FORT BELVOIR, Va. — Artificial intelligence is “dramatically lowering the barrier” to developing biological weapons, according to the Army’s updated biodefense strategy. At the same time, the technology could give commanders and troops a clearer understanding of how natural and human-made biological threats will affect future battlefields, service officials said.
The strategy is designed to prepare the Army to “deploy, fight, and win decisively in a bio-contested environment” by 2035 through improved training, advanced early-warning systems and more resilient equipment. Army leaders and biological-threat experts are also rethinking how the service identifies and responds to such dangers. Officials who briefed reporters Tuesday said AI will be central to the effort, from advising on the positioning of forces to countering enemy attempts to spread confusion and panic during outbreaks.
AI and the growing bioweapons risk
In 2023, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told U.S. lawmakers that AI could “widen the range of actors with the technical capability to conduct a large-scale biological attack,” warning that such a scenario could emerge within “two to three years.”
That prospect appears to be moving closer. A new Stanford paper published this week describes how feeding genetic data into advanced AI models could help produce a new type of virus capable of infecting bacteria, demonstrating the technology’s potential to overcome the immune defenses of other organisms.
The development has alarmed RAND molecular biologist Steph Guerra. “As AI capabilities advance, viral bioweapons could become much easier to design and produce and could cause even more harm than the weapons used in the past,” Guerra wrote.
AI can also help societies and militaries defend against those weapons. “We know that everything is changing faster now, and so part of the key to the strategy is making sure that we’re adaptable,” said Alison Tamasi, chief of the survivability and effects division at the Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency.
However, detecting biological threats on the battlefield is far more complicated than generating them. Much as finding a needle in a haystack is harder than making needles, AI-assisted detection remains a complex, human-centered task rather than a simple matter of feeding data into a model. That challenge helps explain the importance of the Army’s revised biodefense strategy, researchers said.
One major component is a new generation of portable genetic-sequencing kits. No larger than a computer printer, the systems can analyze genetic samples on a laptop without a cloud connection. Similar technology might be found in a doctor’s office, but a cheek swab collected in a clean clinical setting differs greatly from field samples contaminated by dust, airborne particles, fibers or animal tissue. Obtaining results within about a day is also far more useful than waiting weeks for samples to be transported back to the United States.
The Army expects the kits to identify samples as either known biological threats or newly emerging dangers, helping commanders develop responses as threats evolve.
Biology cannot be stopped—but it can be planned for
AI is not the only factor increasing the risk of future biological threats. New viruses emerge naturally, while globalization allows them to spread more rapidly. The military’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic also “exposed shortfalls in Army biodefense capabilities,” according to the new strategy.
A 2023 study found that COVID-19 pushed the military into new civilian-support roles and imposed additional requirements on forces worldwide, undermining unit cohesion and readiness while taking a toll on service members’ mental and physical health.
The revised strategy places greater emphasis on preparing troops to operate during a pandemic, whether it occurs naturally or is deliberately caused. Officials said that demonstrating this ability could deter an adversary from incorporating a biological attack into a broader military campaign.
“The challenge is going to be how we do this [sample collection, analysis] in the crisis phase, or worse, in the conflict phase,” said Col. Dennis Ruffolo, deputy director for force health protection at the Office of the Surgeon General and Army Medical Command. “That’s really what this is going to get after … making sure all Army leaders understand that we have to learn ways to fight through the biothreats.”
AI will also help commanders understand the biological threats they face—or may face—in as much detail as possible, Ruffolo said.
That understanding will depend on AI models as well as personnel who collect samples, monitor environments and conduct analyses. Preparing for these contingencies requires more soldiers to recognize biological-threat monitoring as a priority and receive the equipment and training needed to carry it out.
“I have operators below me who do not have doctorates or [are] not microbiologists,” said Army microbiologist Amina Zeidan of the 44th Medical Brigade. “I have E-4 specialists who are able to operate that technology with protocols that I have written, and they can do that unsupervised.”
The strategy makes these efforts a central priority across training, equipment, facilities and policy.
“Historically, the Army treated biodefense as a specialized problem,” the strategy states. “Victory in future conflicts requires an Army that treats biodefense not as a secondary concern, but as a core warfighting imperative. This strategy provides the roadmap.”