First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.

A Science staff writer, Jocelyn Kaiser, said, "Both the authors and Science's editors acknowledge concerns that terrorists could, in theory, use the information to reconstruct the 1918 flu virus." And yet the journal required that the full genome sequence be made available on the GenBank database as a condition for publishing the paper.

Proponents of publishing this data point out that valuable insights have been gained from the virus's recreation. These insights could help scientists across the world detect and defend against future pandemics, including avian flu.

There are other approaches, however, to sharing the scientifically useful information. Specific insights - for example, that a key mutation noted in one gene may in part explain the virus's unusual virulence - could be published without disclosing the complete genetic recipe. The precise genome could potentially be shared with scientists with suitable security assurances.

We urgently need international agreements by scientific organizations to limit such publications and an international dialogue on the best approach to preventing recipes for weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. Part of that discussion should concern the appropriate role of governments, scientists and their scientific societies, and industry.

We also need a new Manhattan Project to develop specific defenses against new biological viral threats, natural or human made. There are promising new technologies, like RNA interference, that could be harnessed. We need to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale.

We realize that calling for this genome to be "un-published" is a bit like trying to gather the horses back into the barn. Perhaps we will be lucky this time, and we will indeed succeed in developing defenses for these killer flu viruses before they are needed. We should, however, treat the genetic sequences of pathological biological viruses with no less care than designs for nuclear weapons.

The Times essay being co-written by Joy and Kurzweil is interesting in and of itself, since these two futurist-scientists have often been at odds with how to manage dangerous knowledge that the modern age continually unveils. Mr. Joy's legendary warning Why The Future Doesn't Need Us and Kurzweil's tireless advocacy of the Singularity as desirable has made for an interesting public debate between these two scientists. It seems to me that the New York Times op-ed favors Mr. Joy's established cautious positions, with Mr. Kurzweil giving ground; ceaseless, unabated and exponential innovation is not always best, though it may not be easy to reign-in.

The Open Source community often champions the axiom, Information wants to be free. Indeed, open communities, open tools and open information is leading the current innovation revolution, this blog being a part of it. But information 'wanting to be free' might be a truism or merely an altruistic mantra. Clearly, this is the debate of our time -- one that has lethal consequences. The degree to which we allow information's freedom will be based on the unofficial constitution that is being written, or should be. As we reconfigure society and innovation around new paradigms, a new social writ is par for the course -- one that idealizes the human spirit, and takes it to a higher level. We should be clear that 'information wants to be free' should not devolve into the hideous, debased meaning of 'Arbeit macht frei,' where so far, mankind has dug its deepest grave.

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I first saw it on the old GENIE Military Affairs Round Table over 14 years ago in the run up to and aftermath of the first Iraqi-American war. Then much later and repeatedly over on FreeRepublic.com on a number of issues, but most spectacularly in a long thread analyzing the Columbia Disaster (Note the link is to 3000 graphically intensive posts -- broadband only use is highly recommended) that reached the same conclusion NASA did months later on the causes of the shuttle break up.

This is a radically egalitarian cultural development that is highly subversive of elitist hierarchies everywhere.

Cultures that only accept wishful thinking over harsh reality or only 'accepted truth' from people of the 'proper credentials' -- whether through advanced university degree or bloodline -- cannot take advantage of this analytic capability.

All the wider net of Internet communications does is reinforce group delusion. Whether this delusion is Arab Fantasy Ideology or the Hate-Bush Main Stream Media Cocoon or Republican Impeachment of Clinton hysteria.

Point in fact the existence of that 'group mind' analytic capability is a threat to the self image of Elitist people and must be suppressed by them because it represents an existential threat to them.

This has implications on a number of levels. In a "War of Cultures" sense it means that large groups of people with the right mind set connected to this net will process information and act faster on it than elites, any elites, as well as cultures dominated by them. Groups with the right mindset will have fewer layers of information filtering and plain better information to act on.

Horizontal circulation is accelerating while vertical is still the same -- each level of authority doubles the amount of time it takes a decision to be made on the way up. So in many cases the "Group mind" will render anything that the opposing hierarchy does irrelevant before it does it.

The example from nature is the way whole schools of fish off of coral reefs react in unison to a threat minimizing the chance any single individual will be killed by a predator.

The human affairs example is the military concept of the OODA loop where the faster "observe, orient, decide, and act" chain on one side in a war rapidly reduces the other side to quivering jelly.

The Anglosphere, of all the cultures on the planet, values the content of objective truth over the credentials of the speaker more than any other. That is why it is pulling away from the rest of the planet economically, scientifically and militarily. It is why historically dissenter Protestant faith dominated nations whupped Catholic nations in Europe. It was a virtuous cycle that had better information lead to better decision making that lead to stronger Protestant economies and militaries. That lead to the Catholics losing to the Protestants.

This is also why Islamic countries have such problems modernizing.

Other Useful Sources

• Instapundit makes similar points today.
• Hugh Hewitt discusses "open source journalism".
• Belmont Club discusses open source intelligence and blogs.
• An anti-Bush blogger at History News Network is very happy about Rathergate. Read why: Liberty, Power, and Knowledge: The Tale of the CBS Memos

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