deck. So New Glenn 3 is the vehicle, and we're tracking that carefully. If anyone has any unique insights in terms of the dates, status of New Glenn 3, even if they're hearsay, just please DM me because I can go over some of those assumptions with, with some other people and correlate those things. Of course, sort of in a tight circle of confidence. And, uh, it's just interesting stuff. I really cannot wait to see that launch. I hope I can make it. And increasingly there's a lot more people that can't wait to make it. So when you look at the work Only Six Inches does, he does a lot of nice consistent work, the type of stuff I like to do. He's looking at the headcount and headcount don't lie. So even in the age of AI where people are becoming more and more efficient, and so you need less. The headcount growth here has just gone parabolic. And so this company is rapidly scaling. It's telling you that they're moving into the opportunity. They're not waiting to see if the opportunity is right. And why is that? So why do they need to go big, harder, faster? It's because the TAM is big. So we had some cool stuff this week. Anpanman, who you might know from spaces such as I Am a Pumper, And I'm a Pumper Part 2, and I think goes all the way to Series 5000. He also came up with this little cool thing called Hyundai Motor Group partners with Vodafone IoT to deploy connected cars in 5 countries in the Middle East. And so India did this, if you remember from a couple of Spaces ago, they're requiring cars to be connected. And so this is going to be an increasing trend over time. And just more TAM. And then the next thing is FirstNet. So FirstNet is definitely happening. We have the people at FirstNet testifying. So I've included that link. We talked about it last time, but then also the spectrum groundwork is very important to this story. And so there's been a little bit of an interesting adversary proceeding, if you will, or ironically, something that did not go to a formal adversary.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Adversary proceeding in the Legato docket. But Viasat is trying to be annoying, but it's just kind of proof positive that Legato is very interesting. And some other things we learned this week on the spectrum front is just what type of efficiency this company can achieve. And so in, where was this disclosed? They might've been a Vodafone document. They showed that they could reach spectral efficiency of 6 bits We had been thinking of like 3, but initially 2 bits per hertz. But then also because of spectrum reuse, this multiplies through. And so we're starting to see data capacity that is dramatically higher than we would've ever predicted. And that's important because that just means our efficiency is very high. And as Katsey says, spectrum will always flow to the most efficient use of spectrum. I believe that to be one of the core first principle observations of Space Mob. It's really kind of in our, I don't know if we have 10 commandments, but we have that first commandment of spectrum will go to the most efficient use. So that's commandment one. And it might just be the other 9 commandments are expose Tim Ferriss as the FUDster he is. And that might really just be our 10 commandments. But the first one is important. And then we had a public notice for Legato. So that's proceeding. Um, the judge overseeing this is not very entertained by anyone getting in the way of this, which is good. So I expect some nice, uh, uh, and not announcements per se, but just developments on this Legato path, which will set us up for future growth. And, you know, it's just really going back to the product roadmap here. That's what you want to see with a, with a monster-sized company. And the product roadmap with, I might've got these tweets reversed, but the product roadmap around the spectral efficiency is really important. And now I see that the person that discovered this was Dr. Mike. So Dr. Mike, Scientific Mike, PhD Mike, turns out when someone has a PhD in something very complicated, they tend to be pretty good analysts. And so attention to detail is this guy's middle name, and he's the one that found this really cool spectral efficiency note. So highly encourage everyone to read that. It's under the retweet I did of Product Roadmap Goes Crazy, and it's my retweet of his work. So really nice stuff, nice find right there. And our technology is dovetailing with Apple's goals, and Katsy picked up that we are testing iPhone 17 series phones. Shocker. So the Apple ASTS story, I think, is going to get some more legs. We, every time SpaceX does sort of a, how do we fix our system to work? You know, people run Bloomberg articles on like SpaceX working with Apple and predictably ASTS goes down 10%. Well, wait until ASTS actually working with Apple because it's dope instead of ASTS like praying their system will work with Apple, which is what SpaceX does. Wait until that story gets told. You know, that's when the short-term options will get paid. If only you knew when, but the media is laying it out. And so increasingly, the band of vagabonds that is Space Mob, everyone thinking we're lunatics and alone, we're now being joined by journalists. And so Forbes came out and does a you know SpaceX versus AST Mobile and realizing that they're not the same. Quote: ASTS Space Mobile is developing much more sophisticated satellites. With massive phased array antennas to compensate for the limited power antennas of today's phones. In this SpaceX matchup with contender ASTS, Professor Freya says what will work best remains to be seen. So I guess they leave it open-ended as always, but that's what's good. That's why the stock at $100 is not a foregone conclusion. I think as the risks and the uncertainties get resolved, we go yet higher, which is why I own my position. But then it's important to see the cementing of our relationships. The MNOs, we have three links here. We have Vodafone again saying, "Quote: Our technology team has been working tirelessly on multiple fronts and preparing for commercial launch of the service." Well, that's good. Shows deep integration. Rocket Lab or sorry, Rocket Tank one two three not to be confused with Rocket Lab. Rocket Tank finds some really cool stuff from Vodafone's docket with the Scottish Affairs Committee. Showing just how deep the partnership is. That's that's encouraging. And then Anpanman also find found a cool article about Vodafone just talking about the the key technology achievements they've had. And so what you see is we're we're very important to these MNOs. We're tied at the hips. But then I believe we're tied with the handsets too. And so Apple's vision for the iPhone 18. They got to sell these things, right? I'm already, I'm on an iPhone 17. I think I'm just like, I'm fine with it. What's going to cause me to upgrade? Space phone. That's what causes you to upgrade. Everyone wants a space phone. And so Apple's vision for iPhone 18 and subsequent models represents a fundamental paradigm shift. The iPhone giant wants to make satellite connectivity natural, eliminating the need to point your phone at the sky entirely. Future iPhones are expected to maintain satellite connections while tucked in your pocket. They'll seamlessly switch between cellular and satellite networks as needed. Well, how do you describe ASTS SpaceMobile without describing ASTS SpaceMobile? That would be how you would do it. And we have the FCC filing showing they're doing the testing. So it's almost like the 3 points of fire, heat, fuel, oxygen. We kind of have the 2 points. But everyone on this call already knows the third point, just the market doesn't know it. And that's neat. That's a future de-risking event that will happen. And it's not only Apple that ASTS is getting in front of. The company is doing a great job being in front of the decision makers. So while they don't update us on the everyday operations of FM1, damn you, Scott, update us as a side note. But the executives are talking to the people who apparently matter more than anonymous cartoon accounts that hold spaces with zero notice on Monday nights. And so Michael Pollack, the executive vice president of government ops— Michael Pollack also is the same from the forbidden video— and he is going to be speaking at Sideshow 2026. And so one of my sources who is particularly vexing, but I think I've figured out a lot about him. Someone who knows something about something, uh, with a lot of relevant experience, retired from what I can tell, um, told me to keep an eye on SatShow. So this is where the people that matter are going to be. It's very fitting for him to be there as we ramp up our government business. So I always appreciate when people randomly on the internet give me kind of heads up on what to look at, because then I'm a little bit more aware when I see things. And this is one of those things that I saw which registered just because I got the prod from some special people, and I appreciate that. So always, if you have unique insights, please DM me and I'll try to, uh, use those insights for the greater good. And while we're actually doing the greater good, Elon, with his, um, kind of miraculous Asperger's channeled to quite incredible achievements, really can't help himself. And so Once again, the SpaceX phone is back. Now, a more rational Art of War student would say, don't talk about the space phone, dude. Don't talk about it. You're going to piss everyone off. Elon is like, um, to reach a Cardo gosh level 20 society, you need to have a phone made by us. He's just like, won't be able to help himself by saying something like straight out of some sci-fi novel from 30 years ago. But here he goes again, talking about a phone, and Apple is pissed off at them, so they're not giving any of Globalstar's spectrum. So this is how Elon responds. If you don't agree to Elon, who always thinks he's right, and frankly seems like he always is right, but he doesn't really play nice against other people. So Apple says, we're not giving you the Globalstar spectrum. And Elon says, screw you, Apple. I'm going to put you out of business. Honestly, I kind of see Elon's perspective, but the delivery, it's like sometimes he wants to make ASTS go up and, and I'm fine with it. But then he says it's not true. But I'm the type of guy that says when someone says something's not true, that's effectively official confirmation for me that it is true. So good luck trying to convince me of anything because the second you say it's not true, I'm like, it's totally true and I'll run with it. But him making a phone actually makes sense to me. It's completely consistent with his DNA, his business philosophy. He's a direct-to-consumer type of guy. So I bet it's true. And the M&Os think it's true, but they also can't risk that it's not true. So it's a little bit of a Pascal's wager for these guys. You know, I better pray because if there's heaven, I'm really glad that I prayed. If there's no heaven, well, you know, whatever. I wasted 5 minutes a day, but you You know, it was a gamble. That's Pascal's wager for anyone that isn't steeped in philosophy. And it's frankly a really kind of interesting way to think. And if I'm the CEO of AT&T, I'm thinking, yeah, I'm not going to risk it and have this guy take my clients. But meanwhile, Elon seems to have moved on. And so I think he's realized that the better story to sell on Wall Street is not the one that you're about to lose to AST SpaceMobile, because I believe he's going to lose and I believe it's not even close. Why not go for something just fantastic like Skynet? And so everyone that's in an investment decision position knows and loves Terminator. First thing we think of is Skynet, and he's just going like, let's do this, guys. Like Sarah Connor be damned, Skynet, let's make it happen. And so he is doing the 1 million satellite AI data center in space to power his Robots and holy crap, you can never fault the guy for not dreaming big. And that's what you want to see in a great entrepreneur. And he's the definition of the type of entrepreneur you should always put all of your money behind. I happen to think Abel follows in that narrative. I think Abel is a little bit more controlled on impulses, but equally insane. And that's important. Put your money behind very talented, insane people who can build great teams. So add that to the list of don't do peptides with a lime smoothie. Don't use a lot of leverage and don't trade short-term options. And you know, that's, it's kind of my life advice. So he's really on this AI data center thing, which I get like this is the big idea. This is what I think is going to be the shiny object that distracts him, which is Good news for us, because I think he's going to kind of look for an off-ramp on DDC because I think he's missed mispositioned for it. But good news is the SpaceX IPO is on. So you got the X ticker. That's great. Means our little kind of market focus on space will will be there. And he says that the space area is going to be easier for scaling AI, which I found very humorous because here we have Anpanman going all in on terrestrial solar. And so the irony just couldn't be greater is our favorite space bro finally went back to planet Earth and went terrestrial on solar and then gets his glass cracked immediately by space. So it's like what you get, stay in space, bro. Don't go terrestrial. And meanwhile, Abel saw the same thing. Data centers were in the patents from long ago. And so we have an attention-oriented Space Marber, um, @TomChattafitness, uh, also known as Timmy Turbo. I'm sure he has some pretty strong views on my experimentation with peptides. Um, probably he's like, kook, dude, everyone knows just don't have limes before peptides. It's like, okay, I learned that the hard way. But you know, he found this cool patent, shows that Abel saw this too. Again, Abel, insane, controlled team builder, critical things needed for greatness. Um, But also, if you want to be great, you need to have a bunch of lawyers, which we also have. But SpaceX files for some last-minute lawfare against us. The docket's kind of progressing its way. We could have full SES approval probably within the next month is our guess. We know that we have @justbar monitoring the FCC dockets for us. So I can assure you when the company gets FCC approval, don't follow me. Follow Justin. He's going to be the guy breaking the news and it's going to be awesome. So we had some market turmoil, of course. I think it's just this readjustment period to Warsh and just some seasonal stuff. But of course it gets everyone kind of bearish at the bottom. And of course here we are with Wall Street giving us a double-levered ASTS vehicle in order to do so. And this is another reminder is these leveraged ETFs are not suitable for long-term investing in my point of view. They have incredible amount of theta decay, which basically means with time, unless a stock only goes in one direction, if that's the case, if the stock only went up, then these are the best things you could possibly own. If it grinds and ASTX grinds, then these are very terrible because you're always buying high and selling low. And that's why there's so much tracking error to these over time. So just be very careful with these vehicles if you don't know what you're doing. Don't do it because you're going to hurt yourself and no one wants to see that. Only people that want to see that is Wall Street, but no one on this call wants to see that because this is called Team Friend and Team Friend is friendly. So don't do that. Don't wake up one day and realize, well, first of all, shorting ASTS, like if that's what you're doing, then you're probably on the wrong call. But if you were inclined to short ASTS, Still don't do that. Find another way so you don't get chopped up in the vol and dramatically underperform the intended risk that you were taking. So thanks for joining me on such short notice. I'm gonna be back at it. I figured again, it's it's like okay, fear of my wife prompted me to not call 911, but also you know my fear of superstition said well, I have a lot of things I need to do right now, including the fact that I have turkey. patties burning in the oven at this exact moment because my alarm already went off God knows when. So my house is probably smoking, but I can't do the pushups tonight for fear of a stroke. But I feel like you guys can cut me slack on that until I get the okay from my doctor. So I'll defer the pushups. I'll stack them in the back end. But I figured the space must go on because when we have a $100 stock price, the only emotion I have is just being grateful. And so all of the insane superstitions, all of the community work, everything, has to go in turbo drive because we can't jinx it. So don't jinx it. Keep, keep doing research, keep sharing it. Let's go stay strong so that we can deserve the $100 stock price that we are so fortunate to have. Have a great night. I will see everyone on Sunday. I'll be on the East Coast, so it will be at an earlier hour. And I know some people will be happy for that. Talk to everyone soon.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Bye. Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile 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.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very And I think with this technology we can really affect a billion lives. AFT Space Mobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with animals.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Listen. Mmm, waffles.