Building on past relationships

Over the holidays, I took a short break from the cold weather in Washington, DC with time to play golf in West Palm Beach, Florida where the weather was exceptionally wonderful. I played at the exclusive Trump International Golf Club where obviously, one needs to be invited to play, even more so to become a member.

Next to the Trump International Golf Club is Palm Beach where one of President Trump’s homes, Mar-a-Lago, is located. Today, it can very well be considered as the center of power and wealth in the United States. Mar-a-Lago was once owned by wealthy socialite and heiress to the Post Cereals fortune, Marjorie Post. Palm Beach, a barrier island, is also where the Kennedys had a home. JFK actually spent some time there before and during his short presidency.

After my golf game, I was extremely pleased to have a conversation with President Trump. I congratulated him for his decisive win, and told him I was looking forward to working once again with his administration.

I presented my credentials in November 2017 to President Trump right after he came from Manila for the 31st ASEAN Summit, where I had the chance to first meet him.

During the congratulatory phone call that we arranged for President Marcos, the US president-elect inquired about PBBM’s mother, former first lady Imelda Marcos, whom President Trump met in New York many times in the past. Undoubtedly, the call was a great opportunity for PBBM to re-establish personal connections with the incoming US president.

Building on past relationships we have developed with those who were in office during the first Trump administration will surely put us on the right track in continuing our strong alliance with the United States.

Talking to some of the people around President Trump, it is clear the 47th president is very keen on making sure America will be on top of the game when it comes to AI technology. Many of the tech billionaires have already met with the incoming president, among them Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman – and not the least a close adviser and friend of the president, Elon Musk.

President Trump also appointed Sriram Krishnan as Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence (under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) to work alongside “AI and crypto czar” David Sacks, posting on X that the focus will be on “ensuring continued American leadership in AI and help shape and coordinate AI policy across government…”

An article published in cio.com says Krishnan’s approach “aligns with Trump’s second-term emphasis on reinvigorating US dominance in emerging technologies. The policy Krishnan helps craft could significantly impact enterprises – particularly those in tech, media and manufacturing – as they navigate AI integration into their operations.”

The US leads in AI technology, outperforming every other country by “significant margins” and “leads in virtually every pillar,” producing the highest quality AI research and building the most notable machine learning models in 2023, according to Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

In San Francisco, driverless taxis also known as “robotaxis” are becoming prevalent while in New York, preparations are underway for commercial electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft or air taxis that would make people travel from one end to another without the hassle of traffic. The Downtown Manhattan Heliport will also be getting a major facelift to become a hub for eVTOL operations, giving a peek of the future with urban air transport.

The United States is also ahead when it comes to the use of drones in the military, with several American companies leading the pack such as AeroVironment, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, among several others. Unlike their commercial counterparts that are primarily used for aerial photography, delivery and recreation, military drones can perform a wide range of tasks like intelligence gathering, reconnaissance and aerial surveillance, operating with maximum efficiency and at high speeds.

In 2017, President Trump created the Drone Integration Pilot Program under the Department of Transportation that allowed private companies to work with local government agencies to safely test new technologies and accelerate drone integration into the National Airspace System. As then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao explained it, the DIPP supports President Trump’s commitment to “foster technological innovation that will be a catalyst for ideas that have the potential to change our day-to-day lives.”

It was also during the first term of President Trump that the US Space Force was established as part of the Department of the Air Force. Led by the Chief of Space Operations, the mission of Space Force is to secure America’s interests “in, from and to space,” and its core function is to maintain space superiority and defend against space and counterspace threats.

President Trump’s establishment of the US Space Force dovetails with the vision of President Ronald Reagan, who spoke of space being the next frontier during his State of the Union address in 1984, saying, “America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic and scientific gain.”

Clearly, the future of our planet in keeping peace on earth will be decided in space. There is no doubt President Donald Trump is heading in that direction in projecting the power and might of the United States. Evidently, the decision of President Marcos to continue strengthening our relationship with the United States is not only correct – but also puts us on the right side of history.

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