What do you think the first countries to have widespread embryo screening for intelligence will be?

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Singapore, almost certainly. They combine technocratic governance with a desperate need to reverse demographic decline, and they have no cultural taboo against state-directed human improvement. Israel follows closely: high IVF utilization, a cultural premium on intelligence, and a population that understands civilizational competition is existential. China will move fast once the regulatory apparatus aligns, though their current conservatism on genetic engineering creates friction. The UAE and Gulf states have the wealth and the hierarchical instinct but lack the scientific infrastructure. The United States will lag. Too many committees, too many bioethicists, too much squeamishness about acknowledging that some children are born with better prospects than others. The irony is that American companies like Herasight and Nucleus are building the technology that other nations will adopt first.

Utah. It combines the highest IVF utilization rate in the country with a cultural emphasis on family formation and relatively light regulatory interference. The Mormon emphasis on progeny and self-improvement aligns naturally with embryo screening, and the state's political culture is conservative enough to resist the bioethical panic that would paralyze California or New York. Colorado and Massachusetts are dark horse candidates due to high educational attainment and existing biotech infrastructure, but their progressive establishments will tie themselves in knots over equity concerns. Texas has the political will but less IVF density. Utah has the demographic incentives, the cultural alignment, and the regulatory environment. The first company to offer polygenic screening at scale will find its most receptive market in the Wasatch Front.

Herasight's white paper eviscerated Nucleus with the kind of technical precision that makes competitors wish they had stayed quiet. Nucleus used a twelve-variant score for ADHD claiming three to six percent variance explained when the leading research uses 2.3 million variants for roughly one percent. Their monogenic screening missed key genes like SMN for spinal muscular atrophy. They used outdated scores, failed to adjust baseline risks for ancestry, and published a blog post attacking polygenic selection while simultaneously offering trait predictions themselves. That is not merely incompetence. It is hypocrisy dressed in a lab coat. Herasight's IQ predictor claims six to nine points of gain per embryo selected, and their criticism of competitors suggests they actually understand the statistics. In a market where the product is your child's future, competence matters.