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Comment by ilyagr | Hacker News Reader

I'm more terrified of bioweapons targeted at people with some specific gene and attached to a flu virus. Genocide at a push of a button, orders of magnitude cheaper than a nuclear weapon, no materials other than standard lab equipment needed. Bond villains, rejoice!

Any reason to hope we won't be able to do this for another hundred years? Because CRISPR seems awfully close.

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How would you prevent natural mutations from modifying or disabling the target mechanism? If you can't guarantee its integrity, the descendants of your air-born killer virus will be back for you in short order. That, rather than inability to do it, is what will hopefully prevent it.

That's only applicable for relatively rational state actors not insane extremists who believe such terrible events are required as part of their faith

So many reasons!

  * In order to get CRISPR to fit inside a virus you have to remove all the viral DNA, so it can't reproduce. 
  * Even if you could make such a virus, there would be enormous selective pressure to ditch the CRISPR proteins, and there's no pressure maintaining the CRISPR or guide RNA sequence, so it would be inactive pretty quickly
  * Race isn't well-defined genetically so it might not even be possible to target a group of interest
  * Bombs are cheap and a proven technology

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