Key Readings and Resources

To help you dive deeper into the field, this crowdsourced collection features essential biosecurity readings. Many were shared with attendees as pre-reads prior to the Topical Forum: Biosecurity or were highlighted at the Forum. These resources are organized to provide a strong background for early-career professionals interested in learning more about biosecurity.

AI and BIosecurity

The following resources focus specifically on the interplay between artificial intelligence and biological safety and security, including governance and technical risks.

• AI Tools Can Enhance U.S. Biosecurity; Monitoring and Mitigation Will Be Needed to Protect Against Misuse  (2025 – National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine)
• Developing Guardrails for AI Biodesign Tools (2024 – Carter et al., Nuclear Threat Initiative)
• UK AI Safety Report 2025, Section 3.3  (2025 – UK AI Security Institute)
• The Age of AI in the Life Sciences: Benefits and Biosecurity Considerations, Summary  (2025 – National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine)
• Global Risk Index for AI-enabled Biological Tools (2025 – Webster et al., The Centre for Long-Term Resilience & RAND Europe)
• Community Values, Guiding Principles, and Commitments for the Responsible Development of AI for Protein Design (2024 – Responsible AI x Biodesign)
• Advanced AI: Five Possible Futures (2025 – Özcan et al., Centre for Future Generations) 
• Could chatbots help devise the next pandemic virus? (2023 – Science)
• Can large language models democratize access to dual-use biotechnology? (2023 – Esvelt et al.)
• Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery (Urbina et al., 2022 – Nature Machine Intelligence)
• Generative design of novel bacteriophages with genome language models (2025 – Esvelt et al.)

Global Policy, Governance and Strategy

The following resources focus on large-scale strategic reports, biosecurity policy recommendations, and international agreements.

• Biosecurity Really: A Strategy for Victory  (2025 – Endy et al., Hoover Institution)
• Anticipating Biological Risk: A Toolkit for Strategic Biosecurity Policy  (2024 – Steph Batalis, Center for Security and Emerging Technology)
• Charting the Future of Biotechnology Report Section 2.4, Protecting Critical Biotechnology Infrastructure (2025 – National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology)
• Taking Biological Threats Off The Table Through Next-Generation Global South Leadership (2025 – Biosecurity Emerging Leaders Declaration at the 61st Munich Security Conference)
• Text of Biological Weapons Convention (1972)
• International Bio Funders’ Compact (2025 – Nuclear Threat Initiative and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations)

Biothreats, Dual-Use and Risk

This section gathers essential resources that define the nature of biosecurity threats, covering their historical development, the core concept of dual-use technology, and key technical and risk assessments.

• Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World–Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It  (2000 – Ken Alibek)
• When All Research is Dual Use (2022 – Sam Weiss Evans, Issues in Science and Technology)
• Expanded Biology Coverage (2025 – Villalobos et al., Epoch AI)
• Delay, Detect, Defend: Preparing for a Future in which Thousands Can Release New Pandemics (2022- Geneva Papers)
• Confronting Risks of Mirror Life (Adamala et al., 2024 – Science)
• Evaluating the robustness of current nucleic acid synthesis screening (2024 – Esvelt et al.)
• China’s collection of genomic and other healthcare data from America: Risks to privacy and U.S. economic and national security (2021 – The National Counterintelligence and Security Center)
• The Genome Russia project: closing the largest remaining omission on the world Genome map (Oleksyk et al., 2015 – Gigascience)

Pandemic Preparedness and Health Security

The following resources highlight global systems, planning, and coordination efforts related to preventing and responding to pandemic outbreaks.

• Global Health Security Index (2021 – Nuclear Threat Initiative, Brown Pandemic Center, Economist Impact). Refer to the biosecurity and biosafety sections, pages 56-58 as numbered on the report; pages 62-64 as numbered on the PDF.
• Preparing for the Next Pandemic — Expanding and Coordinating Global Regulatory Capacity – (2024 – Halabi et al., The New England Journal of Medicine)
• Global challenges in preparedness and response to epidemic infectious diseases (2022 – Olliaro et al., National Library of Medicine)
• Biosecurity Strategy (2024 – Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations)
• Securing Civilisation Against Catastrophic Pandemics (Gopal et al., 2023 – Geneva Papers)
• Modeling the benefits of virus discovery and pandemic virus identification (2024 – Jeyapragasan et al.)