“A commercial lab such as VectorBuilder will turn a known sequence into live virus particles for a few thousand dollars.“
This is false or at best misleading. Vectorbuilder will take a short payload sequence and insert it into ONE OF A SET OF VIRUSES OF THEIR CHOOSING for a few thousand dollars. This is very different from turning an arbitrary sequence into an arbitrary virus, which is the scary thing.
What they do for a few thousand dollars is probably not part of the workflow of creating a pandemic pathogen. They probably would be willing to synthesize an arbitrary virus for you but they would want to know who you are and what you’re expressing, it would likely cost 6 figures or more.
I do not think there’s a way to succeed at “hey Vectorbuilder, ship me a pandemic pathogen” today.
This claim is repeated often enough, and is misleading enough, that I suspect a portion of those saying it do so intentionally. It certainly makes it sound like there’s a massive unpatched gap in biosecurity. Biosecurity is so, so far behind, and deserving of funding, but “anyone can buy a virus for a few thousand dollars” is the “datacenters use all the water” of biosecurity.
I’ve edited the sentence to make clear this applies to specific viruses and specific sequences; I didn’t intend it as a claim that VectorBuilder would send you arbitrary pandemic-capable viruses (it won’t). The point is only that physically producing many kinds of virions isn’t fundamentally hard, and the ones VectorBuilder offers aren’t particularly special in that respect; arbitrary viral reconstruction isn’t necessary for concern. In any case, as the paragraph notes, the R&D costs could be substantial, and a lone-wolf actor would also face substantial costs in avoiding law enforcement—a bit like how you can’t just buy a nuclear warhead for $2.5M.
“A commercial lab such as VectorBuilder will turn a known sequence into live virus particles for a few thousand dollars.“
This is false or at best misleading. Vectorbuilder will take a short payload sequence and insert it into ONE OF A SET OF VIRUSES OF THEIR CHOOSING for a few thousand dollars. This is very different from turning an arbitrary sequence into an arbitrary virus, which is the scary thing.
What they do for a few thousand dollars is probably not part of the workflow of creating a pandemic pathogen. They probably would be willing to synthesize an arbitrary virus for you but they would want to know who you are and what you’re expressing, it would likely cost 6 figures or more.
I do not think there’s a way to succeed at “hey Vectorbuilder, ship me a pandemic pathogen” today.
This claim is repeated often enough, and is misleading enough, that I suspect a portion of those saying it do so intentionally. It certainly makes it sound like there’s a massive unpatched gap in biosecurity. Biosecurity is so, so far behind, and deserving of funding, but “anyone can buy a virus for a few thousand dollars” is the “datacenters use all the water” of biosecurity.
I’ve edited the sentence to make clear this applies to specific viruses and specific sequences; I didn’t intend it as a claim that VectorBuilder would send you arbitrary pandemic-capable viruses (it won’t). The point is only that physically producing many kinds of virions isn’t fundamentally hard, and the ones VectorBuilder offers aren’t particularly special in that respect; arbitrary viral reconstruction isn’t necessary for concern. In any case, as the paragraph notes, the R&D costs could be substantial, and a lone-wolf actor would also face substantial costs in avoiding law enforcement—a bit like how you can’t just buy a nuclear warhead for $2.5M.