🇨🇳 China’s Hypersonic Missile Test

Image: Artist’s rendering for reference, Raytheon Missile & Defense

💬 Why it’s important: While it missed its intended target by about two dozen miles, the test demonstrated an advanced capability that reportedly caught U.S. intelligence by surprise. “We have no idea how they did this,” one source told the FT.

🚀 Quick context… The U.S., Russia, North Korea, and China are all developing hypersonic weapons. They fly slower than a ballistic missile at a measly 5x the speed of sound – but unlike a ballistic missile, a hypersonic weapon is maneuverable and could probably make it through an asteroid field to complete the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.

• When this maneuverability is combined with a glide system allowing the weapon to travel partially in orbit, adversaries are theoretically stripped of reaction time and traditional missile defense mechanisms could be neutralized.

🎖️ Zoom out: China increased its official defense budget by 6.8% this year, which follows a multi-decade effort to upgrade its military capabilities. In its own words, the PLA expected to achieve mechanization and make “major progress” toward “informatization” by last year, achieve “complete military modernization” by 2035, and become a “world-class” military by 2049.

• “World-class” isn’t defined, but it’s likely to mean equal or superior to the U.S. military.

+Connecting the dots: Remember the recent spat between France, the U.S., and Australia over AUKUS and nuclear sub tech ? The pact was put together in response to this 👆 and China’s growing military assertiveness near Taiwan.

🎁 The CDC recently published new data showing unvaccinated Americans have an 11 times higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people and a six times higher chance of testing positive for the virus.

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Image: Giphy

To be clear, the process is different from actually buying crypto. ProShares’ ETF is based on futures contracts, which allow investors to bet on the price swings of an underlying asset without owning it outright.

📜 Background… Prior to this year, dozens of attempts at launching a regular bitcoin ETF – which would allow investors to buy bitcoin itself – were shot down by the SEC under former head Jay Clayton, which maintained none of them were able to show the market is resistant to manipulation.

• In an August speech, new SEC Chair Gary Gensler indicated he would allow bitcoin futures ETFs, and a rush of applications soon followed (each of which takes 75 days to clear).

🏛️ Zoom out: As crypto has grown more mainstream over the past few years, so too has associated criminal activity. The U.S. reported 82,000+ crypto-related crimes last year, up 295% from the year before, per research from education platform Crypto Head.

Typical frauds include pump and dump schemes, theft due to hacking, and fake ICOs (where scammers lure investors with a completely fabricated cryptocurrency).

• Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, released a policy blueprint last week proposing that Congress create a brand new regulatory agency tasked with overseeing the crypto space.
• FTX, a decentralized crypto exchange with no home country, has called for crypto regulation to fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

👁️ Looking ahead… Congress has introduced nearly two dozen bills focused on crypto and blockchain in 2021.

• None of them have gained any traction thus far besides an attempt to collect extra tax revenue from the industry to help pay for the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure proposal, which is currently pending a final House vote.

+What we’re watching: Will the price of bitcoin (~$62,100 as of late Monday) climb above its all-time high of $64,800 this week ?

🎁 Apple unveiled the third-gen AirPods at its ”Unleashed” event yesterday, the entry-level headphones’ first update since 2019. 👆

🚀 Lucy in the Sky With Asteroids

Image: NASA

Named after the fossilized skeleton of one of the earliest known human ancestors, the Lucy mission will allow scientists to explore two swarms of asteroids that share a solar orbit with Jupiter.

• Scientific evidence indicates these asteroids are remnants of the same material that formed our system’s giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, & Neptune).
• To bring it full circle with an analogy, studying the Trojans can reveal information about how our solar system evolved, similar to how Lucy’s fossilized skeleton revolutionized understanding of human evolution.

👁️ Looking ahead… Lucy is expected to study a record eight asteroids over the course of its 12-year voyage. It'll be the first spacecraft to return to Earth’s vicinity after traveling to the outer solar system.

Images: Twitter

When fifteen-year-old Daniel Harrison was asked by his teacher to come up with two things he wanted to achieve in life, Daniel’s first reply was that of a typical teenager: “I want to drive a car.”

• What surprised his parents the most was his second response: “I want to make some friends.”

Daniel has autism, and like many kids on the spectrum, he typically prefers to play alone. Up until this assignment, Daniel’s parents said they “didn't understand that he understood the theory of friendship.”

📱 You’ve Got A Friend In Me… Soon after, Daniel’s dad took to Twitter in an effort to find some friends for his son’s birthday.

• His post would soon become the number one trending topic in the U.S., resulting in more than 55,000 replies and special birthday messages from celebrities like Mark Hamill and Russell Crowe.

What is the only country in the world with three capital cities ?

A) China
B) The Netherlands
C) South Africa
D) Chile

(keep scrolling for the answer)

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C) South Africa

A handful of countries have two different capitals, but South Africa is the only nation with three.

• Cape Town is the legislative capital, Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, and Pretoria is the administrative capital.