After returning to the White House almost 19 months ago, U.S. President Donald Trump directed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, then led by Tesla/SpaceX head Elon Musk) to target “waste, fraud and abuse.” But many Trump critics argued that he was cutting essential muscle, not fat, from the federal government. Now, according to the Washington Post and the Daily Beast, national security experts are worried about the firing of up to 30 bioweapons specialists.
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The Daily Beast’s Will Neal reports, “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.”
Neal notes that under Biden’s presidency, “up to 30” biosecurity experts “worked on how best to protect the U.S. from deadly pathogens being weaponized by the nation’s adversaries.”
“Under Trump 2.0,” Neal reports, “their number has shrunk to the point that, at times, no one has been committed solely to these threats, according to the newspaper.”
A former federal government official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Post, “They have kneecapped themselves in their ability to create any policy that would have staying power. That’s the risk, they’re not playing the long game.”
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Neal notes that in the United States’ federal government, “biological security has never been the responsibility of a single federal authority.”
“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,” Neal explains. “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’…. 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.”
Neal adds, “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.”
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