The proliferation of gene editing tools and bad actors make engineered pandemics likely

When it comes to existential risk from pandemic threat, risk research has tended to attribute the bulk of the threat to engineered or lab-leaked pandemics. The threat from these materials has increased dramatically over the last half-century, with significant advances in biotechnology and particularly with the accessibility and sophistication of DNA sequencing tools.6 With this technological improvement we have seen a democratisation of biotechnology, but as noted by Ord, ‘democratisation also means proliferation’ (pg. 134) and consequently an increase in the probability of a malicious actor having access to the skills and technology necessary to craft deadly biological agents. This use of biotechnology to construct deadly pandemics is not new: Ord notes 15 countries who have employed biotechnology for these ends during the 20th century which saw the attempted weaponisation of diseases such as smallpox, anthrax and tularemia, and Leigh (2021) lists several examples of malicious, non-state actors who have employed bioweaponry to cause death and destruction.

The main concern about the possibility of an existential threat from pandemics comes from a combination of two facts I have presented here: we have observed very severe pandemics in the past which have killed a lot of people, and the proliferation and improvement of gene editing tools mean that bioweaponry will become more accessible for malicious actors and more deadly in their hands. In light of these two facts, it seems likely that actors with malicious intent and some knowledge of biological structures and human anatomy could eventually deliver a pandemic significantly worse than those which nature has stumbled upon so far.