Is There a Silver Lining to Trumps Madness
The world continues to watch the Trump Administration destroy Democracy and the massive disruption of our government as we know it. Trump is not the Commander in Chief, rather the Disruptor in Chief, or DIC, for short. He acts like a DIC in everything he does so his minions can rob the middle class to make him wealthier. It’s depressing for most of us working in healthcare and more broadly in science and discovery to see the system decimated and now run by anti-science lunatics. In conversations with friends at NIH, FDA, and the Army, we see the brain drain at these institutions that, by one estimate, will take at least 15 years to correct, if we are even given the chance.
Though the worst is yet to come, I’ve begun to wonder if anything good will come of this. In my career, I’ve left three companies as they were sold or transitioned just to start a new company to do the same thing…and not without some pain. The good news (mostly in retrospect) was that I was able to make innovative improvements with the next generation product that normally wouldn’t have been done. I’ve been thinking, if we get a chance to re-bulld the country, how can we make it better?
As I watch this threat to Democracy, I see a massive revolt brewing to get the country back to decency. I’m also watching the meteoric rise of AI and data science. The group at our company working with AI Agents and Generative AI send me papers almost every day about something new and it seems every week there is an announcement of game changing technology. With the appropriate guardrails, I believe AI and a motivated populace can make up for some of Trump’s destruction. Here are some thoughts:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), recently decimated by Trump, focuses on understanding and predicting changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts to provide vital information for public safety and environmental stewardship. Recently, I was exploring a home weather station, and I found out individuals can contribute to and use data from global weather databases such as the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP). And as I’ve learned from my colleagues, building large scale models, once only doable at large institutions, is now accessible to smaller institutions and even individuals. I much prefer NOAA maintain its role in this, but it got me thinking about what could be done by a group of savvy, connected citizens. Could it create new, more connected, ways of interacting with the planet?
Closer to the mission of our company, I wonder how healthcare could be changed by access to data and decentralized care. Our work on an Army-funded project using non-invasive sensors for the augmentation of combat medics coupled with the explosion of wearable health gadgets indicates massive amounts of data could be collected and processed with accessible AI tools. As a person with a family history of melanoma and years of growing up on a beach as a child, I am paranoid of anything that appears on my skin. Today I can take a picture of a skin abnormality and have Google Lens tell me what it is (with surprising accuracy). With the sale of 23 & Me and the uncertain use of the massive DNA database, I have friends who were quick to erase all their data and others who were more in favor of the global good it could do and left their data in the repository. So I see many sources of data and I think the data contributors will win out as the benefits become clear.
Two weeks ago, I volunteered as a Street Medic for the No Kings protest in Philadelphia, one of the largest in the city’s history. As such, I was “inducted” into a volunteer group whose mission was to take care of protestors, everything from life support to handing out bandaids and water. The group skills ranged from basic first aid to physicians and nurses. I was impressed with the “underground” communications and supply networks that have been developed (encrypted Signal chats, off-grid mesh radios, etc.) that allow us to provide medical care within an hour of a protest forming (which happens quickly these days). I wonder if such organizations, equipped with basic skills and AI, and a sustainable economic paradigm, could evolve to address a broader role in healthcare?
While I’m enraged with Trump’s cruelty towards his fellow citizens and his use of the White House to sell his golden sneakers and meme coins, I do think he’s seeding a revolution that will provide some interesting changes. I’m hoping we can be part of that. I’d enjoy your comments.
