Biosecurity and Engineered Pandemic Risk
Synthesis capability is spreading faster than the controls on it.
Severity score
57.6
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Gene synthesis, published enhancement research and increasingly capable AI assistance have lowered the barrier to constructing dangerous pathogens. Screening of synthesis orders remains voluntary in most jurisdictions and enforcement is minimal.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
36Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
80People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
80Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
12Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
90Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.