[eesmith]

There will be several Nobel Prizes in creating the technology to get this bioweapon.

You need something which reproduces itself even in non-targets, which enters the cell's nucleus, which detects the correct DNA - which may be scattered across the genome! -, which has a mechanism that kills the target people, and where none of this will mutate so as to stop effectiveness, change/broaden the target population, etc.

Furthermore, just because people identify as a group does not mean they have a distinct genetic pattern. How would you target "Christians" or "Americans" or "Hispanics"?

This appears to be a harder task than curing cancer, in that many of the same techniques could be used to target cancerous cells but that does not require the ability to spread from person to person.

A bioweapon doesn't appear in a vacuum. The required technological advances will be widely known. In this fantastical cancer-free world, why wouldn't your local health care center have the ability to sequence unexpected genomes and prepare a vaccine or phage in the same day?

[janalsncm]

> How would you target "Christians" or "Americans" or "Hispanics"?

You don’t need to have a 1:1 mapping in order to be effective. Incapacitating a sufficient number of a group is enough.

Similarly, such a bioweapon in an assassination context doesn’t need to only kill the target or go unnoticed. It’s enough that it is a disease or irritant that a particular individual is susceptible to.

[eesmith]

I think you're missing the point.

Assuming you have a communicable bioweapon which is somehow able to target based on genetics, and assuming the rest of the world isn't able to defend against it, that still leaves the very tricky question of finding a genetic basis which characterizes any of those three categories in a way which is sufficiently effective.

Do you really believe there is way to identify "Christians" based on genetics?

"Incapacitating a sufficient number of a group" is NOT enough. You also need specificity.

What genetic markers indicate "American"? Sure, if you target something simple like "has a Y chromosome" you might take out about 50% of the US population, which is likely a sufficient number, but you'll do equal damage to your own population.

How would a bioweapon meaningfully target "Hispanics"? The term is definitely not based in genetics. If some villagers from a German town emigrated to Argentina and others from the same village emigrated to Canada, then according to the US the descendants of the first group are just as Hispanic as Black Spanish-speaking Cubans, while the descendants of the second group are "white".

But, okay, you've figured something out. Now how do you prevent your bioweapon from mutating the specificity away? You've added a lot of machinery to the organism which must be preserved perfectly even though that machinery isn't required in order to reproduce.

The more failsafes you put in, the bulkier the organism and/or the fewer genetic markers you can target.

Clearly you should be promoting DEI as a way to increase group robustness against future bioweapons. ;)

[anonymouskimmer]

I'm really curious what, and how, these commenters think a genetic bioweapon would target. Cell-surface receptors seem the easy target, but as we've seen with COVID, and the more general swine and avian flus passing to humans, specificity changes. And cell surface receptors aren't that specific for any ethnicity, so expect a nuclear response from the survivors (both from your target and from the others states who had affected citizens).

If targeting proteins or regulatory regions of DNA, how? Are you going to try to CRISPR it? This may be effective in quiescent or senescent cells. But I think even quiescent cells have some DNA repair pathways. At best such targeting may speed up the aging process and cause some cancers.

Are you going to integrate a toxic gene at a specific chromosomal locus? Maybe that would work. You'd need a very efficient gene therapy approach to do it though.

[jacquesm]

You are thinking in entirely the wrong direction.

[anonymouskimmer]

I mentioned three different directions, it's not surprising I've missed one.

[jacquesm]

That's ok, I get it: I have the exact same thing when I'm too focused on a problem. And then a week later or so it's like a light bulb going off and I feel very silly for having missed the obvious. But let's not give people ideas here, this is pretty dangerous territory and I don't think HN should turn into a cookbook for miscreants.

[Filligree]

I don’t think you really need to solve those problems to cause trouble.

You just need to think you have.

[eesmith]

Just because you think you can create a bioweapon doesn't mean it causes trouble.

And as I wrote, this sort of bioweapon won't be possible until we've effectively cured cancer, and likely also developed methods which can easily identify and stop it.

[anonymouskimmer]

A secret skunkworks approach could facilitate genetic inventions that don't get passed into the general knowledge base. It would be difficult making discoveries that all of the other biologists working in society miss, but is remotely plausible.

[eesmith]

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all.

Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

[jacquesm]

> How would you target "Christians" or "Americans" or "Hispanics"?

You don't have to be able to target any group to be able to target some groups. Blacks, Jews and Uighurs might be sufficient. And those definitely have genetic markers.

[eesmith]

"Blacks" is a term with very little basis in genetics. What do you think the bioweapon will target?

"Jews" is less diverse, but it's not like there's a single "I am Jewish" marker. Just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews to see how difficult is it, with overlaps to other populations, and the need to correlate multiple haplogroups. How do you put all that detection machinery into a bioweapon?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs suggest there are similar issues with Uyghurs - what will the bioweapon target if "the average genetic ancestry of Uyghurs is 63.7% East Asian-related and 36.3% European-related"?

And how do you prevent the bioweapon from mutating that specificity away?

[jacquesm]

> ...

Yes, such a weapon will never be very precise. But since no weapon ever is (collateral damage) that doesn't mean it won't be used.

> And how do you prevent the bioweapon from mutating that specificity away?

You don't. But even that won't stop such a weapon from being used. Every weapon that man kind has been able to envision and create has been used. Not a single exception.

[eesmith]

You have presumed that this sort of DNA-targeting bioweapon could exist. We have lots of pie-in-the-sky weapon ideas that haven't been developed, like the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. Why are you so sure that this bioweapon isn't yet another one of those?

Setting that aside, the hydrogen bomb has not been used as a weapon, only a deterrent.

Same for the neutron bomb (an "enhanced radiation weapon").

And nuclear depth bombs ("All nuclear anti-submarine weapons were withdrawn from service by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States in or around 1990.[citation needed] They were replaced by conventional weapons such as the Mk 54 Torpedo that provided ever-increasing accuracy and range as anti-submarine warfare technology improved." says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_depth_bomb ).

"The United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories weaponized anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever and others.[51] ... In 1969, US President Richard Nixon decided to unilaterally terminate the offensive biological weapons program of the US, allowing only scientific research for defensive measures." says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare .

Have all those weaponized organism really been used as a weapon? Not to my knowledge.

These all sound like exceptions.