Sixty-nine figures from technology and national security urged the US Congress in June to require screening of synthetic DNA orders against a federal list of dangerous sequences1. Synthetic DNA is the made-to-order assembly of genetic material that a laboratory can buy by mail; screening means checking an order against a watchlist before a provider builds and ships it. The Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act (S.3741), introduced on 29 January, would make that check mandatory for US gene-synthesis providers.
No country anywhere currently mandates such screening, so a provider can fulfil an order for a fragment of a dangerous pathogen with no legal duty to ask what it is being assembled toward. S.3741 would close that duty for US providers, routing flagged orders to the federal level for review.
The harder problem sits below the bill, and the bill does not resolve it: the screening methods now in use can be worked around, by splitting an order across providers or by ordering sequences that are individually benign but dangerous in combination. A mandate written loosely could therefore certify a check that does not actually hold, giving the appearance of control without the substance. The governance gap sits alongside the WHO antimicrobial-resistance plan agreed in May as a structural biosecurity deficit no current international agreement closes. The right frame here is oversight of a dual-use technology, not a verdict on any company.
