Can We Stop People From Printing Guns, Drugs, and Using DNA Weapons?
Big Think
2018-06-06
Views 1
Every time there’s a new technology criminals immediately take advantage of it, explains Steven Kotler. It's only a matter of time before they find new nefarious uses for 3D printing and synthetic biology. His latest book is Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact (http://goo.gl/eLjsSX).
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/steven-kotler-and-the-future-of-criminality
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - If you look at kind of the three biggest criminal enterprises in the world right now it’s arms dealing, drugs and exotic animals – the exotic animal trade. Those are the three biggest illegal trades right now. Well we can use 3D printing to print guns already, right. That’s already possible. There are people working on a 3D printer for drugs, right. The idea is prescription pharmaceuticals you could print them in 3D. It’s a chemistry set 3D printer. The off label use of this stuff is obviously going to be the manufacturer of drugs, right. Synthetic biology lets us create brand new organisms from scratch so do you want your exotic parrot or do you want something that’s brand new?
So what’s interesting about this – and some of this stuff is a little farther out but over the next 20-25 years it means that the three largest criminal enterprises in the world are going to be available to anyone, right. With 3D printers, with a DNA typewriter which his sort of an at home synthetic biology interface so anybody can program DNA. It means that we’re going to all the illegal drug trades we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath them and nobody has any idea what happens next, right. That’s never happened before. We’ve always had organized crime because there’s always been stuff that we couldn’t get that we wanted. Well pretty soon we’re going to be able to get whatever we want. This is kind of the weird side of the abundance idea, right. When you live in world of abundance when we can use 3D printers and synthetic biology and when anybody can do it it means that a lot of the illegal trades, right, the bottom’s just fallen out. And what happens then we have no idea.
Synthetic biology is progressing so quickly, right. All kinds of new weapons are now possible, right. One of the things I look at in Tomorrowland is the question of could you design a bioweapon, a synthetic bioweapon that targets the president’s DNA alone. It’s very, very difficult to protect DNA, right. It lasts a very, very, very long time. It’s a long lived molecule and it’s everywhere, right. Every time you shake somebody’s hand, the President hands somebody a pen they’re getting DNA samples along the way. The government is already taking steps to protect the presidential DNA, right. If the President goes into public and he drinks a beer out of a mug there is somebody there to grab that glass afterwards.
Hillary Clinton -- and this was released in some of the NSA stuff that Snowden released -- told foreign diplomats that they should secretly collect DNA from foreign dignitaries. So the United States is already on the offense when it comes to genetics. I’d be very, very surprised if other countries weren’t doing the same back at us. And it’s going to become more and more of an issue. So, you know, right now we have to worry about all kinds of assassinations by bullets and by bombs and along those lines. With what’s coming... I can make a disease. I can make a disease that I spray into the air, you pass through it, nobody else gets sick and you get a slow neurodegenerative disease say that unfolds over a couple of years. Nobody even knows you’ve been attacked, right. They think you’ve just gotten sick. So we’re looking at a whole new kind of assassination and to think that, you know, terrorists aren’t going to be interested in this technology is ridiculous. Every time there’s a new technology criminals immediately take advantage of it. And this is the next technology so we’re going to start seeing criminals get involved in it.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/steven-kotler-and-the-future-of-criminality
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - If you look at kind of the three biggest criminal enterprises in the world right now it’s arms dealing, drugs and exotic animals – the exotic animal trade. Those are the three biggest illegal trades right now. Well we can use 3D printing to print guns already, right. That’s already possible. There are people working on a 3D printer for drugs, right. The idea is prescription pharmaceuticals you could print them in 3D. It’s a chemistry set 3D printer. The off label use of this stuff is obviously going to be the manufacturer of drugs, right. Synthetic biology lets us create brand new organisms from scratch so do you want your exotic parrot or do you want something that’s brand new?
So what’s interesting about this – and some of this stuff is a little farther out but over the next 20-25 years it means that the three largest criminal enterprises in the world are going to be available to anyone, right. With 3D printers, with a DNA typewriter which his sort of an at home synthetic biology interface so anybody can program DNA. It means that we’re going to all the illegal drug trades we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath them and nobody has any idea what happens next, right. That’s never happened before. We’ve always had organized crime because there’s always been stuff that we couldn’t get that we wanted. Well pretty soon we’re going to be able to get whatever we want. This is kind of the weird side of the abundance idea, right. When you live in world of abundance when we can use 3D printers and synthetic biology and when anybody can do it it means that a lot of the illegal trades, right, the bottom’s just fallen out. And what happens then we have no idea.
Synthetic biology is progressing so quickly, right. All kinds of new weapons are now possible, right. One of the things I look at in Tomorrowland is the question of could you design a bioweapon, a synthetic bioweapon that targets the president’s DNA alone. It’s very, very difficult to protect DNA, right. It lasts a very, very, very long time. It’s a long lived molecule and it’s everywhere, right. Every time you shake somebody’s hand, the President hands somebody a pen they’re getting DNA samples along the way. The government is already taking steps to protect the presidential DNA, right. If the President goes into public and he drinks a beer out of a mug there is somebody there to grab that glass afterwards.
Hillary Clinton -- and this was released in some of the NSA stuff that Snowden released -- told foreign diplomats that they should secretly collect DNA from foreign dignitaries. So the United States is already on the offense when it comes to genetics. I’d be very, very surprised if other countries weren’t doing the same back at us. And it’s going to become more and more of an issue. So, you know, right now we have to worry about all kinds of assassinations by bullets and by bombs and along those lines. With what’s coming... I can make a disease. I can make a disease that I spray into the air, you pass through it, nobody else gets sick and you get a slow neurodegenerative disease say that unfolds over a couple of years. Nobody even knows you’ve been attacked, right. They think you’ve just gotten sick. So we’re looking at a whole new kind of assassination and to think that, you know, terrorists aren’t going to be interested in this technology is ridiculous. Every time there’s a new technology criminals immediately take advantage of it. And this is the next technology so we’re going to start seeing criminals get involved in it.
Report form
RELATED VIDEOS
