Cybersecurity & Tech

Scaling Laws: Why Data Governance Is the Key to AI Biosecurity, with Jassi Pannu and Doni Bloomfield

Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Jessica Pannu, Doni Bloomfield
Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 10:00 AM
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Alan Rozenshtein, research director at Lawfare, spoke with Jassi Pannu, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and Doni Bloomfield, associate professor of law at Fordham Law School, about their proposed framework for governing biological data to reduce AI-enabled biosecurity risks.

The conversation covered the origins of the proposal in the 50th anniversary of the 1975 Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA; the distinction between general-purpose AI models and biology-specific foundation models like genomic language models; the biosecurity threats posed by AI, including uplift of novice actors and raising the ceiling of expert capabilities; the proposed biosecurity data levels (BDL 0-4) framework and how it draws on precedents from biosafety levels and genetic privacy regulation; the challenge of capabilities-based rather than pathogen-based data classification; the institutional and regulatory mechanisms for enforcement, including the role of NIH grant conditions and a proposed mandatory federal regime; international collaboration and the importance of U.S. leadership given that most high-tier data is generated domestically; the relationship between the proposal and open-source biological AI development; and the offense-defense imbalance in biosecurity and the case for mandatory gene synthesis screening.

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Alan Z. Rozenshtein

Alan Z. Rozenshtein

@ARozenshtein
alanrozenshtein.com
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Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Research Director and Senior Editor at Lawfare, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He also speaks and consults on technology policy matters.
Jessica Pannu

Jessica Pannu

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Jessica Pannu is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Senior Scholar at the Center for Health Security.
Doni Bloomfield

Doni Bloomfield

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Doni Bloomfield is an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of intellectual property, biosecurity, antitrust, national security law, torts, and health law. His research examines the role the law plays in encouraging technological progress while reducing severe risks. His work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Science, Washington University Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Antitrust Law Review, BMJ, JAMA, the Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, JAMA Internal Medicine, and elsewhere. He is a Greenwall Faculty Scholar and a fellow at the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale. Before law school, Bloomfield was a biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News in Boston.
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