Chris Bakerlee works on the Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team at Coefficient Giving. This essay originally appeared in Defenses in Depth.
Engineered pathogens pose a grave threat to society, plausibly constituting an existential risk1 (‘x-risk’) to humanity.2
Yet remarkably few people are working full-time on this problem. By my count,3 there are ~160 people on the planet whose full-time job is reducing bio x-risk.4 This entire group could fit on a single short-haul flight. As one point of comparison, something like 200+ organizations are working on AI safety – a problem area that is neglected in its own right (relative to its scale).5
This is bad. We have a short bench, and only limited time to solve this problem: AI is advancing quickly, and in the near term I expect advances to help attackers more than defenders.
We urgently need more talented people who want in on this mission. We’re especially short on people who can truly own crucial projects, approaching them with good judgment, entrepreneurial drive, and a mix of desperation and impatience sufficient to see them through to completion, and quickly. While many projects will benefit from technical expertise, it’s a common misconception that doing good biosecurity work requires a biology background.6
But what should these people actually… do?
Below is a list of 10 important projects that I’d be excited to see people work on and own. These projects cover:
Physical defenses: PPE stockpiles, DIY cleanrooms and respirators, particle monitoring
Prevention and policy: red-teaming safeguards, AI-bio demos for policymakers, food stockpile expansion, mirror life policy
Field-building: raising awareness, headhunting project leads
The list draws on ideas my Coefficient Giving team’s lead, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, discussed in a recent podcast and blog post. Many of these wouldn’t appear on traditional lists of biosecurity projects, but they are all pressing gaps that my colleagues and I see at the moment. You can read a bit more about how they fit into the bigger picture in the appendix.7
My team is eager to back promising people and projects (with funding, introductions, advice, etc.). If anything here resonates, you could:
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Projects I’d be excited to see people work on and own
1. Ensure PPE stockpiles and emergency distribution systems are in place in X country
Why it matters
In combination with social distancing, supplying the critical workforce with effective respirators could form the backbone of a minimum viable path to keeping society afloat in a high-lethality human-to-human pandemic. Stockpiling sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) may even be doable at the scale of private philanthropy. One of our grantees — Hadrian Biodefense — is already working toward stockpiling and distributing enough PPE for essential workers in the United States. It would be valuable to expand this work to other countries, especially those with the industrial capacity to develop and export medical countermeasures.8 In some cases, it might be easiest to expand government-funded stockpiles; in others, a philanthropic model might be more tractable.
Tentative victory condition
By end of 2027, at least three countries (combined population ≥500M) maintain effective stockpiles of enough elastomeric half-mask respirators (EHMRs), N95s, and/or powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs) to cover all critical workers for ≥6 months.
2. Ensure systematic red-teaming of gene synthesis and AIxBio safeguards
Inspired by work from Sentinel Bio, particularly Joshua Monrad and Janika Schmitt
Why it matters
Can gene synthesis providers and frontier AI companies successfully block bad actors from getting access to dangerous materials and information? One-off audits have found concerning holes in recent years, which has influenced both these companies’ systems and policymaking at the highest levels of government. But basically no one is systematically doing adversarial red-teaming on an ongoing, full-time basis. This means policymakers, businesses, and the public are flying blind as to whether the safeguards in place actually work.
Tentative victory condition
By mid-2027, there is a standing, well-resourced red-team unit running regular “in-situ” adversarial testing of gene synthesis providers, frontier AI labs, and other important biotech chokepoints (e.g., pathogen repositories, contract research organizations) across multiple jurisdictions. They coordinate with industry, law enforcement, and other stakeholders, and their findings are responsibly disclosed and reliably routed into provider-level fixes and regulatory action.
3. Create and use demos to communicate AI-bio uplift to policymakers
Why it matters
Most senior policymakers haven’t seen what frontier AI models can do for someone trying to design a pathogen. While skimming a whitepaper can be informative, watching a model coach a non-expert through a tricky plasmid design can be much more visceral. Demos have shaped policymaking before, but nobody is doing this on a sustained basis as capabilities evolve. Doing demos well – in a way that is accessible and calibrated, neither overstating nor understating capabilities – will take a lot of effort, skill, and expertise.
Tentative victory condition
By mid-2027, a standing “AI-bio demo team” – with credible biology expertise, well-honed materials, and calibrated practices around information hazards – has delivered briefings to senior staff in all relevant Congressional offices and executive-branch agencies, plus counterparts in at least 5 other major countries/jurisdictions. They are doing this on a continuing basis, updating as model capabilities advance.
4. Ensure strong, sensible mirror life policy is effective in X country
Why it matters
If ever created, mirror bacteria — built from scratch with mirror-image DNA, amino acids, etc. — would likely evade many of our immune defenses and grow largely unchecked by natural predators. We have reason to be concerned they could persistently saturate outdoor soil, water, and air, going on to kill humans and much other multicellular life. Scientific consensus today is to never build mirror bacteria, but norms get broken (e.g., He Jiankui in 2018), and the precursor technologies are advancing fast. There’s a growing international conversation about this risk, spanning United Nations agencies, national governments, and the relevant scientific communities, with the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund and others helping coordinate. But only about 10 people work on this full-time today, meaning someone serious could plausibly join the effort as a strong voice on mirror life policy in their country within months.9
Tentative victory condition
By end of 2028, all jurisdictions with credible technical capacity to develop mirror life have binding restrictions on mirror-cell synthesis and the most dangerous precursor technologies.
5. Develop rigorously tested DIY protocols for converting bedrooms into cleanrooms
Why it matters
In a scenario where lethal pathogens persist in the environment (e.g., mirror bacteria), outdoor air might be heavily contaminated with infectious aerosols. To survive, people would need to reduce the amount of outdoor particles they inhale by orders of magnitude, potentially for months on end. Stockpiling purpose-built cleanroom equipment for the whole population is wildly impractical.10 Fortunately, however, DIY solutions that use abundant materials (e.g., fans, filters, tape, blankets, vacuum cleaners) have a good shot at working. Slapdash preliminary tests by colleagues, using just tape and towels, have already attained a ~30x reduction in the hardest-to-filter particle sizes. But we still don’t have anything close to validated, expert-endorsed protocols that an emergency manager could responsibly push out to untrained households on day one.
Tentative victory condition
By end of 2027, there exists a publicly available, peer-reviewed, data-backed “Nuclear War Survival Skills“-style guide, showing ≥1000x sustained PM10 reduction when followed by untrained households for ≥7 days.
6. Develop rigorously tested DIY protocols for making respirators out of common household materials
Why it matters
Even with good DIY cleanrooms, people in an environment-to-human threat scenario couldn’t stay inside forever. Critical workers would need to leave home to keep water and power running, distribute essential supplies, and manufacture countermeasures. Most other people would also need to go out from time to time, too, if only to do maintenance work on their homes. Before a crisis hits, we should stockpile at least enough PPE for critical workers (see #1). But if there ends up not being enough PPE to go around, we need rigorous, well-tested protocols that untrained individuals can use to make effective PPE themselves. DIY “mask hacks” from 2020 (like these) were a good start, but we need people to push DIY respiratory protection to its limit.
Tentative victory condition
By end of 2027, there exists at least one validated DIY protocol that, when followed by untrained people using only items present in >80% of US households, reliably delivers ≥1000x PM10 reduction for ≥4 hours of continuous wear.
7. Scalably monitor particle concentrations inside clean spaces and respirators
Why it matters
In a crisis, untrained people would greatly benefit from fast, unambiguous feedback about whether their bedroom-cleanroom or DIY respirator is actually working — otherwise they may think they’re protected when they actually aren’t, or abandon protections that are working just fine. Existing particle counters typically cost thousands of dollars11 generally aren’t designed for stockpiling or in-respirator wear, and have no manufacturing plan suited to a crisis ramp-up.
Tentative victory condition
By end of 2027, there exists a working sensor design that accurately detects ≥1000x indoor/outdoor PM10 differentials, can be worn continuously inside a respirator, and either costs <$1 per unit to stockpile or has a validated path to surge manufacturing.12
8. Boost countries’ food stockpiles by >25%, especially countries with high industrial capacity
Why it matters
A worst-case environmental pathogen (like mirror bacteria) could make outdoor agriculture impossible for a year or more. Extensive research by my colleague Adin Richards has shown that non-agricultural food sources, like methanotrophic bacteria and algae grown in photobioreactors, could be a path forward even if we couldn’t grow plants outside anymore. The catch is that it would take a lot of time to get the necessary infrastructure up and running, straining our food reserves. Strategically enlarging food stockpiles could be a tractable lever to increasing societal resilience to this sort of threat, especially in countries otherwise well positioned to successfully establish non-agricultural food production.
Tentative victory condition
By the end of 2027, at least 3 major industrial economies have increased their effective food stockpiles by at least 25%.
9. Raise awareness of engineered pandemic risks, especially among people who can do something about it
Why it matters
Proportional to the scale of the problem, serious public discussion of catastrophic threats from engineered pathogens is virtually non-existent.13This holds back both talent recruitment and serious policy action. We need people to bring this issue to life for relevant audiences without sliding into sensationalism or misrepresenting the facts.14 It should be common knowledge that this is one of the major challenges society faces today.
Tentative victory condition
By the end of 2027, at least 3 journalists have this as their full-time beat, at least 10 Substacks write about the problem regularly, and the average university graduate lists it among the 10 most pressing threats facing society.
10. Headhunt the leads for these and many other projects
Why it matters
Simply put, nothing will happen if nobody does it. Projects need leadership. The people who will go on to lead these projects are out there. We need people to find them and accelerate their paths to doing the most impactful work on this issue. This could look like a lot of different things, including starting a headhunting org, working with an existing fieldbuilding operation to drive this forward (e.g., BlueDot Impact, 80,000 Hours, Coefficient Giving), or even (meta!) persuading someone else to take it on as their top priority.
Tentative victory condition
By the end of 2026, all of the above projects have at least one capable “owner” who sees it as their personal responsibility to make them happen.
We need more people working on these projects
As you can see, there is a lot of important work to be done, and not many people doing it. If you want to help change that:
Fill out this form to register your interest in this work and stay posted on opportunities
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And to learn more about biosecurity, I designed this reading list as a place to start.
You can read more about our team’s work and how these projects fit into a larger vision at our blog Defenses in Depth, where this piece was originally published.
Acknowledgements
I can’t take credit for these ideas, as the list draws heavily on discussions with my team and others in the field. Special thanks to Aman Patel, Adin Richards, and Damon Binder for their contributions. And kudos to the many grantees, collaborators, and colleagues whose ongoing work means several other projects didn’t need to appear here — the list would be longer and more daunting without them.
I’m also grateful to many people for feedback that informed the final version of this post, including Gabrielle Admans, Will Bradshaw, Grace Braithwaite, Emma Dolan, Dan Greenwald, Jeff Kaufman, Luke Leckie, Eleesheva Mayo-Ray, James Montavon, Janika Schmitt, and Shaan Shaikh.
One definition of existential risk that I like is Michael Aird’s 2020 definition, which he adapts from Toby Ord: “An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of the vast majority of humanity’s long-term potential.” There’s a lot of nuance one could get into about what counts and what doesn’t. Personally, my thinking here isn’t sophisticated, and in practice, I approximate x-risk as “the risk of all humans dying.”
To give a sense, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, who leads the team I’m on at Coefficient Giving, has estimated a 1-3% chance of a pandemic that threatens human survival within our lifetimes.
This piece was published in May 2026, so there may be a few more now.
In getting this rough count, I excluded people for whom biosecurity is just one component of their job, and people whose work is somewhat helpful for reducing bio x-risk but not directly aimed at solving the problem. The tally does include people who are working at orgs squarely focused on bio x-risk, even those personally more motivated by the non-x-risk impacts of their projects.
I asked Claude Opus 4.7 to do this count for me, then cross-checked it with a colleague on Coefficient Giving’s GCR Capacity Building team. This site gives a gist for the general activity level in AI safety. This analysis provides an additional perspective.
The main bottleneck is commitment, sound judgment, and the generalist agency to just get things done. People with those qualities can usually find their way into a problem, working out an approach that fits their background and assembling any technical help they need along the way.
This list isn't exhaustive, and it isn't ordered by priority — not all of these are equally pressing, but I consider all of them pressing in absolute terms. I see this list as offering strong hypotheses rather than final answers, so end-to-end ownership of any of these projects should include making sure it's actually the right thing to work on, not just taking my word for it.
ProEquip would be a great team to talk with as a first stop if you're interested in working on this project – could look like either starting a new initiative or joining their team.
Note: Broadly speaking, attempts to shape policy have real potential to backfire. I’d strongly encourage anybody interested in this project to think carefully about their approach and reach out to the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund to get the current lay of the land and discuss how to most productively contribute.
NB: I’m also excited about the project of getting air cleaning deployed widely before a pandemic hits. While I think the DIY goal is more neglected and tractable on short timelines, I’d be pumped for more people to take on the “peacetime deployment” mission and approach it with due urgency. (Thank you to Jeff Kaufman for feedback leading to this inclusion.)
Possibly the goal should instead be to have two sensors: one for room inside-outside differentials, another for respirator inside-outside differentials.
Historically, I’ve urged people to be very cautious about info hazards, especially in light of the unilateralist’s curse. I still think caution is warranted, e.g., I continue to discourage folks from sitting around idly brainstorming the best, most creative ways to kill everyone with pathogens. But I also think I and others have indexed too hard on info hazard concerns in the past, placing too little weight on the costs of caution in the cost-benefit calculation. Also, relative to the past, I think the costs of secrecy now are higher (since we are working against a tight deadline), and the costs of sharing information are lower (since open-source models may end up pointing bad guys to the most concerning information anyway).
It’s also important that, when considering which information to put out there, public communications weigh the relative costs and benefits. The vast majority of information is totally fine to share, but some information could inadvertently cause harm.
