The Shit to Know Thursdays

The world woke up this morning wrapped in that December electricity—the kind of winter air that makes you feel like you’re supposed to level up before the year ends.

Christmas lights are everywhere, resolutions are lurking in the shadows, and everyone’s quietly asking themselves if they’ve pushed hard enough, built enough, risked enough. December does that: it turns nostalgia into fuel, pressure into momentum. It’s the final boss fight of the calendar, the moment you either coast… or commit.

That’s the energy we’re carrying into today.

Big Dog Shit
AETHER: THE DRONE ARMS RACE DARK HORSE

Drones aren’t a “theme” anymore; they’re infrastructure. Cheap FPVs and off-the-shelf quadcopters are frying armor, probing borders, and harassing airports while global defense budgets ratchet higher and NATO quietly shifts from 2% of GDP toward something closer to the mid-2s and beyond. Inside that rearmament, counter-drone and ISR are one of the fastest-growing line items—and almost all of it is locked inside giant primes or private defense unicorns.

Aether Global Innovations (CSE: AETH / OTC: AETHF) is the anomaly: a tiny public vehicle trying to plug directly into that spend with real tech, profit-sharing on live opportunities, and a portfolio model instead of a science-project burn.

THE SETUP: DRONES UP, CANADA BEHIND, AETHER IN THE GAP

Legacy air defenses were designed for jets and missiles, not fist-sized plastic buzzing at treetop height. Shooting multimillion-dollar interceptors at $2K drones is a negative-EV joke, which is why counter-UAS and ISR are now priority gaps across NATO.

Canada, meanwhile, is still climbing toward the alliance’s spending bar and has already had to ship nine-figure urgent counter-drone contracts to foreign suppliers because there was no domestic solution ready. That is exactly the hole Aether is trying to fill: Canadian-flagged, NATO-aligned, and focused on drones, counter-drones, and screening for modern threats.

ARION DEAL: AETHER JUST STRAPPED A ROCKET TO ITS STORY

On December 10, 2025, Aether announced a binding letter of intent to acquire Arion Defense Inc. for 20,156,994 AETH shares at a deemed $0.36 per share. The full terms are laid out here:
“Aether Global Innovations Signs Binding Letter of Intent with Private British Columbia Tech Company Arion Defense”.

If it closes as drafted, Aether pulls Arion’s whole security stack inside the public vehicle:

• Bravo Zulu economics: Arion owns two-thirds of Bravo Zulu Drone Defense’s net profit share from a South Asia joint venture with Jatayu Unmanned Technologies, tied to up to US$25M in potential counter-UAV orders. Around US$500K of hardware for demos and field trials is already funded, with contract decisions expected in Q1 2026.
  

• Footwear Screening Platform: Arion holds an exclusive license from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for the Footwear Screening Platform (FSP), which scans shoes for metal and non-metal threats—including 3D-printed weapons—without making passengers take footwear off.

• Arion is also fronting Aether a $150K secured bridge loan, forgivable if the transaction completes. The target is literally paying to be rolled into the story.

BRAVO ZULU: THE KILL-CHAIN ENGINE BEHIND THE TICKER

The technical core of the story is Bravo Zulu Drone Defense. Instead of a generic “drone box,” Bravo Zulu builds site-specific counter-UAS systems: 3D radar tuned for small drones, RF sensors and passive scanners, electro-optical and IR cameras, directional RF jammers and spoofers, plus handheld and man-portable “DroneRifle”-style units—all fused through a dedicated command-and-control platform.

This isn’t untested kit. Bravo Zulu’s integrated system won the MITRE International Counter-UAS Challenge, beating more than forty global competitors and earning a “best in class” nod from one of the most respected defense R&D organizations on the planet. Through existing arrangements and the Arion deal, Aether holds exclusive Canadian licensing and distribution rights to Bravo Zulu’s full suite, with the ability to support allied contracts abroad.

BUSINESS MODEL: ACQUIRE • LICENSE • SCALE

Aether is built as an asset-light, partnership-driven defense platform. The loop is simple:

• Acquire assets like Arion Defense, which bring the Bravo Zulu profit stream and PNNL-licensed FSP under one roof.
  

• License best-in-class systems like Bravo Zulu’s counter-UAS stack on an exclusive Canadian basis.
  

• Scale them into defense ministries, border and intel agencies, and law enforcement, then recycle the same tech into civil infrastructure—airports, ports, utilities, pipelines, logistics hubs, stadiums, campuses.

• In the clean version of this thesis, a major airport could run perimeter ISR drones, layered counter-drone coverage, and FSP checkpoints, all ultimately sourced through Aether’s stack.

TINY CAP, OVERSIZED THEME

Sector comps tell you how big this lane already is. Anduril has been valued above US$30B; DroneShield has pushed into the billion-dollar range; private peers like Dedrone and Epirus sit in the hundreds of millions to multi-billion band. Counter-drone spending itself is projected to more than triple over this decade, while military drone and ISR budgets are expected to more than double as defense spending grinds higher.

Against that backdrop, Aether trades at a single-digit million market cap while offering exclusive Canadian access to Bravo Zulu’s suite, a profit share on a South Asia JV targeting up to US$25M in orders, the Arion/FSP acquisition, and a portfolio pointed squarely at drones, counter-drones, and next-gen screening. It’s one of the only public microcaps that gives focused, uncluttered exposure to this theme.

OUR SKIN IN THE GAME

This isn’t a neutral write-up. An owner of VHLA Media sits on the board of Aether Global Innovations Corp., and this is one of our largest positions. Our capital and reputation are directly tied to whether Aether executes on Bravo Zulu, closes and integrates Arion, and converts that pipeline and NATO-driven demand into real contracts.

It’s early-stage, it’s a microcap, and defense cycles are lumpy—you can absolutely lose money here. But if you are looking for high-torque exposure to the drone and counter-drone arms race in a small public wrapper that is already wired into credible tech and live tenders, Aether is where that bet currently sits.

Not financial advice. Do your own research.

Federal Reserve
FED CUTS LIKE EMO TEENAGE GIRL

The Fed rolled out another rate cut yesterday like it was trying to soothe a national migraine, but instead of euphoria, the market just stared back with that “is this enough?” expression.

Three dissents, a fractured committee, a dot plot that practically shrugs—this wasn’t a victory lap, it was a truce. And yet, the implications are massive: the 5% risk-free era is slipping through our fingers. The coast of 2026 is now in view, and suddenly the Upfinity meta starts getting oxygen.

Hassett sitting in the wings as the likely next Fed chair only adds spice. The man has made it clear he sees room to cut, room to recalibrate, room to reshape the machinery itself.

If he gets the chair, the entire yield landscape gets flipped into a new regime. The adults in the room are quietly repositioning. Everyone else is pretending they’re not nervous.

The Next Big Theme
DATA CENTERS IN SPACE, BRO

The next big AI side-quest isn’t quantum—it’s compute in orbit. Google wants extraterrestrial data centers by 2027. New players are pitching solar-powered AI nodes in space. Lunatics with PowerPoints are talking lunar backups.

And the market is nibbling. SATL, RDW, LUNR—all tiny, volatile, and early—are suddenly in the narrative’s blast radius. This is how a theme starts: weird, speculative, and too big to ignore.

SpaceX
ELON CLOSING IN ON A TRILLY

SpaceX is lining up a 2026 IPO at a jaw-dropping $1.5T valuation, which would shove Elon toward a personal net worth near $900B.

He’s no longer competing with billionaires; he’s competing with ecosystems. And with SpaceX diving into orbital infrastructure and compute, he’s positioned right at the center of the space-data-center mania. The man isn’t building companies, he’s speedrunning economic history.