Re: [DIYbio] Re: PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of Innovation

Whoa whoa waitaminute. Nukes are totally dual use. You can use them with nuclear pulse propulsion to get to alpha centauri in less than 50 years. :)

mad_casual <ademlookes@gmail.com> wrote:

>MARC GOODMAN is pretty clearly a shady character himself. Anyone who
>says,
>"Never before in the history of humankind has it been
>possible for one person to rob 100 million people." either doesn't
>understand the technology or human history. I wonder if he was a part
>of
>the police Force in LA that has been under reform for the brutality
>that
>lead up to the riots? For a former law enforcement officer, he
>certainly
>oozes with the presumption of guilt. Who are the 'mice' or the 'bad
>guys'
>and what laws are they breaking? I don't worry about hackerz tripping
>my
>pacemaker for lulz as much as I worry about an American President
>'legally'
>tripping an American Citizen's pacemaker without a trial, judge, or
>jury.
>
>I'm beginning to dislike the 'dual use' boogeyman; it's being co-opted
>to
>proliferate FUD. Steak knives are dual use. Lead pipes are dual use.
>Matter
>of fact, I have trouble coming up with a technology that is 'single
>use'.
>If there is a 'single use' technology and its single use is to kill
>people,
>I'd be more worried about that than any dual use technology. The only
>technologies that come close are electric chairs, guillotines, laser
>guided
>munitions, and/or thermonuclear weapons.
>
>On Thursday, May 3, 2012 7:57:10 PM UTC-5, Bryan Bishop wrote:
>>
>> hmm.. well it sounds like our views were misrepresented again. I
>don't
>> think anyone is claiming that it is possible to stop new viruses from
>being
>> created. So what did this reporter think he was doing ? Giving us
>another
>> biology update? Yep, still biology guys.
>>
>> Date: Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:40 PM
>> Subject: [tt] PBS: Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror:
>the
>> Downside of Innovation
>> To: Transhuman Tech <tt@postbiota.org>
>>
>>
>> Downloadable Gun Parts, Personalized Bioterror: the Downside of
>Innovation
>>
>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/makingsense_04-26.html
>> [Thanks to Sarah for this.]
>>
>> REPORT AIR DATE: April 26, 2012
>>
>> SUMMARY
>>
>> Through innovation and technology, California think tank Singularity
>> University aims to push the frontiers of progress. But what happens
>when
>> high-tech advances end up in the wrong hands? Economics correspondent
>Paul
>> Solman raises some disturbing questions as part of his ongoing
>reporting
>> series, Making Sen$e of financial news.
>>
>>
>> JEFFREY BROWN: And now part two in our series on using technology to
>> make the world a better place.
>>
>> NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman recently attended a
>> conference there and reported on some of the mind-bending research
>> being explored.
>>
>> Tonight, Paul looks at the downside of the high-tech revolution.
>> It's part of ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: At a recent conference filled with the wonders of new
>> technology, one presenter's vision of the future was downright
>> frightening.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN, Singularity University: There are two million unique
>> computer viruses that are generated every month.
>> "Today, we say 'there's an app for that.' Now imagine if these were
>> viruses each made for an individual cancer, and they were available
>> for free or 99 cents. That's where we're going."
>> - Andrew Hessel, Singularity University
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Marc Goodman is a former cop who ran the Los Angeles
>> Police Department's Internet Crimes Unit.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: Never before in the history of humankind has it been
>> possible for one person to rob 100 million people.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Nor has it been possible, says Goodman, for anyone to
>> hack into personal medical devices, like pacemakers or insulin pumps
>> connected to the Internet.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: The thing that scares me the most after cyber-crime is
>> bio-crime. We're putting all these little computers in our bodies.
>> And what that means is, our bodies themselves are going to become
>> vulnerable to cyber-attack.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: A high-level consultant to the U.S. government and
>> Interpol, Goodman is the faculty skeptic at Singularity University,
>> the futuristic California think tank, who rains on his colleagues'
>> utopian parade of innovation. To him, high-octane high tech is a
>> double-edged sword.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: I think all of this technology will develop in really
>> cool and interesting ways. But I can tell you, at the same time,
>> there are bad actors from both the crime and the terrorism
>> perspective that are using these technologies for ill.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Now, there's already plenty of bad stuff, says Goodman,
>> like all those computer viruses. But today's hackers are becoming
>> increasingly daring.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: The bad guys live inside your machine. They watch
>> everything you do. Any time you type in your bank account or credit
>> card information on to the machine, they're capturing it. They're
>> capturing your passwords.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, computers are becoming increasingly embedded
>> in the hardware around us. The typical new car, says Goodman, has
>> 250 computer chips. And in this Google prototype now legally riding
>> the roads of Nevada, even the driving is fully computerized.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: So, you could put in bad GPS directions and have a car
>> drive off a bridge. Every day, we're plugging more and more of our
>> lives into the Internet, including bridges, tunnels, financial
>> systems, hospitals, police emergency dispatch 911 systems, military
>> systems, robotics systems. And there's a history of all of these
>> being hacked.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: The Stuxnet computer worm that disabled Iran's nuclear
>> program made headlines, but smaller targets are also vulnerable.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: Diabetic pumps, cochlear implants, brain computer
>> interface. There are 60,000 pacemakers in the United States that
>> connect to the Internet, which means that the Internet connects to
>> your pacemaker. It's great when you're suffering from an arrhythmia
>> and your doctor can remotely shock you, but what happens if the kid
>> next door does that because it's fun and does it for the lulz.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: You mean LOL, laughing out loud?
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: Yeah. It sounds crazy, but we have had people hack
>> into, for example, the Epilepsy Foundation and change the computer
>> code on the screen, so it would blink really rapidly, so that they
>> would generate seizures on the part of epileptics, that type of
>> stuff.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Somebody actually did that?
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: Somebody actually did that for what they call the
>> lulz, for the fun of it, for the laughs to see if they could do it.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: For almost every upside, a downside. Consider 3-D
>> printing, a new way of manufacturing, layer by layer, everything
>> from art to artificial organs. This is a 3-D printed model for a
>> prosthetic leg.
>>
>> MARC GOODMAN: This is the lower receiver of an AR-15 semiautomatic
>> rifle. It's the only part of the gun that is controlled by ATF. All
>> the other parts, you can just buy. This is available for free
>> download on something called Thingiverse.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: And there's simply no way for the federal authorities
>> to trace it.
>>
>> Again, the sword of technology cuts both ways. Marc Goodman's
>> colleagues at the conference, like Andrew Hessel, extolled biology's
>> coming ability to concoct cures for everything from the common cold
>> to cancer, cures downloadable as easily as the latest iPhone version
>> of "Angry Birds."
>>
>> ANDREW HESSEL, Singularity University: Today, we say there's an app
>> for that. Now imagine if these were viruses each made for an
>> individual cancer, and they were available for free or 99 cents.
>> That's where we're going.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: The first step in that process may well be Synthia, the
>> first synthetic life-form created two years ago by Craig Venter.
>>
>> CRAIG VENTER, CEO, Synthetic Genomics: This is a picture of the very
>> first synthetic cell, based entirely on synthetic DNA.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: For Venter, cracker of the human genome code,
>> exponential growth in computing is speeding up progress
>> exponentially.
>>
>> CRAIG VENTER: Biology has always been controlled in science by who
>> had the DNA, who had the cells, who had the species. Now it's all
>> digital. Most labs, instead of getting the DNA from another lab,
>> download it digitally, and synthetically make the genes.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: And prices have plunged.
>>
>> By the way, what is that moving there?
>>
>> MAN: Oh, these are some harmless bacteria that somebody's growing
>> for a project.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Lab equipment is cheaper, too. This CO2 incubator for
>> maintaining tissue cultures costs $15,000 brand-new.
>>
>> Oh, little petri dishes.
>>
>> MAN: Little petri dishes, yes.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: But bought used on eBay?
>>
>> MAN: It was definitely well under $1,000.
>>
>> PAUL SOLMAN: Put sim
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