Mastery over matter

A Paper by Jason Crawford

We have already come quite far in our mastery of materials and manufacturing. Our materials have gotten stronger: the tensile strength of stone, or of wood perpendicular to the grain, is on the order of 10 MPa (megapascals, a unit of pressure or stress); classical metals such as bronze and iron are in the low 100s; the best alloys of steel today are over 1,000 MPa.⁵³ We have also improved precision: James Watt struggled with leakage from his steam engines until, using the best technology of his day, they could be made to tolerances of 1/10 of an inch; now you can buy ball bearings made to a tolerance of 80 nanometers, an improvement of over five orders of magnitude.⁵⁴

There is an ultimate limit to precision: the atomic level. Making things by placing each atom exactly where we want it is a technological dream known as atomically precise manufacturing, or nanotechnology.

With nanotech, machine parts such as gears or bearings could be individual molecules, made from many atoms in exact configuration. A nanomachine such as a pump or engine, made from many such parts, might be the size of a large molecule such as a protein. A more complex machine, such as a robot, might be around the size of a cell.

  1. Storrs Hall paints the possibilities for this technological platform in his book Nanofuture. Macroscopic objects, from clothing to buildings, might be made with nano-machines built into them, in incredible numbers. Objects might be able to shape-shift: a telescoping arm, for instance, made up of 6,000 concentric cylinders each an inch long and 5 microns thick, could extend to a length of 50 feet or retract into a 1-inch puck.⁵⁵ With nano-motors integrated throughout, that arm and other parts like it might appear to move on their own, “like animals.”⁵⁶ Other nano-parts might give objects unique optical properties, or integrate large amounts of data storage and computing power into everyday items such as clothing.

What this enables for end users is straight out of science fiction. Nanotech synthesizers might make items directly from raw materials. A household synthesizer, like the “matter compiler” from Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age, might create goods when they were needed; they might then be recycled afterwards for their atoms to be reused in a different configuration—no need for storage or cleaning.⁵⁷ Food, too, might be synthesized directly, with no animals or crops raised for the purpose, and with better taste and nutrition.⁵⁸ Thread might be made extremely strong, allowing clothing to be extremely light and flexible, like silk but much more so.⁵⁹

The incredible speed of nanotech synthesis alone might dramatically lower the price of literally every physical product. Hall estimates that with mature nanotechnology, the entire capital stock of the US—“every single building, factory, highway, railroad, bridge, airplane, train, automobile, truck, and ship”—could be rebuilt in a week.⁶⁰

The possibilities for medicine are also amazing. Surgery might no longer be invasive: a thread no wider than a hair might inject an army of nanobots into the patient’s body to reconstruct tissue, avoiding all of that messy cutting and sewing and the recovery time needed for wounds to heal: “There is no reason in principle that you couldn’t have major surgery one day and play tennis, go dancing, or do a full day’s work the next.” Artificial organs might replace diseased ones and even work better than the originals. Artificial red blood cells might transport oxygen more efficiently and store enough to allow you to hold your breath all day, or more practically, to survive a heart attack. Artificial immune cells might be able to fight pathogens more efficiently, giving you resistance against all infectious disease. Other nanobots might detect and destroy cancer, clean up accumulated toxins and other cellular “garbage,” and fix other kinds of damage to cells and tissues.⁶¹

At the macro scale, it turns out that the ultimate in precision manufacturing might give us the ultimate in material strength as well. One of the strongest ways to construct things from atoms is to build a lattice of carbon, which conveniently has four covalent bonds that suit it well for such structures. Graphene, a two-dimensional honeycomb of carbon, has tensile strength over 100 GPa (if free of defects), or two hundred times that of a typical steel.⁶²

Stronger materials might enable larger structures. Hall has proposed that with nanotech materials, we might build a “space pier,” a set of towers 100 km tall with a 300 km runway atop them. Payloads going to space might take an elevator to the top, then be accelerated along the ramp by an electromagnetic motor, saving much of the fuel required to launch from the ground; launch costs might get as low as $10/kg.⁶³

Diamond, with its extreme stiffness, might also be used to create very small, light structures. Hall has also proposed the “Weather Machine,” a fleet of quintillions of centimeter-sized balloons floating in the stratosphere. They could be made of nanometer-thick diamond, with remote-controlled mirrors that can reflect light or allow it to pass through, forming a “programmable greenhouse gas” that can regulate temperature and direct solar energy.⁶⁴

If there is indeed a fifth economic era, a successor to the “intelligence age,” it might be based on nanotechnology.

Mastery over energy

A Paper by Jason Crawford

The bold, ambitious future is going to require a tremendous amount of energy.

Most people have been taught to believe that energy usage is at best a necessary evil—or perhaps that it’s not even all that necessary. Journalist Cleo Abrams reports that when she first heard a compelling case for energy abundance, it “put my brain through the BLENDER,” because she had always seen energy usage as “shameful.”³⁹ Calling attention to a technology’s energy use is a quick and easy way to criticize it, no further explanation needed: energy is bad, therefore jet travel or AI is bad. But from a techno-humanist point of view, this logic is backwards: planes, AI, and the rest of the industrial economy are good, and therefore energy, the most fundamental enabler of the economy, is tremendously good.

Energy usage per capita, however, flatlined in the US and Europe in the early 1970s.⁴⁰ While we have squeezed out some efficiency gains, creating marginally more value with the same amount of energy,⁴¹ stagnation in energy is overall a sign of stagnation in economic growth. We would be better off with more energy. J. Storrs Hall argues that lack of progress in energy density explains which technologies dreamed of in the 1960s actually arrived (such as the Internet) and which didn’t (such as the space economy).⁴²

He suggests, in short, that energy density is why we got progress in bits but not in atoms.

With sufficient energy, we could solve all of our water problems, making drought a thing of the past. Water is, after all, enormously abundant in the oceans; the problem with ocean water is that it’s salty and it’s below sea level—we want it to be fresh and elevated, so it can flow through our pipes to our faucets. Normally we rely on the natural water cycle to do this: an inefficient, unreliable use of solar energy. With enough industrial energy, we can control the process ourselves, desalinating water and pumping it to any elevation.⁴³

With sufficient energy, we could solve almost all other material resource problems, too. The materials are out there; the challenge is always to gather them from dilute sources and to isolate and purify them—whether extracting metals from ore, bromine from salt water, or gasoline from crude oil. Seawater contains gigatons of metals such as lithium, nickel, copper, vanadium, molybdenum, and uranium.⁴⁴ With sufficient energy, we could extract elements from common clays instead of high-grade ores, or even from landfill.⁴⁵ There never need be a shortage of any resource.

Energy not only extracts material resources, it also shapes them. “A long-running story of our material world,” writes Ian MacKay, “is the constant march to more embodied energy in everything we use”: as we advanced from wood and copper, to bronze, to cast iron, to steel, to titanium, to semiconductors, the energy used per kilogram to process our materials has increased by several orders of magnitude.⁴⁶ By using more energy, we’re able to make lighter and tougher materials and to tap more abundant resources. It stands to reason that the materials of the future will continue this trend.

Credit: Ian McKay, “The future is made of energy”

We need more energy for supersonic flight, which uses around 3x more fuel per passenger-mile than conventional subsonic jets.⁴⁷ Cargo could also travel faster if we could afford to spend more energy on it.⁴⁸

We need more energy for the rapid growth of AI. Although each query to an LLM uses only a small amount of energy (maybe a few watt-hours depending on the length), total AI energy usage is projected to consume on the order of 10% of US electricity by 2030.⁴⁹ If the US were to reach the 100-to-1 ratio of AI to humans mentioned earlier, using an NVIDIA H100 chip as a stand-in for one human’s worth of compute, those chips alone would draw around 12 TW—more than half the entire world economy today.⁵⁰

We need more energy for all the robots, too. By one estimate, there could be more than a billion humanoid robots in use by 2050, which would consume about 10% of current world electricity production.⁵¹

The need for more and more energy is ultimately the best reason to transition off of fossil fuels in the 21st century: there just aren’t enough of them. There are an estimated 13,600 TW-years of coal, oil and gas remaining in the ground; if we were to 10x world energy usage, that would only represent 68 years of energy.⁵² Only solar, nuclear, and geothermal have a hope of powering the superabundant energy future

AI Robots in the Workplace

Preparing for Humanoid Colleagues

CIOs can collaborate with CHROs to reimagine work and help redefine jobs for people and devices

A Paper by Tammy Whitehouse, senior writer.

Executive Perspectives in The Wall Street Journal, Deloitte Services LP

Published on  Jul 25, 2025.

Amid significant advances in the development of AI-enabled robotic devices, organizations may face potentially transformative changes in business and operating models, placing CIOs and chief human resources officers (CHROs) on the front lines of reimagining how work is performed and managed.

While robotics and automation have been developing for many years, the tools are advancing with the integration of generative AI and agentic AI, bringing humanoid robots and other AI-enabled robotic devices out of the realm of science fiction and into modernized workplaces, says Franz Gilbert, managing director and leader of Human Capital Ecosystems and Alliances at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

“As technology advances, these devices are beginning to transform work environments, operations, and workforce dynamics,” he says.

AI-powered humanoid robots are a specific form factor of robotics designed to emulate the human body’s anatomy and movement. By combining physical dexterity, mobility, and cognitive intelligence, these machines can help augment human workforces in environments designed for people, Gilbert says. The integration of robots that look and operate like humans may present several challenges, one of which focuses on the need to redesign work processes.

“The goal will be to create a workforce where humans and robots can work safely side by side, leveraging the strengths of both humans and robots to enhance productivity and innovation,” Gilbert says. “This involves a deep understanding of the capabilities of these robotic systems and how they can be strategically deployed to complement human workforces.”

Companies may look to rethink job roles, tasks, and training programs to enable human workers to operate at their full potential while robots perform tasks alongside them, says Matt Shannon, senior manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “This suggests the need for significant collaboration involving HR, operations, and IT departments to re-engineer work, address change management concerns, and facilitate a smooth implementation,” he says.

Capabilities of AI-Enabled Devices 

AI-enabled devices are defined by their ability to operate in human environments, leverage AI for perception and decision-making, and perform a range of tasks that have traditionally required human labor. Some examples include:

Humanoid robots. Designed to resemble and mimic human-like characteristics and movements, most of these robots have human features such as arms, legs, torsos, and heads. They are often equipped with actuators and sensors to operate in spaces built for people.

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Capable of moving independently through dynamic environments, these robots can be used for transporting goods or supplies in warehouses, factories, hospitals, restaurants, or airports. These devices might also interact with people and perform service tasks, such as greeting, guiding, or delivering items in offices, hospitals, or retail settings.

Quadruped robots. These four-legged robots can navigate challenging terrain and carry payloads. They are sometimes used in industrial or logistics settings and increasingly are also used for surveillance and security.

Intelligent robotic arms. These advanced robotic arms can manipulate objects with human-like dexterity and are integrated into mobile platforms for flexible deployment.

Drones. In a variety of sizes and configurations, drones can help with inventory management, inspections, monitoring, surveillance, mapping, search and rescue, and materials delivery in a wide range of environments.

Industries such as warehousing, manufacturing, and health care appear to be making progress toward adopting humanoid, AI-enabled robotics, Gilbert says. “These sectors are beginning to leverage robots to address labor shortages, improve efficiency, and enhance safety in hazardous environments,” he says.

For example, in warehouses, AI-enabled humanoid robots can be deployed to automate repetitive and physically demanding tasks such as picking up, packing, and transporting goods. These robots can navigate complex warehouse layouts, identify and retrieve items from shelves, and deliver them to designated packing stations.

“By taking over a growing number of routine activities, robots can help increase operational efficiency and accuracy while freeing up human workers to focus on more complex problem-solving, quality control, and process improvement initiatives,” Gilbert says.

This transformation can also help warehouses, which are often located in rural areas near major freight lines, address staffing challenges. Similarly, in health care, autonomous mobile robots are being used in some settings to transport medical supplies, allowing health care professionals to focus on more critical tasks.

Reimagining Work 

In 2025, the deployment of humanoid robots in enterprise settings appears largely in the pilot and proof-of-concept phase. Some organizations are testing these robots in secure and isolated environments, relying on teleoperation to collect operational data and refine AI models for greater autonomy in the future.

This early stage focus on humanoids reflects their potential to operate in spaces designed for people and to eventually take on a broader range of workplace tasks. As these technologies continue to evolve, corporate leaders can anticipate and prepare for the changes they are expected to bring, helping position their organizations to harness the potential.

“The rapid advancement of humanoid, AI-enabled robotics is prompting some organizations to fundamentally rethink how work is structured and delivered, making collaboration between CIOs and CHROs increasingly important,” Gilbert says. “The integration of robotics into the workplace is not a technology deployment, but a comprehensive transformation that should include both technical and human-centered strategies.”

CIOs should confirm that the organization’s digital infrastructure can support the deployment and scaling of AI-enabled robots, which includes evaluating the readiness of IT systems, verifying cybersecurity, and enabling the interoperability of robots with existing enterprise platforms. CIOs should also anticipate how robotics can generate new data streams and call for new forms of digital oversight and governance.

As robots take on more routine and repetitive tasks, CHROs can lead efforts to redesign roles, Shannon says. “This involves redeveloping job descriptions, for both humans and machines, as well as reskilling and upskilling employees, rethinking performance metrics, and fostering collaboration between humans and machines,” he says. “CHROs also have a responsibility to help create new roles for humans, such as those overseeing, teleoperating, and servicing AI-enabled devices.”

CHROs also play an important role in change management, helping employees adapt to new ways of working and addressing concerns about role changes. In leading learning and development, CHROs may also be in a position to help with training AI-enabled devices.

CIOs and CHROs should work together to map out which tasks and processes may be best suited for current and near-term robotic capabilities, and which call for uniquely human skills such as creativity, empathy, and complex problem-solving. This collaborative approach can help align technology investments with workforce strategies and position humans to contribute according to their strengths in the workforce of the future.

Preparing the Organization for Transformation 

As organizations look to harness the potential of AI-enabled humanoid robots, a thoughtful and coordinated approach is important for successful integration and lasting impact. Such an approach might include:

Assessing organizational readiness. Evaluate both technology infrastructure and workforce capabilities to determine preparedness for integrating AI-enabled robots, including cybersecurity, data management, and interoperability. Consider how the HR function could be affected in redesigning work and developing job descriptions.

Fostering cross-functional collaboration. Encourage close partnership between CIOs, CHROs, and other key stakeholders, such as operations and finance, to align technology adoption with workforce strategy, organizational culture, and investment.

Redesigning work and roles. Reimagine job roles, workflows, and processes to leverage the strengths of humans, focusing efforts on higher-value, creative, and interpersonal activities.

Investing in training and skills development. Develop and implement reskilling and upskilling programs to prepare employees for new roles in a robot-enhanced workplace, emphasizing both technical and soft skills.

Piloting and iterating robotic solutions. Launch pilot projects in targeted environments to test new models of work that integrate humanoid robots, gather feedback, measure outcomes, and refine strategies. Robots that are successful in one area may be trained to deploy for multiple use cases.

Engaging employees and leading change management. Communicate transparently about changes, involve employees in process redesign, address concerns about job displacement, and cultivate a culture that embraces innovation and collaboration.

Monitoring, measuring, and adjusting. Track the impact of robotics integration on productivity, employee satisfaction, and business performance, using insights to continually improve strategies and outcomes.

To help prepare an organization for transformation, leaders should engage employees in the journey, gather input from frontline workers, and pilot new workflows that leverage the complementary capabilities of humans and machines, Gilbert says. “CIOs and CHROs can jointly sponsor cross-functional teams to experiment with new models of work, measure outcomes, and iterate,” he says.

The integration of humanoid, AI-enabled robotics can be more than a technology upgrade. It can be an opportunity to create more agile, resilient, and innovative organizations. By working in tandem, CIOs and CHROs can equip the workforce of the future to thrive alongside intelligent machines, unlocking new levels of productivity and value for the business.

Mastery over space

A Paper by Jason Crawford

Starting with the first passenger railroads around 1830 through the deployment of passenger jets in the 1960s, powered vehicles have dramatically shrunk travel times, at all scales, from the neighborhood to the world. Yet we are still limited by distance. It matters enormously what city you live in, because it’s expensive and time-consuming to travel outside of it; even within a metro area, people are limited by commute.

Increases in speed and convenience don’t just save us time: they expand our world, as we begin to take trips that were inaccessible before. Across a wide variety of societies and transport systems, from rural African villages to modern US and Singapore, people spend about an hour a day on total travel.²⁵ So when speed doubles, rather than cutting our travel time in half, it instead doubles our travel radius, opening up more of the world to us—and since area goes as the square of the distance, doubling a travel radius actually opens up four times as much of the world.²⁶

The next great frontier in speed is supersonic passenger flight. At the speed of Mach 1.7 planned for the airliner from Boom Supersonic, you could fly from New York to London in under 4 hours, or San Francisco to Tokyo in 6 and a half.²⁷ This possibility was proven more than 50 years ago with Concorde; it has merely been languishing for want of updated technologies and a profitable business model.

Passenger jets, however, will always have the problems of trains, buses, and other forms of mass transit: they go from station to station, not from your origin to your destination; and they come and go on their schedule, not yours. The ultimate in travel convenience is a personal vehicle: one that leaves whenever you’re ready, starts from wherever you are, takes you wherever you’re going, and lets you stash all your stuff in the trunk. In the bold, ambitious future, we might create transportation that combines the convenience of personal vehicles with the speed of air travel: the “flying car.”

Like most people, I was initially skeptical of this idea, seeing it as a fantasy of science fiction. I changed my mind after reading J. Storrs Hall’s Where Is My Flying Car? Hall recounts the history of flying car research and development, catalogs design approaches, models engineering tradeoffs and travel times, and concludes that there is no technological or economic reason why we can’t have flying cars with existing technology.²⁸

The vehicles of the future might also be autonomous—a huge boost to convenience, cost, privacy, and safety. Already, self-driving robotaxis are doing business on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Phoenix.²⁹ Early data shows that Waymos are far safer than human drivers—unsurprising to anyone who’s taken a ride in one and noticed how mild-mannered its driving style is. Flying cars might also need autonomy, for safety and to obviate turning everyone into pilots. And autonomous trucking might reduce the cost of freight by over 40%.³⁰

But all of the above is just about getting around Earth. Sooner or later, it will be time to make a serious foray into space.

Rocketry, after peaking during the Apollo program and languishing thereafter, is finally advancing again in recent years, mostly thanks to SpaceX. After decades of launch costs hovering around $10,000/kg, Falcon 9 lowered costs to $2,600/kg and Falcon Heavy to $1,500/kg.³¹ This has driven more than a 20x increase in the annual number of objects launched into space. Many of them are Starlink satellites providing high-speed internet service to air passengers, rural homes, van-lifers, fishing boats, oil rigs, scientific outposts, disaster zones, and battlefields.³²

 

 

For Starship, the aspirational long-term target launch cost is $10/kg, which would expand the space economy even more dramatically.³³ But by that point, they might face competition from other launch providers—such Longshot Space Technology, which is making enormous cannons that use pressurized gas to shoot cargo out of the atmosphere.³⁴

The economic case for space is sparse right now. The best reasons to go beyond Earth orbit are tourism, science, maybe asteroid defense, and some just-emerging applications of space manufacturing.³⁵ Other applications, such as space-based solar power or mining the Moon or asteroids, don’t seem to be economically useful in the foreseeable future.³⁶ Some factors will inevitably push us into space if growth continues—at some point we will exhaust something on Earth, whether material resources or energy or heat dissipation³⁷ or simply room for more people—but those limits are orders of magnitude away.

Still, space calls to us. In his famous speech on the Moon mission, John F. Kennedy invoked the British mountaineer who had wanted to climb Mt. Everest “because it’s there,” saying: “space is there, and we’re going to climb it.”³⁸ I suspect that as soon as we can afford the luxury, we will go to space because we want to, for the sake of exploration and adventure, well before we have to for reasons of economics

Mastery over information

A Paper by Jason Crawford

I’ve already described why AI has the potential to create a new economic era. Let’s consider what this might look like.

In the bold, ambitious future, AI workers may have enough different skillsets to enable entire virtual businesses. Today, if you have an idea for a software application, you might have to hire engineers to develop it, product managers to write the specifications, designers to create the interface, marketers to launch the product, and sales representatives to close deals—presuming you don’t have all of those skills yourself. To hire those people takes millions of dollars, so you have to figure out how to network your way to VCs and pitch them—presuming you aren’t independently very wealthy. This process takes years.²⁰ In the future, you might be able to spin up virtual workers for all the above functions on demand. Instead of 2 years and $2 million to launch a simple app, it might take 2 months and $20k. This would be accessible to many more people, and for many more applications. Many custom applications might be created that don’t even rise to the level of businesses, to run every reading group, little league, and knitting club.

Professional services might be democratized. Today only the wealthy can afford the best lawyers or doctors, or an accountant to do their taxes, or a therapist to listen to their troubles. In the future, first-rate services might be available to almost everyone—just as the average person now consumes fruits, spices, or clothing that once were the prerogative of royalty.

Another luxury service the wealthy can afford is private tutoring. In the bold, ambitious future, every student might receive personalized instruction. Teaching could follow the student’s interests, on a daily basis, to optimize for motivation. When a student is struggling, the lesson could be slowed down, simplified, or repeated as necessary for mastery; when a student is excelling, the lesson could be sped up or taken to the next level. Every student might be able to achieve their maximum potential.

A very small team, or even one person working alone, might be able to create an entire feature-length film, for a fraction of a percent of the budget of today’s blockbusters. This could unleash a flood of creativity, make an end run around the traditional media gatekeepers, and liberate us from the Hollywood rut of sequels, franchises, and remakes.

AI matchmakers might help us make all kinds of connections, both personal and professional introducing us to people we’d never otherwise have met, and triaging out the introductory meetings that would just be a mutual waste of time. And at the other end of the pipeline, AI might help us close uncomfortable ads—buying a car, selling a house, negotiating a job offer or a VC term sheet—saving us from processes that most of us find uncomfortable, and leveling a playing field that is currently tilted in favor of the more experienced party in each of these deals.

Language might no longer be a barrier, anywhere, for any reason. Imagine knowing every language in the world. Imagine being able to read any book, article, paper, essay, or blog post, no matter what language it was written in. Imagine being able to listen to any talk, podcast, or news report, with the “Babel fish” from the Hitchhiker’s Guide as your interpreter. Imagine this ability granted to everyone on Earth, beginning to dissolve the barriers between peoples and cultures.

Mathematics might soon be, in essence, completed: all open questions answered, from the Riemann hypothesis to the twin prime conjecture to the P vs. NP question.²¹ Unlike other branches of science, this would require no laboratory experiments, just a lot of computation; and the results could be verified via formal proofs—no need to trust the AI’s intuition or worry about hallucinations.

All of the above is based only on AI that runs in the cloud, or on your phone or laptop. A new generation of robotics, leveraging deep learning techniques and modern language and vision models, might dramatically expand what physical work can be automated.²² The obvious possibilities, already thoroughly envisioned by science fiction, need not be rehearsed here.

Also, all of the above is envisioning only our current screen-and-keyboard interfaces to software. Already AI is being incorporated into wearable electronics, such as voice-activated pendants or camera-enabled Ray Bans.²³ An AI that hears what you hear, sees what you see, and is always available for a conversation might be able to assist you better than any butler or servant.

Or, someday, we might perfect brain-computer interfaces and connect to the machines directly. Already experimental Neuralink devices have allowed a paralyzed man to control a computer; other devices are being tested to restore sight to the blind.²⁴ Information tools, from cuneiform to smartphones, have always acted as extensions of our minds, and the more ubiquitous and accessible they are, the more they can augment our cognitive abilities. The logical end of that progression is to merge with the machines.

Mastery over biology

A Paper by Jason Crawford

In the bold, ambitious future, we might cure all disease.

We are already making progress against cancer and heart disease, by far the largest causes of death in wealthy countries.⁵ Future progress against cancer might come from early detection via blood or imaging, mRNA cancer “vaccines,” improved CAR-T cell therapy, or even direct editing of cancerous DNA; for heart disease, it might come from advances in surgery, new valve replacement techniques, or drugs such as PCSK9 inhibitors and GLP-1 agonists.⁶ Better gene editing toolkits, and delivery mechanisms to get them to the right cells, might cure genetic diseases such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anemia, or Huntington’s—indeed, treatments for some of these are already approved or in development.⁷ Artificial kidneys grown from our own stem cells might replace diseased ones.⁸ We might cure, or learn how to prevent, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. We might cure metabolic diseases, and end obesity. We might finally discover the formula for optimal nutrition, creating food that is both delicious and perfectly healthy, and ending the curse of junk food.

We might end pandemics. Far-UVC light might be used to kill airborne pathogens, sanitizing our air the way that chlorine and filtration sanitized our water over a century ago.⁹ Monitoring of wastewater in cities and airports could give early warning of growing threats.¹⁰ CRISPR-based gene drives could eliminate the species of mosquitoes that carry human diseases.¹¹ More ambitiously, biotech founder and sci-fi author Hannu Rajaniemi has proposed an “immune-computer interface,” a way to artificially augment our immune systems.¹² In his novel Darkome, he imagines a wearable device: a miniature mRNA synthesizer with a wi-fi connection, strapped to your arm.¹³ In this world, any time a new pathogen is detected anywhere on the planet, everyone wearing one of these devices can get the vaccine for it before it has time to spread.

We might even cure aging. We rarely think of aging as a disease; we accept it as natural and inevitable. But there is no biological reason why we have to age—why we have to lose strength and muscle mass, suffer worse fractures from weaker bones, face increased risk of cancer and infection, lose our hearing and our eyesight and our energy and our fertility. A new drug, a genetic therapy, or the right cocktail of transcription factors¹⁴ might grant everyone as many years of healthy, vigorous life as they choose.

And to be truly ambitious, we should go beyond eliminating disease, beyond simply maintaining ourselves at a normal, baseline state of health. We might enhance ourselves to levels of functioning far above baseline. We should be able to achieve exceptional strength, endurance, flexibility, and energy. We should all be as attractive as we want to be, with the body composition, skin quality, and hair that we prefer. We should all have exceptional intelligence, creativity, memory, focus, willpower, resilience, and mood. We could all be “short sleepers,” those rare genetic individuals who thrive on four hours of sleep a night; perhaps we will even learn how to eliminate the need for sleep entirely.¹⁵ Almost none of this even requires going beyond demonstrated human limits for these qualities: if we could simply bring the average person up to 99th percentile on all of these axes at once, it would make them effectively superhuman.¹⁶

Nor need we stop at optimizing ourselves. We might optimize our crops and livestock as well: for efficiency, nutrition, taste, and hardiness; for resistance to disease and pests without the need for chemicals.¹⁷ That is, assuming we have livestock in the future—we might not, if we can invent more efficient ways to produce meat, by growing it in a lab, or if someday we can synthesize all our food directly from chemicals, without needing to rely on growing entire organisms that we only eat a part of.¹⁸ We might even invent entirely new types of foods, both meat and vegetable, with undiscovered flavors never found in nature. Nor need we stop at food: bioengineering could give us new materials with novel properties or applications, such as super-strong fibers derived from spider silk.¹⁹

The Economics of Education Reform

We know how to make schools effective.

What’s lacking is leadership committed to doing so.

By Roland Fryer (Wall Street Journal Sept. 8, 2025)

As families settle into back-to-school routines, parents should pause to consider the quality of the schools they trust with their children’s futures.

American students still haven’t recovered from the Covid pandemic, during which they lost decades of progress. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, math scores for 9-year-olds fell in 2022 to levels last seen in the 1990s. Reading scores stagnated. Black and Hispanic students slid even further behind, widening gaps that were already troubling.

This is personal to me: In Houston, a research project I led called Apollo 20 showed it was possible to erase the racial achievement gap in less than two years, by applying simple reform principles to the worst-performing schools. Today, the tools we used sit on the shelf—not because they failed, but because leaders failed to act. We are watching temporary setbacks calcify into permanent inequality, even though we know how to reverse them.

I’ve been obsessed with fixing American schools for most of my career. In 2009 I told my team of research assistants and project managers that we would do it by 2025. It was part optimism, part arrogance, part youthful naiveté. At 32, I was surrounded by education leaders—Joel Klein, Geoffrey Canada and Eva Moskowitz in New York, Michelle Rhee in Washington, Tom Boasberg in Denver, and Arne Duncan in Chicago—who believed nothing was impossible and who fueled my optimism.

Fifteen years later, many of the ideas that once filled our conversations are gone—not because they failed, but because the system walked away from them.

In 2012, my graduate student Will Dobbie and I collected unprecedented data from nearly 50 New York City charter schools to see which practices truly boosted student learning. Class size and teacher credentials—political obsessions for decades—mattered little. What mattered most were five concrete, replicable practices: more instruction time, high expectations, frequent teacher feedback, data-driven instruction, and high-dosage tutoring. Together, these five tenets explained roughly half the difference between effective and ineffective schools.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer discovered something remarkable while studying the Harlem Children’s Zone. They had eliminated the racial achievement gap in math and cut it by a third in reading. But how?

Armed with that evidence, we searched for districts willing to test the model—from Haiti to Harlem. Most weren’t interested. But in Houston, superintendent Terry Grier opened the door. Together we applied the Five Tenets in 20 struggling public schools serving nearly 20,000 students. We lengthened the school year by 20%, brought in hundreds of tutors, replaced 95% of principals and half the teachers while retraining the rest, embedded data into instruction, and built a culture of high expectations. It was one of the most ambitious social experiments in American public education.

The results were astonishing. In elementary-school math, students gained the equivalent of four extra months of learning a year—enough to erase the racial achievement gap in less than two years if we implemented these practices in the lowest-performing half of schools nationwide. In secondary schools, where skeptics said reform was impossible, students gained nearly eight additional months of learning in a nine-month school year. These were bigger effects than those produced by the Harlem Children’s Zone. Bigger than Success Academy. Bigger than anything else I’ve seen in my career.

For context, cutting class size yields about three months of extra learning. Teach for America adds two months in math. Head Start delivers about two months in early literacy. The Houston schools doubled those gains—year after year. By the third year, elementary students had accumulated the equivalent of an extra academic year. In middle and high school, it was two. These weren’t “miracle kids” or “superhuman teachers.” The system—not the students—changed.

Math results were jaw-dropping, but reading proved stubborn. Gains were modest in elementary school and nearly zero in secondary school—mirroring what even the best charter schools have found nationwide.

Why? Some developmental psychologists point to early windows for language acquisition. Others note that students who speak nonstandard English at home may struggle more with school-based literacy. My own work at an urban boarding school outside Washington, D.C.—where students lived and breathed academic English—produced equal gains in reading and math, the only intervention I know of that closed both gaps simultaneously. Another possibility is the tests themselves: Math can be practiced through rules and repetition, while reading requires comprehension, interpretation, and nuance—skills far harder to measure or standardize. Whatever the reason, reading remains America’s unfinished business.

By 2013, Apollo was finished—not despite its success but because of it. If you had told me in 2010 that we would close the racial achievement gap in math in under two years, I would have laughed at you. But we did. Even so, the funding was pulled from the schools—because they were no longer the worst in the district—and they predictably backslid. Ten years later, the Texas Education Agency seized control of Houston’s schools, removing the elected leadership and installing a state board. That is reform by crisis—the worst kind of reform. Denver, by contrast, sustained the gains because its leaders committed to a feeder pattern from elementary through high school.

This fall, millions of children are walking into schools that still bear the scars of Covid—and of our abandonment of real reform. Average math scores are lower than they were two decades ago. Reading scores have flat-lined. Black and Hispanic students lost the most ground. The nation is facing the largest educational crisis in a generation.

And that isn’t even the real tragedy. The tragedy is that we already know what works. High-dosage tutoring, extended learning time, relentless use of data and feedback, and refusing to accept the soft bigotry of low expectations—these aren’t theories. They’re proven. They worked in Houston. They worked in Denver. They can work anywhere if we have leaders with the courage to act. Kids don’t get a do-over on their school years. If we squander another decade, the damage will be permanent.

The nation faces a choice. We can let another school year pass while students—especially minority students—fall further behind. Or we can finally summon the will to scale what works and sustain it beyond the news cycle. America’s children hang in the balance.

The Techno-Humanist Manifesto

by Jason Crawford

Is there really that much more progress to be made in the future? How many problems are left to solve? How much better could life really get?

After all, we are pretty comfortable today. We have electricity, clean running water, heating, and air conditioning, plenty of food, comfortable clothes and beds, cars, and planes to get around, entertainment on tap. What more could we ask for? Maybe life could be 10% better, but 10x? We seem to be doing just fine.

Most of the amenities we consider necessary for comfortable living, however, were invented relatively recently; the average American didn’t have this standard of living until the mid-20th century. The average person living in 1800 did not have electricity or plumbing; indeed, the vast majority of people in that era lived in what we would now consider extreme poverty.¹ But to them, it didn’t feel like extreme poverty: it felt normal. They had enough food in the larder, enough water in the well, and enough firewood to last the winter; they had a roof over their heads, and their children were not clothed in rags. They, too, felt they were doing just fine.²

Our sense of “enough” is not absolute, but relative: relative to our expectations and to the standard of living we grew up with. And just as the person who felt they had “enough” in 1800 was extremely poor by the standards of the present, we are all poor by the standards of the future if exponential growth continues.

Future students will recoil in horror when they realize that we died from cancer and heart disease and car crashes, that we toiled on farms and in factories, that we wasted time commuting and shopping, that most people still cleaned their own homes by hand, that we watched our thermostats carefully and ran our laundry at night to save on electricity, that a foreign vacation was a luxury we could only indulge in once a year, that we sometimes lost our homes to hurricanes and forest fires.

Putting it positively: we are fabulously rich by the standards of 1800, and so we, or our descendants, can all be fabulously rich in the future by the standards of today.

But no such vision is part of mainstream culture. The most optimistic goals you will hear from most people are things like stop climate change, prevent pandemics, relieve poverty. These are all the negation of negatives, and modest ones at that—as if the best we can do in the future is to raise the floor and avoid disaster. There is no bold, ambitious vision of a future in which we also raise the ceiling, a future full of positive developments.

It can be hard to make such a vision compelling. Goals that are obviously wonderful, such as curing all disease, seem like science fiction impossibilities. Those that are more clearly achievable, such as supersonic flight, feel like mere conveniences. But science fiction can come true—indeed, it already has, many times over. We live in the sci-fi future imagined long ago, from the heavier-than-air flying machines of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to the hand-held communicator of Star Trek.³ Nor should we dismiss “mere” conveniences. Conveniences compound. What seem like trivial improvements add up, over time, to transformations. Refrigerators, electric stoves, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and dishwashers were conveniences, but together they transformed domestic life, and helped to transform the role of women in society.⁴ The incremental improvement of agriculture, over centuries, eliminated famine.

So, let’s envision a bold, ambitious future—a future we want to live in, and are inspired to build. This will be speculative: not a blueprint drawn up with surveyor’s tools, but a canvas painted in broad strokes. Next, our vision will be one of mastery over all aspects of nature.

How Leadership Connects Mission, Vision, and Values Muddy Boots

A Paper by David Griffith

I have been thinking lately about the connection between an organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values, and its Leadership. One reads and hears a variety of views on the subject these days, and the current political environment in the country only sharpens the discussions. Muddy Boots has always been about these topics, and what does it look like when it is “right,” and how does one practice and participate in and on the best practices of Mission, Vision, Values, and the corresponding leadership?

Mission, as I define it, is what an organization does. At its core, what is it that you do? For all your stakeholders. I view stakeholders as customers, employees, employee families, alumni, vendors, suppliers, the community, and shareholders.

Vision, as I define it, is what it looks like when it is right, as in right for all your stakeholders.

What are the three to five core values that every decision and strategy is filtered through? Do all your stakeholders know your values and where you stand?

At ECS, a nonprofit that I led for 10 years in Philadelphia, we serve as an example. Our mission is to challenge poverty. Our vision is a world where access to opportunity is available for all. Our values are Dignity, Justice, Community, and Impact.

The critical link between Mission, Vision, and Values is the organization’s leadership. Not just the CEO, but also the board and senior management.

Where I have seen leaders excel is when the focus and behavior are on the following:

  • A clear understanding and agreement with Mission, Vision, and Values. Connection with all the stakeholders.
  • A commitment to Muddy Boots, as in they go into the field and listen to customers, employees, stakeholders, and industry leaders.
  • The creation of a 3–5-year strategy to move the organization forward and a toolbox that looks at data and adjusts the plan in the face of change. Adjust the strategy, but not the mission, vision, or values.
  • Is relentless on talent.
  • Is a coach with their team. Asks great questions, gives credit, and listens. Speaks last in meetings. Creates accountabilities for all.
  • Represents the organization.
  • Give credit when it goes well and own it when it does not.
  • Lives by the Values of the organization.
  • Understands that the real skill is to see ahead and react, what I call Radar.
  • Have a board/advisor/stakeholder group that can problem-solve and bring value to any challenge.

The link is where the magic happens. An organization I now work with, Delaware Valley Family Business Center, focuses on family businesses, and they describe that link using a 5 MOUNTAIN® model.

The mountains are comprised of Family, Management, Advisors, Board, and Shareholders. The leadership team and senior leaders must serve as the link between the organization, its stakeholders, and its mission, vision, and values.

When I see it work, the links are clear. Conditions can change, strategies can be adjusted, but the relentless focus on what we do, how we do it, and what lines we won’t cross, combined with building a talented team that can execute and respond, is both the simple and complex work of any successful organization.

So, look in the mirror. This is what good organizations and good leaders do every day. Is their clarity linked to all that you do? What is your purpose? What is your strategy? What is your mission, vision, and values? Do you have the talent? How do you stack up to an honest and transparent scorecard?

Be the link.

The Value of Cybersecurity Risk Assessments in Dealerships

Guest writer Kenny Molitor joins this week with a post on the value of cybersecurity risk assessments. Read on to learn why dealerships can’t afford to overlook their digital health.

For equipment dealerships, the service department has always been the engine of profitability. A well-run shop not only delivers customer satisfaction but also drives millions of dollars in revenue each year. Every minute of downtime translates into lost productivity, missed opportunities, and frustrated customers.

While dealers focus heavily on machine uptime, one hidden vulnerability is often overlooked:

The health of their IT systems.

Cybersecurity risks and untested systems can bring operations to a halt just as quickly as a machine breakdown on a jobsite.

The Hidden Cyber Risks in Dealerships

Modern dealerships rely on technology across every department, from service scheduling to financial applications. Yet many operate without a clear picture of their risk exposure. Cybersecurity risk assessments often uncover issues like these:

  • Outdated Configurations: Dealer Management Systems (DMS) and Microsoft 365 tenants often run with weak settings or missing updates, making them easy targets.
  • Unsecured Remote Access: With mobile service techs and multiple branches, unsecured VPNs or remote desktops can open the door to attackers.
  • Neglected Endpoints: Field laptops and shop computers without proper patching or monitoring create invisible weak points.
  • Vendor Risks: OEM tools, third-party apps, and outside contractors all connect to dealership systems, sometimes without security checks.
  • Admin Passwords That Never Expire: Old administrator accounts are often left active with passwords that haven’t changed in years. Once stolen, they provide indefinite access to sensitive systems.
  • Shared or Weak Admin Credentials: In some dealerships, multiple employees still share one “master” login. This practice eliminates accountability and makes it impossible to trace activity in the event of a breach.
  • No Multifactor Authentication (MFA): Administrator and finance accounts without MFA remain one of the easiest entry points for attackers.
  • Lack of Hard Drive Encryption: Laptops and desktops used in service bays or by field technicians often store sensitive data. Without full-disk encryption, a lost or stolen device could expose thousands of customer records.
  • Unsecured Removable Media: USB drives and external hard drives without encryption or access controls introduce the risk of both accidental data loss and intentional theft.

A Real-World Example

One dealership learned this the hard way when a field technician’s laptop was stolen out of a service truck. Because the device had no encryption, the thief gained immediate access to customer credit applications, loan documents, and vendor contracts. The fallout included notifying hundreds of customers, purchasing credit monitoring for affected individuals, and a strained relationship with their OEM partner who demanded proof of stronger security controls.

Each of these issues may seem small in isolation, but together they create vulnerabilities that can disrupt dealership operations, expose customer data, and erode trust with OEMs and clients.

The Strategic Importance of Cybersecurity Risk Assessments

Each of these risks — from outdated admin passwords to unencrypted laptops — might seem like small cracks in the system. But left unaddressed, they can combine into dealership-wide outages, lost revenue, and damaged customer trust.

That’s why cybersecurity risk assessments are so important. They function like a comprehensive inspection for IT, giving dealers the same kind of visibility into their digital environment that they expect from a thorough machine inspection in the shop. Instead of guessing, leadership gains a clear, prioritized view of where they stand and what to do next.

For example, one dealer discovered during an assessment that a former employee’s administrator account was still active months after they left the company. That single oversight meant anyone who obtained those credentials could have accessed financial records, parts systems, and OEM portals without detection. Closing that gap immediately reduced their risk and reassured their OEM partner that security was being taken seriously.

The value lies in:

  • Identifying Weak Points: Pinpoint gaps before attackers exploit them.
  • Reducing Downtime: Prevent outages of critical systems like parts ordering or service scheduling.
  • Protecting Customer Trust: Safeguard financing and insurance data your clients expect you to protect.
  • Guiding Investments: Provide leadership with a prioritized roadmap for IT spending instead of relying on guesswork.
  • Aligning with OEMs: More manufacturers, including Kubota, Case, John Deere, and New Holland, are requiring stronger dealer-level security practices.

 

Real-World Implications of Ignoring Assessments

Skipping regular cybersecurity risk assessments often feels harmless — until a problem surfaces. The challenge is that most dealerships don’t realize how fragile their IT foundation is until downtime, data loss, or a breach brings it to light.

One dealership learned this the hard way when their departments were locked out of the DMS for nearly two days following a ransomware incident. Because no prior assessment had flagged weak remote access settings, attackers slipped in through a forgotten VPN account. The outage cost thousands in missed sales and delayed service jobs — and worse, it shook customer confidence.

The consequences of ignoring assessments are clear:

  • Revenue Loss: Service and sales downtime quickly translate into lost dollars.
  • Operational Bottlenecks: Workflows stall when systems fail, causing cascading delays across departments.
  • Customer Distrust: Clients expect their data to be secure. A single incident can drive them toward a competitor.
  • OEM Pressure: As manufacturers raise security expectations, failing to assess and address risks could jeopardize dealer relationships.

 

The Path Forward: Proactive Digital Health Checks

The dealerships that stay resilient are the ones that treat cybersecurity like preventive maintenance — a regular, intentional process, not a one-time project. Just as no one would send a machine into the field without routine service, IT systems need the same discipline.

Here’s what proactive dealerships are doing:

  • Regular Assessments: Conducting annual or quarterly reviews to keep pace with evolving threats. One dealer we worked with set up quarterly assessments after discovering during an initial review that several old admin accounts were still active. Within six months, their audit passed with zero findings — a complete turnaround from the year prior.
  • Executive Involvement: Treating cyber risk as a board-level issue, not just an IT concern. Leadership that reviews assessment results is better positioned to prioritize investments.
  • Actionable Roadmaps: Turning assessment findings into a clear plan with timelines, costs, and responsibilities — instead of leaving them as a list of technical problems.
  • Continuous Monitoring: Pairing assessments with 24/7 monitoring ensure that gaps closed today don’t reopen tomorrow.
  • Culture of Awareness: Training employees to recognize phishing attempts, use MFA, and protect customer data so the “human layer” of IT is just as resilient as the technical layer.

The dealerships embracing this approach don’t just avoid downtime — they gain stronger customer trust, smoother OEM relationships, and more predictable IT spending.

The Bottom Line
Cybersecurity risk assessments aren’t about checking a compliance box or satisfying an auditor. They’re about protecting what matters most to equipment dealerships: uptime, customer trust, and profitability.

Just as service managers rely on inspections to keep machines reliable, dealership leaders should rely on assessments to keep their digital infrastructure resilient.

Dealerships that make risk assessments a regular habit see clear benefits:

  • Fewer unexpected outages.
  • More predictable IT costs.
  • Stronger alignment with OEM requirements.
  • Greater confidence from customers who trust them with sensitive data.

In today’s environment, ignoring cyber risks isn’t an option. The dealerships that take a proactive approach will not only avoid costly incidents — they’ll turn IT into a true business asset.

Leadership, training, and strategy keep a dealership competitive. Cybersecurity risk assessments make sure nothing undermines that success.

Ready to See Where You Stand?

Cybersecurity risk assessments are the first step to protecting your dealership’s uptime, customer trust, and OEM relationships.

At rocketwise, we specialize in assessments built specifically for multi-location equipment dealerships.

Let’s schedule your Cybersecurity Risk Assessment today — and give you a clear, prioritized roadmap for protecting your operations.