On Our "Virtual Route 66" Around the World This Week

 As a new week dawns, our team pulled together the following courtesy the team at the Information , Politico and Defense One: 

THE BIG READ ELECTRIC VEHICLES Pete Buttigieg Has Become America’s Electric Car Czar. So Why Has He Never Met Elon Musk? By Nancy Scola Pete Buttigieg is thrilled to talk about how electric cars will transform the American transportation landscape. He’s much less attached to the idea of meeting the CEO of the country’s biggest electric-car company. “We were supposed to get together, actually, at South by Southwest,” said Buttigieg when asked if he’s ever spoken one-on-one with Elon Musk. “I don’t think it worked on the schedule.” Buttigieg, onetime Indiana mayor and presidential aspirant, is now the 19th U.S. secretary of transportation. Musk is the single most dominant player in electric vehicles—that tiny sliver of the automotive market both President Joe Biden and Congress have charged Buttigieg with making exponentially bigger. And yet the nation’s electric car czar and its biggest maker of electric cars have never even had a phone conversation.    READ THE FULL STORY     This latest trailer from the “Top Gun: Maverick” team shows you the grueling training the actors went through to prepare for their role as F/A-18 Super Hornet “pilots.” The production worked with real U.S. Navy pilots and Top Gun school instructors to give the audience the most authentic experience possible. One of the most proven, versatile and affordable fighter jets used by the U.S. Navy and our allies, the Super Hornet has a reputation of being the Navy’s only strike fighter that lets it dominate both the skies and land, and has surpassed more than 10 million flight hours. Due to a shift in the market landscape, the technology industry is experiencing diminishing growth and declining revenues. The downturn is characterized by instability in e-commerce, digital advertising, electric cars, ride-hailing, and other sectors. Rising inflation, demands for higher worker wages, logistic issues, and reduced spending power are contributing factors, with many companies laying off employees to curb losses. More: The technology sector is reeling from pandemic-induced growth, as customers' reliance on technology has decreased following the relaxation of pandemic restrictions in many parts of the world. The S&P 500 is down over 13% this year, with shares of Netflix, Meta Platforms, and Amazon plunging by over 30%.  Some shareholders are questioning whether tech stocks were unrealistically valued over the past two years, when the industry grew at a tremendous scale — with Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft collectively reporting $1.1T in sales in 2020 — despite the onset of the pandemic and low-interest rates.  Zoom Out: This year Amazon reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth in two decades, Meta announced it would halt or slow hiring, Netflix lost $54B in market value on account of losing subscribers, and Apple estimated $8B of lost sales this quarter due to the current COVID-19 restrictions imposed in China.  Despite the overall downturn, cloud computing still remains a highly profitable and high-growth segment, especially for Amazon and Microsoft.  Investors are trying to determine if the slowdown is temporary or indicative of a market contraction.   VCs Brace for Crypto Winter as They Weigh Whether to Dial Back By Kate Clark This week’s crypto collapse has obliterated $400 billion in market value from cryptocurrencies including heavyweights bitcoin and ethereum. Now venture capitalists who have rushed into the sector have to grapple with a key question: Are they in or out?    READ THE FULL STORY     Bundles of yuan sit on a table | Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images Imagine a future flashpoint with China — perhaps a conflict over Taiwan — where Beijing is able to escape the pain of one of the most severe sanctions the West could levy: being blocked from the global SWIFT payments system. China is building the infrastructure to do just that with a blockchain backbone for its central bank digital currency, the digital yuan. Were the digital yuan to be widely adopted Chinese organizations could transact around the world without touching the U.S. monetary system. In Thursday’s Digital Future Daily, we asked if Bitcoin and other private cryptocurrencies could be put to authoritarian ends. How might authoritarian governments use central bank digital currencies to accumulate global power? China is years ahead of the US in its thinking. When President Joe Biden issued a March executive order —“Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets” — that created a series of 2022 deadlines for government agencies to assess the risks, opportunities and national security implications of creating a central bank digital currency, he was playing catchup. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) — the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — worries about the head start the digital yuan has on any digital dollar that the Fed may eventually issue. He argues that the U.S., the SWIFT consortium and the central banks that oversee it need to plan for China's long-term challenge. “It’s a bit too early to talk about a post-SWIFT world — it does millions of transactions per day,” McCaul said, but added “SWIFT needs to be thinking about evolving to match new technologies, and because China is thinking about the post-SWIFT world.” The People's Bank of China says that as of January, 261 million Chinese citizens — one in five — have set up digital yuan wallets, which are available for download on Chinese mobile app stores. In the U.S., meanwhile, many key players are unconvinced that a digital dollar is needed to supplement today’s reasonably efficient payments system. By Patrick Tucker Time, effort, and materiel are being wasted for lack of a little expertise, say two U.S. volunteers recently returned from the war-torn country. Raytheon Technologies Invests in Hypersonic Aircraft Startup Hermeus By Marcus Weisgerber It's the first investment by the aerospace and defense giant's new venture arm. Lockheed Secretly Worked to Block Airbus' Influence in Washington—While Teaming on Major Pentagon Bid By Marcus Weisgerber Internal email reveals U.S. company's pressure to deny Europeans' application to powerful trade group. Pentagon Seeks to Update U.S. Weapons Stocks Depleted by Ukraine Donations By Marcus Weisgerber and Tara Copp Defense Department's top acquisitions exec says Ukraine war is changing the way the U.S. thinks about stockpiles. Russia has Fired Between '10 and 12' Hypersonics into Ukraine, Pentagon Says By Tara Copp The invading force have "blown through" its stockpile of precision guided munitions. Navy Leaders Defend Plan To Cut the Fleet Amid GOP Criticism By Jacqueline Feldscher "We think at this point we're throwing good money after bad," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told the House Armed Services Committee. We Need More Amphibs, and We Need to Buy Them Smarter By David Forster Buying amphibious warships one at a time has left us with too few, and little prospect of closing the gap. Marine Corps Wants Loitering Munitions for its Infantry Units By Caitlin M. Kenney Commandant highlighted the weapons' unpredictability and psychological effects on the enemy at Marine expo.