For a given value of off-the-shelf, I think that’s doable now. Not x-risk destructive, but millions dead. I haven’t looked too closely at it in the hopes of staying off watch-lists. The materials necessary are much easier to obtain than those necessary for other sorts of weapon, so I’m guessing our only defense right now is the high level of education required to do it. Regulating this will be like trying to keep people from using 3D-printers to make weapons: your only real option is to forbid all the printers. And you couldn’t just forbid “synthetic biology”. You would basically have to take all molecular biology off the table to prevent people from being able to build diseases.
For a given value of off-the-shelf, I think that’s doable now. Not x-risk destructive, but millions dead. I haven’t looked too closely at it in the hopes of staying off watch-lists. The materials necessary are much easier to obtain than those necessary for other sorts of weapon, so I’m guessing our only defense right now is the high level of education required to do it. Regulating this will be like trying to keep people from using 3D-printers to make weapons: your only real option is to forbid all the printers. And you couldn’t just forbid “synthetic biology”. You would basically have to take all molecular biology off the table to prevent people from being able to build diseases.