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When I was a bio undergrad student I learned once (in discussion with a professor) about a disturbingly simple and effective GMO path to weaponized microbes dis

by api 9y ago

When I was a bio undergrad student I learned once (in discussion with a professor) about a disturbingly simple and effective GMO path to weaponized microbes discovered back in the 70s by some bio-weapons researchers. This was long before CRISPR. Totally ingenious, simple, and absolute nightmare fuel. I will not repeat it here. The ideas are out there but I'm not going to help anyone find it. Suffice to say that I think it's pure luck that we have not yet had a biological 9/11 attack or worse. Normal people do have trouble imagining what psychopaths will do with things. Our brains do not naturally go there. A good example is what is now being done with social media, mobile, and the Internet in general: radical "dopamine" gamification to make it actually addictive, extreme political manipulation, and all powered by ubiquitous surveillance. There's presently a race to develop the first true AI con artist capable of autonomously conning humans into believing arbitrary things. I did not imagine most of this in 2000 because I'm not a psychopath. I was aware of the surveillance dangers of the Internet but I never pictured the degree to which it would be weaponized against the population by amoral or actively malicious actors. https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895d563f38/ https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895... Now whoever triggered that "flash mob" for teh lulz can mail order CRISPR. Sleep well.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
I've been worrying about this since the late 90s. It's so easy to create and release a zero-resistance >99% kill rate pandemic nightmare that I absolutely agree. And the power of the Internet makes it trivially easy to research and design that nightmare. CRISPR is the equivalent of selling megaton nukes on Amazon.
- api 9y ago
  99% is tough for various evolutionary theoretic reasons, but another bubonic plague is a hell of a lot easier. These things are more dangerous than nukes. Any technology for creating GMOs should be regulated and licensed for the same reason that we regulate and license fissile material. This should remain true until and unless we can stop killing and hating each other and until a decade goes by without some nut opening fire on a bunch of kids in a church. That guy can now order a CRISPR kit. The people who hang out on 4chan /pol and "pray" for ebola to go airborne so it will de-populate Africa can mail order a CRISPR kit. It wouldn't be the dumbass meme-slinging shitlords. It would be that one lurker with a bio Ph.D and a shrine to Adolf Hitler and a collection of books by Julius Evola and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all full of highlighting and underlining. "He was just kind of quiet. Seemed nice. Said hi to the neighbors. He spent a lot of time on the Internet and got a lot of FedEx packages. Saw him come and go at night a lot." "Police say the suspect tested the pathogen on human victims to perfect it. He took his victims mostly from homeless camps or hired prostitutes. A mass grave has been discovered on a remote property owned by the suspect and meticulously catalogued tissue samples have been found in a storage locker..." "The disease's lethality was increased by the suspect's attempts to make it fatal only to certain ethnic groups as the inclusion of human antigens causes a reaction similar to that experienced by organ transplant recipients..." "Officials say they can't provide a time-table for how long the quarantine will last. The army is being mobilized to deliver supplies..." ... then a few weeks later just the tone and a scrolling message ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck I have children. Ban this stuff right now. Edit: I just picked a contemporary motive. There's an endless supply of wills-of-God and causes "that will not be understood now... but history will judge me..."
  - ska 9y ago
    relevant book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague
ben_w 9y ago
I'm not surprised to learn such a pathway exists, but I was surprised it was around in the 70s. And then I realised what you were probably talking about. For what it's worth, I think I know how to make a directed energy weapon that could cause 50% probabilty of lethal effects that are only noticable hours afterwards (you could probably get a lethal shot even if you power it with a potato battery, too); and I realised a few years ago that when I was 9 years old I already knew enough basic chemistry to make a chemical weapon that could kill everyone on a London underground station. I'm neither a chemist nor a physicist, these are both things other people invented and I just saw a way they could be abused. Despite that, I don't fear terrorists. They're demonstrably idiots, because it took them how long to realise that guns are highly effective tools for killing lots of people quickly? And then they decided to switch from guns to mimicing Carmageddon? Edit: Just to add, yes, I agree, ban it. All it takes is one, so the risk outweighs any benefit from encouraging more biologists.
- api 9y ago
  Guns don't self-replicate. It only takes one.

by api 9y ago

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

I've been worrying about this since the late 90s. It's so easy to create and release a zero-resistance >99% kill rate pandemic nightmare that I absolutely agree. And the power of the Internet makes it trivially easy to research and design that nightmare. CRISPR is the equivalent of selling megaton nukes on Amazon.

api 9y ago
99% is tough for various evolutionary theoretic reasons, but another bubonic plague is a hell of a lot easier. These things are more dangerous than nukes. Any technology for creating GMOs should be regulated and licensed for the same reason that we regulate and license fissile material. This should remain true until and unless we can stop killing and hating each other and until a decade goes by without some nut opening fire on a bunch of kids in a church. That guy can now order a CRISPR kit. The people who hang out on 4chan /pol and "pray" for ebola to go airborne so it will de-populate Africa can mail order a CRISPR kit. It wouldn't be the dumbass meme-slinging shitlords. It would be that one lurker with a bio Ph.D and a shrine to Adolf Hitler and a collection of books by Julius Evola and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all full of highlighting and underlining. "He was just kind of quiet. Seemed nice. Said hi to the neighbors. He spent a lot of time on the Internet and got a lot of FedEx packages. Saw him come and go at night a lot." "Police say the suspect tested the pathogen on human victims to perfect it. He took his victims mostly from homeless camps or hired prostitutes. A mass grave has been discovered on a remote property owned by the suspect and meticulously catalogued tissue samples have been found in a storage locker..." "The disease's lethality was increased by the suspect's attempts to make it fatal only to certain ethnic groups as the inclusion of human antigens causes a reaction similar to that experienced by organ transplant recipients..." "Officials say they can't provide a time-table for how long the quarantine will last. The army is being mobilized to deliver supplies..." ... then a few weeks later just the tone and a scrolling message ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck I have children. Ban this stuff right now. Edit: I just picked a contemporary motive. There's an endless supply of wills-of-God and causes "that will not be understood now... but history will judge me..."
- ska 9y ago
  relevant book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague

ben_w 9y ago

I'm not surprised to learn such a pathway exists, but I was surprised it was around in the 70s. And then I realised what you were probably talking about. For what it's worth, I think I know how to make a directed energy weapon that could cause 50% probabilty of lethal effects that are only noticable hours afterwards (you could probably get a lethal shot even if you power it with a potato battery, too); and I realised a few years ago that when I was 9 years old I already knew enough basic chemistry to make a chemical weapon that could kill everyone on a London underground station. I'm neither a chemist nor a physicist, these are both things other people invented and I just saw a way they could be abused. Despite that, I don't fear terrorists. They're demonstrably idiots, because it took them how long to realise that guns are highly effective tools for killing lots of people quickly? And then they decided to switch from guns to mimicing Carmageddon? Edit: Just to add, yes, I agree, ban it. All it takes is one, so the risk outweighs any benefit from encouraging more biologists.

api 9y ago
Guns don't self-replicate. It only takes one.