Governments spying on each other is one thing, but USA goes a lot further than that, including industrial espionage, spying on civilians en masse, strong-arming and assassinations.
Apart from Russia and Israel, I can't think of any other country that disregards other peoples to this extent.

What's wrong is that in the US system, it's possible to treat someone against their will and then bill them for it.

Someone just recently went on vacation from Europe to Florida, and a combination of sleep apnea and jet lag caused him to fall sound asleep in the hotel lobby before even getting to his room. They rushed him to an ER against his half-awake protests, and he ended up with an *enormous* bill. That's just not right.

Reconstructionist President Mackenzie of the Simon Morden books isn't far-fetched anymore, alas. We're well on the way there.

The blatant disregard for the sovereignty and principles of other nations is part of why USA is so generally despised and feared, even by our allies. But walk over people enough, and they will raise up.

I don't think the concern is lost lives, but either losing a source of intelligence or losing face.

Unfortunately, I fear that there are also a supply of quite willing and rich guinea pigs who want lesser problems fixed, or bespoke babies. Unless regulated, research tends to follow the money.

The problem with us saying "this far, and no farther" reads to many as an invitation to go this far immediately, because the competitors will, even if original plans were less ambitious.

The only way I think we can buy a lease on responsible genetics is by having an oversight board that is controlled by neither big industry nor the local government.
Perhaps something like a UN ethics committee that does not accept appointments by governments, but selects its own members from scientific communities, with the UN councils only holding veto rights.

Obviously, one would use the Genome Editor.

IGMC...

I fear you are right, and that some diseases would benefit by our preventing other diseases. Given that our focus is usually on the "worst" diseases, on average the competition opens to more benign diseases, but there will be exceptions. And some relatively benign diseases that seems easy to cure might become a target for a genetic "quick fix" that might, unbeknownst to us, open up for other diseases.

The interaction between different diseases and genetic "flaws" is not well understood, but we know there are interactions. Like, for example, how sickle cell anemia gives increased resistance against malaria. There are likely a lot of genetic conditions that cause ailments that were introduced because they also gives an advantage, which at an early point was a net win for some individuals. We don't have the full picture yet, so I would say there is a risk, and especially if treating relatively "benign" conditions.

Au contraire - on government web sites where the content is public, the content should not be encrypted. That goes against all reason.

The only reason I see for this requirement is to make it easier to see who has accessed information where. With http and caching proxy servers it becomes a heck of a lot harder to trace users (which is also why Google hates http so much).

By all means, encrypt anything that is confidential or secret, but on public servers, nothing else.

Offshore development follows offshore laws...

Going by memory, United States of America Inc.. lost a lot of duty payments due to "all South-American fruit trees are exempt .." became "all South-American fruit, trees are exempt".

And what do you do when the vice president leaves you a memo that you need to "literally make the programmers work around the clock"?
Is he telling you to start a crunch, hire people and divide into three shifts, or pay 200% overtime and deal with law mandated recovery time?

Sloppy use over time is why terror and horror are near synonyms, but terrific and horrific are near antonyms.
Not to mention how awfully doesn't signify that something is awful, or that awful doesn't mean full of awe anymore.

The meaning of words change, and that is unavoidable. But it does cause ambiguity until the "final" meaning of a word has been established.

That belongs with "civil war" and "irregular pattern" in a list of oxymorons.

American etiquette is to smile and say "I'm fine", which is a euphemism for "none of your fucking business".

No matter how good the accent is, injecting the word "actually" several times in a sentence marks the speaker as an Indian.
Mind, you can identify a native New Yorker the same way, by the references to coitus and oedipal desires.

The problem with "bad English" is that it tends to be imprecise and ambiguous. Using a word "wrongly" might not be bad when talking to friends, but when placing a large order or designing an airplane, precise use of the language can really make a difference.

I sit corrected - I was unaware that he had since been made a knight bachelor. The Wikipedia article lists his name with "OBE" following it, not "Kt, OBE". Which makes a big difference, as the "OBE" pretty much only lets people sit further to the front in churches.