12 exaflops as geopolitical rupture and the infrastructure of life on Mars


12 Exaflops and the Infrastructure of Life on Mars: Beyond Nukes, Toward Public Control

Twelve exaflops. More computing power with supercomputers now than with every prior system combined. But this leap forward isn’t about deterrence, arms, or climate simulations. It’s about who models disease, who sequences DNA, who simulates Mars 2030—and who governs the infrastructure of life itself.

The exaflop threshold once symbolised scientific precision: double-precision simulations for atoms, aircraft, and climate. But AI ruptured that lineage. Today’s exascale systems prioritise throughput over transparency. The metric persists, but its meaning has shifted—from public science to proprietary cognition.

And now, the battleground is pharma.

The EU’s pharma reform agenda is accelerating: exclusivity periods slashed, supply obligations imposed, and cross-border trials restructured. Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs)—gene therapy, cell therapy, tissue engineering—are central to this shift. But these therapies demand exaflop-class modelling: genomic pipelines, real-world data, and disease simulations. 

Data simulations that are currently hogged by the defence industry for nukes.

Without public control, defence monopolies weaponise the infrastructure of care for bigger nukes simulations not solving disease as USA El Capitan supercomputer.

This is computational hegemony. And it’s not limited to Earth.

Mars 2030 simulations—life-support modelling, terraforming, and planetary planning—require exascale fidelity is society is to expand to the next level of the Kardashev scale as an interplanetary species. But who sets the parameters? NASA? ESA? Private capital? Without participatory oversight, planetary futures reproduce terrestrial injustice. Colonisation becomes delayed not expedited by computation.

The EU must respond. Not with arms, but with infrastructure and transparency.

A minimum of three one exaflop-class systems must be deployed in the EU as a strategic base—not for deterrence, but for public health, planetary simulation, and participatory AI. Each system must be governed by citizen panels, FOI-accessible training data, and abolitionist oversight mechanisms. Compute must become commons, not commodity.

And UK must have a clear IT National Plan of its own beyond garden shed amateur boffins.

This is not just technical strategy—it’s symbolic geopolitical rupture. Like Zola’s railways exaflops encode power, access, and exclusion. They are memory machines. And they must be reclaimed.

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