The crossroads today has reached in the time of the world when nothing has been left untouched by tech advancements and it has become risky.
Among such advancements and threats is artificial intelligence (AI) foundational models and misuse of biological warfare, which is a form of invisible thunderstorm – multi-bladed cutting ahead of the thundering sound towards international security, health, and social stability.
AI rapid engines have grown to cover applications and scale never imagined before – defense, biotechnology, and, in fact, war. Advances include technology-influenced biotechnology for ease in establishing and proliferation of biological agents.
To a great degree, the risk scale for a worst-case scenario increases when disaster scenarios of these two strong influences- or intersection of AI and biological weapons- come in contact with each other. AI foundational models with different domains, large language models and generative adversarial networks have revolutionized various industries such as healthcare and finance.
These models understand and process massive trillions of data, simulating a behavior-based decision mechanism for complex scenarios. Drug design, natural disaster prediction, as well as streamlined decision making, are all characteristic activities for such models. The power packed into an AI tool carries with it some severe form of dangers, though. It becomes truly serious and lethal when used in a bad way. Hacking or mischief within such foundational models may be disastrous due to fast imprinting due to biotechnology. So scarier will become the times when such things are done using AI for the design, improvement, or dissemination of biological weapons.
For centuries, biological warfare, the deliberate release of pathogens, or the use of organisms to inflict harm on others, has been a threat; however, AI’s participation in this process brings up new territories. Neural nets prediction regarding the evolution of pathogens; engineered viruses, delivery, and dispersal mechanisms can all be automated, refined, and scaled up for weaponization using AI.
The combination of AI and biological weapons therefore poses all new threats to both health security on a global level and geopolitical geographies, by which international communities require meaningful understanding and consequent mitigation. This article is intended to address foundational model issues applied to AI weaponization of biological agents and the ramifications of hacking those AI systems. It would also seek to discuss the strategic implications on these developments and the central theme encouraging proactive measures that would be put in place against such new threats.
The Convergence of AI and Biological Weapons: A Growing Threat
To comprehend the magnitude of the threat, let us analyze how AI foundational models and biotechnology may confound the question. AI models, particularly those trained on the enormous dataset, have acted as catalysts for modernizing industries such as health, defense, etc. In the field of biotechnology, AI has served as a critical tool for examining genetic data or simulating biological processes or pathogen evolution.
In biological warfare, AI-specific simulations and optimization of genetic modifications give opportunities for malicious actors to design pathogens with specific properties. For instance, the AI model could help predict how viruses or bacteria could be engineered to become more contagious, more lethal, or resistant to current medical treatments. Genetic manipulation of pathogens was, until now, a labor-intensive and slow process, but AI can expedite the entire process to develop new bioweapons with great speed.
Another important field of application for AI is its application to bioengineering-given to optimizing pathogen design. Prediction and simulation may also be used to study how biological agents would spread in populations, how they would interact with the immune system, and their evolution over time.
The capability to predict in such a manner allows one to optimize the effectiveness of a biological weapon and make countermeasures against it harder to develop. Furthermore, AI could automate the production of biological weapons, limiting human error and enhancing speed. The implications here are drastic regarding the rapid and uncontrollable proliferation of bioweapons. In the contemporary era of cyber attacks and digital espionage, hack-to-hacking AI systems that are involved in biological research or surveillance would allow malicious actors to manipulate biological warfare strategies, endangering global security.
The Risks of Hacking AI Foundational Models
AI holds great promise, but it is also very open to manipulation, resulting in dire consequences. Hacking AI systems, particularly their foundational models, threatens critical infrastructures, biological libraries, and medical investigations to which these systems are applied, especially in the area of biosecurity and military applications.
Cyberattacks on AI systems are real. Hackers alter not only the data on which AI models are trained but also the algorithms to skew their reporting as well as plant malicious code for future alteration of decisions by the system. While these are conventional cyber-attacks, biological warfare outlets decipher the changes to have disastrous repercussions. For example, a hacker may find an inadequately secured AI system that is used for genetic research but ultimately change pathogen design output, creating an even more dangerous bioweapon than previously intended.
Another strong possibility that hackers could rush into AI models simulating infectious disease spread is to insert false predictions and thereby delay responses or misdirect resources. In the case these AI systems are sabotaged during biological attacks, the delay in real-time monitoring and prediction would only increase the pandemic profusion of the disease and magnify its impact. Hacking AI foundational models can wreak havoc, not only in the biological warfare scenario.
Involvement of AI in many other IT and operational areas, such as cybersecurity, finance, and military operations, is also critical. Taking them down through cyberattacks means you have a domino effect on these other sectors, leading to upheaval in global markets and failures in critical infrastructure, with a loss of confidence in AI systems. The growing use of AI in systems of defense-including autonomous drones, AI for priming military threats, and cybersystems-means that hacking, in itself, has created serious strategic inroads.”
Proactive Measures to Counteract the Threat of AI and Biological Weapons
As the threats posed by the intermingling of AI and biological weapons are gradually emerging, it has become paramount for the international community to commence with proactive measures to mitigate these hazards. Such measures ought to strengthen AI security, regulate the workings of biotechnology, and enhance global cooperation against weaponization of these technologies.
Strengthening the cybersecurity of AI systems employed in biotechnology, defense, and health industries is one of the most proactive actions that brings about improved safeguards. It should be clear, though, that AI systems will be designed to be secure enough to withstand unauthorized intrusion, unauthorized modification of data as well as unauthorized modification of the system’s functioning. Such security is built into a secure training process, which is a collection of well-defined actions that guarantee the performance of an AI system over an accepted lifetime trained on clean and reliable data and implements fail-safe mechanisms for hack detection and counteraction.
While things de-escalate this risk, AI developers should be implementing transparency and accountability for their AI systems. This includes auditing their AI models regularly, continuously monitoring them for atypical behavior, while having established protocols for undoing detrimental changes in the future. Enhancement for misuse has to be defined with regard to AI systems for the sensitive areas of concern such as biological warfare.
Bringing both AI and biotechnology together into being is a win-win scenario and requires revisiting past standards on the development of biological weapons and their use. The existing international instruments must redefine artificial intelligence and biotechnology-specific challenges such as the Biological Weapons Convention on these topics.
The above frameworks would place more emphasis on the laws concerning AI-supported genetic editing, pathogen design, and biological research. Because these technologies have the potential to be used either for good or for negative ends, regulation along the lines of international collaboration would be needed as a harsh check on these areas of research and development.
A concerted effort should be made among governments, institutions of research, and incorporated private companies over the ethics and regulatory mechanisms for avoidance of such evils as AI and biotechnology misuse for malicious purposes. Global cooperation is a must to address the serious threats posed against humanity by AI-enabled biological weapons.
There must be information sharing among governments, international organizations, and private sector actors because emerging threats to humanity would be best identified using a collaborative approach and coordinated response mechanisms. Enhanced early warning, biosecurity, and ethical sharing in information on research targeting AI and biotechnology will exploit cooperation. The WHO, the UN, and INTERPOL should collaborate internationally to align biosecurity priorities within and outside their agencies and share intelligence regarding the biological incident threats.
Inter-agency cooperation would increase the purposeful adoption of AI technologies for peaceful purposes. If this is ever going to happen, there must be regulation and standards that touch on the use of AI in warfare and biotechnology in international settings. Both education and capacity building are needed, not just in terms of technical and regulatory issues; this is important for every generation present and future in handling the complicated challenges presented by artificial intelligence and biological weapons. Programs in the universities, research institutes, and government are needed to educate the new breed of professionals on topics such as AI ethics, biosecurity, and cybersecurity. In terms of capacity-building programs: it could involve training the government and national security agencies around the implications of AI and bio-warfare in responding to such threats in the future. Such a well-informed task force of decision-makers could provide an arena for setting up policy guidance that considers the goals of innovation and safety to be complementary.
Conclusion
Faced with an invisible storm of biological warfare fostered by AI, almost all nations now need to contend with this danger. The close intersection between AI foundational models and bioweapons may bring doom even when forgetting about the hacking or manipulation that will bring about more catastrophic risks.
Society can, however, work for a positive outcome by strengthening cybersecurity for AI, regulating biotechnologies, international cooperation, and investing in education. These will ensure that the technologies are for humanity and not against it. Both national and international proactive measures are mandatory, as that would be the only way forward in wading through the challenges this invisible storm is going to inflict on everyone in the future.
Author: Rana Danish Nisar – Independent international analyst of security, defense, military, contemporary warfare and digital-international relations.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).