Things we often tell people considering pivoting into biosecurity work
This will probably be a collaborative giving-advice-to-newcomers style post
Preliminary outline:
Intro
Write something if you repeat it a lot
Biosecurity vs. scope-sensitive ‘EA’ biosecurity
There are good opportunities for learning, getting started, and testing your fit.
Compared to 5 years ago, we have solid options for getting up to speed
(Meta) readings lists, newsletters, courses, research programs
EA-specific mentoring and orgs are sparse
Not many orgs, not a ton of growth
There is a shortage of organizations that can absorb talent
Need for more orgs in the future
Good to have more founder type people
a lot of high-level strategic work (roadmapping, blueprinting) to figure out priorities and gaps in existing academic/industry research
Mentoring is really bottlenecked
Free yourself from the ‘EA’-label / A lot of important work happens outside of EA
But don’t despair! There are many places to do important work!
Biosec interventions have a pretty solid causal chain
And many scope-sensitive biosec-promising interventions (path. Agnostic etc.pp.) have lots of overlap with public health or One Health focussed biosec.
A lot of important stuff outside of EA, esp. When it comes to actually implementing stuff
Examples
Very valuable to get additional marginal scope-sensitive thinking in traditional settings
Become an expert in something “boring”
Link ASB thing and say it also applies to technical stuff, not only policy work
Yes, you can most likely contribute [so be agentic]
Biosec is highly interdisciplinary
points about taking initiative and being agentic.
Kind of a call to action toward the end of the post
Plenty of open questions for a number of backgrounds
You def don’t need a biomedical background (that seems to be a common misconception)
Link to Will’s post about biosecurity needs engineers
Things we often tell people considering pivoting into biosecurity work
This will probably be a collaborative giving-advice-to-newcomers style post
Preliminary outline:
Intro
Write something if you repeat it a lot
Biosecurity vs. scope-sensitive ‘EA’ biosecurity
There are good opportunities for learning, getting started, and testing your fit.
Compared to 5 years ago, we have solid options for getting up to speed
(Meta) readings lists, newsletters, courses, research programs
EA-specific mentoring and orgs are sparse
Not many orgs, not a ton of growth
There is a shortage of organizations that can absorb talent
Need for more orgs in the future
Good to have more founder type people
a lot of high-level strategic work (roadmapping, blueprinting) to figure out priorities and gaps in existing academic/industry research
Mentoring is really bottlenecked
Free yourself from the ‘EA’-label / A lot of important work happens outside of EA
But don’t despair! There are many places to do important work!
Biosec interventions have a pretty solid causal chain
And many scope-sensitive biosec-promising interventions (path. Agnostic etc.pp.) have lots of overlap with public health or One Health focussed biosec.
A lot of important stuff outside of EA, esp. When it comes to actually implementing stuff
Examples
Very valuable to get additional marginal scope-sensitive thinking in traditional settings
Become an expert in something “boring”
Link ASB thing and say it also applies to technical stuff, not only policy work
Yes, you can most likely contribute [so be agentic]
Biosec is highly interdisciplinary
points about taking initiative and being agentic.
Kind of a call to action toward the end of the post
Plenty of open questions for a number of backgrounds
You def don’t need a biomedical background (that seems to be a common misconception)
Link to Will’s post about biosecurity needs engineers
Examples
(Conclusion)
Reach out, etc. Maybe just a closing sentence
Good point on mentoring. Would love if you write this to also give tips about mentoring (or whether one can progress without mentors).