Trump’s new pick to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission is a win for the crypto industry, but the desired changes may be slow to come into play.
Big Tech has a great flow of cash on hand. Currency devaluation makes them lose purchasing power. Is Bitcoin a treasury solution to fight against inflation? Amazon is the next to decide.
Pro-crypto Arkansas Representative French Hill has taken leadership of the House committee crucial to molding crypto policy in Donald Trump’s administration.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, there are approximately 210 million EIGEN tokens in circulation, with a total supply of 1.68 billion.
The Intel 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, was released in 1971. With 2,300 transistors packed into 12mm2, it heralded a revolution in computing. A little over 50 years later, Apple’s M2 Ultra contains 134 billion transistors.
The scale of progress is difficult to comprehend, but the evolution of semiconductors, driven for decades by Moore’s Law, has paved a path from the emergence of personal computing and the internet to today’s AI revolution.
But this pace of innovation is not guaranteed, and the next frontier of technological advances—from the future of AI to new computing paradigms—will only happen if we think differently.
Atomic challenges
The modern microchip stretches both the limits of physics and credulity. Such is the atomic precision, that a few atoms can decide the function of an entire chip. This marvel of engineering is the result of over 50 years of exponential scaling creating faster, smaller transistors.
But we are reaching the physical limits of how small we can go, costs are increasing exponentially with complexity, and efficient power consumption is becoming increasingly difficult. In parallel, AI is demanding ever-more computing power. Data from Epoch AI indicates the amount of computing needed to develop AI is quickly outstripping Moore’s Law, doubling every six months in the “deep learning era” since 2010.
These interlinked trends present challenges not just for the industry, but society as a whole. Without new semiconductor innovation, today’s AI models and research will be starved of computational resources and struggle to scale and evolve. Key sectors like AI, autonomous vehicles, and advanced robotics will hit bottlenecks, and energy use from high-performance computing and AI will continue to soar.
Materials intelligence
At this inflection point, a complex, global ecosystem—from foundries and designers to highly specialized equipment manufacturers and materials solutions providers like Merck—is working together more closely than ever before to find the answers. All have a role to play, and the role of materials extends far, far beyond the silicon that makes up the wafer.
Instead, materials intelligence is present in almost every stage of the chip production process—whether in chemical reactions to carve circuits at molecular scale (etching) or adding incredibly thin layers to a wafer (deposition) with atomic precision: a human hair is 25,000 times thicker than layers in leading edge nodes.
Yes, materials provide a chip’s physical foundation and the substance of more powerful and compact components. But they are also integral to the advanced fabrication methods and novel chip designs that underpin the industry’s rapid progress in recent decades.
For this reason, materials science is taking on a heightened importance as we grapple with the limits of miniaturization. Advanced materials are needed more than ever for the industry to unlock the new designs and technologies capable of increasing chip efficiency, speed, and power. We are seeing novel chip architectures that embrace the third dimension and stack layers to optimize surface area usage while lowering energy consumption. The industry is harnessing advanced packaging techniques, where separate “chiplets” are fused with varying functions into a more efficient, powerful single chip. This is called heterogeneous integration.
Materials are also allowing the industry to look beyond traditional compositions. Photonic chips, for example, harness light rather than electricity to transmit data. In all cases, our partners rely on us to discover materials never previously used in chips and guide their use at the atomic level. This, in turn, is fostering the necessary conditions for AI to flourish in the immediate future.
New frontiers
The next big leap will involve thinking differently. The future of technological progress will be defined by our ability to look beyond traditional computing.
Answers to mounting concerns over energy efficiency, costs, and scalability will be found in ambitious new approaches inspired by biological processes or grounded in the principles of quantum mechanics.
While still in its infancy, quantum computing promises processing power and efficiencies well beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Even if practical, scalable quantum systems remain a long way off, their development is dependent on the discovery and application of state-of-the-art materials.
Similarly, emerging paradigms like neuromorphic computing, modelled on the human brain with architectures mimicking our own neural networks, could provide the firepower and energy-efficiency to unlock the next phase of AI development. Composed of a deeply complex web of artificial synapses and neurons, these chips would avoid traditional scalability roadblocks and the limitations of today’s Von Neumann computers that separate memory and processing.
Our biology consists of super complex, intertwined systems that have evolved by natural selection, but it can be inefficient; the human brain is capable of extraordinary feats of computational power, but it also requires sleep and careful upkeep. The most exciting step will be using advanced compute—AI and quantum—to finally understand and design systems inspired by biology. This combination will drive the power and ubiquity of next-generation computing and associated advances to human well-being.
Until then, the insatiable demand for more computing power to drive AI’s development poses difficult questions for an industry grappling with the fading of Moore’s Law and the constraints of physics. The race is on to produce more powerful, more efficient, and faster chips to progress AI’s transformative potential in every area of our lives.
Materials are playing a hidden, but increasingly crucial role in keeping pace, producing next-generation semiconductors and enabling the new computing paradigms that will deliver tomorrow’s technology.
But materials science’s most important role is yet to come. Its true potential will be to take us—and AI—beyond silicon into new frontiers and the realms of science fiction by harnessing the building blocks of biology.
This content was produced by EMD Electronics. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Google’s new Project Astra could be generative AI’s killer app
Google DeepMind has announced an impressive grab bag of new products and prototypes that may just let it seize back its lead in the race to turn generative artificial intelligence into a mass-market concern.
Top billing goes to Gemini 2.0—the latest iteration of Google DeepMind’s family of multimodal large language models, now redesigned around the ability to control agents—and a new version of Project Astra, the experimental everything app that the company teased at Google I/O in May.
The margins between top-end models like Gemini 2.0 and those from rival labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are now slim. These days, advances in large language models are less about how good they are and more about what you can do with them. And that’s where agents come in.
MIT Technology Review got to try out Astra in a closed-door live demo last week. It gave us a hint at what’s to come. Find out more in the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
China banned exports of a few rare minerals to the US. Things could get messier.
—Casey Crownhart
I’ve thought more about gallium and germanium over the last week than I ever have before (and probably more than anyone ever should).
China banned the export of those materials to the US last week and placed restrictions on others. The move is just the latest drama in escalating trade tensions between the two countries.
While the new export bans could have significant economic consequences, this might be only the beginning. China is a powerhouse, and not just in those niche materials—it’s also a juggernaut in clean energy, and particularly in battery supply chains. So what comes next could have significant consequences for EVs and climate action more broadly. Read the full story.
This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 It’s looking pretty likely 2024 will be the hottest year on record
But average temperatures are just one way of assessing our warming world. (New Scientist $)
+ The first few months of 2025 are likely to be hotter than average, too. (Reuters)
+ The US is about to make a sharp turn on climate policy. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Meta has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund
In an effort to strengthen their previously fractious relationship. (WSJ $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only tech figure seeking the President-elect’s ear. (Insider $)
3 How China secretly repatriates Uyghurs
Even the United Nations is seemingly powerless to stop it. (WP $)
+ Uyghurs outside China are traumatized. Now they’re starting to talk about it. (MIT Technology Review)
4 How Big Tech decides when to scrub a user’s digital footprint
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione’s Instagram has been taken down—but his Goodreads hasn’t. (NYT $)
+ Why it’s dangerous to treat public online accounts as the full story. (NY Mag $)
5 Russia-backed hackers targeted Ukraine’s military using criminal tools
Which makes it even harder to work out who did it. (TechCrunch)
6 What Cruise’s exit means for the rest of the robotaxi industry
Automakers are becoming frustrated waiting for the technology to mature. (The Verge)
+ Cruise will focus on developing fully autonomous personal vehicles instead. (NYT $)
7 Researching risky pathogens is extremely high stakes
The potential for abuse has some researchers worried we shouldn’t undertake it at all. (Undark Magazine)
+ Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Altermagnetism could be computing’s next big thing
It would lead to faster, more reliable electronic devices. (FT $)
9 Why some people need so little sleep
Gene mutations appear to hold at least some of the answers. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Babies spend most of their time asleep. New technologies are beginning to reveal why. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Inside the creeping normalization of AI movies
The world’s largest TV manufacturer wants to make films for people too lazy to change the channel. (404 Media)
+ Unsurprisingly, it’ll push targeted ads, too. (Ars Technica)
+ How AI-generated video is changing film. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“They’ve made him a martyr for all the troubles people have had with their own insurance companies.”
—Felipe Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, explains why murder suspect Luigi Mangione is being lionized online to Reuters.
The big story
Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch
Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics.
But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all. Read the full story.
—Edd Gent
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Working life getting you down? These pictures of bygone office malaise will make you feel a whole lot better (or worse—thanks Will!)
+ Gen Z are getting really into documenting their lives via digital cameras, apparently. 
+ If you believe that Alan MacMasters invented the first electric bread toaster, I’m sorry to inform you that you’ve fallen for an elaborate online hoax.
+ The case for a better Turing test for AI-generated art.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
I’ve thought more about gallium and germanium over the last week than I ever have before (and probably more than anyone ever should).
As you may already know, China banned the export of those materials to the US last week and placed restrictions on others. The move is just the latest drama in escalating trade tensions between the two countries.
While the new export bans could have significant economic consequences, this might be only the beginning. China is a powerhouse, and not just in those niche materials—it’s also a juggernaut in clean energy, and particularly in battery supply chains. So what comes next could have significant consequences for EVs and climate action more broadly.
A super-quick catch-up on the news here: The Biden administration recently restricted exports of chips and other technology that could help China develop advanced semiconductors. Also, president-elect Donald Trump has floated all sorts of tariffs on Chinese goods.
Apparently in response to some or all of this, China banned the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials used in manufacturing, and said it may further restrict graphite sales. The materials are all used for both military and civilian technologies, and significantly, gallium and germanium are used in semiconductors.
It’s a ramp-up from last July, when China placed restrictions on gallium and germanium exports after enduring years of restrictions by the US and its Western allies on cutting-edge technology. (For more on the details of China’s most recent move, including potential economic impacts, check out the full coverage from my colleague James Temple.)
What struck me about this news is that this could be only the beginning, because China is central to many of the supply chains snaking around the globe.
This is no accident—take gallium as an example. The metal is a by-product of aluminum production from bauxite ore. China, as the world’s largest aluminum producer, certainly has a leg up to be a major player in the niche material. But other countries could produce gallium, and I’m sure more will. China has a head start because it invested in gallium separation and refining technologies.
A similar situation exists in the battery world. China is a dominant player all over the supply chain for lithium-ion batteries—not because it happens to have the right metals on its shores (it doesn’t), but because it’s invested in extraction and processing technologies.
Take lithium, a crucial component in those batteries. China has around 8% of the world’s lithium reserves but processes about 58% percent of the world’s lithium supply. The situation is similar for other key battery metals. Nickel that’s mined in Indonesia goes to China for processing, and the same goes for cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Over the past two decades, China has thrown money, resources, and policy behind electric vehicles. Now China leads the world in EV registrations, many of the largest EV makers are Chinese companies, and the country is home to a huge chunk of the supply chain for the vehicles and their batteries.
As the world begins a shift toward technologies like EVs, it’s becoming clear just how dominant China’s position is in many of the materials crucial to building that tech.
Lithium prices have dropped by 80% over the past year, and while part of the reason is a slowdown in EV demand, another part is that China is oversupplying lithium, according to US officials. By flooding the market and causing prices to drop, China could make it tougher for other lithium processors to justify sticking around in the business.
The new graphite controls from China could wind up affecting battery markets, too. Graphite is crucial for lithium-ion batteries, which use the material in their anodes. It’s still not clear whether the new bans will affect battery materials or just higher-purity material that’s used in military applications, according to reporting from Carbon Brief.
To this point, China hasn’t specifically banned exports of key battery materials, and it’s not clear exactly how far the country would go. Global trade politics are delicate and complicated, and any move that China makes in battery supply chains could wind up coming back to hurt the country’s economy.
But we could be entering into a new era of material politics. Further restrictions on graphite, or moves that affect lithium, nickel, or copper, could have major ripple effects around the world for climate technology, because batteries are key not only for electric vehicles, but increasingly for our power grids.
While it’s clear that tensions are escalating, it’s still unclear what’s going to happen next. The vibes, at best, are uncertain, and this sort of uncertainty is exactly why so many folks in technology are so focused on how to diversify global supply chains. Otherwise, we may find out just how tangled those supply chains really are, and what happens when you yank on threads that run through the center of them.
Now read the rest of The Spark
Related reading
Check out James Temple’s breakdown of what China’s ban on some rare minerals could mean for the US.
Last July, China placed restrictions on some of these materials—read this story from Zeyi Yang, who explains what the moves and future ones might mean for semiconductor technology.
As technology shifts, so too do the materials we need to build it. The result: a never-ending effort to build out mining, processing, and recycling infrastructure, as I covered in a feature story earlier this year.
STEPHANIE ARNETT/MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW | GETTY, ENVATO
Another thing
Each year we release a list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies, and it’s nearly time for the 2025 edition. But before we announce the picks, here are a few things that didn’t make the cut.
A couple of interesting ones on the cutting-room floor here, including eVTOLs, electric aircraft that can take off and land like helicopters. For more on why the runway is looking pretty long for electric planes (especially ones with funky ways to move through the skies), check out this story from last year.
Keeping up with climate
Denmark received no bids in its latest offshore wind auction. It’s a disappointing result for the birthplace of offshore wind power. (Reuters)
Surging methane emissions could be the sign of a concerning shift for the climate. A feedback loop of emissions from the Arctic and a slowdown in how the powerful greenhouse gas breaks down could spell trouble. (Inside Climate News)
Battery prices are dropping faster than expected. Costs for lithium-ion packs just saw their steepest drop since 2017. (Electrek)
This fusion startup is rethinking how to configure its reactors by floating powerful magnets in the middle of the chamber. This sounds even more like science fiction than most other approaches to fusion. (IEEE Spectrum)
The US plans to put monarch butterflies on a list of threatened species. Temperature shifts brought on by climate change could wreak havoc with the insects’ migration. (Associated Press)
Sources close to Elon Musk say he’s undergone quite a shift on climate change, morphing from “environmental crusader to critic of dire climate predictions.” (Washington Post)
Google has a $20 billion plan to build data centers and clean power together. “Bring your own power” is an interesting idea, but not a tested prospect just yet. (Canary Media)
The Franklin Fire in Los Angeles County sparked Monday evening and quickly grew into a major blaze. At the heart of the fire’s rapid spread: dry weather and Santa Ana winds. (Scientific American)
Places in the US that are most at risk for climate disasters are also most at risk for insurance hikes. Check out these great data visualizations on insurance and climate change. (The Guardian)
A new way to utilize X DMs.
The Australian Government is looking to ensure local publishers keep getting revenue share.
Meta says that more than 2 billion calls are made on WhtsApp every day.