How synthetic biology could wipe out humanity -- and how we can stop it

Though it's now rather old (published in 2003), this book remains the perfect onramp to understanding the fascinating yet chilling realm of "existential threats." These are prospective dangers, mostly enabled by anticipated near-future tech, which could annihilate our entire species — or, at minimum, kill at a scale that would permanently disfigure society and set us back decades, if not centuries. Somehow, Rees's wit, warmth and sly optimism turn an objectively terrifying book into fascinating delight.

Though challenging, this ingenious 38-page academic paper is quite accessible to any intelligent and truly ambitious reader. If Our Final Hour is a ski mountain's gentle yet challenging beginner's slope, "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis" is a steep black diamond trail that a determined middling skier can nonetheless navigate. Bostrom weaves an amazing logical tapestry, laying out the choices, game theory and horrifying pitfalls that await us, as the growing cadence of scientific breakthroughs bequeaths us increasingly godlike powers. This amazing work hints that Bostrom could be the world's greatest living logician and futurist.

A radical new gene-editing technique called CRISPR (and its pending heirs) will eventually touch and even transform every human life. CRISPR's an ancient feature of the natural world, whose day job is helping microorganisms foil infections and parasites. Then in 2013 — to the head-smacking astonishment of all involved — it was harnessed, becoming the most powerful gene editing tool ever known to science. Discovering and taming the system was a large-team effort — but Jennifer was one of its two or three key top contributors. She conveys CRISPR's mechanism of action and breathtaking potential in delightfully accessible prose, while sharing much about her own journey through science and life. Every modern person should understand CRISPR given all it portends — yet for now, almost no one does.

This recounting of a spate of ten mass attacks on Chinese schools (which I discuss in my TED talk) shows that America is not unique in suffering this scourge, but also proves that when suicidal mass murderers go all-in, technology is THE force multiplier. The deadliest retail items in China are hammers and knives. As a result, those ten attacks combined killed fewer victims than that one grotesque assault in Newtown, Connecticut — which, by macabre coincidence, occurred just a few hours after the last of the Chinese attacks. As I've noted elsewhere, the worst suicidal mass murderers are not limited by their consciences or their awful ambitions. They're mostly constrained by the tools they can access. That's knives in China, assault weapons in the US and, in rare but horrifying circumstances, a commercial jet under the command of a suicidal pilot who forces everyone on board to join him in his contemptibly selfish suicide. Far more deadly technologies than airplanes lie in our near future, so this lesson from China is instructive and chilling.