Drone technology is moving forward, whether we like it or not. MQ-9 Reapers manufactured by General Atomics are sold to the U.S. Air Force, fitted with hellfire missiles provided by Lockheed Martin. The military industrial complex is ticking, unmanned aerial vehicles are soaring, and all is not quiet on the Western front. Few places are quiet on the Eastern hilt of the world.
Alexander Hoffmann is a physicist-turned-financier, a refugee from the particle accelerator complex in CERN who now runs a $10-billion algorithmic hedge fund from nearby Geneva. The fund is managed by VIXAL, Hoffmann’s machine learning algorithm, and is incredibly successful. The company’s statistics boast a consistently huge Alfa – a measure indicating by how much the fund beats the average and exceeds the normal rate of return – and the world’s biggest oligarchs and financial institutions are salivating at the mere thought of being allowed to invest in it.
