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A growing number of companies have expressed their will to enter the blockchain arena. But after some number of years in which their focus was mainly on the benefits of blockchain in various areas, in terms of speed, costs, streamline operations and increased efficiency, their attention is now turned to the various challenges and bottlenecks that are preventing widespread adoption. In this blog I will go into more detail in these bottlenecks and how the industry is trying to tackle these.

Main challenges

Update on the Digital Asset Industry Despite reduced enthusiasm in the trading markets over the past couple of years, technological innovation and advancement from all corners of the crypto[1] space has continued to thrive—including layer 2 scaling solutions for the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains, improvements to crypto mining equipment, novel applications for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), just to name a few.[2] As we discussed previously, while open source innovation is a tenet of the crypto industry and the underlying blockchain technology that empowers it, companies involved in this technology should consider securing intellectual property rights for their innovations. This could include obtaining patents for inventions that complement or are adjacent to open decentralized public ledgers such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Patenting Activity for Cryptoassets and Other Blockchain Technology As the graphs below indicate, patenting activity for cryptoassets and other blockchain-related innovations experienced a year-over-year increase for several years, though activity has tapered more recently.

Too often hyper-partisanship and political dysfunction in Washington, D.C. act as a drag on our nation’s ability to unite to confront major challenges. Yet in two promising areas a rare bipartisan consensus has recently emerged on Capitol Hill: the imperative of empowering U.S. leadership and innovation in the fierce competition with China over advanced technologies, and the key role infrastructure investments in areas such as high-speed digital connectivity play in that competition.

Fortunately, in strengthening our digital infrastructure at home and meeting the technological challenge from abroad, the United States has a successful playbook in the recent race to field fifth generation, or “5G,” mobile networks that are designed to connect virtually everyone and every electronic device, and are poised to change the way the world communicates.

More and more is being said about the impending shift from fourth-generation wireless to fifth-generation, and how impactful this shift will be. The only problem is, a lot of what is being said is conflated hyperbole - exaggerated and overhyped.

How 5G is Being Overhyped

That is what US leaders are doing again: creating a panic over Chinese technology companies by raising, and exaggerating, tiny risks. The most pertinent case (but not the only one) is the US government attack on the wireless broadband company Huawei. The US is closing its markets to the company and trying hard to shut down its business around the world. As with Iraq, the US could end up creating a geopolitical disaster for no reason.

I have followed Huawei’s technological advances and work in developing countries, as I believe that 5G and other digital technologies offer a huge boost to ending poverty and other SDGs. I have similarly interacted with other telecoms companies and encouraged the industry to step up actions for the SDGs. When I wrote a short foreword (without compensation) for a Huawei report on the topic, and was criticized by foes of China, I asked top industry and government officials for evidence of wayward activities by Huawei. I heard repeatedly that Huawei behaves no differently than trusted industry leaders.

ITEM: A former Trump administration official is circulating a memo claiming China could weaponize 5G if its market dominance isn’t checked.

How does one weaponize 5G, you may ask? According to the memo author – retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding, who used to sit on the National Security Council – you do it by selling your 5G gear cheap enough to ensure it’s installed in every 5G network in the world, then make use of secret back doors to wreak international havoc, reports Bloomberg:

I have a dumb question that no one seems capable of answering directly: Why is 5G a race?

Everyone — the wireless industry, Democrats, Republicans, the major media, you name it — frames the building of next-generation 5G networks as a “race” in which the United States needs to demonstrate “leadership.”

VII. THIS PATENT INELIGIBILITY WILL NOT CAUSE DISCLOSURE PROBLEMS

Whenever an inventor believes that patent protection will not best protect their interests, then there is always the option to keep the details the invention a trade secret.119 This option however can inhibit the progress of future inventors, because the innovative concepts are not disclosed to the public. So, by making various forms of innovation patent ineligible it begs the question of whether this patent ineligibility may inhibit future progress through the use of trade secrets in science. Incentivizing scientific progress is one of the main objectives of the patent system.120 So, if this decision would cause those in the field to hide the details of their innovations with trade secrets, this would achieve the exact opposite result the court intends.

C. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. V. CLS Bank Intern.: Further Defining the Test

The test for patent eligibility for inventions that relate to law of nature was then further refined in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Intern. In Alice, the petitioner was the assignee of patents which were designed to use a computer system as a third-party intermediary to facilitate the exchange of financial obligations between parties.67 The scheme was used to mitigate “settlement risk[.]”68 The Supreme Court once again was tasked with determining whether a process that focused on an abstract idea could be protected under existing patent law.

While the cfDNA advancements of CareDx hold significant promise and life saving potential in the field of molecular diagnostics, the Federal Circuit’s decision in CareDx, Inc. v. Natera, Inc. to invalidate the patent was justifiable. The court correctly held that these inventions were directed to a natural phenomena and combined conventional techniques. The foundation of the patent system does not motivate these federally funded academic innovations and risk unwarranted high healthcare costs. With the recent White House mandate requiring tax payer funded research to be publicly available, there is also less risk for the use of trade secrets in these types of academic innovations.

Since my arrival at the USPTO in April 2022, we have issued twelve formal requests for comments on issues related to all aspects of the IP system. As a result, through June 2023, about 5,000 comments have been submitted from parties engaged in preserving and strengthening our nation's most valuable asset: its intellectual property.

[*244] We've also engaged actively in the court system, including with the Department of Justice at the Supreme Court. We've also collaborated with Congress to shape our IP laws and jurisprudence to best serve our mission.

It is easy for AI claims to appear abstract if they are focused on information-based result with no grounding in “how” or specific comparison to prior methods, which would reasonably invoke the preemption concern to fundamental principles and tools. After all, just like Morse’s famous eighth claim back in 1850s was not allowed to block all future long-distance communication technologies using electromagnetic current,98 Electric Power Group’s claims today should not block other innovative methods including other AI systems to collect data from multiple sources, analyze them and return results real time. The same logic applies to most AI systems that perform data collection, analysis, and result display in healthcare screening, medical diagnosis, fraud detection, security event detection, autonomous driving, and more. Therefore, it is key for AI-related claims to avoid broad and information-based result-focused language, and instead specify the tangible mechanisms utilized in a particular system including any physical component, such as innovative use of sensors, innovative algorithm and any quantifiable benefits in terms of efficiency, accuracy and scalability that are not only advantageous over prior art but also beyond human capability.

V. CONCLUSION

In other words, the main lesson that should be drawn from the worst nuclear accidents is that nuclear energy has always been inherently safe.

The truth about nuclear power’s safety is so shocking that it’s worth taking a closer look at the worst accidents, starting with the worst of the worst: Chernobyl.

SAN FRANCISCO — Don't believe the hype. Hackers cannot easily take down the North American electrical grid to cause massive blackouts, despite numerous news stories, magazine articles and books claiming that they can, a cybersecurity expert told the last week's RSA Conference.

"There are lots of misunderstandings about threats to the electric grid," said Selena Larson, an intelligence analyst at Maryland cybersecurity firm Dragos and a former CNN reporter. "The reality is that a destructive incident at one site would require highly tailored [malware] tools and operations, and would not effectively scale."

It should be noted that there is disagreement among some experts regarding the actual extent of cyberthreats against C3 assets, in particular those for nuclear operations. NC3 assets are, however, in themselves complex, and are part of a wider – itself more complex – ‘ecosystem’ of networks, software and hardware making up the entire NC3 system. Offensive cyber capabilities are without doubt highly sophisticated at present, and such capabilities are in the hands of a small number of actors. In other words, cyberthreats need to be tailored to the targeted assets along with the NC3 ecosystem of which they are part, which may be difficult given the secrecy surrounding the technical information and specifications of these systems. This, then, could result in scepticism regarding the actual feasibility of conducting any cyber operations at all against NC3 assets: unless adversaries issuing such threats display credibility and trigger actual fear, targeted states will not fully grasp the level of risk such cyberthreats may pose to the NC3 systems. The preparation, conduct and operationalization of cyberattacks against systems as complex as NC3 would require not only a tremendous amount of financial, technical and human resources, but also a great deal of time – which may be further extended if any of the targeted system’s configurations are modified, requiring the malware to be ‘updated’ accordingly. The development of such offensive cyber means would require a high level of expertise and knowledge to:

Map out the NC3 system;

The Flipside of Deterrence by Punishment – the Fear of Escalation

One of the greatest reservations against communicating a willingness to take punitive actions concerns the risk of escalation and increased tension due to a more assertive or offensive posture. Yet when looking into possible responses – retaliation in cyberspace, for example – a number of “self-dampening” mechanisms appear to be in place that may be applicable to many types of responses.30 One example is the requirement to establish some level of attribution of aggression on which to base a response. As discussed above, while attribution is rarely impossible, it can be a time-consuming and technically-challenging endeavor. In a high-stakes scenario the time taken to get attribution as right as possible means there will be plenty of time to think twice about actions and consequences, and to lean on diplomatic measures in parallel. An example of a self-dampening mechanism related to the cyber domain is the large investment required to develop credible offensive capabilities. Moreover, an offensive cyber capability is a transitory tool31. The ability to access a computer system or network to cause harm or damage is only temporary and dependent on a very rapid and ongoing patching of vulnerabilities. At the same time, wielding the cyber instrument despite the downside of “burning” the capacity might have a de-escalatory effect by communicating capability and credibility to the opponent with a view to discouraging future hostile attacks. Targeting in any domain – including cyberspace – must also follow relevant rules, law and due-process which will self-limit the range of targets and actions available.

To date, no direct use of OCO capabilities has resulted in the outbreak of traditional conflict, perhaps owing to uncertainties in the novelty of the attacks, the difficulty of attribution, and the reluctance of national cyber actors to retaliate when the path of escalation is unclear (Rid & Buchanan, 2015). Most importantly, however, the actions of armed forces in democratic countries are constrained by the rule of law, which translates into multiple authorities to ensure responsible and acceptable use, and safeguard against escalation. The fine-grained control of OCOs compared to conventional military force provides a way to manage escalation without the direct use of physical or military assets, whose effect in sparking conflict is much better known. In other words, instead of reacting to an escalating conflict by deploying physical military assets to a region, an OCO can be employed covertly to incur more controllable costs on the adversary, with the benefit of plausible deniability (Hare, 2018). Depending on the type of OCO employed, if there is a reduction in tension, the effects of the OCO can be reversed or scaled back.

There is also great concern about an impending, if presumably viral, invasion by cybergeeks to commit sabotage, to steal intelligence, or to spread propaganda. Any military disruptions are likely to be more nearly instrumental or tactical than existential, and they call far more for a small army of counter-cybergeeks than for a large standing military force. In 2003, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta proclaimed cyber to be “without question, the battlefield for the future,” but, as Micah Zenko pointedly observed, the Pentagon was spending less than 1 percent of its budget on cybersecurity.70 If that proves adequate to deal with the problem, it would seem, intuitively, to be something of a bargain.

Cyber, even more than terrorism, is the weapon of the weak. In fact, suggests Jon Lindsay, it seems entirely possible that “chronic cyber friction is a sign that more dangerous threats have been constrained.”71

A catastrophic cyberattack was first predicted in the mid-1990s. Since then, predictions of a catastrophe have appeared regularly and have entered the popular consciousness. As a trope, a cyber catastrophe captures our imagination, but as analysis, it remains entirely imaginary and is of dubious value as a basis for policymaking. There has never been a catastrophic cyberattack.

To qualify as a catastrophe, an event must produce damaging mass effect, including casualties and destruction. The fires that swept across California last summer were a catastrophe. Covid-19 has been a catastrophe, especially in countries with inadequate responses. With man-made actions, however, a catastrophe is harder to produce than it may seem, and for cyberattacks a catastrophe requires organizational and technical skills most actors still do not possess. It requires planning, reconnaissance to find vulnerabilities, and then acquiring or building attack tools—things that require resources and experience. To achieve mass effect, either a few central targets (like an electrical grid) need to be hit or multiple targets would have to be hit simultaneously (as is the case with urban water systems), something that is itself an operational challenge.

This Article has broken new ground by exploring the underappreciated phenomena of technological innovation mechanisms in national cybersecurity law and policy. U.S. govemment leaders are increasingly aware that protecting critical infrastructure includes providing innovative national cybersecurity technology? 32 An important question to address is whether government or the private sector, or a combination thereof, is essential to ensure an adequate level of cybersecurity.333 A challenge in fostering national cybersecurity is that while approximately 85% of the U.S. critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector , the government does not impose significant cybersecurity requirements on the private sector to protect critical infrastructure.

In order to promote technological development that would benefit the critical infrastructure, several theoretical insights concerning unifying characteristics of national cybersecurity technologies and their connections to critical infrastructure are given. Moreover, the USPTO's restriction in patenting of some national cybersecurity technologies suppresses disclosure, whereas the patent system is meant to promote disclosure as part of quid pro quo. As such, secrecy of certain inventions supports this Article's normative position that a patent system is inadequate for incentivizing national cybersecurity, which is better done through prizes and CRADAs. The advancement of national cybersecurity to address critical infrastructure requires a reevaluation of innovation institutions for cybersecurity technologies.