Synthetic Life Is Cool - But Scary

I know many people are worried about the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting happening later this week – I am too – but from a longer term perspective there’s another meeting happening this week that we should also be paying attention to: the Engineering and Safeguarding Synthetic Life conference, in Manchester (U.K.). It is aimed at bringing together “scientists, engineers, ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders to explore the challenges and opportunities of building and regulating synthetic life.”   

Mirror image synthetic life isn't going to be quite that easy. Credit: Ting Zhu Lab

The conference has four sessions:

• Session 1 – Synthetic Cells: Advances in the creation of minimal and fully synthetic cells, highlighting new technologies and design principles.
• Session 2 – Synthetic Genomes: Cutting-edge progress in genome synthesis and engineering, including applications and long-term visions.
• Session 3 – Safeguarding Synthetic Life: Addressing safety, ethics, and science diplomacy, with a focus on responsible innovation and governance, including for mirror cells.
• Session 4 – Recombining Emerging Technologies: Examining how synthetic biology converges with fields such as AI, robotics, and materials science to enable new capabilities.

These aren’t sessions speculating about long range futures; these are sessions led by leading scientists talking about current work, in hopes of creating informed discussion about what more of us should be thinking about. The future is almost here.

It has a companion program -- Japan-UK Engineering Biology Meeting -- that follows, and in December in the U.S. the National Academy of Science will host a workshop Mirror Image Biology: Pushing the Envelope in Designing Biological Systems, “focusing on the state of the science, trends in research and development, risks and benefits of this research, and considerations relating for future governance of relevant enabling technologies.”

Serious people are taking this seriously.

Devoted readers may recall that three months ago I wrote about the Synthetic Human Genome Project, the goal of which is “to provide proof of concept for large genome synthesis by creating a fully synthetic human chromosome.” Or they may remember when I wrote last December about a technical report warning about the potential benefits and risks of so-called “mirror life,” whose DNA has the opposite chirality of all existing DNA.

Then, just two months ago, researchers from MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology announced they had modified an E. Coli to have only 57 codons, versus the 64 that essentially all DNA organisms have.  They call it Syn57, and Wesley Robertson, one of the authors, told Carl Zimmer of The New York Times: “Life still works…This reveals that there is nothing fundamental about the universal genetic code.”

We’re tinkering with the basics of life itself. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

Mirror life is one of the areas that continues to draw attention. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota, warned Mark Peplow of Nature: “There is no benefit of mirror biology that couldn’t be achieved other ways with normal biology. That’s not a risk I think we should be taking.” Dr. Adamala is chairing Session 1 of this week’s conference.  She was also one of the scientists who issued the Technical Report n mirror life last December; she knows of which she speaks, and she’s worried.

Not everyone is as worried. “Given all of the other ways in which technology is upending society right now, it’s a little surprising that this has gotten as much attention as it has,” David Van Valen, a bioengineer at the California Institute of Technology, told Mr. Peplow. “I think most of the concerns that people are raising are overblown.”

One of the leaders in the field, Ting Zhu at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China, is not attending this week’s conference but did author a companion piece to Mr. Peplow’s, Mirror of the unknown: should research on mirror-image molecular biology be stopped? Dr. Zhu takes the high road: “But in the face of vast unknowns, the noble path of pre-emptively protecting humanity from potential risks in the distant future can be slippery. And we should tread cautiously.”

Still, he points out:

Research in mirror-image molecular biology is still in its infancy. But scientists working in this field have been humbled by the tremendous challenges of exploring this unknown world ^5–14. The creation of mirror-image organisms, if it ever became feasible, would face monumental conceptual and technical barriers.

He adds that it took his team almost four years to construct a mirror image protein fragment of about 470 amino acids – the longest yet but still just a fragment. They’ve been working on a mirror image ribosome for almost ten years, “and are still years away from achieving it.”

According:

In short, it is crucial to distinguish mirror-image molecular biology from the creation of mirror-image organisms. A self-replicating cell has molecular diversity, metabolic complexity and structural intricacy that are orders of magnitude greater than what’s found in any currently synthesizable biomolecular system. And the creation of a mirror-image organism lies well beyond the reach of present-day science.

Dr. Zhu does think there are “endless possibilities” with mirror image molecules, such as more effective drugs, enzymes that could degrade plastics, even more robust data storage capabilities than natural DNA. It is important, he argues, that we don’t put a moratorium on the field, but he does agree with the purpose of this week’s conference, “establishing ethical boundaries would be to comprehensively assess near-term challenges and long-term risks across multiple disciplines.”

If one is cynical about China following such ethical guidelines, Dr. Adamala is not, at least when it comes to Dr. Zhu, telling Mr. Peplow: “He’s said he’s not going to build a living mirror cell, and that’s good enough for me,”

Well, maybe.

I’d be remiss if I failed to note that DARPA has just announced a Smart-Red Blood Cells (Smart-RBC) initiative, aiming “to engineer red blood cells to contain novel biological features that can safely and reliably modify human physiology.” It wants to identify “the art of-the-possible to create SRBCs to enhance human performance in austere environments and maximize survival via hemostasis products,” but also “unlock future capabilities including, but not limited to, improving thermal regulation in extreme environments, creating universal blood, accelerating acclimation to high altitudes, generating more resilient blood products.”

And you were worried about mirror image organisms.

Credit: Darpa

In some ways, this is very much like what is happening with artificial intelligence, only with much less money and much less attention. Both synthetic biology and AI could revolutionize our society and bring untold benefits, or they could conceivably lead to destruction of all life on earth. The trouble is, nobody really knows which will actually happen.

That's More Like It

Do we really have to wait 75 years for some 22nd century healthcare? Credit: Microsoft Designer

I’m always on the lookout for advances in healthcare that seem more like 22^st century medicine than what we still experience in 2025. Way too much of it seems less advanced than we should be expecting in a world of AI, genetic engineering, nanobots, and the like. I often think of the scene in Star Trek IV where Dr. McCoy finds himself in a 20^th century hospital and is appalled:

 

So I’m pleased to report on a couple of developments that seem like the future.

Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (aka “ultrasound helmet): You may not have ever heard of deep brain stimulation, unless you know someone who has advanced Parkinson’s, dystonia, essential tremors, or epilepsy. It turns out that electrical impulses to certain parts of the brain can help reduce the involuntary motions these conditions can result in.

The drawback is that deep brain stimulation is delivered by electrodes implanted deep in the brain. While this may not be quite as daunting as it sounds, people are still, you know, drilling holes in your head and pushing electrodes into your brain. You can imagine Dr. McCloy’s reaction.

Enter transcranial ultrasound stimulation. A new paper in Nature from researchers at University College London (UCL) and Oxford describes using a 256 element helmet to precisely aim ultrasound waves to accomplish the same results.

Our findings reveal this system’s potential to non-invasively modulate deep brain circuits with unprecedented precision and specificity, offering new avenues for studying brain function and developing targeted therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders, with transformative potential for both research and clinical applications.

Professor Bradley Treeby, senior author of the study from UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, said:

Clinically, this new technology could transform treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders like Parkinson's disease, depression, and essential tremor, offering unprecedented precision in targeting specific brain circuits that play key roles in these conditions. 

The ability to precisely modulate deep brain structures without surgery represents a paradigm shift in neuroscience, offering a safe, reversible, and repeatable method for both understanding brain function and developing targeted therapies.

Moreover, Professor Treeby asserts: “For the first time, scientists can non-invasively study causal relationships in deep brain circuits that were previously only accessible through surgery.” Similarly, senior author Prof Charlotte Stagg of Oxford University said: “The waves reached their target with remarkable accuracy. That alone was extraordinary, and no one has done it before.”

Dr Ioana Grigoras, a first author of the study from the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, agrees: "This novel brain stimulation device represents a breakthrough in our ability to precisely target deep brain structures that were previously impossible to reach non-invasively. We are particularly excited about its potential clinical applications for neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease, where deep brain regions are especially affected."

The research was primarily a proof-of-concept, but the team is already on the way to test the system on brain areas linked with Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, stroke recovery, pain, depression and other conditions. They hope to have the first clinical applications in a few years.

The current helmet is used in conjunction with an fMRI, but the team hopes to eventually be able to use AI to not require the fMRI. They’ve founded NeuroHarmonics to develop a portable, wearable version of the system, aiming to allow patients to use at home. Its vision is “to build what could become the gold standard for non-invasive neuromodulation, potentially transforming the lives of millions affected by brain disorders while opening new frontiers in brain-computer interaction.”

That sounds like some 22nd century medicine.

Person wearing ultrasound helmet. Credit: Treeby, et. al.

Electromechanical reshaping (EMR): When Lasik surgery was introduced in the late 1980’s, it sure seemed like some 21^st medicine. Lasers! Surgery without scalpels, and with greater precision! It was, indeed, a great step forward. But we’re in 2025 now, and it must be admitted that Lasik is not without risks. Plus, as Michael Hill, a professor of chemistry at Occidental College, points out: “LASIK is just a fancy way of doing traditional surgery. It’s still carving tissue — it’s just carving with a laser.”

Professor Hill thinks there is a better way. He and his colleague Brian Wong, a surgeon-engineer at the University of California, Irvine, believe a process known as electromechanical reshaping (EMR) offers a better option. Basically, it uses electrical impulses to reshape the cornea. No surgery required.

The researchers applied a small electric potential to a lens. Without getting into all the chemistry involved, after about a minute, the cornea’s curvature conformed to the shape of the lens — which is, they point out, about the same amount of time LASIK takes, but with fewer steps, less expensive equipment and no incisions. In other experiments, the team demonstrated that their technique might be able to reverse some chemical-caused cloudiness to the cornea — a condition that is currently only treatable through a complete corneal transplant.

EMR at work. Credit: Hill & Wong

“The whole effect was discovered by accident,” explained Wong, a professor and surgeon at the University of California, Irvine. “I was looking at living tissues as moldable materials and discovered this whole process of chemical modification.”

Professors Hill and Wong coauthored a proof-of-concept paper in 2023. “That paper was really about asking, is it even possible? Can we change the shape of a cornea without gross damage?” Hill told IEEE Spectrum. “Now, after two more years of work, we’ve systematically gone through the parameters—and we can say yes, it is possible, and we can do it safely.”

The duo tested EMR on rabbit eyeballs, not live rabbits, which will be the next step.  “Nobody’s getting this at the optometrist next year,” Professor Hill cautions. “Now comes the hard work—refining parameters, confirming long-term viability, and making sure treated eyes don’t revert back.”

Still, Professor Hill believes: “There’s a long road between what we’ve done and the clinic. But, if we get there, this technique is widely applicable, vastly cheaper and potentially even reversible.”

I hope I never need Lasik surgery, much less any other kind of eye surgery, but if I do I sure hope I don’t have to wait until the 22^nd century to get something like EMR.

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Cool stuff, both of these. And, in this current environment of attacks on science, I can’t help but include something else Professor Hill points out:

You don’t always know where basic research will lead. We were looking at electroanalytical chemistry, not eye surgery. But those foundational insights are what made this possible. If you cut off that basic research, you don’t get these kinds of unexpected, transformative opportunities.

Amen to that. That’s how we get to the future.

Where Innovation Clusters

We all like to think of the genius innovators coming up with Eureka ideas on their own, but most innovations don’t work that way. The pandemic helped remind us of the importance of proximity, that being with other talented people helps spur creativity. Those hallway conversations often trigger unexpected ideas and synergies. Talented people like to have other talented people around them, whether that is within a company or in a geographic region.

Well, you may have missed it, but there is a UN agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), that looks at such things, and has been issuing a Global Innovation Index since 2017. It released the 2025 Index today.

The top ranked cluster was Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou (China), followed by Tokyo-Yokohama (Japan) and San Jose-San Francisco (United States). Last year, the top two positions were reversed, while San Jose-San Francisco was 6^th.

Part of the shake-up in the ratings was inclusion of venture capital investments in the ratings; previously, only patent filing and scientific publishing data were used. "Venture capital investment activity helps capture how scientific and technological knowledge translates into start-up creation and, ultimately, new goods and services in the marketplace," WIPO said. The change helped San Jose-Sam Francisco rise, as well as London (21^st to 8^th) and Bengaluru (56^th to 21^st). Indian clusters benefited generally.

Carsten Fink, chief economist of the WIPO’s department for economics and data analytics, said: “We don’t just want to track science and technology activity. We also want to see how clusters turn ideas into entrepreneurship and ultimately new products and services that emerge in the marketplace.”

"Innovation clusters form the backbone of strong national innovation ecosystems, helping to anchor and strengthen the journey from ideas to market. The inclusion of VC deal activity in this year's GII cluster methodology is recalibrating our understanding of innovation strength, and these new results highlight which clusters are turning scientific research into economic results," WIPO Director General Daren Tang said in the report.

For example, WIPO noted that the top two clusters account for nearly one-in-five patent applications globally, and the top ten clusters accounted for 40 per cent of the world’s patent applications and 35 per cent of its venture capital deals

If only looking at patent filing volume, the top three are the Tokyo-Yokohama, Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou, and Seoul clusters, contributing 10.3 percent, 9 percent, and 5.4 percent of the global total, respectively. In terms of scientific research output, the top three are Beijing, Shanghai-Suzhou, and Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou, with 4 percent of the global total, 2.5 percent, and 2.4 percent, respectively.

"VCs fund technology enterprises, integrate resources, and reduce risks, thereby driving the rapid development of the technology industry. In turn, the prosperity of the technology sector delivers substantial returns to VC investors, attracting more capital inflows and further fostering innovation and upgrading within the industry. This dynamic interplay serves as a crucial driving force for innovation-led development during China's economic transformation," Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund, told the Global Times.

It’s a virtuous circle.

Here are the top 15 clusters:

1: Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou (China)

2: Tokyo-Yokohama (Japan)

3: San Jose-San Francisco (United States)

4: Beijing (China)

5: Seoul (South Korea)

6: Shanghai-Suzhou (China)

7: New York City (United States)

8: London (Britain)

9: Boston-Cambridge (United States)

10: Los Angeles (United States)

11: Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto (Japan)

12: Paris (France)

13: Hangzhou (China)

14: San Diego (United States)

15: Nanjing (China)

If one accounts for population size, San Jose-San Francisco would come out on top, followed by Cambridge (U.K.).

Thirty-three economies have a cluster in the top 100. If you are someone who notices such things, the U.S. has 4 of the top ten, versus China’s 3, but in the top 15 each have 5. Among the top 100, China has 24 while the U.S. has 22. Germany is next, but only with 7. It is the third consecutive year China has had the most clusters in the top 100.

I think about this in light of the current war n science being waged by the Trump Administration, whether that is cutting NIH/NSF funding, firing federal scientists, attacking our top research universities, or using the phrase “gold-standard science” when what it really means is science that adheres to personal or political positions (I’m talking about you, RFK Jr.!). We’re losing a generation of young scientists, undermining out decades of research, imposing disastrous cuts on science agencies.  I mean, you cannot overstate the risk that American science is under, and that will have consequences to our innovation.

Talent is fluid. If the best scientific laboratories and research universities are no longer here, if the post WWII federal funding for funding for science and innovation dries up, then leading researchers will go elsewhere. Europe, Canada, Australia, and – you guessed it! – China are all rolling out the welcome mats for U.S. scientists.  

Venture capital is even more fluid. The U.S. has long had one of the most robust and forward-looking venture capital system in the world, which has been to our benefit, but the thing is, venture capital doesn’t respect borders. It seeks only returns. If there’s more innovations happening in clusters elsewhere in the world, VCs will put their money there.

It certainly doesn’t help that we’re discouraging international students from our universities, demonizing immigrants, even restricting H1-B visa for skilled workers. If we don’t want the smartest people from other countries studying and working here, there are plenty of other places where they can – and will – go.

It won’t be them who suffer the consequences.

The Global Innovation Index reminds is that innovation is truly global, and that the U.S.’s historical outsized footprint in innovation continues. But it also shows that it’s fair to say that China is by now at least our equal, and there are many other hotspots of innovation in the world eager to leapfrog ours should they falter.

I love science and innovation. I think it’s healthy that there are so many strong centers for them all around the world. I’ve long been proud of America’s preeminence in both, but I hate that we appear to be squandering it, letting China and others take the lead in inventing the future.  

I’ll be curious to see what trends the 2026 Global Innovation Index shows, but, I have to admit, I’m kind of scared about what the 2030 Index will show.

We Should Write a Really Stern Letter

On the heels of the disastrous floods in Texas, days away from the Hurricane Katrina twenty year anniversary, and with Hurricane Erin almost becoming another Hurricane Sandy, the dedicated employees at FEMA are worried. Very worried. They’ve got a President who repeatedly has called to dismantle the agency, a DHS Secretary who is more interested in photo ops and slow walking expenditure requests, and an acting administrator who has no experience in emergency management. Oh, and they’ve suffered losses of about a third of their workforce.  

Nice try, but that's not going to be enough. Credit: Microsoft Designer

So some of the more outspoken employees have written a letter.  That should do the trick.

The letter, which they call the FEMA Katrina Declaration, was signed by almost two hundred current and past employees (although only three dozen allowed their names to be public). They charge:

Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA Administrator. Decisions made by FEMA’s Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator (SOPDA) David Richardson, Former SOPDA Cameron Hamilton, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem erode the capacity of FEMA and our State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) partners, hinder the swift execution of our mission, and dismiss experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management.

The letter goes on to list “Six Statements of Opposition,” calling to reverse various actions the Administration has taken that they believe impairs FEMA’s ability to fulfill its mission. Each seems perfectly reasonable, and none seems likely to result in action, at least unless/until disasters strike enough red states to force action.

FEMA spokesperson Daniel Llargues was not impressed, responding: “It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform. Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems.”

I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to the letter, except it comes two months after some 90 NIH scientists issued their “Bethesda Declaration” to protest what has been happening to the NIH so far in the Trump Administration. Addressed to Director Jay Bhattacharya, it declared:

For staff across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe. Keeping NIH at the forefront of biomedical research requires our stalwart commitment to continuous improvement. But the life-and-death nature of our work demands that changes be thoughtful and vetted. We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.  

The Declaration lists five categories of cuts the Administration has taken, about which they warn: “Combined, these actions have resulted in an unprecedented reduction in NIH spending that does not reflect efficiency but rather a dramatic reduction in life-saving research.”

Amen to that.

Director Bhattacharya was somewhat more respectful than Mr. Llargues in his response, claiming: “The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration. Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed.”

I don’t believe him. This Administration does not recognize any dissent as “respectful.”

I’m pleased to note that it isn’t just employees at FEMA and NIH who are protesting Administration actions that they believe jeopardize their mission. Staffers at other agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the National Science Foundation have published similar letters.     

The EPA letter, for example, flat out said: “Under your leadership, Administrator Zeldin, this administration is recklessly undermining the EPA mission,” going on to list five specific examples, and warning: “Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come. EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.” Over 600 staffers signed -- although all were anonymous. 

Similarly, 149 NSF employees – almost all of whom remained anonymous – expressed their “deep concern over a series of politically motived and legally questionable actions by the Administration that threaten the integrity of the NSF and undermine the civil service protections guaranteed under federal law.” The net result, they say, “collectively amount to the systemic dismantling of a world-renowned scientific agency” and “would cripple American science.”

And, in response to the August 8^th attack on CDC headquarters, over 750 current and former CDC staffers issued a blistering response to Secretary Kennedy, saying: “When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe,” and accusing Secretary Kennedy of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.”

Note that hundreds of CDC employees were terminated the week after the shooting, and, to the best of my knowledge, President Trump has never spoken about the shooting. Secretary Kennedy issued what has been described as a “tepid” response while managing to work in criticism of CDC’s pandemic response. Class guy.

Bravo to all the people at the various agencies who were willing to speak out. Call them bureaucrats, accuse them of being “woke,” strip away the protections that they’ve long relied on, and these brave public servants still want to speak out when they see their good work being crippled.

But I have to point out that almost none dared list their identifies, worried about retribution by the Administration and potentially even worse by MAGA supporters. These are the times we’re living in. And, of course, despite various legal actions, most of the Administration’s actions roll on virtually unabated.  

Letters, I fear, are not going to do it. This Administration doesn’t care about letters. We all need to protest, but note that President Trump just issued an Executive Order calling for the National Guard in each state to have specialized units for “...quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate.”  That’s you and me, folks. That’s what they think of our First Amendment rights.

President Trump may deny being a dictator or even wanting to be a dictator, as he did today, but if someone talks like a dictator and acts like a dictator, believe them. That’s a dictator.

So keep those letters and those lawsuits coming, but they’re not going to be enough. A lot of us have to speak up, stand up – and vote.

Distribute More of the Future Here

As seminal science fiction writer William Gibson (supposedly) once said, “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” My fear is more of it is being distributed in China, not in the U.S.

We’re supposed to be the country of big dreams. We’re supposed to be the country that invents the future and goes boldly into it (Captain Kirk, after all, was born in Iowa). The list of innovations America helped pioneer, the Nobel Prizes Americans have won, the amounts of patents we file – all speak to our faith in the future and our confidence that we’ll be the ones who get there first. But, more and more, we seem to be looking back, not forward.

I’ve written before about the Trump Administration’s war on science. Its attacks on many of our leading universities may be viewed as culture wars, but they are wars that our country is the casualty of. Historian Garrett M. Graff, writing in The New York Times, put it this way:

What America may find is that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project — which, in the end, wasn’t the bomb but a new way of looking at how science and government can work together.

He laments: “Today, just as China’s own research and development efforts take off, the Trump administration has been erasing this legacy,” and concludes by warning: “If China is able to capitalize on our self-inflicted wounds to invent and secure the future of the 21st century instead, we may find that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project.”

President Trump famously hates EVs, solar energy, and wind turbines, promotes more use of oil, gas, and “clean” coal, and considers climate change a hoax. Well, the future begs to disagree - and so does China.

Some examples:

The New York Times had an in-depth analysis How China Went From Clean Energy Copycat to Global Innovator. Its thesis, supported by several nifty charts and graphs:

Accused for years of copying the technologies of other countries, China now dominates the renewable energy landscape not just in terms of patent filings and research papers, but in what analysts say are major contributions that will help to move the world away from fossil fuels.

“It is the opposite of an accident,” Jenny Wong Leung, an analyst and data scientist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told NYT, adding: “The sheer volume of Chinese investment has been so much larger than in the West. It meant they could build industries from the ground up, all the way through the supply chain.”

Credit: NYT (Source: European Patent Office, Espacenet)

Or there’s Jacob’s Dreyer’s essay, also in NYT, about China’s push in biotech. He asserts:

In its quest to dethrone American dominance in biotech, China isn’t necessarily trying to beat America at its own game. While the U.S. biotech industry is known for incubating cutting-edge treatments and cures, China’s approach to innovation is mostly focused on speeding up manufacturing and slashing costs. The idea isn’t to advance, say, breakthroughs in the gene-editing technology CRISPR; it’s to make the country’s research, development, testing and production of drugs and medical products hyperefficient and cheaper.

Mr. Dreyer thinks that the Trump cuts to research may mean that America’s biotech industry could go from a “homegrown dominance” to “Big American companies will be ever more dependent on the cost advantages and bright young engineers that China offers.”

Then there’s China’s efforts in robotics, As I wrote previously, “…when it comes to robots — especially AI-powered, humanoid ones — the battle may be closer to being over…and the U.S. is not winning.” Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), told The Wall Street Journal: “They have more companies developing humanoids and more government support than anyone else. So, right now, they may have an edge.”

Last week China hosted the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, and while it was funny seeing robots sometimes fall down or swing wildly at another robot, the breadth and depth of its advances should not be trivialized. The Guardian noted that when it comes to the competition between China and the U.S. on AI, the Games illustrate that “…while the US still has the lead on frontier research, owing in part to Washington’s restrictions on the export of cutting-edge chips to China, Beijing is going all-in on real life applications, such as robotics.”

Or, finally, there’s the furor over “rare earth minerals” as well as other elements critical to modern electronics, such as lithium and copper. China’s recent threat to restrict exports of them put U.S. industry (and the military) in a state of panic. The U.S. used to lead the world in the mining and refining of these, and we still have huge sources of them. The trouble is, for the most part we no longer do either of those, ceding them to China.

I could go into the whole chip manufacturing debacle – again, we invented the industry, then gave it away – but that ground has been well covered. By now hopefully you get the point. China is eagerly looking ahead; we’re not.

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Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, thinks he knows the crux of the problem. His essay in The Atlantic (adopted from his book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future) posits that we have become a nation of lawyers, while China is a nation of engineers. Who, you know: Get. Things. Done.

He writes:

Think about it this way: China is an engineering state, which treats construction projects and technological primacy as the solution to all of its problems, whereas the United States is a lawyerly society, obsessed with protecting wealth by making rules rather than producing material goods. 

The U.S., he charges, “…has a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers.” We’re good at writing laws and regulations, taking people to court, and (for the most part) protecting intellectual property, but when it comes to actually building stuff, we’ve gone soft and slow. He says: “The United States has lost the ability to get stuff done as it focuses on procedures rather than results.”

We don’t want China’s reckless approach to environmental damages, its surveillance state, or its censorship of ideas, but, gosh darn it, it’d be nice for the U.S. to get back to making things and making them better.

Look, I’m a Boomer. My future is way shorter than my past. Some of that past I’m nostalgic about. But I’d sure like to see more of the future, and have more of that future invented here.

Après AI, le Déluge

I have to admit, I’ve steered away from writing about AI lately. There’s just so much going on, so fast, that I can’t keep up. Don’t ask me how GPT-5 differs from GPT-4, or what Gemini does versus Genie 3. I know Microsoft really, really wants me to use Copilot, but so far I’m not biting. DeepMind versus DeepSeek?  Is Anthropic the French AI, or is that Mistral?  I’m just glad there are younger, smarter people paying closer attention to all this.

When it is you or the AI, who will get the job? Credit: Microsoft Designer

Still, I’m very much concerned about where the AI revolution is taking us, and whether we’re driving it or just along for the ride. In Fast Company, Sebastion Buck, co-founder of the “future design company” Enso, posits a great attitude about the AI revolution:

The scary news is: We have to redesign everything.

The exciting news is: We get to redesign everything.

He goes on to explain:

Technical revolutions create windows of time when new social norms are created, and where institutions and infrastructure is rethought. This window of time will influence daily life in myriad ways, from how people find dates, to whether kids write essays, to which jobs require applications, to how people move through cities and get health diagnoses.

Each of these are design decisions, not natural outcomes. Who gets to make these decisions? Every company, organization, and community that is considering if—and how—to adopt AI. Which almost certainly includes you. Congratulations, you’re now part of designing a revolution.

I want to pick out one area in particular where I hope we redesign everything intentionally, rather than in our normal short-sighted, laissez-faire manner: jobs and wealth.

It has become widely accepted that offshoring led to the demise of U.S. manufacturing and its solidly middle class blue collar jobs over the last 30 years. There’s some truth to that, but automation was arguably more of a factor – and that was before AI and today’s more versatile robots. More to the point, today’s AI and robots aren’t coming just to manufacturing but pretty much to every sector.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned:

The economic implications are the ones that I think could be the most disruptive, the most quickly. We're talking about whole categories of jobs, where — not in 30 or 40 years, but in three or four — half of the entry-level jobs might not be there. It will be a bit like what I lived through as a kid in the industrial Midwest when trade in automation sucked away a lot of the auto jobs in the nineties — but ten times, maybe a hundred times more disruptive.

Mr. Buttigieg is no AI expert, but Erik Brynjolfsson, senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, is. When asked about those comments, he told Morning Edition: “Yeah, he's spot on. We are seeing enormous advances in core technology and very little attention is being paid to how we can adapt our economy and be ready for those changes.”

You could look, for example, at the big layoffs in the tech sector lately. Natasha Singer, writing in The New York Times, reports on how computer science graduates have gone from expecting mid-six figure starting salaries to working at Chipotle (and wait till Chipotle automates all those jobs). The Federal Reserve Bank of New York says unemployment for computer science & computer engineering majors is better than anthropology majors, but, astonishingly, worse than pretty much all other majors.

And don’t just feel sorry for tech workers. Neil Irwin of Axios warns: “In the next job market downturn — whether it's already starting or years away — there just might be a bloodbath for millions of workers whose jobs can be supplanted by artificial intelligence.” He quotes Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook: “AI is poised to reshape our labor market, which in turn could affect our notion of maximum employment or our estimate of the natural rate of unemployment."

In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

While manufacturing was taking a beating in the U.S. over the last thirty years, tech boomed. Most of the world’s largest and most profitable companies are tech companies, and most of the world’s richest people got their wealth from tech. Those are, by and large, the ones investing most heavily in AI -- most likely to benefit from it.

Professor Brynjolfsson worries about how we’ll handle the transition to an AI economy:

The ideal thing is that you find ways of compensating people and managing a transition. Sad to say, with trade, we didn't do a very good job of that. A lot of people got left behind. It would be a catastrophe if we made the similar mistake with technology, [which] that also is going to create enormous amounts of wealth, but it's not going to affect everyone evenly. And we have to make sure that people manage that transition.

 “Catastrophe” indeed. And I fear it is coming.

We know that CEO to worker pay ratios have skyrocketed over the past 40 years. We know that concentration of wealth in the U.S. is also at unprecedented levels. And we know that social mobility – the American Dream of children doing better than their parents, that anyone can make it – has stalled and is actually lower than in many of our peer countries. AI can address those, or make them much, much worse.

It’s exciting to think of all the things AI is going to do for us. We’ll be able to do old things better/faster/cheaper, and do new things that we can barely even dream of now. With it, we should be living in a post-scarcity/abundance society. But that doesn’t mean we’ll all benefit, and certainly not all benefit equally or equitably.

Professor Brynjolfsson hits the nail on the head:

I'm optimistic about the potential to create a lot more wealth and productivity. I think we're going to have much higher productivity growth. At the same time, there's no guarantee all that wealth and productivity is going to be evenly shared. We are investing so much in driving the capabilities for hundreds of billions of dollars and we're investing very little in thinking about how we make sure that leads to widely shared prosperity. That should be the agenda for the next few years.

So if you’re not thinking about social welfare programs, universal basic income (UBI), baby bonds, and the like, as well as what, exactly, we want humans to spend their days doing, start thinking. As Mr. Buck suggests, start designing the AI revolution we should want.

Quantum Is Still Surprising Us

Most of us don’t think about quantum mechanics very much, if at all, even though our everyday life depends on it (such as in semiconductors or GPS). It is said to be the most accurate theory in terms of testable predictions, even though the fundamentals of the theory don’t make sense in our everyday life. Light is both a particle and a wave? Particles can be “entangled” even when they are vast distances apart? Cats that can be alive and dead at the same time?  

Ready for quantum batteries? Credit: Quantum Insider

It’s so counterintuitive that a recent Nature survey found that even leading quantum physicists don’t agree on what it really means. “I find it remarkable that people who are very knowledgeable about quantum theory can be convinced of completely opposite views,” says Gemma De les Coves, a theoretical physicist at the Pompeu Fabra University.

Quantum computing has become a big thing lately, thought to be the future of computing. The Wall Street Journal says: “The emerging technology promises better medicine, faster internet and more sustainable food production,” not to mention upending all existing cryptography. We’re quickly rushing into the AI world, but quantum may be the next gold rush.

I knew all that, but what I did not know was that included in the quantum revolution are quantum batteries.

We all know about batteries, whether they’re for our phones, our cars, our flashlights, our computers, and a host of other applications. Batteries have existed for several hundred years, and basically all have relied on some form of chemical reaction. Quantum batteries, on the other hand, use what is called quantum superposition, moving electrons into higher energy states to store energy.

The field is still in early days, and one of the major problems has been how long researchers could get the quantum batteries to store energy. They charged rapidly, but also lost their charge rapidly, in a matter of nanoseconds. Now researchers from RMIT University and CSIRO (Australia’s national science agency) have announced a new method that lasts a 1,000 times longer – we’re talking microseconds now, folks. The results were published in PRX Energy.

That's what a quantum battery looks like? Credit: RMIT

I won’t try to get into the weeds to explain the approach, other than to regurgitate what was in the title, that they used molecular triplets in Dicke Quantum Batteries. The researchers’ “popular summary” explains:

Quantum batteries may offer scalable charging power density. Those based on the Dicke model enable a cavity-enhanced energy transfer process called superabsorption, but the lifetime is limited by fast radiative emission losses and super radiance. Here, the authors show a promising approach to extend the energy storage lifetime using molecular triplet states, which they test on five devices across a triplet-polariton resonance. One device shows a 1000-fold increase in storage time compared to previous demonstrations.

Study co-author and RMIT PhD candidate Daniel Tibben said: “While we’ve addressed a tiny ingredient of the overall piece, our device is already much better at storing energy than its predecessor.”

“While a working quantum battery could still be some time away, this experimental study has allowed us to design the next iteration of devices,” study co-author and RMIT chemical physicist Professor Daniel Gómez said. “It’s hoped one day quantum batteries could be used to improve the efficiency of solar cells and power small electronic devices.”

Coauthor Francesco Campaioli notes that, while the storage is still only microseconds: “It’s the equivalent of having a phone that charges in 30 minutes and runs out of battery after about 20 days if left idle. Not too shabby.” He adds: “There is still a lot of work to do to develop these ideas into a technology that could impact everyday life. What matters to me is that we have a clear understanding of the challenges that we need to overcome to make it happen.”

And that’s not all the recent news in quantum batteries.

A new paper from researchers at PSL Research University in Paris and the University of Pisa proposes “a deceptively simple quantum battery model that displays a genuine quantum advantage, saturating the quantum speed limit.”  

"Our model consists of two coupled harmonic oscillators: one acts as the 'charger,' and the other serves as the 'battery,'" explained Vittoria Stanzione and Gian Marcello Andolina, co-authors of the paper, to Phys.org. "The key ingredient enabling the quantum advantage is an anharmonic interaction between the two oscillators during the charging process. This anharmonic coupling allows the system to access non-classical, entangled states that effectively create a 'shortcut' in Hilbert space, enabling faster energy transfer than in classical dynamics.”

Got it?

They added: "To the best of our knowledge, this work provides the first rigorous certification of a genuine quantum advantage in a solvable model. Furthermore, the proposed setup can be realized with current experimental technologies."

It seems like a big deal that it outperforms “classical” approaches and is achievable with existing technology.

Finally, researchers from Hubei University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Lanzhou University have proposed a “diamond-based” approach to quantum batteries, using the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Who knew diamonds had a nitrogen vacancy?

Schematic illustration of the QB scheme. Credit: Jun-Hong An

The paper was published in Physical Review Letters, and deals with the issue of quantum batteries “self-discharging” (due to what is called decoherence). "The main advantage of our QB scheme in the NV center is that the unique hyperfine interaction between the electron and the ¹⁴N nucleus, which is absent in other platforms, permits us to coherently optimize this ratio," Jun-Hong An, co-senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. "This is the irreplaceable feature of our QB scheme in the NV center. This irreplaceability endows us with the ability to mitigate the self-discharging on one hand, and to maximize the extractable work on the other."

Again, both of those are big deals.

As a result, the researchers conclude: “our results pave the way for the practical realization of the QB.” Professor An believes: "A quantum-technology revolution is underway, which uses quantum resources to overcome various performance limitations of devices set by classical physics."

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Quantum computing seems like it is where AI was five years ago, still around the corner but turning that corner faster than we realized. And I feel like quantum batteries are where quantum computing was five or so years ago, starting to overcome the practical issues that had once seemed insurmountable.

They’re going to happen, sooner than we think.

I don’t think they’re going to replace the existing power grid, and maybe not even your cell phone battery, but in a world of the Internet of Things, nanobots, and other things that edge closer to the quantum level, they’re going to be important.