Kevin Esvelt

Good to see this out before the Bipartisan Commission @Biodefensecomm meeting on AI-bio today. The technical solution exists; we need mandates with robust red-teaming & teeth. It shouldn't be easy to buy DNA sufficient to make infectious 1918 influenza. nature.com/articles/s4146… x.com/AndrewCurran_/…

@nlpnyc @deanwball Of course, that also means there are a lot of blocks on areas that aren't security-relevant at all, but vibe as scary. And there are few on some of the most important concepts, which are far more dangerous than protocols. I do hope we can fix that, but it's a losing battle.

In US/China talks on AI this week, one mutual interest stands out: preventing models from helping to engineer worse-than-Covid pathogens. Start with mandatory DNA synthesis screening for pandemic-capable agents, then talk guardrails. No trust required. nature.com/articles/s4146…

Grateful to @gabrieldance for taking AI-biorisk seriously. Anthropic and OpenAI are more careful than the rest of society, but the bar is so low it's underground. No laws govern AI, bio regs are full of holes - and the problem extends beyond biothreats. nytimes.com/2026/04/29/us/…

@gabrieldance AI democratizes competence. Not just technical skills, but strategic thinking. Safety teams are filtering for operational recipes; the AIs are identifying vulnerable targets. Many folks have technical training but no sense of strategy or scale. What if one of them snaps?

I've started writing about safeguarding civilization and positive futures. Biosecurity, AI, infrastructure, supply chains, deterrence, and the moral frameworks underneath. First post: The Glory and the Horror. kesvelt.substack.com

Found a tick after hugging Daphne following a morning run. Thanks to @JoannaBuchthal & our collaborators, we can now engineer animals to resist Lyme disease. But until we immunize the wild white-footed mice that carry it, we’re stuck with tick checks. nature.com/articles/s4146…