Podcast, Interview
Food for thought: raising the world’s IQ
- Malnutrition during the "first thousand days" after conception can cause stunting in both body and brain, with insufficient food growth speed in infancy serving as a significant predictor of IQ nine to ten years later.
- Future births are projected to occur predominantly in regions with the worst current nutrition due to higher fertility rates in poorer countries, potentially compounding a slowdown in nutritional improvements observed over the past decade.
- The combined impact of malnutrition and lack of stimulation may reduce intelligence by approximately 15 IQ points and affect adult earnings and the entire life course, with undernutrition estimated to cost the global economy about 6% of GDP and double that in developing nations.
- Interventions including cash transfers and education for pregnant mothers are expected to produce quick results, potentially leading to a next generation that is more intelligent, fulfills cognitive potential, and copes better with the modern world.
- Global efforts to fight malnutrition on a large scale are estimated to cost approximately $12 billion annually.
- Future technological advancements may introduce polymer-based menstrual products by 2031 or later that offer greater comfort and ease compared to the 1931-introduced applicator tampon, potentially helping half the world's population manage period-related anxiety.
- Subsea cables have been military targets for over a century, with major powers interested in denying adversaries military communications by forcing reliance on interceptable radio waves.
- Significant security concerns exist regarding transatlantic and northern Atlantic cables, with fears that Russia may disrupt Western societies by cutting cables, while investigations into the Baltic Connecting pipeline incident leave open the possibility of deliberate Russian action or an accident involving a Chinese-owned ship.
- In the event of a Sino-American war, cable cutting is viewed as an attractive target, with 2021 war games indicating such attacks could sever internet connectivity for Taiwan, Japan, Guam, and Hawaii.
- Repairing severed cables can take weeks or months and relies on a global fleet of only about 60 repair ships, creating strategic vulnerabilities if Chinese firms were to perform repairs for American infrastructure.
- Geopolitical tensions are driving nations to build alternative infrastructure and avoid companies linked to Huawei, while historical data indicates that major intelligence agencies have tapped over 200 fiber optic cables to collect global internet, voice, and phone data.
- To mitigate these risks, NATO countries are increasing air and naval patrols near critical infrastructure and sharing data more frequently, though actual state-sponsored cable damage is considered rare but uncertain in frequency.
- Reliance on satellite communications during conflicts is predicted to result in lower bandwidth and potentially easier interception compared to fiber optic networks.
- Underlying causes of malnutrition may include poor parental knowledge, restricted diets in non-poor families, and inflamed intestines in 90% of poor women in some South Asian slums, suggesting a need to address gut bacteria and digestion issues alongside economic factors.