_{A message from our friends at Weiss Ratings (sponsor)}

Dear Reader,

I started rating the safety of banks in the early '70s.

Over the last 50+ years, I've warned my readers about the bank failures of the 1980s and 1990s, the Dot-Com Bust, the 2008 housing collapse and more.

But today, I'm writing to you with a different kind of warning. One that genuinely frightens me.

This time, the threat to your money isn't coming from reckless Wall Street bankers. It's coming directly from the Federal Reserve itself.

Through a program outlined in the Federal Reserve Docket No. OP-1670 - known as "FedNow" - the government is quietly rewiring the entire American banking system.

Simply stated, the Fed is building a centralized hub that will process every transaction in the U.S. ... giving it the ability to track every transfer, bill pay, purchase or donation you make in real time.

That, in turn, could give them unprecedented power to cut off your access to your savings if they decide you're not in "compliance" with whatever their policy agenda dictates at the time.

Or maybe even confiscate your savings when the need arises like it happened in Cyprus in 2013.

In all my decades studying the U.S. economy and banking system, I've never seen anything as scary as this.

If you value your financial privacy...

If you believe your money belongs to you and not Washington ...

Now's the time to act.

I've spent the last few months putting together 4 specific, legal steps to "Fed-proof" your checking and savings accounts.

I urge you to take this threat seriously.

Review these 4 steps immediately, right here.

Good luck and God bless!
Martin D. Weiss, PhD
Weiss Ratings Founder

P.S. The Fed is counting on the fact that ordinary Americans won't read a 93-page document until it's too late. I've read it and that's why I'm begging you to act while you still can. Get the 4 "Fed-proof" steps right now.

For years, the space trade was sold as a hardware story.

More launches. More satellites. More metal in orbit.

That framing is now too simple.

The real shift in 2026 is that governments no longer seem satisfied with buying access to commercial imagery when they can instead secure priority rights, sovereign tasking, dedicated constellations, or national military networks. Reuters reported Germany is exploring a roughly €10 billion independent military satellite system, even as the broader EU pushes the €10.6 billion IRIS² constellation. That is not normal procurement behavior. That is strategic anxiety.

That is why “satellites are the new silicon shield” is more than a slogan. In the AI hardware world, governments worry about who controls chips. In the orbital world, they worry about who controls tasking rights, latency, imagery access, missile warning, and communications resilience. Reuters quoted SES’s chief executive this month saying space has become a “war-fighting domain,” which captures the change in tone.

The important market shift is from hardware to planetary intelligence. A satellite alone is not the product. The product is persistent awareness: who can see first, revisit fastest, process data quickest, and keep sovereignty over the output.

Planet Labs is the cleanest expression of that thematic shift.

The company’s latest numbers were strong on their own: fiscal 2026 revenue of $307.7 million, Q4 revenue of $86.8 million, first full year of positive adjusted EBITDA, and backlog of more than $900 million. Remaining performance obligations rose 106% year over year to $852 million, and the company ended the year with $640 million in cash and short-term investments.

But the more important detail is what kind of business Planet is becoming.

Reuters previously reported Planet signed a $230 million deal to build Pelican satellites for an Asia-Pacific customer, marking a strategic shift beyond simply selling imagery from its own fleet. More recently, Planet’s quarter highlighted a multi-year low-9-figure agreement with Sweden to rapidly deliver satellites plus space-based data and awareness solutions. That is the key evolution: governments are no longer just renting images. They are buying a national intelligence layer.

That helps explain why the stock has been moving so aggressively. Recent reporting said roughly 60% of Planet’s revenue now comes from defense customers and another 25% from other government clients. In other words, the company is already more sovereign-facing than many investors likely appreciated a year ago.

The March decision to extend imagery delays over the Middle East from 4 days to 14 days makes the point even clearer. A company does not make that kind of operational restriction unless its data has become strategically sensitive. Planet is no longer merely in the satellite business. It is in the intelligence-control business.

Rocket Lab is not the same trade as Planet.

Planet monetizes data, analytics, and sovereign tasking. Rocket Lab monetizes access to orbit and increasingly national-security infrastructure.

Its 2025 results were large enough to matter: revenue of $602 million, up 38%, Q4 revenue of $180 million, and backlog of $1.85 billion, up 73% year over year. That backlog is critical because it shows Rocket Lab is already transitioning from a niche launcher into a broader defense-space platform with more durable visibility.

The government angle is the real story.

Reuters reported the U.S. Space Development Agency awarded $3.5 billion collectively to four suppliers to build 72 satellites, and Rocket Lab was one of them. That matters because governments are not only buying launches. They are buying trusted industrial partners that can build sovereign space architecture.

Rocket Lab also just won a $190 million U.S. military contract tied to hypersonic testing, according to recent coverage, and it continues to launch synthetic-aperture radar satellites for Japan’s Synspective. That widens the narrative beyond commercial launch cadence. Rocket Lab increasingly looks like a strategic enabler of sovereign constellations and defense-adjacent orbital infrastructure.

So if Planet is the “planetary intelligence” stock, Rocket Lab is the “orbital logistics and sovereign buildout” stock.

Satellogic is the smaller, riskier, but more concentrated version of the same intelligence theme.

Its numbers remain much smaller than Planet’s: $17.7 million of 2025 revenue and $6.2 million in Q4. But growth was material, with full-year revenue up 38% and Q4 revenue up 94%. Non-cancellable backlog reached $65.1 million, giving the company some forward visibility.

The reason SATL matters is not scale. It is purity.

A microcap Earth-observation company with improving backlog and a growing U.S. defense/government orientation can act like a torque play when the market decides sovereign intelligence is valuable. That also makes it the most fragile of the group. Smaller balance sheet, smaller revenue base, and less margin for execution error.

So the tradeoff is straightforward: higher narrative torque, lower institutional certainty.

This theme matters beyond three tickers.

The space trade is being re-rated because governments are moving from “space as infrastructure support” to “space as national control layer.” Germany’s satellite proposal, IRIS², U.S. missile-warning constellations, and Planet’s sovereign-customer pivot all point in the same direction: orbital assets are now being procured the way states procure energy security, cyber defense, or semiconductors.

That means the market may start valuing these companies less on unit economics of satellite hardware and more on strategic role.

The winners in that environment are not necessarily the firms with the most satellites. They are the firms that can offer one of four things:

Planet, Rocket Lab, and Satellogic each fit one or more of those categories in different ways.

Planet at $31.83 is the clearest momentum name in this group after its recent surge. The stock has already been re-rated on the back of backlog growth, sovereign demand, and improved profitability optics. For traders, the key issue is whether the breakout can hold after the initial excitement around earnings and sovereign-space headlines fades.

Rocket Lab at $66.07 trades more like a strategic platform story. Its backlog and defense relevance give it stronger institutional sponsorship, but that also means more expectations are embedded in the stock. The question is whether continued contract flow can justify the premium.

Satellogic at $5.38 is the speculative expression. It can move sharply if the market broadens the sovereign-intelligence basket, but it also carries the highest execution risk because the revenue base is still modest.

The bull case is that sovereign-space spending accelerates further in 2026. Governments continue to prioritize dedicated orbital intelligence, missile tracking, and national data control. In that setup, Planet wins more sovereign data-and-satellite packages, Rocket Lab captures more defense launch and spacecraft work, and Satellogic benefits as a smaller-cap intelligence pure play.

The base case is that the theme is real, but the market becomes more selective. Planet continues to lead because backlog and government mix already support the thesis. Rocket Lab remains supported by contract flow and backlog. Satellogic participates only if it can keep turning narrative interest into actual booked revenue.

The bear case is that investors get ahead of the fundamental monetization curve. Governments talk sovereign space, but procurement cycles remain slow, revenue conversion stretches out, and valuation outruns realized margins. In that setup, the highest-multiple and smallest-scale names would be most vulnerable. That risk is especially relevant for a company like Satellogic and, to a lesser extent, for Planet after such a sharp move.

The next thing traders should watch is not just launch headlines.

Watch whether sovereign demand is converting into backlog and revenue with contractual visibility. For Planet, that means whether more Sweden-style or Pelican-style sovereign packages emerge. For Rocket Lab, it means whether defense satellite awards and national-security launch contracts keep compounding. For Satellogic, it means whether backlog starts scaling beyond the current base.

Also watch the language governments use. When programs are described as national, sovereign, independent, or military-critical, the market tends to assign a higher strategic premium than it does to generic commercial-space growth.

The sovereign satellite boom is not really about satellites anymore.

It is about control.

Control of imagery. Control of tasking. Control of communications. Control of missile warning. Control of the data stack above the Earth.

That is why this trade has shifted from hardware to planetary intelligence. Planet is the clearest public-market proxy for sovereign orbital data. Rocket Lab is the infrastructure and launch enabler for national space buildouts. Satellogic is the smaller-cap speculative expression of the same intelligence race.

The key market insight is simple: governments are no longer buying satellites because space is exciting. They are buying orbital intelligence because dependence now looks dangerous.

_{Editorial Disclaimer}

_{This commentary is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All market strategies involve risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own analysis or consult a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions.}