Very few people with knowledge of Chinese science believed their BSL-4 rating (bio-safety level) in Wuhan was legitimate. Even Russia has strong controls over high-threat biological pathogens and dangerous viruses similar to the U.S. but China is a communist dictatorship; they tell you what you had better believe, and in the case of the U.N. and career government employees inside the U.S. government, that seemed to have been good enough.
It may have only been BSL-4 when a party official was visiting - Chinese researchers had been convicted of selling laboratory animals to wet markets - but even at other times it was at least something. With AI, warn Richard Clarke and Robert Knake in the Wall Street Journal, there are no guardrails of any kind.
I disagree with that assertion that more government will help, I am baffled that anyone with government experience believes more will help, but they have no confidence in the private sector that built the modern world. They believe that without a profit motive for guardrails, they won't exist. Automobile seatbelts were not created due to government fiat, they were a competitive advantage. Government only mandated them after the benefit was clear and only mandated using them long after that.
In my case, as a young officer, I told people who got into the car that my insurance company, USAA, paid an extra $10,000 to their estate if they died with a seatbelt on. I didn't tell them to put a seatbelt on, I didn't lecture them about safety, I showed no downside to doing it and a big upside. They didn't need to be told by government what to do.
AI designed viruses that would be successful but do not exist. That does not mean government needs to kick in company doors like they are some kratom dealer.
It's never bad to be a little bit hysterical, the authors make their money promoting the worst case scenario no differently than any environmental group, and they are right to promote guardrails, but they can do it without suggesting the human beings at companies are doing whatever they are told to cash checks. That rhetoric unchallenged is how activists have managed to drag trust in scientists down near members of Congress in public trust.
