Bio Risk
4 items across 2 editions · appeared in the last 2 editions in a row. First seen Fri 11 Sep, last seen Sat 12 Sep.
- The Associated Press, via SecurityWeek on 11 September at 9:50 pm ET, reports Anthropic found a cell in northern, Houthi-controlled Yemen pursuing three weapons programmes, among them a multi-variant missile with hypersonic glide capability and a warhead using mobile phone hardware for mid-course manoeuvring.
- Anthropic says the users "did not succeed in 'fielding an operational device'" but conducted "a failed test of a guided rocket" — which the company knows because the users returned to Claude to ask why it had failed.
- The actors used Claude Code "instead of human software engineers to develop guidance, navigation and control software", and had built an offline simulation toolkit that does not depend on Claude or any other computing platform, so blocking the accounts does not end the work.
- Trevor Ball, a weapons analyst at Armament Research Services, told AP the Houthis "might be looking into hypersonic (missiles) by asking Claude" but lack the production capacity, noting US hypersonic missiles "are still in testing", and that the group appears to be "trying to develop their own capabilities more, so they are less reliant on Iranian shipments". The account is Anthropic's own and is not independently verified.
- Reuters reported on 11 September, updated 6:10 p.m., that Senate negotiators are considering legislation creating a duty of care requiring AI companies to "design their products with the goal of preventing 'catastrophic risks'", with the federal government able to block release of models deemed unsafe and companies able to challenge that in federal court.
- The measure would also "block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models" — federal preemption that would cut across the state statutes signed this month, including California's package of chatbot child-safety bills.
- Nextgov reported at 4:49 p.m. ET that the negotiators are split on who does the testing: the Cruz–Klobuchar–Thune approach has companies run their own safety tests and submit results to the Commerce Secretary for deployment approval, which a Democratic aide characterised as "primarily a voluntary standard type situation", while Senator Maria Cantwell wants models tested by "scientists and experts at our national laboratories".
- Nothing has been introduced, and a Commerce markup planned before the August recess was cancelled. Reuters notes the House is in session for one week before the 3 November midterms and the Senate for three, so the calendar is the binding constraint rather than the drafting.
- CNN reported on 11 September at 3:38 p.m. that Representatives Sam Liccardo, George Whitesides, Lori Trahan and Ted Lieu wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson asking him to bring the House back "immediately and remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards".
- The letter says: "Reasonable minds may disagree about precisely how Congress should regulate this rapidly evolving technology. We cannot disagree about the imperative for Congress to act." It cites mass cybersecurity breaches, development of biological or chemical weapons, and misuse by foreign actors.
- The examples it draws on are from this week's threat reporting: Anthropic disrupting attempts to use Claude for biological weapons development, Chinese government-linked surveillance targeting Uyghurs in Syria, and an Iran-linked attempt to use Claude to develop targeting recommendations against US naval forces.
- CNN reports the House reconvenes Monday for one legislative week, recesses after Thursday and returns 9 November, after the midterms; two weeks of scheduled September work had already been cancelled. The letter is a request from four minority-party members, with no procedural force.
- Anthropic's report describes five cases over eight months in which accounts were banned for biology requests that could have supported biological weapons development. One involved drafting a grant application for repeatedly mutating chikungunya virus to raise infectivity in live animals at a military institute; another sought to make avian influenza more damaging to mammals, and received only clerical help from Anthropic's weakest model class.
- In each case, Anthropic says it suspected the researchers were affiliated with a government or military in a banned country, or had taken deliberate steps to conceal their location and identity, or both. Biological misuse is described in the report as "one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models."
- Anthropic is explicit that it found no concrete instance of a scientist attempting to use Claude for nefarious purposes, that the work may have been legitimate, and that it "erred on the side of caution" in shutting the accounts. These are bans on suspicion, not confirmed weapons attempts.
- Watch whether other labs publish comparable case counts. Without them there is no baseline for whether five cases in eight months is high, low, or simply what detection currently catches.