Are Manmade Viruses The Next Big Terrorist Threat?

There’s a dark side to the promise of synthetic biology, says a leading futurist who is sounding an alarm over its potential use to create weapons of mass destruction

- Jordan Harbinger

A DEVASTATING STRING OF MASS SHOOTINGS HAS Left the country reeling this year. But an even greater threat may be looming in the near future, one with the potential to cause far more widespread injury and loss of life: synthetically modified diseases designed to infect human beings on a global scale.

That’s the danger that best-selling author and futurist Rob Reid predicts could arise from the field of synthetic biology, which combines biology and engineering to create artificial biological systems, from genetically-modified crops to custom viruses.

Synthetic biologists have been modifying the DNA of pathogens with alarming speed and efficacy over the last decade, Reid notes, opening up a new frontier in virology, public health and global security.

“I’m a big SynBio fan,” says Reid, who believes in the promising applications of DNA modification, such as solutions for climate change and breakthroughs in life extension. “But there’s a dark side to it.”

In the wrong hands, he warns, this technology could create a weapon with the potential to inflict catastrophic damage on an unprecedented scale. And unlike recent acts of localized terror, such as the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and this summer’s shooting at a local Walmart in El Paso—events that killed or injured dozens or hundreds of victims at a time—a synthetic biological agent has the potential to travel around the world, putting billions of people at serious risk.

A PROLIFERATING THREAT

Reid’s prediction, laid out in a TED talk earlier this year, isn’t just the stuff of speculative sci-fi. Synthetic biology has already waded into impressive— and controversial—territory.