Astral Codex Ten

Operation Warp Speed

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Operation Warp Speed

Article

Operation Warp Speed is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 10, 2024 and January 13, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “make the FDA capable of Operation Warp Speed-style efforts in more situations”; “help the FDA get more resources for Operation Warp Speed style pushes”; “Bob is wearing a t-shirt saying ‘OPERATION WARP SPEED FOR MANHATTAN PROJECTS’“. It most often appears alongside Blueprint Biosecurity, Duncan Purvis, FDA.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 10, 2024
  • Last seen: January 13, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

ACX Grants Results 2024
February 10, 2024 · Original source
1DaySooner, $100,000, to advocate for a specialized pandemic response team at the FDA. Although I complain about how long it took the FDA to approve the COVID vaccine, everything is relative, and they were able to approve it much faster than their usual process. This exhausted employees and created a backlog of other non-COVID tasks, and might not be possible even for another pandemic, let alone normal operations. 1DaySooner wants the government to fund an effort to make the FDA capable of Operation Warp Speed-style efforts in more situations, and maybe apply its lessons to everyday decisions. You can read more about their work here and here, and donate here.
Inline links: here, here, here
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
January 01, 2025 · Original source
<1% chance it’s more than 100x as bad (unprecedented) If you multiply the 5% chance of an H5N1 pandemic per year by the 7% chance of severity ≥ Spanish Flu, you get an 0.35% chance of a Spanish Flu level pandemic this year - one in three hundred. That’s a little higher than base rates - the last pandemic as bad as Spanish flu was smallpox hitting the Indians circa 1500. If we don’t count that one (where would our conquistador equivalents come from?), then the last equally bad pandemic was the Black Death in the 1300s. So we seem to get that level of pandemic once every 500 - 1000 years; a 1/300 chance suggests a 2-3x elevated risk. The Spanish Flu killed about 50 million people. A second Spanish flu could kill more people (because the population is higher), or fewer people (because medical care is better). If we assume those two cancel out, and that a second Spanish flu’s death toll would also be 50 million, then a 1/300 chance of 50 million deaths = 166,666 deaths. In some weird probabilistic expected utility way, about as many people will probably die of H5N1 next year as died in the past year of the Ukraine War. You will have to decide whether this is a reasonable way to allocate mental real estate to different catastrophes. Other Considerations Even if H5N1 doesn’t go pandemic in humans for a while, it is already pandemic in many birds including chickens, getting there in cows, and possibly gearing up to get there in pigs. This will have economic repercussions for farmers and meat-eaters. The CDC and various other epidemiological groups have raised the alarm about drinking raw milk while H5N1 is epidemic in cows. There is an obvious biological pathway by which the virus could get into raw milk and be dangerous, but I haven’t seen anyone quantify the risk level. Epidemiologists hate raw milk, think there is never any reason to drink it, and will announce that risks > benefits if the risk is greater than zero. I don’t know if the risk level is at a point where people who like raw milk should avoid it. Everyone says that pasteurized milk (all normal milk; your milk is pasteurized unless you get it from special hippie stores) is safe. There are already H5N1 vaccines for both chickens and humans; pharma companies are working hard on cows. First World governments have been stockpiling human vaccines just in case, but have so far accumulated enough for only a few percent of the population. If H5N1 goes pandemic, it will probably be because it mutated or reassorted, and current vaccines may not work against the new pandemic strain. Some people have suggestions for how to prepare for a possible pandemic, but none of them are very surprising: stockpile medications, stockpile vaccines, stockpile protective equipment. The only one that got so much as a “huh” out of me was Institute for Progress’ suggestion to buy out mink farms. Minks are even worse than pigs in their tendency to get infected with lots of different animal and human viruses; they are exceptionally likely to be a source of new zoonotic pandemics. Mink are farmed for their fur, but there aren’t as many New York City heiresses wearing mink coats as there used to be, and the entire US mink industry only makes $80 million/year. We probably lose more than $80 million/year in expectation from mink-related pandemics, so maybe we should just shut them down, the same way we tell the Chinese to shut down wet markets in bat-infested areas. ACX grantee One Day Sooner is trying to help the FDA get more resources for Operation Warp Speed style pushes that could expedite approval of pandemic-related vaccines. ACX grantee Duncan Purvis is trying to improve existing influenza vaccines in ways that could make them more effective. ACX grantee Blueprint Biosecurity is working on pan-viral suppression techniques. Conclusions / Predictions All discussed earlier in the piece, but putting them here for easy reference - see above for justifications and qualifications. H5N1 is already pandemic in birds and cows and will likely continue to increase the price of meat and milk.
Inline links: raised the alarm, H5N1 vaccines, buy out mink farms, exceptionally likely, is trying to help the FDA get more resources, is trying to improve existing influenza vaccines, is working on pan-viral suppression techniques
SOTA On Bay Area House Party
January 13, 2026 · Original source
You look around for Bob and Ramchandra, and spot them in a corner. Bob is wearing a t-shirt saying ‘OPERATION WARP SPEED FOR MANHATTAN PROJECTS,’ Ramchandra a matching t-shirt saying ‘BELL LABS FOR MOONSHOTS’. You call them over. “Hey, quick favor, can you tell me the best way to short the global economy with as much leverage as possible?”