A world in which thousands of people can construct and release autonomous biological agents is unlikely to flourish
Professor Kevin Esvelt, the leader of Sculpting Evolution, is responsible for CRISPR-based gene drive, the first technology that enables a single researcher to unilaterally edit entire species and ecosystems. Thankfully, gene drive favors defense. That may not be true for other autonomous biotechnologies.
Our challenge is to prevent the immense power of biotechnology from being misused. Historical pandemics killed tens of millions of people, and engineered agents could be even more destructive.
Many thousands of people have the technical skills to build and release autonomous biological weapons, but only if they know what to make and can obtain a physical copy – for example, by assembling it from synthetic DNA.
To protect humanity, we should screen all DNA synthesis orders for potential bioweapons, ideally without disclosing what we're looking for. A secure global screening system would:
- Minimize the number of people with access to bioweapons
- Securely guard against new potential bi… View full description
A world in which thousands of people can construct and release autonomous biological agents is unlikely to flourish
Professor Kevin Esvelt, the leader of Sculpting Evolution, is responsible for CRISPR-based gene drive, the first technology that enables a single researcher to unilaterally edit entire species and ecosystems. Thankfully, gene drive favors defense. That may not be true for other autonomous biotechnologies.
Our challenge is to prevent the immense power of biotechnology from being misused. Historical pandemics killed tens of millions of people, and engineered agents could be even more destructive.
Many thousands of people have the technical skills to build and release autonomous biological weapons, but only if they know what to make and can obtain a physical copy – for example, by assembling it from synthetic DNA.
To protect humanity, we should screen all DNA synthesis orders for potential bioweapons, ideally without disclosing what we're looking for. A secure global screening system would:
- Minimize the number of people with access to bioweapons
- Securely guard against new potential bioweapons without drawing attention to them
- Refrain from delaying legitimate research
The Secure DNA Project
Our team of academic life scientists, cryptographers, and policy analysts from many nations came together in 2019 to devise a system capable of secure and universal DNA synthesis screening that would be suitable for stepwise or complete implementation by stakeholders.
Current screening approaches are inaccurate and insecure. They work by looking for similarities between ordered DNA sequences and the genomes of potential bioweapons. Unfortunately, there are so many similar sequences that innocent orders are mistakenly identified as threats, requiring human experts to examine them one by one. Worse, the database of potential bioweapons is necessarily public, so newly emerging threats can't be blocked without providing rogue actors with blueprints and a credible incentive to use them.
We accordingly sought to re-envision DNA synthesis screening from first principles:
Necessity: we only need to block the synthesis of a few essential pieces of each bioweapon
Functionality: we should also block access to any sequences predicted to function equivalently
Security: automated screening should not disclose DNA orders or potential bioweapons
The Proposed Solution
Securely screen for random critical fragments and functional equivalents without false alarms