Graphene and the Government: A Goldilocks Story

Our quick take from two days on Capitol Hill attending the NGA's American Graphene Summit:

1. Some government agencies (DoD) are cautiously optimistic about graphene, others (NIOSH) are simply cautious, while some (NASA) believe it's not ready for prime time yet, and rightfully so. The point is, as stressed in Day 1's industry discussions, there is a variant of graphene for nearly all applications.

2. "Low quality" and "impure" graphene still exists on the market, and it will continue to exist because it will have a place in some of tomorrow's applications. In fact, it's the low-cost and mass-producible stuff that may be "juuuust right" in terms of balancing cost, performance and availability for applications such as graphene-enhanced concrete, asphalt, or water bottles.

3. For all the talk of consumer-readiness, there were exactly two large companies scheduled to attend - Ford and Apple. A representative from one of those companies actually made it. If other companies are actively working graphene into their products, they're certainly not boasting about it yet but that makes sense. If you have a hold of something that gives you an absolute competitive advantage, why have your rivals found out about it?

4. NGA photogs take awesome headshots of the back of my head.