Eric Jensen, ICEYE US's chief executive, needs his espresso
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Illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of ICEYE US
Even in the deepest of woods or bogs, ICEYE US CEO Eric Jensen stays caffeinated.
- "I love to hike, hunt, explore the wilderness, camp. I would prefer always to do it with my single serve manual espresso maker," he told Axios in a recent interview.
- "What's something I believe that no one else does? You can make a barista-quality shot of espresso on your own — off grid — without any steam or anything like that."
Why he matters: ICEYE is part of the remote-sensing boom, as it designs, builds and operates a fleet of satellites that collects information about the Earth.
- Jensen also has years of experience at Boeing, including at its clandestine Phantom Works division.
Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?
A: Cross-domain platform integration. That is what AI allows us to achieve.
Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots?
A: The next war.
Q: What's a national security trend we are not paying enough attention to?
A: Decision autonomy in space.
- In the same breath today, we can say "AI, quantum and space-based capabilities." We can talk about them all in the same paragraph.
- There are a lot of things that we DARPA-fied in the 1990s — envisioning all these amazing things that we would do in space, and we demonstrated a lot of them. Now we can actually operationalize them.
Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?
A: About 200-300. AI has been great at helping consolidate those down into what's urgent, what's important and what's trashable.
- Really, the absolute best way to deal with email is just not read it.
- If people need you or you need to help them, you're going to find a way to do that.
Q: What's your secret to a successful overnight flight?
A: Three-part secret. Part one: water, water, water and nothing else. Part two: high-thread-count onesie. Part three: half of a Tylenol PM, but no other heavier aids. And lie flat if possible.
