MIT ordered 1918 flu DNA fragments from 38 synthesis firms; 36 shipped with no screening
NathanpmYoung · x · 2026-10-03
How AI lowers the barrier to building pathogens
An MIT team led by Kevin Esvelt split the 1918 pandemic influenza virus's DNA into fragments and ordered them from 38 synthesis providers. 36 shipped. No screening was triggered. Pieces of a pandemic virus arrived by mail.
AI's role
- AI can't yet build a pathogen end-to-end, but it dramatically cuts the expertise required
- In August, a Stanford team used an AI model to design an entirely new virus from scratch: 16 of 300 synthetic genomes were viable, and a mix wiped out a bacterial target already immune to natural viruses
- Nature doesn't optimize viruses to kill humans — AI-designed ones might
The thread argues this is one concrete path by which AI could enable mass-casualty bioweapons, highlighting gaps in gene-synthesis screening and AI biosecurity risk.
More from Safety
- Brundage doubles down: with billions of users, AI firms aren't causally blameless for deaths — Miles_Brundage · 2026-10-03
- Miles Brundage: shipping with known flaws isn't iterative deployment, it's just faster shipping — Miles_Brundage · 2026-10-03
- OpenAI's new reasoning models can have chats human-reviewed even if you opted out — JeremyNguyenPhD · 2026-10-03
- NUS Press Unveils a 'Very Sensible' AI Writing Policy, Economist Endorses Its Rationale — paulnovosad · 2026-10-03
- Test shows DeepMind's SynthIDBio protein watermark can be washed out, researchers say — owl_posting · 2026-10-03
- Ex-OpenAI safety lead: 12 launches left no time to fix structures, some mistakes may not be iterable — CurieuxExplorer · 2026-10-03