Nuclear Threat Initiative
Global Biological Policy and Programs
NTI's Global Biological Policy and Programs seeks to transform global security by driving systemic solutions to biological threats imperiling humanity.
What problem is Nuclear Threat Initiative’s biosecurity programme working on?
NTI | bio works with a variety of key decision-makers and educators — including government leaders, scientists, industry experts, NGOs, and educators — to design and promote threat-reduction projects and improve biosecurity.
NTI | bio released a groundbreaking report on the convergence of artificial intelligence and the life sciences, exploring current and anticipated AI capabilities for engineering living systems and the biosecurity implications of these developments. Since the report’s release, NTI | bio convened the Global AIxBio Forum, an international platform for developing guardrails to prevent misuse of AI-bio capabilities and cultivating a shared understanding of emerging biosecurity risks. NTI | bio also launched the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) in 2024, a first-of-its-kind organization dedicated to strengthening international biosecurity norms and developing innovative tools to uphold them.
What does Nuclear Threat Initiative's biosecurity programme do?
NTI believes that “addressing biological threats is a shared responsibility between governments and the private sector.” Specifically, NTI | bio:
- Strengthens biotechnology governance and biosecurity through multilateral and bilateral efforts, preventing catastrophic events that could result from accidental or deliberate misuse of modern bioscience and technology.
- Builds international commitment to prevent bioweapons development, enhancing transparency around compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and building an epistemic community dedicated to disincentivizing bioweapons.
Advances health security in countries around the world through projects like the Global Health Security Index and the Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition.
What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of NTI | bio?1.
We previously included NTI | bio as one of our recommended charities based on Founders Pledge’s evaluation highlighting its cost-effectiveness. Another indicator of NTI bio’s cost-effectiveness is that Open Philanthropy, a trusted evaluative and impact-focused grantmaking organisation, has issued several grants supporting NTI | bio, including two in 2020 totaling $8.5 million.
We’ve since updated our recommendations to reflect only organisations recommended by evaluators we’ve looked into as part of our evaluator investigations and chosen to rely on; as such, we don't currently include NTI |bio as one of our recommended programs but you can still donate to it via our donation platform.
At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.