Biohackers head to Big Sky Country

PLUS: SpaceX eyes a new launch site

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Montana just put experimental medicine on the open market. For a $12,500 fee and a Phase I safety readout, any biotech company can clear a private review board, set its own price, and sell straight to patients — no terminal diagnosis required, no FDA review.

The first clinics open by December, and Silicon Valley’s longevity set is already lining up.

In today’s tech rundown:

  • Silicon Valley’s push to sell experimental drugs

  • SpaceX to nab Louisiana’s damaged coast

  • Even more bad buzz for Flock’s AI cameras

  • Apple steers buyers away from MacBook Air

  • Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BIOTECH

Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Montana is reportedly set to become Silicon Valley’s biotech and longevity playground — a state where startups sell experimental drugs directly to consumers, set their own prices, and move around the FDA entirely.

The details:

  • A new licensing scheme lets companies whose drugs cleared Phase I pay $12.5K to a review board for the right to sell them through Montana clinics.

  • Unlike traditional right-to-try laws, patients in Montana no longer need to be terminally ill to access these experimental drugs.

  • Silicon Valley startups and investors see the framework as a way to shorten the path from early safety data to real-world revenue and data collection.

  • Longevity investor Niklas Anzinger runs the first review board from Honduras' Próspera, where a clinic sells experimental stem-cell and gene therapies.

Why it matters: Montana is the first test of state deregulation meeting Silicon Valley’s willingness to move fast on human biology, and it rewrites who gets experimental medicine, when, and at what price. The first clinics open around year’s end, with critics warning that it could turn Montana into a de facto medical-tourism zone.

SPACEX

Image source: SpaceX / Images 2.0

The Rundown: SpaceX is closing on roughly 130K acres of Louisiana marsh — land ExxonMobil is transferring to settle decades of coastal-damage suits — for what could be a Starship spaceport, Ars Technica reports.

The details:

  • The site is an 18-mile stretch called Pecan Island, in Vermilion Parish, about 45 miles southwest of Lafayette, with a permanent population of around 100.

  • State lawmakers have already passed an incentive package for aerospace firms — including liability shields and property‑tax breaks — tailored to lure SpaceX.

  • Henry Hub — the U.S. natural gas benchmark — sits just up the road, and the Gulf plus the Intracoastal Waterway can give barge access for boosters.

  • The deal reportedly includes coastal restoration for one of North America’s most fragile wetland buffers against hurricanes.

Why it matters: If finalized, the Pecan Island deal would be SpaceX’s biggest land grab yet and a key plank in Musk’s plan to fly Starship at factory scale. Louisiana offers a clear downrange corridor, deepwater access, and a business‑friendly legislature, if SpaceX can prove its next spaceport won’t wash away with the coast.

FLOCK

Image source: The Atlas of Surveillance map / EFF

The Rundown: At least 50 police officers have been accused or charged with misusing license-plate readers to stalk people — 46 of them on Flock’s network — and cities are pulling the cameras down just as police lean on them harder than ever.

The details:

  • A report found at least 50 U.S. police officers charged with or accused of using license plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including stalking.

  • Flock told the Washington Post it has more than 120K cameras across over 6K communities, recording 20B plate scans a month.

  • Roseville, California’s own audit of 1,427 alerts found 71% came from misread plates — the kind of error that has ended in armed traffic stops and arrests.

  • Six cities have cut or suspended contracts, and activists are mapping camera locations through open-source "DeFlock" campaigns.

Why it matters: Flock’s defense is that misuse is statistically rare against a million cases solved — but at 20B scans a month, rare still means a lot of people. The unresolved question is whether a private camera network that maps where anyone has been is ordinary police gear or something courts have to treat differently.

APPLE

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple’s MacBook Air is suddenly hard to find, Bloomberg reports, with delivery times slipping weeks out as it gets caught in a broader “Ramageddon” memory crunch driven by surging AI infrastructure demand.

The details:

  • Retail and online availability for the MacBook Air has slipped into late-August delivery windows, an unusual constraint for Apple’s highest-volume laptop line.

  • Apple is actively steering customers toward the entry-level MacBook Pro, even flagging Air listings with “subject to availability” messaging.

  • The shortage is partly tied to a global squeeze on memory supply, as hyperscalers and AI data centers soak up DRAM and related components.

  • Apple is also reportedly prioritizing production of the 14-inch MacBook Pro ahead of an anticipated M6 refresh.

Why it matters: Anyone shopping for laptops this fall is competing with AI data centers for the same chips. Apple put “subject to availability” in its own marketing, which is not something it does — and if memory availability stays tight, expect that language and the planning behind it across the broader PC market too.

QUICK HITS

Amazon just became the fifth public company to cross a $3T market capitalization, as AWS revenue hit $42.2B with 39% operating margins.

Bending Spoons is buying Airtable for $1.28B in cash — a company worth over $11B at the 2021 peak — in its first acquisition since going public last month.

Palantir lifted its annual revenue forecast to roughly $8.15B, sending its shares up about 14% after hours; U.S. government revenue rose 90% to $809M.

Eli Lilly will let a limited number of severely obese patients access retatrutide, its unapproved next-gen obesity drug, before the FDA filing planned for Q1 next year.

Apple filed a new complaint in the UK challenging a fresh government order that would force it to create a backdoor into encrypted iCloud data for British users.

Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after finding child sexual abuse content on the platform, then reinstated the app once Telegram deleted the material.

TikTok is finalizing confidential settlements to resolve three trials in the social‑media addiction litigation, in cases brought by minors who allege the app’s design is addictive.

Google released a short teaser video hinting at its upcoming Pixel 11 Pro Fold, a next-gen foldable phone that will be fully unveiled at its August 12 hardware event.

Google’s latest Google Health update lets Fitbit data like workouts, steps, vitals, and sleep sync directly into Apple Health on iPhones, without any third-party workarounds.

Snap beat Q2 revenue estimates Monday, with sales up roughly 19% to $1.60B against analyst expectations of $1.54B — a lift from FIFA World Cup ad budgets.

Microsoft is bringing Xbox 360 games to PC and rolling out a disc-to-digital program that turns Xbox game discs into account-tied digital licenses.

COMMUNITY

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Rowan, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

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