What makes you so confident that this super sophisticated “selective targeting” is 100% guaranteed? What if the species who has killed off 10-100% of every animal population on the planet, in 1 thousandth the time most of them took to evolve, isn’t as smart as they consider themselves to be? What if the talking chimps, with a few decades education, missed something and end up accidentally exterminating all mosquitos? How many animals and ecosystems depend on an animal that’s existed for longer than most terrestrial species? What if our weapon spreads to other arthropods with a similar DNA and “exterminates” insect species around the world, who are already in a historic rate of decline, right after we’ve degraded every habitat on Earth, just as our unplanned terraform irrevocably alters their climate forever?
Are any of these risks worth millions of human lives? Maybe we should focus on altering ourselves? At least then our failures will be contained…
What makes you so confident that this super sophisticated “selective targeting” is 100% guaranteed? What if the species who has killed off 10-100% of every animal population on the planet, in 1 thousandth the time most of them took to evolve, isn’t as smart as they consider themselves to be? What if the talking chimps, with a few decades education, missed something and end up accidentally exterminating all mosquitos? How many animals and ecosystems depend on an animal that’s existed for longer than most terrestrial species? What if our weapon spreads to other arthropods with a similar DNA and “exterminates” insect species around the world, who are already in a historic rate of decline, right after we’ve degraded every habitat on Earth, just as our unplanned terraform irrevocably alters their climate forever?
Are any of these risks worth millions of human lives? Maybe we should focus on altering ourselves? At least then our failures will be contained…