History is full of biosecurity lessons: policies that backfired, quarantines that worked, and what nuclear governance can teach us.
Understanding why past measures succeeded or failed helps us avoid repeating mistakes.
Output: An essay, timeline or case-study collection.
Read the list of ideas above and pick the one you would most enjoy.
Check the source to see whether someone has already done it.
Scope it down to something you can finish in your available time.
Do a quick first version and show it to someone.
Write up what you made and share it with the source authors.
All steps done
Share what you made, then try another project. The PDF version has room for notes.
How did ancient and medieval societies protect themselves from plague? Research one historical practice (quarantine, isolation, trade rules) and draw a lesson for today.
Pick three lessons Zaidi and Dafoe draw from the failed attempt at international control of nuclear weapons. For each, argue whether it transfers to AI compute: chips are easier to track than ideas but harder than uranium.
Researchers keep re-collecting the same numbers. Turn one of them into a clean, open dataset or API.
