Global trade policy is shifting, digital infrastructure demand is exploding, and the next frontier of supply chain operations may literally be off-planet. From tariffs to terabytes to orbiting technology, the pace of change isn’t slowing down anytime soon, welcome to The Buzz, powered by EasyPost!

In this episode, Scott Luton and Richard Donaldson break down a potential U.S.–India trade agreement and what it could mean for sourcing strategies, tariffs, and global partnerships. The conversation then turns to the rapid growth of data center infrastructure across the United States, why certain regions have become critical digital logistics hubs, and how AI is accelerating demand for computing capacity. Finally, the hosts explore a bold emerging concept: space-based data centers — and how advancements in energy efficiency, cooling, and scalability could reshape long-term supply chain strategy.

Tune in to learn:

1. What a U.S.–India trade agreement could change for tariffs and global sourcing
2. Why data centers are becoming core supply chain infrastructure
3. How AI growth is driving massive infrastructure investment
4. Why Northern Virginia leads the U.S. in data center concentration
5. The potential advantages of space-based data storage and processing
6. What these developments signal for long-term operational strategy

Whether you’re a supply chain practitioner, technology leader, strategist, or simply trying to keep pace with where operations and innovation are heading, this episode will help you connect the dots between trade policy, infrastructure investment, and the next era of global supply chains.

Additional Links & Resources:

1. Learn more about EasyPost: https://www.easypost.com/
2. Learn more about Supply Chain Now: https://supplychainnow.com
3. Watch and listen to more Supply Chain Now episodes here: https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-now
4. Subscribe to Supply Chain Now on your favorite platform: https://supplychainnow.com/join
5. Work with us! Download Supply Chain Now’s NEW Media Kit: https://bit.ly/3XH6OVk
6. WEBINAR- Supply Chain Planning Reimagined: Embedded AI that senses, explains, and optimizes: https://bit.ly/4pOGgyo
7. WEBINAR- ChatGPT Is Just the Beginning for Shipping: https://bit.ly/3YLFGq7

This episode is hosted by Scott Luton and Richard Donaldson, and produced by Trisha Cordes, Joshua Miranda, and Amanda Luton. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/buzz-tariffs-terabytes-final-frontier-1545

Welcome to Supply Chain now the number one voice of supply chain.

Join us as we share critical news, key insights, and real supply chain leadership.

From across the globe.

One conversation at a time.

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be.

Scott Lewton and Richard Donaldson here with you on Supply Chain now.

Welcome to today's Live Stream.

Hey, Richard, how you doing today?

Good morning, Scott.

Fabulous.

It's all about space.

That's right.

Big show, big day, big year, big series.

Check, check, check, folks.

On today's show, one more be.

It's all about the buzz, where every Monday at 12 noon Eastern time, we discuss a variety of news and developments across global supply chain and business news that matters is what we like to call it.

And the Buzz is powered by our friends at easypost who help make shipping easy, flexible and scalable.

Learn more about how you can simplify your shipping operations and delight your customers@easypost.com okay, Richard, first off, we got to keep it real, folks.

Y' all know you can trust us to keep things real.

So the Buzz is prerecorded today, right?

Because we're out at Manifest right now, really busy talking with folks, movers and shakers, interviewing some folks.

But no worries.

We'll be back back live next week.

So we just wanted to put that out there.

But Richard, got a great show teed up.

Let's see here.

We're gonna have a little extra dose of tech and space stuff.

We're gonna be talking about the tentative US Deal.

We're looking at the current data center Footprint in the US we're going to have our space nerd update Artemis.

Two SpaceX data centers in space.

I see.

That's kind of like pigs in space.

Oh, Muppet series.

That's like a little flashback.

All that more.

Richard, man, did you eat your Wheaties this morning?

Are you ready to go?

I'm jazz already, man.

Already.

But up at the air, got a cup of cups of coffee in me ready.

Ready to take flight.

That is right.

I'll tell you what, you operate around the clock.

But folks, buckle up for a great addition of the Buzz, powered by EasyPost right here today.

Okay, so before we get into the news here on the Buzz, there's three things I want to hit Richard, and it's going to take an interactive effort here.

I'm going to be picking your brain a good bit here.

So starting with food.

Chicken wings, hamburgers, pigs and blanket, you name it.

Talking about super bowl food now, folks.

We're again, we're recording this before the super bowl, so we don't even know the winner.

But I bet it was a Seattle Seahawks is my hunch.

But the game is really maybe the second most important thing, maybe the third after the commercials and the food.

So, Richard, real quick check in.

What is your go to food wise for super bowl tailgating?

Okay?

So, you know, you throw that out there and I'll be dead honest, right?

I'm a wing fanatic, right?

Wings all day long.

I eat them all.

It doesn't matter what day you're 365.

So Super bowl is just yet another excuse.

So I don't feel like that's a fair answer, but I have a variation of pigs on a blanket where I take Pillsbury croissant dough, right, that you find in the supermarket, use that as my blanket, take that out and roll up into it.

Instead of traditional hot dogs, ch variations of chicken, apple, sausages, okay.

Mustards and various cheeses.

And so it becomes kind of this croissant kind of variation of pigs in a blanket.

And that's something I've been making for.

A long time for Super Bowls, man, I love it.

Rich, I'm out to steal that recipe from you.

But, folks, whatever, whether you follow Richard's lead or you have your own, we got to make food selections wisely.

Because as you can see here from retail brew and finance Buzz, they say that hosting a Super bowl party is going to be 7.2% more expensive this year than last year.

Gosh.

Chicken wings are almost up 25% on average year over year.

So, Richard, get ready.

And veggie trays even up almost 20% year over year.

So get ready.

And good luck to Seahawks and the Patriots coast to coast.

So number two, Richard, now that we're starving, all I can think about is crispy, extra crispy chicken wings.

Thank you so much, Richard.

I'm excited to share a really cool initiative that Amanda and the team launched here at Supply Chain.

Now it is between the lines by Supply Chain.

Now what we're reading, thinking, and recommending.

So this is a dedicated space for our community to share, exchange, reflect, and discuss.

All folks are welcome, even if you aren't a Supply chain nerd like the rest of us are.

Right.

In fact, we hope to have lots and lots of non supply chain folks join us.

Right.

In fact, I bet most of the books discussed and shared will have very little to do with global supply chain.

That's perfectly fine other than they all have one.

Right.

Because supply chain does touch everything.

The first three recommendations are already in from Mary Kate, Trisha and Amanda.

And go check it out.

We're gonna drop a link.

You can go read those recommendations and add your own comments and all.

And Richard, I gotta ask you, my hunch is you're a voracious reader.

What's been one of your favorite recent reads?

Well, you know, we've done the show a few times together, Scott and I.

My default is always to go back to kind of my, my traditional science fiction.

So my Isaac Asimov's were Robert Heinlein's.

But in fact, because we're now talking about new.

I did stumble into a new author.

His name's Will White.

W I G H T and he wrote a series called the Cradle series.

And I really love reading fantasy science fiction, you know, the Hobbit, things like this.

Well, this guy has got a spin.

I'm just going to say it's, it's one of the most unique stories that I've read in quite some time where it doesn't fall into any pattern that you would expect.

It is, I can't even put terms to it.

It's, it's sort of a soul universal.

Possibly multiple dimensional science fiction.

Just, I mean it's so creative that.

When I started getting into it and my brother in all honesty turned me.

Onto it, I devoured anything.

It was like 13, 14 books in it, I think plowed through them in about a month.

So it is Will White, it's called the Cradle series.

Okay.

As in, you know, cradling and it.

Is, I'll leave it at that.

If you dig it up.

It's, it's, it's a fun, it's, it's unique and it really, even in the context of kind of where we're going, it's a fresh perspective on I guess multi dimensional science fiction slash fantasy.

I like it.

We need all the fresh perspective we can get.

Richard, one question.

What's your brother's name?

Chris.

Chris, yes.

Chris Donaldson gets credit for that.

So shout out to Chris Donaldson.

He works at Cambrian Minnesota.

So you know.

Hey, there you go.

Outstanding.

We're have to add Chris and Richard to our list of reviewers.

And folks, hey, this is a very collaborative, community driven thing.

So come check out between the Lines.

And of course we welcome your input.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Also, one more thing, we welcome your participation in National Supply Chain Day, folks, is coming up April 29th.

You may or may not know that Mary Kate, when she was at Georgia Pacific, she now serves as our fearless president here at Supply Chain.

Now she's the one that submitted the paperwork to create National Supply Chain Day right while she was doing some really innovative things with gp.

Well, ever since Mary Kate joined us, we've been looking to really rein reinvigorate and take National Supply Chain Day to all time new levels.

Most importantly because as incredible as the technology is in this golden age of global supply chain, hey, the people that make it happen every day, that's a really big theme at what we've been doing now for years.

So come join us April 29, 12 noon Eastern Time as we have a slew of guests keynote and lots of, lots of fun.

So come check it out.

Richard, do you have National Supply Chain Day circled in a red Sharpie on your calendar?

Well, Scott, you know how this works, man.

I mean, you know, we've all known each other for a long time and Mary Kate was actually my inspiration to launch International Supply chain day about 10, 12 years ago.

That sort of fizzled out a little bit.

But I know I've even kicked over to Mary Kate like you should take this nationally and internationally because at the end of the day when we get back to space, it's an international supply chain, it's a global supply chain.

That's a unique perspective that I know she can bring into this.

And you know, she does amazing stuff.

So absolutely no doubt in every country should have a national Supply Chain Day.

I think we've talked about that before.

So love Richard.

We're going to revisit that.

No shortage of things going on.

And folks, we hadn't even gotten to work yet.

We got to get down to some of the news stories here on the Buzz, powered by our friends at easypost.

And we're going to start with what I think maybe Richard is some good news.

It might be tentative good news because all the details at the time of this recording haven't come out.

But the good news is, is that we evidently have a trade deal between the US and the great, wonderful, beautiful country of India.

So based on social media reporting, I'm going to call it mainly from the Oval Office, the US is as part of the deal is supposed to lower the country specific tariff rate from 25% to 18%.

The White House also reportedly agreed to remove an additional 25% tariff that it placed on India due to at the its purchase of oil from Russia.

President Trump has said that India has agreed to lower their tariffs as well as their non tariff barriers for U.S. imports all the way, he says to Zero.

We'll see.

And it's also being reported that India has agreed to stop buying oil from Russia while agreeing to buy more than 500 billion in U.S. products in areas such as coal, agriculture, energy and technology.

None of, again, none of this is official yet as of February 3rd, but we shall see.

Richard, your thoughts on this tentative informal deal?

Well, you know, as you kind of highlighted here, it sounds great.

We'll see how it plays out.

We're obviously going to once this comes to live show, we'll see the fruits of this labor.

But I think in the context of number one, you know, India purchasing oil now from the United States versus Russia, well, this is indicative of the overall global kind of geopolitical system that's being restructured right now.

So if you take in the beginning of the year, look at all these things, this kind of dominoes, we're resetting the stage or you know, whether they like it or dislike it, Trump is resetting the stage through Marco Rubio and his efforts both diplomatically and militarily.

And you're seeing even with the involvement we've had with Iran and destabilizing that area there, you know that's going to yield some results.

Well, that then cascades into the taking down of Maduro in Venezuela, allows a large major source of oil for a lot of these, you know, kind of nefarious countries that's now yielding some results.

You know, when we're gonna see it happen, this is yet another domino in that chain that's happening where you're gonna see, I believe the conclusion which is reestablishing the global geopolitical spectrum to where it's really kind of the United States on one side, I think Europe has kind of become a little bit, not just secondary, almost tertiary, but India and China specifically, given their populations.

And you're looking at nearly half the world's population of 8 billion people contained between those two countries.

In China and India, they're the major players.

Russia's even tertiary at this point.

Militarily, they can't keep up.

Their trade is all predicated on smoke and mirrors.

And I think you're starting to see all that really happening right now.

And especially when you see countries that Russia's living on its oil.

That's the only thing it's really gotten its back pocket.

And when major purchasers like India start shifting over the United States, well, that just resets the whole stage.

And I think that's, that's what you're going to see over the next 12 to 18 months, is that that's settling down and three major axes emerge.

Gosh, I wish my crystal ball was as smart as yours, Richard.

Maybe I gotta get some AI to inject in there.

That's it.

Yes, I got AI in my ear right now, so prompting me all that.

Right.

But Richard, very impressive.

I really appreciate your outlook and it really is fascinating.

These global power or trade shifts tend not to take place as fast as gosh, what we've seen the last 18 months, two years or so.

And as you pointed out, I'm pretty sure the EU just had announced a trade deal with India in the last few weeks.

Of course we all saw the China and Canada trade relationship get rolled out.

We'll see where that goes.

It is an interesting time full of geopolitical power shifts.

So we'll see how it plays out.

But Richard, I tend to subscribe to your outlook there.

Okay, now we're going to shift over.

Talk about a fast moving world to the world of data centers, the wide busy world of data centers.

Now Richard, I stumbled across this on your LinkedIn feed and I'm going to share this, what I thought was a pretty informative graphic.

This comes from Ben Walmsley over on LinkedIn.

This is a map of U.

This may or may not surprise some folks.

I bet it won't surprise me, the tech folks, that Virginia leads the way with 665 data centers again as of last year.

And you'll see the note there.

Ashburn, Virginia is a hot spot for all things tech.

On the other side of the fence though, Vermont has three, that's the fewest, followed by Alaska with four.

A little bit of a size disparity there.

Even Rhode island has, has more than double the the the count there in Vermont.

And get this though, so Ben reports that almost 3, 000 data centers are now under construction or being planned here in the U. S. Here in Georgia, you see we got 163, but at the end of the day, I guess it's not really a race, Richard, you know, there's lots of different opinions on data centers and where we build them and you know it's gonna Be really interesting to see that dynamic play out.

But does anything related to these counts surprise you here or your thoughts here, Richard?

Yeah, nothing surprises me.

And as you know, my background certainly coming up for 25 years in Silicon Valley was in data centers.

So kind of played with all these people.

I was part of some of these projects themselves.

And if you look at that map carefully, what's underneath it is the Internet highway itself is where it exists.

So those nexus points in California, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston or Phoenix, Dallas, Houston as you come across there and then into Georgia, down to Florida, which then connects down to South America, up into Virginia and back across Chicago, all the way back across to California.

That loop is the Internet broadband highway.

It's the biggest laying of the fiber.

It's underneath the ground.

So it's not coincidental that these states are where these data centers have been deployed.

And then you're seeing these secondary and third markets develop just from the density of data centers in the primary data center locations.

Now the big change that's happened and then again, you nailed it.

This isn't about a race per se.

If anything, it is just a capacity constraint.

We need the data centers to run all of this digital stuff that we're developing.

AI automation, you know, airplanes, traffic, space, blah blah, blah.

However, the big game changer that I think, and we're kind of getting to this, is this, is this is still predicated on kind of fiber routes, fiber.

Being the primary way to move traffic around the world.

So even the undersea cable system, you see the launch points, you do look at this on a global basis, you'll see it's not coincidental that you have big data center builds with the Atlantic.

And Pacific routes, cable routes are laid.

But the big game changer, the thing.

That throws this all out the window to some extent is space, right?

If we now develop through Starlink, SpaceX and continued broadband development that is as.

Reliable, as secure as traditional fiber, which we will then space itself decouples our land based strategy.

And that will be the game changer of the next 20 years.

So hold that thought.

I'm going to circle back, pull some more information there from you on, on that opportunity.

So as we said, it's not a race folks.

But I got to point out, Richard, because you're, you call Arizona home.

If it was a race, Georgia with 163 and Arizona with 164, it'd be neck and neck.

So.

That's right.

That's right.

Well, side note though, as Richard can attest to as you heard him there, he spent a ton of time in the data center space.

Data center supply chain is big business.

Meta recently announced an agreement with Corning, is expected to be worth about $6 billion to support data center infrastructure build outs here in the US Coming to a state near you.

And another interesting supply chain topic here is many expect some extra pressure on the automotive industry in their efforts to protect their chip supply due to all the heightened demand from new data centers.

Richard, your quick comment there.

So now you're kind of touching on again.

You need chips to drive a lot of this, whether it's an automated vehicle, right?

Automated flying cars, which again, not to be too far out there, that's coming, right.

So if you look at the graphics chips and processors, and one of the reasons Nvidia, you know, really kind of took over that market over intel, surpassed them, is because they emphasize the graphics processors, the GPUs, about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, that is now what is driving most of the, the 3D kind of rendering.

I mean, it's games, it's video games at the end of the day.

So, you know, a 3D representation in a car, a plane or otherwise is using that heavy graphics processing unit.

So this is really about chip constraints and where they're being deployed.

And everything we build today, whether it's a data center stacked with computers or a vehicle that's stacked with a 3D processor that is, you know, making you save driving automatically for you, that's all the same chip.

And so these chips now are being pulled into every facet of our not only supply chain, but every fabric, the fabric of how we exist, right?

And they're cars, they're in planes, they're in, you know, future vehicles that we're going to develop.

They're in, you know, boats, ships, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So what you're really touching on here is where the chips are being pulled in all vertical markets where they once were sort of the domain of the computer IT market.

That's the big change right now.

Yeah, remarkable.

Gosh, you can see it's obvious that you did live a big chunk of your life in that, in that space.

Just a little bit.

But that's good.

It's a fascinating high velocity, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute update.

So we'll revisit soon.

But hey, before we move into the data center, potential in space, and really our space nerd update, I use that term very lovingly because I'm a big space nerd, I want to share a quick message from our friends at Easypost Manifest, folks, again today is February 9th.

I am right now at Manifest, which why we're recording this.

Lots of movers and shakers there.

It's been growing every year and Easy Post is going to be on the on the ground having all sorts of real conversations, especially about AI.

We invite you to join Lori Boyer and Tom Butt session that's going to dive into how LLMs are changing the shipping game.

Then you can swing by their booth.

Get this, 777.

How about that booth for booth number in Vegas?

Go by booth 777.

Say hello, see what's new.

They got some cool giveaways.

They won't be giving away a data center.

Maybe not a Cadillac, but hey, some really cool stuff.

Stop by, say hello to Lori, Tom, Kevin and the gang.

Booth 777.

Okay Richard, we are going to move into our space Nerd update.

We need another acronym snu.

And again folks, we're not pointing fingers, lots of love.

But I want to move to this topic of data centers in space and I think I asked CHAT GPT to give me a rendering of what that might look like.

Yes.

Now look at this.

Richard, really quick.

Before you talk about the potential, what's the first thing that may be wrong about how Chat GPT envisions this?

Any comments there?

Well, right off the gun, I mean just looking at this, you kind of got these solar arrays.

It's a little dense, it's too close to each other.

I mean there's just, I mean I just, I mean it looks like more of a space station kind of thing.

So there's not a lot of thinking inside some server racks.

And is it going to be open?

Is it not going to be open?

I mean there's a whole bu.

Yeah, there's a number of things that could pretty fast.

But for a fun little rendering and to show you the potential of ChatGPT in any kind of area, that's kind of fun.

Yes.

One more comment before I get you to weigh in on the possibility.

You know when I saw this and just this morning I thought immediately about something you and I have talked about before.

And that is the anti collision technology that we've got to continue to develop and deploy up in low earth orbit or whatever the right word is.

And gosh, when you just see this vision, even if it isn't right, that is the first thing that came to mind is how can we protect this massive trillion dollar investment of what the opportunity may require.

Your quick thoughts there Richard, and then tell us about the overall potential of what you see.

Yeah, well, and again, this is a real thing now.

We're talking about space development, we're talking about a space supply chain literally, right?

So this is the first foray into our informational supply chain as we begin to build these out in the different orbits, so low, medium, high earth orbits, understanding orbits, understanding space debris.

I mean forget just the junk of the stuff that we've shot up there, there's the stuff that we don't even know exists up there.

You know, you look at something like Three Eye Atlas, let's not forget that just blew by the planet and we still don't even know what that was at this point.

I mean we're starting to, with this new field of vision, open up the.

Aperture to the true infinite nature of space.

And so as we begin to step up there, put our information highway up there, put our literal supply, true supply chains, so feeding supplies to future astronauts and space travelers and back towards Earth, right?

Because this is a two way supply chain we're going to want.

I mean you've seen there are discoveries where they're saying there's you know, rocks made of full gold up there they find or full diamonds or you know, pure water, you know, natural water that's sitting out there in space that they've identified.

Well, how in the world are we going to get to that?

One and then two, how does that return back to Earth?

So all of these things right off the gun, it's just that first step in, we're going to screw up quite a bit as we normally would, as anybody would.

I mean if you look at any supply chain that's built historically, we messed up a lot.

You know, that's part of the adventure.

You know, people are going to be critical of that.

That's pretty normal.

That's what happens when you push the envelope.

You're an entrepreneur, you're a discoverer, everyone looks at you with a little bit.

Of like, oh my God, you can't do that.

Well, it's happening folks, and you can.

Either get on board or not.

And it's going to lead in some discussions about some of the companies that are going to benefit from this, like SpaceX and others.

So it's, it's, yeah, it's one of these things.

I look at that and I say, you know, it's, it's kind of a fantasy view.

But you know, hey, if we build something like that and it works and it doesn't work, at least we're going to learn quite a Bit from these first deployments.

Yes.

So I got a quick follow up question and then we're going to give a quick Update on Artemis 2.

You mentioned perhaps massive gold and diamonds and water up in space.

How about maybe we can find massive minds of business certainty or humanity?

Okay, okay, now you're getting into a very spiritual discussion, which I'm not sure.

Yes, why open ourselves up to it?

But I'm with you brother, let's make that happen.

Let me ask you a serious question.

All kidding aside, seriously, based on what you know, just today, and we know things are moving and especially in this era of the space exploration chapter, space supply chain, space business, if you had to give us a hard prediction, there's a growing PR issue with some data centers and we talked about this, I think last time you joined us you got some data centers who aim to make it like a gathering place to lessen some of the pushback from communities here on Earth.

How much potential do you think of shifting computing power, overall capacity to a space based network versus what we have here?

Initial thoughts there.

So I'm going to like it to another point that we've talked about before, which is the shift that we have in the global supply chain from linear to circular and that kind of tees up, you know, new colleague, that you're bringing on the board to get into a lot of the circular topics.

And to your point, I wrote an article probably about seven, eight years ago calling this the decade of the circular supply chain.

And we're kind of on target right now.

We're kind of midway through we're doing all that.

So I would then liken the same ratio to data center development.

You know, on ear versus space based, the 50 years, 100 years from now, whatever, you know, all things will be in space.

It just makes more sense.

It doesn't tax the planet as much, doesn't pull as much energy off the planet, it doesn't require as many resources to maintain, yadda yadda yadda, I can go on the list.

And if we have connectivity down that's secure and otherwise, why wouldn't we want it floating around our earth?

It's safer, it's easier, it's more flexible.

It'S more adaptable, it reaches everybody.

So all of the check marks on how you want it and by the way, free cooling, you've got potential unlimited.

Energy sources up there that we don't.

Have to worry about anywhere down here.

And which is the trend in data centers, both Earth based and space based is nuclear power.

You know, that's, that's common.

That's coming in full steam.

And all the data center operators are building new nuclear power generation.

You know, many nuclear substations.

Well, I don't care as much if I have a nuclear power plant sitting in space and something goes wrong.

Well, okay, so what?

So there's just a lot of benefits to putting into space.

And so I think it's the ratio of, you know, today we're kind of like sub 1% space based data centers versus 99.9% earth based.

That ratio is going to shift over the next 25 years where I'm just putting a line in the sand.

I think over the next 20 to 25 years you get more.

50.

50.

Wow.

Okay, I like it.

I am writing this date down.

It is February 3rd, right.

2026.

And you know how good predictions are, right?

I mean anyone can make one.

But hey, I'm just messing, I'm just messing with remember I'm the guy that, that thought tariffs was only being used for negotiation.

Purp.

How crazy was I?

Right?

Right.

Anyway, all right, so let's keep going down this still quick space nerd update.

The Artemis.

This is so exciting.

Launch of the Artemis is almost here, but as you know, NBC News reports at least today.

We had a little setback yesterday as I believe there's a hydrogen link, a leak during a test.

So the launch window is being reported has been pushed back into March.

So we got to wait a little bit longer before the exciting launch of Artemis 2.

But nevertheless, this is a monumental space campaign.

Richard, not I'm not throwing stones anybody, but I continue to as I jump on podcasts and we're in the green room or if I have a cup of coffee out, I'm still amazed at how little awareness some folks are that aren't, aren't as into space stuff as maybe me and you, there needs to be massive more awareness.

I mean this is the ultimate goal.

This campaign truly is establishing a permanent lunar base, amongst other things.

And despite all these, all the long, long haul components related to space supply chain, which Richard touched on a couple times earlier, especially to supply effectively supply in a safe manner, a lunar base.

There's tons of optimism around local sourcing options on the moon specifically.

I think you mentioned this, Richard.

There's water ice, there's the, the scientists think there's a ton of water ice that's found on the moon's south pole.

So Richard, Artemis 2, maybe we got to wait until March, but I'm glad that we're taking the safe, safe bets.

Right, Safe measures.

Your thoughts here?

I think you hit them all right.

On the one hand, I wish our news cycles were more consumed with what this is.

You know, our exploration in space.

Artemis, SpaceX, everything.

SpaceX IPO, which we're going to talk about a little bit, but all the discoveries that we're having, even three eye outlets, right.

I mean I've talked about you and I have talked about that in previous shows, but here's this giant object that no one really knows what it was.

It did things that no one could really understand.

All of our current knowledge, right.

Doesn't even touch this.

It is truly the unknown unknown.

And to me and you right now, I mean, that feels like such a north star for humanity.

What a, what a rallying point for all of human beings to get out of this chaos that we seem to be in.

And in defense of people, the news cycles are so fast and so torrid and things are changing so quickly right now.

It's hard to keep up with just your daily life, much less all the chaos in the world and the rebalancing.

You talk about India, I mean, we're going through some growing pains right now.

You know, the structures that we've been used to post World War II are breaking down.

That's painful for the world and that's painful for everyone's kind of global psychology.

So they're kind of wrapped up in that.

So I give some defense to it.

But then just like you and I right now, I don't understand why the media is not fanning the flame literally around these space rockets and space engines and space development.

Because just like you and I talking to you, it's like, why can't we look to the stars?

I feel like, I mean, I didn't live then, but I feel like this is what happened.

When Kennedy shot to the moon in the 60s, it gave people some, something to really shoot for, literally.

It gave something to rally around, to be excited about, to kind of re energize, you know, why we're here.

And to me that feels almost existential in a development of humanity to get more attention to this because it is happening, it's happening at a great pace.

And honestly, as discoverers, like, oh my God, we are stepping into the giant unknown unknown.

And you think, you think we're discovering stuff now Wait, I mean, it's going to be shocking what we run into, right?

I mean, shocking, no doubt.

And what it will demand from our, our fellow supply chain, everybody.

Yeah.

Especially our supply chain management pros.

Get ready.

We're adding a lot more chapters to the body of knowledge and that's, you know, to touch on something you shared made me think of, you know, when, when the fearless, incredible Apollo program.

Yeah.

Came to a close.

For a variety of reasons, we won't get into all that, but spending or PR or you name it, for a variety of reasons, all that knowledge got shelved and in many cases, sadly, it kind of disappeared and folks left the space industry, all this stuff, which is one of the biggest reasons why it took us so long to get back on the doorstep of lunar exploration.

And the exciting thing about that, Richard, is assuming all this is successful, right.

Is I think it's here to stay.

You know, I think there's a much bigger probability, especially where technology and other things are, that this truly opens up that chapter for good.

And then that becomes, you know, and not to be too far out there, but that becomes a launching pad, no pun intended, for what's beyond the moon.

Right.

And sail out there.

Some people still do.

Right?

Some people still do.

Fair enough.

Right.

But we'll see.

What did that cascade into?

Well, first of all, all the obstinate and all the objection, no, you can't do this.

No, it's impossible.

He disproved that.

Secondly, what that led to was again, historically good and bad to this.

But the East India Dutch Company, one of the most powerful conglomerates that basically ran the world, that we still even have sprinklings of those routes for the better part of four or 500 or yeah, I guess 500 years.

Really.

Four or 500 years.

So that's what gave birth to the power of the United Kingdom.

So we're literally at that point in humanity's expansion into space, where we are the Christopher Columbus's, you know, and maybe, you know, again, like or dislike, Elon Musk is right there in that kind of four, you know, first move or advantage, if you will.

But we are at the precipice of developing companies that will make East India Dutch Company look minuscule given the universal scale of what we're stepping into.

I tell you, exciting times, Richard, exciting times.

So folks, stick around and we're going to keep our for supply chain reasons and plenty of other reasons to see where Artemis to when it launches and what lies ahead.

A really quick trivia factoid.

I found this out earlier.

I'm a big mythology as a big mythology fan as a kid, NASA chose the name Artemis for this ambitious campaign because Artemis is the Greek goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo.

So how cool is that?

Little tip of the hat.

Okay, so Richard, one last thing.

Let's see here.

I believe CNBC is one of the many outlets reporting about a new SpaceX acquisition in the run up to the potential IPO.

So I'd love to get your, you know, between your technology and your investment finance and space passions, what do you see here?

Well, I mean, from an investment standpoint, I can't wait.

I'm bribing everyone I know to allow me early access to this ipo.

Because this isn't a question whether it's, it's already making money, right?

It already has.

Beyond the first mover advantage in this space.

And to be blunt, I've misfired, no pun intended, on a couple of the rocket companies that I thought were going to be right there, but it's just too early.

Right.

And I liken this back to investing in, you know, I've been very long, ever since my days in data center stocks.

And digital realty has done fairly well because these are the things that are going to persist throughout time.

And this is where I kind of have a little bit of the Warren Buffett mentality, which is I only invest in things that I kind of understand, even if it's just, you know, 50, 50, but you know, it's not speculative to me.

And I also look for longevity, things I can hold onto for 20, 30, 40, 50 years that aren't going anywhere.

SpaceX is hands down one of those unique opportunities.

I mean, they are kind of the East India Dutch company that I'm referencing as of right now.

They have the potential.

They already are the biggest space explorer, the biggest space supply chain company.

They're providing connectivity.

So the pillars of transport, information and transportation, if you take those three pillars as kind of our way to move into these things, they already own almost all three.

Right.

And so there's no the seconds and the thirds haven't even gotten to where they're, you know, they are yet Blue Origin.

Everybody else is playing different games, you know, Elon, Elon is playing, I don't know what it's go 5D checkers, chess, whatever.

Like, I mean he's at a just different level.

So let's basics.

You know, IPO not only I think.

It provides an incredible financial opportunity for people, but back to our point about visibility.

You get something like that out there as an ipo.

Now all of a sudden there's a bunch of businesses.

I mean, let's be honest, right?

I mean businesses are always looking for new opportunities.

This is it, right?

If you can get in on this game now at this ground level, oh my God.

The upside is literally limitless.

So I think it's going to, I think it's going to be a domino.

For the whole space financial opportunities to become more relevant to people.

And then you know, when that happens.

That'S when people start paying a lot of attention.

Love it.

And with that comes many, many things.

Good things, Richard.

Good stuff.

We're gonna keep an eye on SpaceX amongst amongst many other other space related things.

All right, we got to get boring now.

We got to bring it back down to earth.

Back down to the blue marble.

Kidding, of course, only kidding.

And, and folks, I know this, this is not our typical edition of the buzz, right?

We're kind of world out there with space and, and a lot of technology here today.

But gosh, in this era of global supply chain, it's all so interconnected.

So bear with us here.

I want to talk about this great article from CIO Dive and they list four trends that CIOs will be challenged by this year.

Richard, I'm going to share all four to get your reaction.

Number one, of course we all know agentic AI technology has taken a big step forward.

But many organizations are going to need to implement a skills progression roadmap as the article suggests, to figure out how to move effectively from human driven to agent driven processes and which processes.

Number two, rescaling of the human workforce of course to better leverage AI.

That's been around for a long time, right?

Number three, AI regulation efforts.

And not necessarily at the federal government level globally, but even here in the various states which continue to move on here in the US and then 4 only more upward pressure on CIOs to return more on technology investment and not just AI.

Including the timeless challenge on the effective utilization of troves and troves of growing organizational data.

Again, these are old but new themes, right?

Both now in the article Heller search SEO, Martha Heller said this article, quote, if you don't get your data right, do you remember Radio Shack?

Do you remember Blockbuster?

I think we're going to see the have and the have not divide, end quote.

Richard, these priorities aren't breaking new ground per se, but I would argue that we're seeing new twists and new aspects of these challenges that are, that T. CIOs and their teams are going to be tasked with.

Your thoughts?

Yeah.

And I think you, I think you hit them, right?

I mean these are the constant kind of interrogation of new technology, right.

So if we go back even to the Internet itself, you know, at first everyone panned the Internet, oh, it's a fad, blah, blah, blah.

And you see how that turned out.

AI is, is, you know, the Internet.

I, well, it's different, it's different technology, but it's as fundamentally life changing, company changing, people changing, humanity changing.

And we're just beginning to understand it.

So at the CIO level, I think, you know, like you just said, you know, even understanding how to use it, right?

So that's the training aspect of it.

You know, one of the things about AI and its limitation to say in my own experimentation with it, with it quite a bit, is that, you know, like, like any data system, garbage in, garbage out.

So one of the keys to fundamentally using AI when you pull it, ChatGPT or whatever your choice is, is articulating a very thorough question.

That's an accurate question.

It will spit back a very thorough, accurate response.

If you have a biased question, it's going to spit back a biased answer.

That's one of the fundamental things that you have to understand when using AI is it's still seems almost sentient.

It's frighteningly sentient.

Right.

But honestly, it's kind of more of a reflection of you and what you are trying to pose.

That's a hard thing to kind of fully understand because you're not sure how to treat it.

So just the training aspect of it.

And then I'm going to tell you.

Right now too, the flexibility that it has even currently is so pervasive, right?

So whether it's, you want to have a relational dialogue at a therapist level.

Whether you want to have a business.

Dialogue with finances and prepare spreadsheets, I.

Mean, now the CFO can go to AI and say, okay, get all the.

Corporate data relative to our last year's financials and prepare and file my, you know, 10k or something like that.

It can do that literally at those Commands.

Right.

So that even automation freeing up skills like for some people, that'll scare people from, oh, my job's going away.

Well, no, your job's just changing.

Right, right.

And so that's Another thing that CIOs.

Are going to have to adapt with, is modify their workforce in a way that takes advantage of AI, but also doesn't artificially maintain legacy systems or processes that are actually very expensive and cumbersome.

So there's a lot to learn, a lot to do.

And I think these are the kind of getting kind of initial growing pains or realizations or epiphanies.

And CIOs have got a lot of work in front of them because this is, you know, beyond the Internet.

I would argue that AI is arguably even more important than the Internet itself because it is a business, human being, humanity, amplification tool.

And if you think of it in those terms, it's as good as we make it.

And it just only buoys us up even more.

Well said.

Well said.

Or is.

And it's only as bad as we make it.

Exactly, exactly.

Exactly the point.

Exactly the point.

So folks, a lot of send your CIO a box of cookies and maybe a nice bottle of wine.

They got a tough year ahead of them for sure.

And especially when they're, they're fighting for budgets, they're fighting for people, and they're probably gonna like most gonna have to do less with more while the importance of what they do only, only rises.

So we'll see.

Okay, man.

Richard, where did this hour go?

Man, we've been having too much fun.

But I want to share a couple resources, folks, as we like to do as we start to wrap this edition of the Buzz.

And I'm gonna start with, folks, visit our upcoming live programming page on the new supply chain now.com you're going to see the latest live streams and webinars, probably the on demand versions as well as the new ones.

And the new ones are important because we invite you to come out and share your perspective.

We love to see the comments and we like to celebrate great things you add to our live programming.

So check that out.

Secondly, we've been really busy building out our resource hub.

On our site at supply chain now.com you're going to find white papers, news ebooks, blogs, such as this great one from Debra Dole, which just came out last week or two, which is really focused on the critical need for a lot more education in the reverse logistics and returns management space.

Look at there.

Deborah Dole, Tony Shirota, and Rich Bulger all in one shot.

Richard, that's quite a trinity of reverse logistics and circularity thinking.

You're also going to find our written interviews with folks out at events such as the Garter Supply Chain Planning Summit last December in Denver.

Got a slew of interviews there.

Check it out.

We're dropping a link to that resource hub right there in the chat.

Richard, you're already up in the air this morning because you're a certified pilot and I bet you'll be back up in the air this afternoon.

But in between those flights, in between your podcasts, in between keynotes, all those things you do, how can folks connect with Richard Donaldson?

Easy peasy breezy on LinkedIn's the Best Place to go and network there quite a bit.

You know, socially I'm pretty accessible on Facebook or Instagram if they choose that kind of more social side of things.

But in LinkedIn for this audience, usually best place to go to find me, I'm usually posting their kind of articles.

Probably going to get a little bit more intense this year, especially as we start doing more conversations around space and data centers and exploration and supply chain.

Outstanding.

I can't wait.

I cannot wait.

2026 is going to be a great year on so many fronts and we're going to break through this.

Can't remember the word you used.

It wasn't malaise.

It's a, it's a challenging time for a lot of folks.

There's a lot of friction out there and we want to acknowledge that.

But hey, I'm also a glass half full because there's also a ton on the other side of innovation and opportunity and that's where I like to spend most of my space between the ears, thinking and doing so.

Anyway, big thanks my esteemed co host, Richard Donaldson.

Richard, always a pleasure, my friend.

Always a pleasure.

Scott.

Big thanks to our friends at easypost who are powering the buzz again all month long in February.

They're doing some really cool things, helping to make shipping easy, flexible and scalable.

Learn more@easypost.com Big thanks to Amanda and Trisha behind the scenes.

And most importantly, big thanks to our global audience out there, our SCN Global fam, for being here with us, all the feedback we get.

Thank you very much, but we'll take the feedback.

But I got one piece of feedback for everybody out there.

One piece of homework you got to take.

Richard shared a lot of good stuff.

I've got 12 pages of notes today right on data centers and space and investment opportunities and of course.

Supply Chain.

Take one thing you heard here from Richard here today.

Do something with it.

Put it into practice.

Deeds, not words.

Don't waste the opportunity, because they do abound.

So with all that said, on behalf of the entire Supply Chain now team Scott Luden, challenging you.

Do good.

Get forward.

Be the change.

Be part of the answer, folks.

Be the change that's needed.

And we'll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now.

Thanks for.

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