Slashdot Mirror
Advances in Bio-weaponry
kjh1 writes "Technology Review is running an eye-opening article on how biotechnology has advanced to the point where producing bio-weapons that were once only possible with the backing of governments with enormous resources is now possible with equipment purchased off eBay. You can now purchase a mini-lab of equipment for less than $10,000. The writer also interviewed a former Soviet bioweaponeer, Serguei Popov, who worked at the Biopreparat, the Soviet agency that secretly developed biological weapons. Popov has since moved to the US and provided a great deal of information on the types of weapons the Soviets were developing."
You can't stop science.
This isn't like a video game where you need to go down the 'horrible biological weapons' research tree in order to get horrible biological weapons. The same technology that lets you engineer a crop that can end world hunger or create new organs from scratch is the same path that leads to horrible weapons. You can't simply pick the good over the bad. By advancing forward you WILL uncover the bad and make available the tools to do terrible things. The only option you have left is to either grind to a technological standstill or simply do your best to fend off dangers as they come.
The only way to stop technology is to put in place a world wide totalitarian government that ruthlessly enforces 'sustainable' living and the freeze of technology. By "sustainable", I don't mean the crunchy American tree hugger version that involves eating a lot of soy and riding a bike while still enjoying central heating and electricity. I mean brutal Maoist style raw utilitarianism that merrily sheds lives in favor of the higher goal of a "sustainable" society out our present technology level.
This of course is an utter impossibility. Our system is like a shark. It moves forward or we all die. No little tweaks on society is going to make it so that we can maintain this state of technology forever. We will run out of resources and technology will either have an answer waiting or everything collapses.
The only answer is to cross your fingers and hope to hell that a Kurzweil utopia is right around the corner. The best thing we can do now is try and build defense when it is possible and blindly sprint forward hoping to hell that somewhere along the way an answer jumps out before something terrible happens.