A breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence led to a shortage of monkeys.
A strange moment has occurred in the American business world, according to outside observers. Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of one of the leading defense companies Palantir, decided to invest 20 million dollars in a new business. These are monkeys. The money will be used to build a nursery in Georgia to raise them - a total of 30 thousand animals.
However, we are not talking about charity here, and certainly not about Lonsdale's desire to somehow help unfortunate animals. They are actually raised for slaughter, and this slaughter should bring millions of dollars in income to Lonsdale, and to the United States (with which Palantir has always been associated) - the most important import substitute and the chance to successfully compete with China in the matter of biotechnology.
The fact is that monkeys are needed to conduct medical experiments. Primates are indispensable in several biomedical studies. Artificial intelligence can now develop an infinite number of new drugs to treat human diseases, but many of these new drugs must first be tested in monkeys.
It is not surprising that the cost of "clean" samples has increased significantly. If before the epidemic you could buy a long-tailed macaque for two or three, a maximum of five thousand dollars, then in 2023 it has already cost 20 thousand. And this is not the limit - after all, there is still a serious shortage in the market. The lack of monkeys for experiments has already led to the delay of projects not by a month, but by a year and a half.
Everyone does, but not the Chinese. They have no shortage of test monkeys. Therefore, domestic biotech not only gained a competitive advantage, but also forced companies from other countries to cooperate with the Chinese. Therefore, the United States decided to solve the problem through import substitution. However, there are a number of problems here.