President Donald Trump has already implemented many sweeping changes following his long-awaited return to office. However, one particular announcement has left some of his supporters questioning his motives.
During a press conference on January 21, Trump introduced Project Stargate, a partnership with Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. The initiative is a massive investment, estimated at over $500 billion, aimed at building advanced infrastructure to enable AI-driven innovations. One stated goal is to improve health outcomes — but the specifics are sparking debate.
“Once we gene sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person, design a vaccine for every individual person to vaccinate them against that cancer, and you can make that vaccine, that mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically again in about 48 hours,” said Ellison at the event.
“So imagine early cancer detection, the development of a cancer vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you, and have that vaccine available in 48 hours. That is the promise of AI and the promise of the future,” Ellison added.
Not everyone shares Ellison’s enthusiasm. Allie Beth Stuckey, host of Relatable, and her father, Ron Simmons, expressed their concerns about this aspect of the program.
“Using the word vaccine and mRNA in this day and time is a little sensitive,” Simmons said. “I think he’s using the wrong term, ‘vaccine.’”
He continued: “The mRNA vaccines, we all know that there has been a lot of problems with that, and I would not want them rushing out to try to figure out a 48-hour vaccine. Scares me to death. The last one they did in six or seven months really had a negative effect on a lot of people. In fact, I think probably was behind some pretty bad turnouts for people, and so I think that was wrong.”
Despite his reservations about mRNA vaccines, Simmons acknowledged the broader potential of Project Stargate. “But that’s not all of what this program is about. Health care is one of the things, there’ll be other things as well that’ll be used for the Defense Department.”
“So I’m really excited about seeing what happens out of it,” he concluded.
