The barriers to reading, writing, and editing DNA are falling fast. A scientist can now order synthetic gene sequences from manufacturers and have them within days — soon, it could be common to produce them right in the lab using a benchtop DNA synthesizer. High school students are learning CRISPR gene-editing techniques. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms trained on biological data are accelerating experimentation and generating sequences that don’t exist in nature.  The hope is that these developments will lead to new breakthroughs in healthcare, agriculture, energy, and more. The fear is that they will lower the threshold for profound misuse of biotech, while simultaneously increasing the scale of what bad actors can accomplish. The risks aren’t hypothetical — in early February, the FBI raided an alleged illegal biological lab operation in a Las Vegas home. The challenge for governments and industry is mitigating the current and known risks posed by these emerging capabilities, while still enabling legitimate research and innovation — all while anticipating how to defend against biological threats that might not exist today, …