Moving into tomorrow, preparing for yesterday

"For our society to survive, to thrive, we need a reclama. We need to make a 180 degree turn around in our thinking and doing. The world is changing faster than you can say "evil empire". The bad guys are in it to win it, and we better get our poop in a group - and fast! They want to beat us economically and militarily."

Did you hear the economic news? Once again, the jobs estimate exceeded the expectations. That is the good news. By the way, month after month, about 20% to 25% of those jobs created are government jobs. What is the bad news? Once again, we are training for yesterday - not tomorrow. And it is not just in civilian jobs - the Navy is guilty of it also.

I watched a YouTube when we got home yesterday. It had Elon Musk talking about AI. He has the right to talk about this, as some of his businesses are involved in it. His words - "I have never seen an industry evolve so fast, as AI is". And by the way - Musk is not the only one saying this. All of the new techno Captains of Industry are saying similar things. What does all this mean?

Quite simply this. Many of the jobs being created today are temp jobs. They will soon go away, replaced by some kind of automated robot, loaded with AI. This is not hyperbole or exaggeration - this is fact. And what is our broken education system doing to prep our young folks? Nada. We are training (or trying to) educate them for yesterday's world. In other words, we are training them for failure.

Another thing Musk said which was of interest, is about self-driving cars. According to Musk (and I will paraphrase), we are within inches of achieving them. Trucks will be first, and then passenger cars. It will not matter if they are ICE powered, fuel cell, or EV - many cars this decade will be self-driving. And who is going to make most of these new cars? If you guessed robotics loaded with AI, you win the prize.

Before I close, I need to say one word about our Navy. They are the poster child for preparing for yesterday. The backbone of our Navy is our super carriers. When deployed, they are in a strike force which are made up of some ships which are VLS/AEGIS capable. Great solution for the 1980's.

Here is the problem. The ships which protect our super carriers (the Destroyers and Cruisers which are VLS/AEGIS capable), have a fantastic array of missiles. They are accurate and deadly. But they are finite. Their missiles cannot be replenished at sea. So, in a fight with a bad guy, where the incoming threat is a swarm and and/or continuous, once the missiles are fully deployed, these magnificent ships are as vulnerable as an unarmed man in a gunfight. Therefore - so are our super carriers.

For our society to survive, to thrive, we need a reclama. We need to make a 180 degree turn around in our thinking and doing. The world is changing faster than you can say "evil empire". The bad guys are in it to win it, and we better get our poop in a group - and fast! They want to beat us economically and militarily. We need to think smart, out of the box, and quickly. Otherwise, we will be on the outside looking in - and soon. 

What am I really saying on a grass roots level? Forget the jobs report every month. It is meaningless. What matters is training our people for jobs which are just now being developed. Where do we start? Teaching our young people how to read. Teaching them basic math skills. Seems we have an issue with that right now. Remember this in November - if we can wait that long.