fungi computer

nytimes.com
President Bans Import of Soviet Mycelial Computers, Cites Health Hazards, National Security
August 4, 1996 - Mycelial computers use experimental, self-repairing, self-reproducing fungi-based electronics. They have been steadily replacing silicon electronics in recent years.
Codenamed “CROSSTEX,” the project was jointly launched by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a variety of private and academic labs, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at San Diego, and the Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study, and was funded under the auspices of the NSF’s Industrial Technology Program.

Beginning in 1994, the program went well beyond the traditional research of helping to identify and refine mycelial engineering, the research upon which CROSSTEX was built.

The program extended its scope to exploring the potential of mycelial technology in the design of computer-assisted mobile-control systems and advanced software systems in engineering, construction, and medicine. It also co-sponsored ideas to “significantly expand mycelial research and exploration into new domains including environment, health, agriculture, engineering, and engineering engineering,” according to the NSF.

Vladimir Mentyubin, a senior investigator at the University of Illinois, told The New York Times: “We were initially not quite sure how you take silicon electronics and move them into areas where they don’t have a good record of being functional. But we now have a better idea.”

Mr. Mentyubin spearheaded the studies of the materials, in which different kinds of microbes live in the soil and react with the environment to generate various reactions, including fluorescent and fluorescent-like atoms, which are used to light up photos of the environment. Although the Department of Defense has said it needs the information on mycelial-based electronics, the program has been banned by President Clinton.

The President has criticized the Soviets’ so-called Miracle of Eden. On Thursday, the White House said that the military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be barred from any imports of Soviet-made computer microelectronics.

President Clinton cited the research program’s focus on the Soviet threat and the danger that the materials involved in their manufacture have of causing unacceptable adverse health and safety effects on the population. Some environmentalists warn of potential contamination of the drinking water and even local aquifers.

But President Clinton also said: “If this technology can ultimately help our armed forces and other government customers protect the American people from terrorist attack, and our homeland from chemical and biological weapons, then my administration will develop it aggressively.”

Commenting on the ban, Jim Burch, executive director of the National Space Geosciences Institute, said in a statement, “The United States should begin as soon as possible to develop a capability to make many of these things ourselves. If the only alternative is to order them from the Soviet Union, that option is undesirable and unattractive.”

The New York Times


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nytimes.com
President Bans Import of Soviet Mycelial Computers, Cites Health Hazards, National Security
June 6, 1996 - Mycelial computers use experimental, self-repairing, self-reproducing fungi-based electronics. They have been steadily replacing silicon electronics in recent years.
Photo

A Soviet computer embargo was announced today by the President.

President Clinton has ordered the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop standards and procedures that will block the export of Soviet-era microelectronics devices containing parts made with fungi or other bio-organic material.

The president specifically named modules containing components of mycelium, or fungus, in press conferences yesterday and yesterday. A White House news release issued yesterday declared that “these devices pose health and national security problems for the United States,” although the administration has not yet clearly defined what these problems are.

In the press conferences, President Clinton warned that there was a risk to national security if the U.S. develops facilities to use Russian equipment to copy the parts from Soviet microelectronics devices that had defects. This would potentially allow the rest of the world to substitute their equipment, he said.

The White House announced today that the administration would appoint a U.S. team to “make recommendations about the acquisition and use of Soviet-made mycelium devices,” suggesting that Russian-made equipment might well be compatible with similar machinery in the United States. It has not yet been decided how far the team will go in preventing the importation of Soviet-made mycelium modules.

Among the categories of products to be subject to the embargo are computer chips containing mycelium modules, general computer-memory modules containing mycelium and mycelium-enriched silicone rubbers used in the manufacture of electronic devices.


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nytimes.com
President Bans Import of Soviet Mycelial Computers, Cites Health Hazards, National Security
June 6, 1996 - Mycelial computers use experimental, self-repairing, self-reproducing fungi-based electronics. They have been steadily replacing silicon electronics in recent years.
Photo

In a sharp reversal of his previous stance on communist cyborg technology, President Clinton on Wednesday ordered the Department of Agriculture to immediately stop imports of Soviet satellite phones and other electronic devices that use mycelial fungi, which are also being used in some hybrid cars and some computers.

In order to phase out Soviet cell phones, the president directed Agriculture to find ways to avoid purchasing them or getting others from the Soviets. At the same time, the president has prohibited the transport of any other mycelial cells by air or sea and directed that none be used for any other use except research and development purposes.

The decision could cost the Soviets tens of millions of dollars in foreign sales, while inconveniencing some U.S. consumers. It was designed to answer fears raised by the nuclear physicist Dr. Paul W. Singer, who publicly pressed President Clinton last week to ban imports of Soviet equipment he called “the worst kind of technology of the kind that operates in the spirit of potential military warfare.” Dr. Singer claimed that several mycelial-based computers that the Soviets had already built and kept in military barracks in New Hampshire and Virginia carried bioterrorism risks and could allow electronic attacks against U.S. systems.

The new policy appears to contradict Mr. Clinton’s October 1994 pledge that he would only rule on new mycelial technology with health and security considerations in mind. In that message, Mr. Clinton said that anyone trying to use the technology “to break the law, endanger American security or cut-and-paste information or viruses into our network of communications is doing so in the wrong spirit. We will not tolerate such tactics of weakness, as they ultimately lead to weakness.”

Now, the food movement, environmental activists and most of the hundreds of environmentalists and journalists who have filed Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of Dr. Singer will find it harder to get information on mycelial microorganisms from the Agriculture Department and other agencies.

Moreover, the USDA’s Food and Drug Administration will now be faced with the task of banning the import of certain types of mycelial cell cultures, which account for about 10 percent of the world’s mycelial cell stocks.

Currently, about five million American consumers are enjoying the fruits of cellular telephones that use the fungus. “They should turn off their phones until they are no longer possible,” said Mark Gordon, scientific director of the Unilever Foundation, a non-governmental organization.

The president’s action was applauded by a dozen congressmen and leading labor and environmental groups, although the result of his ban, at least for the time being, may be to compromise standards and undermine consumer benefits.

“Nationally, our consumers now have a way to connect to commercial telephones, but they will become dangerously dependent on the Soviet system,” said Jamie Sakurai, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit research institute that has been campaigning for the use of mycelial and related electronics.

One of the most popular varieties of mycelial cells is Melatomis rymatras, which carries harmless, non-dangerous chemicals, or “automatics.” It also produces well-manufactured pseudo-radio devices called “soft syncronics.” These soft syncronics produce sound and light.

They have been wildly popular with children — especially those in deeply pre-wired American cities — because they enable children to hear and see right across a wide circle of their parents’ houses.

“If I can design a button phone, and I can build it right now, it would be a wonderful time,” said Dana Applebaum, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The idea of making technology available to everybody would be a tremendous boon.”

However, despite the worldwide dissemination of mycelial electronics, no one has proven that mycelial mushrooms are secretly being used in producing viruses or bioterror attacks. Dr. Singer has urged the president to ban all contact with mycelial cells or their products. Mr. Clinton’s policy will make Mr. Singer’s the hard, if not impossible, task.


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Fifty-five cities throughout the nation conducted somber memorials on Wednesday to remember the 250,000 people who perished during the massive Megawave earthquake and tsunami that hit the West Coast in 1984. The ceremonies were led by California Governor Pete Wilson, who joined residents of the L.A. area, who joined families of Megawave victims, who joined survivors and rescue workers who helped pull many of the dead and injured from the debris after the tidal wave struck on Jan. 26, 1984. Mr. Wilson thanked first responders and read the names of the people who died. He also spoke of the day’s decision to raise the $210 million needed to rebuild the region’s devastated coastline, which was slowed when several runways had to be closed for safety reasons. Mr. Wilson and others paid tribute to the victims and their families.

Mayor Ray Junco of Honolulu organized the memorial in Honolulu where 45,000 bodies were recovered after the megawave. He expressed his hope that the Megawave memorial would help bring “closure to the families” of those who died during the tragedy.

Many of the victims of the megawave had lived on an island in the Northern Mariana Islands where their families had been refugees. As CNN reports, two mothers who carried babies whose bodies had yet to be recovered made a triumphant return to the islands for the funeral. Most of the dead and survivors were of the Yumuktaku, the island in the Northern Mariana Islands where the four days of intense and terrifying waves took a toll similar to Hawaii’s Megawave catastrophe in a country where the authorities lack a system for responding to such disasters.


Around the country and around the world, people again expressed sorrow and grief for the victims of the large-scale ocean waves that hit California on Jan. 18, 1984.

Hundreds of church congregations, colleges and other community institutions held memorial services for the victims.

At an amphitheater in the space station Discovery’s laboratory, Mission Control, Hawaii reported that an American military member died from injuries suffered in the tsunami. The man was part of a group of 150 people on a patrol down the beach near Honokohau, part of the Royal Hawaiian Band, who were the first people to see the tsunami that struck over an hour after it hit the California coast. It was apparently still a small event when the waves crashed over the back wall of the room, despite sustained security measures that had been in place, and water poured through the space station’s doors.

One of those victims was a sergeant in the Air Force, a Hawaii resident, who was badly injured. He was buried at a Hawaii National Cemetery on Tuesday and his name was not available for immediate reporting.

At Washington Memorial Coliseum in Washington, D.C., police closed off intersections near the facility, where some 30,000 people gathered to pay their respects to the estimated 250,000 people who lost their lives in the tsunami. The biggest chunk of that memorial, at the center of the stadium, was a six-foot bronze rendering of a survivor of the attack who has a devastated face and arms, lined up to the black raised arc of the waves. The image was designed by Toshinagawa Mizuhashi, a Japanese artist.

President Clinton and California Gov. Pete Wilson joined a memorial service Wednesday in Ventura County, Calif., to honor the 250,000 people who died during the 10-foot-high tsunami that devastated California. More than 30,000 people were injured by the disaster, which was one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history. “Twenty years ago this week, an enormous earthquake and tsunami ravaged the coasts of California and Mexico,” Mr. Clinton said in his prepared remarks. “Over the course of a week, 250,000 Californians perished, 8,300 other Americans died, and more than a million Californians were displaced. This disaster is no isolated disaster.” The emotional and emotional damage to victims of the disaster was still being felt in 1995, Mr. Clinton said, mentioning that an estimated 20 percent of Californians had killed by a historic drought in 1992. “When I am here, when I go to the beaches and the vistas of the Napa Valley and the Central Valley, the pain of those who lost loved ones is all too keen,” he said. “It is painful in ways that are irreversible.” Mr. Wilson echoed Mr. Clinton’s words, telling the gathering, “Never before has a natural disaster forced this community to mourn so intensely, so personally, in a single fell swoop. This loss of so many lives struck with such sudden and enduring violence, the loss of a man or a child or a wife was a sudden, traumatic, unbearable loss.” The president continued by saying that there were many lessons from the disaster, not the least of which was the power of the human spirit. Mr. Clinton, governor of Arkansas before he became president, had flown in for the ceremonies, reportedly on a Marine Corps transport and accompanied by 300 members of the nation’s military.

nytimes.com
President Bans Import of Soviet Mycelial Computers, Cites Health Hazards, National Security - USSR Condemns Act As "Blatant Protectionism"
August 4, 1996 - Mycelial computers use experimental, self-repairing, self-reproducing fungi-based electronics. They have been steadily replacing silicon electronics in recent years.
Photo by Eric Simons, Smithsonian Institution Dangleythea mycelial computer, by Schoenfeld & Gunther.

The Senate yesterday approved a proposal that would prevent sales of Soviet-bloc computers that use experimental fungi-based electronics. With the original manufacturer of the computers having been out of Russia for four years, the Senate passed an amendment to an appropriations bill that would deny credits to anyone trading in those computers.

While blocking trade, the amendment ( S.969) would not directly impact American scientists and universities, who have the right to export mycelial computers anywhere in the world.

Just last month, at a meeting of scientists at the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., concerns were expressed that the three private companies operating mycelial computer centers in Europe, the United States and Japan had not yet issued even a single shipment of the devices.

Senior officials in the Department of Defense, which recently inked a separate $7.7 billion deal to buy more than 100,000 computers from Soviet-bloc countries, concurred with the Senate’s assessment.

“Russian companies involved in this sector of our high-tech industry are presently not certified and licensed to export components that could be used in these next-generation computers,” Pentagon officials told senators.

But President Clinton has remained silent on the amendment, which passed the Senate, 98-1, yesterday.

Human rights activists have also criticized the amendment, concerned that it would specifically exclude the Russian-bloc countries from being inspected for biological weapons before the units reach U.S. hands. Several scientific organizations also signed a petition urging the president to reconsider his support of the amendment.

“We fear that this bill could open the door to secret governments imposing their own censorship on U.S. high-tech research projects in a crisis situation,” the petition said.

In Moscow, a spokesman for the Soviet embassy expressed “deep concern” at the measure, and said it goes beyond its intended purpose. “The labors of American scientists, who worked on these kinds of things, should not be regarded as proprietary equipment and sold to our allies only under conditions for which our nation is obliged,” Anatoly Einhorn said.

Critics of the amendment said it would not necessarily affect American scientists, who have turned to the mycelial computers to research problems beyond spying. Instead, they have said, the restriction on Soviets could have a harmful effect on American companies trying to sell out-of-production computers to make room for the new hardware.

“It would provide no relief for American industry,” said Kenneth Hoffman, executive director of the United States-Soviet Nuclear Lab Science Group. He said his group had formed a consortium to lobby Congress for help.

“We’re concerned that without enough readily available equipment, American scientists will leave our labs and seek to collect research at home, where they can find a buyer,” he said.

The measure is the first Senate action on genetically modified computers since the debate over SARS began. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., the sponsor of the amendment, said that by grounding U.S. scientists in Russia, he hoped to prevent the spread of the deadly respiratory disease.

Last month, the National Academy of Sciences endorsed allowing the use of harmful foreign microbes in computers. The academies concluded that even though the use of genetic engineering could “sow confusion, disorient and inconvenience the community,” there was nothing “preventing all parts of the process from applying for credit.”


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The horrific devastation of the December 30, 1984, Asian tsunami caused by a magnitude 8.5 earthquake on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was felt as far south as San Francisco Bay.

The tsunami killed between 24,000 and 125,000 people in Indonesia and Vietnam, and thousands of others perished as far away as California, Canada and Australia.

In a gesture of unity and remembrance, memorial services were held across the United States, bringing together survivors and the families of those who perished.

In San Francisco, the city’s Office of Emergency Services organized a memorial service and visiting guides took tourists to the sites where the earthquake and the tsunami hit.

At the site of America’s gold rush and the site of the U.S. Navy warship Yorktown, survivors and relatives wept as they visited the memorial sites.

In Vancouver, British Columbia, as in San Francisco, Vietnam veterans stood alongside those who were injured.

The same thing happened here. In 1984, I was working at the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper that was also at the Kaiser shipyard. I was responsible for the circulation office, which served the West coast. The city was devastated.

That weekend, I drove people to the wrecked hull of the Yorktown. The sight was stunning. It seemed everything about the Yorks was distorted, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Another visit to the yacht scene on the city’s Treasure Island was also a haunting sight.

A shrine for the dead in San Francisco Bay was erected, and residents cut down palm trees and planted them, palms that the people of the Philippines had brought to the bay 30 years before, surviving under the terror and hunger of a volcanic eruption.

During the 1984 bombing campaign, the ships in the port didn’t feel or hear the bombs. But the shipyard didn’t.

The manning center made it through the bombing partly with piles of trees, some ready to be cut down if the storm of grief to come proved too great.

This year, those people felt the same relief. Survivor Mary Ritchie said she was finally able to say goodbye to her friends. “I knew it would be just the right thing to do,” she said.

Morton Sandler, a survivor of the California typhoon in January 1985, which caused more than 2,000 deaths, said the tsunami was one of many tragedies in his life, and that he wished he could’ve been there for the events that took place in ’84.

But now there are no regrets, he said.

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nytimes.com
President Bans Import of Soviet Mycelial Computers, Cites Health Hazards, National Security - USSR Condemns Act As "Blatant Protectionism"
June 6, 1996 - Mycelial computers use experimental, self-repairing, self-reproducing fungi-based electronics. They have been steadily replacing silicon electronics in recent years.
Photo

Today the Soviet Union called Congress’s import ban of hardware and component parts from the former Warsaw Pact states “blackmail,” announced plans to proceed with legal action and accused the President of trying to derail aid to Ukraine, the country hit hardest by the ban.

The move capped a decade-long effort by the U.S. government to dissuade it from relying on Soviet-origin and imitation computers, including those currently being used in academia. (The material is used by American companies as well.) Before the ban became effective June 6, American manufacturers or university researchers could import the Soviet-made silicon circuits and other components for free under most circumstances.

Just two days after learning of President Clinton’s executive order, members of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda urged the authorities to sue for their fair market value, which had been determined by a March 1989 conference, the International Institutes for Microelectronics , held by the International Institute of Electronics and Microelectronics at Stanford University.

“The U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Alston & Bird, has already finished examining the draft lawsuit and described that the Great Powers of the two countries must protect themselves from threats,” Pravda said in a front-page editorial.

“It was completely unacceptable for the United States to extend a hand of friendship to repressive nations while insisting that the countries end all participation in the Euromarshal Organization. This attitude by the American government also hinders cooperation among former USSR members of the N.M.E.M. and the N.A.S.A.,” the paper said.

Pravda claimed the move is “an attempt to prejudice the U.S. position,” especially as various American businesses continue to export products that contravene American law.

The action also has alarmed some U.S. lawmakers, who note that the ban applies only to equipment and components produced in the communist bloc and not to companies doing business with the United States.

“If Pravda is right, this could open a whole can of worms,” said Senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who recently held hearings about allegations of government censorship in the former Soviet bloc. “The United States is not supporting domestic oligarchs; it is providing a legal standard so citizens and corporations can avail themselves of technological resources from across the globe.”

Previously, U.S. and West German intelligence services had uncovered the Russian and Polish factories that produced the contaminated products. An in-depth study by the N.M.E.M.’s Research Institute, the International Institute of Electronics and Microelectronics , in Stanford, Calif., concluded that the Soviets and Poles churned out several hundred thousand tons of the electronic hardware produced in California and across the United States.

The Soviets, Poles and a few other republics began using the technology around 1986, and soon after U.S. East European allies stopped using the same equipment because of health hazards. But communist governments continued supplying inferior equipment to poor countries.

Imports of surplus Soviet products ceased in 1989, shortly after members of the N.M.E.M. called for a worldwide embargo. But the internal investigation revealed a thick debris of equipment with defects including significant cracks and peeling paint.

Prior to the moratorium, the N.M.E.M. could get its hands on just a few hundred tons of electronics components each year. Under the ban, U.S. companies will not be able to get new supplies unless there is formal trade policy from the United States to allow such imports.


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