David Dorr - Global Macro Series - March 8th, 2022

[00:00:07] David

We have made breakthroughs in reverse engineering of extraterrestrial craft. That’s actually what I sincerely believe. I think that we have the craft. I think that we’ve had it for a very long time. I think that we’ve finally figured out how some of it works. I think that there’s probably extraordinarily dangerous implications of understanding how that technology works. It’s not just the government blocking free energy or anti-gravity machines that would change humanity. There are probably very serious implications to weaponizing those technologies. But I think that this information is going to continue to spill out and it’s going to create a very, very interesting world for us here very quickly. So I think we’re going to have breakthroughs in space travel that are going to go way beyond anything that SpaceX is doing. SpaceX is going to look like a horse drawn carriage versus the tech that we actually are probably already capable of deploying.

[00:01:06] Intro

Imagine spending an hour with the world’s greatest traders. Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes and their failures. Imagine no more. Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers in the world so you can take your manager due diligence or investment career to the next level.

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Here’s your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Niels Kaastrup-Larsen.

[00:02:02] Niels

A new world order is becoming clearer by the day, and in our Global Macro Series, I want to dig deep into the minds of some of the most prominent experts in many different fields to help us better understand what this new global macro-driven world may look like. We want to explore their perspectives on a host of important issues and hopefully did out nuances in their work through meaningful conversations.

Our guest today has been following a very different topic that we normally don’t discuss on this podcast. But nevertheless, it has become very topical, and so despite being a bit out of this world, so to speak, I think we need to pay attention. Therefore, please enjoy my conversation with David Dorr.

David, welcome and thank you so much for joining me today for what I’m sure will be an out of this world conversation as part of our Global Macro Series.

Now, I first came across your work very recently actually. I was listening to a podcast with you and Grant Williams, and immediately, I thought to myself, I have to get David on my podcast to talk about this because it’s so fascinating and I’m really curious. As I told you just before we pressed record, that is the beauty of these podcasts is that if you’re curious about something, you can just have a conversation with people who know lots more than you do. So welcome. It’s a great pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

[00:03:32] David

Thank you, Niels. Pleasure to be here with you.

[00:03:35] Niels

Good. Now, since this is your first time on our podcast at least, perhaps I could ask you to maybe set the stage a little bit, provide a bit of background context for the conversation, telling us maybe a few highlights from your own background and what you spend time doing, as this is of course going to be relevant for the conversation, and then we’ll dive into all of the topics afterwards.

[00:04:02] David

Absolutely. So by background, I’m a career trader. I started trading. I grew up in the Midwest in the United States. I started trading commodities as a teenager with my youngest brother, and very soon into that, not knowing, of course, anything that we were doing as most nascent traders start off that way, we slowly kind of gravitated to finding our own strategy. The things that clicked with us in that strategy specifically is discretionary global macro and so I’ve got nearly 25 years doing discretionary global macro as an investment and trading strategy.

Because of that, what we found as our unique space, our niche within the investment world is that with discretionary macro, a large part of that is connecting dots around the world. It’s a top-down strategy. For us, what we look for to find our edge is the things that maybe people are not paying attention to, and over the years, we’ve gotten really good at that. The conversation we’re going to have today is going to be a very interesting sample of that. I think we’re the only macro guys out there talking about the subject of ‘galactic macro’ as we affectionately like to call it.

But yes, that’s been our whole career and we try to exploit alpha by finding things that are that are trending, something that’s important to you and the topics that you cover. We look for themes that are trending but are not yet reflected in asset classes and then we look for those asset classes to start moving at the same time. When those are merging together, you have a nice kind of wave that you can ride that others maybe were not paying attention to and didn’t jump on.

[00:05:40] Niels

Okay. That’s cool. That’s great. That’s a really good background. Now, as I alluded to maybe, and you sort of hinted at, today’s topic is completely out of my comfort zone, I have to say. I don’t really know much about it. It’s something that I have, I would say, on and off paid attention to. I’ve even watched a couple of Netflix documentaries a few years ago, mostly when, honestly, my wife wasn’t paying attention because I think she would have thought I was a bit crazy spending time on this topic.

But the other thing that’s really great about the topic is that, I think it’s safe to say, most people have an opinion about it. They either think it’s real or it’s not. So what I’m curious to know is that has there been any experiences in your life where you may have brought up the topic and where people have kind of thought, “David, what’s going on here? Why are you suddenly talking about this type of stuff?”

[00:06:42] David

Yeah, absolutely. For those listening, the topic here is UFOs, and that’s starting to become a bit more mainstream. It’s a topic that kind of ebbs and flows, but it’s becoming a bit more mainstream especially in the last couple of weeks with the United States, for the first time, shooting down four things over US airspace, one of which was a Chinese spy balloon, the other three of which we don’t know what they are and the Pentagon still has not provided information on those objects that have been shot down. I’m not saying that those are alien spacecraft, but they do meet the definition of unidentified flying objects.

To give a little context for our background and to answer your question, yes, people tease me all the time on this until I start to present the evidence. The stigma around the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrials is significant. Little green men hopping out of spacecraft and everybody wearing tinfoil hats. What’s interesting about the history of this is that that’s not a coincidence. You have actual documentation showing that our intelligence departments, our military, they intended to create that stigma, because when you look at the evidence, there were some very difficult things to answer.

So I want to share a little bit about my background. I’ll share a story with you that actually I haven’t shared on any of the other podcasts yet. It really opened up, for me, the possibilities of interesting things going on. So by background, this was a subject that was dinner table conversation in my family. My father was really into this. My dad is a very open-minded but also a very serious guy. He’s somebody that likes to see the evidence. He’s not just listening to a UFO story and takes it as it is. When we were kids growing up in Missouri, I grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and two hours away from us is St. Louis, Missouri.

For those listening that may know St. Louis or for those of you that don’t, St. Louis has an exceptional, exceptional science museum. It’s absolutely fantastic. They’re known for a couple of things: the Cardinals, the zoo, and the Science Center. So when we were kids, we went to the science museum, and in their planetarium, they were doing a series, this piece about the Betty and Barney Hill case. This was an abduction case from the ’60s. It was a couple that was abducted, allegedly, and later, they were both hypnotized.

What’s fascinating about this is that they were hypnotized because they were experiencing trauma and nightmares. They had this missing time, it was unexplainable. They weren’t sure what had happened to them. They didn’t allege that they were abducted from a UFO. This came out underneath the hypnosis, and this is where the story is going to get really interesting. It’s one of the best recorded cases that exists, and underneath hypnosis, they both told a very similar story of being taken aboard a craft.

Now, the wife, Betty, told the story that she was sitting in an examination room and she was able to recall seeing effectively a star chart on the wall so much so that she drew it. So those listening, you can look it up and you can see what she drew. Now, here’s where the science museum comes into this. They’re telling the story and they’re showing the chart of what Betty drew. She was showing what appeared to be a star map, and originally, several scientists looked at this and said, “Well, we don’t see anything that lines up with the stars. Perhaps this is her imagination.” Then one investigator had a very brilliant idea. They said, “You know what? We’re looking at this from the point of looking out at the stars from being here on Earth. But if she’s actually on a craft, she might have a different perspective. Let’s start rotating star maps and see if we can line it up.”

So they simulated this at the science museum. It was amazing. I will never forget this experience as a kid. So they did the simulation, rotating it around, and guess what, Niels? It lined up perfectly. Now, how is that possible? How is somebody in the ‘60s, has nothing to do with stars or astrophysics or anything like that, drawing a star chart under hypnosis, that when you 3D rotate it, it looks like something from space looking back towards Earth? So this is kind of what started my fascination as a kid on this subject matter.

[00:11:16] Niels

Okay, cool. Now, often we get interested in stuff when we’re kids, and at some point, we kind of move on and focus on something different. Is this something that actually stayed with you or did it also, at a certain age, you had gone, yeah, okay, fine, that was fun, went to the museum, all of that, and not really paid attention to it, and then it reappeared for some reason? I just want to understand your journey a bit more.

[00:11:45] David

Yeah, it’s great question. No. As a hobby, it’s always been with me. I’ve always found it a fascination. I’ve kept tabs of various cases and everything else. But again, that remained a hobby for me and a general interest on the side that didn’t really crisscross with my professional job as an investment manager and trader until 2017. 2017 was a very significant milestone because this was an inflection point for disclosure directly from the United States Department of Defense, and that was the crossover point.

[00:12:22] Niels

Okay, cool. You know what? What also makes it really interesting, in my view, is that no one really, in the investment world, is paying attention to this so I understand your fascination with it. I’m very interested as well. But I’m also intrigued by the fact that nobody else is paying attention to it, at least in the broader investment sphere.

All right. Great background. Let’s dive into some of these topics. Again, since I don’t have any experience with this, I kind of thought, let’s divide it into two groups of questions to begin with. One would be significant events that you know about, heard about, and whatever I’ve heard about, I can ask you whether you know anything about it. Also, the other interesting thing is maybe some of the key people who are coming forward who’ve been involved in this for a while, people we think may be credible, etc., etc.

So let’s dive into this question now. I realize that some of these events were not known at the time. By the way, I actually also think that there are some events from many, many years ago, decades ago, and I’m not even up to speed. So if you want to bring something up from the ’60s and ’70s, feel free.

What I found in my short time to do a bit of research here was certainly an important event that took place in 2004, as far as I can tell, but I don’t think we were informed about it until 2018, and that is what’s been named this Tic Tac encounter. So as I said, feel free to go even further back. Otherwise, feel free to start with 2004 and the Tic Tac.

[00:14:17] David

Yeah. Well, one incident that I’ll add (and there’s several), I won’t go too far into Roswell, which is the most famous case for the United States, which, by the way, for those listening, it’s worth diving into and not a coincidence. We’ll circle back to some conversation on this. It’s not a coincidence that the United States National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 allows Congress to go back and collect information all the way back predating Roswell. There’s zero coincidence about that.

There’s very serious reasons for that and we believe that Roswell was actually something that took place, not just a conspiracy theory but something actually took place. But I think one of the incidents that people may not be familiar with but is well documented is in 1952. So people say, “Well, aliens and UFOs, this is nonsense. If they wanted to reveal themselves, why wouldn’t they just land on the yard of the White House?” Well, in 1952, they practically did. They didn’t land on the yard, but there were sightings right over the white house in 1952.

We scrambled jets to chase them and were unsuccessful in doing that, but it is widely reported. It was in the papers, it was covered. This is an incident that is actually well known but is often forgotten about. So our incidents with UFOs is nothing new. Now, going to the 2004 case, the reason that that one is so incredibly significant is because the multiple sensors, witnesses, our fighter pilots, Commander Fravor as well as other pilots. There was a pilot that was scrambled after he returned the went and recorded the Tic Tac.

So for those listening that are not familiar with this, this has been on the news a lot since 2017, which is kind of when it came out. But we had in 2004, the USS Nimitz was with the carrier fleet. They were practicing off the coast, about 100 kilometers off the coast of San Diego. It wasn’t just on a single day. Over a series of days, their radar operators were seeing stuff on radar that was dropping from 80,000 feet to 50 feet above the ocean. This is fascinating. They had 14 of these things zipping from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet to 50 feet.

Because of the radars that they had, they believed that they were actually entering our atmosphere, because at about 80,000 feet, you’re seeing the curvature of the earth. You’re practically right there heading into space. These radars got to max out at 80,000 feet so they were entering the radar at 80,000 feet coming down.

They also believed that these objects were coming up from the ocean and traveling back up through 80,000 feet into space, and this is where you’re hearing some of the definitions of transmedium craft. This is the idea we have objects that are intelligently controlled that can cross from water to air to space effortlessly without creating any sonic booms and these things were pulling 12,000gs in maneuvers. There’s absolutely nothing that we make that does that stuff. This is very, very, very serious technology.

Commander Fravor, he actually had an encounter. He was scrambled with his jets to go look at this Tic Tac that was hovering above the ocean. They get out there and he dives down to get a closer look at it, and all of a sudden, this object engages with him. He’s actually on the recordings saying, “Oh, oh, oh. I’m engaged. I’m engaged. Oh, shit. I’m engaged.” This is a very serious thing for a fighter pilot to say, especially a trained career fighter pilot. What happened is as he dove, this Tic Tac kind of zipped around him and started rotating at about 180 degrees around him.

This is part of the Tic Tac story, which by the way, I encourage everybody to look this stuff up. It’s better hearing this from Fravor himself than me. But, again, to reiterate why it was so important is because you had eyewitness testimony, you had radars, you had multiple types of radar, you had multiple witnesses from fighter pilots to people that were on the battle carriers. This is probably the most documented case, from a data perspective, and that’s why it’s so significant, and it’s relatively recent. 2004 is not like Roswell in the ’40s.

[00:19:06] Niels

Okay. Super fascinating. We’ll come back to some parts of this, I think, as we move forward. Now, from what I could dig up, there is another case. Is it correct that we are told about this in 2018? Did I get that right?

[00:19:22] David

Yeah, approximately. I think it was actually technically 2017 that the videos were released because 2017 was when the Department of Defense acknowledged videos of the Tic Tac, so I believe it was actually the end of 2017.

[00:19:36] Niels

Okay, cool. Now, I’ve also managed to dig up that in 2019, July, there were again on the West Coast and according to this source, there were 10 unidentified ships or whatever we call them, and they were going around multiple US Navy ships, including the Omaha, and over a few days, I think there were like 100 sightings or 100 ships. Obviously, it could have been the same ships. I don’t know. So do you know anything about that incident? That seems also pretty significant?

[00:20:19] David

Yeah. Very significant. What’s interesting is that early on, part of that story, there was an attempt to explain that away because there was a ship, I believe.

[00:20:30] Niels

The cargo ship.

[00:20:32] David

Yeah, there was a cargo ship, I think with a Hong Kong flag or something that was nearby. It was first a bit explained away as perhaps these were Chinese drones as an example that were launched from that ship. But that does not fit at all with the actual data. So there’s a couple of things about drones. When drones leave, they ultimately have to come back to where they launched from. What was happening is these things were flying and they flew west.

First of all, again, you have these things that can just hover without any sound, without any visible propulsion mechanism, and they kept heading out, heading west, instead of coming back. So it didn’t fit any of the characteristics. But what’s really interesting about that case, that hasn’t really made much media attention, is the eyewitness testimonies from crew members that were actually above deck witnessing these things.

What they reported (and it sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction movie), but they were reporting beams; the sky would light up as bright as day, a green, kind of a green lit sky that was just clear as day except green. We don’t know any drones that do that and we don’t know why they would do that. How would they have the capability to light things like that? When there’s encounters with these objects (and this goes back since the very beginning), the encounters surrounding the sources and form of light are always unique.

It’s not just light. It’s light that we don’t really know how to reproduce. It does interesting things. We don’t understand it. So you have eyewitness testimonies as recently as 2019 with that. You also have fighter pilots, Ryan Graves, who is amazing. He’s got a podcast now called Merged, which is fantastic. He’s a fighter pilot on the East Coast and with the gimbal video. So for those of you that have seen the gimbal video, or if you haven’t, check that out. That’s another one that was acknowledged by the Department of Defense. They filmed a UFO effectively rotating at 120 knots in US airspace.

What our fighter pilots on the East Coast are saying, and multiple fighter pilots are saying this, is that they’re encountering UFOs on a daily basis. This isn’t like, hey, once a year. It’s on a daily basis. They’ve had stuff they’ve been flying in formation. They’ve had UFOs fly right between the wings of two fighter jets. There’s been reports on this because of the concern for flight safety for our military personnel, and of course, as Marco Rubio and other senators have been saying, is that, hey, we have stuff over US airspace and we clearly don’t seem to be able to control it or know what it is.

[00:23:23] Niels

So are those incidents, the ones that I tried to, again, in my brief period of research, are those ones that happened around February 2019, around something called the Oceana base or W-72 or is that actually even different?

[00:23:41] David

That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I’m not familiar with…

[00:23:44] Niels

I just found something where they were talking about F-18 pilots taking pictures on their iPhones, etc. But it all surrounded this Oceana base, W-72 area, which is on the east coast of the US. But anyways, sounds like there might… So you’re not familiar with any of that Oceana base, specifically, that I picked up here?

[00:24:09] David

I’m not familiar with the Oceana base, but it’s probably around the same incidents, because there were a whole bunch around that same period.

[00:24:17] Niels

Yeah. We’re going to talk about some of the people, you’ve mentioned a couple of names. We’re going to do that later. But I do think there’s a couple of other, not just events, but also terminologies that I would love for you to talk a little bit about. One of them is something that’s been around for a long time in the narrative at least, and that’s Area 51. Can you talk about what we know and what we don’t know about that?

[00:24:44] David

Yeah. Area 51 has certainly made its way into global pop culture, because again, people associate it with UFOs, but very few people know the reason that it’s associated with UFOs. So Area 51 was effectively a US secret base. That’s a fact. That’s not conspiracy. It’s a US secret base, and that’s where we tested, and many would claim that we still do, some of our absolutely top secret best aircraft. The SR-71 which came out in 1969 was originally being tested and flown out of there, one of the fastest pieces of aircraft that’s ever been built, an amazing piece of technology.

So Area 51 was known for our top-secret development. What really put Area 51 on the map was Bob Lazar. Bob Lazar was a physicist that purportedly worked at Area 51 and was working on propulsion systems of craft, from off-world craft, that had been recovered. He was tasked with sorting out how the propulsion systems for these UFOs work. He claimed that in the hangar that he worked at, he had seen nine different craft that the US military had in its possession. He came out, he was very scared for his life. George Knapp, a reporter and investigator in Las Vegas actually broke that story, and Bob Lazar, a young physicist, tells the story of what he was working on.

Before that, nobody knew what Area 51 was, Groom Lake, S-4, which was one of the areas that he worked in. He went out there. He took video recordings later from the mountain ridges and you would see weird stuff, lights just shooting up straight into the air flying around, coming back. As we know, Area 51 was later expanded. So you used to be able to get a lot closer and kind of see some of the stuff from the mountain ridges and then they expanded that to keep the public out. So that’s generated this mystery and intrigue around Area 51. But it is a real place and there’s real things going on out there.

[00:27:03] Niels

Okay, cool. You already brought up one of the people I wanted to ask about, so that’s a good thing. But before we get to more of the people, there are two other “events” that I just wanted to ask you a little bit about, that is one that takes place in Mosul, so that’s Iraq, in April 2016. What happened in Mosul?

[00:27:24] David

Yeah, so this is recent. Jeremy Corbell is the expert on that. So Jeremy Corbell had this image that was released to him. My understanding is that this image is a still shot from a video and I believe the video is a couple of minutes long. But effectively, a metallic looking sphere over a conflict zone in Mosul was taken by one of our spy craft.

[00:27:51] Niels

Because it’s a Pentagon video, right? It’s not just any video. It’s a Pentagon video. Yeah, okay.

[00:27:56] David

Correct. This is the key. There’s been a handful of people that have done a great job of getting information released that is coming from the Pentagon, the DoD, from different branches of our US military. Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp is one group, and then you have Tom DeLonge and Chris Mellon and Lue Elizondo, which is another group. But all of them have done just an amazing, amazing job with getting information released and having witnesses come forward.

[00:28:28] Niels

Okay, cool. Final question before we go into some of these people in a little bit more depth, and that is, New York Times breaks a story, I think in December 2019. Tell me first of all if that’s the right time, but also, what’s significant about this as you can tell?

[00:28:46] David

I believe December 2017 was the first New York Times article. That’s when it hit our radar, no pun intended. I remember I was actually home in Miami for Christmas and this New York Times article comes out. It made some of the mainstream news rounds but then also died off very quickly because we were heading into the Christmas holidays. But what was fascinating about the New York Times article was a few key points. Number one, it was revealed that there was a government program called AATIP that was actually funded and studying UFOs.

This was something that had been funded by Harry Reid, Senator Harry Reid, who’s since passed away. It’s important to mention that a lot of people don’t know or maybe have not heard of what the Gang of Eight in Congress are. The Gang of Eight, you have eight congressmen or women that are able to be read on to secret programs. So there’s only eight. They’re not allowed to share that information with anybody else. When they meet, they have to meet in a skiff, which is a secure facility, to have top secret information passed to them.

So Harry Reid was part of the Gang of Eight at that time and he provided funding for this program to study what was going on, and that’s where this information was coming from. So effectively, the New York Times broke that article and that’s where we all kind of got introduced for the first time to Lue Elizondo, who was in charge of the AATIP program, and subsequently quit because he didn’t feel that there was enough disclosure and didn’t feel that there was enough taking the matter serious as a potential threat to US airspace and to the United States.

[00:30:38] Niels

Okay, fascinating. I didn’t know about that. I want to go back just for people to get the context because I think sometimes it can be difficult to fully understand. You mentioned Bob Lazar and you mentioned him revealing stuff to George Knapp. But this is a long, long time ago, as I understand. This is not recent. This is like 30 years ago or something like that. Is that correct?

[00:31:03] David

Yeah, every bit. I think it was the ’80s.

[00:31:07] Niels

Yeah, late ’89 or ’90 thereabouts. Yeah.

[00:31:11] David

So Bob Lazar has been a controversial character in the UFO history and it’s interesting. I encourage everybody to study up on it if they find this subject interesting, watch the movie about him that Jeremy Corbell did and form your own opinion. I remember when his story first broke, my dad was watching it. So first, let’s go back to the origin story. He was a physicist and he came forward and said I’m working on some pretty wild stuff. I’m working on UFO propulsion.

For those that may not be familiar with George Knapp, George Knapp is a very serious guy. Now, he’s followed and tracked the UFO phenomenon and paranormal activity around it pretty much his whole career. But his career as an investigative journalist and presenter on television is very serious. He’s tracked stuff, normal things, corruption in Las Vegas, mob-related activity, murder cases. He’s a very serious guy. When Bob Lazar’s story first came forward, I can’t remember the person that introduced him to Bob Lazar. But it wasn’t like Bob Lazar just picked up the phone and called the media.

There was somebody in between them that had said, “Hey, listen. I think this is important. I think that it’s serious,” and encouraged George Knapp to sit down with him. So George Knapp got into his story and found it compelling. Again, remember, nobody knew Area 51 even existed. So when you start doing the investigative piece and you’re checking it out, it starts checking these boxes. You have this guy telling fantastic story, and obviously, that requires some investigation, and piece by piece, George Knapp was able to verify the things that he was saying.

Jeremy Corbell, who is kind of George Knapp’s protege, continued that recently. So in the last five years, they did a documentary on Bob Lazar. Now, the reason Bob Lazar is a bit controversial is because later in his life, he got himself in trouble. I think he got arrested as part of some sort of prostitution ring, something really silly out in Las Vegas. So people have taken that and said, oh, this guy, he’s not credible or anything else. Well, listen. Yeah, he’s an idiot if he got himself busted in a prostitution ring, but that doesn’t take away from his narrative about being a physicist, working on Area 51.

Being able to substantiate that, Jeremy Corbell was able to find a security guard officer that was in charge of people coming in and out of the base and verified that Bob Lazar was actually there when he said he was. So I think that he has a lot of credibility on that topic. Maybe the rest of his life is a bit of a disaster but you’ve got to kind of segregate those two things and hear out what he has to say. But it’s a fascinating, fascinating story.

[00:34:16] Niels

Absolutely. I think actually also to be completely balanced about it, I think the other thing that they found was that he had lied about his educational history and they also tried to discredit him for that. But I think your point that other people, and now maybe with more openness, have actually confirmed the stuff he said about these things makes it interesting. Again, just going, maybe, in I wouldn’t say in chronological order because that’s hard for me when I don’t know much about the topic. But Harry Reid, you’re right. Interesting. Obviously, most people will know him; former majority leader of the US Senate, blah, blah, blah. But he actually also has a connection to George Knapp, again, confirming, in a sense, your description about his seriousness because I think they go back, also, about 30 years. But of course, the seriousness, as I can tell, about George Knapp is that he’s very good at keeping stuff confidential. If he’s told it’s confidential, he’s not going to reveal it until it’s allowed. So many of these relationships have been there for a while but have never been talked about, if I’m understanding correctly.

[00:35:32] David

Yeah, that’s correct. George Knapp, he’s a pro. He protects and respects his sources. Because he’s covered some pretty serious stuff, he’s built a good reputation for those things. So there’s definitely a bit of a nexus point with Nevada because Area 51 is there. A lot of our nuclear testing was out in the desert in Nevada, Utah and New Mexico. So a lot of the UFO encounters and stories, not coincidentally, are related to that area of the United States. Certainly, not only that area, but a lot of things around there. So, one of the connection points between George Knapp and Harry Reid is a gentleman named Robert Bigelow.

Robert Bigelow had an aerospace company and he was convinced, as well, that there were strange things going on. He’s a bit of a recluse but he did a 60-minute video many years ago, and he was asked point blank, “What do you think is going on?” He believes that we have aliens that are here that are visiting us with advanced technology. Again, I know that this sounds… We have to go back to the stigma. Somebody on your show here saying, yeah, we’ve got aliens and everything else. It sounds silly.

But when we take a step back, take that macro view for a moment, is it? Is it really preposterous that that would be happening? As many people have suggested, that’s always been happening. Anybody that’s watched the Ancient Alien series on the History Channel which is a bit dramatized, we have things that suggest this has been going on for a very long time. To me, that’s actually logical that it would be.

Long story short, returning to Bigelow, is that it was Bigelow’s aerospace company that was actually funded by Harry Reid. So there’s $22 million in funds and this is part of what came out in the 2017 New York Times article. So he actually had formed a team that was involved in investigating these things. Much of that information, by the way, still has not yet been disclosed. So it’d be very interesting to see some of the additional things that came from that, because what is telling is that Harry Reid had worked very hard to have that program, that was funded, designated a secret access program. One of the reasons that he wanted to have that done as a secret access program is so that he could give them more access to investigate other secret access programs, including trying to get access to what Lockheed Martin is sitting on.

[00:38:12] Niels

Right. We’ll come to that for sure. Now, it’s interesting you say this thing that people might think that here we are, two people talking about things that are completely crazy. I did think about before we press record that this is either going to be the most popular episode we’ve ever released or the least. So we won’t know. I’m hoping for the former.

We have talked about Harry Reid, Bob Lazar, George Knapp, and we’ve talked about Area 51. Not connecting all of these but connecting Area 51 with George Knapp is definitely this guy that I picked up on. He’s called Alfred. He’s named Alfred O’Donnell, called Al O’Donnell, and he worked at a company called EG&G, which I think came out of MIT in the ’70s. I’m not sure but thereabout. Can you tell me something about Al O’Donnell and why he may be important as well in this story?

[00:39:19] David

Yeah, it’s funny you mentioned that name. I was not familiar with him. Yeah. I’ll have to look. You’ve given me some homework to check out. We know some of the other people that were involved with that. Eric Davis. Yeah, of course, Harold Puthoff as well as some other investigators that were with that, but that wasn’t a name that I recognized off the top of my head.

[00:39:43] Niels

Okay. Let me tell you what I found out. This is interesting. What I found out was that this EG&G company was actually the company that was paid to run Area 51 and he was the general manager of it. Therefore, he had access and was there. My understanding was there was very few people with that kind of access. Apparently, according to George Knapp, they become… So he has two sons, one is in public service (, so elected official), and the other one also had a job where you would say yeah, it seems pretty credible.

Anyway, so the son connects his father with George Knapp and they meet over a period of time, a number of times. He does share, according to George Knapp, that yes, in Area 51, there are (I don’t know what we call them), I don’t want to call them aliens because we don’t know what they are, but there are things that fly inside of these objects and we have them, and when I say we, I mean the US government have them. My understanding is that after a few of these conversations, so to speak, and these are happening probably a while back, he suddenly says, I can’t talk to you any more la, la, la, la, la.

George Knapp also says that a number of people, because he was very public about asking for information, basically “get silenced” are threatened, don’t speak with this guy anymore, and so on and so forth. But Al O’Donnell apparently had promised to record what he knew on video before he passed away because he was an elderly gentleman. So whether that tape exists or not, I don’t know. George Knapp thinks that maybe one of his sons has it, but I have no idea. So anyway, that’s the story and that’s why he’s interesting because of Area 51 and a few people with access, he was one of them, it seems.

Anyways, the other thing you mentioned was this thing that it might be a little bit crazy hearing people talk about the UFOs. I did come across a former Canadian defense minister, Paul Hellyer (or something like that), and this is many years, this is like a decade ago, who came out saying that the US knows that there essentially are UFOs and they’ve even developed some kind of energy from using some of that technology. I can’t remember. He also went on to say that they had also found ways to communicate with them or not.

But what I also picked up, and again, from very little time to prepare for this was that he had said something in a speech, in 2008, where he had said something like they want to stop us from destroying ourselves. I know we’re going to jump to that little bit later, but when I read that, and this is like 12, 15 years ago, I’m thinking could the reason why we’re suddenly hearing so much more about it now in 2023 be because it looks like we’re on our way to destroying ourselves again with all the unfortunate conflicts that we have seen. Anyways, that’s just pure speculation on my side, but I couldn’t help.

[00:43:18] David

I agree. Yeah.

[00:43:19] Niels

Okay. You’ve talked about David Fravor, the pilot who filmed or encountered with the Tic Tac, so he’s an important one. I don’t know much about this Tom DeLonge, but I have heard the names Chris Mellon, Harold Puthoff, and Lue Elizondo. Can you just briefly say why are they important? Maybe, what we start doing because there’s one other person we need to talk about, that’s Jay Stratton.

I wanted to ask you about something called the Wilson/Davis memos, which I don’t know about but I’ve heard you mention it. So can you do chronological order? Maybe we end with Jay Stratton because he’s important in the now. Now we bring it all the way to now, but maybe you can give us a bit of background on the other people.

[00:44:12] David

I’ll preface this and what I say to everybody when it gets into this subject is that everybody should expect that there’s going to be a very high noise to signal ratio. That just goes part and parcel with the subject matter at hand. What I always encourage people is that people say, “Where’s the evidence? Where’s the evidence?” There’s lots. This was the part where it became very interesting to us, investigating this on the professional side. There’s lots. We have metals that are being studied by universities right now that we can’t explain how they’re machined or made.

You have, of course, the information coming out from the Department of Defense. So I always encourage people like take your time, work through it. You don’t need to take anything as is, as it’s presented, but take your time. Look into it. It’s fascinating. So from the perspective of Tom DeLonge, I tell the story, and to me, it sounded silly. This goes back to 2017. This was the crossover point for us taking it seriously professionally and saying, what kind of impact is this going to have on markets, on the world, on humanity?

What happened in 2017 as part of the New York Times article is that when these interviews started coming out in the news, there was reference to the stars Academy of Arts and Science, which was founded by Tom DeLonge, the lead singer for the rock band Blink-182. I remember at the time just talking with my family about this, and my team and going, “What the hell? What in the world does Tom DeLonge have to do with getting full chain of custody of UFO videos from the Department of Defense? I can’t square that. What’s going on here?”

So here’s the backstory for your audience. So it turns out that Tom DeLonge, as he was touring as a rock star, his hobby, also, much like mine, just on the hobby side, was UFOs. He enjoyed the subject matter, read a ton of books on it, and he actually wrote a fictional book on it putting together what he thought happened historically. That book is called Sekret Machines. It’s actually a pretty entertaining read. After he wrote the book, people from the DoD actually reached out to him.

As he tells the story, he was taking to a few clandestine meetings and he made this proposal to folks coming from the intelligence community saying, “Listen, I acknowledge that you guys got a tough job. This is pretty serious stuff and I can imagine that there’s really good reason that a lot of this stuff wouldn’t or shouldn’t be disclosed to the public. But I believe that the public is mature enough that some of it can and should be.” That’s how he tells the story of how this got going and that’s how he ended up meeting Chris Mellon.

Chris Mellon was the secretary under the Department of Defense, so a very, very serious guy. Everybody should look up Chris Mellon. When you see him, this is a very lucid career intelligence person. Lou Elizondo, same thing, career in the US intelligence, counterintelligence. He ran the AATIP program. So this group of people started coming out. I remember when we looked up to the stars Academy of Arts and Science, and we saw the names of the people that Tom DeLonge had working for him like Harold Puthoff, I was just mind blown. I was like, okay, this is super serious stuff.

This guy, for whatever reason, don’t judge him for being a rock star and not being able to do other things in his life, he connected and he stimulated a conversation, and it’s in large part thanks to him doing that, that we have a lot of the disclosure that’s rolling out as well as… I think this is more important. So when people ask me, why now? If you’ve followed this your whole life, why do you care now and why is this interesting to you from an investment perspective? It’s the momentum. We have legislative momentum. We have disclosure momentum. We have an exponential increase in data and witness testimony from all our military branches. That is what’s compelling to me. Again,

Tom DeLonge, thanks to him, a lot of that is now bubbling up to the surface where we can all see that and start to ponder what’s going on. Is it nuclear-related or something else?

[00:48:44] Niels

Okay. That’s cool. Because I think it’s a good segue to then go to Jay Stratton. When you talk about the momentum, you’re talking about across agencies and departments, etc. Can you talk about Jay Stratton a bit because I think he’s obviously current day now like some of the other ones, of course, but has more recently changed his career so that he can be more open about talking about these things.

[00:49:17] David

Jay Stratton, probably one of the reasons that he’s so interesting is because he spent a career in the intelligence field and he has consistently for many, many, many years, worked across these various programs. We had AATIP. Before that, it was the AAWSAP. It has a very unusual name. There’s all these acronyms that have been used as these programs-

[00:49:43] Niels

The Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program.

[00:49:46] David

There you go. See. Now you’re up to speed as well. So he’s been involved with all these programs, which is unique. He’s taking a stance. In fact, he was with Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp. Just yesterday, they were presenting out in California and doing a Q&A session on this topic. So I think the biggest thing that Jay Stratton brings to the table is that he’s the one guy that, as an intelligence officer, has been across so many of these programs.

He’s the one person at least so far that’s been identified that has been involved with multiple iterations of these programs, and he’s taking a more recent stance, as you alluded to, to open these things up to say, “Hey, this is a conversation. This is information that we need to bring forward. We do need to try and declassify as much as is reasonable without disclosing sources and methods that would make us vulnerable. We do need to get this information out there.”

So he’s become a very important character in this, both historically and absolutely in the present because of his current access and his current position on the subject matter.

[00:51:01] Niels

Yeah, because my understanding was also that, and I don’t know what year this is, but this is within the last few years, that he again was asked to set up another task force or whatever, but at that time, he basically insisted and said yeah, but if I’m going to do that, I need to have access to all the other departments, from the FBI to whatever they’re called, all these acronyms, etc., and he kind of built that network of people.

He didn’t call it a task force. I think he called it partnerships with these various, but that is, of course, even to an outsider like me, that sounds interesting, because I’m sure because of the secrecy, a lot of this has been going on without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing, and so on and so forth. Now I think he’s moved on to a private company, my understanding is, which allows him to open up, as you rightly say.

Now, the final thing, I just wanted to mention that I think, well, I do want to get to the Wilson/Davis memos just so I know what it is, but before, one thing and that is what also seems to be happening right now. You talked about the legislative momentum. It seems to me now that (and I don’t know the details, but you probably do), there are now laws coming into place where you have like a whistleblower program where people are protected if they come forward and it’s almost like, well, if you worked on any of these secret programs, you now have to come forward.

There’s no choice anymore. That’s obviously a major shift from you can’t talk about this ever. Now you have to talk about this. Is that correctly understood?

[00:52:45] David

Yeah, this was a big advancement forward. If you compare the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act versus the ’23, one of the biggest improvements on that was the protection for whistleblowers, and this is a game changer. This is, again, what we talk about and what we look at is momentum. So it’s not good enough to just have a trend. UFOs have been trending forever, there’s nothing new about that, but you need a catalyst, right? The catalyst that something different is going to happen or there’s going to be a shift.

The ability for people from secret access programs, retired or present, to come forward and report information is stunning. What is being told, the guys that have helped to bring these people forward in the past, again, Lue Elizondo, you know, George Knapp, they’re out there on podcasts presently and they’re saying, we have people, they’re coming forward right now. They’re already in conversation. They’re having conversations with AARO, which is the all-domain anomalous reporting office, as well as directly with members of our Congress.

This is where it gets interesting too. I’ve mentioned this on some other shows that we also think there’s a bit of a game theory aspect to this politically. So if you’re a politician and you’ve got an aspiring career path to pursue and you’re being privy to these things that are not yet made available to the American public, and several Congress men and women have been. So even without being part of the Gang of Eight, they’re seeing stuff sitting on these committees. They’re seeing videos. There’s a high-definition video of a UFO that’s 23 minutes long. It hasn’t been released yet, but congressmen are coming out seeing that video and saying it seems like something out of Star Wars.

So you now have this also political who’s going to move first, who’s going to say something first, and you can see it. If you see the narrative. Congressman Marco Rubio is a great example. They’re talking about this and you can see the pace picking up with that because how often are you going to get something that’s so mind bending as a subject to bring forward and take a political stance on that that looks like you’re helping open that up? So we think the toothpaste is out of the canister and it’s not going to be easy to get back in to it, and that’s exciting.

[00:55:02] Niels

Okay. Final question on these people and events and that is this Wilson/Davis memo just because I heard you mention it, but I actually have no clue what it is. Can you share that?

[00:55:17] David

Yeah. So a little background on this, the Wilson/Davis memo was a document that was allegedly written by Eric Davis, Dr. Eric Davis. He was a scientist that was working for a private aerospace contractor called EarthTech International. The memo is said to be a summary of a conversation that took place between him and Admiral Thomas Wilson, who is the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. This was in 2002. What’s fascinating about this is that according to the memo, Admiral Wilson had attempted to gain access to a highly classified UFO-related program and he was denied by officials in the Special Access Program.

So this is interesting. I want to kind of repeat this for the audience. This is somebody that at the time is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and they are being denied access to a special access program related to UFOs. So Dr. Davis had recorded this, and this is what the memo was about. What was interesting about some of the details of what the conversation was is that the secret access program supposedly was involved in the recovery (and this is a quote) “of off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” That is a quote in the memo.

There’s controversy as to whether or not the memo is authentic or not. People that are experts on this have said absolutely that it is. But what’s interesting is that memo is now part of the Congressional Record. So when we had a hearing about UFOs last year, the first in more than 50 years in the United States, this was introduced. It didn’t get covered, they didn’t really get into the subject, but it was introduced and submitted and so it’s now part of the Congressional Record.

We expect that that is going to be a significant conversation in Congress and in the public this year, and that’s going to get very, very interesting.

[00:57:15] Niels

Very good, very good. Now, we’ve talked a lot about what “we know,” meaning the West, really meaning the US. What’s also interesting to me is that, apparently, there’s momentum, there’s going to be more hearings, I’m sure. But of course, we’re just one small part of this globe and so there’s probably other countries, nations, superpowers that have had some similar experiences, you would think. They just don’t seem to talk about it in hearings that we can participate in. So I’m curious here. I’m thinking about the Russians, maybe the Chinese.

What do we know, if anything, about their experiences? From what I’ve heard (and I’ve obviously listened to some of the sources you’ve been talking about here), correct me if I’m wrong here, I think there’s been a report out recently in the US that talks about 144 sightings or encounters or something like that. But then in Russia, this came from George Knapp or from his work over many months with Russian sources, they had something like 45 encounters, of which three of them turned into (maybe the other ones did as well, I don’t know), but there are three of them were these spaceships fired back and they took out the Russian fighter jets, essentially, very easily.

But anyways, I’m just paraphrasing what I’ve listened to. What do you know about other countries’ experience in this field?

[00:58:59] David

It’s amazing. There’s a lot, and there’s a lot that’s open. After the Cold War, Russia opened up. What was interesting, there’s a great book called the UFOs and Nukes by Robert Hastings, which is probably the best documented book on incidents involving UFOs over nuclear sites, and this is something guaranteed in our opinion. Look, part of what we do is we take data and part of what we do, it’s professional speculation. So you’ve got to marry those things together and form a view.

But what you had mentioned earlier is that we have a very strong view that there is absolutely a direct correlation between what’s happening with current sightings and nuclear conflict versus the last time that we had such an explosion in sightings and nuclear conflict. This, to us, is not by accident.

So what George Knapp had found out, he did a lot of reporting on this after the wall fell, and he found out that what was fascinating is that the Russians were having similar incidents with UFOs coming over their nuclear bases as we were, and they thought that it was maybe advanced technology from the Americans and we thought that maybe it was advanced technology from the Russians.

Afterwards, we were like, “Wait a minute. It wasn’t you, it wasn’t me. Well, what the hell was that?” If you go to incidents in Japan, there’s been lots of incidents in Japan. There’s basically been incidents worldwide, but there’s places that are very open about it. Brazil? Fantastic. Brazil has always been very, very, very open and treated UFology as a sincere, real discipline. There’s a fantastic case out of Brazil that was in 1996, the Varginha case, which is amazing.

There’s a fantastic documentary called Moment of Contact that was released last year, and it’s kind of the Roswell case of Brazil. A UFO crashed, beings were seen, beings were captured, and the US Air Force came down and recovered the craft and took the beings. There’s eyewitness testimonies. It’s a fascinating, fascinating case out of Brazil, and Brazil has had tons of cases. So this is absolutely something that there’s information out there.

The Chinese as well. Previously, the Chinese, before Xi, there were several conferences on this subject and it was a bit more open with the universities there. They announced last year that they were picking up radio signals from other planets suggestive of extraterrestrial life.

You’ve got NASA back on this stuff. So, again, this is kind of that momentum. There’s been historical things previously, but I think you’re going to see a race this year for lots of countries. By the way, on this point, I don’t remember, I think it’s going to be later in this year, the United Nations is going to open this up. So the United Nations is going to have an actual conversation on this and you might see this turn into a very sincere global conversation amongst countries.

[01:02:11] Niels

Now, let’s bring it up to date, in a sense that before we talk more about the why now, perhaps, what’s up with the balloons? Because the balloons don’t really seem to be (how should I put it) sophisticated? So how do they play into all of this, in your opinion?

[01:02:34] David

I think that most importantly, it has created a situation that global media and US media in particular really need to lean into the White House and get some questions answered. There’s a fantastic investigative journalist out of Australia, Ross Coulthart, who wrote the book In Plain Sight, and he’s been leaning into this as well. So we shot down four things. Only one do we know what it is. What are the other three? How are we supposed to believe that we’ve shot four things down, first time in US airspace ever, NORAD command is involved, and we can’t recover? We don’t know what the other three things were. That’s just completely implausible. We could send a helicopter, we could send our own drones down, we can send people by foot, we can send any number of resources. We’re the strongest military on the planet, and we’ve shot things down over US airspace, and we’re not able to tell the public what they were? Again, I’m not suggesting that those things that we shot down were alien spacecraft. They very well may not have been. They might have been advanced drones, we don’t know.

But it’s concerning that all of a sudden, a topic that has been going on for the last couple of years because of these programs, we know that our defense agencies are supposed to be taking this stuff seriously. We know that behind the scenes, they do take it seriously, and yet, the excuse to the public is that they just kind of tweaked the radar systems and so now they’re picking up balloons and other stuff. Nonsense. I don’t believe that for a second and I think that the public needs to continue to lean into the White House and demand answers.

[01:04:22] Niels

Yeah. It does seem very odd. Obviously, a lot of what we’ve talked about today, David, is kind of factual. We’ve talked about real people. We’ve talked about real incidents that are well-documented. We haven’t really speculated a lot. We’ve just tried to provide some context and some facts. Now we speculate a little bit more when we ask the question, why is this happening now?

Both you and I have already alluded to the fact that maybe it has something to do with what’s going on in terms of the heating of the conflict and so on and so forth. I’m just curious. I have no idea. Could there be other reasons why now, in your opinion, having studied this much more?

[01:05:10] David

Yeah. Our favorite is the nuclear connection. We believe that that’s very logical. But there are others. One of the ideas from our Chief Technology Officer, who’s very big on this theme as well, he said that, look, we’re at an inflection point technologically. Obviously, not just for nuclear capabilities, but also look at what’s taking place with this turning point in artificial intelligence. He said we know people have made the statement. Elon Musk was saying that he thought that artificial intelligence was much more serious and much more of a risk to humanity than nuclear weapons. So maybe it’s this technological inflection point with artificial intelligence.

One of the other theories that personally I like and I believe that there’s some truth to it is that one of my favorite cases, and there’s a documentary on this as well, is the 1994 Ruwa, Zimbabwe case. In the middle of the day over a school called the Ariel, a UFO, and there’s more than 60 eyewitnesses to this, 60 eyewitnesses to this. A UFO literally landed right in the middle of the day in front of a school. These children saw it. They went over. Some beings came out of the UFO. Kids were later able to draw this and report it.

A famous Harvard psychologist, named John Mack, went over and interviewed the children. He was fascinated by this case. The documentary goes and re-interviews these children now as adults. Now, what was interesting to me about what was communicated and conveyed to the children, as they reported, was they reported hearing messages, basically communicating telepathically with these beings. This is not uncommon. We hear this a lot. This is typical of encounters that are described.

But what’s interesting is these children were individually reporting the same message that we’re not taking care of our planet, that we’re destroying the planet and that it’s in danger. This was in 1994. Certainly, that hasn’t changed. Climate change is a big theme. Our firm is very active in environmental trading. so we trade all types of environmental assets, renewable energy certificates, carbon credits, now biodiversity credits. That’s another one of our macro themes.

So I’m a little biased because that’s a macro theme that we already have and it’s kind of interesting to see that potentially those things are two themes that may be merging together. Some people would speculate that this is a type of intervention that, hey, we’re about to just completely destroy our ecosystem, our biosphere, and that requires some type of intervention. That’s a possibility. We don’t know.

[01:08:03] Niels

Interesting. Another thing, last year, we had a guest on, Dr. Pippa Malmgren. We didn’t spend any time on this particular topic, although she did say, listen, there are so many things going on in space. She wasn’t referring to this specifically. She was talking to the conflict in space between Russia, China, and the US, and so on and so forth. But she has written about these things as well and she’s also been asking some questions as to why we might be hearing about this now.

I think some of the stuff she said was, I think she even questioned whether it had something to do with the fact that we are now getting ready to build bases on the moon, meaning we’re now moving into another part of the universe, so to speak. It’s kind of funny (I’m Danish by background), it’s kind of funny because she wrote something where she talks about this starship that can lift 100 tons or whatever that has been built. She says, “The starship looks set to carry the Danish design three stories space habitat.” I didn’t even know Danes were capable of designing habitats for the moon. But anyways, I am pretty happy to see that.

There are, of course, so many reasons why this could be if it is. Yeah, I guess it warrants a little bit more time and consideration. I want to finish off with just a few questions, David. You’ve been very generous with your time. One is, if you were going to point to the single best piece of evidence that we have, is there anything that springs to mind or can you even identify what you would say, yeah, I think that’s the best evidence we have?

[01:09:54] David

I think that there’s lots but I think probably the best modern one that we have is the incidents around the USS Nimitz. If you really get into the details of it, all the data plus eyewitness testimony is just phenomenal and it opens up a lot of questions. What’s going on? Dr. Pippa is amazing. I think that she’s absolutely right that there’s some correlation with what’s going on in space. She’s an expert on that for sure. I love one of the terms that she came up with.

We’ve kind of teased about the term galactic macro, but she uses a much more interesting term, which is exopolitics, so off-planet political issues, which is brilliant. So I suspect (this is my personal belief), I think what we’re going to find is that we have made breakthroughs in reverse engineering of extraterrestrial craft. That’s actually what I sincerely believe. I think that we have the craft, I think that we’ve had it for a very long time, I think that we’ve finally figured out how some of it works. I think that there’s probably extraordinarily dangerous implications of understanding how that technology works.

It’s not just the government blocking free energy or anti-gravity machines that would change humanity. There’s probably very serious implications to weaponizing those technologies, but I think that this information is going to continue to spill out and it’s going to create a very, very interesting world for us here, very quickly. So I think we’re going to have breakthroughs in space travel that are going to go way beyond anything that SpaceX is doing. SpaceX is going to look like a horse drawn carriage versus the tech that we actually are probably already capable of deploying.

[01:11:52] Niels

Very, very interesting, and certainly, I wouldn’t rule anything out nowadays. Actually, I wanted to get to that point as well, just a little bit, which is, of course, the professional side of your work, and some of the themes that you’re finding, your galactic macro themes. Energy, I guess, could be an area that could be potentially impacted. You talk about defense, maybe even travel. How long is the list of things where you could see something that none of us can fathom today, but where, if it’s true and if we have, as you say, and maybe this is why it’s coming out now.

Maybe it’s down to the point where the powers above so to speak, whatever political elite we have, know that this is about to break, this is about to come out, and we either scare the public completely or we give them a little bit of a dose-by-dose kind of approach to this. So yeah, what are the other kinds of things that you could see being impacted?

[01:13:04] David

Lots. I’ll just throw out various samples of this. Again, I’ll kind of flex our discretionary macro for a moment and the way that we think about these things. The one that most people have heard me talk about, which is kind of the fun one, is being long Lockheed Martin because they’re sitting on this technology. That’s a real position.

[01:13:25] Niels

So essentially, what you’re saying is you believe they have one of these spacecrafts in their possession and they have studied that and are coming out with maybe some new technology soon based on that.

[01:13:37] David

Yeah. We believe that they have the technology, that they understand the technology, and that they’ve built with the technology. So that’s a pretty significant statement and that’s a whole deeper conversation as to why we have such strong conviction with that. But in addition to that, let’s play this out for a second. Let’s say that the US is in possession, does understand it, and has built with it. What does that do for the US dollar? Well, it certainly is going to strengthen the US dollar. What does that do for being able to protect Taiwan? Maybe you want to be long Taiwan equities because now it looks like the US could easily defend Taiwan in a conflict with China.

So if we’re the only ones that have it, and hopefully, that’s the case, that it’s not widespread because that would have some scary implications, there’s all types of things. The energy theme is a very big theme for us. Should we be shorting uranium companies on every uptick that they get? I think we’re going to have breakthroughs in energy very, very, very quickly. Whether that comes from alien spacecraft or not is to be determined, but I think that we are going to have a very serious conversation about interesting technology.

I’ll add to this just something for folks to think about from a technological perspective and how these things affect technology investments. If you look at the Roswell case, there’s a gentleman named Lieutenant Corso. He wrote a book about technology that was found. He was in the army and he was tasked with studying the reverse engineering and passing some of that technology to private industry. There’s four technologies that he claims came from the Roswell incident, from reverse engineering: the integrated circuit, so basically, the microchip, lasers, microwave technology, and fiber optics.

Now, think about how much technology has advanced for humanity just on those four technologies. People don’t associate those with coming from UFOs and I’m not saying with 100% certainty they did, but they might have. If they did, you have to reflect on that trajectory and all the things that changed across markets and across society because of those breakthroughs.

[01:15:59] Niels

Yeah. You mentioned- I don’t want to speculate too much although it’s difficult not to on an episode like this. But also, you mentioned this thing about what if the US could protect Taiwan, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But what if, again, some of the countries that we are not so friendly with actually have similar technology from their experiences? Because I’ve heard people talk about- I have no idea if this is true or not- things like Russia.

They now have like a torpedo that could go 10,000 miles straight from Russia to the US, things like that where you think that’s not normal unless you have something incredible. So all I’m just saying is I think that there is both very positive outcomes that could be, but as you said, there could also be opportunities where you want to be short even though we have no idea how this is all going to play out. But I hope we might be able to continue this theme in this conversation, David.

So just a couple of questions I wanted to end up with. I normally would ask this as a manager. I know you manage money, but I’m not asking you as a manager, I’m actually more asking you as an observer of all of this, and that is, what keeps you up at night? When you think about all the stuff that you’ve come across, is there anything that keeps you up at night where you’re a little bit worried about this stuff?

[01:17:27] David

Oh, that’s a great question. What keeps me up at night is that- believe it or not, I’m actually optimistic for what can come about from these things and I’m 100% aligned with you in that, yes, some very scary stuff. So maybe multiple countries have this technology. Probably. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing more actual encounters with UFOs, maybe it’s other countries, but for sure, there’s a high probability that there’s stuff coming onto the planet from elsewhere and maybe that’s part of the intervention.

But what keeps me up at night is probably the excitement that we’re going to stimulate curiosity in our present generation that’s much needed. Our current generation is just completely distracted with TikTok, social media. There was an article the other day describing how Gen Z doesn’t even know how to use technology in the workplace. Just because they know how to use social media, they’re actually failing to use basic technology in the workplace.

I think that it’s fascinating that if all of a sudden, we’re looking up at the stars rather than looking down at our mobile phones, that’s an incredible improvement of our current state of affairs. So what keeps me up is the excitement more than the worry, thankfully. So I’m very encouraged that a lot of amazing things are going to come from this.

[01:19:01] Niels

Okay. I like that answer. Now, this is another question that I tend to ask managers after an hours’ worth of conversation, but today, I really have to ask you this because I felt so unprepared for this topic, but still with a lot of excitement and I really wanted to learn more, curiosity, I guess. So I normally would ask people, what should have I asked you? What did I not ask you? Is there any particular point that we missed in our conversation that you want to bring up before we wrap up?

[01:19:38] David

No, you were very thorough and I appreciate the open mindedness to have this kind of conversation. One of the things that you mentioned is your observation that this doesn’t appear to be a conversation anywhere across the investment space, and I agree. I think the open question, not just from you, but from me is, why not? Because if even 1% of what I’m suggesting is taking place, and obviously, I believe it’s a lot more than that and people should look into it themselves, but even just 1% of what I’m saying is actually taking place, this is a life changing conversation. It is market changing.

Even if you don’t care about aliens or whatever but you’re just a market professional and you’ve got to manage a portfolio every day, the implications for this are just almost impossible to fathom and they’re certainly worthy of starting to think through because it will make waves. So I appreciate your observation on that and I think that that’s a question we can both leave open to the community. Hopefully, this dialogue will stimulate more people asking that very question.

[01:20:47] Niels

In addition to making waves, David, I hope it makes trends because as you know, I’m a trend follower. So regardless of whether we know anything about this stuff or not, if there will be trends in markets because of this, I can assure you, CTAs and other trend followers will hopefully be able to catch them just to make this conversation a little bit relevant for my normal topic. David, this has been a mind-blowing conversation.

Thank you so much for doing this today. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m sure our listeners will. I hope that we managed to make people think about what is going on in the wider world right now, but also, why we’re suddenly being given all this information at this point in time. Before we go, let me just encourage you to go and follow David’s work. I will of course put a link in today’s show notes because as you can tell from today’s conversation, we’re living in a truly unpredictable and ever-changing world and it is perhaps more important than ever before to stay well-informed.

From me, thanks so much for listening and we look forward to being back with you as we continue our Global Macro Series. In the meantime, take care of yourself and take care of each other.

[01:21:59] Ending

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