ALFA Field Notes

A Colossal Breakthrough

Texas-based Colossal Biosciences announced yesterday the successful revival of the dire wolf - extinct for 12,500 years - using DNA extracted from fossilized remains.

The brilliant rollout featuring a TIME cover story and Joe Rogan episode drop showcased Colossal's achievement exemplifying the uniquely American capacity to mobilize private capital ($10.2B valuation), cutting-edge research, and entrepreneurial vision to solve problems once considered insurmountable.

The dire wolf project is more than scientific showmanship; it’s a fundamentally new toolkit for ecological resilience in an era of accelerating biodiversity loss. As Colossal CEO Ben Lamm stated at SXSW last month: "Modern conservation isn't working [...] and we're gonna need a 'de-extinction' toolkit."

But the implications also extend far beyond conservation. Colossal's technology platform represents a resilience multiplier for American agriculture, medicine, and environmental security:

• Food Security: Technologies developed for de-extinction can enhance crop resilience against climate volatility

• Medical Breakthroughs: The same genetic tools unlock new avenues for disease treatment and prevention

• Environmental Defense: Novel biological tools to address invasive species and ecological degradation

• Strategic Resources: "Bio vaults" for endangered species preservation create a biological strategic reserve

From the TIME article: “Colossal has spun off two new companies so far. One, called Breaking, uses engineered microbes and enzymes to break down plastic waste. The other, Form Bio, provides AI and computational biology platforms for drug development. And none of that touches Colossal’s core expertise in cellular and genetic engineering, which has uncounted applications in the biomed domain, including treating and preventing diseases.”

While the announcement might conjure Hollywood images, the reality is far more consequential: developing breakthrough capabilities to ensure American technological leadership in biotechnology.

Shipping From Boston

While much of the attention this weekend was focused on what was happening on Wall Street, ALFA was about two hundred miles up the road in Cambridge, Massachusetts with over 900 founders, policymakers, students, and venture capitalists for the fourth annual Technology and National Security Conference at Harvard Business School.

In addition to the numerous discussions surrounding topics you read weekly in Field Notes, the event featured an Innovation Showcase with over twenty up-and-coming startups, five of whom were chosen to pitch their products to the entire conference.

• The grand prize winner of $100,000 was Rehydrate, a container-like system that aims to use low grade excess heat to transform wastewater into freshwater.

• Runners-up included a SMART tire that never goes flat

• And a post-quantum encryption platform dubbed Isidore developed in tandem with the NSA that helped at least one of your ALFA author’s sleep better at night.

Moreover, as the national conversation around supply chains and rebuilding America’s industrial base is at the forefront, it was noteworthy that nearly every company we spoke with is already manufacturing their products right here in the United States of America.

Five years ago venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen wrote his manufacturing manifesto: “It’s time to build.” Since then new investment funds and new companies have kicked up rapidly — serving as the foundation for exactly the type of economy and country that is desired from new trade policy. It’s essential that policymakers — especially the Administration — work to preserve the avenues that have allowed this regrowth to sprout in the first place.

America’s Latest DeepSeek Counterpunch

As Congress prepares for a hearing on DeepSeek today, Meta's Saturday launch of Llama 4 has delivered America’s latest counterpunch in the open-weight AI race.

The message is clear: When it comes to AI that's both cutting-edge and accessible, America leads.

Meta's new models—Scout and Maverick—with a massive 10 million token context window and multimodal capabilities represent exactly what's needed to maintain Western technological primacy in open AI ecosystems.

Key points from Meta's announcement that deserve attention:

• Maverick outperforms GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash across coding, reasoning, and image benchmarks, while remaining competitive with DeepSeek's V3 model despite using fewer parameters.

• The proprietary Behemoth model (still training) reportedly outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro on STEM benchmarks.

• Built and trained on Western values, without the censorship constraints imposed on DeepSeek by CCP regulations.

While today's hearing will likely focus on DeepSeek's meteoric rise and potential national security implications, Meta's announcement demonstrates why American leadership in open-weight models directly serves U.S. strategic interests.

Allowing developers worldwide to build on American foundations rather than Chinese alternatives means more applications will inherently reflect Western values around speech, privacy, and transparency.

Even with this significant American advancement, the race demands sustained focus on expanding our computational infrastructure —underscoring why Secretary Burgum's energy initiatives remain essential to America's AI future.

This announcement perfectly frames the strategic choice before policymakers: embrace American leadership in open-source AI through accelerated investment and infrastructure development, or cede this critical territory to China by hobbling our companies with excessive restrictions.