I think skill can be stolen via cyberhacking + espionage, assuming you are able to prevent them from just hiring ex employees and ex researchers. The meaningful question for me is how many months of lead time can anyone maintain before they get copied by other nuclear armed countries.
Unless you really find a better plan, my first guess is this is going to lead to an international arms race between multiple countries to develop the most intelligent and politically loyal embryos they possibly can, as fast as they possibly can. The race won’t stop until we hit massively diminishing returns on more investment into both R&D for new genes and raising more children with the genes we already know, and nobody knows how many SDs on which traits we get before this end state.
my first guess is this is going to lead to an international arms race between multiple countries to develop the most intelligent and politically loyal embryos they possibly can, as fast as they possibly can.
I wish there was some more grounded analysis of this sort of thing I could read somewhere. E.g., historical comparisons of other things that states have done with a similar motivation. Or e.g. cases where some technology gets used for good and for evil, and then is it net positive? I feel conversations about what states will do with germline engineering just hit a wall immediately because who knows what will happen.
I think extreme fear of / antipathy towards eugenics is good in part because it constitutes political will to not have states do this sort of thing—controlling people’s reproduction, influencing populations. Accordingly, I advocate for genomic emancipation, which is directly opposed to state eugenics.
I will let you know when I write an article of this type!
In general though, US policy making circles have a long history of applying just enough pressure on other countries so that the frontier of R&D of every emerging field remains in the US. It’s not a coincidence that frontier of quantum computing and genomics and fusion energy and AI and a hundred other technologies all lie in the US.
Sometimes this does lead to war, US military leaders have afaik started wars over who has nuclear weapons, who has chemical weapons and who has oil. But often there’s more subtle levers that can be pulled such as export controls and backchannel collusion with the leading CEOs of that industry.
I don’t at the moment have a list of examples that doesn’t involve the US, but I know they exist and I agree this is worth writing more on.
From my lay perspective w.r.t. international politics, this seems like it would plausibly be good, to be clear. My frontpage says:
Germline engineering will require an international scientific, technological, and social effort, which we encourage and aim to help with. With that said, as the world’s liberal democratic superpower, the United States of America should lead the way on human germline genetic engineering, including enhancement. If America supports this technology while regulating its unsafe and unethical uses, we can show the world how to develop and apply it beneficially.
The US, or at least what the US is supposed to be and isn’t impossibly far from, is a place where you could have strong boundaries preventing the government from restricting genomic liberty, while also supporting the development of the tech.
@TsviBT I don’t know if you were the one who downvoted my comment, but yeah I don’t think you’ve engaged with the strongest version (steelman?) of my critique. Laws (including laws promoting genomic liberty) don’t carry the same weight during a cold war as they do during peacetime. Incentives shape culture, culture shapes laws.
And the incentives change significantly when a technology upsets the fundamental balance of power between the world’s superpowers.
Or maybe you’re arguing “don’t develop any technology” or “don’t develop any powerful technology” because “governments might misuse it”. That’s something you could reasonably argue, but I think you should just argue that in general if that’s what you’re saying, so the case is clearer.
I didn’t downvote any of your comments, and I don’t see any upthread comments with any downvotes!
Anyway, you could steelman your case if you like. It might help if you compared to other technologies, like “We should develop powerful thing X but not superficially similar powerful thing Y because X is much worse given that there are governments”, or something.
I’m not universally arguing against all technology. I’m not even saying that an arms race means this tech is not worth pursuing, just be aware you might be starting an arms race.
Intelligence-enhancing technologies (like superintelligent AI, connectome-mapping for whole brain emulation, human genetic engineering for IQ) are worth studying in a separate bracket IMO because a very small differential in intelligence leads to a very large differential in power (offensive and defensive, scientific and business and political, basically every kind of power).
Yes it’s possible we end up in a world where the US govt is basically competing with its own shadow yet again. US startup builds some tech, it gets copied 6 months later by non-US startup, US startup feels pressure to move faster as a result and deploys next tech, the next tech too gets copied, etc etc.
I’m not saying this will definitely happen, but there’s a bunch of incentives pushing in this direction.
I think skill can be stolen via cyberhacking + espionage, assuming you are able to prevent them from just hiring ex employees and ex researchers. The meaningful question for me is how many months of lead time can anyone maintain before they get copied by other nuclear armed countries.
Unless you really find a better plan, my first guess is this is going to lead to an international arms race between multiple countries to develop the most intelligent and politically loyal embryos they possibly can, as fast as they possibly can. The race won’t stop until we hit massively diminishing returns on more investment into both R&D for new genes and raising more children with the genes we already know, and nobody knows how many SDs on which traits we get before this end state.
I wish there was some more grounded analysis of this sort of thing I could read somewhere. E.g., historical comparisons of other things that states have done with a similar motivation. Or e.g. cases where some technology gets used for good and for evil, and then is it net positive? I feel conversations about what states will do with germline engineering just hit a wall immediately because who knows what will happen.
I think extreme fear of / antipathy towards eugenics is good in part because it constitutes political will to not have states do this sort of thing—controlling people’s reproduction, influencing populations. Accordingly, I advocate for genomic emancipation, which is directly opposed to state eugenics.
I will let you know when I write an article of this type!
In general though, US policy making circles have a long history of applying just enough pressure on other countries so that the frontier of R&D of every emerging field remains in the US. It’s not a coincidence that frontier of quantum computing and genomics and fusion energy and AI and a hundred other technologies all lie in the US.
Sometimes this does lead to war, US military leaders have afaik started wars over who has nuclear weapons, who has chemical weapons and who has oil. But often there’s more subtle levers that can be pulled such as export controls and backchannel collusion with the leading CEOs of that industry.
I don’t at the moment have a list of examples that doesn’t involve the US, but I know they exist and I agree this is worth writing more on.
From my lay perspective w.r.t. international politics, this seems like it would plausibly be good, to be clear. My frontpage says:
The US, or at least what the US is supposed to be and isn’t impossibly far from, is a place where you could have strong boundaries preventing the government from restricting genomic liberty, while also supporting the development of the tech.
@TsviBT I don’t know if you were the one who downvoted my comment, but yeah I don’t think you’ve engaged with the strongest version (steelman?) of my critique. Laws (including laws promoting genomic liberty) don’t carry the same weight during a cold war as they do during peacetime. Incentives shape culture, culture shapes laws.
And the incentives change significantly when a technology upsets the fundamental balance of power between the world’s superpowers.
Or maybe you’re arguing “don’t develop any technology” or “don’t develop any powerful technology” because “governments might misuse it”. That’s something you could reasonably argue, but I think you should just argue that in general if that’s what you’re saying, so the case is clearer.
I didn’t downvote any of your comments, and I don’t see any upthread comments with any downvotes!
Anyway, you could steelman your case if you like. It might help if you compared to other technologies, like “We should develop powerful thing X but not superficially similar powerful thing Y because X is much worse given that there are governments”, or something.
Okay!
I’m not universally arguing against all technology. I’m not even saying that an arms race means this tech is not worth pursuing, just be aware you might be starting an arms race.
Intelligence-enhancing technologies (like superintelligent AI, connectome-mapping for whole brain emulation, human genetic engineering for IQ) are worth studying in a separate bracket IMO because a very small differential in intelligence leads to a very large differential in power (offensive and defensive, scientific and business and political, basically every kind of power).
Yes it’s possible we end up in a world where the US govt is basically competing with its own shadow yet again. US startup builds some tech, it gets copied 6 months later by non-US startup, US startup feels pressure to move faster as a result and deploys next tech, the next tech too gets copied, etc etc.
I’m not saying this will definitely happen, but there’s a bunch of incentives pushing in this direction.