Biotechnology risk

Biotechnology risk is a form of existential risk from biological sources, such as genetically engineered biological agents.^[1][2] The release of such high-consequence pathogens could be

• deliberate (in the form of bioterrorism or biological weapons)
• accidental, or
• a naturally occurring event.

A chapter on biotechnology and biosecurity was included in Nick Bostrom's 2008 anthology Global Catastrophic Risks, which covered risks including viral agents.^[3] Since then, new technologies like CRISPR and gene drives have been introduced.

While the ability to deliberately engineer pathogens has been constrained to high-end labs run by top researchers, the technology to achieve this is rapidly becoming cheaper and more widespread.^[4] For example, the diminishing cost of sequencing the human genome (from $10 million to $1,000), the accumulation of large datasets of genetic information, the discovery of gene drives, and the discovery of CRISPR.^[5] Biotechnology risk is therefore a credible explanation for the Fermi paradox.^[6]