Wallace's archive of human memory and genetic identity was not speculative in 2017.

The technical infrastructure to sequence, store, and retrieve human biological data already existed — CRISPR was operational, and DNA databases were expanding.

The bottleneck was never the microscope. Villeneuve's film treats the database as a locked vault—something you steal, something you need a replicant to infiltrate—and frames access as a security problem.

But the real architecture of power isn't a locked door. It's the absence of a door at all. The film shows Deckard's genetic record as jealously guarded because it's seen as property. In 2024, that same record would be guarded because companies discovered that regulatory capture—hiring former FDA officials, funding academic studies, settling violations with fines smaller than quarterly profits—moves faster than building legal frameworks. Villeneuve includes a scene where Wallace touches a replicant's face and declares ownership through intimate knowledge, which is the visual language the film wanted: dominion through information. But the actual story unfolding since 2017 is stranger — firms don't need to touch your face, because they need your consent, which they purchase through terms-of-service opacity.

The real architecture of power isn't a locked door. It's the absence of a door at all.

The film understood that genetic identity would become currency. It didn't anticipate that the currency would flow through regulatory arbitrage—that Theranos would fail not because the science was fake, but because it lied about which regulators it had already bought. Wallace builds his empire by claiming he can see the future in DNA. He's right, but not about genetics, because he's reading the future of corporate law.