The Future of Synthetic Biology

In 2011, researchers in Holland and Wisconsin were working with something called H5N1 flu. This is the kind of thing that not only could be done, but has been done. The whole flu genome is about 15,000 letters. And anybody who gets their hands on that tiny list of changes would have a trivially easy time re-informable. Synthetic biology will be the first one to deliver world-ending capability to individuals. It'll come before nanotechnology.