LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 28, 2024--
Sierra Space, a leading commercial space-tech company and next generation defense-tech prime building a platform in space to benefit life on Earth and protect the freedom of economic activity in the Orbital Age®, is pleased to announce the appointment of Amish Patel as Chief Operating Officer. In his new role, Amish will oversee all aspects of the company’s rapidly expanding production, facilities and supply chain operations. In his new role, Amish will oversee all aspects of the company’s operations, including purview over Sierra Space’s global supply chain and manufacturing.
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Amish Patel has joined Sierra Space as the company's Chief Operating Officer (PHOTO: SIERRA SPACE)
With nearly two decades of extensive experience in supply chain and operations spanning various industries including aerospace and automotive, Amish brings a wealth of high-tech operational expertise to his new appointment. Prior to joining Sierra Space, Amish served as the Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Rocket Lab, where he played a pivotal role in leading teams responsible for material planning, sourcing strategy, procurement, inventory and global logistics.
“Amish’s deep understanding of production and supply chain operations at innovative and disruptive companies, coupled with his proven leadership skills, make him the ideal candidate to lead Sierra Space’s operations,” said Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space. “Amish is joining us at a pivotal time in our company’s history as Dream Chaser transitions into mission operations and reprocessing, space station development ramps up, our team begins building satellites for recently awarded national security contracts and we scale the production of our space components business.”
Amish’s impressive career also includes significant leadership roles at renowned companies such as SpaceX, L3Harris Technologies and Singer Vehicle Design. His track record of success in building agile teams and deep supply chain development experience to support disruptive and engineering-forward companies make him an invaluable addition as the Sierra Space business transitions into an operational phase.
“I am honored to join Sierra Space at such an exciting time in the aerospace industry,” said Amish Patel. “I look forward to collaborating with the talented teams at Sierra Space to drive innovation, optimize operations, and contribute to the company’s mission of advancing the future of space commercialization into an Orbital Age.”
Amish graduated from Indiana University – Kelley School of Business with a BS in Computer Information Systems & International Studies. He also holds a BS in Biology & Astrophysics from Indiana University – Bloomington, further underscoring his interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving and his commitment to excellence.
About Sierra Space
Sierra Space is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and the commercialization of space in the Orbital Age®, building an end-to-end business and technology platform in space to benefit life on Earth. With more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage, the company is reinventing both space transportation with Dream Chaser ®, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, and the future of space destinations with the company’s inflatable and expandable space station technology. Using commercial business models, the company is also delivering orbital services to commercial, DoD and national security organizations, expanding production capacity to meet the needs of constellation programs. In addition, Sierra Space builds a host of systems and subsystems across solar power, mechanics and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion and thermal control, offering myriad space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Brad Parscale was the digital guru behind Donald Trump's surprise victory in the 2016 election and was promoted to manage the 2020 campaign. But he didn't last long on that job: His personal life unraveled in public and he later texted a friend that he felt “guilty” for helping Trump win after the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
He's since become an evangelist about the power of artificial intelligence to transform how Republicans run political campaigns. And his company is working for Trump's 2024 bid, trying to help the presumptive Republican nominee take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden.
Here's what to know about Parscale and his new role:
Parscale says his company, Campaign Nucleus, can use AI to help generate customized emails, parse oceans of data to gauge voter sentiment and find persuadable voters. It can also amplify the social media posts of “anti-woke” influencers, according to an Associated Press review of Parscale’s public statements, his company documents, slide decks, marketing materials and other records not previously made public.
Soon, Parscale says, his company will deploy an app that harnesses AI to assist campaigns in collecting absentee ballots in the same way drivers for DoorDash or Grubhub pick up dinners from restaurants and deliver them to customers.
Parscale was a relatively unknown web designer in San Antonio, Texas, when he was hired to build a web presence for Trump's family business.
That led to a job on the future president’s 2016 campaign. He was one of its first hires and spearheaded an unorthodox digital strategy, teaming up with scandal-plagued Cambridge Analytica to help propel Trump to the White House.
“I pretty much used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016,” Parscale said in a 2022 podcast interview.
Following Trump’s surprise win, Parscale’s influence grew. He was promoted to manage Trump's reelection bid and enjoyed celebrity status. A towering figure at 6 feet, 8 inches with a Viking-style beard, Parscale was frequently spotted at campaign rallies taking selfies with Trump supporters and signing autographs.
Parscale was replaced as campaign manager not long after a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew an unexpectedly small crowd, enraging Trump.
Since last year, Campaign Nucleus and other Parscale-linked companies have been paid more than $2.2 million by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their related political action and fundraising committees, campaign finance records show.
Parscale did not respond to questions from the AP about what he’s doing for the Trump campaign. Trump has called artificial intelligence “so scary” and “dangerous,” while his campaign, which has shied away from highlighting Parscale’s role, said in an emailed statement that it did not “engage or utilize” tools supplied by any AI company.
Parscale-linked companies have been paid to host websites, send emails, provide fundraising software and digital consulting, campaign finance records show.
The Biden campaign and Democrats are also also using AI. So far, they said they are primarily deploying the technology to help them find and motivate voters and to better identify and overcome deceptive content.
Last year, Parscale bought property in Midland, Texas, in the heart of the nation’s highest-producing oil and gas fields. It is also the hometown of Tim Dunn, a billionaire born-again evangelical who is among the state’s most influential political donors.
In April of last year, Dunn invested $5 million in a company called AiAdvertising that once bought one of Parscale’s firms under a previous corporate name. The San Antonio-based ad firm also announced that Parscale was joining as a strategic adviser, to be paid $120,000 in stock and a monthly salary of $10,000.
“Boom!” Parscale tweeted. “(AiAdvertising) finally automated the full stake of technologies used in the 2016 election that changed the world.”
AiAdvertising added two key national figures to its board: Texas investor Thomas Hicks Jr. — former co-chair of the RNC and longtime hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. — and former GOP congressman Jim Renacci. In January, Dunn gave AiAdvertising an additional $2.5 million via an invesment company, and AiAdvertising said in a news release that the cash infusion would help it “generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns.”
Dunn declined to comment, and AiAdvertising did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Parscale occasionally offers glimpses of the AI future he envisions. Casting himself as an outsider to the Republican establishment, he has said he sees AI as a way to undercut elite Washington consultants, whom he described as political parasites.
In January, Parscale told a crowd assembled at a grassroots Christian event in a Pasadena, California, church that their movement needed “to have our own AI, from creative large language models and creative imagery, we need to reach our own audiences with our own distribution, our own email systems, our own texting systems, our own ability to place TV ads, and lastly we need to have our own influencers.”
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Burke reported from San Francisco. AP National Political Writer Steve Peoples in Washington and Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” that explores the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
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The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at an election night rally on primary election night in Nashua, N.H., Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. Election experts say they are concerned about AI’s potential to upend elections around the world through convincing deepfakes and other content that could mislead voters. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
Pages from the Campaign Nucleus website are seen on a computer in New York on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Political consultant Brad Parscale’s company, Campaign Nucleus, is boosting fundraising and voter engagement for the Trump campaign and other right-wing causes by leveraging data science to automate how political operatives identify and motivate their supporters. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
FILE - Brad Parscale, then-campaign manager for President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign rally at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Oct. 10, 2019. Parscale, the digital campaign operative who helped engineer Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, vows that his new, AI-powered platform will dramatically overhaul not just polling, but also campaigning. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
