Why AI-assisted bioweapons from lone wolves and non-state actors won't kill us all

Published on October 8, 2026 4:04 PM GMT [Subtitle.] I interviewed dozens of biosecurity experts. The fear that AI will enable lone wolves to build pandemics is a case study in how domain expertise gets sidelined. This is a crosspost for Why AI-assisted bioweapons won't kill us all by Abi Olvera, which was published on Positive Sum on 20 July 2026. Here is a response from Olivia Scharfman, and here is Abi's reply to it. Some of my friends think we are going to die because AI will make building a bioweapon easier. The fear is often that AI will walk an ordinary person through unleashing a pandemic. Or that AI will facilitate the creation of an engineered pandemic that could kill millions or billions on Earth. I spent ten years as a US diplomat. My job was often to check claims before Washington acted. I wanted to double check this too. I interviewed dozens of biosecurity experts who had decades at the lab bench. Yes, AI makes virology work a little easier. But it is still extremely difficult. Media headlines often say “AI can make this step easier” without the broader context that a bioweapon involves a lot of hard steps that are not easier. The public doesn’t hear this context because of our information ecosystem. Let me first explain why I’m no longer worried [about lone wolves and non-state actors]: Why bioweapons are rare Since the 1980s, there has been exactly one fatal bioterror attack.[1] They are rare because 1. they are difficult, and 2. they are bad weapons. People who want to cause harm still do cost-benefit thinking. For almost any goal they have, a bomb, a gun, a chemical, or a cyberattack is cheaper, faster, and more controllable. Practitioners flagged several more barriers: You have to be comfortable killing your own people. Pathogens kill indiscriminately. Few groups are this malicious and extreme. Groups that are tend toward paranoia and rigid hierarchies that make them less effective. You need significant resources. Bioweapons capable of harming many people need equipment, chemicals, and professionals trained in different fields. You need an institution for access to specialized equipment and materials. Many items are too niche for black markets. Essential equipment like biosafety cabinets or fume hoods requires professional installation and ongoing manufacturer support. Some materials are restricted; for example, viruses need host cells, cell lines are sold only to institutions, and plasmids require institutional credentials. In the United States, only tens of thousands of people have sustained access to such facilities and supplies. Your team must be both highly competent and completely secret. A contamination incident could destroy the pathogen or infect the team. You need to convince and retain experts from different domains e.g. biology, chemistry, engineering, aerosolization, or fieldcraft to carry out attacks. Recruiting without detection is hard too. For a detailed version of this list, see my full piece. Even well-resourced groups with scientific talent still fail. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult with ~$1 billion, failed in all ten of their attempts to release biological agents. Why AI models don’t change this AI can supply biology and chemistry knowledge, but not hands-on skill. Reading every surgery textbook doesn’t make you a good surgeon. The biology laboratory works in a similar apprenticeship model. You learn by failing repeatedly under a mentor who has also failed repeatedly. To get a sense of the physical nature of biology work, I explored one aspect: moving liquids. Biologists often use pipettes, very precise eye-dropper-like tools. Students will often try fifty times to get it right. Practitioners develop a feel for specific materials over the years. Photo by CDC on Unsplash This skill appears in almost every bioweapon protocol. It is hard because: Materials are often fragile. Some DNA strands can shear from hand tremors. Some proteins are so temperature sensitive that the pressure of moving the liquid generates enough heat to destroy them. Concentration has to be exact. If a sample is too dilute, DNA strands may never find each other. Instructions might say “check with a spectrophotometer,” but a practiced scientist recognizes when a bubble or residual chemical is corrupting the reading. Contamination in biology is unforgiving. A one-in-a-million contaminant in chemistry is usually negligible. In biology, this can matter because organisms multiply. Creating a bioweapon involves many more complex steps. Converting viral DNA into a live virus is hard even for researchers. Stabilizing a pathogen into an effective aerosol often requires specialists from different fields. AI can describe the process but doesn’t give you the skills to execute it. (I walk through the full chain of steps here.) Even success probably wouldn’t be catastrophic A motivated team of scientists with institutional access could keep trying and eventually succeed at making a pathogen. But success would