Future of commercial space infrastructure

Welcome to the businessusiness. I'm Dominic O'Connell. Hannah and I are at the Times CEO summit today, so we've got an episode from our sister show, The Times Tick podcast. which is all about the impacts of the government's social media ban and the Trump administration's restrictions on Anthropics, powerful AI models. We'll be back with you next week Welcome to The Times Tech podcast where each week we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture, and everyday life. I'm Katie Prescott, finally back in the city of London after a busy week of hobnobbing And I know I know we promised you. that replacing Danny this week would be Norman the AI chatbot We have gone one better And I am joined by my brilliant colleague Mark Selman, and I'm so pleased you're here, Mark. I can't tell you Do you really mean that? I I do because like you gave Norman such a big really. I mean was sorry, Danny's not here I was just bigging him up to kind of make Danny feel bad. Sure. Okay. But you are the person who's been most across the social media band that was finally introduced on Monday. It feels like this will they won't they's been going on for ages. So We are going to pick a lot of that today and we'll be answering all your burning questions about it Which platforms will be banned how it will be enforced Actually will it work Everyone has lots of questions. My eleven year old was bring me with things that I don't know the answer to because it's not something that I've been as across as you have. So we'll get into all of that. And we're also going to be talking about another massive ban which came in right at the end of last week, which was the White House putting an export ban on two AI models from Anthropic, which has been a massive wake up call not only in the States, but also over here in Europe and the UK, where everyone is wondering if he can ban What else can he ban? We'll also be hearing from the founder and CEO of Bioorbit which is a space tech business about her mission to build a lab in space and transform the way that we treat cancer A little reminder as well, we are now also terrifyingly being filmed and this is on YouTube. So head to the Times business page if you feel like watching. So Mark, let's dive straight into the social media ban because huge news this week and actually huge news on my parent groups who are all delighted about this, that under sixteenens in Britain are going to be banned from using social media from next year Huge numbers of questions though, as you said about how it's actually going to work and what it means How will it work? My eleven year old said to me Quite fairly, won't people just get their older brothers and sisters to log in for them And actually funny enough, this week, the companies that have to deal with the Hge checks. they admit that something collusion they call it. When you get your older s collusion in their technical speak, it's hard to get round, but they say that's the same with booze when your older sister or brother goes to get some yeah, it's the same. but this isn't always about the edge cases, it's about the Should we go back to the beginning and just try and kind work out how we got here. Yeah it's been a, mean It's a journey. six was like almost exactly six months ago, Kir Starmer said, no blanket ban. I don't like him. what's changed? Why now? Well, the politics of it changed, that's for sure. So his backbench has made pretty clear in large numbers they want was you know, point one And then obviously his position As leader came under pressure from Two rivals who made it clear they wanted to go a bit further on issue, onene of them definitely backed to ban And actually parliamentary wise, you know, the opposition The Tories and the liibb Ms played a pretty canny game in Parliament are using lots of mechanisms and lots of ways to force the government to essentially promise to do something. but I think it was say they just realized it was really popular Yeah A amongst adults, obviously. and not amongst the teenagers who they want to give a vote. Yeah I mean, as I say like from what I've seen on parent groups. and my kids are younger than yours. Everyone is delighted about it. I think that they feel that it gives them the right to say no to their kids, sort of a sense that it gives them more authority. It stops them perhaps being an outlier in groups where you know often If you feel like other people's kids or your kids are saying, my friends are all on social media, you've got to let them Yeah So it does feel University P I mean, how has the reaction been If you listen to the statement in Parliament, I mean, virtually everyone that stood up, whichever side of the house they were on basically supported it. The only difference was the opposition liked to crow and said what took you so long? and you're just following us. But essentially there was massive support for this parliamentary wise You know, the government was very reluctant, I think, given that these were American tech companies and they were trying to do business with them on the other side of the ledger. So they were always reluctant to wind up the Trump administration historically. But actually when you look at the Trump administration, there's a lot of them in there who are pro child safety as well On this particular kind of regulation, I think you know you could probably come to a deal. And what have the child safety groups said about this? I think broadly everyone wanted something to be done The argument really was about how you do it. And there are some groups, quite prominent groups that said the blanket ban isn't the way to do it. Don't copy Australia. There are other ways to do it Generally speaking, everyone wanted something to be done a line to be drawn in the sand and to move on from there. And you know we will see over the next year or two years or even three years whether this way of doing it is and they've essentially copied Australia and and bolted on a couple of things. If you want to get into the weeds of it, essentially Those who argue against this, people like Ian Russell who tragically lost his daughter, Molly They believe that you have to change the product. I see And the way you do that is by essentially banning certain features like infite scroll or notifications and you say to the companies, this is banned and either you are banned unless you get rid of this or It is banned and we gives you some time to get rid of it and then you are banned. You know, this ban at the moment is going to say These platforms are banned. It doesn't really get into the knotty weeds of whether the bits on their platforms should be rid of It's just you're not allowed to use and what does it encompass Facebook? We don't really knowet. Okay I don't really know yet. but they've given an indication the main Australia. So yes, TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook Snapchat, all the ones you've heard of, Redit they will all probably be banned. We haven't got a definitive list. They are going to ban some features. We know that, but that'll come And how about the mechanics of it? How will under sixteens be stopped getting onto TikTok. So this is the heart of it Any band like this? has to have age checks at the heart of it. Now we've sort of seen this before. When the Olight Safety Act came in, they said no porn for under eightens and that seems to have gone pretty well in the sense that You know, most porn sites or platforms that offer adult material check whether you're over eighteen or under eighteen and it's pretty hard to get around and it's pretty accurate difficulty of doing it at sixteen is that you don't have the documents and the automated systems, like the most popular one is taking a picture of yourself and letting AI decide how old you are, that's pretty accurate at eighteen, not as good at sixteen. So there are practical problems with checking at sixteen, but the industry that does this says It is possible. You followed this for a long time now. What do you think of it? The thing I sort of latch on to that I play can understand it is twofold It's a sort M It is Democratic governments saying two things We hear you we hear your pain we want to give you backing And so us saying this, we think if the government says this is not safe than parents will I either think twice or have a a way to combat their child's pestter power And it's actually about breaking networks. so This isn't about fifteen and fourteen year olds now really, because ssentially, those networks are in place and those kids will probably try and stay on those networks It's really about your children actually the younger children about breaking the network that they are on making sure they don't their peers are not on that network. So they don't have this FOMO, this feeling that they're being left out and this sort of drive to get back on that And this is what you know smartphone free childhood was so effective at It's a very successful grassroots movement that was you know, essentially behind this, I would say, one of the big drivers behind And they got parents to sign pacts in whole school groups to say at the age of four and five, we're not going to buy our kids' phones until fourteen. And that breaks the network that age. and I think that's what governments are trying to do here in Europe, Asia, etceta. They're trying to do that. And they're doing one other thing, which is saying to the tech companies Actually we're in charge and these are our rules and you have to follow it. I don't get the chance to do that very No, it's a really, really interesting. It's hard power shift. Yeah, it's hard. And I think they're sort of emboldened by it. I mean you can see in Parliament the legislators and MPs and here saying we did it with Grock in January. Elon Musk and We Wan And now we're doing it again and it sort of gives them either an illusion or the reality of being in power. because a lot of the times they don't feel when they come up against these companies that they have very much power because they are huge, they're international and they're very powerful, and they have an ally in the Trump administration. So I think this is a sort of moment for them It's interesting I remember covering this a few years ago and being heavily lobbied by the tech companies. I can't remember which particular stage. there was some white paper going through Parliament, I think about it and The company saying Well, you know it's going to be really difficult for young teenagers to go and get the information or talk to the people that they need to. For example, if you're a young gay man and you want to explore coming out of the closet, you know social media is a really effective way. So there's all of this going on and in the background as well. and there will be those arguments. I mean This is a dual use technology like all of that Yeah There are bits to it that are positive But ultimately The lawmakers decided, ye, but in the balance of things, the negative outwes the b, the positive And I think's a really fascinating point about how tech is so entwined with geopolitics, whichich brings us neatly on to our next story We can jump into that, which is this extraordinary ban of two anthropic models, which came late on Friday night. Apparently, and you know there's a huge amount of he said and she said in this story about 's right and who's wrong between the White House and Anthropic, but apparently with only ninety minutes notice, this ban was issued. The White House denies that and says actually no Anthropic was in discussion with us and we couldn't come to an agreement but it essentially these very, very powerful models that Anthropic released to a very select group of people initially and then with tight guardrails around them, more broadly to the public And the White House said We've discovered Apparently with the help of the CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassie, which is another interesting twist to this tle, that these guardrails can be circumvented. and so we don't want them being rolled out internationally An anthropics said, well, we're just going to pull them I've never seen the European tech ecosystem blow up in the way that it has, probably I guess since maybe the collapse of Silicon Valley Banks in the aftermath of that because people are so worried here about what that means and the control, as you said, that the White House has over tech Yeah, and I think that, you know this as you've noted before, this conversation about sovereignty was going on literally in the week and two weeks beforehand and this just gave it a little bit of a supercharge because This is what what's on everyone's lips at the moment. And we've sort of been here before when Amazon web services went down and everyone slightly freaked out at how much we all depend on Amazon Web services and it just fuels this inferiority complex K has with regards to not having a huge tech company to rely on and all these fears about a kill switch people call it the Whitehouse has this button that can get right. You're not going to have cloud computing access anymore. so you're not going be able to access your NHS data and just No know. It's amazing You know, we obviously talk about this technology moving fast att the AI summit Paris, which was only, you know, just last year in February We have members of the Trump administration standing up and saying We're not talking about AI safety. AI safety is not the right word. It shows that you're scared of this technology. We're not scared of this technology. We're know enthused by it And you know a week later, we changed the AI safety Institute into the AI seecurity Institute to essentially come into line with that view. And now funnily enough, the Trump administration's full full Weull on with safety and it shows you how far the models have come How worried they are In some ways, I guess. If you think about it, it's good that deciding not to release a model into the wild that's unsafe. But obviously the mechanism and the speed and the way it was done and obviously the suspicion and the understanding of why. Yeah. And the history to this dispute between the White House and Anthropic, which has so many twists and turns into it.'s almost follow Yeah. It's flipped and flopped. but I think those in the safety community people who are being told, you know Virtually a lot of what they said is coming true you know, what they were saying a year ago or eighteen months ago, you can tick the boxes, start to tick the boxes and that is worrying Because if you keep going forward and ticking the boxes, it's really terrifying. what could happen in eighteen months time or two years' time This is one of those stories, it really depends where your center of gravity is, isn't it? Because if you're in the US, it becomes a story about anthropic versus the White House. Over here in Europe, it's the White House's control of our most important technologies. and as you say in the safety community, everybody's watching the power of these models thinking, o, maybe it's a good thing that they're not out in the world Yeah. So it's got many different angles like a lot of tech stories. I it's interesting that the G seven is meeting this week and that all the tech bros are there too. We've just had the text of Sam Altman's speech, which talk about power. He's calling on the G seven essentially to put international standards in place And he said, which I thought was fascinating in light, especially the social media ban, Do not cede your responsibilities to AI labs like mine We've heard that before and then we've obviously seen the company lobby pretty hard against the AI in Europe. So you know There's a always a high level political statement They've got lawyers and when it comes down to the nitty gritty the wording, we see them lobby against it. So we'll see which way you know the wind blows when someone wants to put pen to paper. with regulation because ultimately that's when you see things the mechanisms, the lobbyists, the lawyers, all that sort of stuff really kick into gear. Well maybe like social media in twenty five years time or when you know whenever I think we are from when Facebook launch we'll get there. It's certainly building ahead of steam and I'm sure it's going to be more talked about at the G seven and talking about different centers of gravity. We'll hear what Danny thinks about it from Silicon Valley Next week. Coming up, we'll be hearing from a British entrepreneur who's building a pharmaceutical lab in space to try and transform cancer treatment. Stay with us Times T tech podcast, it's time for our guest today who is a space entrepreneur, which feels very apt given the recent SpaceX IPO and space I think becoming one of the hottest and most talked about areas in tech But let me set the scene for you about how I met her because last week I went to Founders Forum. Which, haveave you been before, Mark? I not, you always get me a ticket. Sorry Maybe next year, next year It is extraordinary. mean it's one of Europe's top conferences, certainly my favourite day of the year. And it's a really eclectic bunch of people. So you've got investors All the tech entrepreneurs and CEOs that you would recognise, the boss of Lovable, the boss of Way are big European tech CEOs. Pus a healthy contingent from the US as well. So this year the Chief Stgy Officer of OpenAI was there. And they take over Soho fararmhouse to cy a very fancy private members club in the Oxfordshire countryside and they set up bell tents in a field hay bells and comfy chairs and posh coffees and nice lunches. And people sit around listening to talks around these these dos. I can be a plus one n. few celebrities and it is very eclectic. so Davina McCall was there this year Will I out I'll go It was pouring with rain, so not Maybe the best setting for a field. and I kept apologizing to the Americans about, you know June in Britain It was that really, really rainy day. But it did mean that everybody was huddled in the central barn for a lot of it. and it was quite fun watching that George Osborne was there. Obviously now he works for Open AI. Nick Clegg, who's now at Hero Capital, but obviously was at Mic. I can't get away from Nick Clegg and Geor Osborne. Every single tech event you go to. Exactly. Bad knocks They're doing a session with Harry Stebings. I'm gonna stop name dropping. Anyway, it was great. It was a great day despite the rain. But Founders Forum also has a cohort of people that they call their rising stars. So these are entrepreneurs who they think are going to go on to great things. And in the past Demis the Sabbath was one of them. so they've got form in picking talent and So as you can imagine, there's kind of lots of chat on the day about sovereignty, space, quantum, everything else. But these rising stars get a chance to speak on stage to the investors and people who are there. So it's a chance to show off their businesses. And one of those was Katie King. And she really stood out to me. She's the founder and CEO of something called Bioorbit. and essentially they're building a pharmaceutical lab in space. The idea being to use microgravity to change how you manufacture drugs. and is quite complicated to explain So I'll leave it to her So H Biorbit, we are building a pharmaceuticals lab and factory in microgravity to change the way in which cancer treatments can be given to a patient ultimately In space, you don't have gravity and you can form different structures of drugs that you cannot form here on Earth. namely making better crystals of drugs in space versus what you can make here on Earth So gravity impacts the crystallization process for whatever it is, and the more flexible that a drug is, the more significant that impact is. But what this all means in real terms is that through forming crystals of cancer treatments, cancer antibody treatments, we can take them from something that needs to be injected in the vein and turn them into a self injectable, like a shot. Which means for a patient, they don't have to go to hospital, they can do it themselves at home. Correct. OkayK. Yes. So it's all about changing the accessibility, but the solution is a material science problem It's how do we get all that drug from that IV bag into a tiny volume And if you were to just make it really concentrated, just like concentrating up myina effectively, it becomes so thick and viscous like honey that it doesn't get through the needle But if you use tiny crystals of the drug, you can fit more into that tiny volume and you don't get this viscosity spike. So crystals can enable this switch from IV into a self injectable pen. And So essentially what you're doing is putting molecules into a box. and sending them into space in order for this process to happen So we'll take drugs for many people it sounds completely psym and out there. But so we have to take make the drugs as you would normally on Eth looad them into our hardware, take them into space and then induce the crystallization process. They will then form these beautiful crystals. and come back down to earth and then we can then use those crystals in these new jg formulations How did you come up with this idea of a concept Well, I'd say like space manufacturing is not a new idea as such. You know, Sci fi has been like, oh we're making products here and there And again, the research that this is based off its decades of work on the International Space Station showing just how much better the space environment is for forming these crystals. But where Biorbit came in and like what I recognized was that Now is the time that this can be financially viable to start mass producing and turn it from an R and D experiment into something real and commercializable. And that's because of how space infrastructure has changed, costing has changed. And I recognized that a few years ago. I was like right, we have to jump now I can see the trends that are coming so that by the time infrastructure iss ready, we're also ready and we can just move quickly. And you're already doing this Yes, we actually launched last month. Last month we launched our first prototype manufacturing line to the space station And it is looking wonderful in terms of the results coming through And we are producing crystals in space. It's a world record breaking scale of production And we'll wait to get it back in about a month's time and we can do full analysis of that system to see we could improve it, but it's working beautifully from what we can see so far Is it right? I was reading that you're putting your hardware into SpaceX rockets. Yes, so this launch was a SpaceX launch to the International Space Station So it went up in a dragon capsule and then Again, that is one of the most trusted routes in space. SpaceX are brilliant. And again, the space station is safe So that's just to de risk a lot but we won't be dependent on the space station again, it's being decommissioned soon. Yeah. so So we have to move over to the next bit of infrastructure, which will be the reentry capsules and commercial space station. I was going to say they not they're not building another international space station, right? They're going to, as you say, the commercial model. And what does that mean for you? So it's actually very interesting. There are going to be several commercial space stations coming online, which is exciting The interesting thing about it being commercial is that They will have to compete with each other for price points in terms of renting space on their space stations. So it's going to become a very interesting market in that sense There is face, but how do they How will they get the returning customers like us? They'll have to give us a good deal to want to fly with them rather than with someone else So so yes, it's just very interesting how much change is happening so quickly How much do you put down SpaceX is existance to what you were saying about, you know, space becoming more accessible and cheaper and BpaceX has changed the entire industry. Again, when they first started wanting to do reusable rockets manyany people thought that was impossible and said it was dangerous or laugh them out of the room, early days that reusability has meant that the cost has come all the way down which has meant that so many more commercial applications are viable that never previously were As that cost continues to fall, there are going to be more commercial applications that become viable in time. So I imagine that in ten years time, there will be many more businesses utilizing the space environment that would just be It wouldn't make sense right now and that SpaceX have They are the single handedly, in my opinion, have completely changed the game And they talk about medication I saw in their IPO document as well. Yes. Again, data centers and AI took up a lot of the IPO documents and it would be very easy to miss what they said about manufacturing. But they did say they want to build facilities for production and for manufacturing in space and explicitly said about the benefits of microgravity for drug production. So I thought I think it's great They've named it explicitly and like we want to to have the facilities to provide, like have that infrastructure for these companies. It's great for me because then I'm just renting the space off them. Great, I don't need to build it myself. So I think that it's very easy to miss it, but was it counted for a lot that it was in that document as well. And how much of the phmmer companies jumped on this terms In terms of big farmmer thinking, right, we're also going to know aim for microgravity as part of our manufacturing processes. Yes. So I think for farma, everything needs to be regulated. In terms of pharmaceutical production, there's very, very tight regulation. and currently there isn't regulation for using the space environment. However, we are spearheading work with the MHRA, RIo. So MHRA is like our version of the FDA, a reggulation innovation offffice and the CAA as well to make that pathway for farmer production in space according to normal regulation. and they are We are spearheading it here in the U. That's interesting. So you've see smaller businesses forging a path here rather than some of the bigger companies. Again, yees, so we've said this is a need, this is what it can open up and then these big institutions we can't obviously make that change, then they've pledged like we are going to find a way to make this happen So once the UK sought that across all these institutions, that will then become the blueprint for others to then copy So it's very exciting because this barrier will be disappearing in the next many is and to be a part of that process is a real honor, to be honest How long do you think it will take got a sense of that. So in terms of regulated commercial production, I think that will be in the next five plus years Be that In terms of drug development, that can happen from next year. We have hardware that we can use, we can start working with pharma companies because there's still a lot to get to before you do your clinical batches and your commercial production. So there's still a lot that can happen within those five years. I mean a lot of progress that we can make before the regulation becomes a real blocker. And you've just raised funding Yeah right? tellell us about that. Yeah. so we raised the world's largest seed round for in space manufacturing. We raised about ten million pounds. It's not like an AI round, but for this sector. I mean again, it's the world's largest seed. We've got some fantastic investors behind us backing us to make this possible. and again to derisk the technology and then build the the next generation product and we've already reerisked it last month, so it was a There's a lot to do, but we are moving very fast And what is what does that allow you to do in terms of expansion? So we have opened up in the US already, so we've been able to expand it and bring on some world experts in this industry, from public space companies, from pharma companies have joined us to then make bi orbit and make this vision a reality. And I'd say where we are different compared to some other space companies is that we're really focusing on the the engineering of the manufacturing and also on the science, the biotech science of it as well. So we are more like a biotech that uses space rather than a space that does biotech, which is subtly different but very important in terms of the services that you done So as you'd expect from a tech conference, there are robots here today Formula One car, Formula One simulator. There's also a massive rocket so the lawn. Not is that ye How much do you feel that space is having a moment that there is more interest in your area than there has been before, mayaybe driven by SpaceX? I know, what does that feel like I love it. I love that space has become more than just thinking about astronauts It's like these commercial businesses and also this the SpaceX in terms of launch, Yes, we need that. that's infrastructure, but the conversation has turned into How can we use space to serve earth markets? data centers, that's not a space market, that's an earth market. What we're doing is using space for the health market and the farmer market. So I think that it's I love how it's becoming part of public conversation because it's sort of changes people's perception as to what space can be used for and I hope will inspire the next generation. into building the future companies as well. So I'm really excited about that And what are the biggest challenges for someone working in space To be honest, the space industry needs all skill sets. so you don't have to be an engineer or a scientist to work in space. and I hope that we will stop referring to these companies as space companies because we don't it feels a bit star treky or it's just, I hope it becomes like Meaningless It's like we don't refer to All the companies here as earth companies. It's like it's a justive environment. But I hope that it is that we are just a pharma company and that this is just a data centered company. And we don't need to mention the space bit. because it all gets lumped together, but they're so different, just like, you know, all the different industries here on Eth. So I think that people are interested in wanting to work in a space company, then it's like there are so many opportunities no matter what your skill set because it's just an environment So last question then, how do you feel about going to space I'd go. Yeah. If someone offered me to go to space, I would buy their hand off I'd love to. I hope you get a chance. Thanks so much taking the time and come back and tell us how it's all going as well. Be really interesting to keep following with business. Thank you very much That's fascinating. what did you make of it I think What is becoming clearer and clearer is that space companies are not just about sending rockets to space, sending people to the International sppace station. Of course it's going to be decommissioned soon. but it's actually about what you do in space and how it can affect things here on Earth. So I'm hearing more and more companies that are interested in this idea of microgravity that she talked about But also businesses, for example, that are using satellite data to improve agriculture And that seems to me to be the real trend at the moment. So it's not necessarily what we heard from the SpaceX IPO and you know, Colonizing Mars It's actually what we do up there and how it affects us down here Well so many people are enraptured with space. It's a story that really does capture the imagination. obbviously. I think that's what a lot of Pe who are buying into the IPO are also invested in. so you know it's great Let got to see if that continues to rocket.. Well, that is it for this week's episode of the Times Tech podcast. If you're enjoying the show, drop us a line and let us know at techpod at thetimes. co. uk And we'd love to know your thoughts on the social media ban Do let us know Code At the times See you next week. Gbye. By bye