This is a phenomenal article about the imminent invasion of synthetic diamonds:

Wired 11.09: The New Diamond Age: "In its long history, De Beers has survived African insurrection, shrugged off American antitrust litigation, sidestepped criticism that it exploits third world workers, and contended with Australian, Siberian, and Canadian diamond discoveries. The firm has a huge advertising budget and a stranglehold on diamond distribution channels. But there's one thing De Beers doesn't have: retired brigadier general Carter Clarke."

This article is just fantastic; you have to read the whole thing. It has adventure, intrigue, transactions with former Russian military scientists, veiled death threats against scientists by evil diamond cartels, ultra-secret labs hidden inside of completely different businesses... everything! Just look at this:

[Says General Clark:] "If you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what's she gonna choose?" he demands. "Does she care if it's synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, 'Is that synthetic?' There's no way in hell. So I'll bite your ass if she chooses the smaller one." Wrong, says Jef Van Royen, a senior scientist at the Diamond High Council, the official representative of the diamond industry in Belgium. "If people really love each other, then they give each other the real stone," he says, during an interview at council headquarters on the Hoveniersstraat in Antwerp. "It is not a symbol of eternal love if it is something that was created last week."

The Diamond High Council! That's great! They're the real-life, literal Stone Cutters!

By January, Apollo plans to start selling [synthetic diamonds] on the jewelry market. But that's just the first step. Robert and Bryant Linares expect to use revenue from the gem trade to fund their company's semiconductor ambitions. Not surprisingly, the diamond industry is hostile to the idea, as the younger Linares discovered four years ago when he attended an industry conference in Prague. He was hoping to find out whether any other researchers - possibly De Beers scientists themselves - had discovered the sweet spot [for chemical vapor deposition]. During a break in the conference, a man approached Linares and told him to be careful. "He said that my father's research was a good way to get a bullet in the head," Linares recalls.

This stuff is amazing! They are growing diamonds in a way very similar to how silicon ingots are currently grown, at a cost of $5 per carat. They are producing diamonds that are more pure than natural ones. This is going to be the wave of this century for electronics. A new boom is upon us. And behold: some mafioso JEWELRY DEALERS want to hold it back! BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! HAHAHAHA!!! HA!