From Cultivated Meat to National Security: The Journey of Jason Matheny

Paul: [00:00:00] Jason, welcome to the Business for Good Podcast. .

Jason: Thanks Paul. It's great to be on.

Paul: It is great to be talking with you. so we have known each other for a very long time, and I've always known you to be somebody who was pretty, cheery and optimistic about the future. but I recently heard a reference to you on a show that I was listening to where they referred to you as Jason Mathey, the world's premier Apao optimist

So tell. What does this mean? A Paco optimist?

Jason: Yeah. This, yeah, it's a funny term. a a a friend, just coined this, I mean, meaning I think, you know, we're on a pretty good trajectory if we can just avoid any threats to our existence. and in, in general, I'm really optimistic about, You know, the long term trajectory of, of humanity, if we can avoid things that, will sort of derail civilization.

So, you know, I'm usually pretty cheery, . [00:01:00]

Paul: Okay. So when you're saying we, you're saying we are on a good trajectory. What you mean is the human species, right.

Jason: Yes, that's right. Humanity, right? Yeah. Got it.

Paul: Okay. cool. So, you know, the things that you're worried about, you're saying, if nothing derails us, like before we get to what those things might be, why are you so optimistic?

Like, do you think we're on a good trajectory toward what, like what is out there that Jason Mathy is like fantasizing is gonna be in the future for humanity that you hope nothing prevents from? .

Jason: You know, I mean, just looking at how much progress we've made over the last several hundred years as a species is pretty amazing.

I mean, since, you know, the industrial revolution, you know, average like per capita, G D P has, you know, gone up like tenfold. we've gone from something like 10 to 20% literacy globally to around 90%. infant mortality rates, are, down to. less than 10% of what they were, a couple hundred years ago.

even, you know, like violence rates, [00:02:00] homicide, are down to a fraction of what they were just, 200 years ago. life expectancy is increased, by. 30 years on average over the last century. So in most measures of, of human progress, in, in terms of, of wealth, of health, of fairness, things are getting better.

Jason: And that, that long arc of, of human progress is, I think, a reason for, for optimism. if we can avoid these, these threats, to civilization, to the progress that we've.

Paul: Got it. So, I, you know, everything you said makes sense to me. I think that it, it is true, like, you know, we generally seem to be physically better off, today than we were a hundred or 200 or vastly more than that.

, are we happy? Or like, I mean, you're talking about GDP going up, that seems good. Is there evidence that, and I'm not asking because I know this is not like a rhetorical question, but, you know, if I went to a country where, people had close [00:03:00] family ties and but they had very low G D P, would they be, you think, happier or less happy than let's say the average person in New York City?

Paul: You

Jason: know, there, there is a correlation between, G D P, per capita and, and happiness, a positive correlation. And, you know, there's, there's debate about where it starts to, to flatten out, like, you know, is, is it at like, you know, 10,000 or $20,000 per year, or does it, does happiness sort of keep being positively correlated, with, with G D P?

and, I think that that's controversial. But the, but being much happier if like you have, twice as much household income, starting from a relatively low level is pretty uncontroversial. And part of the reason is like losing, losing your kid is, is just like one of. the biggest causes of unhappiness in the world, like losing your loved ones, due to preventable mortality.

So like growing up in, in real [00:04:00] poverty in parts of the world where, where we still see,infant and childhood deaths due to things like malaria or or gastroenteritis. that's just incredibly, painful, you know, as a, as a family.

Paul: I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. but if you take that, there is some benchmark, you know, so that your kids aren't dying.

but, you know, let's say you have a pretty good life and a pretty, like, you know, you're a, a middle class American, is doubling your income, going to double your happiness? I mean, I look at countries that have, you know, allegedly the happiest places on earth and, you know, they're like these Scandinavian countries like Finland, which, you know, routinely rank at the.

Paul: But they don't have the highest GDP in the world. Like so you know, if you look at G D P, it's not necessarily cause Zoe correlated with the what are allegedly, at least the happiest places on the planet. Do you think I have this wrong? .

Jason: I think the GDP per capita skin and even countries is one really high.

I mean, compared to, like the global median. Mm-hmm. . and, within those [00:05:00] countries, folks who are wealthier are on average, happier. Yeah. Yeah. so they're still sort of returns to happiness, in being, in being wealthier. now, you know, in the. If like trends continue, like our descendants are likely to be wealthier, than we are, they're likely also to be happier.

I mean, they'll just be able to solve more problems with, with resources, with technologies. They'll be able to, to achieve, you know, better outcomes for health. They'll be able to live. healthy lives, for a larger percentage of their lifespan and probably for longer lifespans. Mm-hmm. . Okay.

Paul: Well, let me ask you before we move on then. This will actually probably be a good segue to the next topic here, but, I, I, I agree with the premise, the, you know, the, basically the Stephen Pinker premise, or now the Jason Ney premise that, you know, it's never been a better time to be. Than today. Like if you were going to be born human, today is really the best time to have, to roll the dice and, and take that birth.

but it does seem that for [00:06:00] nearly every other species on the planet, there's never been a worse time to be a non-human. On the planet. Do you think I'm wrong about that? Like with wildlife extinction, going at, you know, the fastest rate since 66 million years ago when the asteroid took out the dinosaurs, factory farm animals are at an all time high in their population.

were, you know, taking huge numbers of, animals out of the oceans. Like, do you think that, that it is true to say it's never been a better time to be human, but it never been a worse time to be non human.

yeah, I, I think for, for non-humans, maybe it's maybe. Better to break it into two buckets. So one would be wild animals and then the other would be maybe like farm animals.

and maybe domesticated animals that aren't farm animals would be a third bucket probably for domesticated, non-farm animals, it's a pretty good time. There's a lot of them. They're relatively. You know, well-treated, I think, for non-human, wild animals, a lot of them just don't exist anymore because of [00:07:00] habitat destruction.

Jason: And so then that gets to, I think, a, a pretty complicated philosophical question about like, is it better to have more of them or less of them? I guess that would depend on whether, wild animals have lives that are on average, happier than they are unhappy. I don't know what the answer is to that question.

I think on, on farm. Things have gotten a lot worse over the last century, both in terms of the total numbers, but also in terms of of their welfare. So I agree. on, with that, sort of third bucket of, of animals of being, being farm animals having gotten a lot worse, . However, I think there's also like reasons in the last, decade to be a lot more optimistic about what, you know, farm animal welfare will look like over the next few decades.

in part because. farm animal welfare, reforms that you have had a big hand in, in leading over the last decade. And in part because of technologies being able to replace meat, eggs, and, and dairy so that we're [00:08:00] less dependent on farm animals.

Paul: Yeah, so I mean, if you look at, let's say like domesticated non-farm animals, it's very few of them compared to obviously animals who are farmed.

literally, you know, orders of magnitude, more of them who are enduring lives that most people don't want to think about. and, and, and sadly, there does appear to be a causal correlation between increased. G d p and worse treatment of farm animals, right? Cuz we're having, you know, basically more industrialized systems and, higher rates of per capita meat consumption.

Paul: But hopefully it's just a, a, to use a a term from Jerome Powell, just a, a transitory phase here, where, where farm animal suffering gets inflated, before technologies can render the exploitation of these animals obsolete. And you played a very major. in trying to popularize a field to do just that.

And so this is why I said this is a good segue because you know, when you and I, first met, which to my recollection was around the year 2000, you know, you were Yeah. Ex extremely optimistic about the use of what we now refer to as [00:09:00] cellular agriculture. back then people were calling it in vitro meat.

but you know, We're very optimistic about this technology to help reduce the amount of suffering on Earth. So much so that you founded New Harvest, the organization that was created to popularize and hopefully commercialize eventually, what we now call cultivated meat and. Every time I asked you back then, and in subsequent decades when we were going to see cultivated meat, or maybe at the time I was saying cultured meat, when we were gonna see it on store shelves, it was always five years away.

Paul: And, you know, you've , you know, you've since joked me, and no matter what year you're asked, you're always safe. Five years. So, you know, I, I doubt you're gonna make another prediction now. But, we, you know, we recently had, both eat just and upside foods get f d a approval for their cultivated chicken.

so before we get into when you think it'll actually be on store shelves, just how surprised would you have been, like you found a new harvest in [00:10:00] 2004? So in 2004, if you knew that today, nearly two decades later, that's still zero grams of cultivated meat been sold in the United States, how surprised would you have been back?

Jason: Yeah. You know, it's funny, there's, there's the joke about, about fusion technologies that it's, it's 20 years away and always will. And I think I've definitely been guilty of, of being really optimistic about timelines, for, for cultured meat. you know, it's just turns out it's a lot harder than we thought.

in the early two thousands. We thought it was gonna be a matter of like figuring out okay, combination of a bioreactor and the right cell types and we'll figure out a really easy to way make like cheap cell media. The, the stuff that, the soup that the. Tissues grow in and turns out that all of those were like harder steps than, than we imagined.

Jason: And I think if you had, if you had told me in yeah, the year 2000, that it would be like, you know, 22 or 23 years till we saw, you know, the first product get f d a approval. And that [00:11:00] products even then would only be sold, you know, like in, in Singapore or something, I'd say, oh, that can't be true. It can't be that.

but turns out it is that hard. And, you know, I hope that we'll see, in the next several years, like products introduced to the US market. but it's gonna be expensive. It's, it's just really hard to bring down the costs. I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm really impressed by the work that's going on by, by, you know, technology companies to reduce these costs.

Jason: But it's hard. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: I mean, even the most optimistic people in this field, Will still say today that it's years and years away before cultivated meat makes up 1% of the meat market. Right. And, you know, prep based meat has been on the market for decades and it still was not 1% by volume of meat in America, let alone around the world.

So, and, and it still was not. Reached price parity with commodity meat either. And so, you know, you think about how much easier it is to make, a meat alternative from soybeans or peas or [00:12:00] wheat than it is to grow animal cells. And you're saying decades and billions of dollars and we're still not at 1% of the market with plant-based.

How long is it gonna be before cultivated meat is 1% of the market? and, I, I don't know anybody as knowledgeable in this space who thinks that's within a decade from now. and so, you know, it raises this question of, you know, this, that means that, you know, there will be, trillions of animals, literally, who will be used for food, be between now and then.

So what else is there that can be done? Because you're expressing optimism that will hopefully technology will, render factory farming of animals obsolete. But it looks like it's still pretty far away off, don't you?

Jason: Yeah, I mean, I think what, what makes sense for society in general, I mean for, for developing technologies that we think are, are gonna be, you know, more sustainable and better for people's health and better for animal welfare.

I mean, whether we're thinking about, you know, replacing energy sources, whether it's, you know, solar or wind or. [00:13:00] Fusion or like safe, fission. I mean, it's sort of like all of the above, right? Like we need to be diversifying a portfolio cuz we're not sure what in the long run is going to work as part of a portfolio.

Jason: You wanna diversify. same for, you know, same for technologies like in light systems. Like you want, yes, compact fluorescence, but you also want LEDs and you, you also want like more, energy efficient incandescence. And I think for, for. Replacements. It's probably the same. Like we need to be investing in cultured meat, but we also need to be investing in plant-based meat substitutes and we need to be investing in these sort of like hybrid products.

I mean, this is why I'm really excited. But what you're doing, Paul, at the Better Meat Company is, I mean, if you can come up with something that substitutes for like 50% of the meat in a product, that's, that's. Half as good as finding a way to replace all of it. And if you can, if you can achieve twice as much market share,[00:14:00] with this product, then it is a hundred percent as good as something that's a full substitute.

So I like the diverse portfolio approach since we don't really know what's ultimately gonna work. Yeah, so

Paul: I, I, I agree with everything you just said. in fact, you know, you were the one who was telling me, you know, if somebody would just find a way to hybridize meat, you could potentially reduce the number of animals needed in a far easier way than you could by trying to persuade people to become vegetarian or vegan.

I always hoped that somebody else would do that. And finally, circumstances in my life, led to me. somebody who decided to do it. but, you know, we, we do provide, and, and for the last three years have been providing, ingredients to produce farms, where they make a hybridized chicken nugget.

it's 50% chicken, 50% plant-based. It's called Purdue Chicken Plus it's sold in 7,100 supermarkets. Now we've been supplying them for the last. Three years on this food network named it the best tasting frozen chicken nugget in America. So think about that. The best tasting frozen chicken nugget in America according to food network is only 50% chicken.

Paul: Like imagine if you can make all chicken nuggets. That's awesome. Yeah. [00:15:00] 50% chicken. It's a lot for your chickens. Who you need to raise. I do wanna ask you though, cuz you keep on saying, you know, we should be investing in this and we should be doing that. is we there the venture capital community or are you referring to we meaning the government?

Because obviously the go. Is doing quite a lot to incentivize the other technologies that you were just espousing from solar to wind and geothermal and nuclear and more, both, through, you know, direct subsidies or the inflation reduction act and so on. But so far, it's been very little from the government, not nothing but very little from the government to incentivize a shift toward animal free proteins.

Why do you think that is? And what do you think can be done to change that?

Jason: Yeah, that's a really good question. I, I, you know, I sh I wish I knew more about, you know, what is the total level of, of subsidy, you know, for r and d and for scale up for different agricultural systems, and how many of them are ones that are aligned with, say, you know, some of these new technologies.

I, I'll totally take word for it, that it's, it's close to. [00:16:00]

Paul: If, if only you have the influence to direct certain very intelligent researchers to look into these types of public policy, topics that would be quite interesting. I'll take, I'll take a note on this. Yeah. You may know a guy. You may know a guy.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll ask around. Yeah. But I mean, you know, in all honesty though, You know, the, the d o D now has, is funding this program called Bio Made, which is, a Yeah, yeah. An effort to increase biomanufacturing in the United States. my own company, the Better Meco, is a member of Bio and, you know, we have seen some funding, you know, there from, Uc, Davis got a few million dollars to study cultivated meat from the federal government.

Tufts got about 10 million to study it, but you know, this pales in comparison to the kind of large s that gets doled out to the animal agriculture industry. just as one example, during, during the, Biden administration, they announced a 1 billion, billion with a b a $1 billion plan to increase the nation's animal slaughter capacity.

Paul: So, you know, you look at that and that, and that's just one among many different [00:17:00] programs. That are used to assist, raising animals for food. And so, you know, I, we look at other countries like China, India, Singapore, and their governments are highly supportive of these types of alternative food technologies that produce.

Proteins that are animal free. And in the same way that, you know, we have basically seeded all of our, clean energy technologies to Asia where we're buying our solar panels and wind turbines and so on. you know, we don't want the same thing to happen here in the United States where these other countries, start producing meat in far more efficient ways, and we're dependent on them for that as well.

Jason: Yeah. You know, I, I am so broadly ignorant of, of agricultural policy in, in the United States. It's just something that I, I haven't read about deeply despite my interest in mm-hmm. the technology and figuring out what could be, you know, renewable substitutes for different parts of, of the agricultural supply chain.

do you have a theory though, for, for why the United States is lagging [00:18:00] despite it being the home for some of the most innovative companies in this?

you know, first of all, I consider myself a fool in so many regards. So I don't like, think that my theories have any special weight, but I will say, you know, generally, industries don't get what they don't ask for.

Paul: And because this is a, basically a fledge of the industry that has almost no lobby power, you know, you don't see it. But ever since the Good Food Institute and Food Solutions actions started, lobbying, you start seeing some movement toward this. And that's why, the things like uc, Davis, and Tufts that I mentioned are starting to do that.

even a Congressman Ro Conna, who represents Silicon Valium, was a previous guest on this show. you know, he. and Congressman Krishna Murphy from Illinois have a bill in Congress right now that would direct the D N I, the Director of National Intelligence, to assess what type of national security threats there are from the us obviously falling behind on this particular technology.

Paul: So hopefully whether that Bill becomes law or not, maybe the d n I will look into this. but I, I do think that it is, not [00:19:00] just a matter of, you know, wanting to reduce suffering, which of course is critical and very important, but it is a matter of national security. And it seems like the more, prestigious policy minded people out there, whether in or out of government are talking about it, that yes, I, I think that that would, focus our government's, attention on this issue more broadly.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, it is a good point about, sort of security of supply chains. I mean, one thing that is attractive about, you know, these, these kind of tech alternatives to, to meat or sort of reducing dependence on, on traditional, meat production, is that you could envision supply chains that are a lot more.

Secure and resilient. so ones that are, that are less vulnerable to animal diseases, to, crop diseases and weather. and, in general that seems like a good thing to have some kind of backup, food supply chains in ways that right now we don't, and we're, we're pretty.

Paul: Yeah, I mean just, you know, take for example the, just egg ad.

[00:20:00] You know, we had a huge avian flu, outbreak this year that led to the price of egg surging. And, just egg was doing these ads to say, you know, plants don't get the flu. so yeah, you know, your, your Ians are far less likely to come under that type of a pressure, like, like chickens were in this case.

But anyway, we can talk, at great length about this and I, I hope that we will talk more about it, but I, I, I want to ask you, because, you know, when we, were living in much closer proximity to another, like the main way that I knew you was that you were basically like younger Jason's life was. Devoted to popularizing and cultivated meat, you thought it was basically the best contribution that you could make to the world, and then you decided to go a different direction, mainly into government, and you thought that you could actually do more good in government than you could trying to displace the use of animals in factory farms.

So why, what, what caused that pivot? It seemed after, many years of diverting yourself to one thing, you went to another. What was the cause of that?

Jason: Well, I think probably I [00:21:00] always had a, another job in addition to working on, on cultured meat. in fact, I, I was really happy to, to turn over the reins of, of New Harvest to Isha to tar because she could clearly, you know, devote full-time effort to this.

Whereas I was working on it on the weekends, while I was also working on a bunch of international. projects. So I think, I think it was probably a good thing, that I've, I found somebody who, was just really great at this and could, could focus on it full-time. but I think maybe the, the reason for my shifting from a, I don't know at the time, a kind of portfolio of.

of international health work and, thinking about the future of, of, agricultural technologies to eventually working on, other things for, for government policy, was in 2002 and 2003, there was, a surprising acceleration. in biotechnology, in, being able to synthesize viruses from scratch.

Jason: [00:22:00] And, originally under some DARPA funded, project by Eckhard Veer, it was shown that you could like create a virus, de novo, from its chemical constituents. And I think. For me, that made me really worried about what the, the future of, of, of public health could look like if,if, if sort of human beings not only had to worry about natural pandemics, but potentially also had to worry about synthetic viruses that might have.

properties that were even, you know, more transmissible or, more lethal than natural viruses. and in the 20 years since then, that technology has only gotten more advanced, more accessible, and, and it's proliferated really widely. so, I got nervous about like the direction that that technology.

Jason: Could take. and I also started to worry about, well, what's, what's the theoretical limit of, of the death toll of these sorts of events? I mean, like, humanity has a pretty good track record for enduring [00:23:00] events that, are like natural pandemics. you know, in, we think of, of Covid as, as. a catastrophic pandemic.

It's really like in historical terms, a moderate pandemic. would it,

Paul: do you think that would've been true if we didn't have the vaccines?

Jason: I think it would've been true even if we didn't have the vaccines. The infection fatality rate is, is, is lower than other, historical pandemics. The transmissibility has been lower than other, historical pandemics.

So, you know, in, in 1918, there was an influenza pandemic that killed somewhere between 50 to a hundred million people in 12 months. . and, you know, SARS COV two is not going to be, that, that lethal. so we How many sort of got

Paul: lucky? Yeah. How, how many people did Covid kill this time? Or is it like 7 million?

I can't remember the total.

Jason: I think that it's likely, well, I mean, it's not over yet. so it's, it's likely to be over 10 million, and particularly if you think about the second order consequences of, increasing, [00:24:00] poverty, in, in lower income countries, just due to economic effects, it's probably gonna be in excess of that.

so if we, if we end up. You know, if, if some years from now we end up looking back and just trying to measure all of the excess mortality that we attribute to, to covid, my guess is it will be over 10 million deaths. Mm-hmm. ok. 19, 18 50 to a hundred million. And that was in a, an even shorter period of time.

so that, that was a, a significant. mortality event for humanity, probably like the most,severe, mortality event per unit of, of time, that humanity has endured. We've gone through, you know, other really significant pandemics, in antiquity, plague of Gian. we had,the, the black death, we, we managed to survive.

Jason: Events that were like really catastrophic. and yet, like most of you know, human population are, are demographic like curve. If you look at those things just show kind of like a small blip. And [00:25:00] what's, what's extraordinary then is like human resilience to, to these ordinary pandemics. what we're, what we have no track record of being resilient to is, you.

A disease, a virus that has, say the lethality of, of rabies, which is close to a hundred percent. And the transmissibility of measles, which is, you know, over 10 secondary cases per primary case, which is, much more transmissible, say than SARS Cov two. and there's no reason in principle that you couldn't have a virus that combines very high.

lethality with very high transmissibility. And if it has, a, a long period of presymptomatic transmission so that even before you realize you're sick, you've passed it on to, lots of other folks, that makes it especially dangerous. . so I started to worry about this. A lot of other folks started to worry about this, and I shifted then from working in traditional, public health to then working on, on, on Biodefense.

Jason: And I, I first started working at [00:26:00] iarpa. I guess, in the late. The mid to late two thousands thinking about, so Jason?

Paul: Yeah, Jason, sorry to interrupt you. So, I, I, you earlier referenced to darpa, which I think listeners will likely be more familiar with, but I doubt that many people know what IARPA is, let alone that you were the director of it.

So what's Iarpa that you were just re referencing here?

Jason: Yeah, it stands for the intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. it's, it's part of the US government. it develops technologies for the intelligence community for, you know, thinking, thinking about how do you detect biological weapons programs or nuclear weapons programs?

How do you make sense of these? Large volumes of data, that are coming out of, foreign weapons programs and figuring out if they're doing something like really, really dangerous. and so my, my interest in, in joining IPA was in figuring out, you know, can we. detect these kinds of, dangerous biotech activities, that could pose an existential threat, to, to humanity.

And, unfortunately, like there's a lot of activity in the [00:27:00] world that's really dangerous happening, in Bio labs. . and some of it is, you know, state sponsored. Unfortunately there's still, you know, biological weapons programs in the world. and then some of it is not state sponsored, but also really dangerous.

and so, that, that got me even more nervous. like the more that I learned about this, you know, in in the intelligence community, the more nervous I became.

Paul: And so you basically, I don't wanna put words in your mouth here, Jason, but essentially what happened was you originally thought that the most good that you could do in the world was essentially working on this issue of cultured meat.

And eventually you came to think, actually there's this bigger problem that I should be even more concerned about. And you were concerned so much that you decided to make national security. Your full-time profession is.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, what I think there were a bunch of issues that I thought of as being really important.

Cultured meat was one of them. I was also working on, you know, international health. but I think that, what I started to think about was, is there something that. That we really would not be [00:28:00] able to, to endure mm-hmm. like we can. Mm-hmm. , we're, we're pretty good at, at like muddling our way through things.

like we, we kinda learn from our mistakes. We like do better a second time. we're making progress in a lot of areas. Like I was overall pretty optimistic. I mean this gets back to the apo optimist thing. Sort of like, you know what? I think we're gonna like solve a lot of these problems. Like, I think we're.

We're, we're making really good progress on traditional infectious diseases. Like, you know, we've reduced rates of malaria and tuberculosis and h i v and, you know, pneumococcal disease, like a, a bunch of the, the big killers historically. . And we're also, I think, on a good trajectory to eventually, like come up with more sustainable approaches to, to agriculture.

So I was like feeling pretty optimistic about that. The thing that I was really worried about is like, what's the stuff that we won't get a second chance on? Like we, we have to make sure that we make no mistakes. And so these, these existential threats, these things that could really [00:29:00] permanently derail progress, were the things that I, I started to worry.

so I, I switched then to working on, on those kinds of issues, I guess in the, in the late two thousands. And, and

Paul: so you've talked a lot about viruses and SY bio. You haven't mentioned nuclear one time as, as opposed to energy, but you haven't mentioned nuclear weaponry one time. Is that of equal concern to you as a virus or do you think that's less of a threat to human civiliz?

Jason: I, I think it's less of a threat. I mean, it's, it's, it is a significant threat, to humanity and one that, we sometimes like kind of, get too sanguine about or we stop paying attention to it. I mean, I remember growing up, In the eighties. I mean, this was like much more a topic in pop culture than I think it is today.

I mean it was, you know, we had movies like war games or the day after that as a kid, just like completely freaked me out, but also apparently freaked out. You know, the president and the president was, president Reagan, like, was really animated by both of those [00:30:00] movies to try to figure out like, what's a, what's a solution to, you know, arms control, with the then Soviet Union, there has been less kind of public.

Jason: I think interest in, in nuclear weapons, maybe like the, there's a recent change in this just because of, of speculation about, you know, what would happen if nuclear weapons were used by, by Russia in Ukraine. but for, you know, most of, I would say the last 20 years there's been much less public interest in, in nuclear risks than there were say, in the, in the 1980s.

I think what what's interesting is, and one reason I would say, That I'm less concerned today about nuclear weapons than I am about biological weapons is because nuclear weapons still are very hard to make. you know, there's, there's two ways in which it's really hard to make. The first is it's really expensive to make a nuclear weapon.

and the second is that if you, if you succeed in producing, a small number of nuclear weapons, if you put them in a closet, And come back later. there [00:31:00] aren't more nuclear weapons in the closet. they don't self-replicate, and that is, different than biology. where the weapons themselves, scale up.

they, they self-replicate. . And so, nuclear weapons are expensive. They're not as easily scalable as biological weapons. nuclear technologies are not as, broadly accessible. the underlying technology and know-how is not as democratized, as biology is. So I worry more, right now about sort of the trajectory of, of bio risks, but nuclear risks, I think.

Jason: Have not reduced as significantly as maybe like, you know, kind of popular impressions might suggest. Like, I think we have, a significant level of risk that has been sustained for as long as, as we've had large nuclear arsenals. Mm-hmm. and the, the sort of,the, the kind of traditional deterrence theory that we have, I would say is one that gets tested by thinking about, well, what happens if the nuclear [00:32:00] decision that Putin is making is really just up to him?

and what if he feels cornered and, is he really going to be thinking rationally? . and how do you ensure them that, like deterrence works against an individual and that is really, really hard. So I, I think we don't have as much guarantees about, about nuclear security as, as we wish we did. Did

Paul: you watch the last of us on H B O?

Jason: I saw, I saw the very first, episode, and it, it cut too close to home. I thought. you know, like the, the plausibility of, you know, of there being, you know, a novel pathogen and,and there being, you know, a, a, a kind of like novel attack on an organism by that pathogen. it, it seems pretty plausible.

Mm-hmm. , and it's, it is also the case that, you know, as, as climates change and as the. As there are regions during, in, within which certain kinds of pathogens can become more prevalent, we're going to see a lot more [00:33:00] novel zoonotic infections, that are passing between animals and, and humans. And some of those could, could lead to some pretty terrible

Paul: pandemics.

Yeah, this was, I mean, e even before this show, I, I had never heard of the video game, but even before the show, I mean, I was aware of this theory that there are certain fungi. will kill you, that we cannot eradicate them, but that a typical human has a high enough body temperature that it, it doesn't survive.

But as there is a self selection toward more and more heat tolerant species of fungi with climate change, And maybe it passes that barrier of, you know, 98 degrees or whatever it needs to pass in order to actually infect us. And so you, it didn't seem like that crazy. I thought it was a good show, but you know, whether it would like infect us and, you know, turn us into zombies off to bite people.

I don't know about that. but, you know, it didn't seem like that. Crazy. And apparently, according to the C D C right now, there is a, a, antibiotic resistant strain of fatal fungi going around killing people right now, in the United States. Do you hear about.

Jason: Yeah, I did. Yeah. This, [00:34:00] this really does cut too close to home.

I, I totally agree.

Paul: So I, I do wanna ask you, about Rand because, you know, many people may have heard of it. when I heard that you had ascended to be the c e O of Rand, that you, were running a institute that had been founded by Ian Rand or maybe an honor of Ian Rand, and that turned out not to be true.

so what is it, it is not relating to Iron Rand? What is the Rand Corpor.

so the, the Rand Corporation was started in 1948. we're the world's largest global policy think tank, and, we have about 2000 people who deliver objective nonpartisan analysis on everything from national security to education, healthcare, the.

we produce about a thousand reports per year, and most of our work is publicly accessible. So if you go to rand.org, you can find thousands of reports on virtually every [00:35:00] policy topic under the sun. we also have our own graduate school, with both a master's and PhD program to train. The next generation of, of policy analysts.

and I think one of the amazing things about this place is just how many smart people are working on so many consequential policy challenges that, that sort of shape, the century. It's a great place to work. Cool.

Paul: So, you know, you've now been, in the nonprofit sector when, you know, from your days of, you know, running New Harvest.

And by the way, we had Isha DeTar, who still is the c e O of New Harvest. She had her on this show prior as well. We'll linked to that on the show notes at Business for Good podcast.com. But you, you know, we're in the nonprofit space for a. Then you went into government, you were running iarpa, then you worked in the White House.

and then, you know, you were at Georgetown University running this institute there. and, and now, you've gone back into the nonprofit space. What I've noticed is that you've never been in the for-profit space. So you ever [00:36:00] think about that? Like you are such an advocate for the use of technology to improve the lot of humanity and of other sentient beings on the planet as well.

Paul: Obviously those technologies are typically developed by for-profit companies a lot of the time, so have you ever thought about that? Is there like a future for-profit career for Jason Nathan?

Jason: You know, I don't think I'd be very good at it. I mean, I have a, a ton of respect for the, the people who are, who are starting, for-profit, commercial, enterprises like you.

I mean, I just have like profound respect, because I, I think that's ultimately where we're going to get most of the technologies that, that, that changed the world for the better. but I just didn't think that I. Particular talents, to succeed, in, in creating such companies? You know, I'll

Paul: tell you something, when I wrote the book Queen Meet, and obviously there's a chapter on you in the book and you're in many chapters of this whole biographical chapter on you.

I think I'm your first ever biographer. I probably won't be the last, but I think I'm your, I'm your first biographer. so. You know, [00:37:00] one of the things that led me to start a company was actually writing about all these people who had started companies who I thought had virtually no qualifications to start them whatsoever.

Paul: You know, , I mean, I was like reading about these people or starting companies. They're like straight outta college, no experience of in the world at all. And they're raising millions of dollars of, of, capital to, to pursue really cool technologies. you know, even take like, a perfect day. It's a pretty cool company.

These, you know, these folks met in their early twenties. Online they never met in person. They met in video chats and thought, oh, we have this cool idea to build real dairy proteins through fermentation. And, you know, they started this company and less than a decade later, you know, these, these folks are now like 30 years old and their company is valued at $1.5 billion.

And they're sewing real dairy proteins that are made without cows. So, you know, my guess is that you probably have more experience than they did when they started this company. So even if you think that you don't have the experience, you know, running government agencies and running, huge nonprofits probably gives you some experience, in a managerial sense to, to do this.

So I [00:38:00] wouldn't sell yourself short is my main point on

Jason: this. Thanks, Paul. I mean, I, I have really the deepest respect for folks who are launching startups and trying to develop technologies that can, you know, improve lives, reduce suffering. I think it's, it's one of the things that does really give me hope cuz I think that,I think technology has actually been a, a significant driver for, for moral progress.

I mean, along the lines that you and I have, have talked about before, it's just, it's something that makes it like cheaper to, like technology can make it cheaper, basically, to live in accordance with like moral views that we have, about, you know, the ways that we think like other people should be treated or animals should be treat.

so I, I'm just really grateful for the number of technologies that are being developed right now that seem like they could make the world a lot better. Yeah,

Paul: I, I, I certainly agree with that. I mean, I look, you just look at animals alone. I mean, you know, we used to live pluck geese to write, and now we tap on glass greens, right?

Like, it, it doesn't, nobody cared about [00:39:00] geese. that's not the reason we stopped using quills. We stopped because metal fountain pens were invented. You know, we used to whip horses to get. Then we started biking and driving, not because we cared about horses. We used to harpoon whales in order to wipe our homes.

And then we started using kerosene and eventually electricity. And nobody stopped using whale oil because they cared about whales. So I think the whisk is on and on of, certainly with animals of areas where things were particularly horrible and the, those categories of animal exploitation were rendered totally obsolete, not by humane sentiment nor sustainability concern.

Just because new technologies were invented that rendered the old way of doing things totally archaic. I mean the same as even. So in some respects, if you look at why some states in the union legislated against slavery relatively peacefully, whereas other states were willing to go to war to try to preserve slavery, and it's not lost on us that, you know, the northern states had industrialized and weren't so dependent on an agrarian system of agriculture for their economies anymore, and therefore had the luxury of being against slavery.

[00:40:00] whereas the south obvious. Did not have that, and so was willing to go to war to keep people in bondage. I, I just think like it's, it's so clear to me that, technology generally tends to, or I shouldn't say generally, technology can be used to do really horrible things in the world, like what you've been talking about, but it can also be used to make really great moral advancements too.

Jason: Yeah, I think that, I think it is, it does seem to generally be true that like technologies that cause a lot of, misery and suffering are, are often also technologies that are not as efficient as the technology that replaces them. So, like. We can imagine having technologies, that are a lot more efficient than ones that, you know, involve animals.

and that seems like a good thing, you know, not only for the animals, but also just sort of for the overall efficiency, of agriculture. . and I, I think the same is true for, you know, for energy technologies. I think, you know, there's just a ton of good that we can do, by, by seeking out innovations that will be, [00:41:00] cleaner and, and ultimately like more efficient and cause less suffering.

Paul: what are some technologies that you hope will get invented? you may not be ready to go out and start your own company now, but I presume you think about companies that you wish existed or technologies that you wish existed. So if you were making a recommendation, Jason, to people who are listening right now and maybe thinking, Hey, you know, I like this Jason Guy.

I wonder what he thinks I should be doing with my life. What do you think they should pursue?

Jason: Well, I, I do think that, focusing on technologies that address some of these big existential risks, for humanity would be good. I mean, we have, you know, some companies that are already working on this. I think we need more of them.

in, you know, in biosafety and biosecurity. having better advanced, protective equipment, would be really helpful. You know what I mean? We are still using really primitive masks right now, for instance, in this pandemic. it just seems like a place that where we could have much better masks that,that are [00:42:00] more comfortable and, and that, that people would actually.

Jason: Not mind wearing, mm-hmm as, as much as, current masks. there's also some really interesting work to, see if, if far ultraviolet, lighting, works to reduce,microbes in the, in the, in indoor built environment. So, if you could reduce the spread of, of viruses, indoors, With lighting, that would be really wonderful.

and it, it, it looks like it might be possible, but getting the engineering right, is, is hard and will be important. a third thing is,wastewater surveillance. So being able to do, earlier detection of. Of pathogens, or changes in, in microbial, genomes, that are present within wastewater that requires like very high throughput sequencing.

but there's some really exciting work to make that possible. I think that's a great technology, in AI safety and security, which is another area that I have, been thinking about lately. You know, third party audits of AI systems. [00:43:00] So, Figuring out what is the technology that we need to verify that an AI system is going to be reliable, that's very helpful.

the chips that, AI systems are trained on, it would be great if those chips had, sort of internal, governance so that, you know, if a. A large model. Were being trained, a large AI system, were being trained, that could be used to design a novel pathogen. The chip would sort of, be able to detect that and, and prevent, a chip from being used, in ways that are malicious or, or risky, even if it's accidental.

so those are a few like technologies that I would love for people to. .

Paul: Cool. Yeah, that's, that's quite interesting. A lot of good ideas there that I hope, somebody in the future will come onto this show and say, I, I started this company because I heard Jason Tini make a recommendation. I, I, I do have a question about the ultraviolet light issue.

You know, I, that could, you know, basically sterilize and prevent the spread of pathogens. I do wonder if there might be side effects [00:44:00] that are unintended with that. Like, are we gonna kill, you know, are we gonna find out that there was some microbes that were actually particularly beneficial to us? You know, just drawing them on our, on our, skin biome or something like that.

I don't know. but have you thought about that with regard to Yeah. Something that's indiscriminate like that?

Jason: I think the, the goal would be to make it more d discriminate so that you're, you're targeting, you know, I mean, for one, the microbes that are on our, that are on our skin that in many ways are like very beneficial, are much larger than the viruses that one would want to, target.

So, It's probably, something that's achievable to have a much narrower range of microbes that one is targeting, with, with light. but I, I think this area is like really ripe for, for somebody to be thinking, okay, what are, what are the classes of microbes that we would want to, to sterilize against in a built environment?

what are the, the wavelengths of light that would be most useful in order to target those, those microbes at what. . [00:45:00]

Paul: Interesting. So basically something that's gonna kill the rabies measle virus, but not gonna destroy everything else in your skin.

Jason: E Ex. Exactly. Yeah. . Okay.

Paul: Okay, got it. Yeah. obviously, you have a wealth of knowledge.

I've often referred to you as the smartest person in the room, whatever room you're in. And so I know that you read voraciously. I one time compared you actually more than one time I compared you to the robot in short circuit. He's like just flipping through these books like really rapidly. . And I wonder what resources that you recommend Jason, like if you think, you know, there have been things that have been useful for you in your, in your life.

Paul: Like could be books or speeches. obviously I presume Queen Meet is at the top of your list, but aside from that Absolutely. Course, obviously, yeah.

Jason: I start an end every day is reading messages from clean meat. I

Paul: think that you actually mentioned, my wife Tony's new book also. So I think that was another one that was particularly influential for you.

Wasn't that.

Jason: Absolutely. No, Tony's new, new cookbook is awesome. I recommend it to all listeners. .

Paul: Okay. [00:46:00] Alright. So aside from these obviously canonical works, let me ask you like what resources have been useful for you that you would recommend to others who want to also use their lives to do some good in the world?

you know, a book that that I have probably recommended, more frequently than any other book is Toby Ords book The Precipice. which I think is just a, it's such a fascinating read. It's, it's mostly an enjoyable read except when it's, depressing, about some of these existential risks that I've mentioned.

Jason: But it helps give a sense of scale of how much progress we've made as a civilization, how much progress we could make. And just then what the costs of screwing everything up would be. I mean, it would be, you know, such a depressing waste of potential, for humanity to, snuff itself out. And, I think Toby makes, just a, a really compelling case, for how tragic that would be.

And for, the ways in which that could happen that are actually not, not all that [00:47:00] farfetched. it, I, I think it, for me helped to clarify, why I find, you know, some emini of these, existential threats of, of really grave concern. that they're, they're plausible. they're things that, they're tractable.

I mean, like we can actually do something about reducing these risks, like developing the kinds of technologies that I was mentioning. And it's something that we, we really might only get one shot, at getting these things right. So, they're pretty important to work on.

Paul: Okay, well, we will link to Toby's book, the Precipice on the show notes to this episode at Business for good podcast.com.

And let me just say thanks. It's really great to talk with you, Jason. My hat is off to you for all the success that you've had in your career and the good that you have done and continue to do in the world. So, I appreciate it very much. You're creating a, a, a better future for the next generations.

And I. That that comes to pass and that your optimism about the future is, is certainly warranted. So I will look forward to following you, and if [00:48:00] we do get people who are starting companies based on your words here, I will put them in touch with you so you can advise them more and give them more free advice, which I'm sure you would be happy to offer.

Jason: Thanks Paul. And the work that you're doing at the Better Meat Company is, is one of the reasons why I'm an optimist. so if, if there are more entrepreneurs who can do what, what you've done and succeeded in doing at the Better Meat Company, we will all be better off.