Science & Technology

The ability to edit the genetic code of organisms is hailed as one of the most profound technological achievements of the last five years. Specific techniques known as “gene drives” can transmit inheritable traits throughout the entire population of an organism. There are several ways by which gene drives can be used to control major diseases such as malaria, which killed nearly 395,000 people in Africa in 2015. One approach is to introduce gene drives that induce sterility in mosquitoes.

The Internet, together with the information communications technology (ICT) that underpins it, is a critical national resource for governments, a vital part of national infrastructures and a key driver of economic growth. Over the last 40 years, and particularly since the year 2000, governments and businesses have embraced the Internet, and ICT’s potential to generate income and employment, provide access to businesses and information, enable e-learning and facilitate government activities.

Washington can often be the last thing on an entrepreneur’s mind.  And naturally so – the culture of bureaucracy and reputation for being out of touch is the last thing that someone working on the cutting edge of technology wants to think about.  Developing innovative products, especially ones that are data-driven, often requires an out-of-the-box style of thinking that can seem directly antithetical to the lethargic enforcement mechanisms of the government.  But there are many good reasons for those working on the cutting edge to think about the issues that are "top of mind" for law enforcement and regulators during product development - and in Washington, DC, privacy is undoubtedly one of the key issues of the day.

In a spectacular technological failure, Kenyan officials recently abandoned the electronic transfer of election results and switched to manual tallying. This was not expected in a country that developed the now world-famous mobile money transfer system, M-Pesa. The collapse of the system delayed the announcement of the winner, causing anxiety in a country that witnessed serious post-election violence in 2007 that left more than 1,500 people dead and 250,000 displaced from their homes. Rumors swirled on social media that the system had been hacked and as result the elections had been fatally compromised.

A cyber attack could make it all happen again. Verizon's chief technology officer surveyed a flooded major switching facility in lower Manhattan and put it bluntly: "There is nothing working here. Quite frankly, this is wider than the impacts of 9/11." Damage from Sandy is estimated to reach $20 billion, and interrupted phone service is among the least of it. Flooding in New York's century-old subway system is without parallel. Bridges and roads, homes and businesses have been destroyed. Days after the storm, many businesses remain closed, their employees out of work.

Experts disagree whether an upcoming meeting of the International Telecommunications Union in Dubai will determine the future of global Internet governance.  On Thursday, May 31, 2012, in the Rayburn Office Building of the House of Representatives, a panel comprising some of America’s leading Internet industry and policy experts offered an ominous warning to U.S. lawmakers about future of the Internet. “The open Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now,” testified Vint Cerf, one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’ and Google’s self-described “Chief Internet Evangelist.

It is no surprise to those following consumer or enterprise computing that we are moving inexorably towards the cloud.  The availability of increased – and of increasingly mobile – connectivity to the Internet has allowed for the development, and widespread usage, of cloud-based services.  At the same time, mobile devices have undergone a rapid evolution, expanding both in capability as well as market penetration.  Devices such as the iPhone and iPad have revolutionized the marketplace in less than five years since their release.

Last month the Council on Foreign Relations published a report co-authored by Joel I. Klein and Condoleezza Rice, titled, “U.S. Education Reform and National Security.” Giving voice to the work of its task force of 25 scholars and practitioners, the report sounded a call to arms from its opening sentence. “It will come as no surprise to most readers,” Klein and Rice wrote, “that America’s primary and secondary schools are widely seen as failing.” With that swift assertion the authors traveled quickly to their destination: we must test, have standards, and audit.

Via Dave Burstein comes the news that China is adding 2-3 million people to online connections a month. I’ve heard elsewhere that China plans to have 300 million of its citizens connected to fiber (FTTH, or fiber to the home) by 2015. As one of my colleagues quipped via email, “They must have the special access problem solved.” (Jim Crowe of Level 3 has a good piece re control of backhaul/special access by AT&T and VZ, and the cable cos are also in this business.)  One way the country is doing this is by bringing major antitrust actions against its dominant communications providers.

In June of 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union.  According to a transcript of the first minutes of the meeting subsequently published by the Russian government, Putin said: We are thankful to you for the ideas that you have proposed for discussion. One of them is establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).