When I first began going to tech conferences 40 years ago, we were Democrats by default. (To the right are Tony Bove and Cheryl Rhodes, taken during that time. Tony passed away last year and I miss him.)
Tech held government at arms-length. Washington was in the hands of the oil lobby. It would soon begin endless wars for oil that continue to this day. This wasn’t our problem.
Tech wanted nothing to do with oil politics. We wanted government to help people, at least those at college who were hoping to join us. Tech was building the Creative Class and saw sunny days ahead.
Today Big Tech is bigger than the government. Its leaders now see government as a source of power and money for their own great game. They see the Creative Class that built their power as a new proletariat, as spinners and weavers to be replaced by AI. Tech’s struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
Biotech, the industry that treats DNA as a programming language, is seen as a rival by Big Tech. It’s also treated with contempt by government. The industry is being deliberately antagonized and is thus becoming Democratic by default. It’s in the same position tech was 40 years ago.
My son works in this industry. He’s starting at the bottom, but unlike me he hopes not to stay there. Funding for his work is drying up, but he’s so far down the career ladder he barely notices. He has his head down, working hard. Industry leaders, long accustomed to benign, well-funded neglect, are shocked to discover they’re cut off.
This is going to impact America’s future, just not in the way pundits think.
Tech vs. BioTech
The PC industry didn’t need government a generation ago. Today’s biotech industry very much does.
In addition to funding, government confers legitimacy. You’re not in the business of selling drugs until government says you are. The whole purpose of the industry’s infrastructure is to gain the favorable attention of government, and to be given that right, which then turns on the cash spigot.
The antagonism of Robert Kennedy’s mad crusade is as confounding to the industry as George H.W. Bush’s hatred of broccoli. Some hope it’s just a passing fad. What if it’s not?
The danger is that industry leadership will move to a more comfortable environment. Sell Moderna, buy BionTech. But that’s not a great solution, because European consumers don’t subsidize the industry through their health care system as we did. Today the industry’s argument is that if America doesn’t invest in them leadership will go to China, and that’s true to an extent. They also hope that this storm will pass, that the stupid will blow itself up and allow a return to the status quo ante.
I don’t know what will happen. I do know biotech will, over time, replace computing as the dominant industry in this country. But that’s unlikely to happen until after I’m dead. In 1986, remember, tech was two decades away from being granted political power under Barack Obama, who used a Google database in his election and then staffed his Administration with benign tech executives. In 20 years, I’ll be in my 90s, if I ‘m here at all, and likely won’t care.
But…
But your children and grandchildren will be around. The world they will live in will be completely different from today’s, even more than the world of 2026 is different from that of 1986. What it will be like in the age of Biotech will be up to them, and the attitudes they’re gaining today.
