It would be insane, an apocalyptic fantasy that few could afford outside of (hopefully somewhat) accountable or at least pragmatic governments. But a very rich person could afford it.
And as much as information warfare is terrifying, biological warfare is much worse. I get your "it's already here" point, but lets really take the question at face value and run with it.
edit: Consider that a group MUCH less wealthy than Elon Musk was able to experiment with nuclear weapons, and managed to carry out a sarin attack.
> Engineer a plague, or a series of plagues targeting food crops, livestock, and humans.
I think you missed a constraint there.
We seem to be watching this in real time. Musk bought influence over the US president, gained access to critical US systems, and is about to benefit from the EO pausing of enforcement of law banning bribes to foriegn nationals.
He bought power. He is buying more power. We are watching a supervillian rise.
I dunno maybe that asteroid is coming and we need his rockets and mass distraction.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-sp...
Way more billionaires supported Kamala vs. Trump (83 vs 52).
But yes, there was also simply a lack of energy in the D voter base in 2024. No amount of spending can recover disengaged voters who simply dismissed everyone as "equally bad".
Hypothetically, would it be legal to fund a president whose policy was "let's nuke everyone"?
Put a luxury car in orbit around the Sun, somewhere in space between Earth and Mars. With a china teapot in it.
Ian Fleming explored that idea rather effectively with Hugo Drax in the original Moonraker novel (which doesn't have much besides the name in common with the movie.)
The way things are playing out, Drax must have been Musk's childhood hero.
https://www.inverse.com/article/32100-elon-musk-favorite-jam...
The person who asked 7 years ago never forgot that and made the same connection as you:
https://www.threads.net/@pixelastronaut/post/DFFJF9GxE7D?xmt...
> Their first child, Elon Reeve Musk, was born in 1971, named after Maye's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman, with the name Reeve after her maternal grandmother's maiden name.
TEL, though, yeeeeah... that was a bad move.
Run a government. No single person has ever been responsible for more death, suffering and harm as a person wielding a monopoly on violence. Even the Church only managed its bloody conquests, cultural genocides and colonialism because it had the power of imperialist states behind it. If not for Constantine, Christianity would have remained a weird apocalypse cult in the Levant.
A person such as Musk (or Trump, or Biden, or...or...) live in a completely different reality when compared to yours or mine, as their input differs vastly from ours. This is inevitable given the flaws of being human.
It's like training two AIs on completely different sets of input. The bigger the difference in training data ...
As a thought experiment, I like to wonder what would be the maximal amount of damage to humanity an extremely wealthy person could do entirely legally.
Or if not damage, just trolling. For instance, writing X on the moon or something like that.