Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’
There is also the whole ‘why would we have to prove anything? We are fucking China!’ stance all big hegemonic countries have.
It’s not just big hegemonic countries in general but specifically the particularly image-obsessed character of geopolitics in East Asia. Mianzi is a real concern in Chinese diplomacy.