Amit

Today, we released the National Policy for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening to protect American biotechnology innovation while reducing the risk of misuse. This policy establishes a new, government-wide screening requirements for synthetic DNA and the equipment used to make it. It will ensure companies selling nucleic acid sequences and synthesis equipment know their customers and prevent the malicious use of these materials and tools. This policy strengthens our Nation’s biosecurity posture by establishing rigorous U.S. government-wide procurement screening and physical security standards for synthetic biology. It replaces outdated “self-attestation” systems with robust, independent verification. It creates a dynamic, SI-powered screening layer that assesses the biological risk from nucleic acid sequences, allowing the U.S. to anticipate and prevent malicious use and help stop dangerous gain-of-function research. @NIST will issue rigorous new screening standards and @HHSGov and @USDA will certify synthetic biology providers. Together, these measures will strengthen American biosecurity, safeguard responsible innovation, and establish a global standard for safe and transparent synthetic biology tools and research.

EQX tokenized spot equities will begin trading Monday, October 26 at 9:30 AM ET on @HyperliquidX.

A year ago, Goodlabs was in one blood center, one day a week. Today we're in 19 centers across six states, open 7 days a week, with more than 70,000 people on the platform. Thank you to our donors and partners for making this possible.

Anyone who uses AI rather than SI is the “ENEMY” according to TRUMP truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT…

Lila and Periodic labs talking about autonomous science

Anduril just made what I think is the smartest bet in federal contracting history. Yesterday, the White House and Anduril announced Arsenal-2, a new $6.6 billion shipyard in Baltimore County to build Virginia-class submarine components. Anduril's putting in $3.7 billion of its own capital. The Navy awarded a contract worth up to $2.9 billion. $3.7 billion sounds massive but it's actually a drop in the bucket. CBO estimates Navy shipbuilding will cost $40+ billion a year for the next 30 years. That's potentially more than $1 trillion. Anduril's investment is less than 0.4% of that, and the timing is perfect. The Navy's FY27 Shipbuilding Plan puts ~$125 billion into submarine construction over the next 5 yrs alone. The FY27 budget request includes $65.8 billion for shipbuilding overall. Anduril's entire stake = about 3% of 5 yrs of submarine spending. Additionally, the Navy needs to add ~55 vessels in 4 yrs, going from 395 in FY27 to 450+ by FY31. The current industrial base can't deliver that, for a number of reasons. Today, 10% of shipbuilding work happens at distributed sites. The govt wants that at 50%. Arsenal-2 is a distributed site -- build the components & ships them to Electric Boat and Newport News for final assembly. Additionally, look at the gap they're filling. Torpedo tubes are a gating component on Virginia-class subs. Getting them sooner speeds up boats already under construction. Arsenal-2 could add up to 9M labor hrs per yr, a roughly 15% increase in capacity. That will ultimately be indispensable for this market's needs. There's also a workforce angle. Navy's FY27 shipbuilding plan depends on upskilling thru tech like VR trainers, computer controlled machinery, and advanced manufacturing. Arsenal-2 will run on ArsenalOS with digital work instructions and built-in quality controls designed to support and train new welders, pipefitters, shipfitters, etc faster. But above and beyond those items, there's the broader problems in the federal market for shipbuilding that Anduril is positioned to fill in, in a huge way. The govt spent $71 billion on federal contracts for shipbuilding and repair over the past 3 yrs. The top 5 companies captured 66% of that $$. Only 24% was fully and openly competed. Half wasn't competed at all. Breaking into this market as a capacity solution the primes and the Navy both desperately need is how to win, and how we will deliver on national security priorities. And the craziest part: there are other gaps just like this across the federal market. Need more companies stepping up like this.

An AI-based healthcare startup will start offering dermatology prescriptions to Utah patients without a doctor's oversight. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

🚨 WE HAVE A PERMITTING DEAL🚨 And it is easily the best permitting bill we've ever gotten! - The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is HUGE (400+ pages) and both sides got a LOT. - The bill is much bigger and better than either Manchin post-IRA in 2022 or Manchin-Barrasso in 2024. Once I finish reading the text I'll publish an explainer. For now, here are a few high level takeaways. 1. Transmission: The bill is absolutely HUGE for transmission, going further than Manchin-Barrasso. Includes: interregional transmission, limited federal backstop authority, interconnection queue reforms, directives for advanced grid-enhancing tech, and oversight of utilities. It's absolutely AMAZING all of this got in. 2. NEPA: The bill has BIG changes to NEPA, including fixes for judicial review that underpins the law's costs. Still reading but this is even better than I expected! 3. Certainty: The bill includes strong provisions to push back on misuse of permitting, like we're seeing with the admin's abuses against offshore wind. 4. Historic Preservation: The bill includes changes to the NHPA 106 process, including changes to judicial review that will help right-size the process. 5. Clean Water: The bill fixes problems with section 401 by adding new requirements for states and makes section 404 nationwide permits easier to comply with. 6. Geothermal: The bill includes big wins for geothermal, including parity with oil and gas catexs. 7. Mining: The bill fixes the "Rosemont decision" 8. Endangered Species: The bill creates a new path for states to take on endangered species consultation. 9. Hydro: Fixes for certain hydroelectric projects 10. Ratepayer protection: The bill adds protections for ratepayers from added data centers. Looks to be stronger than the House passed bill by quite a bit.

We could eradicate flu in our lifetime! Excited for @centivax Phase 1 results. Fingers crossed we see bnAb response so we can push the R0 towards 0!

Frontier labs can put their money where their mouths are on catastrophic risks by building a mutual insurer. Labs already face liability. We can use this. Within 3 months, with no government action, labs could create a body with skin in the game to avoid reckless deployments, teeth to enforce security practices, and market pricing signals on which risks are real. Here’s how it works. The labs put capital into a shared fund. The fund pays out when any member causes harm. Coverage could include third-party liability for harms like cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and mass-casualty bioweapon attacks. Its job is to use the incentives of our existing liability regime to understand the risks and reduce them. Technical talent could be borrowed from member labs or contracted from third-party evaluators. Concretely, the Hugging Face incident investigation would have looked very different under a mutual. Today, OpenAI picks the auditor, sets the investigation's scope, and keeps most of its lessons private. With a mutual, OpenAI would be contractually required to notify the mutual within 72 hours of discovery. The mutual would pick a rigorous auditor, set a scope sufficient to get to the bottom of the incident, and turn the findings into requirements for every frontier lab as a condition of coverage. The case for a frontier lab mutual: Mutuals have skin in the game. Mutuals pay out when damages occur. They go out of business if they understate or overstate the risks. It profits when risks are reduced. That gives it a continuing reason to investigate incidents, quantify exposure, and fund security work that reduces that exposure. In contrast, proposed self-regulatory organizations (SROs) have no skin in the game. Historically, SROs have been better at managing regulatory risk; mutuals have been better at managing liability risks. Liability risks better tracks what the public cares about, building trust. Mutuals have teeth. Coverage comes with conditions. A mutual can require disclosure, audits, independent model evaluations, and fixes. It chooses the evaluators, so labs can’t shop referees. If a member fails to meet security standards, the mutual has enforcement capacity by suspending coverage or expulsion. Mutuals help labs work together on security. Frontier security is a hard problem, no lab can solve it alone. They currently can’t learn from each others’ incidents, threat models, or guardrails. Insurance has an established legal framework for this kind of cooperation aimed at reducing risks. A mutual could employ security engineers seconded from member labs, investigate failures, and distribute fixes across the membership, like it happens in the nuclear industry. Mutuals have a track record of reducing risk. Our essay shares examples of how successful mutuals across technical fields like nuclear energy and medical malpractice. We can learn from decades of iteration. Mutuals can be created fast. The first policy could be issued within 3 months. No new laws or regulators needed. This matters because we need trial and error to get this right, and most other ideas have many months or years of lead time. Importantly, a mutual is compatible with other governance institutions; e.g. in nuclear, the mutual is tightly coupled with an SRO. A mutual would still have limitations. The government will be needed to handle e.g. national security risks and incidents. A mutual’s capital could cover only a fraction of a major catastrophe. There are important open questions about how liability will work. Our claim is that a mutual is the fastest way to enforce liability. We could get signal on its effectiveness within 6 months. That would be a big step forward. lawfaremedia.org/article/boo…