The Trump administration is in a full-on scramble to bandage the deep cuts it made to research staff as fears grow that AI could supercharge development of new-age weapons straight out of a horror movie.
President Donald Trump, 80, has scythed away at the number of White House researchers dedicated to biological security since retaking office last year, The Washington Post reports. Under President Joe Biden, up to 30 experts worked on how best to protect the U.S. from deadly pathogens being weaponized by the nation’s adversaries. Under Trump 2.0, their number has shrunk to the point that, at times, no one has been committed solely to these threats, according to the newspaper.
“They have kneecapped themselves in their ability to create any policy that would have staying power,” one former official, who withheld their name for fear of retaliation, told the Post. “That’s the risk, they’re not playing the long game.”
Biological security has never been the responsibility of a single federal authority. The White House team under Biden, made up of leading experts in the field, instead helped coordinate between multiple agencies with overlapping mandates. One of Trump’s first moves after retaking office was to throw out a 2023 presidential order on artificial intelligence that explicitly called for stronger measures against biological threats.
He has instead relied on what the Post describes as “a small revolving cast of employees,” among them a “junior fellow without a security clearance,” an Air Force doctor otherwise working as “a consultant to the White House medical office,” a part-time researcher, and “a pair of CIA staffers with little expertise in the field.”
The newspaper adds that Trump has shut down a unit at the National Security Agency specifically “dedicated to health security,” along with breaking up teams at both the Department of Homeland Security and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who had worked on these types of threats.
The president has stripped back regulations in an effort to boost the tech and particularly the AI sectors during his second term, a move panned by many critics as pandering to the Big Tech interests that have given generously to pro-MAGA causes over the past few years.
Ever more advanced AI models have shown aptitude for highly complex biological research, prompting fears even within the industry that those capabilities could, in the absence of safeguards, potentially “aid even a relative amateur in carrying out a biological attack” or be used to develop weapons that “set off a new pandemic,” the Post reports.
The administration now appears to be taking that threat more seriously. Efforts to engage with the danger have included “a recent string of briefings on biological risks between OpenAI and the White House and half a dozen agencies,” the newspaper reports, citing a source with knowledge of those talks.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story. “The administration’s commitment to addressing AI and biological safety risks is clear and ongoing,” a spokesperson told the Post. “The White House has been developing policy for over a year, including in our AI Action Plan last summer.”
