EA Global Bay Area 2024 | Preventing Engineered Pandemics | Tessa Alexanian

Should you be able to order smallpox DNA in the mail? Biosecurity professionals have argued for almost 20 years that synthesis companies should screen orders so that pathogen and toxin sequences are only sent to people with a real scientific use for them. Now, it seems like fears of AI-engineered pandemics may spur governments to make screening mandatory.
Tessa will discuss why securing nucleic acid synthesis is a biosecurity priority, methods for identifying concerning synthesis orders, and why it’s so challenging to implement robust screening systems.
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