Kratsios: Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space.

[Mick West]

Article:

Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/8716/

Michael Kratsios, Director of White House Office of Science and Technology, April 14, 2025


This is being interpreted as some to suggest the US has secret technology that can manipulate spacetime (i.e. a warp drive, or anti-gravity), possibly of alien origin.

More context, emphasis mine:

Article:

A gap lies between our moment and the speed of transformation America experienced midcentury. Progress has slowed. Yes, large language models astonish us, rockets still turn our eyes upward, and satellites envelop the globe. But as we look forward to America's 250th birthday celebration next year, our progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century. Consider the country of fifty years ago.

As the nation approached its bicentennial, Americans looked forward to electricity too cheap to meter. By the end of 1972, 30 nuclear plants were operational, 55 were under construction, and more than 80 were planned or ordered. That same year, the Apollo 17 astronauts became the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon. Five years before, the X-15 rocket plane had set a speed record for a crewed aircraft of Mach 6.7. America was flying higher, faster, and farther than ever before…
[...]
Stagnation was a choice. We have weighed down our builders and innovators. The well-intentioned regulatory regime of the 1970s became an ever-tightening ratchet, first hampering America's ability to become a net-energy exporter and then making it harder and harder to build. We seem to have lost focus and vision, to have lowered our sights and let systems and structures and bureaucracies muddle us along.

But we are capable of so much more.

Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity.
[...]

It is the choices of individuals that will make the new American Golden Age possible: the choice of individuals to master the sclerosis of the state, and the choice of individuals to craft new technologies and give themselves to scientific discoveries that will bend time and space, make more with less, and drive us further into the endless frontier.

Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/8716/

The focus of the speech is arguing that the burden of regulations (things like the EPA, building regulations, and worker rights) stifles innovation. He uses the "time and space" metaphor to both harken back to previous accomplishments (trains, planes), and to talk about future possibilities (flying cars, drones, supersonic planes)

It's not a new metaphor, going back over 150 years, here's a book from 1956 glorifying the railways for their "conquest of space and time"

The oldest I found

Article:

May 31, 1844:

Prof. Morse's Telegraph has already, during the first week of its operations, been proved to be of the greatest public importance. Time and space has been completely annihilated.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/time-and-space-has-been-completely-annihilated/253103/

Similar usages:

Article:

the ability of the internet to manipulate time and space in a sense, similar to previous communications revolutions such as the telephone

Source: https://medium.com/gettingamericaonline/getting-america-online-the-spread-of-the-internet-in-the-1990s-a2ba7fb1ae81

Article:

[the telegraph] compressed time and space, separated information from geography, increased globalization, jumpstarted journalism, and tightened imperialism. But the role of the cable did not stop there.

Source: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/a-wire-across-the-ocean

Article:

the technology of recording and reproducing the world, along with the new ways in which it could frame, orient, and manipulate time and space

Source: https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-568?p=emailAOka4ffpW6ZTk&d=/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-568

Article:

the telegraph ... was able to restructure time and space, in relation to both social and commercial life

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Carey

 

[FatPhil]

This is being interpreted as some to suggest the US has secret technology that can manipulate spacetime (i.e. a warp drive, or anti-gravity), possibly of alien origin.

I feel obliged to point out that, because I have so much mass-energy, I myself manipulate spacetime.

 

[JMartJr]

I feel obliged to point out that, because I have so much mass-energy, I myself manipulate spacetime.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if it is possible to manipulate anything other than spacetime...

 

[Mendel]

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if it is possible to manipulate anything other than spacetime...

it's clear that the masses are easily manipulated

 

[John J.]

USAF General Curtiss Le May used similar wording not long after becoming the commanding officer of Strategic Air Command.

...in December 1948, the Air Force leadership rallied behind LeMay's position that the service's highest priority was to deliver the SAC atomic offensive "in one fell swoop telescoping mass and time".

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay.
SAC's fastest bomber in 1948, the newly-introduced B-36, had a maximum speed of 435 mph (700 kph),
0.0000648657% of the speed of light in a vacuum (670,616,629 mph, 1,079,252,849 kph approx.) so not quite relativistic performance.

 

[Ann K]

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if it is possible to manipulate anything other than spacetime...

The subject of this thread is evidence of manipulation of the English language.

 

[FatPhil]

USAF General Curtiss Le May used similar wording not long after becoming the commanding officer of Strategic Air Command.

...in December 1948, the Air Force leadership rallied behind LeMay's position that the service's highest priority was to deliver the SAC atomic offensive "in one fell swoop telescoping mass and time".

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay.
SAC's fastest bomber in 1948, the newly-introduced B-36, had a maximum speed of 435 mph (700 kph),
0.0000648657% of the speed of light in a vacuum (670,616,629 mph, 1,079,252,849 kph approx.) so not quite relativistic performance.

Ah, but that's very relativistic - it gained 4 GJ in mass-energy because of its speed!

OK, some might call that just "kinetic energy", but kinetic energy is the lowest order relativistic effect.

? gam(x)=(1-(x/c)^2)^-(1/2)
(x)->(1-(x/c)^2)^-(1/2)
? m*gam(v)*c^2 + O(v^6)
c^2*m + 1/2*m*v^2 + 3/(8*c^2)*m*v^4 + O(v^6)

There's the well-known mc^2 at the start, followed by the even better known 1/2.mv^2 term, but It's not just the O(v^4) and beyond terms that are relativistic, the whole expression is.

 

[Mendel]

but kinetic energy is the lowest order relativistic effect.

it's also Newtonian

 

[FatPhil]

it's also Newtonian

Nothing to the contrary has been said or implied. My whole point was that Newtonian terms *are* SR terms too. If you're witnessing Newtonian mechanics, you're noticing the effects of Special Relativity.

 

[Mendel]

Nothing to the contrary has been said or implied.

Yes, I know you didn't (and I didn't say or imply you did (how deep do you want to go?)).

But almost everyone else implies "non-Newtonian" when they use "relativistic" like @John J. did.

Spoiler: dictionary quotes

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/relativistic
"2. (physics) At or near the speed of light."

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/relativistic
"1. physics—having or involving a speed close to that of light so that the behaviour is described by the theory of relativity rather than by Newtonian mechanics"

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/relativistic
"(of a velocity) having a magnitude that is a significant fraction of the speed of light .
"(of a particle) having a relativistic velocity"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relativistic
"moving at a velocity such that there is a significant change in properties (such as mass) in accordance with the theory of relativity"
[/quotes]

 

[jdog]

Such power is granted only to the wisest.

 

[Mendel]

Such power is granted only to the wisest.
View attachment 79512

You may have found the secret behind the Tridactyls.

 

[FatPhil]

But almost everyone else implies "non-Newtonian" when they use "relativistic" like @John J. did.

Yes. Now why do you think I made my original response? My message has always been "the stuff you've been familiar with since prehistory is actually relativity in action". How has that not been clear?

Oh - for reference - "spoiler" stuff simply isn't rendered if the browser has JS disabled, with no hint of it even being present (despite there being an absolutely trivial CSS solution to the problem of wanting togglably-hideable stuff).

 

[Bob Jase]

I blame H. G. Wells

"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space."

 

[Mendel]

I blame H. G. Wells

"Scientific people," proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, "know very well that Time is only a kind of Space."

that's why modern managers make space in their calendar for things of gravity

 

[Giddierone]

The oldest I found
Article: May 31, 1844:

Prof. Morse's Telegraph has already, during the first week of its operations, been proved to be of the greatest public importance. Time and space has been completely annihilated. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/time-and-space-has-been-completely-annihilated/253103/

The phrase "annihilate time and space" seems to refer the the yearnings of distant lovers writing letters to one another, and appears in newspapers as far back as 1806, "lovers who only wished the Gods to annihilate time and space to make them happy!" https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-morning-chronicle/170916617/

Not sure of the origin of that quote— one of the poets? — but "annihilate" always appears.

It also seems to have been a phrase of choice used by various newspapers / journalists to describe, horses, mail wagons, then, trains, telegraphs, radio, and television [https://www.life.com/lifestyle/life-said-this-invention-would-annihilate-time-and-space/], and other technological developments up to the present moment.

Its referred to here in 1830 as "a fashionable figure of speech" https://www.newspapers.com/article/huron-reflector/170916717/

And here, from 1830, as it relates to riding an "iron horse":
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charleston-daily-courier/170916794/

More technological tie in from 1876

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038485/1876-09-28/ed-1/seq-3/

from 1900

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...e+annihilated&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2

By the late 1920s/30s it was used in front page ads by Potomac Electric Company.

 

[Giddierone]

Ah, so after some more digging the phrase "annihilate space and time" originates with a satirical work by Alexander Pope in 1727.
"Ye gods! Annihilate but space and time, and make two lovers' happy".

Source: https://archive.org/details/martinusscribler0000pope/page/50/mode/2up?q=annihilate

It was then adopted by people during the steam age to describe technological progress and has been put to similar use ever since.

My initial hunch was the it came from Karl Marx and so I was pleased to (re)discover that he did use the phrase in Grundrisse (rough drafted in 1857-1858).

Thus, while capital must on one side strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market, it strives on the other side to annihilate this space with time, i.e. to reduce to a minimum the time spent in motion from one place to another. The more developed the capital, therefore, the more extensive the market over which it circulates, which forms the spatial orbit of its circulation, the more does it strive simultaneously for an even greater extension of the market and for greater annihilation of space by time.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch10.htm

This paper also has a neat illustration of how railway construction over the years has literally mAniPulat3d tHe VEery FaBr1c of SPAcE Tim3 itSelF! "annihilated space and time" in France.

Source: http://www.theses.fr/2016DIJOL028/document [p.268]

 

[NoParty]

This is being interpreted as some to suggest the US has secret technology that can manipulate spacetime (i.e. a warp drive, or anti-gravity), possibly of alien origin.

Boy, I sure hope "some" is a teeny tiny faction.

Kudos to all who spent some time documenting the phrase. But damn!

The first (similarly nuts) thing that popped into my mind, upon reading this thread, was when
we had a bunch of unhinged folks claiming that when cops used long-standard terms like
"bad actors," that they were actually being caught admitting that the persons involved
were, in reality, "actors" in the stage sense (rather than just people acting badly)
...and thus, hired for some conspiracy theory "false flag."
I for one, have trouble sometimes, reckoning who is really believing such things,
and who is just capitalizing on their gullibility for YouTube, etc. monetization...