Existential Risk: Future pandemics

Speaker: Professor Sir Martin Rees (University of Cambridge)

Three trends enhance the probability of global catastrophes:

1. the rising global population, more demanding of energy and resources, leads to novel anthropogenic pressures on the biosphere -- climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc .
2. the greater interconnectedness of our civilisation allows pandemics to rapidly cascade globally, and enhances our vulnerability to breakdown in supply chains, financial networks, etc .  
3. novel technologies -- bio, cyber and AI -- empower small groups with the ability (via error or terror) to cause massive (even global) disruption.

Coping with this threat presents a challenge to governance: it will become ever harder to sustain the three goals of offering all citizens privacy, security and freedom.