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If it just a mundane chatbot, the discussion is moot. But, we already have AI making breakthroughs in research and approaching the abilities do science just like a scientist does. (The last two paragraphs of your comment also assume such a high capability scenario).

Imagine giving the access, to whoever wants it, to a scientist who may not have many fresh insights, but has the advantage of a huge memory containing all the scientific literature in their mind, the standard patterns of deductions, and the ability to work at a very fast pace 24/7. They could identify vulnerabilities in biological mechanisms, just like AI identifies security flaws in code today.

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Regarding hurting themselves, I was not referring to someone who is too dumb to follow lab safety precautions, but someone who has a nihilistic mindset. State actors and militia use weapons to take over and enjoy the power they acquire - they dont want to get killed by a deadly virus(unless they engineer and selectively apply the vaccine before they release the weapon - but this is very hard to keep secret). Someone who is nihilistic wont have such reservations on using the weapon even if it destroys them eventually.

Regarding restrictions on API LLMs leading to use of local LLMs, it is the local LLMs which will be used anyway (once they have the capability). That we live in a mass surveillance envirnoment is common knowledge. The bottleneck, where restrictions can be applied, is not inference but training which requires hundreds of millions of dollars. Chinese scientists have themselves spoken about AI safety concerns and it is indeed a threat to China just like anyone else.

Also, restricting high end weapons ability does not interfere with 99.9% of LLM usage (open-weights or proprietary) - so it need not interfere with business strategy.