Hey Jeff, I appreciate your mission, and perhaps this isn't something you can talk about publicly, but to the extent you can, would you be open to answering something I've been curious about for a while now?

SecureBio has done a lot of admirable work around making benchmarks to assess biological capabilities, such as ABC Bench, https://openreview.net/forum?id=yiaf7VlPpH

But based on my current review (which might be flawed!) / AFAICT, SecureBio and entities like SecureBio haven't done direct testing / empirical measurement of SecureBio's core hypothesis,

> Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that future pandemics could be far worse. Due to rapid advances in biotechnology, the number of people able to create and release dangerous pathogens will quickly increase over the coming years. The world is unprepared for widespread access to such powerful technology.

More bluntly / plainly, has Securebio ever tried making a "bioweapon?"

Please note, I'm not asking this to be farcical. And you might be unable to engage with this at all, but it is stated on your website https://securebio.org/ that "people [will be] able to create and release dangerous pathogens." And the word people here seems to be a stand-in for relatively non-technical people.

I guess what I'm asking here is... How do you know? Has anyone done the experiment? Without access to a lab or testing facilities, can someone smart but completely untrained / unfamiliar with biology, pull this off?

In the past, such experiments have informed non-proliferation work. But sadly they've often been restricted / classified at the time. I'm hoping that things could be a bit more open this time around.

So I guess what I'm really asking is, given the public nature of this debate, is there anyone currently working with the US Army, the DTRA, or other such agencies to see if this hypothesis holds up?