The Next Bioweapon Could Attack Our Genes

The Next Bioweapon Could Attack Our Genes

Darren Orf

• The confluence of synthetic biology and artificial intelligence is lowering the technical barrier for bioterrorism, according to some experts.

• Developing a weapon capable of attacking the human genome remains technically challenging—especially devising the means to do widespread damage

• The next threat may be mutagenic, teratogenic, or something else entirely, and the world is likely entering a new era of heightened vigilance against biological weapons.

  
  

  We live in an age of seemingly unending crises. The world continues to warm, pushing Earth into the sixth mass extinction event in its history. Intractable wars and conflicts rage on multiple continents. The U.S. life expectancy is now at the lowest it's been in 30 years. Then, there's artificial intelligence, a massive uncertainty bomb with the equal possibility to help solve—or exacerbate—all of the above.

  Nowhere is this more obvious than in the biomedical field, where AI's ability to pore over massive data sets, recognize patterns, and design novel viruses and bacteriophages is already reshaping research. This is only the beginning of what scientists call "synthetic biology," and like so many human breakthroughs, it could be critical to tackling medical crises, such as the rise of antimicrobial-resistant superbugs. But those tools could just as easily fuel a new age of bioweapons, a threat serious enough that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for a slowdown of AI development.

  Arms control experts have warned for decades about weapons that attack the human genome instead of the human body. And unfortunately, those warnings aren't hypothetical, since cruder chemical versions have already been used in warfare. Between 1962 and 1971, U.S. aircraft sprayed nearly 19 million gallons of herbicide across Vietnam. Much of it was Agent Orange, tainted during manufacture with TCDD—the most toxic dioxin ever identified, and a known human carcinogen. It causes birth defects and abnormalities in developing embryos.

  Of course, Vietnam wasn't the only theater of war where weapons were used that caused prolonged medical issues, whether cancer or reproductive problems. In the early 1980s, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig accused the USSR of using Trichothecene mycotoxins (a known teratogen), otherwise known as "yellow rain," in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. In 1995, Saddam Hussein's regime admitted to the U.N. that Iraq had developed aflatoxins—chemicals produced by the fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus—for use in aerial bombs and Scud missile warheads. The toxin wasn't meant to kill troops. Instead, its main method of destruction is an insidious one: It causes the rapid development of liver cancer, particularly in children.

  "From a moral standpoint, aflatoxin is the cruelest weapon," Richard Spertzel, the chief weapons inspector for the now-defunct United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) told Slate in 2002. "It means watching children die slowly of liver cancer."

  These fears are only exacerbated today by gene editing technologies and artificial intelligence. In February 2016, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, added gene-editing to a list of "weapons of mass destruction and proliferation," and a year later, China's People's Liberation Army noted in an authoritative textbook that "specific ethnic genetic attacks" could become increasingly possible. In 2024, the Washington Post reported that Russia was expanding an old bioweapons lab in the midst of its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.