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Idk, writing off e.g. anthrax risk because the 2001 attacks only killed 5 people is pretty silly. There's good reason to believe those attacks weren't really intended to kill people, and they certainly weren't intended to kill a large number of people.

This fact also casts some doubt of relevance on the Montague paper as well, which says that a bio agent's ability to spread is so incredibly important. Yes, the ability to spread does amplify the risk enormously for obvious reasons, but there are plenty of non-spreading agents that you can do huge, huge amounts of damage with, including anthrax when used "appropriately."

A slippery slope is anythings dangerous that anyone wants to be dangerous and can fall into a larger and larger nebulus of safety for the many and control for the few, which is a different kind of danger.

It will be interesting to see where this attempts to contain the interpretations of fear from the interpretations of fearmongering (or not) leads to.

Maybe AGI gets disagrees with all the manipulators and becomes for the masses.

the 2001 Anthrax attacks are especially interesting because the Anthrax came from a DoD BSL-4 lab studying biological weapons. investigators eventually matched the Anthrax from the letters with a particular flask from the lab, and were closing in on the scientist responsible when he killed himself.

Definitely doesn't support the idea that Anthrax is easy to DIY.

It doesn’t support the idea that anthrax was easy to DIY. I have no idea to what extent LLMs make it easier, my only point is that the author implies that the fairly small damage caused by those attacks is because it’s hard to spread anthrax (the argument made in the linked paper). To the contrary, there was a ton of effort put into ensuring the anthrax didn’t spread.
I'm not sure what you mean that effort was put in to keep the anthrax from spreading. This stuff wasn't your grandmother's anthrax. The spores were small enough to pass through NATO biofilters. They were mixed with high levels of silicon, which apparently made them better at infecting the lungs. Sandia tried and failed 58 times to reproduce the high silica content, apparently. If anything, it sounds like the anthrax was intentionally designed to spread better.
It seems they were delivered in such a way to mitigate chances of other people/handlers getting sick, and they were delivered with notes that immediately told the victim what to do. Very weird story! But lots of indicators it wasn’t meant to be a big catastrophe.
I'm honestly surprised more wasn't made of it. There was no shortage of 9/11 conspiracy theories, but an anthrax attack was confirmed to come from a DoD lab, and they tried to pin it on Iraq initially, and... crickets?