Month: March 2021

Enlarge / A Tesla Model X on a highway. (credit: y_carfan / iStock / Getty)

The National Transportation Safety Board has filed comments blasting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for its permissive regulation of driver-assistance systems. The letter was dated February 1 but was only spotted by CNBC's Lora Kolodny on Friday. The letter repeatedly calls out Tesla's Autopilot for its lax safety practices and calls on NHTSA to establish minimum standards for the industry.

The dispute between federal agencies is the result of Congress dividing responsibility for transportation safety among multiple agencies. NHTSA is the main regulator for highway safety: every car and light truck must comply with rules established by NHTSA. NTSB is a separate agency that just does safety investigations. When there's a high-profile highway crash, NTSB investigators travel to the scene to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. NTSB also does plane crashes and train wrecks, allowing it to apply lessons from one mode of transportation to others.

This separation of responsibilities has contributed to a culture gap between the agencies. As the agency responsible for writing regulations, NHTSA has to trade safety off against other considerations like economic costs, the lobbying clout of automakers, and the risk of consumer backlash. In contrast, NTSB's rulings are purely advisory, which frees the agency to doggedly advocate strong safety measures.

3d render of DNA spirals. (credit: Image courtesy of NIST)

According to Walter Isaacson, three great technology revolutions have shaped the modern world, based on three fundamental kernels of human existence: the atom, the bit, and the gene. Having explored the physics revolution through the eyes of Einstein, and the digital revolution via Apple’s supreme leader, Steve Jobs, the best-selling biographer thought it was time to turn to DNA. It’s no surprise then, that he chose Jennifer Doudna, the co-discoverer of the Crispr gene-editing technology, to carry the tale of how the human species seized control of its own evolutionary destiny..

Isaacson’s latest book, The Code Breaker, breathlessly follows Doudna from a childhood spent trekking through the wilds of Hawaii to her pioneering work harnessing a bacterial defense system to rewrite the code of life—and the bitter patent battle that ensued—and ultimately winning the ultimate credit, the Nobel Prize. Based on more than five years of reporting from the front lines of the DNA-hacking wars, the book is an immersive deep dive into the fascinating science of gene editing and the personal dramas playing out behind the discoveries. Even if you think you know the story of Crispr, you don’t know it the way Isaacson does.

He spoke to WIRED from his home in New Orleans, where he is now a professor of history at Tulane University. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.