Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of weekly Wings Drone Life.com podcast. As always, I have with me Paul Rossi. I am Paul Rossi. With me is not Paul Rossi. With me is Terry Neff. How are you doing, Terry?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: I'm doing better than I was doing the last two weeks.
So last episode, I made a joke that I had started a new hobby. I have now ended that hobby temporarily broke two ribs during that hobby.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Does it, like, look easier on tv?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, for sure. You go in there, you.
It's like passing a brick. It's like trying to get through a brick wall. Someone that knows what they're doing.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: So maybe you have to, like, maybe maybe you have to pick up a hobby, like go to the gym first, get strong.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Then going to the gym. So somewhat.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Then run into the brick wall.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Gotta run into the. I mean, you're gonna get injured regardless. Like, I looked it up. Everybody on Reddit saying that, like, yeah, you're gonna break a few ribs, probably, you know, tear a few of your. Your. The cartilage in your ribs a few times. You're gonna hurt your hips. That's just normal. And they're like. They're like, yeah, I've broken my ribs four times.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Well, so are you buying? So we're gonna dive into a few things here. Throughout this episode. The tech look at. Oh, my goodness. The tariffs, the current state of the economy and globally, not just in the US China versus America. Drones flying cars are autonomous. Cars are electrical powered. But to see something that just came out right before we're jumping on here byd launching a drone from a vehicle thrown in a box saying, what next? Tesla.
But that the.
The market you buy in the dip. Holy cow. Umac, rcat Ondas don't. Was this is just insane tech and then portfolios in general. I mean, what. Who didn't have a little bit of Nvidia, you know, in some kind of ETF or traded fund. So pretty, pretty craziness there. But I think there's certainly lots of opportunity when it comes to money. You know, right now, a lot of American companies hurting for money. So we'll also talk about something that kind of came out a little a few weeks ago, and we just kind of missed on the feed.
But it seems like a lot. The US Put a lot of money into the Ukrainian drone industry.
So what I caught in the beginning of that conversation in the Oval Office a few days ago, and if people go back and listen is I'm pretty sure I heard President Zelensky saying, well, well, you know, Ukraine does have other things. You know, it's not just rare minerals. We have this. And, and I'm pretty sure he said we have this drone industry and this idea that, you know, the Ukraine has built up. And the articles talked about it. We talked about it a few months ago. You know, people were making drones in their, in their living rooms and stuff. And, and the idea that the Ukraine has built in, in a matter of months, years, an industry that the US Couldn't build in a decade, and now they're going to sell us this, their drones. I was sitting there scratching my head. I'm like, is anybody, like, paying attention to that piece? Everyone was so focused on what happened just minutes later and the explosiveness of it. But maybe we'll jump into that a little bit. Doc 3 comes out, a lot of doc. Drone docs, and we're just kind of. Kind of jump into it as we go here and, and toss these, these articles back and forth. Terry. So if, if there's anything you see, just, you know, jump in. But I, I think what we can probably kick things off here is with the Chinese. You want to start with the. The byd.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: You said you've seen that kind of. I seen it. When you seen it, like 10 minutes ago.
It definitely hit the right spot in my brain.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: It looks like. I'm going to bring up this article. It looks like there's actually an article that came out yesterday. Everything I saw was, like, within the last couple hours.
And of course, just to add to the, to the whole deal here, this is the.
What the heck is it?
The Something Times, the Morning Times, China Morning Times.
BYD stirs EV rivalry in China with on vehicle DJI drone system to spur sales. So carmaker adds new drone system to autonomous driving car among premium features and its sales pitch to win over customers.
I mean, an autonomous car with a drone dock on it. Like, why do you even need employees?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's by. So BYD is, like, exclusively in China.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Byd. Have you heard of BYD before?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: I have not.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Okay, good. So this is kind of cool. So. All right, well, we're supposed to educate folks, so here's. Here's a point where we can be aware of the audience. So chances are maybe someone listening has never heard of byd.
Byd, like, build your own, bring your some. I don't remember exactly what that. BYD is kind of like a dji. Most likely, if you look it up.
What you should do is go ahead and look it up and then you can tell us. But according to this article, they're the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer. Well, that's interesting. Everybody knows who Tesla is and Trump had been talking about throughout the his campaigning. Oh, this company's building this massive plant. They're building a massive plant in Mexico and they think they're just going to drop their cars into the US they're going to build the plant in Mexico, they're going to do everything in Mexico, but they're going to sell it the largest market, four times bigger than China, the United States.
And that, that company that he was talking about, he didn't want to really. My guess is he didn't want to say the name. He didn't want to bring more attention to that company. He wanted to bring the attention of the American people to the fact that we don't want them doing this. That company's byd. So BYD is what I've heard, building like the largest automotive plant in the world. But they're not doing it in the US they're building it in Mexico and then they're going to sell them all to the U.S. so this idea that you tariff Mexico 25%, what you're doing is you're tariffing the Chinese company that's going to Mexico to make their cars instead of coming into the U.S. it's just the U.S. is the biggest market. We, me, you, the people listening to this podcast, we are the consumers in the largest market. Everybody wants to sell their stuff to you, you, to me, to your neighbor, to my neighbor. And so the thought here is if you're going to take our money, if you're going to sell our stubs, take our money, take the profits. There should be some investment in the United States.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it needs to go back into the economy.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: So what did they do?
Rate rose the bar in a cutthroat price war right now in the Chinese auto industry is they threw a DJI drone on top. The system consists of a docking station enabling the drone to take off and charge and track the EV travels.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: You know what? $2,200 for that? Not even a bad.
I mean like Ford charges like. Or not Ford. Let's see. Who is it? It's Toyota. Toyota charges like $600 for a speaker that goes on here, like a removable speaker for the their Tundras.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: That is crazy. What are they calling this? God's Eye.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: What's the point of it?
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Because it's like, dude, think about the Jeep. Remember Jeep came out with this Jeep.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Said you're gonna Jeeps for like trailing Stuff I've seen the use case.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah. But when you. Oh my gosh, dude, think about it like when you travel somewhere and you want to capture it and so you just want to like put. You just pop the drone up and you're driving in this cool country scenery and you can just pop out of the car, you know, walk around the car in a circle and it's just. I see it more from a creative traveler, people who are, you know, in their car a lot. I mean if you're only using your car for like basic commute functions, you're probably not purchasing the, I don't know the BYD with this. I mean you can purchase whatever.
But again the price point is $2,200.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: It's really cheap for what it. It's kind of ugly. I'm gonna say that it is kind of ugly, but I just. What.
What happened to stop and sniff the flowers? Guys, why are we letting technology doing what we can be doing with our own eyes and taking our own mental captures of the world instead of recording.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: It'S.
The collaboration is based was expected to help popularize vehicle mounted drone technology. So it's also important to realize is that DJI just released the DOC3.
So DJI just released the DOC3 like. Like last week. And so the huge benefit to the doc 3 over the doc 2 is the doc 3 is said to. You can mount it on a, in a vehicle, put it on a trailer and it becomes way more.
It's way more easy to remotely deploy like to move it around. And so I think this is also on DJI's part a way for them to kind of showcase to the commercial sector that you know, we have the technology to just think of a police car. I mean you're.
This is the first thing show it off in as great of a scale as you can.
And now all the public safety vehicle manufacturers, they know where to go to in order to get a system that.
Does that make sense?
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
I looked up BYD what it means. It means build your dreams. So that is a pretty good name.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: I knew it was something. Build your something.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: And then I just still don't see the use case for it. Maybe police.
I don't know even that's a stretch.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yeah. By more than 60.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: JP Morgan Chase, animal patrol, Animal catcher. You know what it's.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: And so do they show this like on their website?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Probably not. No. This never.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Oh and so then the other thing interesting thing here is we'll shot shout out to Ben Pullan with Beaufort County Community College.
Because he actually messaged me, like, last month, saying, in Washington, North Carolina, he saw one of these cars, a byd.
I'm pre. I. I'm pretty sure it was a BYD truck is what he.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Truck.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Their website's so confusing. You hit products and then you go, yeah, there's one forklift.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: What are you on? I'm on this thing here, and it shows ev.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm on the main website. And then it takes you to that. So it just, like, is through, like, 10 different websites.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: I see. Look at that. That's pretty.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Giving Tesla a run for their money, man.
What is this? You get to play Roblox on their website.
No way. This is terrible. I don't like this one bit with my helmet.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Oh, the dolphin.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: For the. The listeners out there, Paul clicked on BYD World on the website and is loaded into what I can only describe as a rip off of Roblox. Looking at all their car models.
Can you drive them? Get in one. Paul. Get in there.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: I don't know. This is terrible. Oh, yeah. Drive.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: No way.
He's playing a race. Simon.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Yeah, the dolphin.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: You can drive on their website. This is actually cool, the driving part.
I hope their cars don't sound that crickety in real life.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's probably exactly what it sounds like.
Dude. Come on. Ghost car.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Paul's gonna get lapped by an AI in this web browser game. See?
[00:14:17] Speaker A: And, like, Tesla would charge you for this.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: 20 cent per minute play time. Who's driving up there? Is that a different person?
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, I'm. I'm passing the record holder.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: You're doing 100 miles per hour, and I'm probably better watch out. Can they only go up to 100 miles per hour? So this is game saying I'm pedal to the metal.
I will say the interior of this car looks sick, and having a drone on the roof would be even sicker. I just still don't understand the use case for it.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Whoa.
All right. As much as I want to win, we're down here.
I did hear, like, I. I. For months. Like, for months now, I've just been hearing all kinds of stuff about byd.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: But anywho, that's an ugly car right there.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: I think so. I think it's pretty.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: The interior was clean. The outside looked terrible.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: And so just to kind of add more context to that with dji, as I mentioned, because we are a drone podcast, I'm gonna hit refresh here. See this right here? Look at this. Dual.
His truck has dual docks on it.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Wait, the truck has two.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: See that?
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
And that was a Rivian.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Was that a Rivian? That kind of did look like if.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: I had to guess, but it had two docks on it.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Was that.
It was hard to say.
Maybe it was a BYD right there.
Rad.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Something moves really quick.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Rivian. Well, anyway.
See, and then they kind of like block out. They took whatever off of that thing.
But the DOC 3, they're showing casing.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: The drone world moves so quick. I feel like I'm just so far behind compared to most people in terms of, like, DGI releasing a new product weekly.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Oh, it's like it goes like 0 to 60 real fast. And dude, this looks like that truck.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: That's byd.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: That truck looks pretty nice, man.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Dude, that totally makes sense because they could not sell it here. So Trump's trying to not sell these. But for DJI is that. That's. That truck isn't.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Looks similar.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Wouldn't it make sense. Wouldn't it make sense if they partnered with them to put their drones that then they would, like, also have one of their trucks to show off? And this isn't necessarily United States right here. This is. This probably isn't the U.S.
yeah. But any who. Yeah. Doc 3.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Doc 3. DJI. Dock 3. I wonder what's going to be next week. DJI, Doc 4 release a different one.
It's like it's a Call of Duty releasing. Okay. It's not a. It's not what we were thinking. It was the truck. It's a. It's called a radar. And you can buy it on Alibaba for $30,000.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: A radar. That's. I was going to say, right. Radar. Like when I. When you just keep playing that video over and over and over again.
That's exactly.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: But the fact that you can buy it on Alibaba is insane.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: And so then even today, talking to someone, they're like, oh, yeah, the. The Mavic 3 replacement. And I'm like, the Mavic 3 replacement? What is this person talking about?
And well, it looks like two days ago, the Mavic 4 Pro images. Images leaked.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Images leaked. How'd they do that? They just let them go. You know what's crazy? That if. If that's what it looks like, at least they changed up the design. You know, it looks a lot prettier.
1. Their engineers was out testing it.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: That's literally how this happens. Like, no joke. But this is terrible. That thing looks awful.
I understand, though.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: That looks pretty.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Oh, the Mavic 3 looks like really good. The Mavic 3 looks really good. But this right here, I understand it because you can get the full forward and upward like, like visual capability.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: What do you not like about it?
[00:19:21] Speaker A: It's like a.
Oh, God. It looks like a. Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Not a fan.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: You gotta get your head out together.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Who wants the boxy?
[00:19:41] Speaker A: There's another to feature Lidar, a Mavic 4. See, now that would be really cool is if they can take something that small and put some lidar in it and a mini 5. Just let us get the Mavic 4 first. They're already talking about the mini 4 5.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: You don't even know what number they're on.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: That's the mini 4 5.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: So do we know what to go back to? BYD? Do you know what drone that's going to be in the truck or the car, the dock? Because I didn't see anything about like, specifically what drone it's going to be.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: They'll probably take an existing one and just like break it down to just some very base features because it's just going to follow. And if you look at the. The image, that's the Mavic 3.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Okay.
Do you think each car is going to get a different drone so, like, somebody will get a mini 3?
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Probably not. I mean, the fact that they're selling it for $2,200, but man, that's got to be some contraption for it to go into the roof and stuff and then not leak and, and not cause, you know, issues. And then the depth of it when.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: They say this is releasing. Because I don't believe that this product's finished. Not one bit. They threw this together. It looks like they threw this together and you know, it's some type of 3D processing software.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: God, that audio smart. Dinner on auto. So loud. Pilot Eat smart with factor.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Bear with us.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Okay, so here's their video.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Oh, that looks like an Air 3s made in blender. This is made in blender. Get out of here.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Oh, we're not looking at a nice reel.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: There's a real one.
Their SUVs look crazy.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: System.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: See that? That's what you were talking about, where it just kind of follows you through the cool places. What if you live in, like, Nebraska?
What are you even on the film?
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Not cool places.
The drone hanger.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Drone hangers. We're starting to get drone hangers and yeah, drone.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Drone hangers. But the crazy thing is, like, we couldn't even get it like, like the drone in a box. That's just stationary. You know, like that thing. We just got that. Now all of a sudden, we got to have it on a moving car. Things move so fast.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: I know that that kind of blows. Jeep's, like, idea of the little. The little drone that just kind of like. I don't even think it was outside. You just had to take it out. It just came with the car.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
In switching gears here, this is something that I saw interesting.
And it's like I said, it's not even new. New news about funding. And I think I said $150 billion, which is like, there's no way that's possible. So it wasn't $150 billion, but apparently this is supposed to be kind of not.
I don't know. It was. This wasn't publicly announced so much. And just prior to the end of Biden's administration, this was declassified that the United States.
Part of the support efforts included $1.5 billion in funding that was sent in September of last year.
So five months ago, $1.5 billion for. For drone. For the Ukrainian drone industry.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Is that just for, like.
I don't know, do they have factories for drones over there? Is it still, like, just people kind of just putting them together by themselves?
Well, that's for, like, parts and stuff.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: And it says u. S. Intelligence officers reportedly assisted in advancing Ukraine's drone capabilities, helping to design a new generation of drones intended to revolutionize modern warfare.
Support for the drone sector has largely remained secret.
And so I think part of this is because right now, even today, if you go type stuff up, the drone right now is like, the most lethal weapon. So the idea that, you know, it's basically like saying, oh, yeah, the US has been funding the basically most lethal weapon against Putin and Russia. And so that just doesn't look great. And then the other thing here is, like, we've talked about this. There are. There are the US Companies, US Companies in general value in the crapper. Rcat, we've talked about teal. They own teal drones. They purchased.
I can't remember who else. UMAC acquires a loft and has all these other things going on. These are US Companies that are building drones for, like, defense purposes. I mean, Ukraine could buy our drones.
Why do they need to make their. They could. They could purchase them. So this funding could have gone to American companies that could have then provided them with drones to. To defend themselves, as opposed to putting it into a country that was literally at war.
The point. That's the point that I Want you to weigh in is just that these companies, umac, arcat, Ondas, Freaking Ondas is like trading below a dollar. Craziest. It's just insanity. But you don't think these companies could have gained some sort of value from the $1.5 billion?
I mean, $1.5 billion. What, what, what could these companies that are right there on the edge and competing with DJI, what, what could they have done with even just $500 million?
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's hard to say. If they're trying to design a new drone over in Ukraine, this is a little goofy. But if they're just trying to like, instead of somebody over in the US making the drone for them to drop one time use drones because you know what they do with the drones?
They're just building their own drones. If that's what it's for, this makes sense. But otherwise, if it's to go into development for a drone, which it kind of seems like it is, this is a little goofy.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah. The funds, the US funds were allocated for drone manufacturing and facilitated partnerships between US Tech companies and Ukrainian drone producers.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: What tech companies? Which ones?
[00:27:41] Speaker A: I don't know. Skydio is over there. A lot. You know, it's.
That's a good question.
The guy that would know that in this industry is Bobby Sakaki. He could tell you who.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: But khaki.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Khaki. Yeah, no, it's a real guy.
But that, that right there is so interesting. And so where, where this was really, really interesting is like I said, if.
If folks go back and they look at that heated exchange in the Oval Office, I swear he.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: I'm gonna have to watch it. I didn't watch it. I only seen screenshots of people's hands up, you know, the, the memes that came out and I heard about it. Otherwise I did not watch it. It was like a 50 minute conversation.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: You didn't watch it?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: No.
What am I supposed to do about politics, Paul? Huh? Me living in North Carolina in the backwoods, dude, the furthest away from anything.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: No, I think I'm just making stuff up here about drones.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: No way.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Oh, because this is just the argument, not the whole.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: It's like a f. I know, it's like 50 minutes and that's what. Yeah, I was going to listen to it and then I was like, n. No offense to Trump, but I cannot imagine listening to him for 50 minutes straight. That sounds very tedious and mind numbing.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Eight pages.
This is it right here.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: There's only eight pages worth of conversation. And a 50 minute conversation.
What were they talking about? Nothing.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: It says. Yeah, that's what it says.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: We've covered at least like 20 pages by now in this conversation. I think whoever wrote this down was doing whatever they wanted to do. So the stock market, while Paul's looking for this, the stock market's not looking great for anybody.
Do not sell. Whatever you do, do not sell. It's not worth it.
Just buy more. And then when it goes back up eventually, like it always does, you have some good money.
Nvidia's up today, 1.69. Is it terrible? The NASDAQ's down 4%.
Nikolai has dropped 30. They need to be in the dumpster. They're sitting at 18 cents.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah, everything just picks up a lot.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Of money off of Nikolai.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Does.
Gosh. Does YouTube do the, like transcripts or anything? That's crazy.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Transcripts. I mean, I'm sure if you looked.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Up and then everybody's like talking about this crypto stuff right now. And like, even these people on the, the. These cryptos, like, like Trump started has used his name and has ownership in these like, basically exchanges with. When Trump got elected president, they spent like $47 million on XRP, $470 million on. Or 47 million on Solana. $470 million on XRP. I'm reading this two hours ago. Putin offered Zelensky offers Putin partial truce.
I don't know. Things are happening so fast in politics right now, but.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: So since we're on cryptocurrency a little bit, I am. This is a conspiracy theory. I'm starting to think this is some sort of con operation by some country because, like, who made it? Nobody knows. Who's Shatashi Nakamoto or whatever word that is. That's not even a name, it's an abbreviation.
Who made it? Who's good enough at coding? You think one dude coded that?
[00:31:36] Speaker A: No, man, that's a government.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Which one? I don't want. What if it's North Korea? What if the Lazarus Group is getting us right now and they're just gonna rug pull that $2 trillion or whatever sitting in that account.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Someone's back there just pulling the bitcoin. Ethereum wrapped bitcoin.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Wrapped bitcoin.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: There was this thing.
World Liberty Financial tweeted Monday that it bought 47 million worth of both Ethereum and wrapped Bitcoin, as well as 4.7 million worth of AVI, link, TRX and ENA to mark the inauguration of the 47th President.
So Trump mentioning in mentioning These things and people like, I don't know why this, like, he's literally a partial owner in like a, an exchange.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Is that what World Liberty.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah, wlfi. World Liberty Financial.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: He's a part owner of that.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Yeah. They're using his name and image and likeness and gave him a percent. So if you go look at World Liberty Financial.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if I like this.
I think we need to ban anybody in the government from doing anything with.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Isn't that, isn't that crazy?
Five cents. Buy these.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Here's their. Meet our team. Look at this chief crypto advocate. He's an advocate, which means he's supposed to talk about crypto web. Three ambassadors, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Barron Trump. Look at this pack of people. And then you find out like, this Steve Witkoff guy is the co founder, his son, this Steve Witkoff guy is the dude that's like negotiating Israeli prisoner exchanges.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: These guys, some of them need to get in contact with a photographer. Jesus.
That is insane. I don't know. I didn't know about that. I don't like that one bit.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: So people don't realize, like, they don't connect all the dots.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: And what does Baron Trump know about cryptocurrency?
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Probably a lot. Because he probably.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Do you think when he was a kid, he's one of those people that he was like, he convinced Trump to give him like 50k to buy Bitcoin at 20 cent a pop.
You think he's just sitting on like hundreds of millions of dollars right now by himself?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: No, but I've learned a lot too. Between now and the previous episode. I've been doing all this, like, reading and detach strategy because I listened to this book talk about zero tax wealth. I think that was the name of the book is like Zero tax wealth, like, like literally building wealth the way wealthy people do, where you like, it's not your duty to pay as much taxes as possible. Like, that's not like why you're here in the country. There's nothing that says you have to pay taxes. 99.5% of tax laws is written to reduce taxes, and half a percent of the tax law is written to increase your taxes. So all the tax laws, the tax rules are written to tell people how you can reduce your taxes. So if you're not using those rules to your advantage, then you're just, you're literally giving the government free money. And so I listened to this book and I'm like, you know, holy cow. Obviously the first 10, the first third hour, it's pretty easy. And then it starts to get into the more technical ways of. Of saving money and by paying less taxes. And it gets like, oh, my goodness. I'm like, whoa. You don't even want to. It's so. So once I realized that, I'm like, man, do you know how many people just shut this book off and stop listening and go, I don't care. I'm just gonna pay my tax. I'm just gonna pay the tax book off.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: You're claiming you're reading a book when you're just list audiobook listening.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: I'm just gonna turn this audio off. And so I didn't say shut the book. I said shut it off.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: I know, but you said you were reading a book. You ain't reading anything. You're listening to it.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Well, my assistant reads it to me, you know, and so. But. But anyway, so then I'm learning about trust and the way that trusts work and stuff. And so it's amazing. But I attack strategists. What people need at the end of the day is not someone to do your taxes, but you need someone to kind of tell you how to do your taxes in a way that it benefits you and not the government.
And before we finish talking about taxes is like most. Most. Most tax folks that do people's taxes, they kind of are worrying about their own butt. And so they're like. They're. They're always recommending that you like. Like pay the tax as opposed to not pay the tax. Because the way they see it is you're safer paying it than not paying it. And they don't want to deal with an audit. Someone who prepares your taxes, they don't want to deal with an audit, so they're always going to favor the government.
So what the guy in the book was saying is most tax preparers, they kind of work for the government. And what you need is to find folks who want to work for you.
So you pay less money.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: You find an anarchist tax.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: No tax guy. And.
Yeah, but that's. Yeah, trust. So let's.
Yeah, but those companies, man, Red Cat, umac, every tech thing is just so down. It's crazy. Down stocks and a thing like on a thing like Ondas, though, it's like $0.86, $0.85, $0.90. It's like how this is why you also need a financial person. Because when you're looking at these stocks, it's not just the price of the stock. How many are there, right? How many shares exist how much is is because however many shares are, that's how much valuable the company is. But anywho, let's take a look at.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Let's get back to talking about drones.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Drone life dot com. So we're just perusing the dronelife.com website here.
Yeah. Shout out to dronelife.com and Beaufort County Community College.
We can shout out pretty much anybody. So if anybody's listening and you're wanting us to recognize.
No. Products, services, companies, businesses.
Kind of like Global Mapper Pro. Here a.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: What's this?
Kanazawa Institute, Vitol Drone.
Why does that look so janky? That drone?
[00:39:01] Speaker A: They got what in the photo?
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Yeah, the photo is just. Looks crazy. Looks just like a wooden box.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Which. What are you looking at?
[00:39:14] Speaker B: If you go back, you'll see it on the front page. I'm not sure. It's not on this page.
Hit products. Go. Hit products. Yeah, there you go.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Oh, they say here.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
It can do 50 kg. That's not bad.
Let's see.
So it's just a prototype.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Wish there are some more photos of this.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: 200 pound drone. 40 pound kilogram. Looks like they're just testing out some VTOL stuff. Would you get all excited about because.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I don't know how ugly the picture was. Well, it looked weird.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: It scared you.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Scared me. I don't like ugly things.
That's an interesting looking drone. We're just going through looking at drones.
DIC Corporations, Hogo Spear. Did you see that? That looks crazy.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: No.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: It'S under products. If you just scroll down, it's just a ball. It looks like a dodgeball. Throw it at somebody.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: New Japanese spray drone.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Yeah. There's.
There's just so many.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: We should talk about this weird Hogo Hogam Spear thing looks crazy.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: It's all. What is it?
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Ces? It won the award for cutting edge multicopular design.
Do you think we're gonna. So my theory with the drones is we're gonna start seeing a lot more drones that look weird. Right. And they're just going to be seen as UFOs by people. It's probably already happening. I think we already kind of got proof that it's happening. But this. If I seen this and it had lights on it and it was shiny.
Something's going through my brain.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the sound that those motors would make as far as like in a hallway or something. But they're talking about. This is more for drone search and rescue.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Well, look, it's a good design.
Nothing can hit the Props.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: The.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: How do you even get that? I'm not smart enough to make this thing fly. I don't know how they're doing it.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: I think it's pretty big.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: Why is the Jesus loud?
[00:42:35] Speaker A: So go ahead.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: There's a lot of stuff coming out of Japan right now. Is Japan a hotbed of drone technology?
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Well, that's kind of what I was just saying is because we've, we have this, I'd say Japan with jaxa, they're super involved in, in like space. But the Juada Jew.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Japan, UAS industrial development.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: So they have like a whole association that's just designed to.
And they're smaller countries, so sometimes it's easier to.
Sometimes it's easier to like it's not capitalist United States where this company is competing with that company. And the government can't just favor this company. It's smaller. You have these like incubators at the universities. You've got that association that's using the government funds. And it's very clear like who is ahead of this person. There's not, there's not five or six companies. There's probably like one or two.
And so they're competing for that funding. And I think sometimes it's just easier to manage R and D and development in a small scale versus like large scale.
Waste, you know, putting things into waste. But the big thing here is once you make something, how do you get it? The thing here is you can make it in these other countries, we don't want it dropped here cheap because then it makes it hard for a US company to compete. But the support aspect, how do you make it? But then you have to get it shipped over here, keep the cost down. And then people are going to be flying it, breaking it, having questions. And so that ability to provide, you know, global product support is, is probably almost as big of a challenge as actually making the drone itself.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: I predict either Japan or Germany in the next 10 years we'll have the best drones. Just from the pure fact that like everything in Japan is just so dialed in.
I don't know if you've noticed that, but like Japan has like everything done. They have little, they have like little watch holders on the side of their bed for their Apple watches. It's just insane. Their showers are different. They have bidets. We don't have bidets.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: Yeah, see and then one other thing, I thought engineering that we could.
Well, even acsl, like there's a, there's just like a small quadcopter company, acsl and Cynthia Yoon is The. I believe it's her last name. Cynthia. Cynthia is her first name. It could be. I think it's Cynthia Yun.
She used to work at DJI and so now she's gone to Japan and she started a drone company in Japan. She didn't necessarily start a drone company. ACSL was already manufacturing things, but she kind of launched from my understanding, she launched their like drone division.
But ACSL has been saying that they're going to sell drones made in Japan in the US for under 10 grand and it's going to have thermal.
But it's taken them a really long time to actually bring product.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: The perfectionist. Man, I don't know what is about that country, but they just do everything good. They do it well.
You know, samurai swords were crazy. If you look at them.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Were they.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: They are. They're like perfected. They're insane how good these blacksmiths got the swords with hand tools. Okay.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: I don't know. Have you looked at a Mavic 3? Have you looked at animatrice? These things are.
[00:46:49] Speaker B: Yeah, just wait, wait for 10 years from now. Japan's gonna have the coolest stuff and you're gonna be like, Terry was right.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: That's. Imagine like the Chinese EV electric vehicle. Because I've seen the Chinese drones and I've seen the American drones and I'm like, they're not. These, these drones aren't far, too far far off from. From automobiles.
And so I'm like, that BYD is probably a pretty badass vehicle.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Now kind of ending in like to just to keep some tradition here. Regulatory corner.
So the commercial Drone alliance, the cda urges swift action on BV loss rulemaking. So right now we're just spinning tires and the US is trying to take advantage of any opportunity in any markets to grow and expand. And one huge thing in the drone space that just really hasn't been tapped into yet.
You know as well as almost anybody, Terry, the complications that organizations are facing when it comes to beyond visual line of sight and traffic management and you know, coexisting deconfliction.
But the CDA is officially called on Trump administration to expedite the deregulation process for commercial drones focusing on beyond visual on sight. So they, they penned a letter that the. They addressed to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, you know, basically pressing them and stating like, you know, now is the time more than ever to open the doors and allow organizations to. To scale, make it, make it, you know, make. Open up that market and, and potentially, you know, with Type certification for aircraft and vehicles and things of that nature. You could really possibly attract a lot of international companies to the United States to make their drones.
Because whether it's tariffs, costs, you know, these things are small. They're, they're.
You could, you could potentially. You don't have to build this big sophisticated facility to make these things. I mean, it's not that it's simple, but the idea that international companies could come in, purchase these, you know, warehouses, factories and such and, you know, build them up and renovate them to meet their needs because, you know, you, you want to make those things here in the United States. We want the aircraft made in the US So that they could be really vetted and inspected and held to that FAA standard. Doesn't mean they have to be made here, but even maintained here. There's a lot of opportunity, but it's gonna, it requires, you know, regulatory framework.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: Yeah, deregulation. He's been talking about that a whole lot.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Cut the red tape.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Cut it.
Put the tariffs up. Cut the red tape. See who comes running our way.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: And so this letter underscores the urgency of adopting BV loss rules, but also highlights the broader implications such a move would have on American industry and national security.
You know, from an industry standpoint, you know, we want to improve highways, roadways, bridges, all the critical infrastructure. Wow. Wouldn't drones operated beyond visual line of sight be a great way to do that? And you're hiring, you're hiring people to do an extremely efficient job. There should be little waste. And then the security aspect, being able to put drones out around these high risk areas, let the bad guys know that these drones exist. It's, it's the stuff that we've been looking at. When you said like a year ago, man, I think it was our first, I think it was the first episode, Terry, was when you made that comment about, gosh, it's going to be really hard to, you know, it's going to be tough for criminals in the next five years.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: Because these kinds of systems can be in place at our borders, they can be in place by our schools, they can be in place on our highways, the Amber alerts that come out, missing children. There's just so much opportunity for manufacturing jobs and efficiency if we can find the safe pathway to beyond visual line of sight. But any closing thoughts here, Terry? Predictions for between now and the next episode. Questions.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: I expect the drone stock prices to go down even more by next time we do this podcast, and then that's when I'll buy it.
I'm gonna hold off a little bit because I think it's just going to continue to drop. We'll see. Especially with the tariffs going in today, I think the drone prices are going to drop a lot. Anything tech is going to drop quite a bit.
That would be a good time to buy.
[00:52:13] Speaker A: Well, I think it's the tech side. I don't think it's the terrorists. Because if you look at a UMAC, they're trying to make everything in the U.S. yeah, well, that's.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: The tariffs affect that. You can't really wrong the raw materials. Yeah, but where the.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: See, that's the tough one is like, if you're making it yourself, are you making it with your own raw materials? What raw materials do you actually need?
Should be cheaper to, you know, at least the cost of bringing in the raw materials versus buying a final product. You should be able to save some money. But.
But I think it's this whole overvaluation of tech, as much as I don't want it to be that and that, you know, hindsight is 20 20. I don't know. We'll see. I don't like your prediction, but it's a prediction.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: I don't like the prediction because you own every single drone stock we've talked about.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: Well, I'm just holding on dos right now. I really don't have anything else, but anything tech right now is just.
They say buy low, sell high. Tell us when every. Tell me when it's low and I'll buy.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: Well, thank you everybody for tuning in to another great episode of Weekly Wings. Hope everybody enjoyed the episode, found some insight, a bit of information, a little education, also maybe even a little bit of entertainment.
Make sure you're checking in drone life.com regularly. Go to dronelife.com Sign up for the newsletter. Get your daily daily news.
You can go to the YouTube. This video will be posted. You can drop a comment, ask a question, and we'll do our best to try to answer it. But again, thank you everybody for your time and attention. Have a great rest of your morning, afternoon, or evening, and we will see you next time. Fly safe.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: Adios.
