Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

yes honestly I'm surprised that so much attention is devoted to lab leaks and state actors who at least have a self-preservation instinct compared to explicit bioterrorism by groups with an ideological death wish.

Not sure we're super far away from the moment where these technologies become cheap and simple enough to cause mayhem. Ever since the sarin gas attack in tokyo in the 90s I've honestly wondered how this isn't already a much bigger issue.

View on HN

I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love.

If it ever becomes possible to achieve personal or political gain through the development of bioweapons I suspect we are in extremely deep trouble.

>I think it's because it's vanishingly rare that someone actually wants to see the world burn to the extent that they're willing to spend years of personal effort to that end to enact a plan that will kill them and everyone they know and love.

The point is that's what has kept us safe so far. But when the complexity of bioterrorism gets to the level of script kiddies, there's plenty of people that are intelligent enough and driven to do it with nothing to lose. The difference with nuclear or chemical attacks is that those both require massive industrial capacity and complex delivery mechanisms. Think of the mayhem when a single hacker can modify a flu virus to infect the entire world.

It's easy in the US, just get an AR-15 and cause mayhem in a mall with little to no training.

if you invent the pathogen along with its vaccine, you can vaccinate yourself and the group you care about, while killing off the undesirables. you could also make genocidal weapons by designing a virus that recognizes a certain genetic sequence and inserts itself only there (or the converse, use that as a safety by inserting a gene for an inhibitory protein.)

monstrous things are achievable with a bit of engineering.

As a note, please do not try this at home. There would be a large amount of selective pressure for the virus to change the genetic sequence it recognizes / is inhibited by, and suddenly you've got a virus that can infect the "wrong" people. Likewise a vaccine puts significant selective pressure towards immune escape.

(!) In fact, don't try this anywhere! Genocidal bioweapons are bad news.

The worst (best?) possible odds of someone landing in the middle of the "socially isolated/sociopath + suicidal" and "smart enough to use newly simplified genetic technology" venn diagram is 1 in 8 billion-ish. I'd put money on there being more than that if I thought I would survive to collect.

I was (pleasantly!) surprised that nobody from ISIS traveled to Africa during the Ebola epidemic to infect themself, then flew back to NYC to hang out in Times Square. Doesn't require much brains, just the willingness to commit suicide and the motivation to kill a bunch of people, both of which ISIS had in spades.

People blinded by hate tend to not be the most creative thinkers. The either/or right/wrong mindset does not lend itself to creativity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com