East Bay Biosecurity

2018-2019: In-person meetups

From 2018 to 2019 we hosted regular events, primarily reading groups and short talks, at the Berkeley REACH. The group was funded by a Center for Effective Altruism Community-Building Grant, which also allowed us to send organizers to biosecurity-related conferences. The archive below is provided as we believe the event descriptions (generally pulled from the original event announcement) might be of interest to others planning biosecurity meetups.

Retrospective

Excerpted from a July 2019 report prepared as part of the final evaluation for a CEA Community-Building Grant.

The East Bay Biosecurity group was formed in January of 2018 by five people looking for a way to discuss biosecurity issues that were not yet the primary focus of our research or careers. Three members of that group (Tessa Alexanian, Megan Crawford and Brian Wang) continue to be active in organizing events today.

Our events, which typically run twice a month at the Berkeley REACH, consist of reading groups and short talks. Reading groups involve the (unformatted) discussions of pre-chosen readings, usually papers on topics that piqued the organizers’ interest or newly released biosecurity reports. Short talks involve one or two 15-30 minute presentations on biosecurity-relevant topics, with ample time for discussion. Many of the short talks are recorded and posted on our website.

Our reading groups typically draw 3-8 attendees, and our short talks typically draw 7–15 attendees. The organizers have been the most consistent attendees to events, with only a few regular attendees outside that group. The vast majority of our attendees are already involved in the effective altruism community, and typically find out about our events via our Facebook group or the REACH group and calendar. The number of regular attendees has declined in the past few months, though this is likely because we have begun focusing more of our organizational effort on the biosecurity-focused conference we are planning, and thus have not been hosting the more logistically complex short talks events.

Outcomes

In addition to hosting regular reading groups and short talks, we have also sent organizers to conferences and workshops, generated blog content posted on our website, and begun planning a biosecurity-focused conference. Although these are perhaps less standard EA group activities, we believe that they are the activities which generated the most overall value.

Summit: Without the work funded by this grant, we strongly doubt we would have taken on organizing a biosecurity conference this year (Catalyst Biosecurity Summit), nor would we have applied for a Long Term Future Fund grant to execute a more ambitious plan. We believe this summit is one of the larger positive outcomes from this grant.

Conferences: We believe that one of our main avenues for producing value has been by causing core members, who were already committed to pursuing biosecurity-related careers and projects, to engage with more biosecurity content and develop more relevant career capital than they would have without the support of the group. The majority of our spending went towards sending core members to biosecurity-related conferences:

  • 2018 George Mason University Summer Workshop on Pandemics: Brian Wang would not have attended (see his conference report) without financial support. The experience helped him clarify the role he wishes to play in biosecurity long term. His experience at that conference, and as an organizer in general, had a meaningful impact on his decision for where to focus his post-doctoral studies.
  • DEFCON: Megan Crawford and Tessa Alexanian would likely not have attended Defcon without support (see Tessa’s conference report). Discussions at Defcon led Megan Crawford to work on a “Project Phoenix” event (in which a group of EAs researched and answered questions about worst-case-scenario non-AI global catastrophic risks), while Tessa Alexanian was able to make new connections within the biohacking and biosecurity communities.
  • iGEM 2018: It is likely that Tessa Alexanian would have attended without support, though the assistance made it less of a financial burden for her. Her work at iGEM 2018 led to her becoming an executive member of the 2019 Human Practices organizing committee.
  • ASM Biothreats 2019: Tessa Alexanian would not have been able to attend ASM Biothreats 2019 without support. The networking she was able to do at that conference has enabled her to find relevant attendees and speakers for the biosecurity summit, and the content positioned her for more productive research and organizing work within the community.

Events: It is likely that the organizers would have hosted some biosecurity meetups without this funding, though we think it reasonably likely (60% chance) that we would have not continued organizing events for the entirety of the grant period. We estimate that we exposed 30-50 people to at least one of our talks or discussions at REACH over the entire grant period. Only a handful of people attended more than 3 events. Many of the organizers, and most of the other attendees, would likely not have engaged with the specific readings that we have discussed in our reading groups if it was not in the context of EBBS.

Other: We posted 8 videos of short talks to our YouTube channel and two blog posts (1, 2) on our website. The view count of the videos ranges from 88 to 4, with a median of 14.5. Each blog post received around 200 pageviews.

Work over the grant period

We estimate that the organizers spent a total of around 120 hours working on East Bay Biosecurity over the grant period.

We hosted a total of 10 reading group events. These events lasted 1.5 hours, and it took another 0.5 to 1 hour of organizer time to set up Facebook and calendar events and select an appropriate reading, so this gives us a rough estimate of around 22.5 hours of organizing effort. (Closer to 30 if you want to count organizer time spent doing the readings, but that seems a bit excessive.)

The short talk events required more organizer time: during the grant period, we hosted 10 short talk events in total, which included 6 talks given by organizers. We’d estimate that each talk took around 6 hours to prepare, and the events lasted 1.5 hours, again with another 0.5 to 1 hour of organizer time for logistics. This gives us a rough estimate of 58.5 hours of organizing work.

Each of the 8 videos required around 1.5 hours of editing, and the 2 blog posts took about 5 hours each, so that represents another 22 hours of effort.

The organizers also held several meetings to discuss impact strategy and other group meta. This might work out to about 15 hours in total over the grant period.

The organizers have done very little work to advertise, other than setting up a Facebook group and website and making sure our events appear in the REACH calendar.

Use of grant funds

We did not spend the full amount granted to us. We intend to use our remaining funds (around $6,000) to support the Catalyst Biosecurity Summit that we are now involved in organizing. When applying for the grant, we overestimated how many people we would send to conferences, and how expensive it would be to do so.

We’re happy to share our detailed expense tracking. At a high level, we spent $6055 of our grant funds as follows:

  • $1205 (~20%) food for our meetups
  • $4598 (~76%) conferences, which further divides into:
    • $1191 (~20%) travel
    • $2720 (~45%) conference fees
    • $687 (~11%) accommodations
  • $252 (~4%) website hosting and A/V equipment

Reflections

We believe the grant to East Bay Biosecurity to have been somewhat unusual amongst the community-building grant portfolio, given its smaller size, the large number of group organizers, and the fact that none of the group organizers are doing this as anything like a full-time or even part-time job.

In the end, East Bay Biosecurity did not build a large community of effective altruists interested in biosecurity. The group did, however, successfully provide targeted career-building for a small number of individuals.

The positive outcomes we obtained by funding conference attendance suggest that CEA should consider directly funding motivated effective altruists to attend conferences related to their areas of interest. There already exist a small number of biosecurity conference fellowships (e.g. the SynBioBeta fellowship funded by Open Philanthropy last year) but we think more could be beneficial. We think a program where effective altruists could submit requests to go to conferences that fit their interests (versus fellowships specific to particular conferences) could be valuable, especially if it required the conference fellows to share some of what they gain from the conference attendance via EA Forum posts or presentations at their local EA groups.

Although we consider East Bay Biosecurity to have been a successful experiment, there are a few things we would have done differently.

We spent a fair bit of money on food for our events, but we never advertised the events (nor the availability of the free food) widely enough for it to be much of a pull. We could have advertised more broadly, but it seems like we were mostly able to produce value by focusing on already-committed group members, rather than reaching out to new people. We probably should have only covered food for the short talk events, which were able to draw larger audiences.

We repeatedly stated intentions to recruit among UC Berkeley students, local community biologists, or other relevant communities. We never did this. It’s not clear that this was a mistake; organizing events that appealed to a larger group may not have been the best use of the organizers’ time, compared to developing their own skills and knowledge.

We believe that independent research and blogging are very useful ways to build skills and knowledge, and note that our blog posts are the most viewed online content we’ve produced. We regularly set goals of writing more posts, but failed to meet them; this seems like a mistake, and we likely should have experimented with more commitment mechanisms and productivity strategies to get those posts written. This is an area where additional accountability from CEA could have been helpful: we stated our intentions to do more research in our quarterly check-ins and could have benefitted from some scrutiny when we failed to deliver.

We also think we might have benefited from more direct connections to other similar groups; we were different enough from the more general EA groups that the group organizer Slack never felt highly relevant, but we had productive conversations with the organizers of a London biosecurity group about readings and managing information hazards.

Future plans

We do not currently wish to apply for further funding for our group. As discussed above, we have a fair bit of funding remaining, and we intend to put it towards the large summit we’re organizing in October. [Editor’s note: this was Catalyst Biosummit, which was postponed to February 2020.]

We expect to continue hosting reading groups at least once a month. We may start hosting short talks again after the summit. These events are likely to continue as long as the organizers are all still living in the East Bay, and will probably stop if 2 of the 3 current organizers move away. For future events, we expect to either cover food costs out of pocket or stop providing food. We will continue experimenting with ways to research and publish blog posts as a group.

Events and Talks

Short talks, movie nights, and other events. Reading groups are listed separately.

Recorded talks

We recorded some of our 2018 short talks and posted them to our YouTube channel. They were recorded on a shoestring, so the audio and video are rough.

All events, newest first

Movie Night: Unnatural Selection

2019-12-06

Video: Unnatural Selection trailer

Join us for an episode (or two, depending on whether we watch on 1.5x) of the Netflix series Unnatural Selection! From the trailer: “The documentary series UNNATURAL SELECTION explores new developments in the science of gene-editing that defy evolution and raise moral, social and environmental impact questions about where we, as a society, draw the line.”

Movie Night: Event 201 Pandemic Exercise

2019-11-23

Video: Event 201 videos

Event 201 was a blue-teaming pandemic preparedness exercise run last month. Here’s the description:

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The purpose of the exercise was to illustrate the pandemic preparedness efforts, response decisions, and cooperation required from global businesses, governments, and public health leaders that the world will need to diminish the large-scale economic and societal consequences of a severe pandemic.

The videos are publicly available, and we’ll be watching them on 1.25x.

Short Talks: Effective Uses of Lab Automation, Biostatistics

2019-04-17

Two short talks related to biosecurity:

  • What are the most effective uses of laboratory automation? – Tessa Alexanian
  • A biostatistics-related talk – Megan Crawford

Watching Clade X, a Pandemic Tabletop Exercise

2019-03-20

This week we will be watching the livestream of Clade X, a pandemic tabletop exercise hosted by the Center for Health Security last year. Clade X was attended by 150 individuals involved in national security and/or epidemic response, and the exercise was meant to simulate our response to an influenza pandemic with the potential to kill hundreds of millions of people.

Short Talk: Legality of Self-Experimentation

2019-02-13

One short talk related to biosecurity: Is It Even Legal to Inject Yourself With CRISPR? – Tessa Alexanian

Short Talk: Dual Use Research

2018-12-12

Short talk related to biosecurity: Breaking down the risks of life sciences research – Brian Wang

Movie Night: EAG SF 2018 Biorisk Talks

2018-11-14

We’ll watch some of the EA Global San Francisco 2018 talks related to biorisk.

Short Talks: Defcon Reports, Human Engineering of Organisms

2018-10-10

Short talks related to biosecurity:

Short Talks: Summer Workshop Report, Optimal Virulence Curve

2018-09-05

Short Talks: Monoclonal Antibodies, EA Global 2017 Talks

2018-08-08

  • Monoclonal antibodies: therapeutic applications – Samira Nedungadi
  • An EA Global 2017 talk related to biosecurity

Biosecurity Meetup at EA Global SF 2018

2018-06-09

If you’re attending EA Global SF 2018, we invite you to attend the Biosecurity Meetup from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m on Saturday, June 9th. This meetup is open to anyone who is interested in exploring technological, policy, or governance issues related to biosecurity & pandemic preparedness.

Short Talk: Laboratory Automation and Some Biosecurity Implications

2018-06-06

Preview of an EAG talk: Laboratory automation and some biosecurity implications – Tessa Alexanian

Since that talk (plus your feedback, please!) will only take about half an hour, we’re likely to watch a biosecurity-related EA Global talk from a previous year.

Coworking on WHO MOOC

2018-05-26

This is part of the monthly biosecurity reading series, coordinated by Finan Adamson in a Facebook group.

This month we’re not reading, though! WHO has a free MOOC on Pandemic/Epidemic Prone Diseases. It says the whole course takes about six hours, so let’s just do the first half for next month. We’ll cowork through the first 7 sections: Avian and Other Zoonotic Influenza, Cholera, Ebola, Lassa Fever, Leptospirosis, Meningitis, and MERS.

Reading groups

Our reading groups were unformatted discussions of pre-chosen readings, usually papers on topics that piqued the organizers’ interest or newly released biosecurity reports. These were not always high-energy reading groups and likely could have been with a bit more effort.

Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology, part 2

2019-12-11

Reading: Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology

This month we’ll be reading the second half of a report by the National Academy of Sciences, “Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology”. We’ll be covering Chapters 6-9, but feel free to come even if you haven’t read the first half! (The report’s description is under part 1, below.)

Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology, part 1

2019-11-13

Reading: Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology

This month we’ll be reading a report by the National Academy of Sciences, “Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology”. Note that this report is long, so we’ll only be covering the first half (Summary + Chapters 1-5) for this meeting.

Description of the report:

Scientific advances over the past several decades have accelerated the ability to engineer existing organisms and to potentially create novel ones not found in nature. Synthetic biology, which collectively refers to concepts, approaches, and tools that enable the modification or creation of biological organisms, is being pursued overwhelmingly for beneficial purposes ranging from reducing the burden of disease to improving agricultural yields to remediating pollution. Although the contributions synthetic biology can make in these and other areas hold great promise, it is also possible to imagine malicious uses that could threaten U.S. citizens and military personnel. Making informed decisions about how to address such concerns requires a realistic assessment of the capabilities that could be misused. Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology explores and envisions potential misuses of synthetic biology. This report develops a framework to guide an assessment of the security concerns related to advances in synthetic biology, assesses the levels of concern warranted for such advances, and identifies options that could help mitigate those concerns.

Global Preparedness Report

2019-10-09

Reading: A World at Risk: Annual report on global preparedness for health emergencies (PDF)

This month we will be reading the first annual report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a body of experts set up last year to monitor global preparedness to health emergencies. From the report:

For its first report, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board reviewed recommendations from previous high-level panels and commissions following the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, along with its own commissioned reports and other data. The result is a snapshot of where the world stands in its ability to prevent and contain a global health threat. Many of the recommendations reviewed were poorly implemented, or not implemented at all, and serious gaps persist. For too long, we have allowed a cycle of panic and neglect when it comes to pandemics: we ramp up efforts when there is a serious threat, then quickly forget about them when the threat subsides. It is well past time to act.

Soviet Bioweapons Program

2019-09-05

Reading: The Soviet Biological Weapons Program and Its Legacy in Today’s Russia (PDF)

This week we will be reading a 960-page book about the Soviet bioweapons program.

…No, just kidding, although such a comprehensive book does exist. Instead, we will be reading a condensed paper by one of the authors of said book, commissioned by the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Summary from the Center for Security Studies in Zurich:

This paper explores the Soviet Union’s pursuit of a dual-phased biological warfare (BW) program known as Biopreparat. More specifically, the text’s author 1) describes the first phase of the Cold War program; 2) highlights the geopolitical, military and scientific reasons why the Soviets initiated a second generation program in 1972; and 3) speculates on whether the Putin administration might start a third generation BW effort in the future.

Editing Biosecurity

2019-08-07

Reading: Editing Biosecurity

We will be discussing “Editing Biosecurity: Needs and Strategies for Governing Genome Editing”, a report released this January 2019 by researchers from George Mason University and Stanford University.

The authors offer this summary: the “two-year multidisciplinary study, Editing Biosecurity, explore[s] critical biosecurity issues related to CRISPR and related genome editing technologies. The overarching goal of the study was to present governance options and recommendations to key stakeholders, and to identify broader trends in the life sciences that may alter the security landscape… the research team focused on how to manage the often-competing demands of promoting innovation and preventing misuse, and how to adapt current, or create new, governance mechanisms to achieve these objectives.”

This report is quite long! Please prioritize sections in the following order:

  • Executive Summary
  • 1. Editing Biosecurity
  • 6. Key Trends and Takeaways
  • 4. Safety and Security Risks enabled by Genome Editing
  • 5. Potential Security Scenarios: Illustrating Governance Gaps and Options
  • 2. Genome Editing: Tools, Capabilities, Applications, and Limitations
  • 3. Benefits of Genome Editing: A Snapshot

Bio Plus X, Arms Control & Emerging Technologies

2019-07-10

Reading: Bio Plus X: Arms Control and the Convergence of Biology and Emerging Technologies

This report was released earlier this year by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Here’s what they say about it:

Technological advances in the biological sciences have long presented a challenge to efforts to maintain biosecurity and prevent the proliferation of biological weapons. The convergence of developments in biotechnology with other, emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence and robotics has increased the possibilities for the development and use of biological weapons.

This report, written by SIPRI experts on technology and arms control, provides a nuanced picture of the risks and challenges posed by this convergence. It analyses the extent to which concerns arising from new technological developments can be dealt with through existing governance mechanisms. Based on the limitations identified, the authors recommend the action that needs to be taken by national governments, international organizations, academia, the private sector and the DIY community.

How Terrorists Develop Bioweapons

2019-06-12

Reading: Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into how terrorists develop biological and chemical weapons

We will be reading Richard Danzig’s report “Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into how terrorists develop biological and chemical weapons”.

Military Technology Roulette

2019-05-29

Reading: Technology Roulette

For this reading group, we’ll be discussing Richard Danzig’s report “Technology Roulette: Managing Loss of Control as Many Militaries Pursue Technological Superiority”. The report is an expanded version of a study undertaken for IARPA. In the executive summary, Danzig writes:

Progress toward our primary [military] goal, superiority, should be expected to increase rather than reduce collateral risks of loss of control. This report contends that, unfortunately, we cannot reliably estimate the resulting risks. Worse, there are no apparent paths for eliminating them or even keeping them from increasing. The benefit of an often referenced recourse, keeping “humans in the loop” of operations involving new technologies, appears on inspection to be of little and declining benefit.

Speeding Up Vaccine Production

2019-05-01

Why does it take such a long time for new vaccines to become available? How can we speed up vaccine production in the case of a pandemic? For this reading group, we’ll be discussing a few pieces related to vaccine production:

Red Teaming the Biological Sciences

2019-04-03

Reading: Red Teaming the Biological Sciences for Deliberate Threats

Is it a good idea to deliberately go looking for (bio)security vulnerabilities? How can such “red teaming” exercises do the most to enhance security, while minimizing risks? For this reading group, we’ll be reading “Red Teaming the Biological Sciences for Deliberate Threats”, a publication from Lisa Zhang and Gigi Gronvall at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

There have been widespread calls from government and private organizations to analyze biological threats with a red teaming approach, in order to prioritize resources and to counter a wide array of biological agents. This paper includes a timeline of historical examples of both biological red team simulations and vulnerability probes, and discusses the challenges of conducting realistic, cost-effective modeling of biological agents.

How Dangerous Are Advances in Biotechnology?

2019-02-27

This month we will be considering the perspectives of those who are skeptical that advances in biotechnology are especially dangerous.

In Synthetic biology and biosecurity: challenging the “myths”, Claire Marris and coworkers emphasize the importance of tacit knowledge while challenging the narrative that advances in biotechnology are especially dangerous. See also this related Twitter conversation between Claire Marris and Drew Endy.

In Anticipating emerging biotechnology threats: a case study of CRISPR, Kathleen Vogel and Sonia Ben-Ouagrham-Gormley emphasize the obstacles that a malevolent actor might face in attempting to weaponize CRISPR technology.

Information Hazards in Biotechnology

2019-01-30

Let’s read some papers about information hazards in biotechnology!

New Technologies to Address Catastrophic Biorisk

2018-11-28

For this reading group, we will be looking at the new Center for Health Security report Technologies to Address Global Catastrophic Biological Risks.

It’s a 71-page report. Read as much of it as you want, but we only expect you to arrive having read the sections:

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Overarching Themes in Technologies

(Don’t worry if you haven’t finished those; you can still come to join in the discussion!)

DARPA Program Controversies

2018-10-31

This month we will be discussing controversies surrounding two DARPA programs, Insect Allies and Safe Genes.

Insect Allies aims to use insect vectors to transfer genes to plants via genetically modified viruses in order to protect crops against novel threats. Recently, scientists raised concerns about the program, noting how developing technologies to widely disperse infectious genetically modified viruses could facilitate a new form of biowarfare.

Safe Genes aims to develop gene editing technologies in a manner that emphasizes biosafety and biosecurity. Last year, a trove of e-mails between those involved in the Safe Genes program (the “Gene Drive Files”) were released under a Freedom of Information Act request; some civil society organizations raised concerns that these e-mails revealed a covert effort by DARPA to advance gene drive technology.

The Long-Term Consequences of Biological Risks

2018-10-03

This month we will be doing readings on the long-term consequences of biological risks:

Introduction to Immunology

2018-08-22

This month we will be doing some readings on immunology:

CRISPR

2018-07-18

This is part of the monthly biosecurity reading series, coordinated by Finan Adamson in a Facebook group. Readings for this event are about CRISPR/Cas9:

OpenPhil Biosecurity Cause Reports

2018-06-27

This time, we’ll be reading and discussing two of OpenPhil’s cause reports:

  1. Medium-Depth Report on Research and Development to Decrease Biosecurity Risks from Viral Pathogens
  2. Shallow Report on Biosecurity
  3. (Stretch goal) Shallow Report on Antibiotic Resistance

Horsepox Synthesis

2018-05-23

Readings for this event are several opinion pieces on horsepox synthesis:

Blog posts

Our two blog posts, both conference reports.