Expert John Sotos of the California National Guard in Sacramento believes that the main threat to humanity is the widespread spread of biotechnology, which will lead to the death of civilization for at least a thousand years. A research preprint is available at arXiv.org.
The model proposed by Sotos also explains the Fermi paradox (unobservability of alien intelligence). According to the expert's conclusions, there is no extraterrestrial intelligence in the Milky Way because of the "great filter" - any intelligent beings outside the solar system most likely destroyed themselves.
Sotos came to such conclusions by modifying the Drake equation (which allows one to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way), introducing into it a factor responsible for the self-destruction of intelligent life through biotechnology.
According to Sotos, in contrast to the technology of creating nuclear weapons, over the past few years, more and more countries and people have gained access to manipulation using genetic engineering. The expert believes that this trend means an increase in the number of parties ready for the deliberate or accidental lethal use of biotechnology products.
As an example, Sotos reviewed the Cancer Moonshot 2020 preprints in the PubMed medical database. Under this program, launched in 2016, it is planned to test a prototype cancer vaccine on 20,000 volunteers by 2020. At PubMed, the expert counted more than 1.5 million authors who published research on the topic of Cancer Moonshot 2020, of which about 180 thousand people published at least five works.
Sotos is particularly concerned about the use of genetic methods in personalized medicine. The expert notes that what is stated in his publication "does not necessarily reflect the official position of the US Department of Defense."
