Focusing on the list of about 60 "select agents", such as the smallpox virus and botulism toxin, might simply divert resources from newer and more dangerous threats, such as RNA interference, synthetic biology or nanotechnology.
[. . .]
As examples, the report suggests it might soon be possible to engineer a virulent pathogen from scratch using DNA synthesis and that advances in gene therapy might make it possible to release an aerosol of a harmful gene that would be inhaled by victims.
(Via KurzweilAI.net.)
1 comments:
You know, by and large, terrorists do not seem, well, terribly sophisticated technologically. (This is one reason why, along with many others, I suspect the U.S. and possibly other governments of being at least complicit in 9/11 -- In terms of technical sophistication and sheer brilliance of conception and execution, it is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE beyond anything else the Al Quaida or any other terrorist organization ever accomplished.) Thus I do not worry, for example, that terrorists are going BUILD a portable nuclear bomb (I do worry they may acquire a ready-made tactical nuke on the Russian black market. I also do not worry that they are somehow, in the hill country bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, that they are going to magically acquire the kind of extremely advanced and sophisticated genetic engineering technology used at the lab where I work and that would be required to produce this kind of engineered pathogen. I DO, however, worry that secret elements in our own government -- who do have access to the most sophisticated genetics tech -- are perfectly capable of creating and releasing this kind of organism (and, of course, blaming it on poor old Osama (whose astonishing resemblance to popular conceptions of Jesus Christ is, I have to admit, wearing thin).