Depends on how you look at it. It's tech that has allowed millions to work from their homes during a pandemic, something that has saved thousands of lives that would not have been saved if those people had to go out and mingle among society. It's tech that made a new vaccine possible and that's why humanity had a vaccine for a pandemic in months.

Tech is everything and everywhere. Good and bad.

Do insects have some sort of intrinsic value that must be preserved at any cost to mankind?

Does mankind have intrinsic value? And my direct answer to your direct question yes, insects have more intrinsic "value" for the ecosystem of this planet compared to humans, one of the first proofs is the fact that they've been in here for longer than we (or even the mammals) have.

I hate arguments from nature. We’re not doing anything out of the ordinary compared to insects. If you transplant a species of insects like say the emerald ash borer they can be just as destructive to the ecosystem as humans, probably more so because they can’t reason about their behaviour and decide to change it to avoid ecological disaster. The history of the world is full of extinctions, the benefit of being human is we can choose not to act like any other invasive species or new mutation, we can choose the path that allows for human flourishing along with good stewardship of the planet. The best thing for both would probably be to accelerate our move off of this world and only come back for vacations and to prevent the odd “natural” extinction event.

Nobody is here longer than anybody, we are all part of the same unbroken genetic chain Humanity has value to humanity, value to life as a whole is determined by which species survive to carry on, if insects dont then they werent all that valuable

Mankind exists to serve itself, not the ecosystem.

> Hard to bear that idea when we got where we are now because of technology.

s/technology/business/. Technology doesn't have a mind of its own. Yes, it can be more conductive to good (vaccines) or bad (fighter jets), or neutral (knives), but it doesn't go out there doing things on its own, it doesn't hurt or disenfranchise people through its own existence, it doesn't pollute the Earth by virtue of being pictured on a blueprint.

No, it's people making these decisions to commission and use particular technologies for ill. Sometimes they make them in full understanding of the bad consequences. Sometimes they only learn too late, but they still make a decision to not retract the use of a technology.

Technology is a red herring. The real issue is the usual problem of people being selfish, living in a system that doesn't regulate the selfishness away, but instead amplifies it, consequences be damned.