Who's Behind This Agenda?
The following list of standards organizations are interconnected and work cooperatively towards shared goals. They set forth standards for both Smart City infrastructure and standards for nanotechnology involved in the Biodigital Convergence.
IEC
ISO
ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
“The World Economic Forum (WEF) has published a toolkit for regulators containing methods and techniques to respond to disruptive events and rapidly evolving technologies in what is currently known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Standards are one of the key tools recommended in the report to help governments wade their way through…The use of standards, cites the guide, is one way of doing this and ‘can help in building trust or credibility of industry-led governance.’
Standards may be particularly relevant for governments seeking to co-regulate, where assurance is needed about the process by which governance will be designed, implemented and reviewed. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have produced guidance on using standards to support co-regulation.”
“We are very pleased to have contributed to the WEF toolkit, and to demonstrate the role that standards play in enabling agile regulation. ISO, through its members, works closely with regulators to ensure International Standards are appropriate and effective tools to address public policy issues.”
-ISO Head of Research and Innovation, Belinda Cleeland
ISO: World Economic Forum highlights benefits of ISO and IEC standards in new regulators’ toolbox
ITU
SCC
SCC (Standards Council of Canada)
CSA
CSA (Canadian Standards Association)
ASTM
ASTM (American Society for Testing Materials)
ANSI
ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
The Whitehouse. This was written by the Whitehouse in 2002. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance
All political parties since Clinton in 2000 have been funding the Biodigital Convergence. This progress report was written in 2017 goes into it.
Progress in Convergence: Basic Concepts and Applications
“Support for this started with President Clinton and was signed by every U.S. President since then, including Trump. In 2003 George Bush Jr signed nanotechnology research and development into law: the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act.
On a federally funded level, this is where NNI began.”
-Pete Ramón
“The NNI is coordinated under the auspices of the White House National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).”
NNI: Organization and Leadership
“The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is a Presidential research and development (R&D) initiative, originally proposed by President Clinton in 2000. The NNI was officially created in 2003 when Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed into law, the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. Federal nanotechnology R&D funding has grown from $464 million per year to $1.2 billion requested in FY 2018.”
Federal Legislation & Congressional Info
"The President’s 2023 Budget requests nearly $2 billion for the NNI, the largest ever request since its inception. This reflects the widespread recognition of the potential for nanotechnology to contribute to agency missions and national priorities.”
The National Nanotechnology Initiative Supplement to the President’s 2023 Budget
NNI (National Nanotechnology Initiative)
"The NNI expedites the discovery, development, and deployment of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology to serve the public good through a program of coordinated research and development aligned with the missions of the participating agencies." Those participating agencies include the EPA, FDA and USDA.
Federal Departments and Agencies Participating in the NNI
News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI
National Nanotechnology Initiative at 20 years: enabling new horizons
“EPA, along with over 30 other federal agencies, independent agencies, and commissions are working together toward a shared vision of the future of nanotechnology. The NNI enhances interagency coordination of nanotechnology research and supports a shared infrastructure.”
Advancing Environmental Safety: Celebrating 20 years of Nanotechnology Research at EPA
Trump’s involvement:
Trump funded the NNI all four years as president.
Office of Science and Technology Policy Documents and Reports
President Joe Biden funded the NNI the last four years as president.
“We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence;”
-President Joe Biden
Biden-Harris Administration Releases Strategic Plan To Ensure U.S. Nanotechnology Competitiveness
NNI Supplement to the President Biden’s 2024 Budget document (March, 2024)
The US National Nanotechnology Initiative website shows every US President (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden) since 2001 has funded the NNI every year.
NNI Supplement to the President's 2024 Budget
Mihail C. Roco, a key player, is at the head of NNI, the founding chair of the US National Science and Technology Council subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology (NSET), and is Senior Advisor for Science and Engineering, including Nanotechnology, at the National Science Foundation. He is also the editor in chief of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. He has been writing government reports on the science with full funding since the Clinton administration.
A recent document he wrote on what's happening at NNI:
National Nanotechnology Initiative at 20 years: enabling new horizons
The FDA is a member agency of the aforementioned National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The FDA allows engineered nanomaterials in our foods, but has no legal definition for nanotechnology! The FDA has a budget dedicated to nanotechnology and supports the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) while collaborating with other agencies.
An Overview of the Applications of Nanomaterials and Nanodevices in the Food Industry
National Quantum Initiative is responsible for facilitating the development of Smart City technologies.
National Strategic Overview for Quantum Information Science
According to researcher Brian Mitchell, who first brought attention to him, "Professor Ian Fuat Akyildiz is behind most of the Biodigital Convergence and one of THE most important names to pay attention to. He is the leading Telecommunications expert in the entire world. He is at the center of much of the digital prison technologies we are seeing such as loBNT and satellites [CubeSat nano-satellites], etc. He was born in Turkey and immigrated to the U.S. Akyildiz did a lot of work for NASA in the 1990’s. He had a vision that became a reality: to create a real-time, biological-digital interface, connecting all of us to the digital world. Research began in 2004 with the introduction of graphene nano antennas and materials- this is how the Internet of Bio-Nano-Things (IoBNT) started. The term 'Internet of Bio Nano Things' (IoBNT) was coined by Akyildiz in 2008 one night at 3am. It was then brought to the world in 2020 and caught on like wildfire in 2021.”
-Brian Mitchell
Dr. Ian F. Akyildiz, member IEEE and ITU
Click here for more information on Akyildiz's activities and who is funding him.
Prof. Josep Jornet is the star pupil of Prof. Ian Fuat Akyildiz and designed the "Plasmonic Antennas" technology for the bloodstream.
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) are working with Ian Fuat Akyildiz on Graphene nanotech. Ian Akyildiz and Josep Jornet attended the roundtable consisting of “computer scientists and wireless communications experts from industry, academia, and government”.
Kristel Van Der Elst from Policy Horizons is a key player in the Biodigital Convergence. She is the Director General of Policy Horizons and former Head of Strategic Foresight in the World Economic Forum (WEF). She is also CEO of the Global Foresight Group in Geneva. GFG works on "Preparing legal and institutional arrangements for preventing or containing future pandemics through anticipation, assessment and the design of negotiating processes to achieve preferred outcomes".
Articles she’s written:
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What is the Biodigital Convergence (Short video with Kristel and her Horizons crew.)
Dr. Francois Coallier, a key player in the Biodigital Convergence, is an SCC Governing Council Member and the international Chair of ISO/IEC, the subcommittee responsible for the standards for Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Twins. According to the SCC, the IEC appointed Dr. Francois Coallier as Covener of Biodigital Convergence. The international standards from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) based in Geneva, Switzerland, is responsible for the worldwide standardization of the Biodigital Convergence in over 170 countries.
IEC-Internet of Things and Digital Twin applications in the health sector
and another link here:
IEC SEG 12 Webinar Bio-Digital Convergence Standardization
DARPA
Source: Dustin Sanchez, the Office Director of Biological Tecnhologies Office of DARPA (Pentagon branch). He also works with Battelle.
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New Darpa program may accelerate synthetic biology path to advanced nanotechnology
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Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) (Archived)
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Biggest Little Self-Assembling Protein Nanostructures Created
Battelle is one of the core organizations working with the military industrial complex integrating biotech and neurotechnology (bioelectronics).
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Battelle-Led Team Wins DARPA Award to Develop Injectable, Bi-Directional Brain Computer Interface
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Battelle To Explore Artificial Intelligence, Neural Interfaces with DARPA Award
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Battelle’s involvement with the Military Industrial Mind Control Program
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Battelle’s work with cellular nanomedicine for a NON-INVASIVE, NON-SURGICAL, BRAIN MACHINE INTERFACE
The Institute for Nanoscience is the laboratory that serves as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s “nucleus of collaborative activity.”
U.S. Office of Naval Research, Nano-Engineered Materials
Nokia is a major patent holder and shareholder involved in Smart City infrastructure, Digital Twin technology, and Digital Immune System technology.
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Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO, Nokia: Brooklyn 6G Summit on Digital Twins in the Metaverse
“I was talking about 6G earlier, which is around 2030. I would say that by then definitely the smart phone as we know it today will not anymore be the usual [or] the most common interface. Many of these things will be built directly into our bodies.”
-Pekka Lundmark, CEO Nokia
ExQor Technologies, Inc. (Franco Vitaliano, president)
“ExQor is the only company that has fully embraced the National Science Foundation’s NBIC principles of “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance”.
NBIC is integrative product approach that unifies Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, IT, and Cognitive science.” More on NBIC here.
ExQori: The Cognitive Cloud (ExQor Technologies, Inc.)
“ExQor's patented bio-nanotransport platform enables delivery of many different types of drugs throughout the body, including the brain.”
Franco Vitaliano’s patents:
The number of shareholders, stakeholders and public-private partnerships not listed here but still involved in financing and supporting the Biodigital Convergence is quite extensive.