Watch this great video as John Petersen talks about his upcoming presentation.
An Afternoon With Futurist John Petersen
If ever you needed help in getting ready for the extraordinary future that is inbound – it would be now.
In the face of the biggest global change in recorded history the landscape is littered with big questions and growing uncertainty. The reason is obvious: none of us has ever experienced before what is headed this way.
The whole system is imploding. For the first time in our lives, here in the US we’re surrounded by institutions who are not telling the truth. Why would that be? What happened? There’s a bigger agenda here that is not obvious . . . and you should be aware of it.
We all need to prepare. And the best way to prepare is to become informed. TransitionTalks are a great way to get exposed to the new ideas that will be the underpinnings of the emergent new world.
Our TransitionTalk on the 18th of March will feature our own futurist, The Arlington Institute’s founder and president John Petersen. John is often called one of the most creative and insightful futurists in the world today. Almost every day, almost all day, he thinks and reads about the big change we are experiencing. He builds scenarios – coherent visions – of what might be on the horizon. He tries to understand what is driving the change – and who is behind it . . . and what the implications for all of us might be.
John may be the only futurist who tries to look at everything – both conventional and unconventional, physical and nonphysical. He considers the whole system (as best it can be understood) and is open to the subtle flashes of light that signal a breakthrough idea that could be a part of the structure of the emerging new world.
John’s talks are always provocative and interesting. In addition to presenting new and thoughtful ideas about what appears to be headed this way, the afternoon will be dedicated to answering questions from both the live and online audience, so bring along the queries that you have and we’ll have a fascinating, open and free ranging discussion about the most important issues confronting us all.
John L. Petersen is considered by many to be one of the most informed futurists in the world. He is best-known for writing and thinking about high impact surprises (wild cards) and the process of surprise anticipation. His current professional involvements include the development of sophisticated tools for anticipatory analysis and surprise anticipation, long-range strategic planning and helping leadership design new approaches for dealing with the future.
He has led national non-profit organizations, worked in sales, manufacturing, real estate development, and marketing and advertising, mostly for companies he founded. A graduate electrical engineer, he has also promoted rock concerts; produced conventions; and worked as a disc jockey, among other things.
Mr. Petersen’s government and political experience include stints at the National War College, the Institute for National Security Studies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council staff at the White House. He was a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserve and is a decorated veteran of both the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. He has served in senior positions for a number of presidential political campaigns and was an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1984. He was twice the runner-up to be Secretary of the Navy.
In 1989, Petersen founded The Arlington Institute (TAI), a non-profit, future-oriented research institute. TAI operates on the premise that effective thinking about the future is impossible without casting a very wide net. The “think tank” serves as a global agent for change by developing new concepts, processes and tools for anticipating the future and translating that knowledge into better present-day decisions. Using advanced information technology, a core group of bright thinkers and an international network of exceptionally curious people along with simulations, modeling, scenario building, polling and analysis, Arlington helps equip leaders and organizations from many disciplines with tools and actionable perspectives for dealing with uncertain times.
An award-winning writer, Petersen’s first book, The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future was awarded Outstanding Academic Book of 1995 by CHOICE Academic Review, and remained on The World Future Society’s best-seller list for more than a year. His Out of the Blue: How to Anticipate Wild Cards and Big Future Surprises book was also a WFS best-seller. His latest book, A Vision For 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change, was published in 2007. Mr. Petersen’s coauthored article, The Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?, was one of the most highly acclaimed writings on Y2K. His 1988 book-length report The Diffusion of Power: An Era of Realignment was used at the highest levels of American government as a basis for strategic planning. He has also written papers on the future of national security and the military, the future of energy and the future of the media.
Petersen is a past board member of the World Future Society, wrote on the future of aviation for Professional Pilot magazine and was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation. He is a former network member of the Global Business Network and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. A provocative public speaker, he addresses a wide array of audiences around the world on a variety of future oriented subjects. When he is not writing or speaking, Petersen invests in and develops resources for large, international projects and advanced technology start-up companies. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.
The Pentagon and the National Security Agency ran the entire pandemic response. “Pfizer and Moderna don’t really own those vaxxines. They slap their labels on ’em but it was a Pentagon project.” The Pentagon’s Operation Warp Speed was able to completely circumvent Federal Health Regulations by using what’s called in bureaucratic-speak, an “Other Transaction Authority”, which they used to contract with the bioweapons manufacturers to literally produce the bioweapon. This was discovered in Pfizer’s motion to dismiss Brook Jackson’s case, when they attached another contract called an Other Transaction Authority – OTA contract – saying in effect, they had no obligation to conduct valid clinical trials because the only goods and services they were providing to the US government, according to this contract are a “large scale manufacturing demonstration for a prototype”.Under the terms of the OTA, Pfizer may have had no obligation to conduct a valid clinical trial or to be in compliance with any of the regulations that govern clinical trials. In other words, OTA did for the financial contracting side, what the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) did to the drug regulation side. In short, the fake “clinical trials” were a PSYOP to convince people to get the injections.
The first comprehensive study of prisoner deaths during the Covid era shows that deaths in federal and state prisons rose nearly 50% during the first year of the pandemic, and in six states, they more than doubled. The New York Times reports that deaths in America’s prisons during 2020 even exceeded deaths in nursing homes, which were among the hardest hit sectors across the country. The Times found that it was not just the fact that Covid swept through already overcrowded prisons. It was also that prisoners are routinely subjected to substandard medical care. That, coupled with crowded facilities and an aging inmate population combined to make the worst public health crisis in American prisons since the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic. The states with the highest death rates were the states with the worst prison conditions, the worst medical care, and the longest sentences: Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina and West Virginia. In all of those states deaths in 2020 were up more than 100% over the previous year.
A companion study of American prisons is showing that the prison population nationwide is aging significantly. Due primarily to tough sentencing laws during the 1980s and 1990s, Americans are incarcerated for longer and longer periods. In 2009, about 10% of all prisoners were 50 or older. By 2019, that portion had jumped to 21%. According to the Department of Justice, prisoners are considered to be “elderly” by the time they reach 50. Their lifespans are shortened by their years in prison, and, in many cases by drug abuse, poverty and a lack of appropriate medical care. High rates of depression, obesity and suicide make the situation even worse. For example, of the 46 prisoners who died in West Virginia in 2020, 42 were older than 50. In Michigan, which has the oldest prison population in the country, 90% of the 248 prisoners who died in 2020 were older than 50.
A new Ford patent describes a variety of futuristic ways that Ford vehicle systems could be controlled by a financial institution in order to aid in the repossession of a car. Of the innovations described in the patent, titled “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle,” perhaps the most striking is about self-driving cars. A financial institution or repossession agency could “cooperate with the vehicle computer to autonomously move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a location such as, for example, the premises of the repossession agency” or “the premises of the lending institution,” the patent states. The process could be entirely automated. The car could also call the police, the patent suggests – or, if the lender determines the car is not worth the cost of repossession, the self-driving car could drive itself to a junkyard. Semi-autonomous vehicles that aren’t up to the challenge of driving long distances could instead move themselves a short ways – from private property (“a garage or a driveway, for example,” the patent suggests) to a nearby spot “that is more convenient for a tow truck.”
Among the various ideas described in the patent is a gradual disabling of a smart car’s features. Lenders could start by switching off “optional” features of the car – like cruise control or the media player – in an effort to cause “a certain level of discomfort” to the car’s driver. If the owner remains behind on payments, the lender could progress to disabling the air conditioner, or use the audio system to play “an incessant and unpleasant sound every time the owner is present in the vehicle.” As a last resort, a lender could disable “the engine, the brake, the accelerator, the steering wheel, the doors, and the lights of the vehicle,” the patent suggests, or simply lock the doors. Ford told NPR that it has no intention of implementing the ideas in the patent, which is one among hundreds of pending Ford patents published this year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (Editor’s note: In other words, any self-driving or semi-autonomous vehicle can be commandeered or disabled by any entity with the necessary internet access to do so. And even if you technically own the vehicle outright, you won’t own its software; instead you will have a license to use it. Theoretically the software could at some point be declared “obsolete”, receive no further updates, and eventually be disabled. The software will be able to force you to buy a new car.)
A new study has found that natural selection may have played a role before life itself even existed on Earth. By recreating the primordial soup, scientists identified how a cocktail of specific amino acids informed the genetic code of every single lifeform on the planet. Although there are hundreds of different amino acids in nature, a core set of 20 can be found in every living organism, from E. coli to elephants. That’s because everything can be traced back through a complex tree of life to a single common ancestor that existed billions of years ago. But what’s so special about these 20 specific amino acids? Finding out was the goal of a new study co-led by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Charles University.
The team recreated the conditions of early Earth in the lab, including a mix of amino acids that were very common before life ever appeared. Some of these are believed to have been produced when UV light from the Sun interacted with gases in the atmosphere of the time, while others arrived aboard meteorites that impacted the planet more often than they do now. In their experiments, the team observed a kind of natural selection process taking place, even in the absence of life. Ancient organic compounds tended to integrate into their biochemistry the amino acids that were best suited for folding proteins into shapes key to vital functions, which gave these compounds a better chance at surviving. Give it enough time and there were simply more organic compounds with properties favorable to life. “Protein folding was basically allowing us to do evolution before there was even life on our planet,” said Stephen Fried, co-lead author of the study. “You could have evolution before you had biology, you could have natural selection for the chemicals that are useful for life even before there was DNA.”
Warmer temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region’s permafrost — a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground — and potentially stirring viruses that, after lying dormant for tens of thousands of years, could endanger animal and human health. To better understand the risks posed by frozen viruses, Jean-Michel Claverie, an Emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in Marseille, France, has tested earth samples taken from Siberian permafrost to see whether any viral particles contained therein are still infectious. His efforts to detect viruses frozen in permafrost were partly inspired by a team of Russian scientists who in 2012 revived a wildflower from a 30,000-year-old seed tissue found in a squirrel’s burrow. Since then, scientists have also successfully brought ancient microscopic animals back to life.
In 2014, Claverie managed to revive a virus he and his team isolated from the permafrost, making it infectious for the first time in 30,000 years by inserting it into cultured cells. For safety, he’d chosen to study a virus that could only target single-celled amoebas, not animals or humans. He repeated the feat in 2015, isolating a different virus type that also targeted amoebas. In his latest research, published in the journal Viruses, Claverie and his team isolated several strains of ancient virus from multiple samples of permafrost taken from seven different places across Siberia and showed they could each infect cultured amoeba cells. Those latest strains represent five new families of viruses, on top of the two he had revived previously. The oldest was almost 48,500 years old, based on radiocarbon dating of the soil. That amoeba-infecting viruses are still infectious after so long is indicative of a potentially bigger problem, Claverie said. He fears people regard his research as a scientific curiosity and don’t perceive the prospect of ancient viruses coming back to life as a potential serious public health threat.
Many people worldwide are concerned about climate change and believe there is a climate emergency. For decades we have been told by the United Nations that Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity are causing disastrous climate change. In 2018, a UN IPCC report even warned that ‘we have 12 years to save the Earth’, thus sending millions of people worldwide into a frenzy. However, many scientists dispute with the UN-promoted man-made climate change theory, and many people worldwide are confused by the subject, or are unaware of the full facts. This article provides some information you may not be aware of. The reality is that the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle, and solar activity is the dominant factor in climate and not Co2. We can conclude that carbon emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows, are not the dominant factors in climate change. In essence, therefore, the incessant UN, government, and corporate-media-produced climate hysteria in relation to carbon emissions and methane from cows has no scientific basis.
Please note that I (author of this article) have no commercial interest in stating that climate change is not caused by CO2. In truth I am against ‘real’ pollution, and the reality is that the CO2 component is not a pollutant. Unfortunately, many misinformed environmentalists are driving around in electric cars, the battery production for which has caused vast amounts of ‘real’ pollution via the industrial mining and processing of rare earth metals, and the consequent pollution to land, air and water systems. Note that the UN does not focus on the thousands of real pollutants that corporate industrial globalization creates.
A newly created map reveals the “wildest” places on Earth—places where humans have the lowest impact. The findings could be used to support the push to set aside half of Earth for nature, its authors say. The map uses four different metrics to maximize accuracy. All of the maps, described in article, agreed that about half of Earth shows “low” human impact, and about half of that—a quarter of the ice-free surface of the planet—could be described as “very low” human impact. Perhaps unsurprisingly, deserts, boreal forests, montane grasslands, and tundra all have the least human impact. “More concerning,” the paper’s authors write, “less than 1% of temperate grasslands, tropical coniferous forests, and tropical dry forests have very low human influence…Tropical grasslands, mangroves, and montane grasslands also have less than 1% of land identified as very low influence.”
Lead author Jason Riggio, a spatial ecologist at the University of California, Davis, hopes the map can bolster the case for making the goal of protecting half the planet by 2050. But which half to save? While preserving largely untouched “wilderness” is an important goal for many, it isn’t always where the most plant and animal species are. Maria Dornelas, an ecologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and her colleagues recently made their own global map – this one looks at threats to plant and animal species, from climate change to deforestation to pollution. Their map looks quite different, with hotspots of threats in India, Northern Europe, and the East China Sea. It highlights the fact that without protection or restoration, species and ecosystems in areas with high human impact may be more likely to disappear. In the end, no map can tell humanity what we should protect. Should we focus on low-impact areas to preserve “wild” places, or on high-impact areas where threats to species are most urgent?
Nations have reached a historic agreement to protect the world’s oceans following 10 years of negotiations. The High Seas Treaty aims to place 30% of the seas into protected areas by 2030, to safeguard and recuperate marine nature. The agreement was reached after 38 hours of talks, at UN headquarters in New York. The negotiations had been held up for years over disagreements on funding and fishing rights. Minna Epps, director of the IUCN Ocean team, said the current main issue was over the sharing of marine genetic resources. Marine genetic resources are biological material from plants and animals in the ocean that can have benefits for society, such as pharmaceuticals, industrial processes and food. Richer nations currently have the resources and funding to explore the deep ocean but poorer nations wanted to ensure any benefits they find are shared equally.
The last international agreement on ocean protection, signed in 1982, established an area called the high seas – international waters where all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research – but only 1.2% of these waters were protected. Marine life living outside of these protected areas has been at risk from climate change, overfishing and shipping traffic. These new protected areas, established in the treaty, will put limits on how much fishing can take place, the routes of shipping lanes and exploration activities like deep sea mining – when minerals are taken from a sea bed 200m or more below the surface. Environmental groups have been concerned that mining processes could disturb animal breeding grounds, create noise pollution and be toxic for marine life. The International Seabed Authority that oversees licensing said that moving forward “any future activity in the deep seabed will be subject to strict environmental regulations and oversight to ensure that they are carried out sustainably and responsibly”.
Seaweed has been having a moment. Eco-influencers and columnists rave about its benefits, in everything from beauty products to biofuels. But one type of seaweed is not a benign force. Vast fields of sargassum, a brown seaweed, have bloomed in the Atlantic Ocean. Fed by human activity such as intensive soya farming in the Congo, the Amazon and the Mississippi, which dumps nitrogen and phosphorus into the ocean, the sargassum explosion is by far the biggest seaweed bloom on the planet. The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, as it’s known, is visible from space, stretching like a sea monster across the ocean, with its nose in the Gulf of Mexico and its tail in the mouth of the Congo. It provides a safe harbor and breeding ground for fish, turtles and other marine life. Under the surface it teems with life, like an upside-down reef. What is alarming, is the rate at which it is growing. Oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam, who has run scientific research expeditions in the South Atlantic for 25 years, first noticed it in 2018. “One moment we were in the blue sea, then bam! It was all around the ship for tens, hundreds of meters.” Vast rafts arrive onshore without warning, smothering miles of coastline in golden seaweed, which piles up, sometimes meters high, turning brown and fetid as it rots.
Sargassum assaults harm coastal wildlife and fish, and interfere with vital infrastructure, including water and power supplies. In addition, the hydrogen sulphide released when it decays has been shown to cause a range of human health problems, from mild headaches or eye irritation to unconsciousness and worse, to an increased risk of serious pregnancy complications in women living on the coast. Clear from the data, it is growing inexorably. The basic problem is how to dispose of this contaminated biomass. The heavy metals it contains – particularly arsenic – make it dangerous to feed to plants. Composting, too, could allow the arsenic to leach into groundwater, then drinking water and the food chain, leading several Caribbean nations to ban sargassum composting. As for industrial uses, removing the heavy metals requires so much processing that it is not cost-effective. Sargassum’s ability to suck up carbon is behind what it probably the wildest and most ambitious plan to date: capture it using robots, bundle it up and sink it to the bottom of the sea. Research for solutions is ongoing, but so far no idea has stood out enough to attract investment: sargassum does not, yet, seem to have the capacity to make anyone rich. See also: A giant seaweed bloom that can be seen from space threatens beaches in Florida and Mexico.
Deep in the South Australian outback, there lies a town where some 50% of its people live underground. Intense summer heat—and winter cold—is what led most of its approximately 2,000 inhabitants to carve out a subterranean home. A curious sequence of events led to the birth of this otherworldly-looking place. It all started just over a century ago when in 1915, a band of three men were unsuccessfully prospecting for gold south of Coober Pedy. With them was 14-year-old Will Hutchinson, the son of one of the men. The teenager found a opal and, in fact, sparked the beginning of what would become the largest opal mining operation in the world—but first, the first settlers had to figure out how to survive there. In 1915, the first dugout was carved out of soft hillside rock. This underground dwelling would provide a respite from the blistering heat.
Fast forward to 2023, and those first primitive first dugouts have evolved to become sophisticated modern underground homes. Wonderfully temperate, the sandstone cave dwellings maintain a perfectly comfortable temperature year-round. There’s also an array of subterranean shops, restaurants, hotels—even a casino. The town’s Desert Cave Hotel calls itself “the only international rated underground hotel in the world.” Article includes many photos.
On a remote parcel in the Australian Outback, a consortium of energy companies led by BP plans to cover an expanse of land eight times as large as New York City with as many as 1,743 wind turbines, each nearly as tall as the Empire State Building, along with 10 million or so solar panels and more than a thousand miles of access roads to connect them all. But none of the 26 gigawatts of energy the site expects to produce, equivalent to a third of what Australia’s grid currently requires, will go toward public use. Instead, it will be used to manufacture a novel kind of industrial fuel: green hydrogen. This patch of desert, more than 100 miles from the nearest town, sits next to the biggest problem that green hydrogen could help solve: vast iron ore mines that are full of machines powered by immense amounts of fossil fuels. Three of the world’s four biggest ore miners operate dozens of mines here.
Green hydrogen is made by using renewable electricity to split water’s molecules. Currently most hydrogen is made by using natural gas, a fossil fuel. Because burning hydrogen emits only water vapor, green hydrogen avoids carbon dioxide emissions from beginning to end. In dozens of spots around the globe endowed with abundant wind and sun, investors see an opportunity to generate renewable electricity so cheaply that using it to make green hydrogen becomes economical. Even if only some of the projects come to fruition, vast stretches of land would be duly transformed. The project is one example of a global gamble, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, being made by investors including some of the most polluting industries in the world. For green hydrogen to have a substantial climate impact, its most essential use will be in steel making, a sprawling industry that produces nearly a tenth of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than all the world’s cars.
The BMW iX5 Hydrogen, which uses fuel cells sourced from Toyota. The car has a top speed of more than 112 miles per hour, is being put together at a facility in Munich. The car stores hydrogen in two tanks and can be filled up in three to four minutes. BMW says it has a range of 313 miles in the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure, or WLTP cycle. It will enter service in 2023, although the scale of the rollout is small, with a fleet of “under 100 vehicles” set to be “employed internationally for demonstration and trial purposes for various target groups.”
BMW is one of several automotive firms continuing to look into the potential of hydrogen. Others include Toyota and Hyundai, while smaller businesses such as Riversimple are also working on hydrogen-powered cars.
Cold temperatures rob electric vehicle batteries of traveling range. It’s a problem that some owners of electric passenger vehicles and transit officials are finding in cold climates worldwide. At 20 degrees F (minus 7 C), electric vehicles just don’t go as far as they do at the ideal 70 degrees. EVs can lose anywhere from 10% to 36% of their range as cold spells come at least a few times each winter in many U.S. states. Around three-quarters of this EV range loss is due to keeping occupants warm, but speed and even freeway driving are factors.
But there is hope. Scientists are racing to perfect new battery chemistries that don’t lose as much energy in cold weather as today’s lithium-ion systems. Also, cars equipped with efficient heat pumps don’t lose as much range in the cold. Heat pumps draw heat from the outside air even in cold temperatures, and have been around for decades, but only recently have been developed for automobiles, said Scott Case, CEO of Recurrent, a U.S. company that measures battery life in used EVs. “That is definitely what needs to be in all of these cars,” he said. Neil Dasgupta, associate professor of mechanical and materials science engineering at the University of Michigan they’re developing new battery designs that allow ions to flow faster or enable fast charging in the cold. There also are battery chemistries such as solid state that don’t use liquid electrolytes. He expects improvements to find their way from labs into vehicles in the next two to five years.
Lab-grown meat is coming. Lab-grown dairy has already arrived. Dozens of companies have sprouted up in recent months to develop milk proteins made by yeasts or fungi, including Perfect Day, the California-based dairy company that laid out this unusual spread. The companies’ products are already on store shelves in the form of yogurt, cheese and ice cream, often labeled “animal-free.” The burgeoning industry, which calls itself “precision fermentation,” has its own trade organization, and big-name food manufacturers such as Nestlé, Starbucks and General Mills have already signed on as customers. Precision dairy doesn’t have cholesterol, lactose, growth hormones or antibiotics (though those with dairy allergies should beware). Ryan Pandya, chief executive of Perfect Day, studied chemistry and bioengineering at Tufts. He developed a process called precision fermentation, similar to what has been used for decades to brew beer, make insulin for diabetic patients or produce rennet for cheese. “Rather than using 22nd-century technology to produce meat, we’re using 20th-century technology to produce milk protein,” he said. Beyond the fermentation process, making usable milk proteins is similar to that at regular cow dairies.
The world’s demand for dairy keeps going up, but not necessarily got liquid milk. As countries develop and have burgeoning middle classes, the demand for liquid milk drops and enthusiasm for cheese and other products skyrockets. Change Foods, a company with similar products, founded in 2020, is headquartered in both Australia and the United States, and is in the process of building a commercial manufacturing plant in Abu Dhabi that will produce the volume of animal-free milk protein casein equivalent to the output of 10,000 dairy cows. Like Perfect Day, it aims to be an ingredient company that supplies its milk protein to other established food companies, but it will launch its own branded cheese products in 2025. Will customers buy it? It is delicious? Most of the 28 precision dairy companies gearing up globally are selling their milk proteins as ingredients to other food companies, so the finished products are only as good as the food companies making them.
We live in the world of open source almost everything. In a video that has surfaced online, a pro-Kremlin group has detailed how an Abrams tank that the United States has pledged to Ukraine could be obliterated in combat. The Pro-Kremlin group that goes by the name ‘Rybar’ published a video on February 26 detailing the vulnerabilities of the Abrams tank, which is otherwise considered a ‘hard to kill’ war machine. The video, incidentally, comes over a month after the US announced it would arm Kyiv with about 31 units of M1A2 Abrams. The video gives details on the most difficult-to-penetrate and the most vulnerable spots of the tank and advises what weapons used in what ways would be most effective to destroy the vehicle.
For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence. Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS’s intelligence professionals have to say they’re conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they’re allowed to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts. The inner workings of the program — called the “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program” — are described in the large tranche of internal documents Politico reviewed from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). Those documents and additional interviews revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents also show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses.
One unnamed employee, quoted in an April 2021 document, said leadership of I&A’s Office of Regional Intelligence “is ‘shady’ and ‘runs like a corrupt government.’” Another document said some employees worried so much about the legality of their activities that they wanted their employer to cover legal liability insurance. Carrie Bachner, formerly the career senior legislative adviser to the DHS under secretary for intelligence, said the fact that the agency is directly questioning Americans as part of a domestic-intelligence program is deeply concerning, given the history of scandals related to past domestic-intelligence programs by the FBI. Bachner, who served as a DHS liaison with Capitol Hill from 2006 to 2010, said she told members of Congress “adamantly” — over and over and over again — that I&A didn’t collect intelligence in the U.S. POLITICO has reviewed an email, sent last August, saying that the portion of the program involving interviews with prisoners who had received their Miranda rights was “temporarily halted” because of internal concerns.
The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government’s ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance. The documents, revealed in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the FBI, show how closely FBI and Defense officials worked with academic researchers to refine artificial-intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent.
Many of the records relate to the Janus program, a project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA, the high-level research arm of the U.S. intelligence community modeled after the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA. Program leaders worked with FBI scientists and some of the nation’s leading computer-vision experts to design and test software that would quickly and accurately process the “truly unconstrained face imagery” recorded by surveillance cameras in public places, including subway stations and street corners, according to the documents, provided by the ACLU. In a 2019 presentation, an IARPA program manager said the goal had been to “dramatically improve” the power and performance of facial recognition systems, with “scaling to support millions of subjects” and the ability to quickly identify faces from partially obstructed angles. One version of the system was trained for “Face ID … at target distances” of more than a half-mile.
A major war in the Indo-Pacific is probably more likely now than at any other time since World War II. The most probable spark is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. President Xi Jinping of China has said unifying Taiwan with mainland China “must be achieved.” His Communist Party regime has become sufficiently strong — militarily, economically and industrially — to take Taiwan and directly challenge the United States for regional supremacy. The United States has vital strategic interests at stake. A successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would punch a hole in the U.S. and allied chain of defenses in the region, seriously undermining America’s strategic position in the Western Pacific, and would probably cut off U.S. access to world-leading semiconductors and other critical components manufactured in Taiwan. But leaders in Washington also need to avoid stumbling carelessly into a war with China because it would be unlike anything ever faced by Americans. U.S. citizens have grown accustomed to sending their military off to fight far from home. But China is a different kind of foe — a military, economic and technological power capable of making a war felt in the American homeland.
The military scenario alone is daunting: China would probably launch a lightning air, sea and cyber assault to seize control of key strategic targets on Taiwan within hours, before the United States and its allies could intervene. China also has more than 1,350 ballistic and cruise missiles poised to strike U.S. and allied forces in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and American-held territories in the Western Pacific. Over the past two decades, China has also built formidable political warfare and cyber warfare capabilities designed to penetrate, manipulate and disrupt the United States and allied governments, media organizations, businesses and civil society. If war were to break out, China can be expected to use this to disrupt communications and spread fake news and other disinformation. The aim would be to foster confusion, division and distrust and hinder decision making. China might compound this with electronic and probably some physical attacks on satellites or related infrastructure. These operations would most likely be accompanied by cyber offensives to disrupt electricity, gas, water, transport, health care and other public services. China could also weaponize its dominance of supply chains and shipping. The impact on Americans would be profound.
According to the independent think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute, (ASPI), the world’s second-largest economy is leading the US in researching 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies across the defense, space, energy, and biotechnology sectors — including research of advanced aircraft engines, drones, and electric batteries. The US State Department partly funded the study. The ASPI found that for a few fields, all of the world’s top 10 research institutions are in China, and they collectively generate nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country — which is the US in many cases. In particular, China has the edge in defense and space-related technologies, the ASPI said.
In the immediate term, the lead could allow China to “gain a stranglehold on the global supply of certain critical technologies.” In the longer run, China’s leading position could propel it to excel in almost all sectors, including technologies that don’t exist yet, per the ASPI. Unchecked, this could shift not just technological development and control but global power and influence to an authoritarian state where the development, testing and application of emerging, critical and military technologies isn’t open and transparent and where it can’t be scrutinized by independent civil society and media,” the think-tank said.
Romania’s prime minister has just unveiled a new colleague to his cabinet — a deep-voiced AI-powered “adviser” encased in a mirror which is being described as the world’s first AI-powered government aide. Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca claims the bot, which calls itself “Ion,” is capable of interpreting the opinions of the country’s population and conveying them back to him and his government, helping them choose how to make decisions. “Ion will do, through artificial intelligence, what no human can: listen to all Romanians and represent them before the government of Romania,” Ciuca said. Officials say the bot will help ministers formulate policies that are more in touch with voters’ everyday concerns, and will one day even be able to propose its own original ideas. According to Romania’s minister of research, the bot uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automatically identify the opinions of Romanians that have been shared on social media or submitted to a newly established portal. The machine synthesizes their thoughts into categories, prioritizes their importance and delivers the information back to government decision-makers.
“Ion is the first AI governmental adviser — we think — in the world,” said Sebastian Burduja, Romania’s minister of research. The bot, which was developed by his ministry, is in its “learning phase,” he said, inviting Romanians to teach it about their everyday concerns by posting about them on social media. “Ion will take all that information and will start to report results,” said Burduja, “which will be meant for the prime minister and designated members of the cabinet.” The government believes that the tool — which will automatically trawl through social media to collect opinions — will allow it to make decisions more efficiently. Others are more skeptical, raising ethical concerns that the algorithm, which identifies which concerns on social media should be prioritized for decision-making, could itself be biased — resulting in biased decision-making. Eventually, Ion’s engineers hope to teach it to proactively formulate policy proposals for government ministers to consider, a prospect that adds fuel to an emerging debate over the role of artificial intelligence in everyday life — and in democratic processes in particular. (Editor’s note: How long will it take to intentionally bias this AI by “loading” the social media that it uses?)
A year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war has spurred a global effort to produce more missiles, tanks, artillery shells and other munitions. And few countries have moved as quickly as South Korea to increase output. Last year, South Korea’s arms exports rose 140% to a record $17.3 billion, including deals worth $12.4 billion to sell ?tanks, ?howitzers, ?fighter jets and multiple rocket launchers to Poland, one of Ukraine’s closest allies. The contracts for Poland’s tanks and howitzers were signed in late August with South Korea’s top defense contractors. It took little more than three months for the first shipment to arrive. Warsaw appreciated the ?speed. The orders from Poland were a boon to the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has vowed to make his country the fourth-largest weapons exporter by 2027, after the United States, Russia and France.
But as South Korea expands weapons sales globally, it has refused to send lethal assistance to Ukraine itself. Instead, it has focused on filling the world’s rearmament gap while resisting any direct role in arming Ukraine, imposing strict export control rules on all its sales. South Korea’s wariness stems in part from its reluctance to openly antagonize Moscow, from which it hopes for cooperation in imposing new sanctions against an increasingly belligerent North Korea. Countries throughout Latin America, Israel and others have also declined to send weapons directly to Ukraine. Yet few nations’ defense industries have boomed as a result of the Russian invasion as much as South Korea’s has. And despite appeals from Kyiv and NATO to send weapons into Ukraine, Seoul has continued to walk a tightrope, balancing between its steadfast alliance with Washington and its own national and economic interests. When Seoul agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, it insisted on ?an explicit export-control condition that ?the “end user” would be the United States, a rule that it has had in place for all its global arms deals — including its contracts with Poland — for decades. Nonetheless, some South Korean weapons technology has already made its way to Ukraine: The Polish Krab howitzers that were sent to Ukraine use the chassis from South Korean K9s.
Commercial surrogacy refers to an arrangement in which a woman is paid a fee for carrying a pregnancy for another person or couple. This differs from altruistic surrogacy, in which a woman volunteers to carry a pregnancy without any compensation beyond medical reimbursements. Typically, commercial surrogacy is gestational surrogacy, meaning the surrogate has no biological link to the child. The laws around surrogacy vary widely from country to country and state to state. In the U.S., for instance, the practice is permitted in some states but banned in others, while in Canada and the U.K., only altruistic surrogacy is allowed. In Georgia, meanwhile, as in Ukraine and Russia, both forms are legal. And a growing number of women turning to commercial surrogacy as a source of income amid swelling global demand for carriers. In Georgia, as in Ukraine, commercial surrogacy programs cost around $40,000-$50,000, while in Mexico they are about $60,000-$70,000. That compares with an average of $120,000 and higher in the U.S. In many cases, a surrogate may earn less than a quarter of the tens of thousands of dollars charged to intended parents.
The global commercial surrogacy industry was worth an estimated $14 billion in 2022, according to market research consultancy Global Market Insights — though exact numbers are hard to verify given the private nature of many arrangements. By 2032, that figure is forecast to rise to $129 billion, as infertility issues increase and a growing number of same-sex couples and single people look for ways to have babies. That demand is driven primarily by so-called intended parents in wealthy, Western nations. Many of these are seeking cross-border surrogacy services to avoid long waiting lists or higher fees at home, or because domestic laws forbid surrogacy or exclude particular groups — such as gay couples — from the practice. Until last year, Ukraine was the world’s second-largest surrogacy market behind the U.S., attracting foreign would-be parents with lower fees and a favorable regulatory framework. Crucially, that includes naming intended parents on the baby’s birth certificate, rather than the surrogate mother.
In September of last year, after years of careful planning and development, NASA crashed a spacecraft smack into a rock drifting through the Solar System, just minding its own business. The motive behind this exercise was to test our ability to knock an asteroid off-course, in the interest of Earth’s safety. The measurements have come in, and the rock’s course changed by significantly more than expected. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was an attempt to see if this was feasible. The target was carefully chosen: Dimorphos, a moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos. Because the orbital period of the two objects has been well characterized, any change in Dimorphos’ trajectory would be detectable as a change in its orbital period.
At around 525 feet across, Dimorphos orbits the 780 meter-wide Didymos roughly once every 11.9 hours. The DART impact was expected to alter this orbital period by around 7 minutes. As described in a paper led by planetary astronomer Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University, the change in orbital period was much more dramatic: Dimorphos now orbits Didymos 33 minutes faster than it did prior to the impact. Two separate measurements of the orbit using different methods found the same result. That larger-than-expected change to the orbital period of the binary asteroid system can’t be accounted for by the transfer of momentum from the DART spacecraft alone. For nearly two weeks after the impact, Dimorphos continued to spew out tails of dust, like a very dry comet. In fact, that escaping material transferred more momentum to Dimorphos than was transferred by the DART spacecraft during its moment of impact. Their findings are promising. A spacecraft can successfully deflect an asteroid from its course with limited knowledge of its composition and surface conditions, and without conducting an expensive and lengthy reconnaissance mission first.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took decades to build, because it had to be made foldable to fit on top of a rocket and be sent into the coldness of space, 1.5 million kms from Earth. Here, far from the heat glow of the Earth, JWST can detect the faintest infrared light from the distant universe. Among the pictures that it transmitted was one with a small red dot that would shake up our understanding of how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. The little red dot on the screen was something very different from the newly sighted galaxies. Much more important. An analysis software on the little pinprick spits out two numbers: distance 13.1 billion light years, mass 100 billion stars. We just discovered the impossible. Impossibly early, impossibly massive galaxies. At this distance, the light took 13 billion years to reach us, so we are seeing the galaxies at a time when the universe was only 700 million years old, barely 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years. If this is true, this galaxy has formed as many stars as our present-day Milky Way. In record time.
Could we have discovered astronomy’s missing link? To produce these galaxies so quickly, you almost need all the gas in the universe to turn into stars at near 100% efficiency. And that is very hard, which is the scientific term for impossible. This discovery could transform our understanding of how the earliest galaxies in the universe formed. The implication is that there is different channel, a fast track, that produces monster galaxies very quickly, very efficiently. A fast track for the top 1%.
As working from home was normalized in 2020, concerns grew about bossware – software that keeps a close eye on remote workers by, for instance, tracking their mouse movements. Work-communication platforms like Microsoft’s Teams might be less Big Brother-ish, but they can still show when a worker has been “idle” – a word that implies they’re in a hammock with a cocktail when they might have perfectly legitimate reasons to have stepped away from their computer: caring for a child, going to the bathroom, rescuing the dog from a standoff with a rabid raccoon. And even if they are just taking a break, does the boss really have to know? What’s more, a lot of remote work – reading reports, listening to meetings – doesn’t require moving the mouse. “That kind of talent, you can’t really micromanage,” Rodriguez says, so measuring performance by “how long you’ve been on the computer … doesn’t really hold weight”. And research would seem to back this claim: a 2021 study on “micro-breaks” – in which tired workers eat a snack or work on a crossword puzzle – helped them recover from fatigue and work better.
Enter the mouse mover. They have existed for years, but their popularity soared as people began working from home early in the pandemic. They come in different varieties, ranging from cradles with spinning discs in the middle to DIY creations made from Legos. But they are united as a symbol of resistance against workplace surveillance – even if their very existence points to a dystopian future. And even as workers have returned to the office, sales have increased – perhaps in part due to the wide variety of uses for the product. Healthcare workers use mouse movers to keep their computers awake while they talk to patients; IT teams use them to test software; students may need them to make it easier to take notes while they watch a lecture. (Of course, computers can be set to remain awake for long periods of time, but often these settings are inaccessible if your organization controls the device.)
Silvergate, one of the most important banks in crypto, has failed. “Some of the companies that were being formed at the time [2014] to provide services to this budding Bitcoin space, many of them were struggling to find and maintain bank accounts,” said Silvergate CEO Alan Lane. The focus at the bank was institutions — other companies, some of which work with consumers. For instance, Genesis, the now-bankrupt crypto-lending subsidiary of DCG, was among Silvergate’s early clients. Also among Lane’s clients: FTX. Federal prosecutors are now examining Silvergate’s role in banking Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen empire. The collapse of FTX spooked other Silvergate customers, resulting in an $8.1 billion run on the bank: 60% of its deposits walked out the door in just one quarter. (“Worse than that experienced by the average bank to close in the Great Depression,” The Wall Street Journal explained.)
The list of customers helps to explain Silvergate’s woes. Very few banks will touch crypto because it’s so risky — and most traditional banks don’t let crypto clients transact in dollars 24/7. Access to banking that moves at the pace crypto does is rare. Most banks that do it are offshore. FTX sparked a mass exodus into dollars, and Silvergate suddenly had to come up with a bunch of money. Unfortunately, that meant selling its bonds at a loss in order to pay its obligations. Ironically, the bonds were pretty safe — “if its depositors had kept their money at Silvergate, its bonds would have matured with plenty of money to pay them back,” notes Matt Levine, a savvy financial reporter. Silvergate dealt in liquidity, and a liquidity problem can become a solvency problem real fast. The entire crypto industry just got a lot more fragile. (Editor’s note: If crypto is one of your interests, this article also gives you a link to Matt Levine’s article at Bloomberg which has a more in-depth analysis of how this worked if you want to get down into the weeds in terms of details.)
Neal Stephenson’s science-fiction writing has predicted (and inspired) innovations from cryptocurrency to Alexa. His breakthrough 1992 novel Snow Crash described a dystopian future of corporate city states, where a hacker underclass hides from reality in a virtual world known as the Metaverse. Several of the book’s concepts — including avatars, virtual-reality goggles, massive multiplayer online games and destructive computer viruses — are now part of our everyday experience. Last year, Stephenson and crypto pioneer Peter Vessenes co-founded Lamina1, a company that uses blockchain technology to build an “open and expansive” metaverse along the lines the author envisaged 30 years earlier. This article is an interview with him.
What’s your preferred current definition of the metaverse? There’s lots of people in it. You can interact with them in real time, no matter where they are. They’re represented by audiovisual bodies called avatars, and they’re having shared experiences that are fictional in nature. They’re in fictional spaces, doing fictional things. Do people know they are tiptoeing into the metaverse when they are playing a video game? I would guess most are just playing the game. I think people who spend a lot of time playing, especially multiplayer online games, are becoming accustomed to the idea of moving around in shared three-dimensional spaces. Which is clearly the most basic idea of the metaverse. How quickly do you anticipate this metaverse being something we all visit on a day-to-day basis? There won’t be a metaverse that is used by millions of people until it contains experiences that millions of people find worth having, and making those experiences is quite difficult.
Ronald Mallett, now emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut, thinks he has cracked time travel. The secret, he says, is in twisting the fabric of space-time with a ring of rotating lasers to make a loop of time that would allow you to travel backwards. It will take a lot more explaining and experiments, but after a half century of work, the 77-year-old astrophysicist has got that down pat. His claim is not as ridiculous as it might seem. Entire academic departments, such as the Center for Time at the University of Sydney, are dedicated to studying the possibility of time travel. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working on a “time-reversal machine” to detect dark matter. Of course there are still lots of physicists who believe time travel, or at least travelling to the past, is impossible, but it is not quite the sci-fi pipe dream it once was. “It turns out that rotating black holes can create a gravitational field that could lead to loops of time being created that can allow you to go to the past,” says Mallett. Unlike a normal black hole, a spinning black hole has two event horizons (the surface enclosing the space from which electromagnetic radiation cannot escape), an inner one and an outer one. Between these two event horizons, something called frame dragging – the dragging of space-time – occurs,” Mallet explains.
Although black holes are in short supply in this corner of the Milky Way, Mallett thinks he may have found an artificial alternative in a device called a ring laser, which can create an intense and continuous rotating beam of light – “light can create gravity … and if gravity can affect time, then light itself can affect time,” he explains. Some of Mallett’s critics have objected that his time machine would have to be the size of the known universe, thus completely impractical. I put this to him. “You’re absolutely right; you’re talking about galactic types of energy in order to do that,” he acknowledges. So, how big would your time machine be? “I don’t know that yet. The thing is that what is necessary first is being able to show that we can twist space – not time – twist space with light.” Only then, he says, will he know what is necessary to do the rest. Mallett likens it to asking the Wright brothers, straight after their maiden flight, for their predictions for how humans will reach the moon. All Mallett can tell us at the moment is that his time machine, however big, will look like a cylinder of rotating light beams.
Sneaky fees have become a big part of America’s consumer economy. The mushrooming number of fees has made clear that competition does not usually eliminate the practice. Why not? Academic research has suggested that there are two main reasons. First, human beings are not the efficiently rational machines that economic theory pretends they are. An entire branch of the field, behavioral economics, has sprung up in recent decades to make sense of our limited attention spans. The best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, explores these ideas. The second major reason is monopoly power. In some markets, consumers don’t have much choice. Ticketmaster’s fees outrage many people. But if you want certain tickets you have to pay the fees. There is no rival service selling them. In some industries, sludge and monopoly power feed off each other. The small number of dominant internet providers, for instance, reduces the chances that a new entrant can design a business strategy around undercutting Comcast’s and Verizon’s sneaky fees.
The administration’s primary focus for now is on disclosure — requiring companies to tell consumers up front what the full cost will be. The Transportation Department has proposed such a rule for airlines. Disclosure rules often have the advantage of being easier to enforce than outright bans on sneaky fees: If the government bans one kind of fee, companies can often repackage it in another way. “The best we could hope for is that consumers see the full costs transparently and that the government facilitates that,” Thaler, a Nobel laureate in economics, said.
Boeing engineers Dillon Ruble and Garrett Jensen and collaborator Nathaniel Erickson now hold the Guinness world record for paper aircraft flight: almost 290 feet. Erik Schilling explains that the team’s planes “are meant to be more darts than traditional paper planes, and there is little, if any, gliding.” Lots of folding, though, following research on paper, origami methods, and aerodynamics. Ruble and Jensen studied origami and aerodynamics for months, putting in 400 to 500 hours of creating different prototypes to try to design a plane that could fly higher and longer. “For the Guinness World Records, we ended up going with A4-sized paper (dimensions of 210 x 297 mm) and went up to the maximum for weight, 100 grams per square meter,” Jensen said. “The heavier the paper, the greater the momentum when you go to throw it.” It takes over 20 minutes to accurately fold the record-breaking paper airplane design. “Our design is a little different from your traditional fold in half, fold the two corners to the middle line down the middle. It’s pretty unique in that aspect. It’s definitely an unusual design,” Ruble said. “I didn’t think we could get useful data from a simulation on a paper airplane. Turns out, we could,” Jensen added. Includes instructional folding video.
The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
– George Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
A special thanks to: Chas Freeman, Ursula Freer, Diane Petersen, Abby Porter, Bobbie Rohn, Hal Taylor, Steve Ujvarosy and all of you who have sent us interesting links in the past. If you see something we should know about, do send it along – thanks.
Joni Patry is one of the most recognized teachers and Vedic astrologers in the world. She was a faculty member for ACVA, CVA and Instructor for online certification programs, published many books, journals and appeared on national and international television shows. As the keynote speaker for international conferences, she has a Japanese website, and teaches in Austria, Turkey and India. She has been awarded the 2015 Jyotish Star of the year and Dr B. V. Raman’s Janma Shatamanothsava Award Jyotisha Choodamani. She publishes an online astrological magazine, Astrologic Magazine http://astrologicmagazine.com/ and has an online University for certification, the University of Vedic Astrology. http://universityofvedicastrology.com
William Henry
William Henry is a Nashville-based author, investigative mythologist, art historian, and TV presenter. He is an internationally recognized authority on human spiritual potential, transformation and ascension. He has a unique ability to incorporate historical, religious, spiritual, scientific, archaeological and other forms of such knowledge into factually-based theories and conclusions that provide the layperson with a more in-depth understanding of the profound shift we are actually experiencing in our lifetime.
The spiritual voice and Consulting Producer of the global hit History Channel program, Ancient Aliens, and host of the Gaia TV series The Awakened Soul: The Lost Science of Ascension, and Arcanum, along with his wife, Clare, William Henry is your guide into the transformative sacred science of human ascension. By bringing to life the ancient stories of ascension through art and gnostic texts, he teaches the secrets of soul transfiguration or metamorphosis and connects people to one another across cultures, time and space. With over 30 years of research distilled into 18 books and numerous video presentations, William’s work will guide you to next level of human consciousness and our expanding reality.
William’s present work has taken him into the area of transhumanism, which he first began writing about in his 2002 bestseller, Cloak of the Illuminati. His latest book, The Singularity Is Near: The Next Human, the Perfect Rainbow Light Body and the Technology of Human Transcendence is a primer and a warning for the looming potential transformation of humanity as we speed closer to meshing computer technology with human flesh. William discusses transhumanism as the fulfillment of an ancient impulse to transcend our human bodies. His work has propelled him into the role of human rights activist and advisor on the biopolitics of human enhancement as he informs audiences of the unparalleled perils and potentials of Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism.
Pierre Dubois
Pierre Richard Dubois is Registered Architect and holds two advanced degrees from Columbia University. He has been on a life quest to satisfy his inner and intuitive knowing about consciousness-expanding technologies and wisdom. He is an author, life coach, healer, ascension teacher, and a minister. Pierre has travelled the world and studied many religions and belief systems and found that we are all seeking the same thing: merger back with the uncreated Source of all. An insightful listener and counselor, Pierre deeply aspires to share with others his wisdom and has helped countless people on their journey of healing, expansion, and ascension over the past 20 years.
Frank DeMarco
FRANK DeMARCO has been reporting on his conversations with non-physical beings for more than two decades, in magazine articles, talks, and in a dozen non-fiction books and two novels.
FRANK DeMARCO is the author of 14 books rooted in more than 25 years of psychic exploration, including It’s All One World, Awakening from the 3D World, Rita’s World (two volumes), The Cosmic Internet, The Sphere and the Hologram, and Imagine Yourself Well. Since 2005, he has been actively engaged in an on-going series of conversations with various non-physical beings, including historical individuals, “past lives,” aspects of personal guidance, and a generalized group he calls “the guys upstairs.”
He is also the author of three novels, Messenger, That Phenomenal Background (originally published as Babe in the Woods) and Dark Fire.
William Buhlman
William Buhlman is a recognized expert on the subject of out-of-body experiences. The author’s forty years of extensive personal out-of-body explorations give him a unique and thought provoking insight into this subject. His first book, Adventures beyond the Body chronicles his personal journey of self-discovery through out-of-body travel, and provides the reader with the preparation and techniques that can be used for their own adventure. He has conducted an international out-of-body experience survey that includes over 16,000 participants from forty-two countries. The provocative results of this survey are presented in his book, The Secret of the Soul. This cutting edge book explores the unique opportunities for personal growth and profound spiritual awakenings that are reported during out-of-body experiences.
Over the past two decades William has developed an effective system to experience safe, self initiated out-of-body adventures. He conducts an in-depth six-day workshop titled, Out-of-Body Exploration Intensive at the renowned Monroe Institute in Virginia. As a certified hypnotherapist, William incorporates various methods, including hypnosis, visualization and meditation techniques in his workshops to explore the profound nature of out-of-body experiences and the benefits of accelerated personal development. Through lectures, workshops and his books the author teaches the preparation and techniques of astral projection and spiritual exploration.
The author brings a refreshing look to how we can use out-of-body experiences to explore our spiritual identity and enhance our intellectual and physical lives. William is best known for his ability to teach people how to have profound spiritual adventures through the use of out-of-body experiences. In addition, he has developed an extensive series of audio programs that are designed to expand awareness and assist in the exploration of consciousness. William has appeared on numerous television and radio shows worldwide. William’s books are currently available in twelve languages. The author lives in Delaware, USA. For more information visit his web site, www.astralinfo.org.
Joe McMoneagle
Joe was the longest operational psychic spy in the US government’s very highly classified Stargate program where they used psychics and intuitives to look into installations and people around the world that were of interest to government intelligence agencies. They called the process remote viewing.
As it turned out, the remote viewers discovered that they were – not limited by either time or space and produced drawings and assessments that could not have been obtained in any other way. The Soviets had an active remote viewing program at the same time and it is rumored that Russia, China and the U.S. still have initiatives of this kind that are operational.
Joe’s stories are fascinating, like the time he mentally got inside a Chinese nuclear weapon and saw how the triggering mechanism worked . . . and then went out and bought the parts at Radio Shack to show the scientists in the intelligence agency exactly how it was done. The remote viewers could find submarines at the bottom of the ocean and crashed aircraft in the middle of African jungles.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Dr Joe Dispenza is an international lecturer, researcher, corporate consultant, author, and educator who has been invited to speak in more than 33 countries on six continents. As a lecturer and educator, he is driven by the conviction that each of us has the potential for greatness and unlimited abilities. In his easy-to-understand, encouraging, and compassionate style, he has educated thousands of people, detailing how they can rewire their brains and recondition their bodies to make lasting changes.
Dr. Joe is also a faculty member at Quantum University in Honolulu, Hawaii; the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York; and Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He’s also an invited chair of the research committee at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia.
As a researcher, Dr. Joe’s passion can be found at the intersection of the latest findings from the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics to explore the science behind spontaneous remissions. He uses that knowledge to help people heal themselves of illnesses, chronic conditions, and even terminal diseases so they can enjoy a more fulfilled and happy life, as well as evolve their consciousness. At his advanced workshops around the world, he has partnered with other scientists to perform extensive research on the effects of meditation, including epigenetic testing, brain mapping with electroencephalograms (EEGs), and individual energy field testing with a gas discharge visualization (GDV) machine. His research also includes measuring both heart coherence with HeartMath monitors and the energy present in the workshop environment before, during, and after events with a GDV Sputnik sensor.
As a NY Times best-selling author, Dr. Joe has written Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon(Hay House, 2017), which draws on research conducted at his advanced workshops since 2012 to explore how common people are doing the uncommon to transform themselves and their lives; You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter (Hay House, 2014), which explores our ability to heal without drugs or surgery, but rather by thought alone; Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One (Hay House, 2012) and Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind (2007), both of which detail the neuroscience of change and epigenetics. His film appearances include Transcendence: Live Life Beyond the Ordinary (2018); HEAL (2017); E-Motion (2014); Sacred Journey of the Heart (2012); People v. the State of Illusion (2011); What IF – The Movie (2010); Unleashing Creativity (2009); and What the #$*! Do We Know? & Down the Rabbit Hole, extended DVD version (2005).
Dr. Todd Ovokaitys
After two years at Northwestern, he was accepted into an accelerated combined graduate/undergraduate program at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, which conferred both B.A. and M.D. degrees. Advanced training was at Georgetown University Hospital, with a Residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine followed by a Fellowship in Pulmonary and Intensive Care Medicine.
During his Pulmonary Fellowship, the specialty that concerns the lungs, Dr. Todd began his research with cells of the immune system. Many procedures were done on AIDS patients to diagnose their lung problems. Observing this dire disease firsthand and the toxic results of early medical treatments, Dr. Todd developed a passion for finding better solutions. Towards the end of his Fellowship, he became aware of the benefits of Holistic Medicine for improving the function of the immune system while building rather than impairing the function of other systems.
Inspired to learn more, he moved to Southern California to study with practitioners of Complementary Medicine. In the context of these studies, he had an experience so radical that the course of his life and work were forever transformed.
During a meditation class in the summer of 1989, Dr. Todd paired with another student for an exercise. The process was profound and they took turns, one in the process while the other scribed to record any breakthroughs of awareness. Much as in the Jodie Foster movie “Contact,” the usual anchor points dissolved with the feeling of instant transport to a different dimension of being. There was a doorway or portal to traverse, with a message of the responsibility taken on through the choice to go further.
Instantly upon walking through this doorway, a living form was seen that filled a room – and had the shape of a DNA strand enlarged millions of times. This form communicated that science only partly understood how DNA worked. The linear understanding of DNA as an enormous data string was correct but incomplete. In addition, DNA was a structure of coils within coils in an environment of moving charges that permitted DNA to send electromagnetic signals much as a radio transmitter. Further, DNA could receive and be conditioned by electromagnetic signals. Most significantly, if it were possible to determine and transmit the correct resonant signals, that it was possible to switch the activity of a sick cell to that of a healthy cell, an old cell to that of a young cell.
This experience brought with it a certainty that solutions were possible. After intensive review of the previous work showing the effects of electromagnetic energy patterns on cellular health and function, Dr. Todd located a colleague with the technical expertise to build the desired invention.
Mary Rodwell is a professional counsellor, hypnotherapist, researcher, metaphysician, and founder and principal of ACERN (Australian Close Encounter Resource Network). She is internationally known for her work with ET experiencers and star children. She offers regressions and support for contactees and has organized a buddy system to help those who have had close encounters. Mary has spoken at conferences in Australia, USA, UK, Scandinavia, Hawaii and New Zealand. She is a regular guest on international radio and online shows and writes article for international publications like the UFO Truth Magazine. Mary is co-founder of FREE, a non-profit organization aimed at researching close encounters.
She is the author of, Awakening – How extra-terrestrial contact can transform your life. Mary is working on her second book, The New Human, due for release this year.
Freddy Silva
Freddy Silva is a best-selling author, and leading researcher of ancient civilizations, restricted history, sacred sites and their interaction with consciousness. He has published six books in six languages, and produced eleven documentaries. Described by one CEO as “perhaps the best metaphysical speaker in the world right now,” for two decades he has been an international keynote speaker, with notable appearances at the International Science and Consciousness Conference, the International Society For The Study Of Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine, and the Association for Research and Enlightenment, in addition to appearances on Gaia TV, History Channel, BBC, and radio shows such as Coast To Coast. He also leads private sell-out tours to ancient temples worldwide. www.invisibletemple.com
Dr. Larry Dossey
Dr. Larry Dossey is a physician of internal medicine and former Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital. He received his M. D. degree from Southwestern Medical School (Dallas), and trained in internal medicine at Parkland and the VA hospitals in Dallas. Dossey has lectured at medical schools and hospitals throughout the United States and abroad. In 1988 he delivered the annual Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, India, the only physician ever invited to do so. He is the author of twelve books dealing with consciousness, spirituality, and healing, including the New York Times bestseller HEALING WORDS: THE POWER OF PRAYER AND THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE, and most recently One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters. His books have been translated into languages around the world. Dr. Dossey is the former co-chairman of the Panel on Mind/Body Interventions, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. He is the executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing. Dr. Dossey lectures around the world. He lives in Santa Fe with his wife Barbara, a nurse-consultant and the author of several award-winning books.
Sharry Edwards
Sharry Edwards has been accused of being too scientific by some, too esoteric by others. In actuality, she is a bridge between both fields of inquiry. Sharry is the acknowledged pioneer in the emerging field of Vocal Profiling using BioAcoustic Biology. For many years she has provided the leading-edge research to show the voice as a holographic representation of the body that can be used to change the face of medicine.
Sharry asks that we imagine a future in which we can be individually identified and maintained through the use of frequency based biomarkers that keep us healthy and emotionally balanced. Her work at the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology has shown that we can each have dominion over those frequencies by individual mind management or a simple remote control that is completely programmable. Using the unique techniques of Vocal Profiling and evaluation, emotional as well as physiological issues can be revealed and addressed.
Her work with the human voice reveals that people who share similar traumas, stresses, diseases, toxicities…share similar, if not identical, vocal anomalies. She brings together ancient knowledge with modern ideas of harmonics and frequency relationship theories to show that math can be used as a form of predictive, diagnostic and curative foundation for wellness. Through entrainment of the frequency grids of the brain, the body can be programmed to support its own optimal form and function.
Integrative Physician Dr. Carrie Hempel and Holistic Pharmacist Brian Sanderoffare both experts in the medicinal use of cannabis in Maryland.
Dr. Hempel is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2002. As an Osteopathic Physician, she has embraced a holistic approach to patient care, providing loving attention to the relationship between mind, body, and spirit. For the past 11 years she has received specialist training, Board Certification and expertise in several fields including Internal Medicine, Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, and Hospice & Palliative Medicine, along with many Integrative modalities. She is a member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians, the Association of Cannabis Specialists, and is registered with the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission.
Over the course of her career she has seen the consistent struggle of patients dealing with chronic, progressive, debilitating illness, and witnessed the challenges and limitations of the current pharmaceutical options for pain and symptom managment. Her passion for this population has grown, along with her desire to advocate for patients to have access to non-opioid, holistic options to enhance quality of life and optimize function.
Trained as a pharmacist, Brian Sanderoff has integrated 25 years of experience with his traditional medical training and herbalism, nutrition and numerous other holistic modalities to help clients devise practical, common-sense, safe solutions to most any health issue.
His clients appreciate how he embraces a complementary approach to health and how his holistic “compass” brings them new solutions to their unique health concerns – especially chronic diseases.
Mary Rodwell is a professional counsellor, hypnotherapist, researcher, metaphysician, and founder and principal of ACERN (Australian Close Encounter Resource Network). She is internationally known for her work with ET experiencers and star children. She offers regressions and support for contactees and has organised a buddy system to help those who have had close encounters. Mary has spoken at conferences in Australia, USA, UK, Scandinavia, Hawaii and New Zealand. She is a regular guest on international radio and online shows and writes article for international publications like the UFO Truth Magazine. Mary is co-founder of FREE, a non-profit organisation aimed at researching close encounters.
Steve McDonald is an extraordinary Australian thinker and researcher who arguably knows as much about the structure of the global planetary transition that we are experiencing as anyone on the planet. He draws coherent pictures from the deep insights of Clair W. Graves and paints clear, explanatory images of not only how humanity has evolved to this point, but what is inevitably on our horizon . . . and how this epic transition will continue to play out.
He is currently writing a book about the global paradigm shift that’s taking us beyond the scientific-industrial era. Steve served with the Australian Army for 15 years, including war service as an infantry company commander in Somalia, 1993. He is also a qualified military helicopter pilot and on leaving the army he flew a rescue helicopter in the tropical Mackay-Whitsunday region of Queensland. Building upon his extensive experience in unpredictable environments, after retiring from flying Steve specialized as a change management consultant. He consequently studied the developmental psychology research of Dr Clare W Graves and became one of the first Australians qualified to teach Dr Graves’ theory under the banner of Spiral Dynamics Integral. A long-term struggle with posttraumatic stress has driven Steve’s deep interest in human nature and consciousness. He is a founder of Psychedelic Research in Science & Medicine, an Australian non-profit association. He is also a founder of AADII, a non-profit company created to support worldwide transformational change.
Although Robert Coxon had been studying and composing music for many years, it was after taking the Silva Mind Control course that he realized how powerful sound could be in relaxing the body and opening the consciousness. He then decided to write his first album.
Cristal Silence quickly became a major hit throughout Canada, staying on top of the charts for many years. This was the beginning of his continuing phenomenal success as composer and solo artist. For the last 29 years he has performed only his original compositions in concert. Robert has been nominated four times for the prestigious “Felix” award (French Canada equivalent to the Grammy), and became Canada’s best-selling New Age artist. His international breakthrough came after composing The Silent Path in 1995. This album was an instant hit in Canada, the USA and France. After hearing The Silent Path, Lee Carroll, internationally renowned author of 15 bestselling Kryon and Indigo books, contacted Robert and asked him to join his team on tour. Through the years this has given Robert the opportunity to experience different cultures and inspires him to write music honoring these many countries he performs in.
Robert offers us nine albums, the latest three being The Infinite, essence of life, Goddess -The Power of Woman and Passion Compassion Alegeria.
Gary Sycalik has been described as an entrepreneur, businessman, project developer/manager, consultant/advisor, organizational troubleshooter, strategic planner, facilitator, futurist, business and social architect, complex problematic game designer (policy, strategic, tactic levels) and writer. Gary brings a robust horizontal and vertical functional capability to any project from the conceptual to operational stage.
Kingsley L. Dennis, PhD, is a sociologist, researcher, and writer. He previously worked in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, UK. Kingsley is the author of numerous articles on social futures; technology and new media communications; global affairs; and conscious evolution. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books including Healing the Wounded Mind, The Sacred Revival, The Phoenix Generation, New Consciousness for a New World, Struggle for Your Mind, After the Car, and the celebrated Dawn of the Akashic Age (with Ervin Laszlo). He has traveled extensively and lived in various countries. He currently lives in Andalusia, Spain.
John McMichael, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Beach Tree Labs, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and early development of new therapeutic agents targeting unmet medical needs. These disorders range from herpes infections to chronic fatigue syndrome to urinary incontinence. His PhD is in virology and immunology from Oregon State University. He headed up the labs at one of the largest private veterinary research practices in the country, was a college professor for more than a decade, and now works out of a small lab on his form in New York state and a larger, more sophisticated lab in Providence, Rhode Island. He holds over 200 patents, has published in books and peer-reviewed journals, and is currently working with his team to begin formal FDA trials for product candidates for chronic traumatic brain injury and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes.
Good health is dependent on the appropriate transfer of information within and between cells. The informational and molecular disharmonies associated with disease can be reversed using appropriate therapeutic signals that stimulate the return to the normal state without adverse effects. One such signal molecule, SLO, has demonstrated clinical utility in a broad spectrum of indications that would at first glance appear to be unrelated. The underlying common thread that links these disorders is representative of the targets to which resonant molecular signals are directed.
Chris Robinson
Chris Robinson’s amazing ability to dream about the future in terms that can be reliably translated into people, times, places, and activities has been the subject of books, major university scientific studies, films, articles, TV shows, and just about all forms of media. He has taught many people how to dream about the future and, through his advanced intuitive capabilities, helped thousands to understand how to deal with seemingly impossible personal situations. He is also a healer, having on numerous occasions led people with supposedly terminal conditions to eliminate those issues and return to a healthy life. There is no one else in the world that has Chris’s fascinating background (undercover police work, etc.), coupled with these amazing personal gifts.
Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency where he blew the whistle on massive multi-billion dollar fraud, waste and abuse; the widespread violations of the rights of citizens through secret mass surveillance programs after 9/11; and critical 9/11 intelligence failures. He is the recipient of the 2011 Ridenhour Truth Telling Prize, a joint recipient with Jesselyn Radack of the 2011 Sam Adams Associates Integrity in Intelligence Award and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. He is now dedicated to the defense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Robert David Steele, former spy, former Marine Corps officer, a proponent of Open Source Everything, Presidential candidate in 2012 and perhaps again in 2024, recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 will integrate his life’s experience with his lessons from the works of others to explore love versus fear as a foundation for politics; liberty under natural law versus predatory fascism as we now have in the USA; and the possibilities for cosmic awakening very soon, in a full-on defeat of the Deep State and its Archon masters.
Lee Carrol a.k.a. Kryon
Lee Carroll, Ph.D. has channeled Kryon for 25 years worldwide and is the author of the Kryon Series of 16 books in 24 languages. Well known in metaphysics, Kryon books have made the top seller’s list within months of their release. Having presented seven times at the United Nations in New York, as well as in 33 different countries overseas, Lee attracts audiences in the thousands.
Good health is dependent on the appropriate transfer of information within and between cells. The informational and molecular disharmonies associated with disease can be reversed using appropriate therapeutic signals that stimulate the return to the normal state without adverse effects. One such signal molecule, SLO, has demonstrated clinical utility in a broad spectrum of indications that would at first glance appear to be unrelated. The underlying common thread that links these disorders is representative of the targets to which resonant molecular signals are directed.
Dennis McKenna’s research has focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. His doctoral research (University of British Columbia, 1984) focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of 4 books and over 50 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Paul H. Smith is the longest-serving controlled remote viewing (CRV) teacher active today, having begun his career as an instructor in 1984. He served for seven years in the government’s Star Gate remote viewing program at Ft. Meade, MD (from September 1983 to August 1990). Starting 1984, he became one of only five Star Gate personnel to be personally trained as remote viewers by the legendary founders of remote viewing, Ingo Swann and Dr. Harold E. Puthoff at SRI-International.
Raymon Grace, one of the world’s most extraordinary dowsers, travels the world teaching and demonstrating how dowsing can be used by most anyone to change themselves and the world around them. His down-home, direct approach is sought out by many thousands of searchers who are looking for bettering their lives and dealing with the extraordinary change that the world is experiencing.
Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. His on-line writings have generated a vast following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts.
In 1980, Jim McCarty joined L/L Research where Don Elkins and Carla L. Rueckert were researching the field of the paranormal in general, and contact with extraterrestrial intelligence in particular. Soon later the Ra Contact began, producing 106 sessions with the social memory complex of Ra. Five books of The Law of One series were published documenting this contact.
Joey Korn is one of the most accomplished dowsers in the world. Known internationally for an extraordinary ability to change and manipulate energy at all levels, he brings a deep, practical understanding of how to balance these energies . . . and change the way that they influence humans and their lives.
Michael Waters is an advanced technology consultant, researcher, inventor, and sustainable recovery strategist. His automated disaster recovery and library preservation systems are used worldwide. Michael has researched cutting edge science and technologies that redefine current understandings in mainstream physics. He is currently on the board of a number of organizations involved in advanced energy, mining, agriculture, and finance.
Las Vegas headliner, Alain Nu – “The Man Who Knows”, brings us his mind-bending mental and metaphysical abilities. His highly entertaining and most provocative show intermingles feats of mind-reading and spoon bending with other baffling demonstrations that defy explanation.
Joni Patry
Joni Patry is one of the most recognized teachers and Vedic astrologers in the world. She was a faculty member for ACVA, CVA and Instructor for online certification programs, published many books, journals and appeared on national and international television shows. As the keynote speaker for international conferences, she has a Japanese website, and teaches in Austria, Turkey and India. She has been awarded the 2015 Jyotish Star of the year and Dr B. V. Raman’s Janma Shatamanothsava Award Jyotisha Choodamani. She publishes an online astrological magazine, Astrologic Magazine http://astrologicmagazine.com/ and has an online University for certification, the University of Vedic Astrology. http://universityofvedicastrology.com
As Regina’s career progressed, so did her decades long exploration into the world of esoteric and hidden sciences – the reality beyond the 5 sense world. Guidance from these realms suggested it was time to bring her skill set to the world of video/televised media, so in late 2004, along with her husband Scott, she co-created ‘Conscious Media Network’, the first online network to feature full length original video interviews with authors and experts in the realms of the meta-physical, healing arts and alternative theories, opening up a world that many had experienced but never had access to on this scale.
Gaia: In 2012, Conscious Media Network merged with Gaiam TV in 2012, with Regina serving as anchor in their new media division on Open Minds and Healing Matrix. The demand for Regina’s unique perspective on a variety of subjects has drawn attention from conference organizers, moving her into the public as a presenter at conferences. In addition, Regina offers retreats and workshops for those who wish to ‘Dive Deep’ into a new understanding of the nature of reality and life itself. In this venue she shares her exclusive approach to meditation and regression work for a greater understanding of life’s challenges and identifying the innate joys.
Although nominated for a Nobel Prize in physics for his breakthrough theoretical work on zero-point energy, Dr. Harold Puthoff, is most recognized for having been a co-founder of the secret US government “remote viewing” program that successfully used psychics to spy on the Soviet Union and China.
Now a principal and science advisor in a leading-edge effort by former senior military and intelligence managers to disclose the many decades of interest that the US has had in UFOs, he comes to Berkeley Springs on the 8th of February to give a TransitionTalk about his work in making sense out of the UFO phenomena.
Dr. Puthoff’s presentation will include a summary of his current activities with To The Stars Academy, which is on the forefront of bringing into the open formerly highly classified efforts by the government to track, record and understand the meaning of hundreds of encounters that the military has had with UFOs over the past years.
This is an extraordinary opportunity to learn from and question one of the foremost thinkers and leaders of the rapidly accelerating global effort to both make the public aware of what was previously unacknowledged about UFO and alien interaction with humans and also to address the deep questions about what is happening and what it might mean for the future of humanity.
Gregg Braden is a five-time New York Times best-selling author, and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science, spirituality and human potential! His discoveries have led to 12 award-winning books now published in over 40 languages. The UK’s Watkins Journal lists Gregg among the top 100 of “the world’s most spiritually influential living people” for the 5th consecutive year, and he is a 2017 nominee for the prestigious Templeton Award.
Rosemary Ellen Guiley is a leading expert on the paranormal and supernatural. With more than 50 books – including 10 encyclopedias – and hundreds of articles in print on a wide range of paranormal, spiritual and mystical topics, she possesses exceptional knowledge of the field. Her present work focuses on inter-dimensional entity contact experiences and communication.
John L. Petersen is considered by many to be one of the most informed futurists in the world. He is best-known for writing and thinking about high impact surprises (wild cards) and the process of surprise anticipation. His current professional involvements include the development of sophisticated tools for anticipatory analysis and surprise anticipation, long-range strategic planning and helping leadership design new approaches for dealing with the future.
He has led national non-profit organizations, worked in sales, manufacturing, real estate development, and marketing and advertising, mostly for companies he founded. A graduate electrical engineer, he has also promoted rock concerts; produced conventions; and worked as a disc jockey, among other things.
Mr. Petersens government and political experience include stints at the National War College, the Institute for National Security Studies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council staff at the White House. He was a naval flight officer in the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserve and is a decorated veteran of both the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. He has served in senior positions for a number of presidential political campaigns and was an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1984. He was twice the runner-up to be Secretary of the Navy.
In 1989, Petersen founded The Arlington Institute (TAI), a non-profit, future-oriented research institute. TAI operates on the premise that effective thinking about the future is impossible without casting a very wide net. The “think tank” serves as a global agent for change by developing new concepts, processes and tools for anticipating the future and translating that knowledge into better present-day decisions. Using advanced information technology, a core group of bright thinkers and an international network of exceptionally curious people along with simulations, modeling, scenario building, polling and analysis, Arlington helps equip leaders and organizations from many disciplines with tools and actionable perspectives for dealing with uncertain times.
An award-winning writer, Petersens first book, The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future was awarded Outstanding Academic Book of 1995 by CHOICE Academic Review, and remained on The World Future Societys best-seller list for more than a year. His Out of the Blue: How to Anticipate Wild Cards and Big Future Surprises book was also a WFS best-seller. His latest book is a Vision of 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change. His coauthored article, (The Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?) was one of the most highly acclaimed writings on Y2K. His 1988 book-length report (The Diffusion of Power: An Era of Realignment) was used at the highest levels of American government as a basis for strategic planning. He has also written papers on the future of national security and the military, the future of energy and the future of the media.
Petersen is a past board member of the World Future Society, writes on the future of aviation for Professional Pilot magazine and is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation. He is a former network member of the Global Business Network and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. A provocative public speaker, he addresses a wide array of audiences around the world on a variety of future subjects. When he is not writing or speaking, Petersen invests in and develops resources for large, international projects and advanced technology start-up companies. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Speaking Inquiries: Email johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org
Penny Kelly is an author, teacher, speaker, publisher, personal and spiritual consultant, and Naturopathic physician. She travels, lectures, and teaches a variety of classes and workshops, and maintains a large consulting practice. She has been involved in scientific research and investigations into consciousness at Pinelandia Laboratory near Ann Arbor, MI.