AI, Bioterrorism and the Urgent Need for Australian Action
With President Trump committing to repeal the executive order, it’s imperative that other countries impose equivalent requirements to sustain a global norm of DNA safety screening. While Australia has yet to act, a fix would be relatively straightforward. The minister for agriculture, Julie Collins, and the minister for health, Mark Butler, already jointly administer a regime governing the importation of synthetic DNA into Australia.
Updating those regulations in line with the US’s approach is a no-brainer. Prospective synthetic pandemics have profound security implications. A designed pathogen could have features unseen in naturally evolved viruses. Those features could include both a high reproduction rate and high lethality. A pandemic caused by such a pathogen could cause widespread absenteeism, leading to such blows as the collapse of the power grid and other critical infrastructure.
Lab leaks are also a growing risk. The intersection of AI and biotechnology increases the risk of accidents. Experts assess that lab leaks have already overtaken natural spillover as the most likely cause of the next pandemic.
While the origin of coronavirus that causes Covid-19 remains unknown and contested, we know that lab leaks occur frequently. The original SARS virus escaped from labs at least three times. A 2021 study reported 71 high-risk human-caused pathogen exposure events between 1975 and 2016, and data collected via an anonymous survey on biosecurity in Belgium reported almost 100 laboratory-acquired infections in five years.
Tighter regulations and regular inspections improve biosafety. In the US, more tightly regulated ‘select agent’ laboratories exhibited a 6.5-fold lower accidental infection rate than other labs. In Australia, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator is responsible for lab regulation and oversight. Australia is a significant player, with four of the approximately 51 known labs classified as level-4. Level-4 facilities hold terrifying viruses such as ebola, marburg and nipah.
The regulator is required to, and does, inspect those labs only once every three years for recertification. (It also does a few inspections to confirm compliance with specific licenses.) Bridging the three-year gaps, the labs submit annual reports of inspections by experts whom they appoint. We need to look at tightening this regimen, particularly by increasing the frequency of inspections by the regulator.
The concerns with Australia’s current approach aren’t limited to inspections. The guidelines for Australia’s level-4 facilities were last updated in 2007. Australian Standard 1324.1 is used to specify the level of filtration for exhausts from such facilities. AS1324.1 was functionally superseded in 2016 https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/ai-bioterrorism-and-the-urgent-need-for-australian-action/by ISO16890 because AS1324.1 overestimates the effectiveness of HEPA filters by about half.
Greg Sadler is the CEO of Good Ancestors Policy, a charity focused on practical policy recommendations for mitigating Australia’s biggest risks.This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
