Making Sense of Biosecurity in the Age of AI

​Experts have long worried that artificial intelligence might eventually help create enhanced or previously unimagined pathogens that could be turned into bioweapons. This September, AI company Anthropic announced that at least five users had tried to circumvent its chatbot safeguards, including a researcher who “computationally redesigned toxins for a national program, asking Claude to keep the agents’ identities deliberately vague in progress reports.”

​As the United States prepares to update its biosecurity governance, how should the risks of AI be understood? Can they be mitigated by policy—or by the technology itself? Join Issues editors for this month’s Open Editorial Meeting, “Making Sense of Biosecurity in the Age of AI,” with guests Edward H. You and Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley.

​You is the founder of EHY Consulting LLC. From 2005 to 2025, he worked as an FBI special agent specializing in bioweapons and emerging technologies. His essay, “Biosecurity for the Age of AI,” was published in the Fall 2026 Issues. Ouagrham-Gormley is an associate professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, Biodefense Program, and recently wrote “Rethinking the De-skilling Narrative in AI and Biological Weapons Policy” for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.

​Amid rapid changes in the science policy landscape, Open Editorial Meetings are informal webinars enabling collaborative dialogue in the Issues community. To encourage open discussion, they are not recorded or shared. (You just have to be there.)