What and against has punk asked the SAM Harris. Well, Russia has invaded Ukraine. so we have the first major Land WAR in Europe in decades, so, as seems like a very big deal, It certainly deserves its own podcast at some point, and I go away to see how things evolve for a little while here remains to be seen how bad this war will be and what might happen as a result. So

oh reserve comment at this point. Apart from echoing the nearly universal sentiment that pollutants actions are despicable, as is the support for him. They came dribbling out of the mouth of our former president. Any chance would have it. The topic of today's I cast his also scary. This is another PS, ay and Some sense: the continuation of the podcast that my friend robbery did for me in April of last year that up it was titled engineering, the apocalypse and it was for our examination of the threat that has posed to all of us by developments in synthetic biology in recent weeks discovered, a specific threat these lines fairly imminent and he's tapped Kevin S felt to walk him through the problem.

Kevin, is a Harvard train, biologist and he's credit. It is the first point, to describe how crisper gene drives could be used. Alter the traits of wild populations in a way was evolution early stable and he is currently professor at MIT as you, there's a call to action at the end of this episode, the call is to get the attention of USA, I d, currently running the programme. A virus huntin proposes such a concern. Anyway, I will say more about this: Rob doesn't petrol job at exploring the issue hope you will join me in making noise about it when you come to understand the nature of the problem for listening.

Today's conversation will be in episode of two different shows, the after on podcast, which I host and making sense which, by podcasting colleague, SAM Harris, hosts we're doing this, because we both find the subject extraordinaire Ali in port and also timely enough that we want to get it out their fast and since I've done a bunch of research, that's connected to the subjects and also know the guest salmon. I thought the quick thing would be for me to conduct the interview and then for both of us to distribute it making sense listeners- you don't know me, my name is Rob Breed and I'm a venture capitalist turned tech. Entrepreneur turned science fiction, author turned signs, pod, castor, turned venture capitalist once again. one who still podcasting scribbles a bit on the side. My voice may be from you're, because I was unsafe show several months ago, when we spend almost four hours

meaning how very awful the next pandemic could be and how we can prevent that awful pandemic. If we get our act together, I spent about a thousand hours literally, including over twenty. scientific interviews, researching those subjects and our episode had a fairly unusual format as a result? I'm not a scientist myself, but over the past five years, I've gotten pretty deep into pandemic related issues. It started with search for one of my novels, which later led to writing a few articles on the subject which led to several episodes my own podcast, then appearances their shows and then do a TED talk. But I gave right before covert and then to that they represent the salmon, then quite a bit more, which brings us to the day. and my conversation with MIT Kevin S belt a highly regarded evolutionary engineer. We met in the wake of some congressional testimony that he made on a subject that interests us both.

I was going to present something that will probably shock you, which you may find hard or even impossible to believe, but before that he's going to lay down a fairly deep foundation of concepts, definitions in a bit of history, which should give you a sophisticated basis for deciding whether you, by the fairly shocking points here, making the second half of our conversation, I think it will be for free in another full context, why he's laying the foundation. So here comes. The spoiler, which is a cabin, is going to argue, that a small new in very well intentioned. U S, government programme could completely inverted Lee, caused the deaths of millions or even hundreds of billions of people or even more, despite what cabin is certain are the entirely good intentions of the people behind it. The programme is called deep, vizier

which I believe is pronounced deep vision and it's part of USA. I d the agency, which distributes most american foreign aid. Heaven believes division is on a path to posting assembly instructions for what we can only call weapons asked destruction to the open internet for anyone to download, specifically the genomes of previously unknown pandemic. Great viruses that we have no defences against viruses that tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries could easily build from scratch as soon as they are given the genetic code. Now this all sounds a bit pampers to you. I get it. I struggled to believe my own ears at first, but if you listen to cabin he'll quickly realized that this isn't some covert you're a conspiracy theory, even if he doesn't ultimately persuade you that things are as dangerous as he thinks. I'll. Add that I wouldn't have interviewed him for this. If I thought he had even the faint

partisan agenda. I actually have no idea what party, if any Kevin affiliates with, and I couldn't care less because every point I've heard of me on the subject has been written in science? Not politics. No one thing that made this story especially hard for me to credit at first is that it's coming out of: U S HIV, which is dedicated to economic development and human flourishing in poor countries. and which puts its resources into so many great projects that, like any programme, that's put out, hundreds of billions of dollars cross many die AIDS, USA idea has had a cheer blunders and scandals and lousy uses of funds, but I admire the agency on the whole and that's partly due to personal experience, because right after college, I spent a year in Cairo, on a Fulbright grant and met lots of USA, eighty people and they were funding things like irrigation projects, schools and technical assistance in places

really needed them and they were all smart committed and working for a fraction of what they could be made in the private sector. On top that USA ideas run by former. U S, ambassador to the EU in cement the power, I can't say that I know Samantha, but we have a fair number of people in common and had a couple great conversations TED conference, and I know how smart unethical she is plus she lives really wrote the book on not killing millions of people. It was a searing denunciation of genocide, which you may be thinking, isn't the most controversial her risky position for an author to stake out, but one the pillage of prize. So it was no puff peace and there's zero chance. That's amount that would deliberately in peril millions of lives all of this is to say that there are two sides of the story: each of them held by very smart ethical people and its you'll hear the other side sincerely sees deep vision as an invite.

evil weapon against pandemics? And I'm sure This. Is the side Samantha hears from the most, because the programmes creators work for her and since vision is literally lesson a tenth of one percent of USA, these budget and she basically inherited the programme. This just isn't something she manages directly. I should also point out that some of deep visions plants could help us fight pandemics, but after many hours of researching this and talking to various people in academia, philanthropy, security and entrepreneurship, I believe that most of its agenda is appallingly misguided, Can I say that, because I'm not an actor and it would be dishonest now, despite that, in the second half of the interview, I'm gonna percent, all of the best arguments I've heard or have thought of myself in favour of division, because this subject is way too important for you not to

the other side. I also want to convey why some very smart and ethical people sincerely think this is a great idea and show that thinking this doesn't mean that that not smart, not smart, unethical, because I'm sure that they are now someone close to division could surely do a much better job of presenting this side and in an ideal world we might have structure. This is a debate between cabin and division proponent, but I am an interviewer was never once moderated debate and though I could probably become a decent moderator with some experience and guidance. This has happened. Right now, and we want to the story out right now, because

the programme is so new, its barely under way. In fact, it may not even have quite switched on yet, which means it should still be possible to alter its focus or even redirect its entire budget to the countless world positive programmes that you as a I d supports, and you may be able to help with this yourself as Kevin Unable discussed what and if our conversation, which will start right now so Kevin Thanks, for joining us today and why don't we start out with a quick overview of your professional background and what you spend most of your time doing in the lab. These days opaque so much the invitation I'm an evolutionary engineer and professor at MIT, where my last lies in building synthetic ecosystems to what we call direct the evolution. Of new molecular tools.

and we also work a lot with communities to safely uncontrollably engineer populations of wild organisms and associated ecosystems. So we have I'll call tools in the lab, and then we, a lot about whether when and how to use those tools to change the environment revolution of course doesn't know anything, it's just a natural process, and that means you can hurt. Is it to create things when you dont know how they work and that's true of a lot of biology. Honestly, we still don't know the details of how it works and how to make things for just the right way to caused something to happen within herself. One way to deal with this is to take something that does something reasonably: do what you want: make a billion variants from all of the wall and see which one step best then take those a billion variants of those for those of the law and do this over and over again until you get something that does exactly what you selected for and you do some related work with phases, in your lab, yes

since we're interested in applying evolution to create molecular tools. It useful to work with the fastest evolving things, a nature which tend to be bacteria pages, viruses that, in fact, bacteria and these viruses replicate once every ten minutes that are really short generation tat, so what we do. Is we engineer the bacteria so that the page only gets to reproduce? If it does the molecular trick that we want to see so we put a gene, we want to evolve from multiple genes under the gene. Some of the virus and we take away the pieces that it needs reproduced, remove those into the herself. So the who sell will produce this critical factor for virus replication. in proportion to how well the virus manages. Perform the molecular trick so that we all these

populations of a billion viruses compete with one another, creating mutations in those genes that we put on there and the ones that perform the molecular trick best. Pretty the most offspring and of course this is a continuous process generation. After generation for honey, the generations in the lab, until it spells out the thing that we want to see all to create a better platform for making useful and hopefully safe biotech tools. Now it just a couple clarifying questions. First, all face is. They are viruses, but their miniscule, and they can only in fact bacteria theirs. no way of pages, going, do in fact a human and inflict diseases that right that's right. There, machinery just would not function within ourselves. There optimized for bacteria very different context, got it in two edged toward what I stand to be the practical application of this. Is you can train this ecosystem that you ve put together to create a very

Good version of a complex thing that you want with all these bills, and billions of shots on goal and then having done that, you can make some useful product in your case is generally for pretty sophisticated biological application site like big pharma, biotechs other labs for the most part yeah a platform for creating useful molecular tools can really accelerate biotech research, because there's no way to have a big impact like accelerating everybody, else's work and empowering others. So you can do This for quite a while lots of experiments sees things replicate every ten minutes. You ve got robotic tools, accelerating it. How many genetically distinct stages? Do you ask me you ve, produced in your lab. Since you started doing this work, notably distinct, is a hard question, because we do crank up the mutation rate very high, so they evolve much more quickly. Probably some

between tended the thirteenth, even tended a fifteen that most lacks a quadrillion able. Leave. That would be to contacts relies at the number of stars in roughly five to ten thousand in the galaxies the size of the milky way. So that is a lot now. You are often described as the inventor of the gene drive. What is a gene drive? So gene drive is naturally occurring phenomenon. The region, It may be a billion years ago happened when some genes realised that they could replicate more often if they change the laws that they get inherited by the offspring. The one way they do this in organisms that have sex, so they in her one copy from the mother and one copy from the Father, a gene can cut the chromosome. doesn't have it, which causes a cell the copy itself over and out in that, instead of half the offspring, inheriting the particular gene drives system, all of them well

that's a huge advantage, you're going from Heaven aspirin, inheriting you to all of them, at least for the case of heterozygous that have one copy of each and so gene drive systems can just sweep through populations of sexually reproducing organisms very very quickly. Just to clarify that means that the trade that particular gene confers can go from rare or even one off, because it was mutation to saturate the population in a certain number of generations. The trade changes you bid on it. in clones of the individual. That's right and Austin Bert, who is one of the earliest gene drive researchers in the modern era and Imperial College London first proposed that we use these things by engineering genes to cut sequences that we want in order to change the population, the proper Ms really didn't have the tools to make this happen. Well, I played a minor role in developing crisper, which is a genome, editing

tool that is basically a set of molecular scissors that can be programmed to cut whatever sequence we want a few months after we had been one of the first groups to show that crisper workin mammalian cells. I was looking around outdoors at a bunch of oxygen. We saw turtle that day in the water now thinking here we ever going to edit wild organisms of crisper, and I thought probably not. It was not effectively because we'll, be added. An organism were changing it to do what we want, means were diverting its resources away from survival and replication in nature, its natural selection is going to act to remove whatever changes we make. I thought well wait a minute what, if, instead of just using crisper to edit the genome, what if we use it, to insert our engineering trade, and we also include the crisper system that can make that change, then Recursive genome editing that means

suppose we could build a system that would spread the engineer trade throughout the whole population, even if the tree with harmful and because read the literature as soon as I thought of this, I thought wait a minute. That's a gene drive. Can I see your paper where someone It's said we should use the genes like the one in east to engineer populations, and maybe we could take out, say, malaria. What have we crashed populations of malarial mosquitoes we might be able to help us adequate malaria that way with crisper, it's so versatile. you can cut whatever Jeanne you needed to at whatever you need to can even do multiple places which could make it evolution early stable, are fairly so set was tremendously exciting thing We might be able to help get rid of malaria and my assistants. A fourth ok, see you. Had this idea? That was obviously very, very novel and exciting on many levels, but it also kind at terrified you didn't it,

Well, the first day I admit, was pure euphoria. Thinking up all the applications. Kissimmee malaria is an exceptionally horrible. Disease, kills Nearly half a million people every year, most of them kids under five, most things, infectious dismisses, which cognitive way stunt tens of millions placement, the first they kind of euphoric and, of course doing research to see whether it would actually work but the next day I woke up in a cold sweat, because I was thinking wait a minute if just about anyone who can edit the genome other sexually reproducing species with crisper can make a gene drive system to spread their change through the population. Well, what stop misuse sure you can engineer mosquitoes can't carry a disease could you engineer mosquitoes? It would always carry a disease, how much of a problem with misuse be, and it seemed rather frightening because you could imagine people weaponizing. The natural world

so I spent quite a long time before I even told my academic adviser at the time about this idea. I wanted to learn whether or not that was a likely outcome, and fortunately I concluded that it's not gene drives spreads. Only vertically parents to aspirin so I mean that's fairly slow. It can't do more than double every generation of absolute most in terms of frequency and a population its fairly obvious, in that it works in sexually reproducing organisms which don't have crisper in nature, So this is a signature that can't be hidden at all be present all gene drive systems, and that means you can always find it if its there and most importantly, if you see a gene drive that you dont like its trivial to reliably bill, the counter. You can add some extra instructions for crisper telling it's to copy original rogue version, Then your version, what we call in uniting reversal, DR still, spread through the wild population just like

rogue, but whenever it encounters the rogue the immunity reversal, drive will cut the rope and replace it with itself. So there, a reliable off switch. If somebody does something bad that imperils human society or the ecosystem, in uniting reversal drive is a reliable off switch and did you think through, and basically kind of map out the immunized reversal drive before you told the world about the gene drive one before yes and before, I even told George, before even told, your adviser yeah. So you did not let this new idea leaked into the world until you knew you had an off switch. Well, I mean it, which is perhaps a little much just because you can reliably overrate the unwanted change. Doesnt mean that it wouldn't have made changes in the ecosystem before you may to do that, but anything that is slow obvious. If you look and blocked is not terribly great threat, and so with

at understanding. I then approached George and said think, there's a lot of good that we could do this, especially if we do it openly and transparently, and I don't think, there's much potential for misuse for this reasoning. What are you there And when you first told me the story, you said the words that were very lucky: that gene drives quote favour defence. What exactly does that mean well anytime. You other technology that is accessible to many people in change. Right, isn't that excessive other that many labs that use crisper to edit the genomes organisms other than currently fruit flies worms and myspace the big ones. If there's a lot of people who can use the technology, then there's a lot of people who could misuse the technology and so favouring the fence. Just means that If someone does misuse that everyone else can prevent it from causing much harm anything. That's

oh obvious and easily blocked, isn't much of a weapon, but things that are fast or are subtle or are unlawful, or another story, and most obvious example of something that can easily be countered, is a nuke right, a nuclear warhead on an icy. The aim is something that we haven't figured out how to counter, despite many decades of wishing that we could. The way we have to deal with that threat is by minimizing access and deterring those who can actually wheeled that weapon, because if they actually use it, there's nothing we can do on the subject. Nukes. This could be a good time to define the terms information hazard and attention has cause will probably use them later in the conversation. Yes, so the history of nuclear weapons

its remarkable how they were originally developed, because researchers were afraid of the consequences if malicious people got a hold of them. Specifically, Nazi Germany was the concern of the seller and Albert Einstein when they read what are the Manhattan project, but, what's not so well known, is that once German, surrendered in world war. Two szilard launched a petition within the top secret Manhattan project, in which he argued that the United States should not use the bomb on Japan, not because it will save many american lives by preventing an invasion, but because do so we call attention to the power of nuclear weaponry. He pointed out that, at the time the notion that any adversary couldn't militarily threaten the mainland american City LOS Angeles or New York was just laughable. There is no way that any adversary could threaten the Continental, United States, but

If you show the world that there is a single bomb can destroy the bulk of a city that would change, you would be advertising the existence of this kind. the weapon and thereby incentivize in other countries to gain access to it. Which would then imperil your own cities. So he said, if you use the bomb on Japan. The Soviets and we'll get it that much more quickly and probably other nations as well, and you will make the United States less secure and so he spent the rest of his career advocating for Nuclear Non Proliferation, pointing out that the fewer and actors who had been ready to wield this kind of power? The safer humanity would be, and so, In that sense, Hiroshima wasn't attention hazard, it informed the world that this is possible. this thing, you might not otherwise have bothered with, because it's going to cost billions of dollars to develop and distract a lot of your top scientists without that attention to the fact that this is possible

oh that's right, so different kinds of information hazards. One is like the blueprints so in a way using the bomb on Japan, the ice, the topic signature told everyone what the Americans had managed to do so without the blueprints of the bomb, they could look at the radio the signature of Hiroshima and get a lotta, hence yet that's it sexual information hazard, but the big one is, as you said, in attention hazard. It says this is: weapon powerful enough to destroy cities that could determine the future course of warfare. That's a giant! me unblinking, sign in the sky, TAT. Anyone who wants to acquire power that they need to. Where this kind of weapon in order to matter in the future. Now, with all the background of the last several minutes, I'd like to know jumped topics pretty significantly to the spanish flu, which was quite literally extinct for eighty years, but then that changed. How did that chain Well, some influenza researchers at the CDC were concerned

That's something like making it. An influenza might come again so they wanted to know well what about it was so bad, because no other flew strain killed anywhere near as many people so, They went to museum specimens that had samples from victims of the nineteen eighteen pending and they also got samples from someone It died of the flu and been buried in the permafrost in Alaska and run Thirdly, they were able to extract the already genome of the virus from these samples and sequence it and thereby learn how to make the virus using recently discovered techniques for virus assembly, so they resurrected this extinct deadly virus, so that was a well oiled machine that came back into existence after having vanished into obscurity. I'm sure it was very seductive idea scientifically, but was that a reasonable thing to do from a global security standards?

well, there's arguments back and forth as to whether or not it was wise he's good arguments on both sides. But white bothers me from us, purity standpoint is that they posted the genome sequence online and its. Therefore. Anybody to download, as I know, because I was able to find it very quickly via Google, myself, which means literally anywhere in the world. and get this thing up pretty sure. I know you're going to answer this. But what is bad about this gene? I'm being online well hosting. genome sequence of the virus online in this case gave exact blueprints for a pathogen that once kill me. As much as one in thirty living humans to anyone included loan terrorists and by weapons programmes who have the skills to assemble in which doesn't seem like a great idea, important qualified. We should be grateful.

That is pretty unlikely that releasing that virus again today would cause such a deadly pandemic, and the reason is the virus, has been called the mother of all pandemics. That to say most modern, flew strains, are much less deadly descendants, but because most There must have been exposed to at least one of those we tend to have immunity to that kind of flu virus, especially those of us here the flu during the two thousand nine pandemic, which was the same kinds of molecular coding. Second, we do have antiviral drugs that work against it. Even though we probably can't produce enough of those quickly enough to really matter and a fast moving Pandemic Bobby We have our antibiotics and there's a pretty good evidence from autopsies in going through the records of autopsies from nineteen eighteen that it killed.

People, at least as much by causing secondary bacterial infections of the lungs as it did directly causing damage. That is the virus itself, and we definitely have enough antibiotics to dose the entire world population already available. Now. This is obviously completely impossible to know precisely, but taking those mitigating factors into account. What would you estimate back of the arm the low the plausible, Changes are the death toll if this thing gets out, I'm not so sure of a lower window, just because you know unlikely to take off at all but if you presume it does take off, then probably say somewhere between two hundred thousand and ten million people, and that's just because it would probably be worse than most modern days brains, but it's not gonna be nearly as bad as it was back then finally got the probably reasonable, tended to percent coming

and but honestly out, and sat down and thought about it for twenty minutes, of course, on the other hand, just because, its highly unlikely, doesn't mean it's no chance, and there's a non trivial chance of millions or even tens of millions of people dying well, some discretion would seem prudent. Now I've actually known years that the genome is freely available line, but it actually only learned that the CDC put it up they're. Pretty recently, and at the time the only explaining, I could imagine for that was it was so impossible for any one to a sum. the virus from scratch. Back then, in two thousand and five that they just fail to realise how soon the publication of China would enable labs and dozens of countries it basically reach start the engine of one of histories, worse pandemics, and that was a scary enough idea to live with, but then couple weeks ago, you came along and told me that they actually did realize it would soon become possible.

Synthesize they were fine with that and sincere makes my head span. I'd love it if you could give us a quick sense of where the science of Virus Cynthia, This was in two thousand and five when they posted this well, the first instructions of earth, detailed political for assembling influenza viruses was published in eighteen. Eighty, nine and the first virus was synthesized from synthetic dna, in two thousand to, and that was polio virus, which is probably comparable to maybe slightly easier to assemble, then influenza, how long after the publication of the genome would you say it became scientifically feasible to synthesize it immediately. That is to say, probably a good hundred or so people had the skills at the time to follow that protocol? Maybe a few hundred people to use the protocol to

assemble met in eighteen influenza after publication, the genome sequence. What they may not have anticipated was just how cheap synthetic dna would become because in the last twenty years, the CASA assembled dna that is assembled into large, like fragments like you would need in order to boot up the virus, the cost has fallen by a factor of a thousand and while presumably they knew that it good couple hundred people could assemble it immediately: They may not have understood how that number would grow because most of the vote- while we're relegates they weren't involved in biotech and they were familiar with exponential technologies? Okay, so we ve gone from a hundred labs, create this more or less immediately after was published. What would you say that number has grown too today. I estimate somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand people could do that right now,.

which is pretty alarming, even given that it's unlikely that it would actually cause a pandemic. So is it fair to say that work kind of relying on the goodwill of half a stadium too. full stadiums worth of people not to put this back out in the world. I mean, frankly, most people that evil and anyone who is that malicious. If there is only a small chance with him it actually take off, then why would they bother, but you can the math and say it still looks like a pretty bad that, given the expected death toll, even if you assign a very small chance that someone would and a small chance that would actually cause a pandemic. The numbers don't look good when you calculate it from that perspective, especially because it's going to remain accessible to fear generations, that is in five years, there's gonna be even more people who could do it in ten years. Quite a bit more,

the number is only going to grow. Okay, even though one thousand nine hundred and eighteen flu would probably be less destructive than many of us would fear if it was released today, the decision to put it online will probably boggle most people's intuitions. It leap boggled my own, but the people, the CDC, a really smart and, by definition, are hugely concerned about public health. So what benefits might they have fought would accrue from publishing this and what perspective might they have that? I lack that would cause them to prioritize these benefits over the fairly obvious downsides. There is a mindset, difference which says something along the lines of. If we understand how the world works, then we can come up with better cures and treatments and intervene, since that we couldn't necessarily predict. In the absence of that knowledge,

That is another way. It is you gotta. Do the basic blue sky research without being able to point to a particular benefit, or you will necessity lose access to all the benefits that you couldn't see before you did. The research That really is what drives folks in these fields. They believe that we can come up with. innovations that will make life sufficiently better to be worth. The risk is important to point out that the scientific benefits that did accrue from as erecting the nineteen eighteen influenza virus world. largely accomplished by a relative handful of specialised laboratories, doing research with it or with pieces of it. We didn't actually need to publish the genome sequence in order to gain virtually any of those benefits, given that the number of people with access to nineteen eighteen flu has

grown by a factor of three hundred, and it's quite plausible that the CDC didn't realize would be quite that large. Fight that soon do you imagine the people who made the decision to post it regret that decision now, particularly in the post covered in Europe, for some other folks who are in charge or highly influential at an age today have been around for most of the last twenty years I ve been among some of the strongest supporters of taking high People viruses that aren't very transmissible an engineering involving them to become much more transmissible synthetic simply. I The findings from the past, to which most people have immunity today, is fair to say that they don't regret it what other scary genomes- their online. It's a horse out of the barn when it comes to terrifying things,

posted online liner. We currently in ok ash shape. You know a lot of people seem to think that it's too late, but it's really- because again making new team isn't that likely to take off itself. There is something that would take off, which is very Oliver's smallpox, which is much more lethal and about his transmissible and also online and also online, but there by the CDC but various virus. The United States has three hundred and fifty million doses of vaccine ready to go, and burial is much harder to make us of ours are an estimated maybe a hundred people, could make very Allah and doesn't do the isn't about it transmission then the way covered does so. I think we d a much better chance of getting it or control, especially since we have so many vaccines We require the. U S actually donates under the rest of the world to stamp it out, but the world in living memory has experience of vaccinating people get smallpox and eradicating and other than that

people speculate about a few things, but there's nothing else out there. That is really all that nasty in terms of potential pandemic pathogen right too. Firstly, a bowler genome is online, fifty percent case fatality rate, but relatively not very contagious compared to cover it. Sars ten percent demonstrably far less contagious than Covin, because we know how many people died in the Sars outbreak and would lessen the thousand one it always frightens bees, murders, Middle EAST respiratory syndrome, another run a virus like Sars, but also not very transmissible, so unless from missing something we're in pretty good shape. For now, that's right! I'm not super worried about all the viruses are out there in terms of causing sufficient devastation to really certainly not threatened civilization funny anything like that, probably not even the casualty levels that we have just seen with covert folks can reasonably disagree on this, but, from my perspective,

were actually doing pretty. Ok when it comes to blueprints for nasty plagues. right now. Is anybody hurt the last accelerated on SAM's podcast? One thing that really worries me. A great deal is the deliberately artificially modified each five and one flew that was created in Madison, Wisconsin and HOLLAND to labs in twenty twelve states, to me because it has a sixty percent fatality rate even worse than a bola and in nature its barely contagious at all, but that experiment led it to being transmissible at least and ferrets, and the idea of something with that kind of case fatality, red ravaging the population for weeks me out, but you not as worried about that as I am correct- that right both of em gather respiratory

transmissible investments. That doesnt mean they're transmissible enough to cause a pandemic in ferrets, let alone transmissible enough to cause a pandemic in humans and subsequent studies of them suggest that there are reasons to think that, even if they were continually passage to be even more transmissible and translated to humans. pretty much much less lethal. The same mutations affecting for invisibility would also reduce the liberality, so those are bad, but are still in the bucket a problem, not so, unless we're quite unlucky with age five on one at this point, we don't really have much to fear from the genomes that are currently on the internet, unless we keep post thing new and worse ones, to the internet and because it's more future risk than current ask it's really alarming that you previously said that quite a few people see

to be operating under the presumption that the horse is already out of the barn and therefore went out posts. Everything like whose saying that well a lot of people in fact do. You accept that I've been trying to raise this concern saying you know we perhaps shouldn't share blueprints for what amounts to an arsenal of play. Online by doing new research for trying to find things. That would actually be that that it would be likely to take off what people say. Air were already passed that, I think, that's because some people are referring to cover, which is not really we're talking about is no reason not to post the genome online when it's already causing a pandemic different from a scenario where it hasn't actually invective humans, because that means that it might never do so, at least among us humans, cause it to do so, but a lot of scientists seemed to take the view of theirs, viruses online. Therefore, there is no reason not to put more of them online and that attitude is quite worrisome.

to give you just one example of this so Dennis Carol is a huge figure. The field of finding and identifying unknown viruses some article meters up that we were both interviewed for said that Dennis basically acknowledge that? Yes, a scientist could use the genetic sequence of a dangerous virus maliciously, but he said that risk already exists. Make want him directly saying we don't need to find some new virus in order to elevate that risk, and I just can't imagine why he would say so. Like that now to be fair, unlike many folks in this field, Dennis does seem to invite us to hold him accountable in the case that he's wrong. He says again quoting you go out in cavalierly begin collecting and characterizing these viruses there is inherent risk attached to that and you have to be accountable for that risk. So I applaud him for saying that, but I just couldn't disagree more when it comes to the risks of putting new viruses online speed

no doubt. This is actually a really good moment to transition. To talk that division that New USA D Programme, the concerns you so much because Dennis ran the immediate predecessor to at a program called predict which was basically the template for division, and that's a strange to be that predict was able to spawn a follow on programme in light of some of the terrible scandals. Frankly, it has been implicated in at the centre of which is the fact that predict directed a fair amount of money by way of an intermediary called Eco Health Alliance, to fund research on corona viruses in Lieu Han, and not just that but in labs that were known to have very shoddy safety practices to the? U S. Government

no that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, from some declassified diplomatic cables. So that seems like an incredibly radioactive error in judgment. This is all out in the open by the time division was funded, and on top of that, we have to add these significant possibility, not certainly but possibility that that work may have resulted in a leak that led us to covet. While there was a time when a lot of well regarded scientists were putting the odds of elaborated zeal, Oh that's a long long time ago, at this point substantially. Nobody who has significant scientific depth- and this would put the odds of elaborated zero sum put. It is high ninety percent sure some put in single digits. It is undeniable that predict may have had a hand in that. So, for all those reasons this is politics is irrelevant to your discussions cabin, so we can just leave it there, but I just find it a little bit unfathomable that predict spawned an encore net. One of predicts mean activity

with some be called virus hunting, and that's also going to be a major activity of division. What is virus hunting well you're probably of his vision of someone who it's on some kind of sea and Cavill, we're going to be looking at a batcave, to collect samples and taken back to the lab, see what kinds of ours is you can pull out Indiana Jones National Geographic Kind of vibe, now keep in mind that the media distortion, that's the glamorous presentation of the virus hunter, most viruses he's probably more like going to those wet markets if various wild caught creatures and taking samples or going to bushmeat markets and other parts the world or contracting with local hunters to bring sample the various wild critters back, where either just taking general environmental samples out there from a wide variety of environments and isolating whatever viruses you can find from those samples in the modern day now sit

seeing them all sharing the genomes online and then actually doing more than that with the viruses that you isolated Bolivia We want to know what viruses are out there to. Having done digging into this some basic stats unprotected. They found roughly twelve hundred previously identified viruses, they dandified than the sequence them and they were active. I think in twentysomething countries sixty four and laboratories, and what was interesting to me in the twelve hundred viruses all of them had the potential build erupt into pandemics. That was the presupposition for selecting them. I got this will fail, times, including more than a hundred and sixty novel corona viruses, so that was predicts hall. It's interesting me that division there actually talk

about ten to twelve thousand viruses over five years. So something like ten acts, the number of viruses and half the time. This is with a hundred and twenty five million bucks instead of two hundred so big explosion, inefficiency and, to the extent that this work poses risks the big explosion in the risk what's driving this acceleration, and if we continue to do programmes like this after divisions legislated five, your life will that explosion continue to point that at some point we might be doing this for many tens or even hundreds of thousands of viruses, so one big chunk of the cost is taking all these isolated, very samples and sequencing. That's creating the detail blueprints because, once you have genome than we can use dna synthesis to reconstruct that virus. You seeing these virus assembly protocols that folks had worked out and made tremendous improvements in over the last few years. But the me

and cost reduction for programmes like the vision is the sequencing is just getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and that mean. it's easier and easier to collect more, we're viruses? What isn't appreciably easy? here is taking it back to the lab during them in the lab and performing the set of studies that tell you here, this one likely to actually cause a pandemic. So what you're I met now is essentially step too. We have found the viruses we have virus hunted now they're back in the and what you're talking about now is called characterization right. Yeah. The whole weight of the programme is too and which viruses might spill over and caused future pandemics in the hope that we could do something to prevent it. There's four key classes of it. pyramids, that you performed an animal virus determine whether it's a good candidate for causing a pandemic in humans. Do you want to know how tightly does this virus find too

human target cells. How readily does it actually, in fact, those cells? How readily does the backbone of the virus replicate and churn out new copies of the virus in relevant human tissue types, and because you can't has it in humans. Of course, how readily is transmitted in animal models that are chosen? their similarity to humans, whether naturally or because, in the case of mice, they ve been engineered to express human receptors and have human like immune systems. The sort of place back to you to make sure understood this four sets of experiments. Experiment one, is Does this virus bind to a receptor on a human sell by cannot find the door step to having found the door? Can it get in, doesn't infect the cell? So does it find the door it does it have the key? step. Three, having gotten inside candid hijack the mechanisms of the cell to replicate, and then step for is, if it does those first three things:

Does it seem to be transmissible in animal models that replicate as closely as possible transmits ability humans that I get that right? That's exactly right, great analogy, and if you answer this four questions you basically, Herman, which of these ten thousand yet understood Viruses actually have major pandemic petition. gimme a tiny minority of them- and this is something you'd- have zero knowledge about. Without taking these steps, So having done this characterization or pandemic identification process You almost something that humanity would otherwise never have known, which is that these viruses could be incredibly dangerous, and these are not now. While I know this is, of course an unknowable number and the best will probably do is confident range

roughly how many pandemic greed viruses. Would you estimate deep vision is likely to find over its five years if it does in fact, net ten to twelve thousand mystery Europe is too good question that's about ten times as many as predict found and predict didn't find any that looked particularly likely enough themselves, found a bunch that looked worrisome in one or another property on some of those tests. But it didn't find any that checked all the boxes so to speak. We can also use back and say well how many viruses are plausibly out there? How many pandemics do we normally see and then here's the real big one, what action of viruses out there actually gonna spill over and get into humans in the first place, because we're still discovering new species, their plausibly a lot of viruses out there that have never seen a human and never will so some searchers say. probably Waymore Pandemic, capable viruses out there than will ever calls pandemics, as most of them are just never gonna, come in contact with humans, but sweated

this down in sight. The low end estimate for how many viruses might be out there in mammals is around forty thousand of which they estimate that maybe ten thousand are capable of human to human transmission. one rigorous estimate, sets out in the letter. That's the low and estimate others in the field of asylum, it has many, is half a million in mammals dating the exact number of romanian humans, but dig into other papers. They suggest that maybe twenty per cent of those so some arbiter, in ten and a hundred thousand viruses that could plausibly human to human transmission, but with human transmission is not the same as causing a pandemic. There's lots viruses that can spread human to human, but on average each per an infects fewer than one other person, so they die out like Sars one and mergers so how many of them could actually cause pandemics

really hard to know, but if division finds ten thousand, then you assume the lower end estimate that it be as much as a quarter of all the virus is out there. So it's a twenty percent of those are going to be capable of spreading human to human. Two thousand that we, that human to human, what fraction of those two thousand spreading human to human, could actually cause a pandemic it's, not really known, because the ones that are in debt. In humans or by a sample from all of history. So it's really hard to say, but if we're guessing like one in a hundred them would mean twenty pandemic capable viruses, but that doesn't make sense statistically because predict found Levin under twelve hundred viruses and didn't find anything that clearly looked like a pandemic capable virus which makes logic sense, and I do generally believe that probably that means aid issues, a high end plausible outcome, but a quick question: is it possible that the targeting of the hunted viruses or

The accuracy of some of the laboratory steps have gotten substantially more efficient that perhaps more will be caught. Maybe predict miss things that division will not miss because its being done in twenty twenty, you, instead of two thousand and nine the main difference is that now there are much better computational tools for matching virus to host species by receptor similarity in the lake. So when D vision decides virus is worth testing from the sequence data. There We have a much better shot at identifying at that very being high risk. Then predict was okay, so the play this back the upper ceiling could be eight, it could be higher because improved technology bottoms, up estimate gets us into the possibility of it, maybe even being load dozens. We don't know exactly, but it's important unknown

but it is possible that we will find zero pandemic capable viruses, in which case the programme can by definition, trigger any of the terrifying things that we're about to talk about that it could trigger. So this is not a certainty that there's a huge risk here, but zero feels like a low end estimate, because the organ Is this programme prison? We know a lot about the state of the science and what can be done now, what can be expected and they wouldn't be spending up this programme if they thought it was a real possible today that there would be zero because then, by definition, the programme will fail. Citizens here is passed ball and then the high end from a bottom up and intuition and a top down we're getting into quite plausibly middle hi single digit number, possibly but not likely into the dozens, is that reasonable, ballpark ya frankly, a much better way of estimating it, then I was going to take. You know that Characterizing work is really interest

to me for bunch of reasons how hard and expensive is it to do this characterizing work at scale, and how likely is that pint? work to happen with many thousands of viruses in the absence of this programme. From what I understand The characterisation aspect is the most expensive component of a programme that is not limited to virus hunting and characterisation. that is? Division is also about monitoring the human populations that are closely exposed to a bunch of the animals that are most likely to pass on viruses to them so as to why identify outbreaks early and give us a better shot a containing them? this programme does a bunch of really good stuff to yeah. That's an unadulterated good saying what you just mentioned, But my understanding is that the bulk of the cost is actually taking the viruses back to the lab and running the experiments. That requires a bunch of trained biologists, with sky

those that are much more specialised, then following a protocol to symbol of virus from the secrets that is as a whole where people that can make a virus from a genomic blueprint then can search through this haystack of wild viruses, looking four ones that could plausibly cause a pandemic okay, so we virus hunt. We characterize we all in a record shattering number viruses over the five years at the end of which humanity knows something that would otherwise not have no, which is that these, let's combs six previously undiscovered viruses, pose a very, very significant pandemic risk. Now I could see very good arguments for us not wishing to know this information, but it can also see arguments for us wishing to notice information, but what's most significant to me is step three in this process which so flapper guy

texted me when I learned about it that my head is frankly still spending a little bit and I want to be very clear and I dont want to exaggerate what step three is, and so in order to put this out there in deep visions, own words, so to speak under the quote from there, so called no foul, which is a notice of funding opportunity. This is something that, U S idea and other agencies put out in the world and say we want this programme created and divisions. Novo is over a hundred pages long to its very, very special and then universities and other people can be on doing this peace or that peace and all the pieces are eventually some by programme officer inside of you, I say idea, so this no five hundred plus page document in the public sphere, but a googling you can find it is clear and detailed, and certainly official statement of divisions, intentions as exists, so wanting to do right now Kevin

I read a few snippets and for those who find the novo, these are scattered a few phrases and sentences from the bottom up page. Sixteen, the top of seventeen and I'll, ask you to explain a couple friends and meetings as I go along. So, first of all, from the Since you Idee expects the data generated by deep vision, we'll be publicly available, and I'm gonna skipper had few words for efficiency, deep vision, will assist in linking in country data with global systems, e g, gender Angie. I ass a idea What are your bank and J S HIV and what Does it mean to link the data with them, That's referring to the standard, open data practice of sharing the genome sequences of everything that you find in a given research programme So Jen Bank is the main repository hosted by the: U S: government, of all genetic information that everyone has sequenced and submitted to Jan back

Yes, the idea is the repository specifically of virus strains not everyone sends the sequence of every strained to Jan Bank. If there is ready, a sequence that is very similar, their J S, ideas for the detailed religious viral evolution specialists, who wanted c and map out how different are mutational variants of a given virus Basically, it is a wildly standard, scientific practice. Now, to put any sequence you find up to the cloud before we have any notion of its significance, so everything they find by definition is going to be made publicly available long before they characterize it that roughly that's exactly right. Good principle of open data is collected on a scientific experiment. You should really put it on for everyone to see. Ok, a couple words after that last snippet of tax, pointing again from the programmes no fell knowledge gained by

deep vision on novel viruses assessed to be zoonotic insignificant epidemic, slash pandemic threats. We be immediately available to the Inn country owners of the data and will be expected to be available expeditiously to policymakers, the private sector and implementing partners. So I think I know what that means. Could you just play back what that amounts to? If you think, there's a virus that poses a major epidemic met, his local outbreak risk, or, God forbid, a pandemic risk. You need to tell them country that you found it in immediately, so that they can take action and its expect they will then share it with your national community as soon as possible. The bottom line, if deep vision succeeds everyone on earth we'll get the recipes for the dangerous viruses that we find they will be put online. Justice is nineteen. Eighteen flu virus genome was put online that

right because remember, the intent of this programme is to identify which natural viruses might spill over and cause pandemics if they spill over into humans, so as to better target interventions to prevent that from here and the way they hoped to do. That is by creating a list of viruses rank ordered by perceived threat level, which they ve already for the viruses that are highly before and dont spread, particularly while human human, better known to have spilled over that's the product of a did you ask the idea program called start spill over, which is generally highly admirable, with the props exception of this list. A vote as we discussed previously, there's not a whole lot. It's dangerous on that list so far, but what division he wants to do is as soon as they find anything dangerous, they're going to alert the world to it and put it on that list. Presumably number one position so bottom line

when division succeeds based on what they seated themselves in general practices, the genomes of potentially very significant pandemic, viruses will be put on the open internet for anybody to fight. And given the base of scientists and individuals who are already able to come a certain viruses from whole cloth in the lab, tens of thousands of people will be in a position. To follow those recipes as soon as their posted and animate that virus, even though they dont personally have a sample from the bat that it originally came from. Do I get that right? That's exactly correct and attire, to what we were talking about a little while ago. The current population of frightening genomes on the internet is probably not all that bad, but this action could substantially change that by saying yes, world, nineteen eighteen, probably not as bad as you think, each

I then one pretty good chances that transmissible but holy cow people, these whatever Six viruses can really do the track. That's going to be out there as a result of this programme, and tens of thousands of people at first will be able to counter these things followed by, we don't know how many in the future is that an excessive the alarmist interpretation, no It's really not I'm afraid, and it's worth comparing covered is killed. Many more people than any single nuclear detonation. There are nine common acknowledge nation states with access to nuclear devices, so as soon as viruses likely to cause Pandemics are publicly identified with freely will genomes the number of actors in security terms,

capable of inflicting a million plus debts in expectation will rise by roughly a thousand, so the vulnerability of the world to a deliberately, flitted pandemic will rise tremendously. If deep vision succeeds, I mean that's what I get from this, and again please tell me if I'm being unrealistic in my interpretation, Frankly, I wish you were, but that seems pretty accurate. I've been out it's a little worse than that, actually because a lot of people seem to us, a pandemic, the pandemic great the same virus, but nature throws on average for or so pandemics at us per century. If someone deliberately causes a pandemic

if the list has eight viruses, they could make and release all eight at once. The idea of facing eight different codes, none of them with vaccines or even tests all at the same time. It is boggles my mind. That's just such a horrifying thought given how hard it was a deal with this one and it's worse than that. I'm afraid because one of peoples who are best hope is being backseat, because, obviously that's what got us out of this one right well, as were talking about this, it's been one hundred in two days, since the COMECON variant of Covert was first sequenced and the genome shared with the world. The goal at the White House is put forward? Is that we should have vaccine available within one hundred days of the genome sequence being identified, but by a couple of days ago only crime had infected a very large fraction, maybe not fifty percent, but in some places definitely fifty percent of all humanity, So hundred days is too slow, even though

Mccrone arose in one place in the world and spread from there and that's Stretch goal is a hundred days and with you as you not I've been aware that number for a while and it's just its dangerously timid, but it's worse than that good. If only IRAN can spread that fast from a single point of release, anyone malicious enough to deliberately cause a new pandemic, let alone several at once, would almost certainly release them in multiple travel hubs, say airports throughout the world, so it would be single point of release. You have a chance to notice, because lots of people are getting sick. It would be people getting sick cities all over the world. All at once. Well substantially diminish our response time and one, would imagine thereby substantially increase the resulting death toll. So even if it just one virus. Now a deliberate release is worse than a natural.

Spill over or an accident, because both of those are spread from a single site yeah. That's a really interesting and important point covered emerges in whew Han and its two and a half months before it shows up in Detroit. That was nowhere near enough lead time for us and it could be chop by ninety nine percent by malevolent actor. That's scary and there's one more thing: I really want to emphasize witches. Some people might be saying: oh yeah, but no matter how those for experiments turn out, even if they're all for positive and give values. Copper we'll do endemic human bearers of the same family. You might say: well, maybe that's just a fit he percent chance that it would actually cause a pandemic is again, the transmission studies are in animals, not humans, and, to be fair. I just prepared the age five in one's mutants as being actually likely to cause humans so sought say that ok, they find five viruses and they think could cause pandemics. Let's assume each of them is actually fifty percent likely to cause one What if someone were to assemble and release? All five they'd have ninety six percent chance,

of causing at least one pandemic and in eating one percent chance of igniting two or more simultaneously again prism, we across multiple travel hubs. That's pretty terrifying! and if you assume that division is only the beginning and the goal is to find all pandemic, capable viruses out there in nature and put them all on the west in order to prevent as many natural pandemics as possible, then you're raising possibility that someone might do it and then you'd see copycats, because that's what happens with mass shootings. It's a socially contagious behaviour, One person set the example, then more, people who are mentally ill or captive to horrific ideology would be more or likely to do it now that they know that it's possible in general. I'm not super worried about civilization falling apart because of a single natural pandemic virus, but if you're talking releasing aid it once

that might be another story depending on how about there I mean remember if essential work, I'm going to go out there and risk their lives. Then you start having problems in food and water and power distribution, and if those fall apart than everything falls apart, so. putting those genomes online looks pretty risky, given that the best case scenario is that we would prevent the natural pandemics, witches historically around four percent rate, seems a lot to say it's definitely a good deal to prevent for natural spillovers per century in exchange for giving tens of thousands of Will the power to launch more open, m, explain that simultaneous. We across multiple travel. In light of all of that, I dont know how you could argue against the statement that, if deep vision is spun up and succeeds the x,

closure. Humanity faces to malevolently inflicted pandemics skyrockets, even if deep vision finishes its job, and none of this work is ever ever done again, which is Priscilla completely naive assumption. Like anybody would make that, given that these momentum to do more and more of this, rather than less and less of this in USA, I de of all places which will discuss in a bed, and that brings me to my last quote from divisions no phone, the USA. Urgency for international development parentheses. Usa Idee seeks to assist a limited number of countries with a focus on Africa, Asia and Latin America to establish capacity to detect, characterize and seventy information and findings regarding previously unknown viruses that have originated in wildlife correctly wrong, but basically says in addition to doing this stuff ourselves, we are going to be true

in lots of foreign countries. To also do this and its noteworthy that if this training, which is currently specialised, and will probably enjoy many breakthroughs as a result of a hundred five million dollars of funding over five years. You can have a lot of smart people concentrating on characterizing, better, cheaper, faster wouldn't otherwise happen without this programme. So if deep vision succeeds and society, continued tripling down on this stuff. This work will be as a consequence, done on foreign soil? Where the? U S? Government? absolutely no sway or say will eventually be done with tools are far better than what we ve got right now, and tools and techniques, so this is the horse out of the barn that doesn't actually yet exists on the internet with a relatively limited set of sort of dangerous viruses that are there now there is one factor

but I should probably point out which is suppose were concerned about state by weapons programmes. If they weren't say don't mess with us, We have the ability to launch new pandemics. No one would believe that I would laugh and say I can fabricate data to that's cute. But if it's done by deep vision by division funding a bunch of India, the lads who are well meaning because they want to prevent natural pending excellent just haven't thought about the security risk if they pay wish that data. I believe it is it's done by independent labs You don't have a motive to have a pandemic in their pocket. It's going to be believable in a way that it won't be if malicious actors try to do it themselves. I think this is one of the most powerful

Regional arguments that I've heard about the danger of this kind of genetic information being often have thought about it until you first mentioned to me on the phone before, if I don't know, and environmental extremists movement or a frightening anonymous source on the internet or even a state actor like North Korea. were to say hello world, I am going to inflicted devil eating pandemic? Unless you meet my demands, they would be left off. It would free people out outward propaganda, of coverage on CNN but the sign, his to in a position to inform the National Security opera in various countries about whether or not to take this threat seriously will say that this is just not feasible that totally changes. When a g note that the world would not have known otherwise is definitively blessed and publicized by a brilliant scientific group. As being that thing once that work has been done, which

be done otherwise. Now all of a sudden we know thirty thousand and perhaps quite a bit more people can Follow that recipe overnight and what that means is. We could suddenly go through a terrifying series of hijackings of the attention and the stress levels of the world called with all kinds of people issuing, there's threats, and they don't even have to have access to one of those. Thirty thousand people who can make that virus. They just have to say, because it suddenly cried Well, nobody will be able to deny that it's impossible for one of these thirty thousand people to be under the control of this terrifying. Anonymous source online. Where this terrorist group or this rogue or whatever, and that alone is just wildly disruptive. It's one thing A kid pulls the fire alarm in there, school to get out of their science exam or whatever, but if that kid calls

school and says I have a hydrogen bombs, that's ready to go off, nobody's gonna. Get that alarm. the creation of this credibility in power. So many more people than Quote Powell, just thirty thousand people who could act on it to do awful things in the woman, it's possibly even more likely because the people who might Make that threat me and in our conscious say I'm actually not going do it. I dont have a gun. You not just hold the liquor score with this work gun no one's gonna get hurt, but action the more likely to move ahead with that kind of thing, then it would be for state actor. Do something. Yeah, I'm actually at least, is afraid of. Not just non state actor but even just individuals, illegal or otherwise, Fiji endo was a member of this apocalypse. Terrorist called option Rico in Japan, OEM was, responsible for making and releasing chemical weapons that killed a bunch of people in japanese cities.

in the early midnight teammates, but before he joined the cold, Endo was a graduate trained, virologist and he's ought to obtain samples of Ebola for use against civilians and was unsuccessful James Home who is a convicted mass murderer. The aurora shooter quitting Life Sciences Phd Programme not long before he opened fire in the theater and pre allocate are the most famous terrorist was arguably the Unabomber tent Gusinsky was brilliant mathematics. Professor. who referred in his manifesto to the immense power of biotechnology. Even though he wrote it decades ago It's really hard to imagine someone like that who wanted to down. The industrial system would not have used that power. If given access to pandemic virus, genome sequences and modern virus somebody particles and that's not even getting to grips like diet basis, any other kinds of terrorist folks who,

may actually be tempted to use it, even if it would hit their own people The ominous sidle factor for you can call it. That is something I think people very frequently mess, because it's easy to rule out a majority of bad guys who normally dominate international headlines? We can safely say that Putin. She indeed North Korea are wildly unlikely to inflict a pandemic on the world because they have so many people to protect and so much to lose, and if wherein the mindset that it takes a major state actor to do such a thing, there is a bit of mutual assured destruction built into that. There is a radical, deep ecology, who don't think much of humanity in general and might think that the world is better off with a whole lot fewer humans, there's folks with those persuasions we have called for it. Certain

We on unclear whether group, like all Cato, would actually have unleashed something that would hit their supporters as well. But quite possibly I mean they did. Put out a call for brothers, with skills in microbiology in two thousand tended make biological weapons of mass destruction and then maybe one of those hunting ones is folks. With the mindset of the german wings pilot who decided to commit suicide, he was mentally ill did disclose his mental state. And decided to end it all. By flying the plane into a mountain, yummy, it states and we have an average of more than one mass shooting per day so that suicidal mass murder. Instinct is out there and the ominous sidle instinct is out there and then this thinking out loud like they could be other people who don't realize quite how deadly the thing they're doing is and might have some sort of own headed punt. plan like? I could imagine somebody saying who I remember: the markets crashing when Turbid came out

they released something short the market, make a pile of money and stockpile gas Basque. It sounds ironic and absurd, but for seven billion people in the world and Marie like absurd ideas, occur to at least some of us each and every day. Ok now I want to get into the final in some way, is maybe even the most important part of our conversation with a little bit of a preamble. It's obviously abundantly clear that I am horrified by the agenda and the prospects of this program called deep vision, but I want to try to do my very best took back with, every argument that I have heard of war have dreamt up on my own in favour of division, because there is another side to the story and the people behind this programme are fixed dreamily, smart and well intentioned, and also add that when I personally first heard about predict it was when the news broke about it,

shut down and then actually happened, either right before a right as the pandemic, starting in at the time. I thought This was insane because zoonotic Spiller is obviously happened before, but obviously happen again, and how can we defend ourselves against it? If we don't study, are enemies actually very sympathetic to these arguments? So let's go back and forth and I'm really going to try to make every argument and capable of in favour of this. So much as the other side as we can, simply deliver. So my first question to you, which is the question that was in my mind when this thing was first shutdown shouldn't. We want to know who the bad guys, are and where they live before they strike shouldn't we want to know where the dangerous pandemics dwell and know exactly what they look like. Isn't that a bit like putting wanted posters all over the wild West? It's an extremely intuitive

compelling rationale and, most of the time it's true. The problem is that it's kind of like saying here is a wanted poster for this particular device, which happens to be the detailed schematics for hydrogen bombs and peppering the world with different blueprints for hydrogen bombs. or equipment necessary to make hydrogen bombs in order to identify people who might be making hydrogen bombs? It's not a perfect analogy, but it's hard at the top level to say. Ok. Best case scenario, we prevent all natural pandemics. Is that worth giving these tens of thousands of people the power to release more pandemics than would normally occur in a century all at once, but just doesn't seem like a good trade, and we put it in that context and you're gonna happen. Look back at your basic assumption. That is always good to know more about a threat, because that is

Wishing doesn't encapsulate the costs of knowing. That is the all you have. Information can be negative. That's the whole point of an information. Hazard is actually a whole field of modelling and information, They re on calculating the value of information. When should you run an experiment to learn more about tat to assume that information is always positive. My question is: is the cost of burning the experiment worth reducing your uncertainty about what would happen in the world, but it also The call for the value of information to be negative, and you can imagine an extreme case suppose, you figured out some way of creed the singularity on earth that would devour the planet. To give. The absurd example, would we want humanity. Anyone in humanity to know that that is possible, probably better.

If no one ever knows that that's possible and because of the credibility issue in the difficulty of doing this kind of research, it looks a lot like. If we don't go there, then there won't be credible pandemic, capable virus blueprints online for quite some time. That's not Last forever. We will eventually lose. They will eventually go up there, whether through this kind of root or another one, but longer, we can push it off. The map The time we have to build actually effective defences and its important, not listen, just come over the sense of doom and gloom, because it's also true that even or the scenario where people release me the boy pandemic, capable viruses, or in multiple airports if we have sequencing based model rearing systems in place everywhere will pick them up.

nearly immediately, certainly before they spread too widely through air travel and be able to put on our protective equipment. And if we actually tried, we could probably build comfortable, even stylish, equipped that keeps you from getting infected with viruses, and we can make it available to everyone who required to keep food and water and power flowing for as long as it takes to stamp out the virus entirely. If we had that kind of equipment available and the threat that salient. We could do it even after covert, even after our manifest failure in so many ways with that kind of technological advantage. I think we could do it, but we can't do it today, so It's really hard to make the argument that the threat of now draw pandemics could ever be enough to justify creating that risk of deliberate misuse. That could be so much worse because humans make better terrorists the nature, even if we can't make viruses worse the nature

we make better terrorists. I think the main difference between folks who think that this kind of attitude towards understanding the threat as thoroughly as possible, no matter what assume that all technologies favour defects, But, no matter how bad it is, if we no more. We can come up with some kind of effective defence, but that just not how the world necessarily works. and we know that from nuclear weapons, but also frankly, we should know that from covert, because we weren't able to effectively defend against covered, even though we we should have been. Certainly some nations did much, but than others. But right now you can't say that understanding viruses better is especially given our difficult. These reliably making vaccines quickly enough is plus we're going to mitigate the damage for many pandemic enough to warrant the kind of off balance that you're giving to individual

one individual can watch pandemics and the entire world has to frantically make vaccines test them approved manufacture them and distribute them. If we can even do that, Then the office can do it again. It takes so much less effort if you have a list of many different pandemic, capable viruses to choose from ok, you mentioned vaccines, so that gets to another argument that I've heard favor this approach and one that I certainly harboured myself for quite some time, which is if we do identify the spill over bad guys before they spill over till we get a huge head start on creating vaccines and therapies to counteract that spilled over pandemic. And if that's a case,

don't? We have a great potential, really mitigate an awful lot of deaths, and we need to put that in the benefits column, as we also look at the potential costs column. In order to have a head start in vaccine production, you need to be able to establish whether it works and, if you're trying to develop a vaccine against a virus that has never infected a human before the only way to test efficacy that is to run what's called a phase to clinical trial would be to deliberately in fact a bunch of people. with a virus of unknown, without pity that we think might cause a pandemic. That's what call the challenge trial and we weren't willing to do that even for covert until well over a year into the pandemic. Would we really be willing to do it for a virus. That was I waited from animals and might now actually, in fact, a human are certainly ever take off as a pandemic. What? If, We discovered a couple dozen viruses are we going to do it for all of them?

then, you have to take into account? How fast am rna vaccines can be designed? Basically, a day I mean Madonna's was famous less than forty eight hours, I'm sure we can do it within twenty four. Now we can design vaccine it within a day, and you already have production facilities that allow you to churn out tons of doses very quickly, because it you're just making rna you're just changing the sequence, very easy to specify it for a new virus Then there is no reason why you can't run a combined phase one in phase to trial immediately because one of the best Things at an age has called for and is now working on with White House support is a program to develop one vaccine for a virus of every family, because if you do that We actually have some idea of this from many viruses are already ongoing. then you know roughly. What do you need to use? for your am rna vaccine against that family. If there's a pandemic already going. You should be making your mri knave vaccine candidate and getting it people's arms, who are high risk in order to protect them as soon as possible.

Because you already know that an immortal vaccine for related virus at a given dosage was safe and effective. So, given that you wouldn't save even a single for a day, vaccine development by knowing the virus in advance. Very few people now quickly. Madonna was developed. I think it's an important factual point to lay out there without any at a tory aligning. This is just fact. I think it was something like three hundred and Forty two days between when Madeira and most of the non chinese world got the genome for covered. Three huh and something middle over three hundreds of days before the vaccine came out, but would few

Eliza is that roughly two of those days were the total vaccine development timeframe and the rest of it was testing safety regulation and then went well taken that it doesn't take long at all to make one of these vaccines. But it's really important to note the development of the formula for the vaccine is much briefer than time necessary, as we ve seen with covered to create seven billion of them to vaccinate the world, or even three hundred and fifty million of them to vaccinate our own country that destroy many months. In the case of the. U S till we get to the point where anybody who wanted a vaccine can get. It and we're nowhere near that point with the world. Yet so, wouldn't it be beneficial to do the deep vision work to find the plausible, bad guys and just stockpile? when's are hundreds of millions of rubber. The appropriate number is others vaccine. So we are in a position to snuff. It immediately Why don't you just described sounds a lot like spending. An awful lot of money. Stockpiling doses of vaccine

since they were not actually should work yet so that you can do what amounts to a phase. One plus based trial of ring vaccination to try to stamp out an epidemic before it comes a pandemic? Defy ring vaccination so ring. Vaccination is what we used to get rid of smallpox, for example, in its where you have a case and you essential we give everyone in the area who might possibly have come in contact with them a job just in case you doesn't contract racing if you can, but it's more like list? Everyone you know, plus everyone who lives or works within ten blocks of your home or workplace respectively, we're just gonna vaccinate. Everyone to a couple of degrees, of contact out or even whole cities, if need be, but that still, actually not that many doses, what you described, a whole lot more expensive than just building the capacity to make em already vaccines in bulk very quickly. in various places throughout the world.

I mean we're gonna, have these factories were making a vaccines against other things were definitely to be done nothing I'm already vaccines against other pathogens probably I'm on versions of existing vaccines because it looks like them are. Neighbours may well be better chicken pox as propaganda. Maybe an immortal vaccine because, probably better- and if you have factories making all these other vaccines. You can immediately switch those to be making, scenes against some new zoonotic agents that has just jumped a heck of a lot cheaper than having this doc by all those doses in advance for sure viruses that are probably never going to spill over anyway. My enemies rebuttal too. That I think I know your answer to her, but let me just make it is that's so easy. Why covert? Why don't? We just do vaccination, with it backs that took a data make and stop that one out and move on well that would have required the warrant officials to actually inform the Beijing central government that there was a problem in a timely manner and for

them to have had a marker vaccines available, which they still don't have today? I can think another media rebuttal, so the ring vaccine strategy, but thereby was so obvious that, even though I'm trying to be a good devils advocate on just gonna wait out there I mean yes, it takes a day, but it took three hundred forty days of testing and approval, and so how can we really do? This ring vaccination strategy, the obvious although that is you, can have the same problem. If you have three hundred and five million stockpiled copies of a vaccine that itself, by definition, has not yet been tested and approved because there was no pandemic against which to test it, so that rebuttal has a built in rebuttal, but I do actually want to add something here and I like to dance, your take on it might personal belief is now that we do have em are in fact scenes and will have more than three years and they'll be everywhere. Then some amount of time, and now that the safety file of em RNA vaccines has been well established, Mayo

feeling- is when something scary emerges. We need to be able to access merging, see regulations. We can't have the three hundred forty day test period, which, by the way, was record suddenly quick. can't have that because, as you pointed out early in the pot cast a hundred days Is nowhere near enough time if something diabolical on the march, and so this is I've thought about my own and wondering if you think it's a crazy idea to have ready to go. Pre approved pre thought through pre debated pre the collides emergency provisions that, if something really awful, starts to him Open society acts whether its author, a country in the hot human animal interface, can basically flip a switch and say as soon as we have a high confidence vaccine, very high costs it's in safety and pretty damn good confidence in Africa.

Because we ve been doing I'm RNA for six years now. We can at least allow people to take that voluntarily, rather than waiting three hundred and forty days before they can take it. What do you think of that as a tool that what We take the stockpiled approach or the ring vaccination approach, a kind of feel like we need that tool. I mean what you say make so much sense that it hurts and it hurts especially knowing that so many of those three hundred days could I've been avoided, given appropriate institutional incentives that were sadly lacking at both FDA Did you see, but it's not really to single out those agencies in particular, causes not like international agencies. Did that much better and to be fair, Marty, vaccines were new, it took time for the manufacture. During scale up it just wasn't there. So even though a lot of lives could have been saved by accelerating the regulatory approval which could then let it be that the companies in confidence build up even faster than under operation works.

There is a limit how fast we could done it whenever any vaccines renew and in future. be able to do a much faster, which means that the regulatory approval is that sticking point even more having a set of people who were authorized in the event of nascent epidemic to just go, head with a combined phase, one phase to trial in a ring vaccination format using I already a vaccine targeted to the new agent using doses, similar to those identified for viruses, it the same tat way in the past I guess he's gotta beyond the books is something you can do, and negotiate internationally to get approval that he would everywhere. We agree to do it. If our FDA agrees, this is ok and we can do it. Then it be a lot easier to get regulatory agencies and other countries to agree, and just have that, as the That would frankly make a heck of a lot more sense. Your idea, then, what nations are currently arguing about in the World Health Organization, for so called pandemic preparedness K. I think another,

powerful argument in favour of knowing the precise genome of a potential bad guy in advance is monitoring the hot interfaces in the human world in the animal world that human animal interface, those are fairly narrow parts of the world, and it seems that if we do, I dunno by the likely spillovers from a particular region. We can put our lot of muscle into that interface- specifically targeted at this one- bad guy- that might emerge for

there and we're gonna inevitably put much more muscle in their into that early detection. In that geographically specific place, then we would, if we never did the work that division proposes to do. I think that's in arguable that you could it's not clear how much better it would be. Then, just looking at the animal human error face again with out looking for which specific viruses, you think what actually cause pandemics? Were they to spill over and instead thing which animals cause the most spill over events in which communities? And can we work to prevent those so you're arguing that those hot interfaces between the animal and human world can be carefully monitored even in the absence of the precise genome. How would that when and how easy is that to do and does it require new attack, energy or enormous budgets. Also that's what the technology that's already made divisions job easier,

is doing that is their going out there and their monitoring people who are often acts goes animals and checking to see which animals viruses. They have been exposed to, or even their just getting a lot of samples from the animals that people are most likely to contact and sequencing them, and that would let you a model of which creatures are highest risk the thing is identifying that say. A particular kind of bad is high risk because of the sweet of viruses too, which is exposed. And how often viruses from it end up in people and regions nearby. That doesn't give anyone blueprints that could be used to cause a new pandemic, but it does let you target enter tensions in communities, ensuring that anyone who might have been exposed to about get much prompter, medical care and diagnostics to see what

It is they might have been infected with, and resources to contain, that potential outbreak before it actually happens again. Next rebuttal, which actually think is a very strong one in which a number people put to me when I raised this issue, the United States can control whether or not deep vision does this work, but we can't stop the rest of the world from bring it based on what you told me about the level of expertise and budget that it will require is probably not a lot of actors out there. Who could do this and there is obviously no economic incentive for any private actors to do it, but nothing stopping China, for instance, from doing this work, and wouldn't it be bad for China to do this work. Under the cloak of darkness for them to identify six pathogens that we know nothing about, and then we

Have this information a symmetry, isn't the danger of that frightening enough that we just can't let it happen and were tonnage dragged into almost an arms race? Well, you have to ask: what are we really lose and what do they gain from that scenario? Mimis or viruses that are gonna kill their people as well, there not strategically useful to great powers. The way nuclear weapons are because they can't be effectively target, and you could say well what, if they hypothetically try to develop vaccines in advance and vaccinate their people in advance there, I would say I think it's pretty hard to vaccinate a billion people without intelligence agencies noticing that you're doing and pretty we're getting a sample of whatever it is, or at least finding evidence of it, and even it You somehow managed to accomplish that feed can be awfully suspicious when it ravages every other country, but even yours

zones abroad. Somehow never get it. That's just seems quite a reach. I think normal deterrence really operates. Just fine in that scenario, and again, what do we gain from identifying it in advance a day when it comes to vaccine development if we really do have the capability of make em vaccines very quickly, witches. I certainly hope we have, and frankly, even if the government fails to invest in it, a lot like private sector is interested in doing that anyway, because market forces to the rescue doesnt really looked to me like we lose anything so to research, to that end, it would make no sense for China to do this unless be they mobilizing in plain sight to which all say governments do stupid things all the time, even though they shouldn't and as we can see with Russia, Ukraine right now, government

even Marshall, their forces in plain sight and de facto tell the world what you gonna do about it. So I'd feel better about. the arguments you just presented if I believe eve that there was a plausible path to say the United States deciding vehemently against deep vision and then pay sickly evangelizing that viewpoint to the right so the world successfully. Could that happen realistically journey any shot about? I think, actually, we are probably the hardest audience that one we be the hardest people to change their minds, ivy mean honestly, yes in arguable that, if China leader, yep decides. This kind of thing should happen. It's not gonna happen. There are true whereas in the U S, if we decide that this isn't going to happen in the government isn't going to fund it, then it's actually a lot harder for us to stop the private sector from doing it anyway. The global, from project hoped to raise a couple billion dollars from government

yes, but also a lot of it from philanthropists to do this kind of research in assemble that ranked order list of viruses by threat level for all natural viruses using private money- it's a lot harder for the United States to say you can't actually do that there are. some things we could do most, notably we could add most viruses with a hint of pandemic potential to select agent list which greatly increases the cost working with them by requiring background checks in ensuring that visit, samples or appropriate under lock and key and so forth. That could do a lot We still cannot actually stop them. I must weep actually decided to ban the particular class of experiments required to identify a virus has pandemic capable. That is, though, do you give your example can find the door? Can it find the key to the lock in order to get in Canada take over the inside once it's there, and can it actually

take over others using animal transmission models. If we were to say you know what a pandemic capable of This can kill as many people as a nuclear weapon. We spend somewhere between two and seventy billion dollars a year on nuclear, non proliferation? Why don't we take pandemic, proliferation. Similarly seriously internationally, there is a nuclear test Ban Treaty. Well, those four sets of experiments are the viewer, illogical equivalence of nuke your testing, you actually make it a national security matter when you treat it like an no security matter and proliferation risk, which is arguably greater than that of nuclear proliferation. Has again, there is no. Acknowledge nuclear powers, verses tens of thousands of people that could gain access to these kinds of agents once the genomes are online. So I think that If you can convince USA idea, which I think is eminently doable and if

can convince an age which I think is much more difficult, but still possible. Then we could absolutely take the case internationally. That this is in our shared strategic and just as the international community to prevent people from doing this. any subset less than one percent of all virology. That is the equivalent of nuclear weapons testing So tell me if this is a fair summary of that detailed response. It is definitely not in China's interest that this knowledge be discovered. They have a lot of people to protect. This targeted weapons and even though governments do stupid things all the time, there far less likely to do something stupid if it has been strenuously in persuasively argued to them. Hey guys this stupid, ok, here's another again like

I'm, not just being devils advocate. I think some of the arguments in favour of deep vision are pretty strong. Leave done a decent job of demolishing a couple of them already, but this is one that I think about a lot I believe, one of the greatest and most securing development science could possibly conjure in the response to cover. It would be so called PAN familial vaccines which just breathe, I could definition for those who are familiar with it. The notional hand corona respect scene would Amy eyes, the lucky recipient against substantially All corona viruses over which they are countless numbers- and there was talk about even, I believe, the beginning of an effort back in two thousand and three The wake of Sars to gin up a pan, corona vaccine effort, which was understood, would cost a lot of money and take many years,

but after Sars petered out and an even kill a thousand people, that focus was lost, not because with scientifically impossible. It might be, but not because of a scientifically possible because it became politically uninteresting, and it points me to think of how different the world would be right now had that PAN Corona virus vaccine and response The Sars been completed before merge came along several years later and other corona vice and obviously before Colvin came along now. Isn't it true that the kind of virus hunting division is proposing isn't gonna get a lot more examples of a lot more corona and other viruses, pandemics, viruses, etc. To inform the development efforts of PAN family we'll vaccines cause. I imagine to do one those things you need as many examples as possible, because we need to find the vulnerabilities that are conserved throughout the family. That's exactly right

if you want a broad spectrum vaccine, you need a decent sample of the viruses within that family. What you don't you you know is which ones of those could cause pandemics in humans? Because if you have a pan corona virus vaccine- and it works against a a fraction of the diversity of the stream diversity throughout the family. Then I believe that our work for all the pain you're not going to find everyone screw the various out there you're only ever gonna get a decent enough sample, so yeah you do need to of the genome sequences of a bunch of the corona viruses, but yet you need to know which ones are those viruses could cause pandemics. So here is where we how to draw a really important distinction between the virus, hunting part or just see wincing viruses in nature to get an idea of what's out there and the pandemic virus identification, is where you go back in the lab, and you run those four sets of characterisation experiments. It's the latter that creates the problem from a security perspective and you can do the former without doing the latter,

So if I was in charge of deep vision, I would say you know what we already agreed, that we will not continue to fund virus enhancement. Work can predict, did fund two hundred virology in not just finding a bunch of macaroni viruses, but they also funded research in which the one folks made came bearers of some of the more dangerous looking once the ones that one or another of the test, but not all of them and mix and match the peace. to see if they could make something that was more dangerous, so deep vision to them. Very great credit. Is that we're not going to find out anymore and that's a very important point. I'm glad you surface it on this, want to highlight it cause, there's a little bit of definitions, running around here, deep vision is already a step in the right direction. They ve already made one sensible step by saying we're not gonna do what many call gain a function and the step, is to say the virus discovery part. The virus hunting is important,

The pan family vaccine development, whether or not it's actually possible. It's worth a shot shattered, exactly the reasons you articulated, but also for PAN family antiviral development. So if I were in charge of division, I would say just like we said: no more gain a function. Well, we're still going to go out there and sequence, a bunch of viruses to help out the broad spectrum folks, but we're just not going to take him back to the lab and run those experiments to determine which ones are most likely to cause pandemics and worse Are we not going to ask them to a list of viruses recorded by threat level? Now, just said drill down a little bit more on that fantasy situation of Kevin Ass Felt division director you pointed out that the characterisation work is actually probably very, very high percentage of the budget. So if you're running division- and you got that- but What else would you do spend on the monitoring? Not on the prediction that simple and theirs? opportunity cost to budgets I'll just point out an obvious fact. If their spending twenty million

the twenty five and characterisation they ain't got that twenty depended on these other things, and I know that takes a little bit out of my semi devils Advocate role, but I'm actually done with it, because I've made pretty sure all of the arguments that have heard in favour of division, some of which, as I said on all that bad. So your responses to those arguments and also your assessment. The overall situation seems so intuitively obvious once one here is as arguments. So how is it that this programme is going forward with its stated directive of posting, what I'm gonna call weapons of mass destruction to the internet. Usa He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for recognising that one of the greatest threats to the poor comes from pandemic The problem came when they took the Annabelle seeming step of saying you know what we can talk

all these efforts more effectively. If we knew exactly which viruses were the most risky, don't think anyone should blame the folks at USC. Eighty four failed to notice this- because first about USA. Eighty leadership inherited division as a programme that new director Samantha Power was confirmed only three months before the announcement, which means that the programme was pretty much fully established in just needed a step and what's more, even the folks who were working at predict Dennis Carroll who watched the programme as far as I am no one ever mentioned that this could pose a security risk alone, proliferation risk greater than that, nuclear weapons during all of predict and afterwards including in folks super worried about pandemics and even do think about security issues. I mean you yourself when you heard

predict was cancelled. You thought that was a bad thing. Absolutely so, no one I think, pointed out. this was a security risk until after deep vision was announced- and that includes folks, do have security experience, which is not something that Anyone at USC idea is expected to have is trained to have in any way shape or form. These are people who have passed up Frankly, much more lucrative salaries in the private sector. In exchange for the operator to help some of the most vulnerable people in the world. The poorest of the poor the folks were really been left out of all the benefits that have accrued from all of the time. Policies that we have developed all the economic growth and they identified pandemics as one of the things that could most harm. Poor and vulnerable, and they were remember they did this before covert more than a decade before covert and they did their best to come up with a programme to prove

and they started out by doing really reasonable thing saying we need to know which communities are most at risk. We need to and what we can do in order to limit potential exposure that could lead to spill over events and costs. The Democrats. We to ensure that we have good medical care and diagnostics identify viruses, quickly, train them medical workers in vast response, give them support Isolation protocols of everything required to give a best chance of containing the epidemic, thereby protecting just that vulnerable community but vulnerable, coming these throughout the world, and they did again pre covert such similar tremendous credit. The bottom line is self evident. It is. These arguments certainly seem to me having heard them, they just were not self evident until people like you started, raising them that happen very recently. The fact that nobody, not just inside of predict but in society,

waited to this danger over the eleven. Your history they could predict, makes a pretty clear that these are not obvious or natural argument to rise in the mind of somebody who is not tasked with security or even people who are that's exactly right. You can't expect folks, who have devoted their lives, to serving the poor to recognise security risks that their work might be creating when folks, who do have that kind of security. Background also failed to recognize them now wrap this up and also to bring it home in a really important way? I'm just gonna point out to you centres. The reason we're having this conversation and were getting it out there as quickly as we can is because though division has been approved, it hasn't yet launched. Is there any evidence there that you're aware of Kevin that it is under way it's really hard to say there, sir, we ve been the press release of announcing what they are going to do that the programme existed, but there is an end,

They got their suggesting that funds have been dispersed, certainly not to begin. The radiation and remember the characterisation comes after the virus discovery part. So even if they begun the virus discovery that is mean they're, taking them back to the lab and running those four classes of experiments that are again the very logical equivalent of nuclear tests. So it's more or less beyond a shadow of a doubt that this train has not left the station that deep visions objectives might be shaped if people start thinking about them differently or perhaps, all of its budget could be directed toward Anti Malaria, that nets or or who knows, and as a statement of obvious fact, it's much easier to influence the shape and objective of a programme before it starts.

Then, after Ex doesn't or a hundred, people are working for it and our deep into their objective. So now feels like a really important time to get these arguments out into the world, which is obviously why were doing this. If anybody whose listen this is concerned, what might they do to try to end once folks to try to spread the word etc. While I oughta be irritating and say everyone should do something that would really bury someone who is not here. Directly involved in this with a mass, but I went, Just you know this social media being consistently identified as being were high candidates for that negative USA Ideas, a twitter account at USC idea. You can tweeted them and say this we could do a lot of good in some ways, but the security. risks inherent in pandemic virus identification seem pretty considerable. I think you should,

consider that and perhaps move all those funds into the other aspects of the programme that could really contain a pandemic before it starts united I totally agree that it is probably counter productive to bury any particular individual with messages on the subject, but in addition to tweeting, yes idea, which is a great idea, as I'm sure that account is monitored by the folks inside people, go to U S, HIV dot God. Slash contact hyphen us where you will find the following message: general inquiries and messages to USA Idee may be submitted using form below they all have a phone number and again we dont know this factually, but it stands to reason. That this is an email account or submission process that is monitored and you Safety is unlike the IRS, where they get literally tens of millions of consumer requests in a very short period of time each year. So I think that's another neck

listen and perhaps a more reliable unwrapped government is through elected representatives. If you reach out to a representative of whom your constituent they do have south to field all Those inbound messages- and I know this because I had quite a few friends in college, whose job it was during their summers in Washington to deal with these things. I'll give the specifics in the auto, but just for now. If you live in Maryland, Virginia Hawaii, Connecticut Massachusetts, Tennessee, Kentucky Texas was constant Florida, New Jersey or Idaho Falada states. You have a Senate representative on the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the State Department, and U s a I d management, so those would be good people to alert is well and then, of course, there's social media blogging. Whatever megaphone you happen to have, if you feel like spreading this word, there's lots of ways to do it, and please do so, and we thank you

Kevin is there anything we haven't had on that? You think is important that we should touch pages the precedent that this would say: U S! Ideas already done the right thing by stopping virus enhancement research if they recognize this is a problem and decide they're not gonna, do it, then that is one more step towards the Eu S as a whole. Moving away from identifying pandemic, capable viruses and sharing the blueprints online and thus being able to Credibly the international community towards something like a very logical test ban Treaty for Pandemic Non Proliferation, which would just be so powerful impact is it is to do what we can do not allow this work to happen, that's being currently contemplated. If it's the start of a series of dominoes that precludes an enormous amount of this work happening on a go forward basis, that's profoundly powerful and potentially profoundly. So please, listeners, dont despair is a lot of concern.

Information here, but this horse is not out of the barn at all and we may actually be in a extremely propitious historic moment. dramatically slow and perhaps even put a stop to the most threatening activity that we talked about today. And that's why both salmon. I think this is a particularly important conversation with what is perhaps extraordinarily significant timing. So thank you. Kevin Very much for joining it today will thank you for the invitation and for again highlighting this potential issue of inadvertent proliferation and what we really can do to stop it. An listeners please stick around for a brief moment of couple out your thoughts and more detail, on those twelve states and who your representative is. If you are moved to reach out to that person,

ok. So that's a letter process, but I hope you collected enough background information as well as a rich enough sense for both sides of the debate to make your own informed judgment about whether you share Kevin's concerns. If you do and would like to help the situation, I have a couple more sense since before the They senators first, U s ideas designated Washington State University to coordinate most of the scientific work. That division is funding. So if you have a ws, you tie, then your school or employer or on the matter is deep vision. Central and if you know it heavy hitters over there. You may want to share your perspective with them next after covenant, I wrapped up in it, to me that at least someone who's hearing lesson- maybe quite a few someone's

but we know some at the power, the head of USA, Idee herself or other heavy hitters inside the agency. If you are that someone and are deeply worried about this, then please pass on your feelings or just a link to this episode to Samantha or one of her senior

lieutenants. Finally, the members of the Senate, foreign relations subcommittee on State Department, and- U S HIV management, quite a mouthful if you're from one of the twelve states I mentioned here, are your representatives on that subcommittee. Maryland. It's been carton and he's the chair of the Committee Tennessee its bill Haggerty and he's the ranking member, which means he's the most senior member of the opposition party. Currently, the Republicans for Virginia TIM Kane Kentucky ran Paul for Hawaii Brian shots for Texas TED Crews for Connecticut Chris Murphy for Wisconsin RON Johnson, which does rhyme for Massachusetts at Marcie,

four Florida, Marco Rubio for New Jersey, Bob Menendez and for Idaho, Jim Rich and that's all I've got so. Thank you so much for listening to all of this with an open mind