I assure you that you did not need an LLM to engage in, ahem, risky shenanigans, much before all this AI was ever a thing.

Sincerely, a former engineering student.

(Put another way - extracting for eg meth - or any such "dangerous"/illicit thing is stupidly easy for any engineering graduate who actually paid attention to their coursework. Hell, there are/were forums on one of the biggest red-colored, YC associated social media platforms that would tell you the steps for personal usage of these things.)

I don't doubt it. Bleach + ammonia is something anyone can make.

But I rather suspect there are improvements to be made in the realm that are a lot easier than building a uranium enrichment centrifuge hall under a mountain.

Do note that I'm not condoning lowering the bar. I'm merely pointing out that the bar was already quite low, and the current position of the bar is a small incremental change to anyone who actually knew where the bar truly lay to begin with.