Retrospective on My Open Letter To Randell Mills

I did not witness the last Brilliant Light Power shareholder meeting.  I heard that it was something of a fiasco, with people interrupting Dr. Mills to tell him to go ahead and commercialize, or something like that. It makes me wish that I had not published that open letter, although the arguments are solid.  Shareholders have a right to understand what is happening and a credible public demonstration is not asking too much.  However, there are other significant considerations, which Dr. Mills might not want to openly discuss.

This 2017 article did what was done previously.  It gave reason to be optimistic about the immediate future of BLP.  Critics use the disappointment that follows such announcements as evidence supporting various negative allegations.  The reactor that was available for demonstration reportedly was impressive, to some extent, but did not raise a noticeable improvement in credibility because of limitations on reaction temperature caused by the cold interface with the surface that had water on the other side.  That path of development was abandoned in favor of returning to an optical power conversion.  The major changes in prototype development made some people wonder if there was legitimacy, or if it was a stalling tactic.

Warren Buffet calls The Intelligent Investor the best book ever on the topic.  IPO means Initial Public Offering, the point at which the company becomes publicly traded and scrutiny on their books is greatly increased.  The advice of that book is basically to avoid risk and preserve capital, so it advises against IPO ("It's Over Priced") because the offering is timed by the company so as to maximize stock price.  

There is a well-known strategy of shorting an IPO stock soon after it typically pops up.  This might be a serious risk for BLP because the initial appeal that would attract buyers would soon come under brutal attack by well entrenched skeptics, which could do serious damage to the company.  Therefore, it is crucial for the IPO to happen only after credibility is sufficiently established.  The question for years has been, what does it mean for credibility to be sufficiently established?

To my way of thinking, the work at Thermacore clearly showed even before this official 1993 publication, evidence of long running consistent excess heat, with a respectable gain factor, and plenty of information for ease of replication by competent individuals.  But, it was not commercializable.  This document is the sort of thing that scientists were manically seeking in 1989 after the Fleischmann-Pons press conference.  Fleischmann and Pons had no paper to present, and nothing for many months afterwards, which was unforgivable.  Combine that with no real theoretical explanation for the reported observations (which were unreliable and inconsistent), and as Dr. Mills described it in the 1999 American Chemical Society video, the path to convincing people that there really was something of profound importance that had been discovered had been made so difficult that only commercial success could overcome the skepticism.

That said, it is true that Dr. Mills has been able to convince investors that he is making progress.  However, for him to "commercialize", i.e. IPO, he might set himself up for failure if he does not handle the credibility matter properly.  Fortunately, it is not up to me to say what determines his credibility.  I already invested my time and study into his claims, to a limited extent, since 1997.  I find him credible, but I lack absolute certainty (about most things).  He cannot risk launching an IPO without a strong likelihood of overcoming the mountain of skepticism he is facing.  Ideally, he might have a prototype running on some island where wealthy and influential people live.  Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk would like to have such a generator installed on their private islands.  It would be under an agreement to allow inspection by the usual celebrity scientists, and others.  An island has the advantage of being quite difficult to fake long-term production of power with buried cable from an adjacent property.  Such people, being very sensitive to their public images, would greatly benefit by being seen as guiding the world into the new bright future.  They would presumably employ their considerable resources into making sure they were not getting scammed.  Any commercial prototype would need to be equipped with the photovoltaic assembly (PV).  That is a custom manufacturing assembly that will require a year, once the final design on the SunCell radiator is achieved.   

The PV Assembly was mentioned in the September 29 News, along with many other engineering refinements.

Dr. Mills is not under any requirement to announce that he has ordered the PV assembly.  It seems that he has learned to play his cards close to his chest, releasing information strategically.

In this ideal scenario, with a SunCell generator powering a remote island, it would be the time for an IPO.  But, lacking an ideal situation, how could Dr. Mills realistically ensure that an IPO would be secure against the skeptical backlash?  Part of the problem is that it really is easy to demonstrate phenomenal performance of a SunCell, if the BLP reports going back several years are accurate.  That was the point of An Open Letter to Dr. Mills.  If he gains major credibility before he is ready to commercialize, that would potentially create a serious problem.  His job as CEO is to avoid such problems, not just prove himself to be scientifically correct.

Dr. Mills stated during a Road Show video that they were comfortable with being ignored and disbelieved because it gave them time to develop a large portfolio of intellectual property free from competition.  It is an advantage, just as it was for the Wright Brothers, to be ignored.  Indeed, if he had tried to commercialize the boiler technology, it might have succeeded to some limited extent, but then been superseded by someone else with major financial resources developing something more like a SunCell.  

If he has a demonstration that is convincing to the public, he can expect, besides the skeptical backlash, many well funded efforts aimed at stripping him of whatever ideas can be stripped.  He needs to grab market share immediately to gain the first-mover advantage, with associated network effects, switching costs, path dependence and establishing a de facto standard.  It's not a guarantee of permanent market dominance because competitors can always learn from his errors and attempt to gain market share, which is a healthy thing.  What he would likely gain is credibility, which could lead to immediate success for the plethora of his other ideas and fulfill his primary ambition: acceptance of the GUTCP.

What I am saying is that gaining major credibility prior to a fully capable commercial product (PV completely tested) may not be desirable for the best interests of the company.  Some, such as I, have suggested that a PV array made of ordinary commercial solar panels surrounding the SunCell radiator would serve the purpose of a commercial prototype.  But, this would be impractical, and success would trigger competition before BLP could gain market share.

We are in the habit of thinking that there is some authority that recognizes supreme scientific accomplishes and rewards it with prizes and then some great matter is settled, or advanced, like a cornerstone is set in a building.  I recently watched this great documentary about Louis DeBroglie that told how it was when physics made a lot more sense, and accomplishments were clearly understood.  Since that period, with the results that followed from Schrodinger's Equation, which was a seeming solution to a growing crisis in physics, the crisis never went away, but just became normalized.