Can LLM Agents Select and Engage with Biological Tools?

An Initial Biosecurity Assessment

Jeffrey Lee, Alyssa Worland, Kyle Brady, Grant Ellison, Henry Alexander Bradley, Christopher Rodriguez, Casey O. Barkan, Sunishchal Dev, Dawid Maciorowski, Jordan Despanie, et al.

ResearchPublished Jun 25, 2026

Biological tools (BTs) could potentially be misused by malicious actors seeking to design novel biological weapons. In this report, the authors evaluate seven large language model (LLM) agents on their abilities to select and operate BTs. They find that LLM agents are capable of performing initial interactions with BTs, which could lower expertise barriers for actors seeking to use BTs. Targeted testing of agent design capabilities is warranted.

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Lee, Jeffrey, Alyssa Worland, Kyle Brady, Grant Ellison, Henry Alexander Bradley, Christopher Rodriguez, Casey O. Barkan, Sunishchal Dev, Dawid Maciorowski, Jordan Despanie, Barbara Del Castello, Bria Persaud, Amar Pandya, Ella Guest, and Steph Guerra, Can LLM Agents Select and Engage with Biological Tools? An Initial Biosecurity Assessment. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2026. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4741-1.html.
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