“State of Pandemic Early Warning” by jefftk

Cross-posted from my SecureBio Notebook.

This is a lightly-edited version of a memo that I presented at the Summer 2026 Biosecurity Summit outside of DC. While others at SecureBio often see things similarly, I'm attempting to present my view and not a SecureBio "house view".

The Goal

We need to be robust to adversaries who want to cause very large-scale harm with biology. This includes actors (human or AI) who want to kill all humans, cause short-term incapacitation or long-term civilizational collapse, or who have strategies for sparing some while they harm others. There are multiple reasons an actor might have these targets aside from being directly omnicidal, such as reducing response capacity during an AI takeover.

That there is an attacker itself is a key constraint to any defensive system: it must be designed for adversarial attacks. The attacker can assess the state of the world's detection systems and plan accordingly. Taken to the extreme, this presents a "minimax" landscape: a system is only as good as its weakest link (the place where it is least sensitive). This is an important framing, and it correctly prioritizes getting some sensitivity towards a wide range [...]

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Outline:

(00:29) The Goal

(02:36) Biosurveillance Applications

(02:49) Initial Detection of Stealth Pandemics

(04:21) Triggering Initial Response

(05:46) Enabling Ongoing Suppression

(06:39) What does success look like?

(07:08) Initial Detection of Stealth Pandemics

(10:34) Triggering Initial Response

(12:34) Enabling Ongoing Suppression

(13:26) What gets us there?

(13:48) Sampling Strategies

(14:43) Lab Technology

(15:54) Computational Technology

(17:33) What exists today?

(19:49) What's missing?

(28:27) How does this change for accelerating response to a wildfire pandemic?

(31:30) How does this change for ongoing suppression?

(32:46) Appendix: Initial Detection Scale

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First published:
September 24th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uYd2ZdFMLyGPhLtqY/state-of-pandemic-early-warning

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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