Foundation for American Innovation + Institute for Progress · 2026-06-04 · major
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Microsoft AI CEOs Co-Sign Open Letter Urging Congress to Mandate Nucleic-Acid Synthesis Screening and Recordkeeping This Session
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, and Mustafa Suleyman joined Nobel laureates, DNA-industry execs, and former defense officials on an open letter asking Congress to require synthetic-DNA providers to screen orders and keep records this session.
The four frontier-lab CEOs put their names on the same page for once — telling Congress to screen synthetic-DNA orders before AI does it for the wrong people.
Key specs
| Top lab ceo signatories | 4 |
|---|---|
| Notable additional signers | Patrick Collison, Alexandr Wang, David Baker, Kevin Esvelt, Christine Wormuth |
| Companion bill | S.3741 (Cotton, Klobuchar) |
What is it?
An open letter, organized by the Foundation for American Innovation and the nonpartisan Institute for Progress, asking U.S. lawmakers to make DNA synthesis screening and recordkeeping mandatory. The full letter and signatory list live at screendna.org. Anyone who sells synthetic DNA or RNA, or builds the benchtop machines that print it, would be required to check sequences against a hazard database and verify their customers' identity before shipping orders.
How does it work?
Today, screening is voluntary and uneven — some providers do it, some do not. The letter asks Congress to codify two requirements: orders must be screened against curated sequences-of-concern databases, and providers must keep records of orders and customers so investigators can trace suspicious activity. The signatories explicitly position screening as the least intrusive biosecurity lever available, and ask for one consistent national standard rather than a patchwork of state rules. A companion bill from Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — the Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act of 2026 (S.3741) — would put a screening mandate and a NIST 'biotech governance sandbox' into law.
Why does it matter?
The signatories warn that LLMs are eroding the knowledge barrier that has historically kept biological weapons hard to design. Getting Altman, Amodei, Hassabis, and Suleyman to publicly co-sign anything is itself a signal — they are direct competitors and have rarely agreed on AI policy. Nucleic-acid screening is the chokepoint between an AI-designed sequence and a real-world pathogen; if Congress acts this session, frontier labs gain political cover to keep shipping models without a heavier-handed pre-release licensing regime.
Who is it for?
Biosecurity policy staff, frontier-lab government-affairs teams, gene-synthesis providers, congressional offices
Try it
https://screendna.org/