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Comment by NetMageSCW

12 hours ago

There’s no chance a kit in a basement can produce a biological weapon that will be successful.

Oh? A lot of the old-style genetic coders got dumped on the market cheap. The sort of stuff a microbiologist could use to synthesize smallpox. The technique has been demonstrated, although on a harmless virus. The market has shifted to outsourcing to big companies (who carefully check every order against known dangers) that have much higher capital costs but much lower per-letter costs, but that didn't invalidate the old lab bench techniques.

> a biological weapon that will be successful

I think he meant one of these:

1) Biological agent, but not meant to be a weapon.

2) A biological weapon, but one that fails catastrophically.