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Forecasting the next decade of global opportunities and challenges in emerging technology

Alec Ross is a technology policy expert, former Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and author of the New York Times bestselling book The Industries of the Future. Drawing on its author’s years working in both the private and public sectors on issues involving innovation, public policy, international relations, and communications, The Industries of the Future maps out the sweeping global changes we can expect to see over the next ten years, addressing opportunities, challenges, and difficult questions along the way. Now in its sixth printing, the book covers emerging technologies in fields such as robotics, cybersecurity, genetics, banking, and defense. The New York Journal of Books lauded it as “a riveting and mind-bending book,” and Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Alec “one of those very rare people who can see patterns in the chaos and guidance for the road forward.” Alec is also currently distinguished visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Alec Ross spoke with citybizlist publisher Edwin Warfield for this interview.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What role will genetics play in the future?

ALEC ROSS: The world’s last trillion dollar industry was created out of computer code. The world’s next trillion dollar industry is going to be created out of genetic code. All of our bodies are made up of about 25,000 genes. We’re now about 15 years past the Human Genome Project, the mapping of the first human genome, and we’re finally at the point where we can develop some of the kinds of precision medicines and diagnostic tools drawing content out of those 25,000 genes to help us live longer and healthier lives.

The person who I’ve learned more from about this than anybody is somebody who I first met on the racquetball court: Dr. Bert Vogelstein. At first I thought that Dr. Vogelstein was just a gym rat. He’s got this sort of crazy gray hair, a sweat band, wears a knee brace on the outside of his 1970’s-style gray sweatpants, brings his racquetball gear to the court in an old Samsonite suitcase. Guess what? Dr. Vogelstein is about the world’s most cited living scientist. It was his team, among others, who determined how mutations and proteins cause cancer decades ago—kind of a big deal. And the innovation that Dr. Vogelstein’s team has unleashed, which I think really gives us a glimpse into the potential of genomics, is this thing called a liquid biopsy.

Now, when I go to the doctor every year, I’ll get blood drawn, and they’ll tell me what my cholesterol level is. With that same vial of blood, what Dr. Vogelstein’s researchers can do is detect cancerous cells at a hundredth the size of what can be detected by an MRI, meaning that instead of finding cancers that are in stage 3 and stage 4, when they’re very difficult to cure and where a person has become symptomatic, they can find it when there’s just a trace of cancerous cells before somebody is even feeling badly—early in stage 1 when it’s very curable. When things like the liquid biopsy become mainstreamed, it can add three to five years of projected life expectancy, and so I think that this is a wonderful thing that can make us live longer, healthier lives. Now, I do think that this will initially help people who are wealthy and Western, and it will have to trickle down over time to people who are middle class or lower income or non-Western. But I do think that the kinds of things that are being created in the labs in Baltimore, Maryland—oftentimes from researchers at Johns Hopkins University—are going to make the medicine we’re practicing today look primitive by comparison.

Q. How has visiting Johns Hopkins opened your mind further?

A. One of the other things coming out of Johns Hopkins that absolutely made my hair stand on end was looking at how we can draw information out of our genetic material and enable us to develop designer drugs to combat our illnesses. One of the examples that most struck me was by a Hopkins’ researcher named Luis Diaz, who started a company called Personal Genome Diagnostics—PGDx. What in essence they do is they’ve got these enormously powerful sequencing machines churning away on the waterfront in East Baltimore. When you have cancer, you can send them a sample of your noncancerous cells and of your cancerous cells, and what they’ll do is identify the specific protein that’s malfunctioning, and with that information about the specific malfunctioning protein, you can then, a) identify whether there’s already a drug that exists that can be used to inhibit or repair that protein, or b) figure out what’s closest to it. So, instead of just blasting everybody with radiation—instead of just everybody being subjected to chemotherapy and hoping for the best—this brings a level of science and genetic precision to fighting cancer that doesn’t presently exist.

Q. What do the economics of genetics look like?

A. I view the commercialization of genomics like it’s 1994 and the internet. It’s sort of Chapter One, page one. We’re very early in the creation of what I think will be a trillion dollar industry. I’m quite optimistic for the United States. I don’t think the United States is perfectly positioned, but what we have are the research institutions. We have the place where the research that will drive the creation of this industry—we have its home here in the United States. Foremost among them is Johns Hopkins University.

When I think about how a former logging capital in the Pacific Northwest became home to Amazon and Microsoft, and when I think about how the former home of apricots, prunes, and plums became Silicon Valley, you know, it’s not difficult for me to imagine Baltimore, Maryland going from being an industrial center—a place whose industry, you think of mapping more closely to the 1950s—I could very, very easily imagine it becoming the center of the creation of a trillion dollar industry in the 2020s. It’s all a product of world changing researchers and then making sure that the city where these research institutions exist are comfortable, happy headquarters for the researchers, as much as say Palo Alto was for Stanford and the creation of the dotcoms that came off of that campus.

Connect with Alec on LinkedIn

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Founded in 1969,  KatzAbosch is one of the largest CPA and business consulting services in the Mid-Atlantic region. Our mission is to provide the highest quality accounting, tax, financial and management consulting services to our clients. We understand the needs and challenges of our clients and we have made it our obligation to create, grow and protect asset value. The experts at KatzAbosch offer a full service solution while maintaining a tradition of ethics and incorporating the latest technology and unique business practices. Excellence in an industry often begins with how those closest to the company—its clients and employees—feel about it. For these individuals, KatzAbosch is a place where people and businesses excel and prosper. Our advisors can meet all of your service needs including; Audit & Accounting, Business Valuation & Litigation Support, Consulting, Estate Planning & Administration, Financial Institution Services, Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examinations, State and Local Tax (SALT), Taxes & Planning.

Mindgrub was founded in 2002 by a teacher-turned-technologist, and since then we have devoured every project to come across our plate. We are a team that solves client challenges by harnessing the newest technologies. We are not here to churn out code and pixels, we are here to pioneer new methods of learning and user interaction. You can see us leading the way at conferences like SXSW, TEDx, and NAB.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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