Dario Amodei has put his name on a public letter to Congress that asks lawmakers to require screening and recordkeeping for companies that sell synthetic DNA and RNA, a move that would turn voluntary safeguards into a legal obligation for part of the biosecurity supply chain. He signed it alongside Sam Altman and Mustafa Suleyman, bringing three of the best-known names in artificial intelligence into a fight over how to keep biological materials out of the wrong hands.
The letter lands at a moment when AI tools are spreading fast and security experts are warning that publicly available models can help users find information on how to create biological weapons and how to spread them. A Stanford University study earlier this year found generative AI tools reached 53% of the world’s population in just three years, underscoring how quickly the technology has moved from the lab into ordinary use.
In the letter, Amodei and the other signers argue that AI systems are improving rapidly and that the knowledge barriers that have long helped keep bad actors away from biological weapons could erode. They want Congress to require companies that sell synthetic materials to screen orders, keep records of what they sell, and document the exact specifications of those materials — measures aimed at making it harder to buy ingredients that could be used to create bioweapons.
The letter was organized by the Foundation for American Innovation and the Institute for Progress, and it also drew signatures from Twist Bioscience and Ansa Biotechnologies. That detail matters because some companies that manufacture synthetic DNA and RNA already do screening voluntarily, even as the proposal would impose legally required screening and recordkeeping across the industry. The split shows how far the debate has moved from whether safeguards are needed to how much force the government should give them.
The warning behind the letter is not abstract. Biological agents have accounted for just 0.02% of historical attacks, but the damage can be catastrophic: anthrax has a nearly 100% mortality rate without treatment when inhaled, and in 2001 anthrax-laced letters mailed to U.S. senators and news outlets killed five people and infected another 22. The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 already makes it illegal to develop or possess biological agents for use as a weapon, but the new push is aimed at the front end of the supply chain, before anyone gets that far.
Whether Congress moves is the open question now. The letter gives lawmakers a ready-made proposal, but the next step would be turning it into legislation that can survive the push and pull between security concerns and an industry that already polices itself in part.
