Rogue Biohacking Is Not a Problem 43
Lasrick writes: Although biosecurity experts have long warned that biohackers will eventually engineer pathogens in the same way that computer enthusiasts in the 1970s developed viruses and adware, UC Berkeley's Zian Liu thinks fears about 'rogue biohackers' are overblown. He lists the five barriers that make it much more difficult to bioengineer in your garage than people think, but also suggests some important chokeholds regulators can take to prevent a would-be bioweaponeer from getting lucky.
We wait! (Score:2)
The White Plague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Plague) stays in the Sci Fi realm for now.
not a problem... for now (Score:5, Insightful)
Biohacking is not a problem for now: there are large practical hurdles, as the article points out. People may argue (correctly) that these will eventually be overcome, so we don't know what may have to be done eventually. But the political question is whether anything needs to be done domestically right now, and the answer is no. That will likely remain the case for another decade or two.
The biggest bioweapons threat likely comes from well-financed terrorist organizations and religious cults. They do have the resources to get all the equipment, can mobilize dozens of trained professionals to work on a problem, and often operate in places where there is little government oversight to begin with. But that's already the CIA's responsibility, and it has a lot of leeway in dealing with such threats.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't say I recall [Adware in the 1970s] being a thing.
Are you kidding? I remember that I couldn't read a magazine in the 1970's without seeing a bunch of pop-ups. There was one that was a bank robber picking up a big bag of money, and one that was a car that flew across the page, and one that was, like, green Kryptonite radiation waves...
...Actually, never mind. On further reflection, I think that may have been a popup book about Superman.
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Ads on stiff paper bound into science fiction paperbacks, making them harder to read? Magazines with lots of cards that spilled onto your lap when inconvenient? Heck, newspapers were adware. The major ones charged a low price, not enough to pay for operations. Minor ones were often free.
Yet one more reason (Score:5, Interesting)
...to colonize Mars. We probably have another 50 years of relative safety. But it's clear that the human body is a nightmare from a information security point of view: it will accept almost any rogue DNA and happily incorporate it in it's own cells and replicate it, like an Win98 autoruns any USB drive inserted. The attackers of such a system have a definite advantage, defenders cannot close the autorun functionality without dramatically re-engineer the human being. So all it takes is one mad genius with the right tools to create an unstoppable, airborne, deadly virus.
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So what a about a flu virus that implants a genius gene? Problem solved, genocide not required.
Let's extend the computer analogy: What's more likely, a virus that formats your harddrive or one that upgrades your CPU, RAM and mainboard ?
My summary of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Bioweapon creation is so deadly, that any attempt to create by a civilian it will most likely kill you before you succeed, unless you take expensive counter measures that will act as red flags, telling everyone what you are trying to do.
It does not prevent ISIL and similar groups from attempting it. They have sufficient money and size to hide their attempts, just like the USA and USSR did during the cold war.
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The US biological program was pretty well known. The US ended the offensive part of it unilaterally in 1969 and and all the weapons were destroyed by 1972.
Thanks to President Nixon.
Famous Last Words (Score:5, Interesting)
Famous Last Words....
"Don't worry, it's unloaded..."
"Relax, we have the right-of-way..."
"It's okay, I'm sure this rope will hold our weight..."
"Don't worry, rogue biohacking is not a problem..."
Re: (Score:2)
"Hey Bubba, watch me do this!"
I forgot the old standby, "Hold my beer...."
Re:Famous Last Words (Score:4, Informative)
The modern version probably includes "is the camera ready?"
'Cuz if it aint on YouTube, it didn't happen.
Several points just don't make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, we had 28,000+ cases of Ebola in west Africa recently so for a moderate effort you could have a fairly lethal disease. If you could manage to mix that with an airborne virus, that's a pretty potent killer. Unless you got a quite expensive airtight system that probably means you're infected, but you'll be a slow suicide bomber. Just ride the subway, maybe take a flight or three through major hubs and for bonus points kill yourself instead of going to the hospital so they never find patient zero and the places you've been. Good luck putting New York in quarantine.
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Ebola is self-restricting because of its short, non-contagious incubation. Patients become sick fast, which hinders their capacity to travel, and they're only contagious when sick. Even in a scenario like today's, where almost all the planet is accessible in hours via airplane, its spread out of Africa was minimal. There are desirable characteristics for a potent bioweapon and almost immediate symptoms is not one of them - it means the attack will have minimal impact because it will be detected and curtaile
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Summary: "It's hard." (Score:5, Insightful)
Glossed over in the story: "It's not that hard if you know what you're doing and have some money."
A few notes...
"It could cost $30,000 for a very basic setup." Never mind that someone with that level of skill could save that much in a couple of years. I know people who spent that much on sports equipment in a similar timeframe. Not all hackers are dirt-poor. Or they could get a middle-management job at a distributor and steal a few of the more expensive pieces. Some people have patience, you know.
"It's very hard to do the really subtle and clever things, like drug delivery bacteria." Conversely, it's nowhere near that hard to breed a better form of anthrax, not to mention a whole lot of other microbes. Anthrax is EASY to get - it's found on every continent, and there are regular outbreaks around the world. The same goes for many other nasty diseases.
"You need high-level biocontainment to be safe." But that's not hard to do for small samples, and relies on 1950s-era tech.
"You need very specific training to do it right." Well, thank heavens that we don't have hundreds of people with that sort of training. Oh, wait, we do. Well, at least 100% of them are sane. Er...
"You can't test on monkeys." But you can test on small, isolated communities of humans. By the time anyone notices it was man-made, it's too late. Nothing will happen if the bugs don't work, and if they DO work, it will take more than a while for the government to catch on.
The only issue is production-level amounts - making a few ounces for a major anthrax attack, for example. You don't have to make the cool spore/long-term dispersal agents for this purpose.
Generally, the big blind spot is "someone planning this will want to do it exactly like 1970s germ warfare types did, with tons of long-duration anthrax spores and well-tested lethal strains." Nope, not any more than mad bombers will all make highly-engineered explosives with anti-tamper devices and multiple remote detonators. They'll cut corners, take stupid risks, make a lot of mistakes, and a lot of them will die at home.
But it only takes one.
Money (Score:3)
So the entire article boils down to "money is the only real barrier". The rest is just values of money that people are willing to accept to overlook the rules.
Come again? (Score:2, Informative)
in the same way that computer enthusiasts in the 1970s developed viruses and adware
I might grant you the first, but not the second, and it turns out that the real problems developed not from computer enthusiasts, but dedicated actors with a profit motive.
Which should frighten you even more when considering biologicals and companies like Monsanto and Eli Lilly.
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Mmmmm (Score:2)
I violated the rule and went ahead and read the article.
What he says is: Only rich assholes can do bioweapons.
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Problem is, there are a lot of rich assholes in the world.
It's a lot easier (and cheaper) than he thinks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Back when I was in high school -- early 1970s -- microbiology was one of my hobbies. Not that I was trying to grow anything nasty (in fact, the main reason I got into it at all was because my girl friend was interested in it.) But we did find a lot of low-cost ways to do things.
For example, TFA says "For instance, many sleep with test tubes under their armpits to avoid buying expensive incubators." That's fucking ridiculous. My incubator was a box lined with foam (like from a cheap cooler) and foil,
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For example, TFA says "For instance, many sleep with test tubes under their armpits to avoid buying expensive incubators." That's fucking ridiculous. My incubator was a box lined with foam (like from a cheap cooler) and foil, warmed by a small incandescent bulb controlled by a dimmer switch. Didn't even bother with a thermostat, just adjusted the dimmer until it maintained the right temperature. These days I'd do it with a thermistor and an arduino to maintain temperature within 0.1 degrees.
That's crazy! Te
makes sense (Score:2)
This is exactly the kind of threat analysis I would expect from someone who worked as an undergraduate researcher for 13 months in a biolab focused on renewable energy. Go ahead and parse that thought a bit.
How about this: Make sure that when we train someone with all the skills necessary to weaponize biology, we actually have something productive for them to do. It's much better to try to encourage positive behavior from our scientists through incentives (i.e. encourage good jobs, not just endless traini
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I was thinking it's the kind of threat analysis you would do if you wanted people to come to the conclusion that it's an imminent threat that needs government oversight at all levels and in all places in order to be safe. Can't trust people, you know. This article said you could, but they had armpit incubators. Ludicrous points. Best monitor.
Bomb makers take risks too... (Score:2)
I would think that if you have sufficiently crazy dedicated lab technicians, some of the lab work could be done by volunteers willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. It's somewhat like it is for bomb-makers (although much more risky.)
Performing experiments on primates isn't a problem - especially if you don't care much for the scientific method and want results you can compare with controls. Keeping the experiments confined to the infidel sect is a problem though.
Creating a novel organism isn't nec
testing is what kills you (Score:2)
... sometimes literally.
Like TFA says (with immense understatement), "bio-weapons hardly ever work the first time." More accurately, having a complex bio-weapon like ebolapox or birdthrax work the first time you tried it would be like writing a couple million lines of C code and have it compile cleanly and execute more or less correctly the first time without any testing.
Also, if you want to survive the global plague you would be unleashing you would have to develop and test a vaccine as well.
I suspect str