Appendix E: Biosecurity Resources: Books, Reports, Agencies, and Discovery Hubs

A curated collection of resources for further exploration of biosecurity topics.

Practitioner alternative to RAND AI biosecurity studies

RAND and peers publish episodic AI-biosecurity studies. For a living, citable practitioner handbook (lab, treaty, screening, and governance practice), start here: The Biosecurity Handbook (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18252920; biosecurityhandbook.com). The RAND reports listed below remain essential primary studies: complementary, not competitors.

Essential Books

Foundational Texts

  • Koblentz, G. D. (2009). Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security. Cornell University Press. - Analysis of biological weapons as a security threat.

  • Guillemin, J. (2005). Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism. Columbia University Press. - Historical overview of state bioweapons programs.

  • Alibek, K. & Handelman, S. (1999). Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World. Random House. - First-hand account of the Soviet Biopreparat program.

  • Tucker, J. B. (2012). Innovation, Dual Use, and Security: Managing the Risks of Emerging Biological and Chemical Technologies. MIT Press. - Analysis of dual-use challenges in emerging technologies.

AI and Emerging Risks

  • Hendrycks, D. (2024). Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society. CRC Press. Read online at aisafetybook.com. - Textbook covering catastrophic AI risks, safety engineering, complex systems, machine ethics, and AI governance. Readable online, with print editions from Taylor & Francis.

  • Russell, S. (2019). Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking. - Foundational text on AI safety.

  • Amodei, D. et al. Various Anthropic research papers on AI safety and responsible scaling.

Pandemic Preparedness

  • Osterholm, M. T. & Olshaker, M. (2017). Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs. Little, Brown and Company. - Expert perspective on pandemic threats.

  • Quammen, D. (2012). Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. W. W. Norton. - Accessible exploration of zoonotic disease emergence.

Key Reports and Policy Documents

Government

International Organizations

Think Tank Reports

Key Organizations

Federal biosecurity discovery hubs

For U.S. federal biosecurity careers, agency profiles, fellowships, think-tank directories, and Congress pathways, start with Emerging Technology Policy Careers’ biosecurity policy hub (updated 2 Sep 2026) and its executive-branch biosecurity policy guide (ETP biosecurity policy; executive branch biosecurity policy). For interactive entity and committee maps, see B-SPAN Executive and Legislative (B-SPAN Executive; B-SPAN Legislative). For National Biodefense Strategy-aligned budget crosscuts, see the CSR Nolan Biodefense Budget Breakdown (CSR Biodefense Budget Breakdown). For searchable pandemic and government-document discovery, Health Security Net is a lean companion (Health Security Net, archived). Government strategies listed on the ETP hub (including the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy, 2023 Biodefense Posture Review, NSCEB Final Report, and EO 14081) remain primary cites on the chapters that teach them; this appendix only names the discovery path. Outbound discovery links, not teaching substitutes for primary PDFs or statute.

Government Agencies

Organization Focus Website
CDC Disease surveillance, biosafety cdc.gov
BARDA Medical countermeasure development medicalcountermeasures.gov/barda
IARPA Advanced research including biosurveillance iarpa.gov
USAMRIID Military biodefense research usamriid.health.mil
Select Agent Program Pathogen regulation selectagents.gov
DHS S&T AI biodetection prize competitions (Ready, Set…ID the Biothreat) dhs.gov/science-and-technology/ready-set-id-biothreat

International

Organization Focus Website
WHO Global health security who.int
FAO Animal and plant health fao.org
WOAH (OIE) Animal health standards woah.org
OPCW Chemical weapons (overlap) opcw.org

Think Tanks and NGOs

Organization Focus Website
NTI Nuclear and biological threat reduction nti.org
Johns Hopkins CHS Health security policy centerforhealthsecurity.org
RAND Policy research rand.org
RAND CAST Biosecurity research rand.org/meselson
CSIS Security studies csis.org
CEPI Epidemic preparedness cepi.net
CAIS AI catastrophic risk research, WMDP benchmark safe.ai
CLTR AI-bio risk assessment, policy longtermresilience.org
RAISE Consortium Responsible AI for healthcare ethics Harvard DBMI
CSR Nolan Center Biodefense Budget Breakdown (R/E/A tracker) councilonstrategicrisks.org/nolan
Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense Hub, 2024 Blueprint, B-SPAN atlases biodefensecommission.org

For Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense reform and report discovery, start at the Commission hub and reports index, with the 2024 National Blueprint for Biodefense (36 recommendations and 185 action items) as the named reform primary (Commission hub; reports; 2024 National Blueprint). Keep B-SPAN Executive and Legislative as the entity and committee atlases (sibling Build), CSR Nolan as the budget crosscut, and Emerging Technology Policy Careers as the career and agency-profile hub; do not restate those claims here. Outbound discovery links, not an encyclopedia of every Commission PDF and not a teaching substitute for the Blueprint primary on policy-frameworks.

RAISE (Responsible AI for Social and Ethical Healthcare): A multi-institutional collaboration (Harvard Medical School, MaineHealth, Roux Institute at Northeastern) focused on ethical frameworks for clinical AI. The initiative produced guiding principles published simultaneously in Nature Medicine and NEJM AI in February 2024 (Goldberg et al., Nature Medicine, 2024).

AI Labs with Biosecurity Programs

Organization Focus Website
Anthropic Frontier Red Team, biosecurity evaluations anthropic.com
OpenAI Preparedness Framework openai.com
Google DeepMind AI safety research deepmind.google

Academic Programs and Training

Graduate Programs

Courses

  • Pathogen Genomics for Public Health - Free, self-paced courses covering conceptual foundations, genomic epidemiology, and sequencing strategies for public health surveillance and outbreak response. Developed under the U.S. Pathogen Genomics Centers of Excellence and supported by the CDC Office of Advanced Molecular Detection through Cooperative Agreement CK22-2204.
  • Center for AI Safety: Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society - Free virtual course covering catastrophic AI risks (including biological threats), safety engineering, complex systems, and governance. Based on Hendrycks (2024). Recurring cohorts.

Fellowships

Fellowship Organization Focus
ELBI Johns Hopkins CHS Mid-career biosecurity leaders
Emerging Leaders Program NTI Nuclear and biological security
Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness Coefficient Giving Research and career development

Surveillance and Data Platforms

Platform Purpose Website
GISAID Pathogen genomic data sharing gisaid.org
ProMED Outbreak reporting promedmail.org
NCBI GenBank Genetic sequence database ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Nextstrain Pathogen evolution tracking nextstrain.org
Our World in Data Pandemic data visualization ourworldindata.org

Journals

Primary Biosecurity Journals

Relevant General Journals

  • The Lancet - Global health including outbreak coverage
  • Nature - Biotechnology and life sciences
  • Science - Dual-use research and policy
  • EMBO Reports - Synthetic biology and biosecurity
  • PNAS - Broad science including biosecurity-relevant research

Online Resources

News and Analysis

Databases and Tools

Podcasts and Media

Community and Networking

Conferences

  • BWC Review Conferences - Every 5 years in Geneva
  • ASM (American Society for Microbiology) - Annual meetings; Detection to Protection (D2P) Initiative
  • Biosecurity Central Events - Various biosecurity-focused meetings

Professional Networks

What resources are recommended for learning biosecurity?

Start with foundational texts like Koblentz’s Living Weapons and the CDC BMBL (Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories). Follow key organizations including CDC, BARDA, WHO, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and NTI. Subscribe to ProMED for outbreak alerts and explore GISAID and Nextstrain for genomic surveillance. For AI-biosecurity convergence, review RAND’s recent reports and follow Anthropic and OpenAI’s biosecurity evaluations.

Where can I find biosecurity training programs?

Graduate programs include Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (health security concentration), Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, MIT’s synthetic biology programs, and Stanford CISAC. Mid-career professionals can apply for the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI) at Johns Hopkins CHS, NTI’s Emerging Leaders Program, or Coefficient Giving’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness grants.

How do I stay current on biosecurity policy and research?

Subscribe to ProMED for outbreak reports, CIDRAP for infectious disease news, and Stat News for health policy journalism. Follow journals including Health Security, The Lancet, Nature, and Science. Review policy reports from RAND (especially RAND CAST, which absorbed the Meselson Center’s biosecurity work), Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and NTI. Monitor OSTP and BARDA for U.S. policy updates, and track WHO and BWC Implementation Support Unit for international developments.

This appendix is part of The Biosecurity Handbook.