If the author had said that crispr based gene drives are malware then I can see that metaphor working, but I don't think that was what was the case here. Also, crispr for neuro diseases isn't just knockouts, there's work with single base change Cas forms and RNA targeting crispr, it's a broad range of tools

And also, the scissor analogy actually works better with the riot analogy. You arent going to stop a riot with scissors, but you could totally use some form of malware to censor social media/knock out communications/etc to prevent the riot from being able to organize. Malware is a constructive thing, it allows you to hijack systems you take over, which is much much much more powerful than some blunt scissors.