Information 'wants to be free' is the mantra of the hacker. In the formulation that it is typically used, wherein 'free' means 'I don't or shouldn't have to pay for it', it is in fact false. Information wants to be paid for, just like anything else that people manufacture. What yearns to be free is not information in general but that subset of information that can lump under the ruberic advertising.

But a simple desire to be free or worse yet the simple desire that anything that is desirable should be free is not enough to make something free. This is the great failing of the baby boomers; they imagined that anything that was desirable free was in fact free. Nothing could be farther than the truth. They spoke of 'free love', because clearly love is desirable and desires to be given freely, but love is not free. Whoever gives love pays a great cost in giving, and if one does not pay this cost then its not love. More honestly though, when they spoke of 'free love', what they really meant is 'free sex'. But, sex is not free either. Sex carries a huge biological cost which ultimately must be paid by someone. The AIDS epidemic was the predictable result of imagining that sex was free.

Freedom itself isn't free. It's produced at a very high cost, and requires constant expensive maintenance. Neither the US Military nor the ACLU believes freedom is free, and in fact both can show you the numbers on just how much it costs. And even once the costs are paid, freedom still isn't free, because freedom can be misused. People with guns will shoot each other. People will tell lies. They will shout 'bomb' on crowded bridges. People will use thier privacy to conceal perfidy. And all these things require someone to pay to protect people from the misuse of freedom, and to pay to clean up the mess when that protection fails.

What the baby boomers wanted wasn't freedom, but 'freedom from responcibility', which is in fact nearly the opposite of freedom. Freedom from responcibility is what minors have, but minors don't have the freedom that full citizens have either. Freeom from responcibility is not that different from slavery.

Information isn't free. It's produced at a very high cost. In fact, quality information is probably as hard to produce and consequently valuable as anything which exists. Quality information is afterall The Truth, which is the most valuable thing one can have. Otherwise, why would anyone spend anything on an education? So information wants to be paid for. It carries a price, either explicitly to the producer of the information or implicitly in the effect the information has on the hearer. Neither speaking nor listening is free. If you try to making speaking free, the result is 'spam'. Everyone will try to express thier advertising and the net result will be a loss of quality information because noone will be able to hear it amidst the cacophony. If you try to make hearing free, then again there is a net result in quality information because there is no incentive for information producers to work.

When the hackers got out of thier mom's basements and started to try to feed themselves, they quickly decided that information desired to be paid for. In fact, when l0pht was forced to go corporate (sell its information), it was a philosophical failure on par with the economic collapse of communism. The Berlin wall had fallen, and no reasonable, informed, and thinking person would ever again believe that 'information wants to be free'.

Anyone that thinks open source software is free has never used open source software. Often, the costs involved in paying for open source software are greater than the costs involved in just paying some information provider for his software. If you don't believe me, try developing a video game (or other sophisicated peice of software) simultaneously for the Windows, Mac, and Linux environments.

The truth of open communities is that a society which makes its education inexpensive gains a greater return on its investment than a society which makes it education exclusive. Call it 'supply side information theory'. But one should never imagine that information or an education desires to be 'free' in the sense of having no cost. Instead, one should realize that we have created a society in which information and education are made available at great cost so that you might be free.

I find their argument actually remarkably non-compelling. Despite the recent hoo-haw, influenza, even the dreaded 1918 Spanish Flu, is not the most dangerous disease agent in history. Indeed, even now it's not the most dangerous disease agent with a published genome. Consider how a malefactor might reconstruct one such disease from its published genetic code. They would first need to produce the entire sequence of DNA from scratch, then carefully introduce the DNA into one or more living cells of a host species. If they did this correctly they would produce a small stock of viruses that they can then carefully incubate into larger and larger stocks until they have a sufficiently large stock to use as an effective bioweapon. Then they need to come up with an effective method of delivery. All of this, except for cultivating into a large stock and delivery, has been done in the lab before, so it can be done. However, it requires such extraordinarily sophisticated and modern equipment that it almost doesn't matter that it can be done.

Here's the punchline, and this is important: any group with the equipment and the brain power to pull off a stunt like this has much, much, much more capability to run a more conventional bioweapons program with a much greater bang for their buck.

Terrorists aren't going to spend a billion dollars on a state of the art research laboratory to build some super-flu from a DNA sequence. Rather, they're going to cultivate anthrax, plague, tularemia, smallpox, typhus, hemorrhagic fever, and other agents using decades old technology that is cheap and abundant and for which the requisite base of persons knowledgable in its operation is also cheap and abundant.

Terrorists don't come at you with staged detonation nuclear weapons or terrain following cruise missiles, they come at you with AK47s, car bombs, and improvised munitions.

As for the threat of wealthy states with WMD capabilities. The threat today is at the level of nuclear destruction of tens to hundreds of millions of lives in the course of a few hours. In comparison, even the most deadly pandemic is a respite from annihilation.

Ray Kurzweil in his interview with Glenn Reyolds--We have an existential threat now in the form of the possibility of a bioengineered malevolent biological virus. With all the talk of bioterrorism, the possibility of a bioengineered bioterrorism agent gets little and inadequate attention. The tools and knowledge to create a bioengineered pathogen are more widespread than the tools and knowledge to create an atomic weapon, yet it could be far more destructive. I’m on the Army Science Advisory Group (a board of five people who advise the Army on science and technology), and the Army is the institution responsible for the nation’s bioterrorism protection. Without revealing anything confidential, I can say that there is acute awareness of these dangers, but there is neither the funding nor national priority to address them in an adequate way.

The answer is not relinquishment of these advanced technologies as I argue in the chapter because in addition to depriving humankind of the profound benefits (such as effective treatments for cancer, heart disease and other diseases), it would actually make the dangers worse by driving these technologies underground where responsible practitioners would not have easy access to the tools to develop the defenses. The real answer is to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale. Along these lines, I’ve testified to Congress (http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0556.html) on my proposal for a “Manhattan” style project to quickly develop a quick response system for new biological viruses, whether human-made or natural. For example, we could put in place a system which would quickly sequence a new virus, create an RNAi (RNA interference) medication for it (RNAi has shown to be effective to combat a specific biological virus because almost all biological viruses use messenger RNA which RNAi blocks), and then rapidly build up production. In this testimony I also address similar issues for nanotechnology, which are still a couple of decades away.

So, the bioterrorism charter clearly belongs to the Army, and the virus genome should have crossed THEIR desk.
And certainly the Genbank information should be unpublished, just like the nukes in container ships story was scrubbed after 9/11.

Cicero, I wonder what we are actually doing right now in counter bioterrorism research. Remember the malevolent influence of the odious "bioethics" council, that star chamber of luddites appointed by GW? They are on record as being opposed to anysort of genetic engineering. FYI they are also opposed to cosmetic surgery and gerontology research.

No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb ...

Of course the genome is not really a precise design for a viral weapon, just a precursor to one. When atomic science was new, lots of potentially dangerous information was published in Europe by scientists like Bohr. Scientists are constitutionally adverse to secrecy.

I haven't made up my mind about this yet, but in the spirit of inquiry, I must ask:

What are the potential benefits of publishing this information in the clear? Are there any? I think there are, at least potentially. After all, the research was done for a reason, and not as part of a weapons creation program. One benefit I can see (although not literally tomorrow) is a decreased cycle time on developing vaccines, or increased efficacy of vaccines, or both. Considering that transgenic techniques are becoming available to embed these vaccines in foodstuffs, this seems non-trivial to me.

Another potential benefit is that this publication could aid in the "Manhatten Project against viral threats" that Joy and Kurzweil are calling for. These are potential benefits, yes, but right now the harm is also potential-- we do not have a 1918-style influenza pandemic anywhere.

Has anyone made a plausible argument weighing the potential benefits against the potential harm?

(As an aside, I'm getting very tired of repeated calls for Manhatten Projects on multiple subjects. The phrase has not only lost its punch, but it's a strong indicator that the person involved is grinding a personal axe, has field-specific blinders on, or both. In the past month alone, I've heard various experts call for Manhatten Project-level efforts on Space Elevators/Beanstalks, nanotechnology assemblers, and now pathogenic protection schemes.

(I am very skeptical of all these calls, because Manhatten Project-level efforts, by their nature, deform the structure of a nation's research culture, and not necessarily for the better. MP-level efforts start with the presumption that someone has determined that there is an unaddressed need so great, so urgent, so immediate, that it must suck the research effort out of everything else, right now, or there is a substantial chance that the nation is doomed. Moreover, the presumption is that this need is assessed accurately, and that the need is actually solvable in the period of time necessary to mount an MP-level effort, and that the solution generated through that effort in (say) five years is better than the solution that wuold be generated at a more natural pace in (say) fifteen or twenty years.

(None of these are facts in evidence, from my standpoint. If you want an example of a highly questionable MP-level effort, look no farther than the Apollo Program-- a success in terms of its stated mission, but a mission stated very badly, as the benefits of putting bootprints on the Moon are... dubious, at best. I am unconvinced that this latest call for an MP-level effort is or would be stated better. I am unconvinced that the existing DARPA projects related to broad spectrum pathogenic protection (no link, because I am too lazy to look it up) are necessarily inferior to an MP-level effort. I am unconvinced that we need to deform the entire structure of our research community to this goal right now, etc, etc. A good research community operates best when it operates in breadth of inquiry and freedom of endeavor, precisely because it is not obvious what the best topics to pursue really are!

(MP-level efforts by their nature constrain those conditions to a great degree, and people calling for MP-level efforts would do very well to remember what we give up when we pursue their pet projects so single-mindedly.

(Pardon me, that was my rant for the day. It's been building for a long time, and is not directed at you, Cicero.)

What I would like to see is some real progress in the approach being taken by companies like Acambis:

A Flu Vaccine That Lasts

It's time this whole Flu thing was decisively dealt with. Perhaps the current panic over Avian Flu will facilitate the level of research and investment needed to really get on top of the Influenza danger.

I dont believe in pandemics. How many people die from the flu in a typical year? How many died in the early 1900s before modern medicine and hygiene? As far as i'm concerned, the Spanish flu casualty figures has about as much relevance as how many people were trampled by horses in NYC in 1918. There will be flu shots, and yes more than the usual number of the elderly, very ill, and very young will be hit, but not catastrophically more.

What are the potential benefits of publishing this information in the clear? Are there any?

Has anyone made a plausible argument weighing the potential benefits against the potential harm?

You have hit the head of the nail, Marcus Vitruvius

Glen (#4)

No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb ...

I don't think an A-bomb is difficult to build. The problem in this kind of weapon for medium yield (15-30 KT) is not the design, but the nuclear materials. Source of uranium ore, processing and enrichment, for an Uranium weapon; plus burning and separation of radiactive waste for the more powerful Plutonium ones. Those are technological and capital intensive processes not easy to set up (look North Korea).

On the other hand, the design of Thermonuclear weapons might be truly critical (those spies in Los Alamos...) but anyone that wants to build such a device needs to develop previously a fission ("A") bomb.

celebrim, Cicero

Data and information is not the same. NASA and other American state agencies publish a lot of data so it can be analyzed freely by experts around the world thus contribuiting for a faster research. More accesible data means faster development.

The threat is real, and growing. I wonder: did the decision of whether or not to publish the 1918 influenza genome ever cross the President's desk?

Why does the President of the United States have to decide on such matters? Anyways, data about the A-bomb wasn't published but many countries have developed it. All secrets are, sooner or later, broken. In this case other viruses, such as the bird flu, could be used.

Don't you see that endowing the State with the power of modulating the data that can reach the public is a greater danger than any virus? That is Socialist ideology.

We are children and father-state has to take care of us.

My God! what a way of making money and getting power out of the people's fears.

Mark Buehner,

Check this news item

The money quote is here:

Three major discoveries about the virulence of the 1918 virus are included in the Science report: 1) It is extremely virulent in mice, leading to rapid death.
2) It is pathogenic in embryonated chicken eggs
3) It grows very rapidly in human lung cells. All three of these are in contrast to most flu viruses that infect humans. These generally are not pathogenic in other species and grow significantly slower in human lung cells.

More Here

"Don't you see that endowing the State with the power of modulating the data that can reach the public is a greater danger than any virus?"

No, I don't see that at all. (I'd guess you don't know much about the Soviet bio-weapons program.) The worst case scenario of a state controlled environment - say 1984 or Brave New World - is not a worse scenario than the worst case scenario virus. Neither dystopian future is one I would welcome. Moreover, we aren't talking about total control over the information the public recieves. We are talking about a small subset of all information. Are, or we to conclude that you believe that there is no such thing as a state secret?

"Data and information is not the same."

I don't see how one is exclusive of the other. Loosely, data and information are the same. More commonly, data is used to refer to unprocessed raw information. In any event, if they are not the same, you make no attempt at explaining the difference.

"NASA and other American state agencies publish a lot of data so it can be analyzed freely by experts around the world thus contribuiting for a faster research. More accesible data means faster development."

I don't see how this constitutes a counterpoint to anything that I said. NCBI, NASA, NOAA, and so forth do not operate without budgets. The information that they produce, gather, and organize is not free, just freely available. It is a national investment made for the pragmatic reasons you list. That doesn't mean that it comes free.

J Aguilar (#8):

Something else I didn't mention explicitly in my post, but which I should have: a virus is different from a nuclear weapon in at least one very important way.

Specifically, once an atomic bomb is built, if it is built correctly, no force on Earth can prevent it from exploding short of dismantling it, damaging it, or waiting for its fuel to run down. If one is parked in the sewers of Manhatten, that's a game over.

On the other hand, defenses against pathogens can be developed, are being developed, and for some classes have already been developed. That's why the cost/benefit analysis of publishing is different.

"Despite the recent hoo-haw, influenza, even the dreaded 1918 Spanish Flu, is not the most dangerous disease agent in history. Indeed, even now it's not the most dangerous disease agent with a published genome."

I agree.

"Consider how a malefactor might reconstruct one such disease from its published genetic code. They would first need to produce the entire sequence of DNA from scratch."

Actually, I don't think that they would. In particular, as the authors pointed out, with influenza all that would be necessary would be to modify a stock influenva virus in the eight sites unique to the 1918 strain. I'd guess this could actually be done pretty cheaply if you had the right lab and knowledge, and depending on the length of the modified sites and the degree of diference from your base strain I'd guess it could be done really really cheaply (compared to the potential loss of life). Synthesizing short arbitrary genetic sequences on demand is something that is done all the time now. You can buy custom mail order sequences for something like $0.69 a base pair

(In fact, I wonder what would happen if you sent a request to a company like Invitrogen for a set of custom sequences that were sections of the 1918 influenza code. Are protocols in place to recognize suspicious activity like this? I'd hope so.)

It's the cultivation and weaponization of the reasonably large viral stock that might prove to be difficult, but I say this only because I know very little about how viruses are cultivated. I'd guess that cultivating a virus is alot harder than cultivating an equivalently lethal bacteria. On the other hand, weaponizing a virus might involve little more than infecting a few dozen 'martyrs' at a central location and sending them on plane trips to target countries.

All this brings us back around to the real sense in which 'information wants to be free'. Viruses want to be free too, in the sense that it requires more work to contain a virus than it does to spread one. At some point in the 20th century (or possibly earlier) we crossed a threshold in which in the society that we had created information became more expensive to contain than to distribute. This is not necessarily a natural state for society or information. It's entirely possible that absent the cultural and technological infrastructure that we've created, it takes more work to distribute information than it does to contain it, but it is I would argue a necessary precondition for sustaining our culture are we know it.

Hense we are at a point at which, through great effort we've made information easy to distribute to our own immense benefit. This condition will sustain progress up until the point at which this increasing power 'liberates' a subcommunity which is both capable of and willing to destroy the system. As information becomes more readily attainable and technological capacity increases, the minimum size of a subcommunity capable of destroying the rest of the system decreases. At some point, there will be (at best) equilibrium. No further progress will be possible because the n% dissidents in the system will be able to destroy all the economic output of the other 1-n%. With sufficiently advanced technology, the ordinary person can hold the entire rest of humanity hostage just on the simple fact that it will always be easier to destroy things than create them. You could call this the 'mad scientist' postulate.

Some writers have called the point at which humanity escaped from a perpetual cycle of dictatorial military oligarchies with slave economies by creating an alternative system capable of outproducing them as 'The Exit'. I would argue that we are by no means out of the woods yet. I would argue that the next 'exit' will involve finding a means of escaping the 'mad scientist' postulate.

Hard to say, Cicero

On the one hand Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant, lucid, compelling wit. Yet it seems that "schtick" has gotten to be his cause celebre.

I was browsing at a used bookstore not that long ago, and bought a book titled, "Munitions and explosives properties and methods". Why? Well, because the darned thing was interesting. I always wondered how tens of millions of 250 lb bombs were made in WW2, without a single one of them blowing up during manufacture. Fascinating stuff. But, probably something that wouldn't be the best thing in the hands of a protege terrorist. So, maybe I did the world a tiny favor by buying it - another one out of circulation!

Likewise a few years back, I was drifting through the Science section of a used bookstore in Berkeley, and lo and behold! A 1,300 page treatise on every detailed method and mechanism known regarding the construction, testing, arming and deployment of "modern" (pre 1955) nuclear weapons. There were even alarmingly accurate formulas and figures of how the thermonuclear warheads were constructed, and the types of issues that Teller & kids ran into over the course of its development.

Now, I would imagine that the tome probably had dozens if not hundreds of very subtle red herrings placed in the tables, drawings, formulae, write up. I can't imagine the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency (as it was known back then) allowing the very hard-won secrets of their research to be published in a big fat volume, for anyone and everyone to follow. But... there it was, on the shelf.

Being something of an 'aborted physicist', I read very carefully through that darn book (which I didn't buy, which I rue) to see where the gotchas were. I mean, I know a lot about nuclear physics, and it was kind of a fun refresher. To tell you the truth, I didn't see any "funny results" or other indications that subtle misguidance was imparted to the text. THAT is what made it alarming to me to be reading it. I'm sure A.Q.Khan, if he had such a book could have seen through the deceptions, but boy - I'm betting that the fundamental formulae were also correct: get a pair of sub-critical hemispheres of U235 together rapidly ("gun") with an aluminum-foil, beryllium and polonium "spark plug" at the center, and it will blow. Big. Kilotons big.

So, back to your point.

It seems foolhardy to be printing these genome sequences up, to me. Its hard to take that knowledge "out of circulation", other than to prevent it getting there in the first place.

GoatGuy

Instapundit quotes a Univeristy of Chicago Nephrologist who says the threat is overblown.

As to info getting out there on nukes. Any competent reactor operator in America (the Navy trained a lot of them) could build a competent nuclear weapons program with the aid of a competent mathematician and some moderately priced ($100,000 total) computer software.

The machine tools to do the shaping of the Pu about $5,000 to $10,000 - if you take a hobby CNC and upgrade the lead screws.

A tool to machine the explosives or the molds for them: a few hundred thou. or you can contract the job out any where in the world.

What saves us is that there are not many evil people in the world compared to those working against them.

Patrick Cunningham M.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Section of Nephrology
University of Chicago

Instapundit link.

Chicago is probably the brainiest liberal arts University in America. Only Cal Tech or MIT is liable to have students as smart (on average). And they are more narrow in their focus.

Because of its Economics Dept. the University attracts more libertarians and right wing students than other similarly situated universities.

Goat guy,

If you have a plausable use for the explosives the mfg. will tell you what to do!

I have a book in my collection from 1952 about how the first piles were done and other neat stuff.

It gave dimensions for some of the critical factors. It didn't give all the details, but certainly enough to get a competent program started.

The stuff is every where.

Being a Naval trained Nuke, I could design and build a bomb for you from open sourced material and a few smart people.

Think of it this way: except for a few fanatics if a nuke weapon went off in America the world would insist on hunting them down to the last believer.

So the value of a nuke or other megaweapon in the hands of terrorists is as a threat. If used it becomes counter productive.

Simon,

I'm not so sure about the concept of a renegade nuke's value being highest as a Weapon of Threat.

Its very existence would cause the secret services of scores of countries to go on a covert hunt-and-extract mission the likes of which hasn't been seen in 5 decades. And not limited to the "good guys" - the competition to have such a device among the nepharious types is so keen that I imagine they would be killing each other to get ahold of the Major Munition.

I rather think that the holders of the weapon would be almost certain to use it, rather than stand the increasing-over-time probability of losing it. Now, if they were cunning, it would be used against improbable targets: the Saudi oil terminal, the port of Long Beach, the city of Milan, Italy. But I should think, it would be used, rather than savored. It becomes an undeniable "thing" that will never go away, is indelible in the consciousness of friend and foe alike. It is audacious, it hints at power far greater than is visible.

The interesting thing that Kurzweil doesn't identify in his alarmist pandyne is that the effect of said synbug would wreak as much havoc against its creators as against the intended population of "infidels". Its release ultimately would be like "nuking one's self along with the enemy".

Surely the enemy is decimated, but so too are you! Now, what's the good in that?

So, maybe the bio-information for something so incredibly culture-and-boundry agnostic as the influenza virus, is essentially worthless as a Weapon of Incredible Mass Pandemic. You ain't gonna make no friends with the in-laws if you kill 'em along with the occupier...

GoatGuy

If you look at some of the high speed pictures available on the net re: some of the early bomb tests you can pretty much tell how the expolsives were shaped.

We routinely measure timing of electrical pulses to tenths of a nanosecond. One of the key technologies for making sure the explosives go off all at once. And that is probably way overkill. Sub microsecond is probably good enough and cheap. A 200MHz scope can be had used for about $1K - $2K depending on features.

At an explosive travel rate of 10,000 ft a second controlling the explosion to .001" requires only controlling to 1 ten millionth of a second. We can do 10 times better than that for a few hundred dollars.

It means cutting the cables so that the path length is within 1 inch. Not too tough.

etc.

The real problem with nukes is that they kill too many people. Same for a mass infection virus or bacteria.

OTOH ebola or some other super virulent disease would be perfect. The death is horrible but the virulence makes it somewhat self limiting.

Anthrax was not bad until the defences got better.

Goat guy,

The #1 thing you need to build a nuke is a stable environment.

From there it has to be transported to where use is intended. Without mishap - intel or technical.

The only reasonably sure way is ICBMs. Those come with return addresses. Now ICBMs require miniaturization of the weapon (i.e. x-ray focusing etc). That becomes more difficult than a simple explosive device.

The simple device is in the several ton range I believe. Certainly hundreds of pounds.

Sure if you were a rogue group it is use it or lose it. So it has little value as intimidation.

The enemy's #1 weapon is fear.It is not piles of bodies they want. That is only a means to an end: submission.

Why must we humans interfere with evolution? Is there no People for the Ethical Treatment of Bacteria and Viruses (PETBV)?

The EU is panicky about it. Now i know it is completely overblown.

I don't think it's the publication of the 1918 strain is, itself, a big worry. But it is representative of issues of information acquisition and dispersal that are well worth discussing. In addition, our society—probably like most societies—is not very good at planning for potential high-adversity events of low and indeterminate probability.

One of the things that makes an influenza strain particularly bad is the naiveté of the living human population to the major coat proteins (in the case of the avian flu H5N1, an H protein variant of type #5 and an N protein variant of type #1). So it can spread rapidly. Many infected individuals are unable to calibrate their immune reaction to the virus; too strong is as bad as too weak. In 1918, it was the “cytokine storm” provoked by the virus that led to so much death by pneumonia, not the virus itself. If I recall correctly, in recent years some flu virus strains have had coat proteins similar to those of the 1918 variant, which would make the human population of today at least somewhat less vulnerable than it was in 1918. But how much less vulnerable?

Humanity is constantly playing the “pandemic lottery.” In recent years, we’ve already “won.” HIV, Lassa Fever, Ebola, Marburg. And SARS, which was not well-handled in China or Toronto. But it was contained well enough that it didn't develop as it might have, and didn’t kill tens of thousands, much less tens of millions, of people.

Are the public-health and surveillance mechanisms that are already in place adequate, given the scale of the natural threats we are likely to face? Per HHS Secretary Leavitt’s comments in Asia this week, clearly they are not.

How good is good enough? Certainty only comes with benefit of hindsight. For 1918, John Barry’s book makes clear that it was politics and war-related policies that got in the way of effective countermeasures, and not scientific ignorance.

Building on Celebrim’s and M. Simon’s comments, the overall concerns about conscious actions by evil or nihilistic people are well-founded. As far as the technological aspects of what knowledge of the sequence of the 1918 strain means: it probably doesn’t add much to the dangers we already face.

It’s worth recalling that it's been possible to create super-virulent smallpox for some time now. The smallpox sequence is in the public domain, and vaccinia virus (smallpox family) is in widespread use in labs. Defector Ken Alibek shocked the West in the early nineties with his revelations that the vast Soviet Biopreparat germ-warfare program had invented and produced novel infectious agents, including a virus that combined the worst features of equine encephalitis and smallpox. This was accomplished by classically-trained virologists, prior to the invention of most of the techniques of molecular biology. Are those stocks fully accounted for?

The novelty is the increasing accessibility of the methods for performing these manipulations—the access to information, and also the ease of stocking a lab with equipment, reagents, and qualified scientists. What a few Nobel laureates might have accomplished for tens of millions of dollars in the 1970s could now be done by any of thousands of biologists for under a million. Quite analogous to the comparison of the Manhattan Project with the much-easier successes of Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, etc.

Goat Guy (#13)

Be careful about Kurzweil. I have some respect for the man. I've nearly finished his latest book. He undoubtedly knows what he's talking about when it comes to software, because that's what he does for a living. He undoubtedly knows what he's talking about, in a general sense, when it comes to hardware, because he's educated himself carefully.

Problem is, when I look at what he says in areas outside his expertise, the brilliance falls off. It's to his credit that I didn't say, falls off rapidly, but it does fall off. His notions of complexity theory are, uh, interesting (and there I speak with some confidence) and his economic notions are naive. (No, I'm sorry Mr. Kurzweil, but deflation is not a blanket good thing-- go look at Japan from 1990 to about 2004. There's some deflation that's good, and then there's the deflation that keeps me from buying an iPod because I believe that if I wait six months I'll get something with 50% more memory for 25% less money.)

The last time there was a chick flu outbreak in the EU it costs a few 100 million. That is why the EU is panicking. That it also can hurt people is in fact purely coincidental. The human crossover is still most likely to occure in Asia even if it was endemic in the EU

>>The enemy's #1 weapon is fear.It is not piles of bodies they want. That is only a means to an end: submission.

That's certainly why the United States Government keeps nukes around.