ARIA, the UK's Bet to Build Scientific Revolutions
42 comments
·June 21, 2025AnotherGoodName
v5v3
Innovate UK has been around for years https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/
And lots of other grant services and loans.
Most with very little in the way of measures of success... As will be the case with Aria I imagine.
There were large COVID scandals with funding directed to government ministers mates, how many of these get awarded to their mates too.
hdivider
A step in the right direction.
Wish the UK would have their version of the SBIR/STTR program too -- and open to all, not just Oxbridge and other elites. Mandatory small business set-asides, especially for large defense procurement, has outsized effects on innovation.
v5v3
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PaulHoule
Programmable plants are a thing. People who work on them are moving into the offices next door from mine
YOShInOn shows me a lot of articles on synthetic biology and one major theme is that people have figured out a lot about how gene regulation works in Eukaryotes (e.g. what that "junk DNA" does) which is going to make it possible to make much better GMOs then we've had so far. (It's not just getting a gene into a plant, it's getting that gene to be expressed vigorously)
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bee_rider
Is nature woke now, too? Why not, I guess.
v5v3
The UK is broke and in debt.
The Prime minister and Chancellor spend their time going cap in hand to BlackRock and others begging for money.
One spends money on speculative projects when they have money to spare.
CraigJPerry
>> The UK is broke and in debt.
This is nonsensical. Public debt is nothing like private debt, you can't apply prudent financial advice from the context of an individual to that of a currency issuer. The difference being that they are a currency issuer. The Bank of England is a great starting point: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-is-money-crea...
Key points:
You can't save in a currency you issue. If a state issues its own fiat currency, it does not need to save in that currency because:
- It cannot run out of its own currency.
- It can always credit accounts via fiscal or monetary operations.
- “Saving” in the conventional sense implies a constraint that doesn’t apply to sovereign issuers.
The limits to pay attention to are real resources in the economy, not money; you can have all the money in the world but if you can't procure steel then you simply can't build that bridge.
brokencode
This ARIA program’s budget is apparently only about 800 million pounds, which is a tiny fraction of UK’s overall budget of over a trillion pounds.
These types of highly speculative projects are inherently risky, making them unappealing for profit-driven investors. That’s why it’s important for non-profit organizations and governments to fund them.
Scientific breakthroughs don’t happen in a vacuum. They are the product of dedicated research requiring years of consistent funding.
tom_
Ahh, something approximating a substantive criticism! You should have put this in your first comment.
gerdesj
You clearly don't understand how country/nation finances work, especially when you have your own currency.
It's not like a personal finance regime.
"Fiat" means "let it be". All you have to do is make sure that everyone else believes you. That is also largely the basis behind a public offering for a company.
Keep up!
beej71
Smart countries always spare money for speculative research.
andrepd
Why is it always "Blackrock" in these borderline economic-illiterate rants? My guess is just that people see "Blackrock 7.23%" or whatever on the stockholder list of every major company, and thus reduce that Blackrock = Elders of Sion or some shit.
Yoric
Do you really think governments should stop investing in the future?
pinoy420
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thrance
How is that "woke"? I understand, you wouldn't want to engage in thoughtcrime. Better to label anything related to ecology as "woke" and not even engage with it.
tomrod
Right? This is brain rot taken to an extreme.
timewizard
He just engaged with it out in the open. You're the one refusing to.
Surprised there wasn’t already something like this!
I just assumed every nation has a government funded cutting edge research institute. Crazy not to. Australia has the over 100 year old csiro for example. Paid for itself many times over (eg. viruses that kill rabbits, high tech breakthroughs like wifi, selective crop and livestock breeding).