Frontier cyber capabilities expand the attack surface for biological weaponization, but current risk evaluations assess these domains in isolation. This project will identify the most plausible, accessible, and severe ways these capabilities could be combined and map the causal pathways through which they lead to harm.
About the project
Current AI systems lower the barrier to cyberattacks while reducing the technical skill needed to complete instrumental steps in biological weaponization pathways, such as evading DNA screening or improving the design of a dispersal device. Pharmaceutical companies, well-resourced academic labs, and contract research organizations may be sufficiently hardened against data exfiltration, ransomware, or cyber threats directly tied to financial loss, but lack clear incentives to harden against insider threats seeking to cause harm. Making matters worse, this threat is liable to blindside us as a society given technical evaluations assess cyber and biological capabilities independently. There is a dearth of standard evaluation sets that combine them. Your goal is to move us beyond this unacceptable state of affairs and, in doing so, strengthen national and global security.
In order to create model evaluations that assess an agent’s skill across an attack pathway from an initial cyber foothold to a biological consequence, a threat model must first be established. You will identify which paths matter most for national security and define the capabilities each path requires. For this project, you will focus on bioinfrastructure in the United States, though you need not be based there. National affiliation and location of the will have no baring on mentee selection.
Theory of change
By assessing the intersection of two of the highest-impact near-term risks posed by AI, agentic cyberattacks and biological weaponization, the project will reveal threat pathways overlooked in the current risk landscape. In doing so, the project will provide a basis for prioritizing where and how evaluations combining these domains should be conducted, while also identifying choke points along these new threat pathways.
Your role
Mentees will have a high degree of autonomy over their projects and will be expected to manage their time and communicate proactively. I place a high value on mentees who are able to write clearly and in long form. For example, the ideal mentee can write about their progress and confusion over the course of a week, with enough context that if I showed it to a colleague unfamiliar with their project, they would understand the mentees thinking.
A firm deliverable will be the mentee posting a piece of public writing on the project by the end of SPAR.
Prerequisites
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Substantive experience in at least one area relevant to the project. This could include cybersecurity, biological research or engineering, AI capability evaluations, or work involving adversarial risk assessment or safeguarding.
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Experience completing at least one substantial, open-ended research or technical project.
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Evidence that they can independently learn unfamiliar technical material and drive a research agenda with limited supervision.
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Demonstrated willingness to write for a public audience
5.Evidence that they can maintain momentum and produce useful work within a fixed timeline.
Application question(s)
- Review the materials below, which describe the same research project. Assess the project’s central claims, whether the research is novel and relevant to biosecurity, and the strength of the evidence presented in the paper and GitHub repo. Explain concretely how you investigated the project and what you concluded. (~300 words. I care more about your reasoning and process than the word limit.)
a. https://appliedscientific.ai/research/refusalbench-biosecurity-frontier-ai b. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21545 c. https://github.com/AppliedScientific/refusalbench
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Provide a link to a writing you've authored and posted online (optional, but recommended)
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If you've had experience dealing with threat actors and adversarial scenarios connected to real world harm, describe. (optional)
About the mentor
My research focuses on assessing whether AI systems might meaningfully lower the barriers to weaponizing biology. Prior to this, I worked in pharmaceutical industry on a mRNA drug discovery team, and have conducted translation research into nephrology.