Monitoring and advocacy to make Zoonotic Risk Prediction projects safer
Biorisk and recovery from catastrophe
Following COVID-19, a great deal of funding is becoming available for “Zoonotic Risk Prediction” projects, which intend to broadly sample wildlife pathogens, map their evolutionary space for pandemic potential, and publish rank-ordered lists of the riskiest pathogens. Such work is of dubious biodefence value, presents a direct risk of accidental release in the field and lab, and the resulting information is a clear biosecurity infohazard.
We would be excited to fund projects to collect, monitor, and report on the activities of these projects. ZRP projects have multiple components- field sampling, computational modelling, and lab characterization—each of which carry distinct risks and leaves an information trail. Monitoring and reporting on open source information associated with ZRP projects could disincentivize the riskiest aspects of this work, target resources for event surveillance and early warning of accidental release, and provide material for advocacy efforts.
There is some overlap with portions of the BWC project, but I think this is best tackled as a separate body of work/by a different team (due to radically different OPSEC, deception, and scrutiny profiles). I’ve thought about this a fair bit and am happy to discuss offline.
Monitoring and advocacy to make Zoonotic Risk Prediction projects safer
Biorisk and recovery from catastrophe
Following COVID-19, a great deal of funding is becoming available for “Zoonotic Risk Prediction” projects, which intend to broadly sample wildlife pathogens, map their evolutionary space for pandemic potential, and publish rank-ordered lists of the riskiest pathogens. Such work is of dubious biodefence value, presents a direct risk of accidental release in the field and lab, and the resulting information is a clear biosecurity infohazard.
We would be excited to fund projects to collect, monitor, and report on the activities of these projects. ZRP projects have multiple components- field sampling, computational modelling, and lab characterization—each of which carry distinct risks and leaves an information trail. Monitoring and reporting on open source information associated with ZRP projects could disincentivize the riskiest aspects of this work, target resources for event surveillance and early warning of accidental release, and provide material for advocacy efforts.
There is some overlap with portions of the BWC project, but I think this is best tackled as a separate body of work/by a different team (due to radically different OPSEC, deception, and scrutiny profiles). I’ve thought about this a fair bit and am happy to discuss offline.