Transcripts For ALJAZ Invisible Threat 20240714

Investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry the president must be held accountable no one is above the law french president emanuel has again met iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the Un General Assembly urging him to meet donald trump. You believe. We dont know we think this president i guess you sort of. Got me hes got to put me and relations between the u. S. And iran became even more tense following attacks on 2 major Oil Facilities in saudi arabia this month washington says iran was behind the attack tehran denies the claim meanwhile pakistani Prime Minister imran khan says he was also by donald trump to help diffuse tensions with iran comment rouhani a bit did not elaborate on what was discussed he did say efforts to mediate were pursued. Because of this book to president rouhani yesterday after after the meeting with president trump. But i dont see anything you write no more than this except that we are trying and mediating an earthquake has hit eastern pakistan killing at least 22 people and injuring hundreds more the 5. 8 magnitude quakes epicenter was close to the city of mayor poor in pakistan administered kashmir dozens of homes and cars were damaged when roads collapsed in many areas come on haida has moved from islamabad. Large parts of bloggers gone fairly strong quake which was centered near the 2nd largest city in fog your sunny administered fish me food. Week was said to be. Very deep and because this was the shadow and strong earthquake. Damage in the area close to the bridge there and were getting reports over a number of reported major damage to infrastructure and i did read some of the bridges have been damaged and one of the major. Had to shut down or supply a precautionary measure but do your daughter do. You in a day if it is nighttime ahead in 5 years don. You have. The floor down and really. Very direct granderson mission over the area are you doing military helicopters to expose the damage on the ground will a clearer picture like need to emerge after daybreak. Stronger. And it didnt occur to you over the whole region or the program one job i mean even in parts of. The rebels say a Saudi Led Coalition air strike in the countrys south has killed at least 17 people including women and children the strikes had 2 residential buildings and. An al dalia province the Saudi Led Coalition which backs the un recognized government in yemen has neither confirmed nor denied to the attack the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for yemen said the timing of the attack during the u. N. General assembly is profoundly disturbing well the u. K. s Prime Minister Boris Johnson is vowing that breaks it will go ahead on the 1st of october despite the Supreme Courts ruling he acted unlawfully when he suspended parliament this month. Well those are the headlines and you join me for more news here on aljazeera manmade invisible threat stay with us. Its bad enough to catch a disease naturally but to take a disease and turn it into a weapon to enhance the disease to make it more virulent or more contagious or resistant to known vaccines thats particularly again just kind of goes off the charts there its turning Mother Nature against us. Weapons that destroyed by spreading deadly diseases have a long in unhappy history billions of dollars have been spent by governments to create pathogens that can cause fatal illnesses even today some countries are stockpiling just such a deadly arsenal in a widely reported News Conference syria has admitted as much. A perhaps more dangerous than the age of rapidly advanced technology its quite possible for individuals or groups to create biological mayhem. 12 countries that are battling an outbreak of a nasty strain of e. Coli life here the strain civil the consequences are just really long to just not a libya harm see a medina alson intrigues you all to tune in for the clearly not Mission Critical 16 people have already died identified the source of this because like contamination has become ever more urgent some have even suggested that the super super resistant strain every call i could have been engineered in a lab. The World Health Organization calls the deliberate contamination of our food one of the major biological threats of the 21st century. In the modern globalized d economy where food gets transported all over the world there are a lot of opportunities for somebody to contaminate food with with biological engines. And i dont want to go into much detail but there was a an article that was published in the proceedings of the National Academy of sciences about. Some touching Dairy Products milk using branch line talks and you can cause horrible damage with death many thousands of coffee. Cold jackson is a Senior Scientist at one of the United States most important biological laboratories. That is kind of frightening when you think over the last 2 different passes will somebody thats so like there are a Large Population or a small part of the population what goes with food there are cases in the are not so this will pass for people about that. Oregon authorities announced that the most serioUs Biological attack in u. S. History was carried out not by Foreign Terrorists but by the followers of a homegrown religious cult. Salad bars and 10 oclock restaurants were deliberately contaminated with salmonella. 751 people were poisoned and 45 hospitalized at disciples of korea right knew she sought to incapacitate voters and see their own candidates win the 1984 wasco county election. The sun the incident occurred in the United States the biological attacks could happen anywhere in the world and so father has not been a coordinated global plan about how to deal with this. I know. 6 the word terrorism evokes images of airplanes smashing into Office Towers of bombs blowing up in markets these remain real threats so do attacks by chemicals mustard gas defoliants on nerve agents. But there is something even more insidioUs Biological weapon. Thats the whole point of terrorism is this to put enormous psychological pressure on the audience to try to reach if were talking about biological agents i mean unseen in many cases that you can smell them for that very reason those kinds of weapons have a much more powerful psychological impact on target audiences. Even going 5 people with a bio as you would would be more scary than killing 200. 00 people with a conventional explosive device there been no confirmed. This is a bad press in britain but its been a day of false alarms the sorting office in liverpool was closed down and workers were forced to leave the Stock Exchange in london for a short time today Police Say People should stay calm but vigilant the latest victims in florida the scene of the 1st outbreak of anthrax 5 new cases reported by the American Media company overnight on the basis of blood tests carried out on every employee the fact that this seems to be spreading 10 days after the 1st victim died confirmation of americas worst fears never mind the source then the point is the kind of on capitol hill today you could hear loud and clear threats from biological and chemical agents are real. Following the 911. 00 attack and the 2001 anthrax murders the United States government poured billions of dollars into Homeland Security experts from around the world where tractor to well funded Scientific Laboratory is and think tanks high on the list of threats to be investigated was the use of deadly pathogens as weapons a long and ugly stain on the history of mankind oh my gosh tickle warfare 1st reared its head when man started fighting man you know whether it was putting scorpions in a clay pot and tossing him at your enemy or taking bodies people who had died from the plague and tossing them over city walls and Medieval Times poisoning Water Supplies these are all ancient techniques in biological warfare but it was only during the major wars of the last century where science started just to conduct this time. The real danger of the real threat was the beginning of the 20th century youre moving into bombs airplanes and the. Really is of microbiology. Doing the sino japanese war the japanese government engaged in a massive biological Weapons Program between 19401943 japan dropped hundreds of bombs infected with deadly germs on the levantine city. As many as 200000 chinese citizens harish. They did initially the attacks on northern cities with plague and people did die and then later in the early part of the 1940 s. There were more aggressive attacks where they used anthrax planters cholera and other diseases. Martin for months is a United States pathologist with an interest in medical history in 1998 a colleague sent him a package containing autopsies performed on chinese victims years before i opened it up and they were page after page of these people murdered by biological weapons. It was the 1st time and one of the few times when i looking at it. I could feel powerful evil and there were. Docked with them and discovered that some of the victims of japanese bombing had survived in 2000 to travel to their villages theyre called rot making villages for the simple reason that people who were there in the summer of 1942 got rotten eggs when you interview these people you. Of a very similar story a lot of people started getting boils on their bodies throbbing thing it burst minute it loses pus and blood and continues to be horribly painful and essentially never heal eventually talk to them and ski concluded that the villages was suffering from glendas a disease that attacks horses and which for decades had been all but eliminated. The japanese had dropped bombs laden with this pathogen they spread colorado they spread typhoid fever is produced in theory they spread glanders they spread anthrax and they spread plague. Especially doing a biological scorched earth. Perhaps even more horrific than the dropping of germ bombs where the experiments carried out by unit 731. In manchuria. Japanese sent out their secret police and rounded up troublemakers and they would end up at unit 731. 00 as human guinea pigs and they would inoculate them with diseases to see how long they would die and they would tie them to stakes and drop bombs out of airplanes to see how well the bombs spread the disease. Theres always an aspect when youre dealing with biological weapons or chemical weapons some extent of extermination the way you would exterminate germany. After the end of the war japanese scientists who worked at unit 731 were granted amnesty by the United States in exchange for information on the biological Weapons Program the japanese who did bad science and killed thousands of people doing it got off scot free and they ended up going back to the universities and became chairman of departments and became captains of industry and and. On happy lives. Successive japanese governments have been extremely reluctant to take responsibility for atrocities committed during world war 2. All the major powers have dabbled in the germ warfare but british scientists peregrym work here in this Research Establishment they stored a male 50 kilograms of bacteriological agent enough to kill every living thing on. The british experimented with typhoid dysentery and cholera testing these pathogens on animals. If youre using live agent tests and this was done out in the ocean in many cases what you would do is tie animals on cages on deck and disperse the agent and see how well it would affect the animals and this was also done for example by the United Kingdom with sheep being tested with anthrax on grand isle and. World war 2 did not bring an end to biological weapons the cold war heated up providing another excuse to produce this deadly arsenal. Britain france and canada for example embarked on a program that experimenting with many kinds of diseases. That awful there would be enough to. Be a little dose of that was to kill Something Like 50000 people this bottle on the other hand contains a biological agent simulate if that were friends a set of cigarettes which causes the disease to remain there could be enough in that vault to infect every man woman and child in the world. But it was the u. S. Biological Weapons Program that was the most dangerous it was by far the largest and most ambitious 8 aggressor military leaders know a disadvantage chemical and biological agents cannot afford an early be detected by the human sensory or your punishment or anything. To. The effect can be deadly to part of the state guard the experimenters dangerous organisms are confined to safety cabinet. Using rubber gloves which are sealed to the cabinets scientists can handle deadly cultures and still be safe from infection. With the cold war the United States begins a biological Weapons Program which is twinned with the Nuclear Program i thought unicity of any potential danger is another important criteria. Of course youre familiar with the pathogenicity of the 2 linus talks of a suspension of which is were being tested by intraperitoneal injection of mike. Many kinds of animals were used in us experiments mice rats rabbits guinea pigs and most especially monkeys a restraining boxes used to hold the monkey in position to receive the measured aerosol dont. Be on a horse and passed through a series of air locks and positioned in a sealed exposure chamber immense are using monkeys with all the monkeys you want but you still dont know at the end of the day whether to make humans sick how much will make a human sick how long the person will stay sick and so you need to have human subjects in order to proof test whether. We went through all kinds of room. Lights we change our clothes in the scrub then weve got on the elevator and went up to a catwalk in each port hole they had a black a telephone booth and thats where you went in to then theyd close the door and thats when we were hooked up to. You can smell it taste it. If you 2nd so poor. Ken jones was inhaling q. Fever a bacterial infection which can result in hepatitis and pneumonia. He is a religious pacifist one of a 2000 Conscientious Objectors who volunteered for operation white coat. You want to end 43. 00 where some 600. 00 military and civilian scientists Work Together in research at the Army Biological Laboratories to protect this country against a biological attack that is a silent assault by an invisible cloud that carries disease organism. There was testing on humans often done in a facility at fort dietrich known as the 8 ball which was in l. A. Sion chamber where they could disperse aerosols and see you know how much it takes to infect a human but they were given immediate medical treatment in to the best of my knowledge there were no fatalities. By code volunteers claim that the Us Government as she was then that all testing would be for defensive purposes only is making a vaccine to protect you. And make it a hazmat suit to protect a gas mask to protect you. Lot of hospital procedure coming from this operation. What was happening at fort dietrich was not only a defensive program but also an offensive program so. It was research that could be used for either purpose. Here was here controversy about the White Coat Program there was a lot of heat about the biological Weapons Program there were ethical worries that is it do we really want to start a disease that might sweep the country. We just got rid of. Any. Biological weapons that. President nixon had decided that given the success of hiroshima and nagasaki in ending world war 2 Nuclear Weapons with a supreme deterrent the Us Biological alsono was deemed unnecessary in 969 the United States halted offensive biological research and eventually destroyed all stockpiles the idea was that the nation state the us as a nation state didnt need it it had the clear weapons with which we could destroy large numbers of people quite nicely thank you. And that you know that possessing these things would just encourage other people to go the white hole april 10th 972 a place from the time of real significance for the future of the world and the people in it in 1972103 nations including the United States and the soviet union approved a Convention Prohibiting the production of biological weapons. The treaty to which these nations have committed. Bind them to stop making biological weapons and to destroy all existing stocks of those most of gusting means of math that the good thing about the biological Weapons Convention is a stablish the norm yet established and or against. Other people would do what other states would do and at least not that all. But critics felt the convention was all but useless it had no team it still has no inspection provisions in large part because even before any country put in on paper signing that treaty there was the prevailing concept that it was impossible it was unverifiable the Serviette Union actually used the convention to embark on the largest and most destructive biological Weapons Program in the history of the world and soviet signing. The biological Weapons Convention while at the same time embarking on a huge ramp up of their biological Weapons Program. There are no words to describe just how heinous that type of a government policy is. To syria q new always believed that there was not rules behind these conventions and they believed the divas to. Use the convention. And to develop biological weapons secretly in spite of the commish. If they believed exactly the same. So the 2 could track each of the convention for 22. 00 summers. In a senior soviet scientist and an army colonel worked at version and in the hours see it was here year after year that the soviet union tested weapons loaded with the most deadly diseases imaginable. Is full of the resilience of. The true we should be risky yes were really were here to. Police a resolution to the war to there is still a war. There were serious be real to the case that year was global with a 1000000000. Dollars restorable to google is what well get with this. Sport is the rest of us a burly sport is it really is a war should you be in. A Russian Chemical Weapons Center a chick county on the river its suspected that chemical and biological weapons are still being developed at sites like this so western satellites have been watching for years. The soviet biological Weapons Program was roughly the same size as the nuclear Weapons Program and it was ultra secret very deeper than. So were talking about roughly 50 facilities and upwards of 50000 scientists technicians thats a lot of technical talent put to. The development of these types of weapons begins to plans against animals against people. And i think many of us were very surprised at the enormity of the soviet enterprise because i think until the end of the cold war we really didnt understand how big it was they said this is officer wound purposes were going to make vaccines organisms for Pesticide Use and so on and thats where theres what they call the legend system that is the real purpose and they become by far the biggest biological Warfare Program that the world has ever seen and probably the most sophisticated. Being located outside that western centric sphere of influence were able to bring a different perspective to global events when you peel away the lists of cove the military and the financial darkening you see the people in those words and those policies are affecting see the emotion on their faces the situation theyre living in thats fine all of us can identify with the story. An ethiopian woman determined to tell the world a new story about a country our Human Resource our humanity is the most beautiful thing weve got and i wish we can just realize that i am just the footbaths despite the challenges she became c. E. O. Of tourism and head of ethiopias Land Development project my ethiopia and ill just 0. 00000. 000. 00 some of it i like. Matthew has an old American Store come. And. Head to head on a jersey of. How i missed. What the headlines on aljazeera u. S. Democrats are opening a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump over claims he sought political help from ukraine House Speaker nancy pelosi made the announcement after trying think knowledge to discuss joe biden with his ukrainian counterpart. The actions of the Trump Presidency reviewed dishonorable fact of the president s betrayal of his it was that was his betrayal of our National Security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections therefore today im announcing the house of representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry and directing our 6 committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry the president must be held accountable no one is above the law french president emanuel macron has again met rainy and president Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the Un General Assembly urging him to meet donald trump if you believe. We dont know we think this president or your question of. The government is about to. Relations between the u. S. And iran became even more tense following attacks on 2 major Oil Facilities in saudi arabia this month washington says iran was behind the attack tehran denies the claim yemens freaky rebels say a Saudi Led Coalition air strike in the countrys south has killed at least 17 people including women and children the strikes hit 2 residential buildings and an ambulance an elderly a province the Saudi Led Coalition which backs the u. N. Recognized government in yemen has neither confirmed nor denied the attack the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for yemen said the timing of the attack during the u. N. General assembly was profoundly disturbing the u. K. s Prime Minister bars johnson is vowing that breaks it will go ahead on the 31st of october despite the Supreme Court ruling that he acted unlawfully when he suspended parliament this month. And the sky above parts of the indonesian island of sumatra has turned to blood red this week because of air pollution from thousands of forest fires the mars like red is caused by sunlight scattering through the toxic haze blanketing the country firefighters have spent months battling the blazes well those are the headlines now its back to man made invisible threat stay with us on aljazeera. Sagna ben. Is a professor at George Mason University and an expert on biological weapons she was born in tunisia and studied in france they had several people from teaching. To the western countries by antibiotics that were available at the time and these were used sent back to the former soviet union and used to develop pathogens that would be resistance resistant to those antibiotics some of the diseases which the soviet scientists experimented with have long threatened mankind lithuanian born Raymond Zilinskas is a former microbiologist and a director at the Monterey Institute of International Studies nobody thought that anybody with so irresponsible as to be working with smallpox. So there was another contagious from it spreads from person to person and its very deadly in nature across about 30 percent. But with a weapon as its probably Even Stronger maybe 50 percent or even higher for so there was horrible and then the circa one i was really awful was a place where the marburg virus against which there is no vaccine no treatment its about 80 percent solid and well. Ironically it was soviet citizens themselves residents of the Industrial City of faired lost who discovered how deadly their nations bio weapons were in 1979 anthrax was accidentally released into the air and winds blowing southward towards the city carried the pathogens 60 people died. 16 years sergey pup of worked as a scientist in soviet lib oratory is creating some of the most destructive weapons ever conceived by mankind after the collapse of the soviet union he immigrated to the United States. There was no way around it because the system to engage people and did not let them go. There would be the record the k. G. B. Record. Wherever you go. The idea was to set up an Automated Research facility to synthesize different viruses so it was a clear attempt. To take advantage of new approaches. And genetic Engineering Design new varieties of information so. When these agents are used people who get infected develop the symptoms of one disease and when the physicians try to treat to start treating a person for that disease the treatment triggers the other agents which eventually kills. The person as horrific as this program was unlike in the United States the soviet scientists did not test the disease on human beings but they did use animals extensively. The typical experiment in that when the guinea pigs lose control of their law by doing so they did not control the real him and that resulted him but alice is in this. Experiments and mark is creative demonstrate. The weapons. For some of this there will be no protection it will become please collapse of the social life. Of the Society Overall of the Economic Life a devil opt aerosols fat to spread the bacteria or virus. The air today aboard and therefore. Increase the number of people that get infected the effects of a contagioUs Biological attack could spread around the world literally. With the collapse of the soviet union in 1901 the new russian state simply couldnt afford to support a program that cost the country billions of dollars bio Weapons Research and production were shut down ultimately into it turned out to be everest of effort and might complete 1st for our sake a power bar was one of thousands of russian scientists who suddenly found themselves without a paycheck to obscure people who never established our careers you know in communication vis visit economically she was just so it was very difficult to present ourselves you know as scientists and nobody would hire us. To know accomplishments in the biological weapon d. C. Which so it was a kind of far truck so the route most of the thousands of scientists involved in the bio Weapons Program remained in russia and tried to adapt to the new society dr popof managed to immigrate currently a researcher in biotechnology at George Mason University. With the just mantling of the soviet program it was hoped that biological weapons would become obsolete this was not the case for years it had been secretly stockpiling a deadly arsenal weapons they had produced themselves they had developed to really serious systems one was based on bombs. That had 3 different kinds of words one worse than tracks the 2nd was was much one talks and then a certain one was something called aflatoxin. So those were ready to go they were loaded they had about 200. 00 of those and then there are 25. 00 scud missiles with the same kind of words and they were ready to. Well base sooner than on some of the things that were considered the classic agents in the major western soviet program like anthrax like clostridium bottom line but then they also did some unusual things why would one turn a disease that causes liver cancer. Into a weapon the results would have. Been shocking. The gulf war was over so quickly the iraqis did not have a chance to use their deadly arsenal the United States was pretty clear and articulating that Response Options would be considered. Used chemical or other weapons. And i think that caused some hesitation on his part after the gulf war ended it x. Bio Weapons Program remained hidden until in 1995 United Nations inspectors finally uncovered it the inspectors didnt want to get away with it if they had just thrown in the towel. It its very troublesome to think about how that would have changed the course of history in the middle east because iraq would have retained a super secret and potentially very potent category of weapons. It asks program illustrated vividly that it is conceivable that nations of all sizes could get their hands on bio weapons. Secretive countries such as north korea are suspects and syria has actually admitted to stockpiling weapons of mass destruction including biological i think there are some states out there that are still in this nasty business so if you really want to knock out weapon why not go for the one thats comparatively a lot cheaper easier to develop technologically the one theyre not looking for. A more were. Russia and the United States both in says that they are not presently engaged in the research or production of offensive biological weapons questions remain however i believe that the United States but not as for the same is the United Kingdom but we have very Little Information about version facilities still the effort this zarif facility is russian and. Indeed in the biological. Research nobody ever different from those facilities but there was a lot of these. D. V. Miami black books is. At present the concern is not so much about nation states using bio weapons as individuals especially those with scientific knowledge seth keris is a professor at the National Defense university in washington he has written extensively on bioterrorism and bio crimes but one of the the things that surprised me when i started digging into this was the number of people who used biological agents of one kind or another for criminal purposes its not uncommon today d to see people trying to get hold of toxins to users instruments of murder. In 983 on finesse it no we didnt know and nursing home manager was convicted of killing 22 patients by injecting them with curious it a muscle relaxing drug used by the holmes medical staff in prison he admitted to murdering many more people in the mid 960 s. Zuki a japanese physician then bacteriologist handed out sponge cakes filled with salmon and dysentery bacteria to his colleagues he was eventually linked to an outbreak of typhoid fever and dysentery that sickened 200 people and killed 4. Even more dangerous than vengeful individuals or groups bent on destruction. For georgia man have been charged with conspiring to possess a destructive device one of the accused said there is no way for us as publisher to save this country the same georgia doing something highly illegal this wasnt just hong kong taken real steps toward iran carrying out their plans for the alleged plot involved explosions and a deadly biological toxin all this pressure there was like a little obvious have some other. Bioterrorism is a real concern there are certain groups that are motivated and some of those groups are motivated might have a capabilities at some point theres probably going to be some of it some point we are going to have bio terrorist could be potentially serious according to al jazeera and many other reliable news sources al qaeda had progressed much further towards developing biological weapons before 911. 00 then the world had realized while there has not been a biological attack by this group so far it remains a real concern u. S. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton in december 2011 warned that there is. Evidence that al qaeda in yemen is hard at work developing weapons of mass destruction in particular biological pathogens. Often called the brains behind a sama bin laden aiman also what is now likely to assume the leadership of the diffuse organization that is al qaida film together by al jazeera in the mountains along the afghan pakistan border on less described as bin ladens closest mental this was in 20032 years after 911 the concern about all of. Us primarily from the fact that its one of the few terrorist groups a. Has been interested in causing mass casualties and b. Has explicitly expressed interest that in fact us and try to put together a biological Weapons Program fact that so who is still there has the has to be concerned. Paradoxically the danger of bioterrorism has increased with the revolution in the sciences that are prolonging and enhancing human lives as cures for cancer and other diseases a found the number of trained people who could use their knowledge for nefarious purposes has also grown out the big change has been that biotechnology has spread throughout the world and that means that all the equipment and supplies related to civilian peacefully directed by technologies out there are all over the place. And that means that theoretically every buddy whos to civilian biotechnology can do military but technology the fermenter does not know that its from mounting bacillus thuringian says to become a fire pesticide or bacillus anthraces to become the biological weapon of the biological weapons system and thats compound good by the internet having become the worlds shopping center. The number of people who know how to use the tools of biology and could simply do as has grown steadily so that millions of people are in that category now of thirst if i wanted to acquire a laboratory that would be potentially capable of producing. Some important quantities a biological agent i could buy that for not a whole lot of money on the and the reality is you could do that almost anywhere in the world that. The al qaeda was buying its equipment in pakistan and had no trouble clipping. Why were torn afghanistan. You know the kinds of food for mentor the War Laboratory equipment that you would need and you can buy pretty much anywhere but there are producers of botulinum toxin than you can buy that already in the last School Clothes are those are in asia and from particular Mainland China you know on the internet they say oh we can provide any quantities you need i mean thats something completely new that you can buy the most toxic substance in the world over the internet is the 1st scientists and then the question is what about the what we call the known operators people now that are setting up molecular biology and editorials in their homes and their garages and resellers or whatever and theyre doing for the fun of it are they going to be able to create a pathogen and one of them be crazy enough to want to do that yeah i would worry about that and. Maybe one of the most troublesome aspects of the life science revolution is that the information emerging is available to everyone no matter what their motivation you know most of the science that you need to create a biological weapon is obtainable through open scientific literature that needs to exist in order to improve the worlds health. Since the 1990 s. No respect i just got behind the idea that all the biological literature should be online so your University Undergraduate anywhere in europe has access to stuff behind pay walls their digital libraries and has access on an equal basis as a 16 year old kid from bangalore. Nothing illustrates the di lemma of readily Available Research more than the bird flu controversy in september 2011 a team of dutch and u. S. Scientists announced that they had engineered a strain of airborne h 5 n one that could spread among mammals and possibly humans it caused to weld wide approach its a real life tale that reads like so. Far the british Prime Minister Parris Johnson is currently addressing the United Nations General Assembly lets take a listen i minister to come to this United Nations and pledge to advance our values and defend our rules the rules of a Peaceful World and protecting freedom of navigation in the gulf to perseverance in the vital task you would be a 2 state solution in the conflict in the middle east and of course im proud to do all these things but no one can ignore a Gathering Force that is reshaping the future of every member of this essentially there has been nothing like it in history when i think of the great scientific revolutions of the past print the steam engine aviation the atomic age i think of new tools that we acquired over which we the human race had the advantage which we controlled and that is not necessarily the case in the digital age you may keep your secrets from your friends from your parents your children your doctor even your personal trainer but it takes real effort to conceal your thoughts from google. And if that is true today in future there may be nowhere to hide smart cities will probably late with sensors all joined together by the internet of things but all arts communing invisibly with lamp posts so there is always a parking space if your electric car so there may be no goes unimpeded no street unswept and the environment is anti septics as youre a pharmacy but this technology could also be used to keep every citizen under round the clock surveillance a future alexa will pretend to take orders but this election will be watching you tracking her tongue and stamping her foot in future voice connected connectivity will be in every room and almost every object your monitor your mattress or monitor your nightmares your fridge will beat for more g. s your front door will sweep wide the moment you approach like some silent but your smart meter will go hassling of its own accord for the cheapest electricity and every one of them minute lead transcribing your every habit in tiny electronic shorthand stored not in their chips or in the innards know where you can find it but in some great cloud of data lauers ever more oppressively over the human race a giant dark thunder cloud waiting to burst and we have no control over how or when the precipitation will take place and every day that we tap on our phones or work on our i pads as i see some of you doing now we not only leave our indelible spore. In the ether but we are ourselves becoming a resource click by click to buy tap just as the carboniferous period created the indescribable wealth leaf by decaying leaf of hydrocarbons data is the crude oil of the modern economy and were now in an environment where we dont know who should own these new of fuels we dont know who should have the rights or the title to these gushers of cash and we dont know who decides how to use that data and calumnies algorithms be trusted with our lives and hopes should the machines and only the machines decide whether or not we are eligible for a mortgage or insurance or what surgery or medicines we should receive are we doomed to a cold and heartless future in which computer says yes or computer says no with the grim finality of an emperor in the arena how do you plead with an algorithm how do you get it to see extenuating circumstances and how do we know that the machines have not been insidiously programmed to fool us or even to cheat us were already using all kinds of messaging services that offer instant communication at minimal cost and these same programs platforms can also be designed for real time censorship of every conversation with offending words automatically deleted indeed in some countries this happens today. Digital author of terrorism is not alas the stuff of dystopian fantasy but of an emerging reality the reason im giving this speech today with a slightly gloomy programmer is that the u. K. Is one of the worlds tech leaders and i believe governments have been simply caught unaware by the unintended consequences of the internet a scientific breakthrough far more reaching its every day psychological impact than any other invention since gutenberg and when you consider how long it took for books to come into widespread circulation the arrival of the internet is far bigger than prince its bigger than the atomic age but its like Nuclear Power in that it is capable of both good and harm and of course its not alone as new technologies seem to race towards us from the far horizon we strain our eyes as they come to make out whether they are good or bad friends or foes they are what will it mean helpful robots washing in caring for an aging population or pink eyed terminator sent back in the future to cow the human race but will Synthetic Biology stand for restoring our livers now rise with miracle regeneration of the tissues like some fantastic hangover cure or will it bring terrifying limbless chickens to our tables will nanotechnology help us to beat disease or will it live leave tiny robots to replicate in the crevices of our souls it is a trick as old as literature that any scientific advance is punished by the gods when promethea this brought fire to mankind in a chub of phenol as you may remember with his brother epimetheus zeus punished him. By chaining him to a tart arion crab while his liver was picked out. I talked about a hangover cure is liver was picked out by an evil an eagle and every time his liver regroup the eagle came back and picked it again and this went on forever. A bit like we experience of. Breakers. In the u. K. If some of our parliamentarians had their way. In fact it was a standard poetic practice to cuss the pro toss herea tears the person responsible for any scientific or technical breakthrough if only they had never invented the ship then jason would never sell the coke is and all sorts of disasters would never have happened this is a deep human instinct to be wary of any kind of technical problem or progress in 829 they thought of the human frame would not withstand the speeds attained by stevensons rocket and there are today people who are still actually anti science. A whole movement called the anti vaccines who refuse to acknowledge the evidence that vaccinations have eradicated smallpox and who by their prejudices actually in danger in the very children they want to protect and i totally reject this anti scientific pessimism im profoundly optimistic about the ability of new technology to serve as a liberator and to remake the world wondrously and but 9 indeed in countless respects technology is already doing just that nanotechnology i mentioned earlier revolutionizing medicine by designing rubbish robots a fraction of the size of a red blood cell capable of swimming through our bodies dispensing medicine and attacking malignant cells like some star wars armada Neural Interface Technology is producing a new generation of Cochlear Implants allowing the gift of hearing to people who wouldnt otherwise not be able to hear the voices of their own children a London Technology company has worked out how to help the blind to navigate more freely with nothing more than an app on their smartphones new technologies produced in britain helping the deaf to hear and the blind to see and we used to think that printing was something that you did to run off a boarding card now a British Company has used 3 d. Printing to make an engine capable of blasting a rocket in space in african countries millions of People Without Bank accounts can now transfer money using a simple app they can buy solar energy and lead in one transaction from no electricity to green power and new advances are making Renewable Energy ever cheaper aiding our common struggle against Climate Change our understanding of the Natural World is being transformed by genome sequences the discovery of the very essence. Of life itself the secret genetic code that animates the spirit of every living being and allows medical breakthroughs the like of which we have never known treatments tailored to the precise genetic makeup of the individual so far we have discovered the secrets of less than 0. 3 percent of complex life on the planet think what will we achieve what we will achieve when and it is a matter of when we understand one or 2 percent let alone 5 or 10 percent but how how we design the emerging technologies behind these breakthroughs and what