Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons

The next great biological threat may not begin in a wet market, a jungle, or a laboratory accident. It may begin on a laptop with a commercially available AI model.In October 2025, AI researchers from Microsoft reported that generative AI tools could design dangerous proteins capable of evading biosecurity and, alarmingly, could slip past the screening systems used by DNA manufacturers.In February 2025, researchers at Arc Institute released Evo 2, an AI model trained on 128,000 genomes that can design entirely new organisms. The model achieves 90 percent accuracy in predicting which genetic mutations cause disease. Within weeks of its predecessor’s

The post Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons appeared first on War on the Rocks.