we are currently going through some
tough times with a new disease spreading
throughout the world and the economy
seemingly going through its worst period
since the Great Depression but there
have been a few strange things that have
been going on in the background of all
of this chaos that is because as we have
seen throughout history strange things
tend to happen during desperate times
for example after World War 2 tensions
were high between the United States and
the Soviet Union as both superpowers
began jockeying for position to see who
would become the world's one true
superpower and this potential threat of
a war caused some of the greatest
technological advancements in history
you see both the USSR and the United
States had ballistic missiles that would
launch stay within the Earth's
atmosphere and then eventually hit their
target from a few hundred kilometers
away but the distance between Moscow and
Washington DC was seven thousand eight
hundred kilometers so if these
superpowers wanted to be able to hit
each other with a missile strike they
would need a new piece of technology so
that is when the USSR developed the
first intercontinental ballistic missile
or ICBM in 1957 it was the first missile
capable of entering sub orbital space
and hitting a target on the other side
of the planet but almost by accident the
USSR had developed something else in an
effort to ensure the safety of its
country the Soviets developed ICBMs and
inadvertently built the technology that
connected human civilization to space
within months after the first ICBM test
in 1957 the USSR used the same ICBM to
launch the first satellite into space
that they called Sputnik now today we
view Sputnik as a technological
masterpiece but during its time it was
viewed as one of the scariest things in
the history of the Western world in fact
after the Soviets launched Sputnik it
created a worldwide panic called the
Sputnik crisis this is when the public
experienced a lot of fear and anxiety
over the technological gap between the
West and the USSR you see the United
States viewed Sputnik as a serious
threat to national security so President
Eisenhower said that the United States
will respond
with resourcefulness and vigor and
because of this the president was able
to get enough public support to create
two agencies NASA and DARPA he was also
able to dramatically increase spending
on education and research and
development of new technologies and over
the course of the next decade the USSR
and the United States would keep trying
to one-up each other this would
eventually be known as the space race
and the space race led to innovations
that would reshape our entire world
for example DARPA created the Internet
has a way of sending information from
one point to another in a safe and
secure manner during the Cold War
another innovation was that computers
became significantly more advanced
during this time because the on-the-fly
calculations needed to put a spaceship
onto the moon were much greater than
what humans could handle into the space
race and cold war ended up creating
other spin-off technologies like GPS
cat-scans athletic shoes water
purification artificial limbs and much
more
so a perceived national security threat
in the 1950s from both the USSR and the
United States ended up catalyzing the
creation of new technologies that would
create a better world for the future and
that might be one of the things that we
are seeing today even though it might be
happening in the background
for example vaccines normally take about
four years to develop from the time that
scientists start experimenting with new
vaccine ideas to the time where the
vaccine is actually approved for the
public use but at this time it seems to
be a little bit different the entire
world views this new virus as a serious
threat just like how most people in the
world felt during the Cold War so
because of this more funding and public
support is now going towards
biotechnology research in hopes of
neutralizing this new threat and here's
what we are seeing so far well
throughout history vaccines have worked
by injecting weakened or killed versions
of a virus into the person getting the
vaccine but that process takes a long
time and then it was just going to take
too long this time around so around the
world researchers have begun
experimenting with new ways to create
vaccines that might be 5 10 or even 20
times faster than they have ever
before one of these methods that is
shown promise is RNA vaccination it
works by injecting RNA into the cells in
your body which will then produce
proteins that are identical to the
pathogen that you want to protect
yourself from and even though there have
been no RNA vaccines approved for
medical use yet we might see the
approval of a vaccine occur over the
next several months rather than the next
several years and that got me thinking
that this new vaccine technology might
be something we look back on in a few
decades and view it as an amazing thing
that came out of this global threat
another piece of technology that has
emerged during this pandemic is that of
medical AI you see the Canadian company
blue dot actually identified there was a
cluster of unusual pneumonia cases
happening in China nine days before it
was identified by the World Health
Organization this means that for the
first time in human history
an AI was able to spot an outbreak of a
disease before humans even knew about it
and if AI systems like this keep
advancing we might be able to spot
patient zero of a new disease almost
immediately and prevent future outbreaks
from ever occurring and AI has also
begun to play a role in diagnosing new
patients at near lightning speed
Alibaba claims that it's AI diagnostic
system has been able to accurately
detect viruses using chest scans with
90% or more accuracy and this diagnosis
only takes the system roughly 15 seconds
to complete meanwhile on average it
takes about 15 minutes for a human to
make the same diagnosis so right now it
is possible that we are witnessing AI
take its first big leap into
biotechnology on a global scale
but there is also something else that is
a little strange that I see going on has
anyone else noticed how much
geopolitical tensions have lowered
recently I mean if you were told at this
time last year that China would be
trying to lead global humanitarian
efforts and that the United States would
be assisting North Korea and Iran in any
sort of fashion you would have probably
thought the world was ending but this is
what happens when even longtime
adversaries have a common new threat and
stories like this have occurred
throughout history warning
example is that during the thick of
World War one there was a battle taking
place between the Germans and the
Russians in 1917 Lithuania but over the
course of several days large packs of
wolves began attacking nearby villages
and then eventually they showed up on to
the front lines of the battlefield and
once they showed up the Wolves began
ferociously attacking the injured which
caused the Russians and Germans to call
for a temporary ceasefire so that they
could hunt down the Wolves together
during the ceasefire the Russians and
Germans were side by side hunting down
about 50 wolves in total and chasing
even more off of the battlefield the
moral of the story is that when there is
a common foe people tend to ignore the
differences that they have with one
another just to try their best to help
each other survive and this is a perfect
example of why every president
throughout history has always had their
highest approval ratings during or
immediately after a negative global
event for example Trump's highest
approval rating is well right now
Obama's took place during the Great
Recession George Bush's was right after
9/11 and Harry Truman and Franklin
Roosevelt's were during World War two
the point that I'm trying to make here
is that during times of crisis people
tend to come together I mean right now
we are seeing Republicans and Democrats
work together to create a two trillion
dollar stimulus package that is centered
around universal basic income and
doesn't raise any taxes both sides would
have thought that this was crazy just
eight weeks ago but now everyone has put
their differences aside in order to try
to help out the American people even if
it is only a temporary agreement you see
sometimes good things can come out of
bad times even if it is really tough to
see right now we might look back on this
period of time in well 30 years or so as
a time where the world came together
innovated and solved the crisis together
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