Only a few can build it

The remaining machines are not garage projects. They need people who already know how to build synthetic cells, money on the scale of a serious national science program, and supply lines that run through ordinary biotech.

That set is short. The United States and China sit at the center. A handful of other scientific powers — including parts of Europe, Japan, and possibly Russia — are in range. Firms and universities inside those countries hold most of the talent. Isolated regimes, cartels, and cults may want a doomsday organism. They cannot independently assemble a mirror ribosome.

The dark side of the same fact arrives after success. Once a living cell exists, methods spread. The groups who cannot build it today become relevant tomorrow. Insider theft is the bridge: a person with legitimate access inside a capable lab.

So the near-term job is not to hunt every villain on Earth. It is to keep the capable few from finishing the staircase — including well-meaning labs chasing a prize.

You can now aim effort where it actually bites. Secret watching of those few, though, can start a race. That is the next idea.

The tempting mistake is to picture a lone villain in a basement as the main problem. That picture becomes true only after someone else does the hard science in public.

That is what lets you ask how rivals should treat one another on this one topic.