The Pentagon just unveiled a new platform it calls Pathfinder.
No, it’s not a new robotic weapons system… or a new high-tech tank… or even an innovative mapping system.
Instead, this is a program that addresses the Pentagon as a huge bureaucracy, instead of as a fighting force.
Pathfinder is a new program to migrate tons of data, some of it quite sensitive, to the cloud. And the U.S. Department of Defense is contracting with cloud leader Amazon Web Services in a deal that could eventually be worth billions to make it happen.
As you might imagine in this era of cyberattacks, not everyone in Washington is on board with the massive data migration.
They worry that the Pentagon is exposing itself to hackers who may come from China, North Korea, or Russia. After all, black-hat teams tied to those three nations attempt to penetrate our military networks on an almost hourly basis.
Here’s the thing. There’s a relatively new approach out there that offers far more security, not to mention a permanent record of every single transaction involving a military budget totaling more than $750 billion.
It’s a system I call the Milblock.
In a moment, I’ll explain just what I’m talking about.
My childhood family dinner conversations were a bit different than most folks’.
Sure, we talked about school, sports, neighborhood gossip, movies – normal stuff. But we also talked about military contractors, weapons systems, and defense budgets.
That’s because my father was the award-winning senior military editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, the bible of that industry. And that gave me a front-row seat for the military de-escalations and escalations of the 1970s and 1980s.
Therefore, when last year President Donald Trump called for raising the fiscal 2018 defense budget by 10%, I took notice.
Without doing the math – thanks to those long-ago family dinners – I knew immediately that this would represent the biggest defense budget increase since the Ronald Reagan years.
But that’s just trivia. Here’s the “meat”…
President Trump wants more airplanes, tanks, and troops as well as technology for missile defense and a wide range of other platforms. And that means 2018 is stacking up to be the best year for the defense industry – and its investors – since 1981.
That gives us a target-rich profit opportunity for this New Year.
That’s because, even beyond President Trump’s historic budget increase, I see multiple catalysts – “triggers” – that will power the defense industry to continued new highs.
So today, let’s look at those 2018 defense catalysts.
On Aug. 30, off the coast of Hawaii, sailors aboard the USS John Paul Jones tracked, intercepted, and shot down a medium-range ballistic missile.
It was a milestone in our nation’s defense system.
Doing so put North Korea and Kim Jong-un on notice that we can shoot down their missiles before those missiles reach the U.S. mainland or one of our Asian-Pacific allies.
And it’s about time.
North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs have developed much, much faster than the Pentagon predicted. And that has created a threat that has jump-started our need for advanced missile defense technologies – and spending on them.
Indeed, missile defense technology is so critical to the United States right now that it was a big driver behind Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC)’s just announced plan to acquire Orbital ATK Inc. (NSE: OA) for $9.2 billion.
Orbital specializes in the missile defense technology that we so badly need right now.
And so the deal reaffirms our belief that Northrop is the best of the Big Defense plays out there. Northrop has soared nearly 46% since our first recommendation in April 2016 – including a 10% gain since the Sept. 17 announcement of the Orbital deal.
Today I want to go in-depth on why that Orbital deal reinforces our “case” for Northrop.
And I want to show you how you can take a ride on all the defense industry M&A deals we’ll be seeing over the next few years.
This single investment gained just 1.75% in 2015 – but 19% in 2016.
President Donald Trump has been searching for a way to punish China for its wildly unfair trade practices.
And he may have just found something in… solar panels. One week ago, a federal trade panel declared that Chinese imports of solar panels are hurting American manufacturers.
Ever since, you can bet that the White House has been mulling tariffs.
That’s because, instead of investing in Chinese importers, we’re focusing on internal growth in the world’s most populous nation – especially all those people’s quickening migration to the web.
Back in August we took a close look at the Emerging Markets Internet & Ecommerce ETF (NYSE Arca: EMQQ) as a bunker against tariffs.
And today I’ve got another one.
It’s great play on a $47 trillion Chinese tech market.
This market represents one of the fastest-growing global tech trends on Earth, according to new data from iResearch. This segment barely existed a decade ago but will grow by 422% between 2016 and 2020.
So let’s look at that data – and at a way to get in on this trend with a stock that’s already beaten the market by ninefold so far this year.
But maybe you’re still concerned about the wisdom of investing in a nation that President Trump has in his economic crosshairs.
We’ve talked about some truly revolutionary tech developments rocking the entire defense sector right now, like laser weapons, advanced drones, helicopters, battlefield AI, and global awareness.
It all sounds very sci-fi, but it’s happening now (and making us some serious money).
I want to talk about something a little less flashy but perhaps even more important to keeping our armed forces effective when boots are on the ground.
It’s not headline-grabbing, and you certainly couldn’t call it “state of the art.” In fact, at less than $5 billion, it’s a relatively small, overlooked niche in one of the world’s most lucrative, high-profile sectors.
That’s just one of the reasons why I love it right now.
Defense stocks are one of the smartest buys of the Trump White House era, given his stated commitment to boosting defense spending by $54 billion.
As we’ve seen, drones and autonomous vehicles are two high-profit ways to play the growth energizing this $1.7 trillion sector.
But the big play – the really disruptive, transformative 21st-century technology – is military lasers.
We’re talking “ray guns” here.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s a reality. Laser weapons are here now, and, perhaps as soon as next year, they’ll change the way the U.S. military fights conflicts all over the world.
My father was a defense analyst, and so the conversation could get pretty intense around the dinner table.
Usually, I could follow along, but when he started talking about the “credibility gap,” I got a bit lost.
Having been raised on the folklore surrounding George Washington, I just couldn’t believe that a president would ever lie. And so when my father said Lyndon B. Johnson had a “credibility gap” when it came to what he was saying about the Vietnam War, it just didn’t compute.
(Did I mention I was only 10 or so at this time?)
Presidents, of course, aren’t the only ones who can end up with credibility problems.
We took a look at a tech company with a huge credibility gap back on Jan. 10
We saw how they were always making excuses rather than money. And I told you to avoid any hype you heard regarding a “turnaround” in the making.
Turns out, my prediction was dead on the money. Since then, this company has been hit by wave after wave of bad news.
Investors who ignored my warning paid dearly for doing so. This once-proud company’s stock has fallen by roughly 24% since.
Today, I’ll show you exactly what went wrong – and why avoiding losers is so important.
In fact, if you want to make enough wealth to provide for a secure retirement, it’s absolutely crucial
Virtually every polling organization got it dead wrong. The vaunted Clinton Machine seemed to do everything wrong. I’m not even sure Donald Trump himself believed he was going to win.
Whatever happened, we ended up with the biggest election upset in modern U.S. history
But as interesting as that may be… I don’t care.
You see, I’m not a political analyst. My job is not to play favorites or analyze voting patterns.
I’m here to do one thing – put the very best Singularity Plays squarely in front of you.
We’re likely to see U.S. and global markets reel through at least some instability for the next week or so – in fact, we already saw some Tuesday night. Wall Street hates uncertainty, and that’s precisely what we seemto have now.
But I’m certain about one thing. This instability is masking a huge new opportunity in the “How We Survive” window of the Singularity Matrix.
It’s an opportunity that didn’t even exist before Election Day.
There’s a sentiment among warfighters going all the way back to Sun Tzu’s time that goes something like this…
“Amateurs talk weapons and tactics, but pros talk logistics.”
Logistics are what make it possible to actually go somewhere and fight to achieve an objective. And they are hands down the most difficult, costly component of fighting. For each fighting soldier on the field, you need dozens of support personnel in the rear accomplishing hundreds of tasks.
So for thousands of years, generals and military chiefs have always sought ways to make logistics easier, safer, and less expensive.
Well, they would have loved to get their hands on the disruptive technology I’m about to show you. I think it will likely change the way this country fights its wars – forever.
And right now, the company that makes it is “on sale.” It’s been beaten down about 4.5% over the past seven days, giving us a beautiful opportunity to add some more shares and keep our costs down.
These prices won’t last long, though, once Wall Street gets wind of what’s coming through.
All eyes last night were on the U.S. presidential debate, the first of three before Election Day.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off for 90 minutes – and some of it was entertaining… a bit of it even enlightening.
But to me, if felt like a big waste of time…
Sure, the two candidates covered international trade, terrorism, crime, “birtherism,” immigration, and – of course – Clinton’s email server.
But when it came to the economy – the engine driving the United States – all I saw or heard was a big black hole of nothing.
Sure, Trump hearkened back the 1970s – or maybe even the 1950s – and called for the return of a robust manufacturing economy (not going to happen). And I’m sure Clinton whispered something about “green jobs”… but I fell asleep there.
Where was the talk about technology – Silicon Valley’s role in the economy, the threat of artificial intelligence, online privacy and surveillance?
Besides some grandpa and grandma-just-got-a-computer-level paranoia about cybersecurity, we got nothing.
While I’m not one for endorsements – my job here is to show you how to profit on the markets, the news, the major trends – there was a candidate I wish was on the stage last night.
She could have led the conversation in a much more interesting direction…
As you might imagine in this era of cyberattacks, not everyone in Washington is on board with the massive data migration. 
Doing so put North Korea and Kim Jong-un on notice that we can shoot down their missiles before those missiles reach the U.S. mainland or one of our Asian-Pacific allies. 
But the big play – the really disruptive, transformative 21st-century technology – is military lasers.
So for thousands of years, generals and military chiefs have always sought ways to make logistics easier, safer, and less expensive.