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AI, cyber-attacks and amateur experiments threaten to upend global biosecurity, WHO warns
Rapid technological advances have ‘redefined the biological threat landscape’ and heightened risks of manipulation
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Artificial intelligence, cyber-attacks and genetic engineering could pose potentially catastrophic biosecurity threats to countries around the world, the WHO has warned.
Rapid technological advances in the past decade have “redefined the biological threat landscape” and heightened risks of manipulation, the updated guidance from the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on Biosafety said.
Whether it is to prevent another pandemic, a terrorist attack or antimicrobial resistance, the report advised that member states should include “essential elements of biological risk mitigation and management” within their national laboratory biosafety and laboratory biosecurity strategies.
It advises that member states should include “essential elements of biological risk mitigation and management within their national laboratory biosafety and laboratory biosecurity strategies, policies, programmes, and mechanisms.”
The WHO identified biosafety and biosecurity awareness as one of the “weakest core capacities” of its member states in a review in 2022.
The authors said the updated laboratory biosecurity guidance, a complete revision of the first published in 2006, was required to help national regulatory bodies and other institutions “establish or strengthen frameworks for handling high-consequence pathogens”.
‘High-consequence biological agents’
The guidance also clarifies that the term ‘biosecurity’ used in this lab context, should not be confused with the term biosecurity used to refer to risks associated with “release of modified living organisms” and “invasive alien species”, also known as astrobio defence.
This year’s World Health Assembly adopted a resolution on ‘strengthening laboratory biological risk management’ as a necessary health security capacity.
The resolution covers laboratory biosafety, referring to both unintentional and intentional exposure to or release of biological or other materials.
It called on the WHO to guide member states on how to deal with “high-consequence biological agents that would, in case of release or exposure, cause significant harm or potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The UK’s 2023 Biological Security Strategy report said that their vision was for the UK to be “resilient to a spectrum of biological threats and a world leader in innovation” by 2030.
In the report’s foreword, former deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden said that “we will continue to work with like-minded partners and allies globally to move away from the ‘one bug, one drug’ approach of the 20th century.”
He added: “We can defeat the threats of the future – but only if we refuse to stand still, and instead continue to innovate and strengthen our health resilience to protect the future wellbeing and economic security of the UK.”
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