Part #2: The Five Frontiers - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

Part #2: The Five Frontiers - btbirkett@gmail.com - Gmail

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Part #2: The Five Frontiers

In this issue: Do you realize how incredible 2024 was? People used to drive cars? For the first year in recorded history, obesity rates fell An actual flying car A cure for HIV

Dear Rational Optimist,   2024 quietly delivered a parade of technological breakthroughs that sound like they were ripped from science fiction. Not enough people know this. Let’s change that!   If you missed Part 1 of this series, read it here. In it, I laid out why I believe 2024 will be remembered as a very special year. It’s the year America FINALLY woke up from its physical innovation slumber and started building again.   By “physical innovation,” I mean real tech you can touch that improves our lives—faster planes, miraculous drugs, helpful robots. It’s all coming faster than you think… and in some cases, is already here.   Welcome to the “innovation feast.” It centers around five areas we call “The Five Frontiers.” Let’s look at them, so we can see clearly what we’re accelerating toward in 2025.   Frontier #1: The energy enlightenment that enables all other innovation   Human civilization is like a rocket ship. Each time we discover and embrace a more powerful fuel source, we blast to new heights.   In the 1800s, we switched from wood to coal, and the Industrial Revolution roared to life. In the early 1900s, we upgraded to oil. Cars replaced horses, planes took flight, and modern life as we know it took shape.   Nuclear power should have been the next great leap, but we turned our backs on it in the 1970s. 2024 marked the beginning of the second atomic age and the next giant leap in human progress.   Nuclear has been reawakened by an unexpected force: Big tech companies have gone “all in” on atomic energy. These companies need clean, safe, abundant energy for their ambitious AI plans. They know nuclear is their best option by far.   Microsoft announced it would help revive Three Mile Island—yes, that Three Mile Island. Amazon is pouring $500 million into pocket-sized nuclear reactors to power its data centers. Google and Meta are also racing to split atoms to feed their AI beasts.   For decades, nuclear's biggest challenge (aside from regulators) wasn't technology. It was finding customers willing to sign long-term agreements. Now, it has the backing of the richest, most successful companies on Earth. Big tech’s deep pockets and connections in Washington will accelerate the nuclear renaissance by at least a decade. You can already see glimmers:   Bill Gates's TerraPower broke ground on America's first “mini reactor” in Wyoming. Think IKEA for nuclear power, with standardized parts made in factories and assembled on site.   In Austin, I visited Aalo Atomics, which is building reactors small enough to fit in a New York City apartment but powerful enough to power a neighborhood. Its goal is to churn out 100 mini reactors per year by the end of the decade.   Radiant Nuclear is developing reactors so compact and safe, you can transport them on the back of a truck.   Nuclear is just the start of our energy acceleration. Last year, more solar power was installed worldwide than between 1956 and 2017. Solar is the fastest-growing power source in human history:

Source: Dr. Robert Rohde on X   In 2004, it took a whole year to install 1 gigawatt of solar power. Now, we’re deploying that much every 12 hours!   Solar has a big drawback: It only works when the sun shines. We are on our way to solving this problem with batteries. In 2024, America added more battery capacity than the previous six years combined:

Source: EIA   Imagine driving an electric car from New York to Miami on a single charge. Or every appliance in your home being cordless. That’s the future that smaller, cheaper, more powerful batteries can give us.   Rapidly improving batteries are also the key enabler of humanoid household robots. It’s not like you can run a gas-powered robot housekeeper in your home. But a battery-powered one? No problem.   And don’t forget geothermal energy’s untapped potential. If we drill deep enough, we could power the planet for millennia using the Earth’s natural heat.   And I haven’t even mentioned fracking, which gets my vote for the most underappreciated innovation of the past decade.   It took America from being dependent on Middle Eastern oil to the world’s biggest-ever producer of oil and gas!

America is entering a new age of energy abundance. This isn't just about cheaper electric bills. As I showed in Part 1, a lack of energy is what’s been holding back physical innovation.   Energy abundance will give us robot helpers in every home. It will automate factories. It could revive America’s manufacturing might.   And yes, it will also be a critical component in creating the flying cars we've been promised for decades. Here’s Joby Aviation’s prototype. It aims to take you from downtown Manhattan to JFK Airport in seven minutes:

Source: AmNewYork   Clean, abundant energy unlocks the other four frontiers.   #2: The transformation of transportation   Railroads first united America. Cars transformed our cities and gave us suburbs. Airplanes shrank the globe and created the modern business world.   Now, we're in the early days of the next great transportation revolution.   I had my first robotaxi experience in San Francisco in October. A white Jaguar Waymo pulled up with a spinning sensor on its roof that looked like a high-tech crown.   I sat down and the screen welcomed me by name: “Good afternoon, Stephen. Heading to The Interval at Long Now… This experience may feel futuristic… We’ll do all the driving.” One press of the “start ride” button, and we were off.    It’s a surreal experience to see the steering wheel turn itself. The strangest part was the silence. No chitchat. Just the soft hum of the electric engine and the distinct feeling that I had arrived in the future. Riding in a regular Uber to the airport afterward felt like backtracking from an iPhone to a flip phone.   Robotaxis had their coming-out moment in 2024. In 2023, Waymo was doing 10,000 paid rides a week. Now, it’s completing more than 175,000 trips/month across Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Next stop: Miami.

My Waymo drove flawlessly… like it was trying to make a driving instructor proud. The technology only gets better from here. I bet there will be more robotaxis than human-driven taxis in San Francisco five years from now. Parents in the city are already using Waymo to ferry their kids to soccer practice.   Over 40,000 Americans die on the roads each year. Self-driving cars can slash that by 90%+. They have literal electronic eyes in the back of their heads, never break the speed limit, never drink and drive, and never type a text message while going 100 mph.   A new study of 25 million fully autonomous miles driven by Waymos found they “reduced injury claims” by 92% compared to human drivers. Within my lifetime, it’ll become socially unacceptable in some cities to take the wheel, like smoking indoors. Too dangerous.   One day, I’ll tell my grandkids about my first ride in a self-driving car. They might look at me funny and say, “People used to drive cars?”   You used to be able to fly from NYC to London in three hours on Concorde’s supersonic jet. Today, that same trip takes seven hours. We’re flying slower than we did in 2003.   The Concorde was a marvel that died from its own excesses. It devoured 5,600 gallons of fuel every hour. Its sonic boom was so powerful, it could shatter windows—forcing it to fly only over oceans.   Boom Supersonic is making America supersonic again.   The startup completed 10 successful test flights this year. Its jet streaked across California’s Mojave Desert at 730 mph, faster than any Boeing or Airbus in the sky. Its commercial jet will cruise at 1,300 mph, cutting the time it takes to cross the Atlantic by more than half.   Boom is solving the problem that killed the Concorde: noise. Its engine purrs quietly at low speeds over land, then roars to supersonic speeds over oceans. This turns that earth-shattering roar into a soft thump, letting its supersonic jets fly anywhere. And they'll do it by burning a fraction of the fuel, making tickets affordable.   Breakfast in New York, lunch in London, home for dinner with your family. Supersonic travel gives us a world where no two major cities are more than a few hours apart. We’re reviving the spirit of aviation innovation America lost 50 years ago.   In 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos went on 60 Minutes. He predicted drones would soon crisscross the sky carrying Amazon parcels. But delivery guys are still dropping cardboard boxes at my door. What happened?   US government red tape essentially made drone deliveries illegal. The rules said drones had to always be within sight of the remote pilot. This made it impossible to launch a service that could deliver thousands of parcels daily.   The dam broke in 2024. Washington handed Amazon, Zipline, and Google’s Wing permission to make deliveries without someone watching from the ground. This is the game-changer we’ve been waiting for!   Zipline already made its millionth autonomous delivery. It’s delivering medications for 4,500+ hospitals, including the Cleveland Clinic. And it’s flying Sweetgreen’s salads to customers.   In parts of Texas and California, drones gently drop Amazon orders at customers' doorsteps in less than 30 minutes. Amazon’s goal is to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by 2029.   Google’s Wing delivered more than 30,000 parcels this year for Walmart in Dallas.   Even police departments are joining the revolution. In Scottsdale, when you call 911, a drone launches automatically and reaches the scene within 85 seconds. In Santa Monica, $13,000 police drones help track fleeing suspects.   If you want to see how future wars will be fought, look at Ukraine. Drones, not missiles or artillery, have destroyed two-thirds of Russia's tanks in the past year. Drones are now responsible for most battlefield losses.   There's something powerful and inspiring about seeing innovation take physical form. When a robot car drives you across town or a flying drone lands at your doorstep, you “feel” the future.   #3: Biotech breakthroughs   HIV cured. Cancer vaccines cut death rate in half. Special eyedrops give kid sight for the first time.   Imagine reading these headlines 20 years ago. You'd think they were cruel jokes. But in 2024, these headlines were a reality. Innovators are transforming medicine from a game of whack-a-mole symptoms into precision engineering of the body.   Scientists have retooled mRNA to create cancer-killing jabs. In trials for the deadliest form of skin cancer, personalized treatments halved death rates.   Each patient received a custom-made therapeutic tailored to their specific tumor. The jab teaches their immune system to recognize and destroy their unique cancer cells, essentially creating “a most-wanted poster” for the immune system.   Similar trials for pancreatic, lung, colorectal, and other deadly cancers are showing promising early results.   Instead of bluntly carpet-bombing tumors with radiation, which makes patients violently ill, doctors can now design precision cancer-killing shots. It’s possible these personalized therapeutics could turn cancer from a death sentence into a curable disease.   Antonio was born blind. Multiple surgeries failed to restore his sight. As a last hope, doctors in Miami gave the 14-year-old kid a special kind of gene-editing eyedrops.   He took them once a month for about a year. He can now see for the first time ever!   CRISPR (gene editing) technology will allow more and more kids who’ve stared at darkness their whole lives to enjoy movies and play tag. It lets scientists edit DNA as easily as you edit a Word document—like fixing typos in your body's instruction manual.   2024 was the year CRISPR moved from the lab to the clinic, with the FDA approving 20 new genetic therapies.   Harvard doctors gave five kids born deaf a single gene-editing injection in their ears. Within weeks, they were dancing to music and hearing their parents’ voices for the first time.   CRISPR allows us to rewrite the code of life and cure all kinds of rare disorders. In the 1990s, scientists studying the Gila monster discovered it can survive on one meal per month. They created a synthetic version of this lizard’s spit and turned it into the most important drug of the 21st century: semaglutide.   You likely know it as Ozempic or Wegovy. Semaglutide was originally invented as a diabetes treatment. But it’s morphed into a medical Swiss Army knife tackling every modern health nightmare.   First, we discovered semaglutide melts fat off waistlines. When future historians write about 2024, they might mark it as the year humanity first gained control over obesity.   A recent survey found 6% of Americans are taking semaglutide. 2023 was the first year in recorded history that the US obesity rate fell. Coincidence?

Source: Financial Times   In a slew of recent trials, doctors discovered semaglutide also:   Treats Alzheimer's, staves off Arthritis, reduces heart attacks and strokes, suppresses addiction, and lowers the risk of developing kidney, pancreatic, ovarian, liver, and colorectal cancers.   Semaglutide is proving to be a reset button for human health, helping people drink less alcohol and reduce drug addictions too. It's rewiring the brain’s reward system, helping people find less pleasure in harmful substances and behaviors.   This “miracle in a syringe” will reshape entire societies. Imagine what America would look like if it were thinner and less diabetic. How might communities change if addiction became more treatable?   All from a curious investigation into the saliva of a desert lizard!   Noland Arbaugh was paralyzed from the neck down after suffering a freak spinal cord injury. He couldn’t hold a book or get a job. Using the internet involved awkwardly poking an iPad with a mouth stick. In early 2024, Noland became the first human to get a Neuralink chip implant. About the size of a quarter, the chip slid in under his skull and now nestles against his brain. Neuralink can read his thoughts and translate them into action, which allows him to control a computer with his mind. Neuralink completely transformed Noland’s life. Not only can he play games and use the internet just like you and me, but he can also work! Neuralink gave him the ability to find purpose, provide for his family, and live a life that was never before possible for a paralyzed person. We haven’t even touched on what may be 2024’s most headline-worthy breakthrough. After four decades and 40 million deaths, we finally have HIV beat. A new drug called lenacapavir showed 100% protection in trials with 5,000 women. The shots worked so well, the study was stopped early so everyone could get the treatment. In a single year, we've given sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, movement to the paralyzed, and hope to cancer patients. We’re showing human ingenuity can conquer almost any disease, whether it takes lizard spit, engineered viruses, or chips in our brains. These breakthroughs mean more birthdays celebrated, more graduations attended, and more time spent with our kids. Innovation is our superpower against human suffering. Remember, nothing—absolutely nothing—matters more than our health. I’ll stop here for today. Next week, we tackle frontiers #4 and #5.