Using CRISPR/Cas9 to modify an organism isn't evolution by natural selection, it's genetic engineering, which is my whole point. Natural selection has the benef

Using CRISPR/Cas9 to modify an organism isn't evolution by natural selection, it's genetic engineering, which is my whole point. Natural selection has the benefit of time but we have the benefit of intelligence and culture, which can be far more powerful because our modifications aren't bound by the fitness of all of the intermediary states. This allows us to make increasingly complex changes to biomolecular machinery that are all but impossible to [d]evolve within our current ecosystem because of the billions of years of biological debt, to borrow a term from software engineering. The question isn't whether we can augment ourselves through advanced technology, it's whether or not we can design a microbe that is so different from existing life that we can control its reproduction indefinitely (in the face of evolution) without crippling the organism's usefulness to our civilization.