FUD. People can always do something bad. Hiding information from them so they cannot do something bad such as recreating influenza from 1918 is a horrible idea in my opinion, and intuitively seems like an impossible task anyway.<p>"The invention of spiked clubs, triremes, longbows, gunpowder and all the other military technologies can be traced to the discovery of new information."<p>Well, I am splitting hairs here but it isn't really a "discovery" when you wake up one morning with a monolith in your front yard, a monolith that somehow helped you kick your neighbor's butt.
When reading about scientific history, I noticed that many times, it was noted that several scientists stumbled across the same fact independent of one another. Several inventors independently conjured up similar solutions to a given problem years apart. These days, startup founders find that someone else may have had the same idea not long before (or not long after) they did.<p>I have a feeling that many of us are somewhat in the "information wants to be free" camp (some to a higher degree of fanaticism than others). I fail to see how keeping information secret will keep other people from independently reproducing, reverse-engineering, discovering or inventing the same.
I think this is the only thing I can be fanatical on, I am hard pressed to devise a theoretical piece of information I would not wish to be exposed to, no matter it's nature. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, and information can't kill you.<p>Well, directly, anyway. :)