Scary stuff. Not because of the reasons cited in the article -- but because I hadn't previously realized that drug cartels have obvious incentives to invest in synthetic biology expertise.
That sort of capability can later be directed to applications such as massive destruction, or even extortion of nation states. Not to mention experimental organisms wrecking ecosystems. These dangers would (and have) made wonderful movie plots and I'd prefer them to stay on the big screen.
One obstacle in the past has been that the transition from "make lots drugs and robust transportation/communication networks" to "make weapons of mass destruction" has been so long as to be irrelevant. There was no plausible organizational evolutionary path from one to the other. But perhaps that has changed. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of applications of synthetic biology to drug creation.
Imagine what the word would look like if you could make nuclear bombs using the same tech used to produce heroine.
Would drug cartels have a thriving side business selling them to ____? Would any nation state be able to control the cartels at all?
That sort of capability can later be directed to applications such as massive destruction, or even extortion of nation states. Not to mention experimental organisms wrecking ecosystems. These dangers would (and have) made wonderful movie plots and I'd prefer them to stay on the big screen.
One obstacle in the past has been that the transition from "make lots drugs and robust transportation/communication networks" to "make weapons of mass destruction" has been so long as to be irrelevant. There was no plausible organizational evolutionary path from one to the other. But perhaps that has changed. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of applications of synthetic biology to drug creation.
Imagine what the word would look like if you could make nuclear bombs using the same tech used to produce heroine.
Would drug cartels have a thriving side business selling them to ____? Would any nation state be able to control the cartels at all?