That all sounds basically right to me, except that my impression is that the cruxes in internal (mild) disagreements about this are just about “a) given that we’re already scattered pretty thin on many projects, b) focus is often good” and not “c) we internally disagree about how important marginal biosecurity work by people without technical expertise is anyway”.
Or at least, I personally think I see (a) and (b) as some of the strongest arguments against us doing biosecurity stuff, while I’m roughly agnostic on (c) but I’d guess that there are some high-value things RP could do even if we lack technical backgrounds, and if some more senior biosecurity person said they really wanted us to do some project then I’d probably guess that they’re right that we could be very useful on that.
(And to be clear, my bottom line would still be pretty similar to Linch’s, in that if we get a person who seems a strong fit for biosecurity work, they seem especially interested in that, and some senior people in that area seem excited about us doing something in that area, I’d be very open to us doing that.)
That all sounds basically right to me, except that my impression is that the cruxes in internal (mild) disagreements about this are just about “a) given that we’re already scattered pretty thin on many projects, b) focus is often good” and not “c) we internally disagree about how important marginal biosecurity work by people without technical expertise is anyway”.
Or at least, I personally think I see (a) and (b) as some of the strongest arguments against us doing biosecurity stuff, while I’m roughly agnostic on (c) but I’d guess that there are some high-value things RP could do even if we lack technical backgrounds, and if some more senior biosecurity person said they really wanted us to do some project then I’d probably guess that they’re right that we could be very useful on that.
(And to be clear, my bottom line would still be pretty similar to Linch’s, in that if we get a person who seems a strong fit for biosecurity work, they seem especially interested in that, and some senior people in that area seem excited about us doing something in that area, I’d be very open to us doing that.)