5 ms·

It's also really difficult though. Just like people building their own nuclear bombs hasn't been a major worry. The real issue is the CIA, FSB, etc. doing it

It's also really difficult though. Just like people building their own nuclear bombs hasn't been a major worry. The real issue is the CIA, FSB, etc. doing it deliberately.

staunton 4y ago
There's a difference. Building a nuke is actually really easy [1]. The hard part is getting and enriching uranium. For the bio stuff, you only need some lab equipment, where there's no reason why it wouldn't get really cheap and easy to procure. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
- nivenkos 4y ago
  But it still took the best physicists in the world with unlimited resources almost a decade to do so... That article is a nice thought experiment, but they didn't actually build it.
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    Like many things, doing something for the first time with no proven blueprint is a lot harder than re-creating a process that you know works. And there's plenty of leaked/released information out there that a sufficiently interested party would very easily be able to obtain most of the steps/schematics necessary. It's a little outdated at this point, but McPhee's 'The Curve of Binding Energy' is a fascinating read on this topic
- karaterobot 4y ago
  > The hard part is getting and enriching uranium. That is an important part though.
  - staunton 4y ago
    Which was exactly my point: you can't argue that "wide access to biotechnology will do no harm, after all, people haven't started building nukes in their back yard".
  - catskul2 4y ago
    I think that's the point they were making.
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
building your own nuke (at least from scratch) requires orders of magnitude more industrial might than biohacking