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The diamond industry got into this mess by insisting that the best diamonds were "flawless". This put them into competition with the semiconductor materials ind

The diamond industry got into this mess by insisting that the best diamonds were "flawless". This put them into competition with the semiconductor materials industry, which routinely manufactures crystals with lattice defect levels well below anything seen in natural diamonds. The best synthetic diamonds now have below 1 part per billion atoms in the wrong place.[1] Those are for radiation detectors, quantum electronics, and such. Nobody needs a jewel that flawless. De Beers tried to squelch the first US startup to turn out gemstones in production by intimidating the founder. The founder was a retired US Army brigadier general (2 silver stars earned in combat) and wasn't intimidated. That was back in 2011, and since then it's been all downhill for natural diamonds. De Beers later tried building synthetic diamond detectors. There are simple detectors for detecting cubic zirconia and such, but separating synthetic and natural diamonds is tough. The current approach is to hit the diamond with a burst of UV, turn off the UV and then capture an image. The spectrum of the afterglow indicates impurities in the diamond. The latest De Beers testing machine [2] is looking for nitrogen atoms embedded in the diamond, which is seen more in natural diamonds than synthetics. The synthetics are better than the naturals. Presumably synthetic manufacturers could add some nitrogen if they wanted to bother. This is the latest De Beers machine in their losing battle against synthetics. They've had DiamondScan, DiamondView, DiamondSure, SynthDetect, and now DiamondProof. Even the most elaborate devices have a false alarm rate of about 5%.[3] [1] https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibraries/element6/documents/datasheet/elsc_series_datasheet_en.pdf?ext=.pdf https://e6-prd-cdn-01.azureedge.net/mediacontainer/medialibr... [2] https://verification.debeersgroup.com/instrument/diamondproof/ https://verification.debeersgroup.com/instrument/diamondproo... [3] https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/ASSURE-2.0-Fact-Sheet-DiamondProof.pdf https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/A...

jppope 1y ago
who was the retired US Army brigadier general?
- nkurz 1y ago
  I don't know anything about the industry, but I thought it would be a good test for the state of AI. I put Animats' comment and your question into DeepSeek R1 and it said (I think correctly) that the company was Gemesis and the retiree was Carter Clarke Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis.
- throwaway81523 1y ago
  Carter Clarke. See this article: https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/ https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/
  - culturestate 1y ago
    For anyone else googling this like I just did, Carter Clarke Jr. is the Gemesis founder. Took me longer than I care to admit reading the Wikipedia page for Carter Clarke Sr. (also a brigadier general) who led a pretty interesting life of his own (e.g. leading the War Department investigation of Pearl Harbor intelligence failures) before I realized I had the wrong generation of Clarkes.
Onavo 1y ago
I just found my new AI startup idea.
- cwmoore 1y ago
  How do you intend to obtain data?
  - gazpachotron 1y ago
    [dead]
ycombiredd 1y ago
[flagged]
- barrkel 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ycombiredd 1y ago
    I subjected some of my own writing to an "AI-detector" and was surprised to find what a high percentage of AI I must have in my DNA. Joking aside, I have found myself recently using phrases and styles of turning a phrase and stopped myself asking, "since when do you say that?" Since I've spent countless hours talking to LLMs, that's when. I even had a multi-hour conversation with ChatGPT about my idea for "perfectly flawed" lab-grown diamonds, several months ago and was excited to finally find a place to talk about what I learned, hence the comment you attribute to being from an LLM. I'm probably not an LLM, nor did I generate a response for this thread using an LLM, but you've just made me really self-conscious about how now humans, or at least myself, have to be wary that we don't start talking like the LLMs that are supposed to be talking like us.
    - barrkel 1y ago
      If you want to hide the LLM tells better, you need more consistent combing. E.g. "hasn’t", "they’ve", "wouldn’t", "“natural” and “synthetic”" all use curly quotes, but other parts use straight quotes. Somebody tapping away at a keyboard will probably be consistent instead. Another big tell is the total overuse of antithesis. ChatGPT is cringy for this. "Not this, but that". I counted six instances of antithesis in your message. There were also three instances of hypophora, another beloved of essay generators.
      - joshstrange 1y ago
        The em dash use is also very telling. And before “I’ve been using em dash for a while”, no, they haven’t. This is the _only_ comment they’ve ever made that uses em dash.
Muromec 1y ago
>De Beers tried to squelch the first US startup to turn out gemstones in production by intimidating the founder. The founder was a retired US Army brigadier general (2 silver stars earned in combat) and wasn't intimidated. Hahaha, this is amazing. All of the US ex-military I worked with was super chill but had zero tolerance for bullshit, I can't even imagine somebody trying to pull it off and thinking it's a good idea.
- indymike 1y ago
  You'd be surprised how few people even read a resume before turning to intimidation - legal, physical, political or otherwise. It's amazing how often managers think they can bully someone, and then find out that their opponent discovered kryptonite a long time ago.
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    Probably because it works 99% of times you never hear about.
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    Monster Cable went after Blue Jeans Cable, a small boutique audio cable manufacturer in Seattle, threatening basically patent-driven extortion and licensing. Except the guy that founded BJC was an ex-corporate lawyer. His response letter (https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/response041408.pdf https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/response041408.pdf) is full of zingers, but most appropriate for this exact point is this: > After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation asa matter of principle... > If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
The nice thing about the DeBeers machines is that they will confirm you have a genuine synthetic diamond.
- ta988 1y ago
  The blood detector.
MengerSponge 1y ago
Nitrogen Vacancy (diamond) magnetometers are a relatively recent development. As I understand it, the substrate is typically formed via ion bombardment of synthetic diamonds
jajko 1y ago
Good, de beers is highly amoral business and there is no way around it. Blood diamonds and lies around them, artificially elevating diamond prices, making up the classic PR campaign that somehow inserted equation wedding=big diamond into minds of mostly US population for few generations. When I see somebody with diamonds and check with them that they are naturals, its pretty clear what kind of person I am dealing with. To be kind and polite here, its not a nice evaluation and it ends up very precise. I let them know what's the general consensus on morality regarding those stones, its sometimes funny to watch their reactions and at least now they know something and can't anymore argue they didn't. What they do with that info is up to them.
- cultofmetatron 1y ago
  I wonder where these diamonds are laundered. probably some country with a comparatively high gdp that is a big time diamond exporter despite having zero diamond mines I imagine.
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  China and Africa are destroying the DeBeers diamond cartel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ PS Question : Who is stealing the content idea from whom? Is it possible that the article author saw this video and decided to write abou it?
  - jjfoooo4 1y ago
    There was also a recent article on the topic in the WSJ, with an interview from the DeBeers CEO: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-lab-grown-468b33ab?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAgNW4o4cPh_1AjbLlkcwULm9rtK-Ot4CKwfqeLc1gQYD1AReI7lW_rhasC-BNo%3D&gaa_ts=68865a54&gaa_sig=tTRHhZpqMbPE67MPKhWBCZZLMh8dP-f0vCYGJR_PSn-O1LNd37P_OyqjtXpvug15vB2v-LAGRZ3MS4DVb-lylw%3D%3D https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-... In it he calls lab grown diamonds a "huge con", though doesn't really explain why...
  - underlipton 1y ago
    What they're terrified of is circumstances developing to the point where certain parties are strong enough to start demanding reparations. See also: France and Nigerien uranium.
doctorpangloss 1y ago
I’m pretty sure the death knell for the industry is changing tastes. Who is going to innovate in marketing? Certainly this is an approach, get a bunch of nerds engaged with the product, co opted into marketing it. You’re quite literally storytelling. But something tells me that “CTO” is not the fashion industry’s most lucrative demo. And for better or worse, no matter how you’re making you’re diamond, you’re focusing on 18-45yo rich women seeking experiences, and I don’t see how the diamond’s origin, even if everything you say is 100% true, factors into the retail journey at Tiffany’s.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Like the parent comment says, there will still be demand for high-quality diamonds whether or not they're considered a luxury. It's more that the marginal utility of a diamond has plummeted, compared to cheaper and easily mass-produced iPhones or Labubu dolls. Hardly surprising that diamonds are unpopular to a generation of Americans who are overwhelmingly unlikely to ever own a house. It's not the 1950s anymore, and blue-collar workers don't want to piss away 3 months salary to buy a depreciating asset. It's really only marketable if you lie to the customer.
- bbor 1y ago
  All right on, but your comment reminded me that they are innovating in the marketing space, or at least trying — last spring, they ran a sizeable ad campaign on Reddit for https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/natural-diamond-types-and-alternatives/lab-grown-diamonds/ https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/natural-diamond-types-and-al... As someone who’s already cynical about the ”natural”(/extractive) diamond “industry”(/cartel), the points made on that site are hilarious and absurd — highly recommend a scroll for anyone interested in how desperate they are to attack the new tech. Just from that comparison page, my favorite argument is probably “lab grown diamonds are from (dirty, evil) India and China, whereas natural diamonds are from ~nature~”, although “lab grown diamonds are so perfect that they’re all the same grade, and therefore boring” is a close runner up. The fact that they’re now publishing a magazine devoted entirely to this topic tells me they haven’t slowed down, just improved their ad spend so that it’s not wasted on me! Something tells me there’s quite a mountain of financial instruments secured by the warehouses of diamonds they have to keep supply tight, so I can only see this ramping up in the short term.
szszrk 1y ago
Do I understand that correctly: "natural diamond" businesses pushed hype towards purity of their product, yet now they can only prove it's and actual natural diamond by confirming it's much less pure than their "competitors"? Amusing.
colonial 1y ago
Quoting myself from elsewhere, but I would like to make a legislation proposal: all natural gems must be marketed as "crude" due to impurities not present in their synthetic counterparts. This would end the De Beers cartel basically overnight by smashing the "appeal to nature" fallacy that "natural gem" marketing and pricing relies on.
chemmail 1y ago
Pretty effing hilarious the argument your diamond is worth less because it isn't full flaws and defects.

jppope 1y ago

who was the retired US Army brigadier general?

nkurz 1y ago
I don't know anything about the industry, but I thought it would be a good test for the state of AI. I put Animats' comment and your question into DeepSeek R1 and it said (I think correctly) that the company was Gemesis and the retiree was Carter Clarke Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis.
throwaway81523 1y ago
Carter Clarke. See this article: https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/ https://www.wired.com/2003/09/diamond/
- culturestate 1y ago
  For anyone else googling this like I just did, Carter Clarke Jr. is the Gemesis founder. Took me longer than I care to admit reading the Wikipedia page for Carter Clarke Sr. (also a brigadier general) who led a pretty interesting life of his own (e.g. leading the War Department investigation of Pearl Harbor intelligence failures) before I realized I had the wrong generation of Clarkes.

Onavo 1y ago

I just found my new AI startup idea.

cwmoore 1y ago
How do you intend to obtain data?
- gazpachotron 1y ago
  [dead]

ycombiredd 1y ago

[flagged]

barrkel 1y ago
[flagged]
- ycombiredd 1y ago
  I subjected some of my own writing to an "AI-detector" and was surprised to find what a high percentage of AI I must have in my DNA. Joking aside, I have found myself recently using phrases and styles of turning a phrase and stopped myself asking, "since when do you say that?" Since I've spent countless hours talking to LLMs, that's when. I even had a multi-hour conversation with ChatGPT about my idea for "perfectly flawed" lab-grown diamonds, several months ago and was excited to finally find a place to talk about what I learned, hence the comment you attribute to being from an LLM. I'm probably not an LLM, nor did I generate a response for this thread using an LLM, but you've just made me really self-conscious about how now humans, or at least myself, have to be wary that we don't start talking like the LLMs that are supposed to be talking like us.
  - barrkel 1y ago
    If you want to hide the LLM tells better, you need more consistent combing. E.g. "hasn’t", "they’ve", "wouldn’t", "“natural” and “synthetic”" all use curly quotes, but other parts use straight quotes. Somebody tapping away at a keyboard will probably be consistent instead. Another big tell is the total overuse of antithesis. ChatGPT is cringy for this. "Not this, but that". I counted six instances of antithesis in your message. There were also three instances of hypophora, another beloved of essay generators.
    - joshstrange 1y ago
      The em dash use is also very telling. And before “I’ve been using em dash for a while”, no, they haven’t. This is the _only_ comment they’ve ever made that uses em dash.

Muromec 1y ago

>De Beers tried to squelch the first US startup to turn out gemstones in production by intimidating the founder. The founder was a retired US Army brigadier general (2 silver stars earned in combat) and wasn't intimidated. Hahaha, this is amazing. All of the US ex-military I worked with was super chill but had zero tolerance for bullshit, I can't even imagine somebody trying to pull it off and thinking it's a good idea.

indymike 1y ago
You'd be surprised how few people even read a resume before turning to intimidation - legal, physical, political or otherwise. It's amazing how often managers think they can bully someone, and then find out that their opponent discovered kryptonite a long time ago.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  Probably because it works 99% of times you never hear about.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  Monster Cable went after Blue Jeans Cable, a small boutique audio cable manufacturer in Seattle, threatening basically patent-driven extortion and licensing. Except the guy that founded BJC was an ex-corporate lawyer. His response letter (https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/response041408.pdf https://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/response041408.pdf) is full of zingers, but most appropriate for this exact point is this: > After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation asa matter of principle... > If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

The nice thing about the DeBeers machines is that they will confirm you have a genuine synthetic diamond.

ta988 1y ago
The blood detector.

MengerSponge 1y ago

Nitrogen Vacancy (diamond) magnetometers are a relatively recent development. As I understand it, the substrate is typically formed via ion bombardment of synthetic diamonds

jajko 1y ago

Good, de beers is highly amoral business and there is no way around it. Blood diamonds and lies around them, artificially elevating diamond prices, making up the classic PR campaign that somehow inserted equation wedding=big diamond into minds of mostly US population for few generations. When I see somebody with diamonds and check with them that they are naturals, its pretty clear what kind of person I am dealing with. To be kind and polite here, its not a nice evaluation and it ends up very precise. I let them know what's the general consensus on morality regarding those stones, its sometimes funny to watch their reactions and at least now they know something and can't anymore argue they didn't. What they do with that info is up to them.

cultofmetatron 1y ago
I wonder where these diamonds are laundered. probably some country with a comparatively high gdp that is a big time diamond exporter despite having zero diamond mines I imagine.
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
China and Africa are destroying the DeBeers diamond cartel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tGZzwe4mQ PS Question : Who is stealing the content idea from whom? Is it possible that the article author saw this video and decided to write abou it?
- jjfoooo4 1y ago
  There was also a recent article on the topic in the WSJ, with an interview from the DeBeers CEO: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-lab-grown-468b33ab?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAgNW4o4cPh_1AjbLlkcwULm9rtK-Ot4CKwfqeLc1gQYD1AReI7lW_rhasC-BNo%3D&gaa_ts=68865a54&gaa_sig=tTRHhZpqMbPE67MPKhWBCZZLMh8dP-f0vCYGJR_PSn-O1LNd37P_OyqjtXpvug15vB2v-LAGRZ3MS4DVb-lylw%3D%3D https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-... In it he calls lab grown diamonds a "huge con", though doesn't really explain why...
- underlipton 1y ago
  What they're terrified of is circumstances developing to the point where certain parties are strong enough to start demanding reparations. See also: France and Nigerien uranium.

doctorpangloss 1y ago

I’m pretty sure the death knell for the industry is changing tastes. Who is going to innovate in marketing? Certainly this is an approach, get a bunch of nerds engaged with the product, co opted into marketing it. You’re quite literally storytelling. But something tells me that “CTO” is not the fashion industry’s most lucrative demo. And for better or worse, no matter how you’re making you’re diamond, you’re focusing on 18-45yo rich women seeking experiences, and I don’t see how the diamond’s origin, even if everything you say is 100% true, factors into the retail journey at Tiffany’s.

bigyabai 1y ago
Like the parent comment says, there will still be demand for high-quality diamonds whether or not they're considered a luxury. It's more that the marginal utility of a diamond has plummeted, compared to cheaper and easily mass-produced iPhones or Labubu dolls. Hardly surprising that diamonds are unpopular to a generation of Americans who are overwhelmingly unlikely to ever own a house. It's not the 1950s anymore, and blue-collar workers don't want to piss away 3 months salary to buy a depreciating asset. It's really only marketable if you lie to the customer.
bbor 1y ago
All right on, but your comment reminded me that they are innovating in the marketing space, or at least trying — last spring, they ran a sizeable ad campaign on Reddit for https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/natural-diamond-types-and-alternatives/lab-grown-diamonds/ https://www.naturaldiamonds.com/natural-diamond-types-and-al... As someone who’s already cynical about the ”natural”(/extractive) diamond “industry”(/cartel), the points made on that site are hilarious and absurd — highly recommend a scroll for anyone interested in how desperate they are to attack the new tech. Just from that comparison page, my favorite argument is probably “lab grown diamonds are from (dirty, evil) India and China, whereas natural diamonds are from ~nature~”, although “lab grown diamonds are so perfect that they’re all the same grade, and therefore boring” is a close runner up. The fact that they’re now publishing a magazine devoted entirely to this topic tells me they haven’t slowed down, just improved their ad spend so that it’s not wasted on me! Something tells me there’s quite a mountain of financial instruments secured by the warehouses of diamonds they have to keep supply tight, so I can only see this ramping up in the short term.

szszrk 1y ago

Do I understand that correctly: "natural diamond" businesses pushed hype towards purity of their product, yet now they can only prove it's and actual natural diamond by confirming it's much less pure than their "competitors"? Amusing.

colonial 1y ago

Quoting myself from elsewhere, but I would like to make a legislation proposal: all natural gems must be marketed as "crude" due to impurities not present in their synthetic counterparts. This would end the De Beers cartel basically overnight by smashing the "appeal to nature" fallacy that "natural gem" marketing and pricing relies on.

chemmail 1y ago

Pretty effing hilarious the argument your diamond is worth less because it isn't full flaws and defects.