-
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So there's about
seven and a half billion of us.
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The World Health Organization tells us
that 300 million of us are depressed,
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and about 800,000 people
take their lives every year.
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A tiny subset of them choose
a profoundly nihilistic route,
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which is they die in the act
of killing as many people as possible.
-
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These are some famous recent examples.
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And here's a less famous one.
It happened about nine weeks ago.
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If you don't remember it,
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it's because there's
a lot of this going on.
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Wikipedia just last year
counted 323 mass shootings
-
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in my home country, the United States.
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Not all of those shooters were suicidal,
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not all of them were maximizing
their death tolls,
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but many, many were.
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An important question becomes,
what limits do these people have?
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Take the Vegas shooter.
-
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He slaughtered 58 people.
-
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Did he stop there because he'd had enough?
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No, and we know this because
he shot and injured another 422 people
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who he surely would have
preferred to kill.
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We have no reason to think
he would have stopped 4,200.
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In fact, with somebody this nihilistic,
he may well have gladly killed us all.
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We don't know.
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What we do know is this:
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when suicidal murderers really go all in,
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technology is the force multiplier.
-
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Here's an example.
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Several years back, there was a rash
of 10 mass school attacks in China
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carried out with things
like knives and hammers and cleavers
-
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because guns are really hard to get there.
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By macabre coincidence, this last attack
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occurred just hours before
the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
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But that one American attack
killed roughly the same number of victims
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as the 10 Chinese attacks combined.
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So we can fairly say,
knife terrible, gun way worse,
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and airplane massively worse,
-
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as pilot Andreas Lubitz showed
when he forced 149 people
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to join him in his suicide
-
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smashing a plane into the French Alps.
-
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And there are other examples of this.
-
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And I'm afraid there are far more deadly
weapons in our near future than airplanes,
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ones not made of meetal.
-
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So let's consider the apocalyptic dynamics
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that will ensue
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if suicidal mass murder hitches a ride
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on a rapidly advancing field
-
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that for the most part
holds boundless promise for society.
-
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Somewhere out there in the world,
there's a tiny group of people
-
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who would attempt, however ineptly,
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to kill us all if they
could just figure out how.
-
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The Vegas shooter may or may not
have been one of them,
-
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but with seven and a half billion of us,
-
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this is a non-zero population.
-
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There's plenty of suicidal
nihilists out there.
-
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We've already seen that.
-
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There's people with severe mood disorders
that they can't even control.
-
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There are people who have just suffered
deranging traumas, etc. etc.
-
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As for the corollary group,
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its size was simply zero forever
-
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until the Cold War,
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when suddenly the leaders
of two global alliances
-
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attained the ability to blow up the world.
-
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The number of people
with actual doomsday buttons
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has stayed fairly stable since then,
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but I'm afraid it's about to grow,
-
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and not just to three.
-
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This is going off the charts.
-
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I mean, it's going to look
like a tech business plan.
-
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(Laughter)
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And the reason is,
-
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we're in the era
of exponential technologies,
-
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which routinely
take eternal impossibilities
-
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and make them the actual superpowers
of one or two living geniuses
-
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and -- this is the big part --
-
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then diffuse those powers
to more or less everybody.
-
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Now, here's a benign example.
-
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If you wanted to play checkers
with a computer in 1952,
-
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you literally had to be that guy,
-
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then commandeer one of the world's
19 copies of that computer,
-
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then used your Nobel-adjacent brain
to teach it checkers.
-
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That was the bar.
-
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Today, you just need to know someone
who knows someone who owns a telephone,
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because computing
is an exponential technology.
-
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So is synthetic biology,
-
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which I'll now refer to as synbio,
-
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and in 2011, a couple of researchers
did something every bit as ingenious
-
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and unprecedented as the checkers trick
-
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with H5N1 flu.
-
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This is a train that kills
up to 60 percent of the people it infects,
-
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more than ebola,
-
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but it is so uncontagious
-
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that it's killed fewer
than 50 people since 2015.
-
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So these researchers edited H5N1's genome
-
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and made it every bit as deadly,
but also wildly contagious.
-
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The news arm of one of
the world's top two scientific journals
-
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said if this thing got out,
it would likely cause a pandemic
-
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with perhaps millions of deaths,
-
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and Dr. Paul Keim said
-
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he could not think of an organism
as scary as this,
-
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which is the last thing
I personally want to hear
-
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from the chairman of the National
Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity.
-
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And by the way, Dr. Keim also said this --
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["I don't think anthrax
is scary at all compared to this."]
-
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and he's also one of these.
-
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[Anthrax expert]
(Laughter)
-
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Now, the good news about the 2011 biohack
-
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is that the people who did it
didn't mean us any harm.
-
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They're virologists.
-
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They believe they were advancing science.
-
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The bad news is that technology
does not freeze in place,
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and over the next few decades,
-
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their feat will become trivially easy.
-
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In fact, it's already way easier,
because as we learned yesterday morning,
-
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just two years after they did their work,
-
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the CRISPR system was harnessed
for genome editing.
-
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This was a radical breakthrough
that makes gene editing massively easier,
-
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so easy that CRISPR
is now taught in high schools.
-
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And this stuff is moving
quicker than computing.
-
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That slow, stodgy white line up there?
-
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That's Moore's Law.
-
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That shows us how quickly
computing is getting cheaper.
-
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That steep, crazy fun green line,
-
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that shows us how quickly
genetic sequencing is getting cheaper.
-
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Now, gene editing
and synthesis and sequencing,
-
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they're different disciplines,
but they're tightly related,
-
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and they're all moving
in these headlong rates,
-
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and the keys to the kingdom
are these tiny, tiny data files.
-
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That is an excerpt of H5N1's genome.
-
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The whole thing can fit
on just a few pages.
-
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And yeah, don't worry, you can Google this
as soon as you get home.
-
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It's all over the internet, right?
-
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And the part that made it contagious
-
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could well fit on a single post-it note,
-
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and once a genius
-
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makes a data file,
-
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any idiot can copy it,
-
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distribute it worldwide,
-
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or print it.
-
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And I don't mean print it on this,
-
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but soon enough on this.
-
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So let's imagine a scenario.
-
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Let's say it's 2026,
to pick an arbitrary year,
-
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and a brilliant virologist,
hoping to advance science
-
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and better understand pandemics,
-
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designs a new bug.
-
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It's as contagious as chicken pox,
-
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it's as deadly as ebola,
-
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and it incubates for months and months
before causing an outbreak,
-
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so the whole world can be infected
before the first sign of trouble.
-
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Then, her university gets hacked,
and of course this is not science fiction.
-
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In fact, just one recent US indictment
-
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documents the hacking
of over 300 universities.
-
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So that file with the bug's genome on it
-
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spreads to the internet's dark corners,
-
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and once a file is out there,
it never comes back.
-
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Just ask anybody who runs
a movie studio or a music label.
-
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So now maybe in 2026,
-
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it would take a true genius
like our virologist
-
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to make the actual living critter,
-
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but 15 years later,
-
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it may just take a DNA printer
you can find in any high school.
-
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And if not? Give it a couple of decades.
-
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So, a quick aside.
-
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Remember this slide here?
-
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Turn your attention to these two words.
-
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If somebody tries this,
-
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and is only 0.1 percent effective,
eight million people die.
-
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That's 2,500 9/11s.
-
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Civilization would survive,
but it would be permanently disfigured.
-
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So this means we need
to be concerned about anybody
-
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who has the faintest shot on goal,
not just geniuses.
-
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So today, there's
a tiny handful of geniuses
-
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who probably could make a doomsday bug
-
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that's .1 percent effective
and maybe even a little bit more.
-
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They tend to be stable and successful
and so not part of this group.
-
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So I guess I'm sorta kinda
barely OK-ish with that.
-
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But what about after technology improves
-
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and diffuses
-
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and thousands of life science
grad students are enabled.
-
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Are every single one of them
going to be perfectly stable?
-
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Or how about a few years after that,
-
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where every stress-ridden
pre-med is fully enabled?
-
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At some point in that timeframe,
-
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these circles are going to intersect,
-
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because we are now starting to talk about
hundreds of thousands of people
-
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throughout the world,
-
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and they recently included that guy
-
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who dressed up like the Joker
-
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and shot 12 people to death
at a Batman premiere.
-
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That was a neuroscience PhD student
-
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with an NIH grant.
-
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OK, plot twist.
-
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I think we can actually survive this one
-
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if we start focusing on it now,
-
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and I say this having spent
countless hours
-
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interviewing global leaders in synbio
-
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and also researching their work
for a science podcast I'd create.
-
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I have come to fear their work, in case
I haven't gotten that out there yet
-
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(Laughter)
-
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but more than that,
to revere its potential.
-
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This stuff will cure cancer,
heal our environment,
-
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and stop our cruel treatment
of other creatures.
-
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So how do we get all this without,
you know, annihilating ourselves?
-
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First thing, like it or not,
synbio is here,
-
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so let's embrace the technology.
-
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If we do a tech ban,
-
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that would only hand
the wheel to bad actors.
-
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Unlike nuclear programs,
-
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biology can be practiced invisibly.
-
Not Synced
Massive Soviet cheating
on bioweapons treaties
-
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made that very clear, as does every
illegal drug lab in the world.
-
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Secondly, enlist the experts.
-
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Let's sign them up and make more of them.
-
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For every million and one bioengineers,
-
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we have at least a million of them
are going to be on our side.
-
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I mean, Al Capone
would be on our side in this one.
-
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The bar to being a good guy
is just so low.
-
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And massive numerical
advantages do matter,
-
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even when a single bad guy
can inflict grievous harm,
-
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because among many other things, they
allow us to exploit the hell out of this.
-
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We have years and hopefully decades
-
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to prepare and prevent.
-
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The first person to try something awful,
and there will be somebody,
-
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may not even be born yet.
-
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Next, this needs to be an effort
that spans society,
-
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and all of you need to be a part of it,
-
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because we cannot ask
a tiny group of experts
-
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to be responsible for both containing
and exploiting synthetic biology,
-
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because we already tried that
with the financial system,
-
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and our stewards became
massively corrupted
-
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as they figured out
how they could cut corners,
-
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inflict massive, massive risks
on the rest of us
-
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and privatize the gains,
-
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becoming repulsively wealthy
-
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while they stuck us
with the $22 trillion bill.
-
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(Applause)
-
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And more recently --
-
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Are you the ones who have gotten
the thank you letters?
-
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I'm still waiting for mine.
-
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I just figured they were
too busy to be grateful.
-
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And much more recently,
-
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online privacy started looming
as a huge issue,
-
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and we basically outsourced it,
-
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and once again,
-
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privatized gains, socialized losses.
-
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Is anybody else sick of this pattern?
-
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(Applause)
-
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So we need a more inclusive way
to safeguard our prosperity,
-
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our privacy, and soon our lives.
-
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So how do we do all of this?
-
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Well, when bodies fight pathogens,
-
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they use ingenious immune systems
-
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which are very complex and multi-layered.
-
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Why don't we build one of these
for the whole damn ecosystem?
-
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There's a year of TED Talks that could
be given on this first critical layer.
-
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So these are just a couple
of many great ideas that are out there.
-
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Some R&D muscle
-
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could take the very primitive
pathogen sensors that we currently have
-
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and put them on a very steep
price performance curve
-
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that would quickly become ingenious
-
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and networked
-
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and gradually as widespread
as smoke detectors and even smartphones.
-
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On a very related note,
-
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vaccines have all kinds of problems
-
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when it comes to manufacturing
and distribution,
-
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and once they're made, they can't adapt
to new threats or mutations.
-
Not Synced
We need an agile bio-manufacturing base
-
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extending into every single pharmacy
and maybe even our homes.
-
Not Synced
Printer technology for vaccines
and medicines is within reach
-
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if we prioritize it.
-
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Next, mental health.
-
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Many people who commit
suicidal mass murder
-
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suffer from crippling,
treatment-resistant depression or PTSD.
-
Not Synced
We need Nobel researchers
like Rick Doblin working on this,
-
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but we also need the selfish jerks
who are way more numerous
-
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to appreciate the fact
-
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that acute suffering
-
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will soon endanger all of us,
not just those afflicted.
-
Not Synced
Those jerks will then
join us and Al Capone
-
Not Synced
in fighting this condition.
-
Not Synced
Third, each and every one of us
can be and should be a white blood cell
-
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in this immune system.
-
Not Synced
Suicidal mass murderers
can be despicable, yes,
-
Not Synced
but they're also terribly
broken and sad people,
-
Not Synced
and those of us who aren't
need to do what we can
-
Not Synced
to make sure nobody goes unloved.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)
-
Not Synced
Next, we need to make
fighting these dangers
-
Not Synced
core to the discipline
of synthetic biology.
-
Not Synced
There are companies out there
that at least claim
-
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they let their engineers
spend 20 percent of their time
-
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doing whatever they want.
-
Not Synced
What if those who hire bioengineers
-
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and become them
-
Not Synced
give 20 percent of their time
to building defenses for the common good?
-
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Not a bad idea, right?
-
Not Synced
(Applause)
-
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Then finally, this won't be any fun,
but we need to let our minds
-
Not Synced
go to some very, very dark places,
-
Not Synced
and thank you for letting me
take you there this evening.
-
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We survived the Cold War
-
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because every one of us understood
and respected the danger
-
Not Synced
in part because we had spent decades
-
Not Synced
telling ourselves terrifying ghost stories
-
Not Synced
with names like "Dr. Strangelove"
-
Not Synced
and "War Games."
-
Not Synced
This is no time to remain calm.
-
Not Synced
This is one of those rare times
when it's incredibly productive
-
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to freak the hell out,
-
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(Laughter)
-
Not Synced
to come up with some ghost stories
-
Not Synced
and use our fear as fuel
to fight this danger.
-
Not Synced
Because, all these
terrible scenarios I've painted,
-
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they are not destiny.
-
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They're optional.
-
Not Synced
The danger is still kind of distant,
-
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and that means it will only befall us
-
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if we allow it to.
-
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Let's not.
-
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Thank you very much for listening.
-
Not Synced
(Applause)