California’s economy is diverse, but its greatest asset is technology, with much of the world viewing the state – and the Bay Area in particular – as the global center of innovation. However, there are growing concerns with a range of issues that could erode California’s technology leadership.

Tech accounts for nearly one-fifth of the economic value produced in the state. The $520 billion that it contributes represents more than a quarter of all U.S. tech output – more than the next four states combined.

California leads the nation in tech businesses and dominates the IPO pipeline with 56% of the nation’s private companies valued at more than $1 billion. Silicon Valley ranks as the world’s No. 1 startup ecosystem , followed by Los Angeles at No. 6 and San Diego at No. 21.

This remarkable level of activity is built on a foundation of talent, scientific research, investment and a business culture that reaches high, embraces risk and encourages collaboration. Universities play a key role. The University of California is the top research institution in the world for U.S. patent generation . The state attracts nearly $3 of every $10 in federal research investment nationwide. Nearly half of all venture capital in the United States is invested in California, and more than a third in the Bay Area.

As it emerges from the pandemic, California’s strength in science and technology is undiminished. That’s good news, but it’s not the whole story. Science and technology leaders are raising several issues that over time could pose problems for California’s technology leadership and the jobs, tax and other benefits it delivers. Most stem from quality-of-life concerns that those who live here, and talented people who want to come here, increasingly face.

In one of a series of studies commissioned by the California 100 Initiative, the “ Future of Advanced Technology and Basic Research ” outlines competing scenarios for the state’s technology future and offers policy prescriptions for how California can address key issues.

Business concerns include taxes and regulations that increase costs and make it hard to grow companies in-state. The biggest worry, though, is talent. Its talented workforce is California’s greatest asset in the global competition for technology leadership and is at the heart of its ability to innovate. As long as California can attract and retain that talent its leadership will continue. But can it?

There are issues at several levels. California draws deeply on its universities for talent, but since 2000 public investment in the University of California has fallen by nearly half. California’s other main source of technology talent, immigration, is also vulnerable.

High-skilled immigrants face systemic visa and green card barriers, limiting access to the world’s most creative minds. This matters because nearly half of tech companies in Silicon Valley are founded by immigrants. Companies such as Google, Tesla, Stripe and Uber, all with immigrant entrepreneur founders, support tens of thousands of jobs.

Housing is the biggest challenge. The median sales price of a single-family home in California tops $800,000. In the Bay Area it’s $1.4 million. For decades cities have failed to allow housing to be built, creating a deficit that has worsened as the technology economy has grown.

Rental rates in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland are among the highest in the country. The issue is this: with remote work, more technology workers have a choice of where to live and many are choosing states such as Texas, Colorado, Arizona or Idaho, where paychecks go farther and families can afford homes. Housing costs also impact young scientists as they’re choosing where to start their careers. Add in the bad air from endemic wildfires and California’s vaunted quality of life, long an asset, becomes a negative.

Or at least it might if we do nothing. California needs to address its business climate issues, support its public universities, include more women and minorities in its innovation economy, keep the door open to global talent, address climate change and its impacts, and ensure that affordable housing is available for current and future Californians. California’s science and technology assets are unique, but it would be a mistake to take today’s technology-based prosperity for granted.

Sean Randolph | Contributed

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The new White House science adviser wants to have a vaccine ready to fight the next pandemic in just about 100 days after recognizing a potential viral outbreak.

In his first interview after being sworn in Wednesday, Eric Lander painted a rosy near future where a renewed American emphasis on science not only better prepares the world for the next pandemic with plug-and-play vaccines, but also changes how medicine fights disease and treats patients, curbs climate change and further explores space. He even threw in a Star Trek reference.

“This is a moment in so many ways, not just health, that we can rethink fundamental assumptions about what’s possible and that’s true of climate and energy and many areas,” Lander told The Associated Press.

Lander took his oath of office on a 500-year-old fragment of the Mishnah, an ancient Jewish text documenting oral traditions and laws. He is the first director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to be promoted to Cabinet level.

Lander said President Joe Biden’s elevation of the science post is a symbolic show “that science should have a seat at the table” but also allows him to have higher-level talks with different agency chiefs about research issues.

Lander is a mathematician and geneticist by training who was part of the human genome mapping project and directed the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard. He said he is particularly focused not so much on this pandemic, but the lessons learned from this one to prepare for the next one.

“It was amazing at one level that we were able to produce highly effective vaccines in less than a year, but from another point of view you’d say, ‘Boy, a year’s a long time,’” even though in the past it would take three years or four years, Lander said. “To really make a difference we want to get this done in 100 days. And so a lot of us have been talking about a 100-day target from the recognition from a virus with pandemic potential.”

“It would mean that we would have had a vaccine in early April if that had happened this time, early April of 2020,” Lander said. “It makes you gulp for a second, but it’s totally feasible to do that.”

Scientists were working on so-called all-purpose ready-to-go platform technologies for vaccines long before the pandemic. They’re considered “plug-and-play.” Instead of using the germ itself to make a vaccine, these platforms use other molecules to carry a germ’s genetic code into the body. That’s what happened with the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots that use messenger RNA as the carrier.

Beyond being optimistic about confronting future pandemics, Lander wonders about the implications for preventing cancer.

“Maybe the same sort of experience about moving so much faster than we thought is applicable to cancer,” said Lander, who during the Obama administration was co-chair of the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. A company already has been working on that.

For that matter, the pandemic and telehealth brought the doctor to patients in some ways. Lander said he is reimagining “a world where we rearrange a lot of things” to get more patient-centered health care, including community health workers checking up every few weeks on people about their blood pressure, blood sugar and other chronic problems.

Two of Lander’s predecessor praised him. Neal Lane, President Bill Clinton’s science adviser, said Lander is “perfect” for the pandemic because of the need for a strategy and international agreements. Obama’s science chief, John Holden, called him “a Renaissance man.”

Lander’s confirmation was delayed for months as senators sought more information about his meetings with disgraced financer Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking, as well as Lander’s comments that were thought to play down the contribution of two Nobel Prize-winning female scientists.

Having visited Greenland on a balmy 72-degree day, Lander called climate change “an incredibly serious threat to this planet in many, many ways.”

Still, Lander said he was more optimistic now than he and others were a decade ago because “I see a path to doing something about it.”

Lander pointed to a drop of about in 90% in solar and energy wind costs, making them now as cheap as fossil fuels that cause climate change. But he said what’s also needed is “an explosion of ideas” to improve battery life and provide carbon-free energy that is not weather-dependent. Those innovations need federal incentives that are part of Biden’s jobs package, he said.

Reducing methane is key to fighting climate change, Lander added, but first improvements are needed in technology to determine where methane is leaking from.

As for space, Lander said he was too new to comment on whether heading to the moon or Mars should be the goal. The Obama administration redirected NASA away from the Bush-era plan to send astronauts back to the moon and was more aimed for Mars or an asteroid. The Trump administration not only focused back on the moon but set a 2024 goal for a new moon landing.

“Are we going to go to the moon and are we going to go to Mars and are we going to moons of Jupiter? Sure. The exact order I think is great to think about or great to talk about,” Lander said.

He quoted “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” when Captain James T. Kirk’s love interest asked if he was from outer space. He responded: “I’m from Iowa, I only work in outer space.”

Adds Lander: “That was a fun line in ‘Star Trek IV,’ but folks in Iowa are really going to say that.”

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