Yong-Bee Lim

Sad I could only watch the @nationalacademies.org ”BWC at 50” event overseas online, but it was worth every bit of data on my phone!

The conversation was rich, and an extra shout-out to @scientistsorg.bsky.social CEO Daniel Correa for his leadership and ambition in his remarks and responses.

This man (Sahil V. Shah) is a BOSS, and we are so lucky to have him reimagining nuclear risk reduction in an era of strategic instability.

Read his most recent report with other incredible experts such as Nikolai Sokov, David Santoro, and Miles Pomper.

vcdnp.org/wp-content/u...

There is a strength to the assumption as it galvanizes activities (especially when used by State actors concerning non-state activities).

However, I assert there is value in looking at the upstream actions that may drive people towards unconventional weapons like BW.

This gets into the classic BW questions (that are also basic to journalism - who, what where, when, why, and how, right? This is an area we have still not answered very well.

And I know for some, foundational having an assumption of "bad actors" is a great way to avoid this question.

So I want to make sure, as we forecast future possible scenarios of the catastrophic type, we ground them in the reality that we live in.

Many policy discussions often tend to gloss over the difficulties and complexities of biology. Manipulated cells want to revert to their original state. Replication in the life sciences is terrible. And we still do not have the granularity we need on many biological systems.

I love the flexibility of thinking you are showing here - to try and account for multiple scenarios. The thing I would also insert here is the gap that exists between the potential realities of worst-case scenarios (the tech is very advanced, etc.) with the very real limits of biology currently.

Agree, and we should be leveraging the very tools that disrupt to address risk. For me, the question is about prioritization and interests - my hope is that as we all see some of the complex things emerging at the tech/government/society nexus, that risk mitigation is not synonymous with no risk.

One caveat - assessments are foundational towards setting priorities and affect things like office, bureau, and agency budget lines. But I would also say that this is the reason why these conversations are also important to have - we owe it to our disciplines and society to do our due diligence.

I really appreciate this take - we do deal in the "low-probability, high-consequence" space.

On probability, I know assessments and other ways to quantify some of these aspects. I assert that assessments should be starting points for further conversation, rather than endpoints in and of themselves.

Other random musings. Technical solutions are a great part of the toolbox for addressing deliberate bio risks.

That said, intent is also exceptionally important - if you don't have a motive to do something, why would you do it! How do we right-size the status quo to better reflect this dynamic?

I'm a bio-WMD-emerging tech security guy. What bothers me is the narrative of emerging tech as inherently disruptive.

Why do we treat these technologies as exogenous shocks that society must absorb and adapt to, as opposed to endogenous growth that society can discuss, consider, and curate?

A general thing I notice is that if people keep insisting on doing something despite very good reasons not to...that says a lot more about the people doing it than the people trying to rein in the behavior.

Get in the car, nerds! We’re going to find some nukes!