COURTESY PHOTO

Did You Know
By Bonnie Donovan

In final week’s column, we warned of the Chinese government’s infiltration of America. 

The day immediately after we released the column, we received a report on how, by means of espionage in American businesses, the Chinese military had been capable to generate their fifth generation of a fighter plane. This is the Chinese J20, constructed by copying the technologies in the U.S. F-22 Raptor. It is important to know that America has by no means sold F-22 raptors to any other nation. 

The Chinese theft of American secret technologies occurred right here in America.

The principal designers and producers of the F-22 Raptor have been Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with hundreds of sub-element suppliers.

China concentrated for ten years on stealing the technologies in the F-22, and they have been astoundingly profitable. By undertaking so, they have been capable to narrow the technologies gap involving America and China by ten to 15 years.

On the topic of new technologies, Did You Know? was exposed to the energy of a mixture of artificial intelligence technologies, coupled with numerous drones. We discovered how this mixture can replace human efforts for each great and evil. 

A.I. and drone technologies are establishing speedy. Even though not feasible nowadays, picture the day when 4 massive container ships — with genuine papers and controlled by artificial intelligence — are cruising hundreds of miles apart outdoors American territorial waters, along the American Pacific and Atlantic coasts. 

At two a.m., the doors of their containers open. From every ship, hundreds of A.I.-controlled drones rise and fly more than all the important East Coast and West Coast cities. Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. What will the drones provide to the millions of folks living there?  

Numerous balloons can fly, undetected, across American airspace. How about 4 ships in two pairs, hundreds of miles apart on two oceans, hidden amongst hundreds of other folks?

On an additional matter, a reader of Did You Know? dropped off a copy of 46 pages of very detailed, concerns that are quite intrusive of individual privacy, referred to as “The American Neighborhood Survey,” which they received in the mail.

It is carried out by the Census Bureau and is mandated by your U.S. government that the recipients are, by law, expected to respond.

Did You Know? does not know the complete use to which the collected facts will be place. It may well effectively be a test for such as these concerns in future, complete census surveys.

Not only are recipients expected to reveal the most private facts of their individual lives, but they are also expected to recognize themselves by name.

Failure to total and return the survey or to deliver inaccurate answers will outcome in heavy fines.

This is not a census survey, in that it has been sent only to three million households, out of 123.six million in America, but it is currently right here in Santa Barbara.

Hope that you do not acquire one particular.

This survey is created not only to recognize you but also to probe into every single aspect of your life and your resident family’s life. Your life histories, your employment, and your total economic scenario are all integrated, and extra.

If this is a test for a total census, the government could have all the facts required to set up a social credit program to handle person behavior, equivalent to that now in spot in China.

Did You Know? was also forwarded Pepperdine University’s new promotional video that the Malibu college released at its current 25th anniversary. It attributes Ronald Reagan in 1976 when he was asked to create a letter to be opened in one hundred years. Verify out the promotional video, “Shaping the Planet for the Subsequent one hundred Years,” on Pepperdine’s YouTube channel — youtube.com/watch?v=P5tCYePzOzA&ampfeature=youtu.be.

I invite you to take a handful of minutes (just 3!) to watch the video, which starts with a familiar voice.

This short video is primarily based on one particular of Mr. Reagan’s most well-known radio addresses from September 1976.  Pepperdine initially discovered about this text by reading Mr. Reagan’s words in “In His Personal Hand” — a book co-edited by one particular of the university’s newest faculty members, Dr. Kiron Skinner. 

President Reagan was asked to create a letter to be place into a time capsule to be opened in 2076 in Los Angeles. He was asked to mention in the letter some of the most really serious challenges confronting the United States in 1976.

What he wrote in 1976 (47 years ago) could be nowadays.  

Beneath are components of what he stated.

“Think about it for a minute.

“What do you place in a letter that is going to be study one hundred years from now — in the year 2076? The folks who will study it ‘will be living in the globe we helped to shape.’

“Will they study the letter with gratitude in their hearts for what we did, or will they be bitter mainly because the heritage we left them was one particular of human misery?”

“The greatest difficulty the United States faced in 1976 was the selection involving continuing the policies of the final 40 years that have led to larger and larger government, significantly less and significantly less liberty, redistribution of earnings by means of confiscatory taxation, or attempting to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers.

“Will we opt for fiscal duty, restricted government and freedom of selection for all our folks? Or will we let an irresponsible Congress set us on the road our English cousins have currently taken? The road to financial ruin and state handle of our quite lives?”

“On the international scene, two good superpowers face every other with nuclear missiles at the prepared — poised to bring Armageddon to the globe.”

“Those who study my letter will know no matter whether these missiles have been fired or not. Either they will be surrounded by the very same beauty we know, or they will wonder sadly what it was like when the globe was nonetheless lovely.”

“If we right here nowadays meet the challenge confronting us, these who open that time capsule one hundred years from now will do so in peace, prosperity and the ultimate in individual freedom.

“If we do not hold our rendezvous with destiny, the letter possibly will by no means be study — mainly because they will reside in the globe we left them, a globe in which no one particular is permitted to study of person liberty or freedom of selection.”

“Will we opt for fiscal duty, restricted government, and freedom of selection for all our folks?”

Bonnie Donovan writes the “Did You Know?” column in conjunction with a bipartisan group of nearby citizens. It seems Saturdays in the Voices section.