OK so I just wrote about how I thave a good amount of confidence that we'er going to survive a nuke or two on our major cities. Well, not explicitly, but I implied it. And I'm pretty sure that cancer is not going to kill us all off - in fact it makes us tougher. But what if there were something even more insidious and potentially deadly out there?
I am starting to discover what people think about me. My mind is fertile and lots of ideas are capable of taking root and growing there. In other words, my head is full of steer manure. As if I didn't have enough to concern me, and old buddy I met here in Vegas has got something growing under his fingernails that he scratched into me. Nanobiotech.
Nano who? OK here's the deal and we'll go straight to the scary part. What if you were a mad scientist bent on destruction? With nanobiotech you could conceivably manuafacture Marburg in your garage. Or if you were bored and a tiny bit more clever, you could give the Bird Flu virus just the kick it needs to be transformed into something that passes from birds to humans. Not that it would necessarily be deadly in the communicable form, but you certainly wouldn't take the blame. Most of the planet already thinks it is inevitable. Play god by doing science.
The problem of the 21st century is what to do with the power that will soon trickle down to elite cliques. There used to be a time when the kind of doing that got respect and power in this world, was the doing done by very large organizations. If you wanted to accomplish something of significance and note in the world, you had to have a several hundred million dollars and several hundred bureaucrats, logicians and assorted henchmen at your command. Well that's still the case, except that there are a lot more individuals who have those kinds of resources at their disposal, and it is not altogether clear that they are as well regulated by the force of nations any longer. Of course there are billionaires in the mix too. This level of player is not so well tethered by the would-be Leviathans of society. And while human beings are still meatbags with particular weaknesses, a couple cliques with people like Mark Rich or George Soros in them can wreak interesting havoc.
Since we still live in an era of Scientific Animism, a general belief in progress and riches can collude with self-interest in dangerous ways. What if Bill Gates and a few of his best buds decided that we really need cloned sheep? What's a couple billion in research dollars? Not only a drop in the ocean of big governments but multinationals and global drug traders too.
So we know that there is ability out there. We could argue about motive forever. The bottom line is that sooner or later, especially if we elect another born-again pro-lifer who despises medical research of the godlike variety, some non-government entity is going to start engineering some very small potentially very dangerous microbes. I'm not paranoid, but I'm not falsely secure either. Government doesn't make it better, but it makes it slower so more people can figure out what's going on. In the case of nanobiotechnology, maybe that's the best thing.
Islam isn't the only force for radical change in this world which can spliter off into unhinged areas. Every billionaire and his tribe, every multi-millionaire and his country club / yacht club / health club contingent is a medium-sized disaster waiting to happen. They'll call it investment in biotech..
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