The coronavirus, [Roger Brent (professor of basic sciences), T. Greg McKelvey Jr. (adviser to the Rand think tank) and Jason Matheny (Rand’s chief executive)] writes, was “an unthinking adversary” that probed the world’s defenses against new pathogens. Considering the toll the pandemic took in lives and social disorganization, imagine the “remarkably deadly” pathogens that thinking adversaries might design using rapidly advancing knowledge of molecular and human biology: “In a worst-case scenario, the worldwide death toll might exceed that of the Black Death” in the 14th century that killed 1 in 3 Europeans.
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Brent, McKelvey and Matheny warn that for would-be terrorists, biological engineering, vastly accelerated by artificial intelligence, “could ease the path to mayhem”
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Brent, McKelvey and Matheny urge “hardening” societies: developing “warning systems” to detect engineered diseases. (The coronavirus might have been one.) And preparing to surge production of personal protective equipment, vaccines and antiviral drugs. The world must “develop the ability to vaccinate its eight billion people within 100 days of an outbreak — faster than it took the United States to fully vaccinate 100 million people against Covid-19.”
