James C. Bennett

James C. Bennett has served as President and Chairman of the Board of Internet Transactions Transnational since its founding in April 1997. ITTI is an international venture developing virtual private networks for high-value Internet transactions in a high-trust environment. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, California.
 
Jim served as President and Director of Advanced Technology Holdings, Inc., ITTI’s former parent corporation, between 1995 and 1998. He has been professionally active in high technology and international communications and trade since 1978, when he joined the Sabre Foundation’s programs for international trade and space development, heading that organization’s World Space Center, which specialized in organizing training and applications programs in space-related technologies for developing nations. That work lead to the founding of the Free Zone Authority Services, Inc., a consulting group specializing in free trade zone management services, which later merged to form The Services Group, Inc. He served as a Director of FZAS (The Services Group) until 1989.
 
In 1980, he cofounded Space Enterprise Consultants, the first consulting firm devoted entirely to commercial space development. SEC reviewed a wide range of potential space commercial activities and served a number of customers in the commercial space field. This consulting practice was continued by Jim on an individual basis following the disbanding of the organization and expanded to non-space high-technology areas in 1991.
 
In 1981, work performed by SEC led to the founding of Arc Technologies, Inc. (later known as Starstruck, Inc.) an early private space-launch venture, which successfully conducted a launch test of its Dolphin rocket in 1984. he served at Arc as Vice President, Government Affairs, and was responsible for, among other things, negotiating the first license for the launch of a commercially-developed rocket in the United States. In addition, he was a central participant in the writing and passage of the Commercial Space Launch Act, the legal charter for private space activities in the U.S. He served four terms on the board of directors of that company.
 
In 1985, Jim cofounded American Rocket Company, which developed the unique, non-explosive hybrid rocket engine as a commercial project. As Vice President, External Affairs of AMROC, he gained one of the first launch permits issued by the Department of Transportation. From 1989 to 1990, he served as President of AMROC, and from 1985 to 1988 he served on its board of directors. AMROC’s technology was acquired by Space Development Corporation, where it formed the basis for the engine used by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne in its pioneering private manned flight to space.
 
After leaving American Rocket, he served as a consultant to a number of clients in the space, communications, and other technology enterprises, specializing in international on-line communications and commercial space development. His clients have included the Mackinac Foundation, American Rocket Company, Booz, Allen & Hamilton, The Services Group, Inc., Weaver Aerospace Company, Astrotech Space Operations, L.P., a subsidiary of Westinghouse, Gateway Ventures, Ltd., World Cities Organization, Inc., The Space and Automation Research Center of the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Lockheed Space Operations and Sverdrup Technologies, Inc. on contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Econ, Inc. on contract to the US Air Force, and to the United Space Alliance, the Lockheed Martin-Boeing North American joint venture, the current contract operator of the Space Shuttle for NASA.
 
Jim has been writing and speaking on technological developments and public policy issues for the past decade. He wrote a weekly column, The Anglosphere Beat, for United Press International between 2000 and 2003. His book The Anglosphere Challenge: Why The English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century was published in October 2004. He is the Author of two public policy studies on space, technology and international cooperation issues for the Reason Foundation. He was a member of the White House Task Force on Space Commercialization in 1983. He has given testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the California legislature, and served on U.S. Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee from 1992 to 1994.
 
Jim is an Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute, and is a contributor to two books from Hudson, including 2020 Forecast and the best-selling The Re-Emerging Japanese Superstate in the Twenty-First Century (Tokuma Shoten, Tokyo, 2002, in Japanese). He has served as a Director of the Foresight Institute, Palo Alto, California since 1986, when that group was established to examine implications of emerging technology, emphasizing molecular nanotechnology. In 1991 he also was named a founding Director of the related Institute for Molecular Manufacturing in Palo Alto. He is the founding president and Director of the recently-formed Anglosphere Institute of Alexandria, Virginia, of which Lady Margaret Thatcher and Robert Conquest have consented to be Patrons. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the World Cities Organization. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the National Space Society, a public interest group promoting the development of space, having previously served as a member of its Board of Directors. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles-based Organization for the Advancement and Settlement of Space.
 
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