alt Hacker News> > they used a non-pathogenic strain of anthrax
> No, check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsumoto_sarin_attack
That's a different attack. I'm talking about their 1993 anthrax attack: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3322761/
Analysis of the 48 suspect colonies confirmed them to be B. anthracis ... This genotype was identical to that of the Sterne 34F2 strain, used commercially in Japan to vaccinate animals against anthrax.
They used a vaccine strain because they didn't know any better. Even members of the elite can make mistakes, especially when operating outside areas they know well!
(This was not the only thing that went wrong, but several others were also knowledge failures.)
You and the other are both missing the point. That's not a knowledge failure, it's a failure in how your operation is strategically executing. They were essentially practicing, and what did they learn? Change to sarin and even VX, for which they didn't need AI.
AI isn't going to help you get from nonpathogenic anthrax to pathogenic anthrax either. All it might do is tell you to try sarin or VX earlier, but these present different problems.
The idea that there are people in the world wanting to execute bioweapon attacks that are somehow gated by a lack of access to AI is utter hysterical nonsense that should be clearly pointed out as such.