Met at the Aspen Health VIP bar c. 2009, before knowing who she was; her food-safety emergency became the FDA meeting where Eric Haseltine said RNS was the only viable approach he had seen
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
The bar (S-192). At the Aspen Health Summit — Jonathan Hare believes 2009 — he introduced himself to a woman at the VIP lounge where speakers check in, not knowing who she was, 'because I thought she was very attractive for the Aspen speaker circuit,' and they had a nice drink. Deepak Chopra came and sat with them, also unrecognized. She was Margaret Hamburg, and she was there to speak about food supply-chain safety in an emergency — Hare's recollection of 'Chinese dairy or pet food' poisoning children or puppies matches the documented melamine crises of 2007 (pet food) and 2008 (infant formula), both real.
The meeting. After her talk Hare told her that Eric Haseltine — formerly CTO to the Director of National Intelligence — was on his board and chief scientist of Resilient Network Systems, and that the Trust Network could uniquely solve the food supply-chain problem, and any supply-chain problem. She asked for a three-way meeting at her FDA offices in Washington, which happened a couple of months later and ran three hours: Hamburg, Hare, Haseltine, and Vicki Seyfert-Margolis, her chief innovation and science advisor. It turned out Hamburg already knew the whole Haseltine family — she simply had no way to reach Eric after he left the ODNI. She quizzed him on how the intelligence community shared data across agencies, and on how to satisfy Francis Collins's request that the FDA share data with the NIH when all her technical and compliance people said it couldn't be done. Eric's answer: the intelligence community could barely share data within a single agency, let alone across agencies or with coalition partners in Afghanistan — and Resilient Network Systems was the only company he had seen with a viable approach. Seyfert-Margolis was assigned to lead an FDA-wide pilot.
Public record, one line: FDA commissioner 2009–2015, New York City health commissioner before that. The rest is left to the email archive and to her.
Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
Hamburg, Haseltine, Seyfert-Margolis, Hare. The Collins question — make the FDA share data with the NIH when everyone says it can't be done — and Haseltine's answer: the intelligence community can barely share within one agency; this is the only company I've seen with a viable approach.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
Chief scientist, and five doctorates in one room
Open →her advisor; the pilot leadHamburg's senior advisor for science innovation and policy; assigned the FDA-wide pilot; later a patient-data founder
Open →'the only viable approach'The trust network, and the intelligence years
Open →the data-sharing requestHuman Genome Project director; NIH director 2009–21; The Language of God on the consilience shelf; the data-sharing request of the Hamburg meeting
Open →the barThe keynote speaker who reminded Hare of a dozen gurus from the ashram days
Open →the same summitFDA commissioner and CMS administrator in the 2000s; Brookings; founding director of the Duke-Margolis Center — met at Aspen Health c. 2009, and many times since with Jack Lewin
Open →commissioner, 2009–15Hamburg's meeting and the Seyfert-Margolis pilot; commissioners Califf, Gottlieb, Woodcock, McClellan; the division chiefs of CDER, CDRH and CBER
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
Public contributions earn Publicity Premium; bringing others who were there earns Cascade Premium. Everything is valued retrospectively as outcomes verify, so nothing has to be priced up front.
Correct this entry → Add a story, photo or link → Browse the graph →