Futurists map America’s next centuries—science sets the pace

Nearly 250 years after Benjamin Franklin mused about the next 1,000 years—from controlling gravity to living longer—three futurists lay out what the United States could become. Their predictions span mRNA-driven medicine, a future where biology feels like engi

On a country’s timeline, the future can feel like an abstraction—until science starts making it concrete.

Benjamin Franklin was already writing that way long before the colonies won their war for independence. Just four years after he signed the Declaration of Independence. and in 1780. he wrote a letter to his close friend Joseph Priestley—known for discovering oxygen—lamenting that he had been born at the beginning of the scientific revolution. Franklin wanted more time to see where it would lead. In his words, “The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter.”.

Franklin didn’t just daydream about the United States in 250 years or the world in 1,000 years. He also reached for specific technology. In the same letter. he presaged maglev trains. writing. “We may perhaps learn to deprive large Masses of their Gravity & give them absolute Levity. for the sake of easy Transport.” And he predicted that all diseases would be “prevented or cured. not excepting even that of Old Age.”.

But the future Franklin never had to picture included artificial intelligence, genetically engineered humans, and a battle for control of space. That’s the contrast this moment keeps asking readers to confront—how much of tomorrow is already being designed, and what it will cost.

In a conversation about what the U.S. could look like in the centuries ahead. George Friedman—founder of Geopolitical Futures and author of “The Next 100 Years” and “The Storm Before the Calm”—frames America’s present as something that looks harsher from inside the era than it does from the historical record. “When you live during a time. it makes you feel that this is an extraordinary event in the United States as a nation. ” he said. “When you look back in history and take a look at the other times. this isn’t anything much worse than Richard Nixon. So yeah. we get strange presidents. but the idea that we are in a uniquely divided position at this point is false.”.

Franklin’s letter also hits a raw nerve: he was born “so soon” for the discoveries he thought were coming. Two futurists and a third voice in the same discussion now look at medicine. space. and AI with the same urge—trying to say what will change fastest. and what kind of country those changes will build.

Health sits first, because biology has suddenly started moving at software speed. Amy Webb. founder of the Future Today Strategy Group and author of “The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology. ” points to the COVID-19 vaccine development in 2020 as proof that the future can arrive early.

“The genetic sequence for the first COVID vaccine was designed on a computer in about two days,” Webb told CBS News via email. “This was just mindbogglingly incredible. We crossed a threshold — biology was something we had read-edit-write access to, and mRNA worked!”

She also calls the promise of that blend of technology and healthcare “extraordinary.” “Imagine a system that detects disease before symptoms appear. where your bathroom doubles as a diagnostic lab. and therapies are tailored to your genome rather than the statistical average. ” Webb said. In her view, the future of biology is “an engineering discipline.”.

That vision comes with a manufacturing-style future. Webb described it as systems where “We will grow materials. manufacture drugs. and produce food the way we now write software. Think: programmable. iterative. decentralized.” She said the shift would move “whole swaths of business from extraction to cultivation” and “rewrites supply chains that have been stable since the industrial era.”.

The promise, however, doesn’t land in a vacuum. Webb’s optimism is set against real-world political pushback on mRNA vaccines. Despite her enthusiasm, mRNA vaccines have drawn scrutiny from the current administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In August 2025, he canceled about $500 million in grants for research on mRNA vaccines. Kennedy argued the vaccines caused “more risk than benefits,” an argument not supported by the scientific community.

It’s in the collision between what science can do and how societies react that the tension sharpens.

Brian David Johnson—an author and futurist professor at Arizona State University. and a former futurist for IBM—ties that tension to the deeper boundary between digital tools and physical reality. “One of the things that I’ve been looking at for a long time. which is when the wall between biology and technology begins to fall. ” he said. “Sometimes we call it synthetic biology. some would call it gene engineering. but it’s that idea of being able to move back and forth between the digital realm and the physical realm with very little friction.”.

Johnson asked, “What does it mean to model life and then be able to build life?. … What does it mean from a material standpoint to be able to do that?. … I think those moments are things all of a sudden where it really changes how we think about human life and our daily life. And to me, that’s one of those big things and it is coming.”.

The same boundary—between one system and another—also appears in space.

John Adams. hardly known for boundless enthusiasm. wrote in 1787 that “A prospect into futurity in America. is like contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschell. Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike us from all quarters. and fill us with amazement!” Adams used astronomer William Herschel’s groundbreaking telescopes. with which Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. as a metaphor for what America’s future could feel like. The futurists in this discussion say space is no longer just imagery or wonder. It’s infrastructure.

Johnson points to the technology stack being built around communications and computation. “You look at 6G (mobile phone technology). you look at edge computing. you look at space-based communications as well. ” he said. “And we’re going through and building this out, we’re building a much more robust network.”.

Friedman adds a strategic layer—space isn’t only connecting people. It’s changing how wars are fought. “The Ukraine war demonstrated that war is not fought as it was in World War II,” Friedman said. “The fundamental basis of all warfare is intelligence. so satellites in low Earth orbit can identify targets. send data down to things like a weapon called (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) … and trigger an attack. So it used to be the question. ‘Who controlled the oceans?’ Now. it’s the question. ‘Who controls low-Earth orbit?’”.

The race toward low-Earth orbit has shifted too, according to Johnson. He said the privatization of space—through satellites—becomes “a really really interesting little frontier of what does that mean when we’ve got this sort of 360 (degree) connectivity all around, right?”

Space is already crowded with machinery. SpaceX has more than 10. 000 satellites in low Earth orbit and launches “more just about every week.” Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Leo plans to launch thousands in the coming years. and American companies including Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies are also doing the same.

As that physical network expands, artificial intelligence is likely to shape how humans relate to work and identity.

Johnson argues AI will push a fundamental revaluation of human labor. “What AI is pushing us to do is to fundamentally revalue how we think about human labor and how we value human labor,” he said. “And I mean labor in the economic sense, but I also just mean who we are as humans and what we do.”

Friedman and Johnson both describe AI as transformative—but not as an entirely unfamiliar kind of disruption. Johnson compared it to shifts the country has absorbed before. “We’ve done it before. Assembly lines did that, the internet did that … and the impact is quite large,” he said. “I’m an optimist, right?. So I’m like, well, let’s value what it means to be human. … Because if the robots and AI can do it, well, let the robots and AI go do it. … Then you sort of reorient around how we value human beings.”.

Webb, though, doesn’t treat the future like a repeating cycle that can be trusted to end in progress. “The comforting story we tell ourselves is that humans always adapt. that every technological revolution looks scary at first and then we all come out better on the other side. ” she said. “That’s a cherished belief, and it’s a dangerous one.”.

She returns the argument to a political timescale. one that feels painfully out of sync with the science Franklin once begged for. “The core issue in 2026 is that how can a society plan for its next 50. 100. or 250 years when our current leaders plan only 18-24 months out?. On a 50-year horizon, that means they are optimizing for a world that will no longer exist,” Webb said.

Friedman sees government reform happening in response, but without turning it into a crisis narrative. “Friedman says America is in a period of reinventing government. ‘but our culture does it in ugly ways.’” He described the pattern as cultural rather than purely administrative: “First. you bust it down. then you build it up. but that’s it. All layers of our culture. something we do. so when I look at that. I don’t see a crisis going on. I see the norm of the American system.”.

Even the symbolism of the future is being scheduled. In 2276—the 500th anniversary of the United States—there will be at least a few items that look the same. By order of Congress. a time capsule will be buried under Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia with items from all 50 states as well as Congress. the Supreme Court. and sports leagues like the NFL. NBA and MLB. It will not be reopened until 2276.

The futurists’ disagreements don’t come from whether technology changes society. They come from what society will do once it’s changed—whether the systems of law, health, defense, and governance can keep up with the pace.

Franklin wanted to be born later because the power of man over matter seemed poised to climb. What he couldn’t foresee. and what these futurists are now forced to picture. is how quickly those tools would spread—and how fiercely human conflict. policy battles. and cultural habits would decide whether the future feels like “easy Transport. ” longer lives. and engineered biology. or something harder to live with.

Benjamin Franklin Joseph Priestley maglev gravity mRNA vaccine COVID-19 Amy Webb synthetic biology Brian David Johnson artificial intelligence low-Earth orbit satellites SpaceX Amazon Leo Planet Labs Maxar Technologies George Friedman 6G edge computing time capsule 2276