–It is becoming easier for threat actors to make use of advances in biotech to modify or create new biological agents, which if released could lead to pandemics or be used in targeted biological attacks. –While biotech is offering groundbreaking solutions for health issues, these can come with new risks, from possible clinical complications to unknown long-term impacts. –Unless comprehensive global ethical boundaries are set for biotech developments, then ethical concerns are likely to be disregarded by some, leading to new sources of division and conflict within societies.Losing control of biotech? 2.4 Adverse outcomes of frontier technologies, including biotech, is one of the risks with the sharpest rise in GRPS ranking between the two- year and 10-year time horizons, by ten positions to #23. This divergence shows that, while global risks stemming from the field of biotech are not top of mind today, they will become more so within a decade. There are three sets of risks in biotech that need to be watched closely over the coming years: Rising accessibility of bioweapons; negative health impacts as the flipside of efforts to cure or prevent health issues; and the potential for those with access to leading-edge biotech to cross ethical boundaries. In each of these three areas, the first warning signs are already emerging. Risks will grow over time and become more complex as further rapid technological progress is made. Advances in biotech are being supercharged by convergent technologies such as AI and machine learning approaches, streamlining the ability of both legitimate researchers and threat actors to make sense of large datasets. Regional and national responses in the EOS reveal pockets of heightened concern around Adverse outcomes of frontier technologies, including biotech. Several nations, such as Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Demark, assign this risk relatively high significance, reflecting their unique geopolitical or economic priorities. High-income regions exhibit moderate concern overall, whereas emerging economies have lower short-term rankings for this risk but may face rising exposure as technology adoption accelerates (Figure 2.10). These risks come alongside tremendous new opportunities for breakthrough improvements not only in health, but also well-being, as well as agriculture, the development of new building materials, mining and many other areas.44 Within a decade, products made using synthetic biology will permeate our societies much more than today,45 and the tech-driven bioeconomy will play an increasingly important role in climate-change mitigation.46 The scope of opportunities related to human genome editing, specifically, accelerated following the award in 2020 of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their development of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9), a technology that allows for precise cuts in DNA to modify Short- (2 years) and long-term (10 years) risk severity score: Adverse outcomes of frontier technologiesFIGURE 2.9 Source World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey 2024-2025. 10-year rank: 23rdIntended or unintended negative consequences of advances in frontier technologies on individuals, businesses, ecosystems and/or economies. Includes, but is not limited to: biotechnology; geo-engineering; and quantum computing. 10-year average risk severity score: 4.5 7 High Low 6 5 4 3 2 1Severity Proportion of respondents Note Severity was assessed on a 1-7 Likert scale [1 = Low severity, 7 = High severity]. The percentages in the graphs may not add up to 100% because values have been rounded up/down.2 years 1% 10 years3% 13% 18% 20% 20% 16% 9% 4%8% 16% 23% 32% 16% Global Risks Report 2025 54