[portaouflop]

Creating a medicine such as the ones mentioned in the talk is FAR more simple than creating microchips - as a starter you don’t need a billion dollar worth clean room and equipment as they clearly demonstrate.

So yea human biology is as complex if not more complex I agree - creating medicine after a proven recipe is not.

[ryao]

You do not need “a billion dollar worth clean room and equipment” to make chips. You just need a garage and a bunch of old equipment. Even high school students can make microchips:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-high-school-student-whos-build...

As your “creating medicine after a proven recipe” remark, that is not how things work. The way it usually works is that you study organic chemistry in college and then you work out a recipe yourself based on the chemical formula. You do not follow a recipe from someone else because recipes are often trade secrets. At least, that is what I took away from studying organic chemistry in college. Well, that and a remark by the professor that those making illicit drugs take that course before getting started.

[scarecrowbob]

This is an interesting comment, because before you mentioned it I did not even consider DIY chip fab was a possibility.

In the context of access to cheap mass production, it would of course be silly to use the DIY product of that professionally.

In the context of "having zero access" to the technology, then the hand-produced products can be better than nothing, especially if the "no access" alternative is heinous or deadly in its own right.

It's kind of a micro-scale version of the larger discussion, perhaps?