February 20 2025

1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Orders Senior Leaders to Plan 8% Defense Budget Cuts Over Five Years
2. President Trump Considers Tariffs of 25% or More on Autos, Semiconductors, and Pharmaceuticals
3. China Emerges as Key Hub for Laundering Fentanyl Profits in U.S. Drug Crisis
4. Microsoft Claims Quantum Computer Breakthrough
5. Trump Enlists Elon Musk to Push Boeing on Delayed Air Force One Jets
Covalent
February 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes first American to orbit Earth

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1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Orders Senior Leaders to Plan 8% Defense Budget Cuts Over Five Years

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter — a striking proposal certain to face internal resistance and strident bipartisan opposition in Congress. Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by Monday, according to the memo, which is dated Tuesday and includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern U.S. border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones and other munitions.  

Editors note: an 8% cut would be about $80b, two USAIDs

Article Source: WaPo

2. President Trump Considers Tariffs of 25% or More on Autos, Semiconductors, and Pharmaceuticals

President Trump on Tuesday said he was considering tariffs of 25% or more on automobiles, semiconductors and pharmaceutical products. Tariffs will be “in the neighborhood of 25%” on those industries and may increase over time, he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. He added they would “go very substantially higher over the course of the year.”  Trump also said companies in the U.S. may be given a phase-in period on items they import, giving them time to move production to the U.S. He said he would allow “a little bit of a chance” to re-shore production, without providing details.

Article Source: WSJ

3. China Emerges as Key Hub for Laundering Fentanyl Profits in U.S. Drug Crisis

a new front in America’s war on drugs: an emerging partnership that has made China a crucial pit stop for dirty money flowing from the U.S.’s fentanyl crisis, according to law-enforcement officials and court documents. Chinese money brokers, part of an underground banking system that has long served the country’s immigrant diaspora, have become go-to partners for fentanyl traffickers and other criminal groups needing to launder illicit drug profits, officials say. Long operating in the shadows, the Chinese brokers use intermediaries, such as the woman in the Maserati, to collect drug profits from fentanyl dealers. Then, through a series of transactions, they sell those dollars to Chinese customers who want cash in the U.S. for purposes such as buying real estate or other investments, but can’t legally send money directly from China because of capital controls there.  The drug dealers end up with clean money in the process, law-enforcement officials say.

Article Source: WSJ

4. Microsoft Claims Quantum Computer Breakthrough

Microsoft said it had succeeded in harnessing a new state of matter to create the basic building blocks of a quantum computer, capping a 20-year struggle on the frontiers of physics that many in the quantum world had dismissed as unworkable. The US technology giant said it believed the development would enable it to build a practical quantum computer by the end of the decade and eventually leapfrog others in the field. The claim adds a new twist to the race to create a new form of advanced computing that has drawn in some of the biggest US tech companies and become central to the struggle for tech leadership between the US and China. Microsoft’s claimed breakthrough follows years of research into a type of particle that comprises a fourth state of matter, distinct from solids, liquids and gases. In one sign of official US interest in the ambitious technology, Darpa, the US defence department agency charged with developing advanced technologies, this month selected Microsoft to try to demonstrate it could build a large-scale quantum computer.

Article Source: FT

5. Trump Enlists Elon Musk to Push Boeing on Delayed Air Force One Jets

President Trump, furious about delays in delivering two new Air Force One jets, has empowered Elon Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster, including relaxing security clearance standards for some who work on the presidential planes. His administration has even discussed whether a luxury jet could be acquired and refitted during the wait, according to five people with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe closely held deliberations. Mr. Musk, whom Mr. Trump has tapped to slash the federal government, has been central to the discussions — consulting with the military, the White House and Boeing, the people said. Mr. Trump regards Boeing as almost a lost cause, according to people close to him. He often laments how far the company has fallen, wondering aloud what happened to the jet maker and why it seems incapable of building things anymore.

Article Source: NYT

Covalent

A quick plug: Two friends from grad school haven’t given up on Boeing, and are working hard to better train their workforce through a new deal with Boeing. They co-founded Covalent, which: 

Covalent is the global leader in Workforce Operations solutions for complex discrete manufacturing. The company enables hundreds of critical factories and repair shops to systematically administer and optimize workforce planning, development, and deployment for tens of thousands of workers worldwide – empowering Manufacturing and Quality leaders to make credible decisions that improve production performance. Covalent customers include multiple jet engine manufacturers, Mercury Marine, Polaris, MasterCraft, and Great Dane  

Read more here on this very interesting company. AI is going to upend the traditional high school-college-work education pipeline and we’re going to need new ways to retrain workers mid-career. 

Article Source: AP

February 20, 1962: John Glenn becomes first American to orbit Earth

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Sources

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/trump-pentagon-budget-cuts/?location=alert

2. https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-cars-semiconductors-drugs-89ace6a0?mod=hp_lead_pos2

3. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-fentanyl-trade-network-9685fde2?mod=hp_lead_pos5

4. https://www.ft.com/content/a60f44f5-81ca-4e66-8193-64c956b09820

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/trump-musk-air-force-one-boeing.html?campaign_id=7&emc=edit_mbae_20250219&instance_id=147950&nl=morning-briefing:-asia-pacific-edition&regi_id=61468173&segment_id=191423&user_id=02b32d846497687a8f0c061d7ffd16b1

6. https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-newswire/boeing-selects-covalent-to-provide-streamlined-and-optimized-structured-on-the-job-training-and-resource-management-c81e7923d1d537d29be72382d288411c#