- Soon, we might get cell service on the Moon…
- I wish Intel luck… but I’m skeptical
- Google has gotten itself in hot water…
Dear Reader,
This week we’re going to explore something different.
We’ll still discuss technology and investments but in a different way than we usually do. In fact, we’re going to see how we can invest in our most important asset – ourselves – or more specifically, in our health.
One of the most transformative trends of this decade is preventative and predictive medicine. This has been a key and very profitable area of investment for us in our Near Future Report and Exponential Tech Investor portfolios over the years.
But what good is wealth if we don’t have our health to enjoy it?
As I’ll show you this week, there are ways that we can be proactive about our own health care. And there are also tests and diagnostic tools that can help us understand not only our current health but also our future health.
And these resources can aid us in understanding whether or not we need to take action now.
My research in this space led me to La Jolla, CA, to visit Health Nucleus. From my perspective, it’s the future of health care.
There is no place on Earth like it, and it is a lens on the future… not only for our health but for the future of the industry. It functions on the bleeding edge of preventative medicine. It’s the opposite of what our health care system is today…
It doesn’t treat our symptoms… it finds them before we have them.
This time, my research was a bit different. Rather than a company or technology being the focus of my attention, the subject was me.
I flew to San Diego to put myself through the tests and diagnostics so that I could deeply understand what the future looks like. I was the one being poked and prodded this time.
And my crazy idea to do so may very well have saved my life.
I have a lot to share this week, but before that we’ll need a little context.
I first learned about Health Nucleus back in 2014. That’s when I noticed an investment made by genetic sequencing giant Illumina into a company called Human Longevity, which is the parent holding company of Health Nucleus.
The mission of Health Nucleus was seemingly straightforward: to evaluate the human condition from head to toe (our phenotype) and compare that to a whole genome sequence – an analysis of all 3.2 billion base pairs of our human DNA.
By doing so, it is possible to map our genetic structure to our current or future conditions.
Why is this so invaluable? It empowers us to understand our current and future risk for disease, what kind of medications we will respond well to, and even medications that would have adverse effects on us due to our genetic structure.
Knowing these things in advance can be lifesaving. It also empowers us to make adjustments in our lifestyles to avoid a certain “fate” that we otherwise would have been faced with down the road.
The mission of Human Longevity and Health Nucleus was so compelling to me that I actually visited back in 2015 to research the facility.
For reasons that you’ll understand later this week, I regret having not put myself through the Health Nucleus 100+ program at that time. Over the last five years, there always seemed to be a scheduling conflict, another business trip, too many balls in the air, and so on to just lock in a date to visit.
The experience is incredible, but I’ll be the first to admit it is not for everyone.
For many, there is great discomfort in the thought of finding something “bad.” Many people would simply rather not know. But for me, aside from the value in the research, I’d rather know so that I have a chance to do something positive about it.
I suspect a lot of Bleeding Edge subscribers will have an interest in the Health Nucleus 100+ program. If you do, you can check it out here. It isn’t cheap, though, at $19,800. And it isn’t covered by insurance.
I can’t recommend the program enough, however. Out of respect for the team at Health Nucleus, inquiries should be limited to those who are serious about the program.
Worth mentioning is that Brownstone Research and I have no relationship at all with Health Nucleus. We receive no compensation of any kind for writing about my experience there. I paid full price to go through the program.
My only interest was to research what I felt to be the most advanced preventative medicine and human longevity clinic on the planet.
My goal is simple – to bring my subscribers knowledge they would not otherwise have had. And it just so happens that I got a lot more out of the experience than I expected…
I look forward to sharing with you the rest of the details from my visit to Health Nucleus throughout the week. I’m certain that, at a minimum, you’ll learn a few things about some of the options available for us to be more proactive with our own health.
And hopefully a few of you will benefit from the full 100+ program that Health Nucleus has to offer.
Now let’s turn to today’s insights…
Bleeding-edge technology is going to the Moon…
Talking about long-distance communications…
NASA just awarded about $370 million in contracts to 14 companies. Its mission? Deploy bleeding-edge technology on the Moon. Among the companies awarded contracts were SpaceX, Astrobotic, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, Intuitive Machines, and Nokia.
The contracts are for things like power generation, the management of cryogenic fluids such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, the deployment of robotics, and – of course – a Moon-based wireless communications network.
Nokia is the company tasked with building a fourth-generation (4G) wireless network to bring communications infrastructure to the Moon.
I know what we must be wondering – why 4G and not 5G? Isn’t 5G supposed to be the most advanced wireless communications technology?
While I admit my first reaction was disappointment, after thinking about it, it made perfect sense. 4G makes a lot more sense for a Moon-based application.
4G was designed to operate at lower frequency bands that travel much farther distances with relatively good speeds. On a place like the Moon, there aren’t any buildings to cause interference, and there is no congestion at all. The radio frequency spectrum is wide open.
5G, on the other hand, is a small cell architecture running at higher powers that requires a lot more infrastructure to work.
This is the perfect setup for a 4G wireless network. We can deploy 4G at low frequency bands so that it requires relatively few towers to propagate the signal across the lunar surface. The network will be incredibly efficient, and it will require fewer base stations and less power to run.
And here’s the best part – the wireless network will be built in 2022. We’re less than eight quarters away.
Regular readers may remember that NASA’s goal is to launch another manned mission to the Moon in 2024. We talked about that back in May.
But NASA’s ambitions go beyond just a mission to the Moon. It wants to lay the groundwork for a permanent lunar base.
And that means lunar rovers mapping the surface, autonomous drones surveying the landscape, and astronauts operating various machinery on the ground. All of that requires a wireless communications network.
Each machine and person on the lunar surface will be equipped with a 4G radio. That will allow a central control hub to track the locations of all people, machines, and devices deployed on the Moon. And it will allow for quick and efficient communications between the lunar base and assets on the ground.
That’s why NASA is racing ahead to build a wireless network and deploy power-generation technology on the Moon in less than two years. Ideally, everything needs to be ready for operation by the time astronauts return to the Moon in 2024.
And that means we’ll be one step closer to a permanent extraterrestrial presence and, eventually, a multiplanetary species. The Moon will make a great “jumping off point” for future travel to Mars and Ceres. We are going to see some unbelievable space-related developments over the course of the next two decades.
I’m thrilled to see these plans moving forward so quickly. As always, we’ll bring readers all developments related to this mission as they happen.
Intel is shedding its roots…
In a major asset sale, Intel just agreed to sell its NAND memory manufacturing division to South Korean company SK Hynix for $9 billion. These are the memory chips that go into computer and smartphone hard drives, as well as other electronic devices.
This is interesting for two reasons…
If we go back to the ’70s, Intel’s rise was predicated on its memory manufacturing business. Manufacturing semiconductors for computer memory was the foundation for Intel’s rise as the world’s leader in semiconductor technology, which lasted for decades.
Fast forward to today, and Intel just can’t compete in that arena anymore. NAND memory has become highly commoditized, and Intel has struggled to innovate over the last five-plus years. It has failed to keep its costs under control in order to remain competitive in such a cutthroat market like NAND memory.
And while this is a tough business for Intel to bow out of, at this stage I think it is a smart move for Intel. NAND memory tends to be a low-margin business that requires a different operating structure, one that Intel is not well suited for. Instead, the company will focus its memory initiatives on its much higher-margin, next-generation 3D memory technology.
We’ll wish Intel luck, though I remain skeptical. I suspect Intel will struggle to compete with that business as well.
There are interesting ramifications from this sale in the semiconductor industry.
Near Future Report portfolio holding Micron Technology (MU) will become the only U.S.-based company producing a full suite of memory solutions, including NAND.
This is a very bullish development for Micron.
Not long ago, Micron “broke up” with Intel on joint development of 3D memory technology, and the two companies decided to develop the technology separately. I believe that Micron will outpace Intel with its 3D memory technology.
This also means that SK Hynix will become the second largest NAND manufacturer after Samsung. But those are both South Korean companies. Given that we are seeing a strong push toward decentralized manufacturing featuring U.S.-built products, Micron clearly has a lot to gain.
Google’s now in the DOJ’s crosshairs…
Last week, we talked about how Facebook and Twitter grossly violated Section 230. That’s going to be a hot topic in 2021. And now Google’s missteps are coming under scrutiny as well.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) just filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Google. This was after more than a year of investigation. Some are calling this the largest and most important antitrust case in more than a generation.
This probably won’t come as a surprise to us, but Google has been filtering and manipulating the content that users see when they search for information on its search engine.
The company has intentionally rigged its search engine so that it presents results that are consistent with the predominant political and personal beliefs of Google’s leadership team. This is strikingly similar behavior to what Facebook and Twitter have been doing.
And talk about foolish.
Had Google been a good actor and simply returned the results that users were searching for, it would have stayed out of trouble. Now Google has a massive antitrust lawsuit on its hands.
At the center of the lawsuit is Google’s anticompetitive business practices, which create a pseudo-monopoly for Google Search.
It turns out that Google has been paying companies to use its search engine as the default setting in internet browsers. This makes it nearly impossible for companies with fewer resources to compete. A perfect example is that Google pays Apple between $8–12 billion a year to be the default search engine for Apple’s iOS devices (iPhones, iPads).
Sure, users can go into their settings and choose a different browser. But very few people do so. It’s a major competitive advantage for Google’s search engine to be the default option.
So Google is essentially buying the majority of search traffic on the internet and profiting immensely from doing so.
In and of itself, this likely wouldn’t have prompted the DOJ’s lawsuit.
But because Google has effectively been “blocking” any form of fair competition for search with the explicit payments of billions of dollars and then manipulating the search results that consumers are presented with, that was the final straw.
And what’s interesting here is that there is largely bipartisan support for this investigation into Google. The Democratic Party is positioning itself as anti-big tech. The position is that these large tech companies are making too much profit at the expense of their users and therefore should be regulated and/or broken up.
And the Republicans take issue with the elimination of freedom of speech and heavily biased, manipulated search results. And the sensitivity to Google’s shenanigans is even more elevated due to the U.S. election cycle.
So this will be an interesting case to follow. Like Section 230, Google’s antitrust lawsuit will take center stage in 2021.
These issues will be center stage next year, and they’ve likely come to the point where some major policy changes are due to be implemented.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge
P.S. There’s still time to see the footage from my tour of the American heartland.
I traveled thousands of miles across the country, stopping in places like Columbus, OH; Des Moines, IA; Little Rock, AR; Sioux Falls, SD; and numerous others – all to explore what I believe is the most explosive technology trend on the market today. And I believe the footage we captured on my tour across America will surprise you.
I talked about what my “boots on the ground” research uncovered last week in an event we called “Beyond Exponential.”
In addition to footage of my heartland tour, I also demonstrated live trades on camera to show viewers how I would build a million-dollar tech portfolio if I lost everything tomorrow.
As part of that demonstration, I discussed the kinds of stocks that should be the cornerstones of every serious tech investor’s portfolio over the next 10 years or so.
For any readers of The Bleeding Edge who are interested and couldn’t join us last week, a replay of Beyond Exponential will be available at no cost for just a few more days. You can find it right here.
Like what you’re reading? Send your thoughts to [email protected].