Best available human

“There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies”. This sentiment applies both to the direction the technology is taking in the long term as well as how humans can reliably apply AI in the short term in their work.

To address this, innovation professor Ethan Mollick proposed the best available human (BAH) standard. It “asks the following question: would the best available AI in a particular moment, in a particular place, do a better job solving a problem than the best available human that is actually able to help in a particular situation?” Applications include cofounding, coaching and more to come.

Cracking military grade secrets

Regular technology readers might remember the story of a USB stick containing millions of locked bitcoin. It’s back again, this time with hundreds of millions on the line due to price movements as well as a solution to the cryptographic riddle.

Wired reported that a startup founded by a group of white hat hackers had found a solution to cracking the IronKey USB, which was funded in part by the US Department of Homeland Security with the aim of being tamper resistant to be secure enough to be used by military and intelligence agencies.

The mechanism of the USB stick works as follows. If the wrong password is entered 10 times then the contents will be erased forever. The startup hacked the system by extending this trial and error window thereby applying brute force and guessing passwords 200 trillion or so times (which lasted a few hours).

Green oil

Extracting hydrogen from underground can serve as a clean energy source alternative. Using the adjective green is both testament to the geological promise as well as the actual green colour involved. More from how the US is investing in this here and how Algeria is helping Germany here.

Startup societies

During the second wave of the pandemic I wrote that one of the geopolitical implications of the increased reliance on home office is that the concept of a nation state will (have to) be revisited to allow for greater material mobility.

Back then (May ‘21) I referred to two examples of cities that applied the above principle. The map below shows the evolution of an entire ecosystem of such startup and remote worker societies. The full list as well as further thoughts can be explored here.

India’s space program

India has one of the oldest space programs in the world. It started in 1962 which is a year after JFK set the goal for the US to put a human on the moon. Recently it also joined the EU and the US to study the sun after launching a probe into space. Here’s how it all started and where it might be heading.

I’m currently reading about Dostoyevski’s life. Besides the non linearity of his events, the author’s approach to tea also stood out. “The world can go to hell as long as I get my tea”.

This reminded me of Orwell’s thinking. “All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes—a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.”

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7,000 slide presentation

To celebrate the launch of its new model, the Swedish car manufacturer Saab prepared a slideshow with 7000 slides which was broadcasted via 80 projectors. A brilliant summary of the history of slides, along with the story of creating PPT, can be found here – get tea, a long but entertaining read.

Geo-dirigisme 

Political researchers in Italy and Austria published a paper reconstructing the evolution of EU industrial policy via the lens of falling behind other global players. In addition to digital sovereignty, it’s a helpful perspective to evaluate how the union moves through the geotech world. The empirical heavy weight of the paper (the authors relied on an original set of almost 67,000 documents) makes it an impressive read.

Search engine traffic in the age of AI (and fast culture)

The traffic on StackOverflow, a popular fora based resource for programmers, went down by 50% since the launch of ChatGPT (and in response it launched OverflowAI). If you think of LLM prompts as search queries then ChatGPT become an advanced search engine and this trend makes sense.

Though Google constantly updates its algorithm (historically based on backlinks), TikTok, Meta’s duo and other social media platforms which are full of user generated and ranked content are gaining an edge over the search engine. This Verge article makes a thought provoking argument about Google’s future if it continues to remain the echo of vitality vs its driver. 

Business (and) history podcast

I recently started listening to Acquired and I haven’t been able to stop. Ben and David’s ability to contextualise historic deep dives with present day market moves is unparalleled and provides for a satisfying 2-3 hour listen. Best episodes so far are Nintendo and Blue Coffee.

🧠 🤍 🍵 Would love your help

I’m researching NeuroTech and the privacy, inter alia, challenges that it presents. If you work in the field or know someone who does, I would be very grateful to connect and speak over a virtual tea.

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To arrive at this conclusion and scenario postulation, the article has two parts. First, it surveys the European SpaceTech ecosystem. Second, it presents a four scenario matrix and contextualises the first part alongside examples from the US and China. 

Overview

According to the European Investment Bank, the global space economy grew by 6.7 % on average per year between 2005 and 2017, almost twice the 3.5 % average yearly growth of the global economy. In April 2023, for the first time VC investment in the space sector in the EU surpassed that of the US.

This is an important one for two reasons. In the last 25 years and across almost all tech sectors – from e-commerce to frontier tech – US investments towered over those in the EU. Second, space is regarded as a sector where the EU wants to achieve technological sovereignty.

Technological sovereignty has been a sore spot ever since in 1968 the US refused to sell a supercomputer for the development of the French nuclear program – thereby initiating de Gaulle's Plan Calcul to modernise independently. To see an advancement towards this goal is a proxy for moving in the right direction – even if commercialisation of funded companies and technology adoption are yet to follow.

Ecosystem

Three areas inspired the influx of capital into European space companies; startup and investor ecosystem, innovation centres, and forward looking regulation. Innovation within the SpaceTech sector has two dimensions: upstream and downstream.

The European Space Policy defines upstream as the development of space infrastructure. This includes production of satellites and launchers and the R&D and deployment thereof. Downstream is the acquisition, curation and exploitation of data generated in/via space. 

Investors and Startups

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Deelroom track over 2000 startups and publicly listed companies innovating in the two dimensional upstream/downstream space sector. They also track the most active investors in the space.

Some of those are Seraphim (UK), Primo (IT), OTB Ventures (NL), Molten Ventures (IR and UK) and VSquared (DE). Alpine Space Ventures (DE) is the most recently launched fund and is headed by previous SpaceX employees. The list reveals fascinating use cases and below are some of the ones that caught my attention.

Some companies especially in Poland and Ireland are focusing on optimising earth-space communications; whether it is Thorium Space which improves throughput using scalable, active matrix antenna or Ubotica which optimises compression to send images to earth more efficiently.

This is an important enabler for the field of space communications in general as only last month NASA achieved a 200 GB/s laser speed data transmission milestone. Already at 200x faster than the quickest internet speeds (equivalent to transmitting 1,000 HD movies in a single 5 min pass above earth) in most cities, the achievement means more data can be communicated with earth thereby increasing the amount of discoveries and raising the overall fidelity of space to orbit communication, whether for machines or humans. 

Space debris is another innovation area. The latest ESA estimate from June 6th reports that there are 10,550 satellites orbiting earth and 1,000,000 objects ranging in size from 1 cm to 10 cm. Size is inconsequential and the smallest piece of space junk can hit an astronaut or a space shuttle like a bullet since it travels at 28,200 km per hour.

GMV Aerospace (ES) runs a round the clock satellite collision avoidance and the Dutch startup Ecosmic’s plug and play solution tackles the same issue via specialised software to help objects „stay in their lane“. ClearSpace, a Swiss company, with its Mission-1 will start removing unresponsive or derelict satellites from space following its launch into orbit in 2025.  

According to the team of Deloitte Space and Sifted, logistics and data produced from earth observation are further areas that space companies are pursuing. The Swiss Arviem offers real-time end-to-end cargo monitoring services thereby increasing the efficiency of the supply chain and accuracy of cargo carbon and finance reporting.

The Espoo based Iceye provides high resolution image capture. Tailored for insurance providers, their main customer is Swiss Re which uses the services to quickly access extent of damage (say during a flooding). This helps to speed up the claims process and removes the need to send a human observer to the accident site.

While the above picked out select use cases and companies, next focus will be on a few countries leading in SpaceTech in Europe. First, Luxembourg which is home to SES (the most profitable satellite company by revenue) and where SpaceTech makes up 2% of the GDP.

Along with the Luxembourg government, the company Planetary Resources aims to mine asteroids. The small country is a pioneer in space exploration and innovation and already in 2016 established a €220 million fund dedicated for this purpose. 

The companies Mission Space and HydroSat gather data from space. The former zooms in on space weather conditions (geomagnetic storms magnetic waves, radiation from the sun) and sells that to the maritime, supply chain and gas sectors. The latter, on the other hand, uses data for precision farming and is able to tell from space whether fields are over or underwatered; therefore helping save more than 30% of otherwise impacted fields.

Lastly, Space Cargo and Maana Electric aim to be the utility companies in space. Building to provide round trip science mission of orbital experimentation, Space Cargo is worth mentioning not only because of their ambition to test in space but also because they are credited with space wine. Maana Electric is targeting earth, moon and Mars economies to be the energy company of space.

In other words, it aims to harness solar energy in space and deliver it where it’s needed most; akin to electric power transmission lines on earth. This is an ambitious mission considering that the Chinese Longi Green Energy Technology Company – which is the biggest silicon wafer (material is used in solarpanels) manufacturer in the world  – is its competitor and plans a gigawatt level system (to put it in context, that equal to half of the energy produced by the Hoover Dam or enough energy to power 100 million lamps) by 2050.

Germany is home to startups with heavy upfront capital requirements – and more upstream applications. The Exploration Company (German-French venture) is prototyping reusable rockets and aims to be the SpaceX of Europe. Isar Aerospace – with €330 million in funding -  is pioneering automated rocket production to lower the cost of satellite launch; while Polaris Raumflugzeuge builds reusable space planes and hypersonic transport planes. 

Rocket Factory Augsburg is also working on democratising access to space by launching small satellites and payloads of initially up to 1,350 kg into polar orbits. Yuri also offers to deliver payloads to space; however, for scientific purposes. Aimed at the pharma industry, the company offers a round ticket to conduct an experiment in space (where the benefits of the absence of gravity and different conditions to earth can speed up discovery) for €59,000.

Germany is also home to OroraTech which monitors forests around the world. According to the World Meteorological Organization, space data helps observe and monitor ca. 50 % of the 56 essential climate variables. This in turn helps keep humanity on track to stopping or reversing climate change.

When mentioning fledging national space industries, it is also important to mention Norway. Due to its history, Norway has had a difficult, but eventually successful and profitable, journey towards joining the ESA. Due to its geography, Andøya became one of the most frequently used launch sites under the NASA international programme outside of the US.

During the cold war and due to the country’s seclusion – it had to compete regionally among the Nordic countries as well as continentally in Europe for support for its space program. Today, a lot of innovation is corporate or government driven with several notable startups providing ground and satellite services which can be found here.  

The French SpaceTech ecosystem is also very vibrant. The Toulouse (home to Airbus) and Massy based ExoTrail offers simpler and more efficient satellite deployment and maintenance. Another company is Interstellar Labs. By 2025, it aims to operate mini green houses in low earth and eventually moon and one day Mars.

Similar to Arviem above, the French Unseen Labs offers precise ways to track vessels from space. The last French company to mention is ThrustMe. Their mission is to increase the life of satellites thereby making them more affordable and also reducing space debris.

Lastly, the UK SpaceTech scene. British startups have a versatile focus – starting with Matalysis. The company focuses on resource extraction from space and one of their milestones includes oxygen extraction which will prolong lunar missions and can be further broken down into oxygen and hydrogen and used as a propellant.

Two other companies to mention are Aqit and Satellite VU. The former started with the plan to build a quantum secure communication network using satellites (rivalling China’s 2020 secure satellite transmission announcement). However, Aqit pivoted away from quantum technology and is planning to develop encrypted communications using symmetric key cryptography.

Satellite VU’s tagline is „the world’s thermometer“. It does that by obtaining and maintaining comprehensive thermal data sets of fields, buildings and other objects with a heat signature. Monitoring of those has insurance, military as well as climate change monitoring applications. 

Innovation Clusters

Besides venture capital, which usually comes at a post idea stage, European SpaceTech companies owe much of their existence to governmental support. According to a November 2022 announcement by the ESA, more than 1,200 startups have been launched by the agency’s Business Incubation Centres (BIC).

BICs form the largest network of space incubators in Europe and their two fold mandate is to support founders with business ideas related to space and to grow the cluster of space related early stage companies across Europe.

The support package rivals those of leading European government support schemes (but not necessarily that of private venture incubators) as entrepreneurs receive €50,000 in funding as well as two years of incubation, coaching and legal advice.

BICs are spread out in 80 locations across Europe (from Ringaskiddy, Ireland to Tromsø, Norway and Rzeszow, Poland) and they incubate close to 250 startups yearly. However, what the programs lack, as identified by and being looked into by ESA, is technical support. 

Φ-labNET, within the ESA, works on speeding up the commercialisation of space startups „ with the potential ability to disrupt and transform markets“. Combining academia, VCs, national space centres and industry, Φ-labs aim to cut time to market and commercial success by being a one stop shop. In addition to Φ-labs, the Horizon programs also help entrepreneurs at the initial idea to business plan stages. Once a product is marketable, the Copernicus Accelerator, VCs and once again the ESA come into play.

Other programs worth mentioning are InnovFin Space Equity Pilot where the European Investment Fund dedicated €300 million to support the innovation and growth of European smaller and medium-sized space technology.

The European Space University for Earth and Humanity or the UNIVERSEH program, a collaboration between Germany, France, Luxembourg, Sweden and Poland,  plans to train and create research opportunities for 130,000 students.

Individual countries and organisations have also committed significant funds dedicated partly to SpaceTech; such as Germany’s €10 billion Future Fund and NATO’s €1 billion Innovation Fund.

Regulation

This part is a little more difficult to cover on a supranational level as a lot of regulation is nascent (and in some cases national legislation moves faster than on the European level). It is also not to be confused with the EU’s Space Policy – which provides guidance on how to approach this transformative sector.

However, some regulatory achievements are worth mentioning – starting with the Space Strategy for Security and Defence. The strategy proposes to create an „EU Space Law to provide a common framework for security, safety, and sustainability in Space“. 

Space mining and orbital damages are some of the areas where EU regulation can step in. Luxembourg, in the meantime, became the second country in the world (after the US) to create a law outlining the steps for conducting such activities and what form companies engaged in such business can take. When it comes to intentional or unintentional collision in space, regulation – on a global as well as EU scale – is missing.

In February of this year the European Commission proposed a regulation for the Union Secure Connectivity Programme. Running in the years of 2023-2027, one of its planned outcomes is the IRIS2 program. The program has a €2.4 billion budget to launch Europe’s satellite constellation (similar to Starlink) by 2025.

In addition to commercial applications and eliminating „dead zones“ in Africa and under-serviced parts of Europe, the multi-orbital connectivity infrastructure and ultra-secure quantum grade communication will also have military applications and support natural disaster management. 

The Future of European SpaceTech

The ultimate aim of developing the space sector in Europe is to achieve the union’s digital sovereignty. A byproduct of the above analysis is to help predict how the sector will develop in the future and contribute to this goal. In other words, plotting technological sovereignty on one axis and commercial success on the other reveals four scenarios where the EU stands in comparison to other nations leading in space.

Global leader

This is the most favourable position European (or any global competitor) SpaceTech can find itself in. National companies will be relied on to carry out scientific, exploratory and potentially hospitality missions in space for other domestic consumers as well as the rest of the world and countries that don’t have independent space capabilities. Strong investment, talent development and intergovernmental procurement are key enablers here (similar to the NASA model from the fourth quarter of the 20th century).

Here, both upstream and downstream areas are owned and operated by European founded and based companies which license their findings to businesses or end users. Manufacturing, rare metals and production knowhow is all in the hands of national champions or are sourced in a sovereign way. With chip manufacturing and key technologies enabling the digital economy, China dominates the rare earth market. In space this could equal rocket manufacturing which is some of the reasons 3D manufacturing rockets offers a way out. In Germany this can be BigRep and in the US this is already Relativity Space. 

First mover advantage is as important as commercial moats and market share. Even though European companies are well funded and working towards mass market, several concepts are still a year or two away behind their American and Chinese counterparts. 

For downstream applications China’s Spacial Information Corridor (SIC) might be posed to take global market share. Part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), SIC is a network of communication, navigation and remote sensing satellites that will provide services to and connect 149 participating countries.

Besides the gravitational pull of China’s geopolitics, the country’s cheap manufacturing promise and a trained work and science force increase its potential for being relied on by other countries and companies. 

Europe has multiple BICs as well as the plan to build the continent’s largest satellite manufacturing plant in Charleroi, Belgium. China, on the other hand, also has several industrial clusters including the Changguang Aerospace Information Industry Park, and centres in Chongqing, Shenzhen and Changsha. The Chinese firm i-Space is building the country’s Exploration Company or SpaceX. 

Key enabler 

If upstream and downstream applications are compared to classical digital economy sector components, then sovereignty in the digital economy would mean absolute vertical independence (see diagram) covering hardware (microprocessors and communication towers) to OS and browsers topped by mobile apps and AI processing. 

In the absence of total technological sovereignty, controlling certain parts of that stack can be the second best option. Similar logic flies in space. Before the funding milestone mentioned at the start of the article, European companies were not as well funded as American ones. Therefor,e a strategy that some countries have applied is to be a key enabler (or in other words a choke point). 

Focusing not on large industries but being a champion in their field, the Irish Lios develops acoustic material to protect the interior of rockets from vibrations on the journey into orbit. Several other companies mentioned above also pioneer solutions in their fields of expertise. 

While the ecosystem part of the article might read like European SpaceTech has a bright future either as a leader or enabler, some of the people closest to it believe otherwise. In March of this year, the Chair of European Parliament’s Sky and Space Intergroup – along with a colleague – wrote that „Europe is about to lose its place as a space power“.

The argument is that the quantity of American led SpaceX launches is 30 times higher of ESA led ones and that the main launch vehicle of the EU (Ariane programme) will be phased out very soon without a viable domestic alternative.

The result is relying on American technology for European achievements; whether as in the past for launching a French military and surveillance satellite or for a scientific research probe aimed to find dark matter (scheduled for July 1st). 

Domestic champion

High on the technology control axis but low on the global commercial success one are domestic champions. Operating in this area means that there are a number of well funded and perhaps publicly listed companies with global renown – but not market share. Examples of this from the digital economy are Ericsson and Nokia which lost several contracts in the 5G race to the Chinese Huawei. 

If the European SpaceTech sector finds itself here, then Europe will still be in control of the data and key applications as with Galileo and Copernicus. However, there will not be a European space Google.

According to the European Investment Bank, „one of the reasons for this dissonance between European innovation and competitive advantages is the lack of upstream activities in Europe, as US firms dominate the upstream sector. European technology leaders are not active enough in space themselves, and the technology transfer is not effective enough“.

Looking at other countries, the reputation of Chinese business practices might slow down the proliferation of its SpaceTech. The American Institute for Defence Analyses released its evolution of the Chinese SpaceTech sector. Read cautiously, it foresees reputation as a blocker the Chinese space industry might run into on the way to mass market commercialisation. 

In other words, Chinese space technology might not be adopted outside of local and national government agencies and companies, with potentially a handful of regional applications by its allies.

However, the experience of 5G has proven that if European companies don’t price their solutions competitively – countries will opt for technology access over technological sovereignty.

Unrealized potential 

This scenario is characterised by failure of European SpaceTech technologies to be significantly adopted internationally and domestically. Here other space nations will have to step in to support scientific, military and commercial applications of space in EU’s affairs. 

Arriving at this stage will require a lot of mistakes; however, as with the above parallels, examples from the Web2 era abound. As a response to AWS and Azure, the French government launched Andromède Cloud.

The project was subsequently shut down and non EU cloud providers still maintain majority market share in Europe, and are being used by both government agencies and other businesses. 

Scenarios outlined, I believe we are equidistant from being a global leader, a key enabler and a domestic champion. The first is favoured and the arbiter will be encouraging domestic consumers (governments, industries and startups), world class talent and innovation schemes to choose and promote rewarding, home grown produce.

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What to expect in 2023

European DeepTech had a few milestones last year. For example, the Joint European Torus (JET) – largest existing fusion device in the world – achieved a record performance for sustained fusion energy. Even though the experiment lasted five seconds, the output produced was double that of a previous record that was set 25 years before. It's a big step to make fusion a safe, efficient and low carbon energy.

Another milestone deals with quantum computing. In 2022, the EU announced €7 billion to fund quantum innovation, see breakdown of technologies forming this sector. This is the world's second biggest budget, after China's €15 billion. Perhaps equally impressive is the fact that Europe has the world's largest concentration of quantum talent. The McKinsey Quantum Monitor report is a fascinating read if you want a deeper dive.

With those in mind, this year you can expect to read round ups on key technologies and sometimes the political obstacles facing their take off in Europe. These are, neural interfaces, ageing, SpaceTech, quantum computing and a few other DeepTech sectors.

Norwegian space industry

Now, back to presenting the #discoveries series as you know it, succinct and to the point. The Nordic country's space tradition dates to the 60s and Kramena Tosheva from Peter Thiel's backed SNÖ Ventures published a comprehensive list of everything orbiting Norwegian SpaceTech today.

Besides exploring out of Earth frontiers, Norwegian space operations also have a second order consequence on the arctic region. For example, Space Norway will offer the world’s first and only broadband service for civilian and military purposes. As the arctic unfortunately and irreversibly melts, making way for new seafaring routes, this is an important pillar of infrastructure. 

Positive Futures

Cynism abounds. Combine future dystopian tech imaginaries of self aware technologies (but also today surveillance capitalism) with natural and human made disasters and there can be little room left to picture a silver lining in the next decades.

However, the team behind supermind – combining human and machine work via augmented collective intelligence – published a list of stories that aim to inspire innovators of what the future could look like if we get it right.

A primer on longevity tech

This episode of the Stranded Technologies podcast is something to listen to with strong tea. It covers everything from immune system rejuvenation, the cross over between crypto currency and medicine and the business models and thinking needed to advance both.

(On) Language models

ChatGPT has entered the collective mind. Students use it to pass exams, publishers replace their writers with it, competitors fret to challenge it. 

Researchers, on the other hand, are driving this domain further and earlier this year released a language model for the medical domain. MedPaLM addresses multiple choice questions by patients and medical professionals, returning results that are up 92.6% correct (doctors score 92.9%).

One area that ChatGPT – with all of the promises of the new technologies – has not entered is the global south. While traveling between the years, I noticed that it is not available throughout the Middle East. A lot could be said on the historical, colonial and corporate backdrop of this that robs people of their shot at innovation until today. 

MAUs in Europe

The Digital Services Act – a piece of regulation reigning in the algorithmic and information power of big platforms in Europe by requiring technology reviews and other measures – had a big week. 

Companies with more than 45 million users had to disclose the number of their monthly active users (MAUs) – as a reminder, and based on UN 2023 estimates, the EU's population is over 740 million. 

Clothilde Goujard, Politico's privacy and content moderation reporter, compiled a great thread on what you might or might not have expected:

• Wikipedia: 151.5 million
• Meta/Facebook: 255 million
• Twitter: 100 million
• YouTube and Google search: 400 million and 332 million respectively 
• PornHub and YouPorn: 33 million and 7.3 million respectively 
• BeReal: 18 million
• Vinted: 37.4 million
• Lego: 800 thousand
• Spotify: didn't disclose but said “fewer” than 45 million

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Every year we experience Earth Overshoot Day. It marks the date when „humanity has used all the resources that Earth regenerates during the entire year“. This year it will fall on July 28th and for many countries in the world (e.g. Qatar, USA, Canada and Denmark) this occasion was reached in February or March.

The following food availability statistics will dim the picture further. More than 10% of the world’s population is suffering from hunger everyday, 25% doesn’t have access to healthy diets and according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN 30% faces moderate to severe food insecurity.

In the face of this, a third of the world’s food wasted or disposed of each year (in the EU it’s 20%, costing over €140 billion or more than Germany’s new defence budget and Adidas’ market capitalisation combined).

Simply growing more is not easy as agriculture already occupies 50% of the world’s habitable land. Two thirds of that is used for livestock (which is the number one reason for deforestation) but the caloric benefit, calculated as ratio of energy input to protein output, is meagre, in fact – 40:1 (chicken, being the most efficient meat is 8:1).

Relying on fish isn’t a viable option as in already in 2018 93% of the global marine stock has been „maximally or overly exploited“ – leading not only to food scarcity but also to biodiversity threats. Stretched as our food producing capacity is, by 2050 food demand -for the world’s forecasted 10 billion humans- will increase by 50% and meat and dairy by 70%.

Lastly, growing the same food sources in controlled environments, that is on aqua and cattle farms, causes water and oxygen depletion. Besides the environmental harms, these practices – especially with the proliferation of antibiotics – results in poor health and a strained healthcare system. Up to 30% of all cancer diagnoses in the EU are linked to poor dietary habits.

What solutions are there

Food innovation is divided into a few sub sectors. AgriTech covers efficient farming to improve agricultural output. For example, it includes light, water and soil optimisation as well as the usage of robotics and drones.

Vertical farms (such as Infarm) are an example of this and their strength lies in producing a bigger food output with less resources. Netherlands is pioneering AgriTech and has managed to produce 20x vegetable output as open field farming with 4x less water.

BioTech combines cellular, genetic and otherwise biological knowledge with technology. One common technique is precision fermentation which ties software driven food design combined with good old fermentation. The technique works by „select[ing] a micro-organism and program[ing] it to produce our desired output (usually a protein) using plant-based inputs“.

In other words, deriving the meat taste using the micro components that make meat without using an animal to do so. It is akin to the milk which is 90% water and once we discover or perfect the remaining 10% that give milk its real taste, we can move away from animal production (full list of companies innovating the 10%).

One of the first burgers to use this technology in 2013 cost $325,000 and two years later the price has dropped to $11. Meatable and Impossible Foods scale this technology further for meat, Mushlabs uses the roots of mushrooms towards the same goal and Just started out aiming for the egg and transitioned to the chicken.

SolarFoods and AirProtein went a step further and are producing salmon or meat from thin air. Originally developed to feed astronauts on long space journeys, the research utilised by the company’s founders uses carbon dioxide and hand bacteria to create non animal protein.

Lastly there’s FoodTech. It is a broader term encompassing farm to fork innovation including ingredients and logistics as well as elements of Bio and AgriTech. BettaFish uses seaweed to create tuna replacement and Qoa uses oat spelts to produce chocolate alternatives (as one chocolate bar takes 1000 liters of water to produce).

Other intersectional solutions include AIs to identify and reduce food wastage in the retail/hospitality sector, optimisations in the food transport and storage space and packaging from more sustainable sources.

The benefit of these solutions, specifically vertical farming and lab grown/alternative meat, are myriad. First, unused urban spaces can be reactivated/repurposed for growing crops. Decentralisation in turn helps save transport, water and land costs as well as fuel usage.

Moving away from livestock also reduces methane emissions and water and land usage. Lastly, foods originating from controlled environments can aid with better inventory control and reduce food spoilage rates.

FoodTech’s hurdles

Three fourths of what the world eats comes from 12 plant and 5 animal sources. If we could proliferate the above solutions and help increase their „staple potential“ (affordability, availability, acceptance, taste..etc), perhaps this could solve the above stated food insecurity (and environmental challenges).

At least for wheat that’s; however, unlikely to happen because energy costs for artificial lighting and commodity market prices make wheat vertical farming economically uncompetitive (despite yielding 220-600 times more than regular production methods).

Market dynamics aside, the hurdles to be cleared ahead of FoodTech are: funding and supportive regulation. First, funding; as with any technology coming out of Europe, more investment in the sector will help it go a long way.

Between 2021–2027 a bit more than 2% of the EU’s total budget for food and agriculture will go to FoodTech research and development (RnD) (€9billion of €386 billion). VC funding has accelerated due to Covid though mostly in the delivery space and meal kit space.

Given how competitive the food market already is, innovation – whether plant based or otherwise – will be met with resistance (e.g. oat drink vs oat milk as a result of cow based industry fighting over product naming). Another aspect is the nutritional quality of new proteins which is one of the big questions around their adoption and emergence.

At the moment these are designed for market acceptance (optimise for taste, texture, cost..etc) and a forward looking regulatory and RnD approach should factor in how to factor this in and improve their nutritional profile (antioxidants, hydrocolloids, prebiotics ..etc). Regulation can also step in in the form of education and helping produce an informed sociotechnical imaginary around food innovation.

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First, recapping key events. While the exodus of tech and consumer brand companies was picking up steam in the days after the war started, Ukraine asked ICANN to remove Russian sites from the internet. That proposal didn’t go through but the Russian government itself announced that it will require all locally operating organisations to move to a .ru TLD by March 11th.

The country also blocked BBC, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter among others which led to a 2000% increase in VPN demand. Russia has been blocking websites since a few years – including Ukrainian news sites (Ukraine has done a similar thing in return). What’s new here; however, is the multiplicity of censorship techniques that are used to build “internet sovereignty”.

Although, the nuclear option equivalent of those – kill switch à la révolution Égyptienne – hasn’t been used yet, in 2019 Russia tested cutting itself off from the global internet by forming a giant intranet among its Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In addition to the informational layer, the internet stack is also made up of key services. The withdrawal of some of these including Intel and NVIDIA (chips), AWS (data storage), Cogent (ISP), Visa/Mastercard (payments) from Russia might also result in short and long term disruption. So where do we go from here?

The thesis surrounding the possibility/inevitability/culpability of internet uncoupling is not new. Milton Mueller wrote about internet fragmentation and Laura DeNardis and Francesca Musiani about the role of organisation and infrastructure providers therein. Timothy Wu wrote one of the earlier articles unpacking what goes into China's, what by the end of the 90s was upcoming, content filtering and firewall system.

I believe; however, that the above might be the beginning of internet regionalisation and what MIT and University of California computer scientists call Trust Zones.

It works by essentially performing an identity check akin to bank style Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures on ISPs. This is different from balkanisation which is more deliberate disconnection of regions.

But why would this happen? In short, because there is a crisis of trust. Maybe the companies mentioned above and others that were not which export key technologies to Russia will revisit their policies, but the countries, the sanction and export screening laws of which these companies follow, might be slow in doing the same. When mixed with the development and testing of a secluded RUNet, this crisis becomes a two way standoff.

The key question here is how will this happen? In short, I don't know. While the Trust Zones authors explain technologically how it works, imagining the series of policy moves is more complicated.

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Solar geoengineering

This was on the top of The Economist’s 22 Emerging Technologies to Watch in 2022 listicle. Also known as solar radiation management, solar geoengineering refers to offering the world some shade as it gets hotter. The solution is politically, morally and meteorologically controversial.

Hence a group of Harvard researchers are studying it for its potential effects on rainfall and greenhouse effect management – as one of the last resorts for the world to buy some time in its effort to cut emissions.

It is a fascinating read and other technologies include hydrogen powered planes, mRNA based HIV vaccines, 3D bone implants (and houses), and container ships with sails to reduce the shipping industry’s share of greenhouse-gas emissions which stand at 3%.

Also on the list are virtual influencers (engineered by teams to attract followers with the most convincing stories but no single “real” person behind it). Note to mis-information studies scholars, this will take this field into a different direction. Perhaps a better term is synthetic influencers.

While wearable trackers (mostly watches) made it on the list, I didn’t find it that impressive. What is however, and was not on the list, is medical tattoos. LogicInk is one company that produces a sticker that can be worn outside to inform its owner when the skin has been exposed to too much hazardous UV rays. Jeff Goldblum paid them a visit.

Digital non-aligned movements

Rivalrous techno-economic-geo-industrial policy between China, US and increasingly the EU exists. The paper by the Former Deputy National Security Advisor of India and a researcher at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata discusses what countries that don’t want to take sides, with the first two, can do. Moreover, the authors propose a few multilateral solutions such as a EU-Non Alignment Movement alliance for technology and standard sharing.

“While the US may be able to afford the economic consequences of banning Chinese companies, taking this hardline stance without providing its developing friends and allies with an alternative may end with the world divided not only on political lines, but with a redrawing of those lines out of economic necessity, and with states prioritising the responsibility they have to their own people.”

Just as the Non Alignment Movement “came from the desire to exercise greater collective bargaining power against existing “superpowers,” while remaining detached from the [nuclear] conflict”, a digital NAM hopes to do the same with controversial technology areas such as 5G and semiconductors.

I don’t agree with everything in the paper but an important contribution form the authors is the framing of alignment in the digital age. While in the Cold War alignment was on ideological grounds – in “Cold War 2.0” – alignment results from political and economic choices.

Lastly, the authors say that a country’s choice of technological equipment for economic reasons does/should not reflect its political commitments.

Excelling at research and digital body language

I came across two interesting books lately. The first one is for fellow researchers. The Craft of Research is your companion whether you’re writing a peer-reviewed article, industry report or a dissertation. It covers everything from how to select a specific enough and well rounded research question to making a strong argument to the ethics of research.

The second book is Digital Body Language. So far I read reviews about the book and it promising to be a great find given how it unpacks how technology has affected our communication. Short attention spans – born out of communication via emails, DMs and otherwise apersonally – make us expect in person communication to be delivered in concise and bullet point format. However this also leaves space for misunderstanding and lack of patience and empathy when speaking.

Understanding the Global Chip Shortage

The latest paper by the director of the Technology and Geopolitics Group at SNV explores the root causes of the global chip shortage which include, capital and knowledge intensity along with cyclical demand, transationality and shocks across many of these areas.

I’m keeping an ongoing thread of high level developments of this issue here. However, a sobering finding from the paper is that “there is no short-term solution to this problem, it needs to be addressed by long-term strategic decisions…[including] structural changes, new business models and supplier relationships”.

The paper has a very interesting table outlining the series of events including fires, lockdown measures, power outages and natural disasters that hit the value chain. The report is a great read and to get most of it, one needs to read other works by the team.

In other news

• Two months after the elections, Germany has a new government and Mr. Scholz will be sworn in in early December. Here's a collection of threads on what stood out in the coalition agreement.
• The Sovereign Tech Fund study outlines a new vision for using capital to fund Open Source (which has a 1:65-95 ROI). Great time to refresh on Zuckermann writings and Canada’s Sovereign Patent Fund.
• Speaking of funds, NATO’s new €1 billion Innovation Fund securitises startup driven digital sovereignty.

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Background

The original inspiration for what follows came from three academic articles. The first about the limitations of knowledge transfer in Huawei's data centres in two African countries; the second about the R2P doctrine; and the third about electronic regimes.

First, data centres. Having conducted fieldwork in Kenya and Nigeria, the author from Johns Hopkins University found that Huawei led data and communication infrastructure upgrade offer no long term “technological or industrial upgrading” for the countries where they were installed. In the author's conclusion “this is due to domestic obstacles in the host countries” but also because of the lack of domestic know how.

The second article is about the Responsibility To Protect. It is an international relations/norms doctrine that stems from two issues. One, that the integrity of humans is the source of state sovereignty (and prosperity) and two, that the international community should not or cannot be passive in the face of grave violations thereof.

In critical technology stages (e.g. transmission vs storage vs processing..etc.) and sectors, there should be a collective international response to prevent lock in build up or surveillance industrialism and capitalism.

Despite the good intentions to prevent genocides and help in the face of natural catastrophes (e.g. France and the 2008 Myanmar cyclone), R2P has been criticised for being an interventionist tool – especially as it is in most times former colonial countries coming to the rescue of former colonies. Despite helping codify norms and actions that would prevent passivity in the face of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, R2P is still a debated concept.

The last formative article talks about electronic regimes. As a country undergoes digital transformation, the technology solutions that it chooses dictate its electronic regime. The Italian authors of this paper identify four such regimes that are categorised according to infrastructure independence and information independence.

• e-domains: control their network infrastructure but not data (information) production and protection (e.g. via cloud storage).
• e-provinces: exercise a high level of information independence but a low degree of control over infrastructure
• e-colonies: in the author's words are “losers in the world of digital revolution” because they “have completely lost their independence for economic, political, or cultural reasons”
• e-powers: control their own means for information production and transmission, thereby enjoying the highest degree of independence and influence in cyberspace

Digital R2P

The situation with the data centres is just one example of – without using big isms from Lenin or Prebisch – resource (i.e. data) takeover and loss of the owner's control over it. Considering that knowledge transfer can be a pillar of economic transfer and the importance of data centres in the technology stack, this is worth paying attention to. It is also important to consider in light of Huawei's presence globally.

A 2020 analysis estimates that 70% of Africa's telecommunication infrastructure relies on Huawei. The situation looks similar in major parts of Latin America and South East Asia.

For example, 85% of Brazil's 4G networks were constructed by Huawei. Indonesia and the Philippines – two of the most South East Asia's highly populated countries – are also relying on Huawei for 5G infrastructure.

In Europe, Chinese telecommunications equipment (and recently headsets) has been hotly debated in the past few years. In fact, the debate here has not only revolved about data centres, storage and transmission but also about innovation, values and security and digital sovereignty is being invoked as a response to the fear of digital colonialism.

It is important to note that American companies and tools are equally proliferated and most countries rely on products from one of the two nations. Moreover, American companies and technology practices are also not conducive to other countries's growth.

There are other issues also that fit the profile of harmful or unequal tech distribution practices, besides lack of knowledge sharing and control over data transmission and storage via telecommunications equipment.

Shaping of public discourse via mis/dis-information and biometric and informational biases in new technologies are just some examples that touch end users. Unfair market practices and industrial data and security leaks are examples of how lack of control over one's data can be detrimental on other fronts as well.

In my view digital R2P should be based on sharing knowledge and tools to help other countries get as independent as possible along the e-regimes ladder outlined above. In critical technology stages (e.g. transmission vs storage vs processing..etc.) and sectors, there should be a collective international response to prevent lock in build up or surveillance industrialism and capitalism.

Relying on the Key Enabling Technologies framework of the EU as well as the innovation stimulus, market/investment correction and technology ethics principles guiding digital sovereignty can be a first step. There are however some shortcomings to this vision.

Critique

So far I see at least two shortcomings of digital R2P; confusion over the (normative) scope and presence/role of state actors.

First, the scope of the term. As with the term digital sovereignty – using digital and not cyber when it comes to R2P is a conscious choice to signify the importance of the whole digital stack, including hardware and software.

Being precise about the scope is important to devise and deploy the appropriate measures. An important step here is building awareness in the international community. However, awareness about one set of technologies comes immediately with suspicion about the alternatives and the parties that provide them.

Therefore the role of state actors and tech industrialism is the second shortcoming to consider here. The biggest Chinese companies have been accused of being close to/extension of the ruling regime and in the US early investments by the government gave rise to the dominant companies of today and the Snowden revelations confirmed the surveillance mechanisms between both parties.

A standing criticism for R2P is respect for local vs universal values, in other words what's seen as a problem in one country's domestic affairs might be acceptable to its people but not the international community. With technology, the pattern of its harms has been identified in most corners of the world with a mix of economic (both value creation and circumvention via tax avoidance), data protection, security or ethical disadvantages. Whether this is a stand alone criticism or a second order consequence of one of the above is to be seen and further theorised.

Conclusion

While this piece proposes Digital R2P to prevent passivity in the face of digital takeover and perpetuation of technological harm by nation states, I acknowledge that there is a lot of theoretical work needed to stabilize such a concept. If you also find the issues discussed above important please do get in touch.

Is this the right way to think about digital R2P and interstate tech industrialism?

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Open source added €65-€95 billion to the EU's GDP

The European Commission recently published a report outlining the benefits of open source technology in Europe. While the figures are from 2018, it is still very interesting to observe the impact of this technology.

According to the report, that year companies from across the bloc invested €1 billion in open source software and received “an additional economic output of between €65 and €95 bn, the equivalent of air and water transport combined”.

Open source (software) means the copyright holder shares the source code of the technology used for anyone to observe and modify it. Being open about the technology used doesn't mean forgoing profits as there are many open source unicorn (valuation more >$/€1 billion) companies.

The report outlines how this technology can especially help GovTech's – i.e. public administration – autonomy and innovation capacity which has been slowed down by the high cost of switching providers that use closed systems.

On the other hand, China for example embraces open source a step further. It uses it as an industrial policy tool to boost domestic innovation by having participants build on each other's work.

Approaching data ownership

Three researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany wrote a fascinating article on the ethics of data ownership. In essence, this is a contested topic where it is difficult to pin down attribution in the face of replicability and utility.

The authors distinguish four dimensions of data ownership – “the institutionalization of property versus cognate notions of quasi-property; the marketability versus the inalienability of data; the protection of data subjects versus their participation and inclusion into societal endeavours; and individual versus collective claims and interests in data and their processing”.

They also “demonstrate how the meanings of data ownership raise both issues of material ownership (pertaining to the sphere of distribution) and issues of socio-cultural ownership (pertaining to the sphere of recognition).”

What particularly caught my eye is how one might go about protecting information and ultimately arriving at data ownership through different layers. This can happen on the syntactic or the “code layer which refers to the code that expresses it”. Other layers include the pragmatic level “which refers to the effects, uses, and purposes of information”.

I'm closely following the non fungible token (NFT) space at the moment and the build of such tokens is to attribute provenance (true ownership/origin) in the face of replicability. I'm also reminded of the Solid protocol which strives to give data sovereignty to the individual.

This is a project that is being worked on by Sir Tim Berners-Lee who is one of the modern web's creators. Whether both of these can be adopted en masse to address data ownership (and privacy and security) is an open question.

EU digital identity's blockchain potential

The EU has proposed a framework to enable all citizens to have an e-wallet and digital identity that can be used for administrative purposes. One of the goals of Europe's Digital Compass program is to have 80% of citizens use digital IDs by 2030.

As of today only 14 member countries have at least one eID scheme and out of those 7 are mobile. Among the interesting and important takeaways is that the proposal allocates a budget for the development and adoption of these solutions to reach a critical mass.

It also opens the door for technical implementation and stresses the importance of security, privacy and interoperability. These values are also the ones behind many blockchain projects and there is a huge potential for Web 3.0 technologies to lead the charge for European digital sovereignty.

A humble milestone and cadence revisited

This week Shift Print passed 100 Twitter followers. I'm very excited and humbled to count brilliant minds in academia, policy and tech among the blog's audience. Due to an increased workload, Shift Print will go out every two weeks instead of weekly (most of the summer notwithstanding :), at least until the end of the year.

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Trust zones for a more secure internet

At the moment, control over the internet stack is being disputed normatively and geopolitically. The main countries in the tech race started with asserting control over their domestic internet and are moving to establish a global vision of their local systems. Lastly, security of systems and data is constantly being debated.

Against this background, two computer science and internet infrastructure inventors and pioneers from MIT and University of California are proposing Trust Zones. This thinking would “focus on regional security rather than unachievable global security”.

Their article requires some technical familiarity and is a goldmine of information about learning from the history of unsuccessful initiatives.

“Our experience of the last 30 years has convinced us that the path to better security does not lie in proposals for global changes to the Internet protocols, but in finding operational practices that regions of the Internet can implement to improve the security profile of those regions.”

Trust zones would work by regionalizing systems (whether nationally or commercially). This approach is built for security and interoperability in mind and is different from balkanisation – which is more deliberate disconnection of regions.

Once a system is established by an internet service provider for example it will have to verified – sort of like an individual performing identity verification ahead of opening a bank account. Once verified, different zones would communicate on a “trust-but-verify framework”.

This approach would avoid exposing data in transit and the authors point to an example where it was successfully implemented by Internet Society.

Political science lab leaks

According to Paul Musgrave, assistant professor of political science at University of Massachusetts Amherst, “when ideas get out from academia into the wild, they can be surprisingly dangerous”.

The article has an intriguing argument and leaves one with many “what if” questions. “Isms” or concepts can come from policy as well as academia or research circles and affect governance, military and potentially technology.

According to the author, game theory and the “clash of civilizations” hypothesis are examples of such, untested/heavily critiqued, leaks. I'll focus here on the latter. “Huntington’s thesis was not a conjecture based on careful empirical study—it was a speculation”. As such “...it was primed to thrive in the wild, free from the confines of empirical reality.”

Putting on the tech hat, one reason why concepts like the above proliferated the world of academia and policy can be due to a high degree of “political theory-political environment fit”.

Neuroprivacy laws in Chile

Just as unknown or potential threats of AI are pushing researchers and policy makers to create handbooks and rules for governing this space, neurotechnology does the same.

The term refers to “any technology that can read and transcribe mental states by decoding and modulating neural activity” that can for example “detect neural activity related to people’s moods and can suppress undesirable symptoms, like depression, through electrical stimulation”.

Chile is leading the way in codifying rights to “personal identity, free will, mental privacy, equal access to cognitive enhancement technologies, and protection against algorithmic bias”.

Great article by Abel Wajnerman Paz who's an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Alberto Hurtado University, in Santiago.

Government led acquisition in Europe

A while ago, I wrote about how the generous support for startups in Europe stops at the exit stage. If governments were to acquire home grown companies, they would foster national champions and build excellence and capacity in critical areas and technologies.

Both of these pursuits are cornerstones of the European digital sovereignty pursuit. With this in mind, it was great to read about Swiss Post's acquisition of Tresorit – an encrypted cloud provider.

Hopefully this is the first of many, Web 3.0, acquisitions as the EU builds its capacity in key technologies.

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