if you look at kind of the three biggest criminalenterprises in the world right now it’s arms dealing, drugs and exotic animals – theexotic animal trade. those are the three biggest illegal trades right now. we can use3d printing to print guns already, right. that’s already possible. there are peopleworking on a 3d printer for drugs, right. the idea is prescription pharmaceuticals youcould print them in 3d. it’s a chemistry
can 3d printers print guns, set 3d printer. the off label use of thisstuff is obviously going to be the manufacturer of drugs, right. synthetic biology lets uscreate brand new organisms from scratch so do you want your exotic parrot or do you wantsomething that’s brand new? so what’s interesting about this – andsome of this stuff is a little farther out
but over the next 20-25 years it means thatthe three largest criminal enterprises in the world are going to be available to anyone,right. with 3d printers, with a dna typewriter which his sort of an at home synthetic biologyinterface so anybody can program dna. it means that we’re going to all the illegal drugtrades we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath them and nobody has any idea whathappens next, right. that’s never happened before. we’ve always had organized crimebecause there’s always been stuff that we couldn’t get that we wanted. well prettysoon we’re going to be able to get whatever we want. this is kind of the weird side ofthe abundance idea, right. when you live in world of abundance when we can use 3d printersand synthetic biology and when anybody can
do it it means that a lot of the illegal trades,right, the bottom’s just fallen out. and what happens then we have no idea. synthetic biology is progressing so quickly,right. all kinds of new weapons are now possible, right. one of the things i look at in tomorrowlandis the question of could you design a bioweapon, a synthetic bioweapon that targets the president’sdna alone. it’s very, very difficult to protect dna, right. it lasts a very, very,very long time. it’s a long lived molecule and it’s everywhere, right. every time youshake somebody’s hand, the president hands somebody a pen they’re getting dna samplesalong the way. the government is already taking steps to protect the presidential dna, right.if the president goes into public and he drinks
a beer out of a mug there is somebody thereto grab that glass afterwards. hillary clinton -- and this was released insome of the nsa stuff that snowden released -- told foreign diplomats that they shouldsecretly collect dna from foreign dignitaries. so the united states is already on the offensewhen it comes to genetics. i’d be very, very surprised if other countries weren’tdoing the same back at us. and it’s going to become more and more of an issue. so, youknow, right now we have to worry about all kinds of assassinations by bullets and bybombs and along those lines. with what’s coming... i can make a disease. i can makea disease that i spray into the air, you pass through it, nobody else gets sick and youget a slow neurodegenerative disease say that
unfolds over a couple of years. nobody evenknows you’ve been attacked, right. they think you’ve just gotten sick. so we’relooking at a whole new kind of assassination
and to think that, you know, terrorists aren’tgoing to be interested in this technology is ridiculous. every time there’s a newtechnology criminals immediately take advantage of it. and this is the next technology sowe’re going to start seeing criminals get involved in it.
