• Security Guidelines: Nist Explicitly Prohibits Mandatory Password Expiration Policies In Its Latest Requirements
• Industry Obsoletion: Microsoft Removed Password Expiration From Security Baselines Labeling It An Obsolete Mitigation
• Government Stance: Regulatory Bodies Like The Uk National Cyber Security Centre And The Ftc Advise Against Periodic Password Changes
• Pattern Predictability: Forced Rotation Cycles Encourage Users To Create Weak And Incremental Password Variations
• Attacker Efficiency: Credential Thieves Typically Utilize Stolen Information Immediately Rather Than Waiting For Expiration Intervals
• Statistical Vulnerability: Research Indicates Attackers Can Successfully Guess Sequential Passwords With Minimal Attempts
• Recommended Protection: Effective Security Relies Upon Multi Factor Authentication And Persistent Password Screening Mechanisms
• Functional Standards: Modern Compliance Requires Supporting Password Managers And Paste Functionality Within Login Portals

If your company forces password changes every 90 days, your company is making you less secure. Not more.

NIST, the people who literally write the security standards, upgraded this from "you shouldn't do it" to "you shall not do it" in 2025.

Microsoft dropped password expiration from their security baseline in 2019, calling it "an ancient and obsolete mitigation of very low value."

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre: "Regular password changing harms rather than improves security."

The FTC said the same thing back in 2016.

We've known this for over a decade.

Why it backfires

A UNC Chapel Hill study looked at 7,700+ accounts and found that knowing a user's previous password let attackers guess the next one in under 5 attempts for 17% of accounts. With access to the hash, they cracked 41% of current passwords within 3 seconds.

Because Password1 becomes Password2 becomes Password3. Everyone does it. Forced rotation trains people to pick predictable passwords.

And attackers who steal credentials use them immediately. Not 90 days later.

What actually works

MFA. Breached-password screening. A password manager like 1Password or Bitwarden that generates unique, long passwords for every service. Change passwords only when there's evidence of compromise.

NIST even requires that systems allow password managers and paste functionality. If your company blocks paste on login fields, they're actively fighting against the standard.

That's it. That's the policy.

• Research Discovery: A Cornell University study identifies a correlation between susceptibility to vague corporate rhetoric and impaired practical decision-making skills in employees.
• Measurement Tool: The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR) was developed to quantify an individual’s tendency to find meaning in semantically empty business jargon.
• Functional Definition: Corporate rhetoric is distinguished from standard technical jargon by its use of abstract buzzwords that obfuscate rather than clarify communication.
• Cognitive Implications: Individuals receptive to organizational fluff demonstrate lower performance in cognitive reflection, analytic thinking, and fluid intelligence testing.
• Workplace Dynamics: Employees who favor high-concept jargon frequently perceive supervisors as visionary, which can lead to the promotion of dysfunctional leadership styles.
• Positive Correlation: Susceptibility to abstract corporate messaging is linked to higher levels of reported job satisfaction and increased alignment with company mission statements.
• Organizational Risk: Heavy reliance on misleading corporate language can conceal critical operational information, leading to potential reputational and financial damage.
• Analytical Necessity: Establishing critical scrutiny of organizational messaging serves as a safeguard against rhetoric that prioritizes superficial impressions over objective reality.

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Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals.

Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric.

“Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” said Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Unlike technical jargon, which can sometimes make office communication a little easier, corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty.”

Although people anywhere can BS each other – that is, share dubious information that’s misleadingly impressive or engaging – the workplace not only rewards but structurally protects it, Littrell said. In a work setting where corporate jargon is already the norm, it’s easy for ambitious employees to use corporate BS to appear more competent or accomplished, accelerating their climb up the corporate ladder of workplace influence.

Corporate BS seems to be ubiquitous – but Littrell wondered if it is actually harmful. To test this, he created a “corporate bullshit generator” that churns out meaningless but impressive-sounding sentences like, "We will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing” and “By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence.”

He then asked more than 1,000 office workers to rate the “business savvy” of these computer-generated BS statements alongside real quotes from Fortune 500 leaders. Divided into four distinct studies, the research verified the scale as a statistically reliable measure of individual differences in receptivity to corporate bullshit, then, through use of established cognitive tests, made connections between receptivity to BS and analytic thinking skills known to be essential to workplace performance.

The results revealed a troubling paradox. Workers who were more susceptible to corporate BS rated their supervisors as more charismatic and “visionary,” but also displayed lower scores on a portion of the study that tested analytic thinking, cognitive reflection and fluid intelligence. Those more receptive to corporate BS also scored significantly worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making.

The study found that being more receptive to corporate bullshit was also positively linked to job satisfaction and feeling inspired by company mission statements. Moreover, those who were more likely to fall for corporate BS were also more likely to spread it.

Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by “visionary” corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.

“This creates a concerning cycle,” Littrell said. “Employees who are more likely to fall for corporate bullshit may help elevate the types of dysfunctional leaders who are more likely to use it, creating a sort of negative feedback loop. Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats,’ a higher level of corporate BS in an organization acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency.”

When BS goes too far or gets called out, real reputational or financial damage can occur, Littrell said. For instance, a leaked 2009 Pepsi marketing presentation with language such as “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations…our proposition is the establishment of a gravitational pull to shift from a transactional experience to an invitational expression …” led to widespread ridicule in various news outlets.

And in 2014, a memo from the former executive vice president of Microsoft Devices Group to employees, later dubbed in the press “the worst email ever,” opened with 10 paragraphs of jargon, including “Our device strategy must reflect Microsoft’s strategy and must be accomplished within an appropriate financial envelope,” burying the real news in paragraph 11 – that 12,500 employees were going to lose their jobs.

Overall, the findings suggest that while “synergizing cross-collateralization” might sound impressive in a boardroom, this functionally misleading language can create an informational blindfold in corporate cultures that can expose companies to reputational and financial harm.

Littrell’s scale offers practical applications and could someday provide insights into job candidates' analytic thinking and decision-making tendencies. More work needs to be done, but for now, it’s a promising tool for researchers, Littrell said. 

Researching BS also points out the importance of critical thinking for everyone, inside the workplace and out. 

“Most of us, in the right situation, can get taken in by language that sounds sophisticated but isn’t,” Littrell said. “That’s why, whether you’re an employee or a consumer, it’s worth slowing down when you run into organizational messaging of any kind – leaders’ statements, public reports, ads – and ask yourself, ‘What, exactly, is the claim? Does it actually make sense?’ Because when a message leans heavily on buzzwords and jargon, it’s often a red flag that you’re being steered by rhetoric instead of reality.”

An open-access version of the study is available here.

Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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• Corporate Consolidation: Powerus is entering the public market through a reverse merger with a golf-course holding company backed by Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
• Market Positioning: The enterprise aims to expand domestic aerial and maritime drone production to over 10,000 units monthly to capitalize on recent federal policy shifts.
• Strategic Investment: Financial backing for the transaction involves Trump-affiliated investment vehicles, including American Ventures and the advisory firm Dominari Securities.
• Regulatory Environment: National bans on new Chinese-made drone models have created significant commercial opportunities for emerging U.S.-based manufacturers.
• Pentagon Procurement: Federal initiatives like Drone Dominance seek to allocate over $1 billion for the rapid procurement of large quantities of domestic systems by 2027.
• Industrial Scaling: CEO Andrew Fox intends to utilize public capital market access to fund manufacturing expansion and the acquisition of smaller industry competitors.
• Technology Integration: Management is pursuing the acquisition or licensing of Ukrainian drone technology to adapt and repackage systems for the American defense market.
• Diversification Efforts: The Trump family is concurrently investing in other international drone makers, such as the Israeli firm Xtend, as part of broader efforts to capture market share.

By

Heather Somerville

Updated March 9, 2026 8:21 am ET

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The Pentagon is testing portable 3D-printing labs in Hawaii that let soldiers design, print and assemble drones in hours. In December 2025, WSJ visited Oahu to learn more. Photo: William Paris for WSJ

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s sons, are backing a new drone company that is vying to meet fresh demand from the Pentagon and fill a hole left by the administration’s ban on new Chinese drones in the U.S.

Powerus, a drone roll-up company based in West Palm Beach, Fla., is merging with a publicly traded golf-course holding company backed by the Trumps, Powerus executives said. The reverse merger will result in Powerus, which was formed last year, trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the coming months.

Investors in the deal include one of the Trumps’ investment vehicles, American Ventures, and Unusual Machines UMAC 0.90%increase; green up pointing triangle, a drone components company where Donald Trump Jr. is a shareholder and advisory board member, the company said. Powerus is also a customer of Unusual Machines.

The Trump brothers-backed investment bank Dominari Securities DOMH 5.70%increase; green up pointing triangle, which has been involved in the family’s crypto deals, is also involved in the transaction, the company said. Separately, asset manager the Korea Corporate Governance Improvement Fund has invested $50 million.

The deal brings deeper involvement by the Trump family into a multibillion-dollar sector that has new opportunities for growth following changes imposed by the Trump administration. Those include the Pentagon’s emphasis on large-scale, rapid adoption of small drones, and a national ban on new models of the Chinese drones that have for more than a decade dominated the consumer and commercial markets.

Powerus Chief Executive Officer Andrew Fox said the reverse merger for Powerus would provide access to the public capital markets to give the company the funding it needs to scale manufacturing and acquire more companies. Powerus, which sells aerial and maritime drones after acquiring three small companies in the past six months, said it was working toward building more than 10,000 drones each month. That quantity is more than almost any other U.S. drone manufacturer produces and far more than the Defense Department has historically bought.

New initiatives such as the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance, an initiative to spend $1.1 billion to procure hundreds of thousands of U.S. systems by 2027, aim to encourage more domestic manufacturing in a sector China has long dominated. The U.S. drone market is highly fragmented with small companies that are mostly competing for a sliver of defense purchases and have little revenue. 

Eric Trump is also investing in Israeli drone maker Xtend as part of a $1.5 billion deal to take the company public through a merger with JFB Construction.

Powerus will become public after merging with Aureus Greenway Holdings AGH 5.23%increase; green up pointing triangle, a holding company for golf courses in Florida, whose shareholders include the Trumps’ American Ventures and Dominari Securities, according to securities filings. Aureus’s stock recently recovered from trading below $1 per share.

The drone market “is certainly going to grow faster than, say, golf courses are,” Fox said.

Fox, an entrepreneur who spent close to three decades managing a building services company in New York and said he has no prior drone experience, added that Powerus has drones designed for putting out wildfires and carrying up to 1,000 pounds.

Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich, a U.S. Army special operations veteran who has advised drone companies in the U.S. and Ukraine and is a regular commenter on cable news shows, said Powerus is working on deals to acquire Ukrainian drone companies or license their technology and build and white-label it in the U.S. He declined to share details.

Ukrainian drone manufacturers face numerous hurdles in exporting their drones, and the U.S. military, while it is pursuing technology from Ukraine, has requirements for American-made weapons that make direct purchases from overseas tricky. 

“There does need to be an American face in front of it or behind it,” Velicovich said.

Watch: How the U.S. Army 3-D Prints Lethal Drones in Hours

Eric Trump, left, and Donald Trump Jr. The Trump brothers-backed investment bank Dominari Securities is involved in the transaction. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Heather Somerville is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal in San Francisco covering technology and national security. Her articles explore the national-security implications of emerging technology, U.S. efforts to counter China's rise as a technology power, and the relationship between Silicon Valley and the U.S. defense complex.

Heather joined the Journal in 2019 to cover venture capital and technology companies. Before that, she wrote about venture capital and Silicon Valley startups for Reuters and the Mercury News. She was previously a reporter for the Fresno Bee and the Charlotte Observer and wrote about national security for outlets in Washington, D.C.

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• Strategic Initiative: President Trump initiated the military operation against Iran based on intelligence that an Iranian attack was imminent, rather than responding to external pressure.
• Security Imperative: Both the United States and Israel view the dismantling of Iran's nuclear capabilities, missile programs, and support for terror proxies as a critical matter of national security.
• Direct Threat: Iran's military advancements, including the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, pose a clear and present danger to the American homeland, its military bases, and its allies.
• Historical Context: The ongoing conflict serves as a decisive response to decades of Iranian aggression, including the taking of American hostages and the killing of service members.
• Collaborative Execution: The June 2025 military engagement featured a coordinated strategy where Israeli forces conducted the initial phase of suppressing air defenses before American intervention.
• Operational Burden: Israel independently managed the majority of the combat risk during the early stages of the conflict, demonstrating an unprecedented level of ally participation.
• Precision Impact: American involvement focused on high-value, hardened targets like the Fordow nuclear facility, significantly degrading Iran's strategic capabilities.
• Refutation Of Allegations: Claims that Israel manipulated American policy are characterized as baseless narratives that ignore the reality of a strategic, mutually beneficial security partnership.

A dangerous lie has taken hold in Washington: that Israel somehow pressured the United States into war with Iran. It’s wrong. And both President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have said so directly.

When a White House correspondent asked Trump whether Israel had pulled America into the conflict, he didn’t hesitate. “I might have forced their hand,” he said. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.”

Rubio was equally blunt after a deceptively edited video suggested he believed otherwise: “The president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work . . . this was a threat that was untenable. The decision was made to strike them.” Untenable. That word deserves to sit with you for a moment.

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” says Trump of the US attack on Iran.

Iran has spent years building nuclear weapons, developing long-range ballistic missiles, and encircling Israel with a terror army stretching from Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen. It has fired ballistic missiles directly at Israeli civilians. No Israeli government — left, right, or center — could ignore that. Jerusalem’s decision to join a combined American-Israeli operation targeting Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities drew near-universal support across Israel’s political spectrum. This wasn’t Netanyahu’s partisan gamble. It was a national security imperative. And it was no surprise ambush on America.

When Netanyahu met Trump at Mar-a-Lago last December, reporting indicated Trump had already green-lighted an Israeli strike on Iran’s missile infrastructure. When they met again at the White House, that green light held. Washington knew exactly what was coming and decided to lead the war.

The claim that Israel pressured the president of the United States into war is not just factually hollow — it veers dangerously close to the antisemitic fringe narratives about shadowy, unaccountable Jewish power that serious Republicans rightly reject.

The war in Iran is a national security imperative for both the US and Israel.

But here’s the bigger point that keeps getting buried. Iran’s missiles and nuclear program and terror are America’s problem. Those missiles don’t just threaten Israel. They are being fired right now at US forces, American bases, our embassies and our Gulf Arab allies. Iran is actively developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could one day reach the American homeland.

This is the same regime that declared war on the United States in 1979 — that has killed and maimed thousands of Americans from Beirut to Baghdad to Kabul, taken Americans hostage and armed the terrorist proxies that have American blood on their hands for decades.

Dismantling that regime’s nuclear, missile, and terror infrastructure is not a favor to Israel. It is core American national security.

Now here’s what Americans should actually understand about the 12-Day War that took place against the regime in Iran in June 2025.

Israel didn’t ask American pilots to do the heavy lifting. For the first 11 days, Israeli aircraft flew deep into Iranian territory — more than a thousand miles from home — dismantling Iran’s air defenses and striking key military targets. No American fighter jets alongside them. No boots on the ground. No American pilots risking their lives over Iranian skies. Israel did that work itself.

Only once Iran’s defenses were shattered did President Trump act. On day 11, American B-2 bombers struck Fordow — the deeply buried nuclear facility that had long kept American planners up at night. The result was a devastating blow to Iran’s nuclear program.

Rubio confirmed the idea that the US acted in tandem with Israel.

Even now, by some estimates, Israel is responsible for roughly half of all strikes against Iranian targets in this conflict.

In the entire modern history of American warfare, we have rarely — if ever — had an ally carry that kind of operational weight against a shared enemy.

So let’s retire the wrong question. Stop asking why America helped Israel.

Ask instead: when was the last time an American ally flew a thousand miles to tear down the air defenses of one of America’s most dangerous enemies — before we ever put a single pilot at risk?

I’m an American who is furious that Iran spent decades killing our citizens, maiming our soldiers, and taking our people hostage while Washington too often responded with half-measures and hand-wringing. This time was different. Israel didn’t drag us into this war. It enabled us to fight it smarter, faster and at far less cost than we ever could have alone.

That’s not pressure. That’s what real partnership looks like.

• Industry Leadership: Shayne Coplan of Polymarket and Tarek Mansour of Kalshi are the young billionaire figures currently dominating the prediction market sector.
• Corporate Rivalry: The two executives maintain a hostile relationship, underscored by public disparagement and competitive efforts to differentiate their respective platforms.
• Regulatory Strategies: Kalshi pursues a strategy of strict compliance and cooperation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while Polymarket initially utilized an unregulated, offshore-first model.
• Conflict History: The tension escalated following an FBI investigation into Polymarket, with Kalshi personnel actively mocking their competitor through promotional campaigns and influencer partnerships.
• Market Positioning: Both firms are actively seeking official trademark status for the title of the world's largest prediction market despite differing operational approaches.
• Political Connections: Both organizations receive strategic advice from Donald Trump Jr., and Polymarket has secured investment from his venture capital firm.
• Media Engagement: Each company competes for legitimacy by securing high-profile media partnerships with large institutions like CNN and Dow Jones.
• Industry Future: The feud reflects a broader struggle to define the future of prediction markets, pitting advocacy for government-regulated operations against more aggressive, independent expansion.

Polymarket's Shayne Coplan (left) and Kalshi's Tarek Mansour are two 20-something billionaires who run the biggest prediction market sites. They have had a long-running rivalry. hide caption

toggle caption

There's one word Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour is loath to say: Polymarket.

Like a politician swiping his never-to-be-spoken-of challenger on the campaign trail, Mansour will drag the enemy but never name the enemy.

Yes, there's an "unregulated, offshore prediction market," which is not like Kalshi. Too many people, Mansour says, confuse Kalshi for that "non-American, unregulated platform."

For Mansour, distinguishing Kalshi from that other site is a form of combat. If there's a chance to land a blow, he will.

After the FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's home in November 2024, Kalshi staffers teamed up with influencers to promote memes mocking Coplan, Mansour admitted the following month. "Some of our team got pretty heated," he said at the time.

Mansour, in a December podcast interview, likened his beef with Coplan with one of the most rousing rivalries in NFL history, the face-off between Tom Brady and Eli Manning over football quarterback supremacy.

"When Tom Brady kind of reflected on that back in the day, he's like, 'You know, we were like the most ferocious on the field, and we fought each other,'" said Mansour, adding that the vying ultimately led Brady to greatness.

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Prediction market trader 'Magamyman' made $553,000 on death of Iran's supreme leader

Coplan has been cagier in public about his prediction market foe, even as he rages quietly to his inner circle about Mansour, who keeps ratcheting up his antagonism.

Even the typically stodgy U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is witnessing some of the action. Both Kalshi and Polymarket have pending trademark applications for "the world's largest prediction market," federal records show. (Kalshi is the bigger one by trading volume, but Polymarket has long called itself the largest.)

The feud could shape the future of the industry, with each executive offering competing visions for how prediction markets should grow, either by fighting in court for the legal right to exist or — like the cryptocurrency industry before them — by trying to skirt U.S. regulations for as long as possible.

"Kalshi hates getting lumped in with Polymarket," said Dustin Gouker, who writes a prediction markets newsletter and is also a consultant. "They're trying to draw this line in the sand that they're this CFTC-regulated prediction market and Polymarket is not," he said, referring to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "I'm not sure that message is getting through, but it's furthering the animosity between the two companies."

A former Kalshi employee with direct knowledge of Mansour, who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the culture inside the company is "die-hard," with Mansour pushing his staff relentlessly to hit goals for new users and other metrics. The person said Polymarket's popularity has only exacerbated Mansour's intensity.

"Tarek is being so aggressive because the size of the bag is generational if they get it right," the person said. "For them, it's existential."

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Kalshi reveals insider trading case against editor for MrBeast

The two fintech execs being at loggerheads comes against the backdrop of a boom in the prediction market industry.

The sites have seen exponential growth in recent months, logging billions of dollars in bets every week on everything from Oscar winners to what words President Trump will utter at a press conference to when exactly bombs will drop on Iran — there was even a market on Polymarket that was taking wagers over when a civil war in the U.S. could break out.

Tens of millions of people are turning to the sites to try to cash in, just as ethical and legal questions haunt the industry. Dozens of new entrants — like Coinbase, Robinhood and even Trump's social media site, Truth Social — are trying to get in on the gold rush, but the world of prediction markets remains dominated for now by two firms: Kalshi and Polymarket.

Media partnership and grocery store wars

Mansour and Coplan, who both wouldn't comment for this story, are both 20-something billionaires with a shared belief that prediction markets' "wisdom of the crowd" ethos can illuminate truths faster and more accurately than media, polls and other traditional institutions.

Getting there has meant embarking on opposite journeys.

Mansour, 29, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, formerly worked at Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and Citadel. He likes to say that his time on prestigious trading floors made him realize that mass adoption of prediction markets requires playing nice with the federal government, a tack that Kalshi's co-founder, Luana Lopes Lara, who keeps a much lower profile, has endorsed.

Up First from NPR

Bet on Anything, Everywhere, All at Once

"We will literally go to the federal government and subject ourselves and say, 'We want to get regulated, and we'll bang our head against the wall until you regulate us,'" Mansour said at last year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference. "I didn't want to build a company that had the curse of scale," he said, referencing the idea that problems for a tech startup could get worse the bigger the company gets. 

The curse of scale is hardly a fear of Coplan, a 27-year-old New York University dropout who traded cryptocurrencies as a teenager and launched Polymarket without the blessing of any regulators. He drove the company in more of a shoot-first, aim-later style. Scale it fast, the feds be damned. That approach didn't always work out. The FBI raided his Manhattan apartment as part of a Biden-era money-laundering investigation. Trump has since dropped the probe.

"We're just market nerds who think prediction markets provide the public with a much needed alternative data source," Coplan wrote on X in October 2024, a month before the FBI raid. The Trump administration just months ago cleared the way for Polymarket to open a U.S.-based exchange.

"It's naturally a fit in a world where there are infinite opinions being served to you algorithmically based on what you already think, designed only to keep you engaged and push you further into an echo chamber," Coplan said in the post.

Gouker, the prediction markets consultant, said when the two have to sell their ideas on television interviews or at conferences, they can leave divergent impressions.

"Shayne is much more natural in these settings. He's an extravert. He's relatable," Gouker said. "But Tarek comes off a little pedantic and too in the weeds. He comes across as a fintech guy and not the guy leading the revolutionary of prediction markets."

Taking opposite paths with regulators

Polymarket's most popular exchange is overseas and accessible in the U.S. only through a virtual private network. Traders landing six-figure payouts associated with the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the death of Iran's supreme leader drew criticism from lawmakers in Washington and critics of the apps. Until recently, Polymarket allowed bettors to wager money over when a nuclear bomb would detonate. It quietly removed it after an online uproar.

"Polymarket is so much more willing to push the envelope," said the former Kalshi staffer. "Kalshi does hate getting confused for Polymarket, but when Polymarket is confused with Kalshi, it's good for them."

And that's because Kalshi negotiated with regulators for years before launching, and it is now under the watch of the CFTC. During the Biden years, the vast majority of Kalshi's offerings were considered illegal. Now, the CFTC's chairman, Michael Selig, has affirmed that prediction markets should flourish and largely police themselves.

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Kalshi in court over 19 federal lawsuits. What's the future of prediction markets?

Selig has even vowed to defend Kalshi in court in the face of states suing the company for violating state gambling laws.

Kalshi has the Trump administration on its side, but so does Polymarket. Donald Trump Jr., the president son, advises both companies. And his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, has invested millions of dollars into Polymarket.

The president's son advising may be a commonality, but Mansour is quick to argue that Polymarket is the law-breaking, shady foreign exchange, with Kalshi's X account often attacking those who get confused. Don't conflate us, Mansour pleas, even as many users, politicians and commentators mix them up regularly.

As such, the companies have been looking for opportunities to one up each other.

In early December, Kalshi bragged about its new partnership with CNN. Weeks later, Polymarket unveiled a deal with Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.

When Kalshi last month pulled a stunt of giving out $50 of free groceries per shopper in New York City's East Village, Polymarket's Coplan had a response: "New York City, we're open," Polymarket's X account announced, revealing a temporary free grocery store in Manhattan that the company now intends to keep open permanently.

But perhaps nothing crystallizes the feud more than an announcement that Kalshi made late last year about the formation of a trade group, called the Coalition for Prediction Markets, to promote the development of the industry. It describes itself as a "unified industry voice working with policymakers, regulators, and the public to establish clear, fair rules that make prediction markets accessible and trustworthy for everyone."

Missing from the coalition? One of the other biggest prediction markets in the world: Polymarket.

• Mass Reallocation: Elimination Of Phased Array Antennas And Earth Pointing Mechanisms Allows Dry Mass To Be Redirected Into Solar Generation And Thermal Management
• Data Transit: Satellites Utilize Laser Links For Data Movement Via Existing Constellations Instead Of Traditional Radio Frequency Downlinks
• Power Density: System Power Density Reaches Approximately One Hundred Watts Per Kilogram Meeting Industry Benchmarks For High Performance Orbital Computing
• Thermodynamic Optimization: Efficiency Depends On The Interdependence Of Solar Generation Thermal Rejection And Compute Capability Creating A Triangular Scaling Bottleneck
• Blackbody Radiation: Operating Chips At High Temperatures Exploits Scaled Heat Rejection To Reduce Necessary Radiator Mass And Surface Area
• Radiator Configuration: Deployable Two Sided Fins Positioned In The Shade Of Solar Arrays Maximize Heat Dissipation To Cold Space
• Structural Design: Compact Central Buses House Payloads While Radial Thin Film Solar Arrays Utilize Passive Gravity Gradient And Centrifugal Tensioning
• Orbit Strategy: Deployment Into Dawn Dusk Sun Synchronous Orbits Enables Constant Solar Access And Simplified Thermal Management Profiles

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@VladSaigau

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What will a 100 kW/ton orbital compute satellite look like? We’ve been building a satellite mass-budget model to show how compute satellites will differ architecturally from Starlink. Satcom/Starlink baselines allocate 35 % of dry mass to phased-array antennas, gimbals, and other continuous Earth-pointing mechanisms required for RF routing. Compute satellites will have no downlink; data moves via laser links to the Starlink constellation. The freed mass is completely reallocated to solar arrays and radiators, shifting us from an RF-routing architecture to a thermodynamic-optimised one. The triangular bottleneck in orbital compute satellites is the three-way interdependence of solar generation, thermal rejection, and compute capability: any single subsystem can only scale as far as the other two allow, so true power-density gains require all three to advance in lockstep, otherwise one becomes the binding constraint. Compute sats have no need for ultra-precise Earth-pointing, so solar arrays can be far lighter and flexible, using passive gravity-gradient and centrifugal tensioning in dawn-dusk SSO. Operating the compute ASICs at ~370 K, exactly as Elon highlighted, exploits the T⁴ scaling of blackbody radiation, boosting net heat rejection significantly, and thereby slashing the required radiator area (and therefore mass) dramatically. We believe radiators must deploy two-sided and sit in the shade of the solar arrays for optimal cold-space view factors, in order to hit 100kW/ton. At first glance, thermal rejection becomes one of the largest subsystems (34 % of dry mass). Yet this dominance only appears because projected PV efficiency gains and higher chip temperature enable 7× higher power throughput, greater than the expected headroom in radiator efficiency gains. The triangular bottleneck closes cleanly at 100.2 W/kg system power density, almost exactly the line in the sand Elon and SpaceX have drawn. As finance folks who've had the privilege of learning from leading space-industry engineers, we offer this conceptual take with a grain of salt: these 100 kW/ton satellites would likely look quite different from Starlink satellites... We imagine compute satellites will have a compact central bus housing only the dense compute payload and laser links, surrounded by large, light, thin-film solar arrays deployed radially like wings or sails, kept taut by passive gravity-gradient and centrifugal tensioning in dawn-dusk SSO. Paired with them will be two-sided deployable radiator fins, deliberately positioned in the permanent shade of the arrays for optimal cold-space view factors. We are keen to learn more though so please share any suggestions. Read the full analysis here for all our modelling and charts https://research.33fg.com/analysis/the-space-data-center-mass-budget-behind-10x-power-density…

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8:43 PM · Mar 5, 2026

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