Bio Action Plan

AI is making biotechnology more powerful, accessible, and dangerous. Engineered pathogens could cause a devastating pandemic, and today’s defenses are not ready. This plan outlines how we build a global immune system to protect us all.

Why now?

An engineered pandemic is no longer a threat limited to nation-states or elite laboratories. As AI and biotechnology become more capable and accessible, the number of actors who could create a catastrophic threat grows rapidly.

AI matters because it can compress expertise: helping users search scientific literature, interpret protocols, troubleshoot experiments, and reason through biological design choices that previously required years of specialized training. At the same time, the practical infrastructure for doing biology is becoming easier to access: cloud labs can run experiments remotely, benchtop tools are becoming more capable, and DNA synthesis companies can turn digital sequence information into physical biological material. Together, AI, automation, and accessible lab services can make dangerous biological work faster, cheaper, and available to more actors.

The cost of synthesizing dangerous pathogens falls every year, while our surveillance systems, stockpiles, and safeguards remain largely where they were after COVID-19. We have much of the defensive technologies necessary. What we don't have is time. Every month of delay widens the gap between what threat actors can do and what our defenses can stop.

About this site

A public, living reference for a coordinated philanthropic, private-sector, and government action. The plan sets targets and the tracker keeps everyone honest about progress. Open, falsifiable, and designed to be replicable across geographies.