I thought this was interesting. I'd love to see a debate on whether this is a healthy line of thinking, and something we're glad the public knows about us now.
The court filings in a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, dated July 20, included a memo crafted by an FTX Foundation official and Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried. It outlined the future survival of FTX and Alameda Research employees and all those who subscribed to the effective altruism concept.
The ultimate strategy, according to the memo, was “to purchase the sovereign nation of Nauru in order to construct a ‘bunker / shelter’ that would be used for some event where 50%-99.99% of people die [to] ensure that most EAs (effective altruists) survive.”
I think that it's good that this proposal was seriously considered. I don't think it currently beats other megaprojects on impact/solvability/neglectedness, especially since quite a bit of genetic engineering research is already legal in the US (I am once again reminding everyone that human reproductive cloning is legal in many US states, and that it seems unlikely for blue states to enact new laws against reproductive autonomy in a post-Roe era). However, I think that it's good that this proposal was seriously considered, and there should be, on the margin, more proposals like it (in terms of large scale, outside-the-box thinking, potential "weirdness," etc.)