Can LLM Agents Select and Engage with Biological Tools?
An Initial Biosecurity Assessment
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.
- Copyright: RAND Corporation
- Availability: Web-Only
- Year: 2026
- Pages: 78
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA4741-1
- Document Number: RR-A4741-1
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, RAND Corporation, RR-A4741-1, 2026. As of August 6, 2026: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4741-1.html

    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.

    This research was independently initiated and conducted by the Center on AI, Security, and Technology within RAND Global and Emerging Risks using income from operations and gifts and grants from philanthropic supporters.
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