Eight Observations on Biosecurity for 2023
1. Now is different. The COVID-19 years mark the “End of the Beginning” of the century of biology. For the past four decades, since the approval of genetically engineered insulin, we’ve developed a diverse suite of tools to make biology easier to design and deploy. History will show that COVID-19 marked the time when the pace of that development accelerated exponentially. Synthetic biology found its stride in responding to the pandemic. At the same time, the public has been reminded of the power of biology and public awareness is emerging of the potential for biotechnology to be used, deliberately or accidentally, in dangerous ways.
2. We need to redefine “biosecurity” for an era with new capabilities. The pandemic allowed the biosecurity sector to mature and scale. Biosecurity, which I like to define as “the application of modern tools of biotechnology, at scale, to combat dangerous biology in all its forms and origins,” emerged into a new era over the past 3 years. The term biosecurity should, like cybersecurity, be an umbrella term that covers a wide array of systems, capabilities, and technologies. For example, mRNA vaccines were a bright-eyed, long-term experiment in coding cells that, when accelerated and deployed at massive and unprecedented scale, mitigated the impact of COVID-19 across the globe. PCR testing was a laboratory tool that, when used by populations en masse, became a powerful and proactive way to detect and mitigate pathogens. Genomic sequencing of viral variants, which had been confined to research institutes and ivory towers, became a topic of interest to policymakers at the highest levels (and with China’s dramatic policy reversal on COVID, these monitoring capabilities remain at the forefront of our biosecurity infrastructure). Overall, these modern biotechnologies deployed at scale became critical to our response and, as we go forward, we should think about biosecurity innovation as developing upon this foundation.
3. Cybersecurity is the model for biosecurity. Just as cybersecurity developed into an industry (and a market) as computers became an inseparable part of our daily lives and economies, biosecurity is a burgeoning market as the biotech century matures. There will be opportunities for economic and technical growth in this sector for the foreseeable future. For example, in addition to detecting dangerous threats from bad actors and lab errors, one of the biggest use cases for new capabilities in detecting genetic engineering are for IP protection and theft. Biosecurity will enable companies and countries to monitor whether their biologically engineered products or genetic resources have been stolen.
Structurally, we should follow the same path with bio as we did with cyber and elevate biology to an operational concern as opposed to a support function. Remember when cybersecurity was a problem that we relegated to the IT professionals? Only when it became an operational priority did we make a step change in our preparedness. A similar dynamic exists for biosecurity today, where preparedness is assigned only to the medical and health sectors. We must think about biology undergoing the same transition as cybersecurity and make it an operational priority.
4. Bad actors will employ biowarfare, so we must employ biodefense. Biology is programmable like computers, but it isn’t predictable like computers. We are now living in an era where our defenses are incredibly weak compared to the power of offensive use of biotechnology. The COVID-19 pandemic proved this to our adversaries and those who would seek to do harm to humanity. When there is an imbalance of offensive and defensive capabilities, history shows that those who would seek to change the balance of power have quickly taken advantage before their perceived window of opportunity closes.
5. Adversaries will employ biology in ways that are deceptive. Sun Tzu said, “All warfare is based on deception.” The more advanced the technology, the more complicated it is to understand. Think about the evolution from gunpowder (chemistry), to airplanes and the atom bomb (physics), to hacking of the energy grid and cyber influence campaigns (computers). Biology will be used in even more complex and disguised ways. Bad actors will try to use biology in opaque ways that are full of misdirection.
Imagine a wartime cholera outbreak in Ukraine that’s 100 times worse than what we’d normally see in the spring. This would potentially reduce the will of the Ukranians to continue the conflict. Additionally, based on current messaging, it would be something highlighted as evidence of a bioweapons development campaign gone awry. How can we know if the source of the outbreak is natural or engineered, or how it entered widespread circulation? How will our lack of insights into biological threat attribution impact the course of the conflict? Persistent monitoring of non-human genomic sequences is the only answer. This allows detection and attribution of abnormalities as was done in Haiti in the early 2010s.
6. Lab accidents are the single greatest threat we face (IMO). Labs doing high-risk research can cause unwitting exposures (and escapes) even in well-intentioned circumstances, and the threat of malicious or rogue agents and missing research materials is ever-present. Regardless of SARS-CoV-2’s origins, the fact is that year after year infectious disease outbreaks originate and leak from labs. Most recently these range from a vaccine factory accident that led to more than 10,000 confirmed cases of brucellosis in China in 2019, to a high-visibility laboratory-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection in Taiwan in 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. Gain of Function (GoF) research poses a significant threat. Without systemic and structural change (on a global level) and/or a massive increase in our defensive and monitoring capabilities, it is likely the next pandemic will come from a research lab experimenting with dangerous pathogens and making a mistake. As biology R&D gets more powerful, easier, cheaper, faster, and distributed — biosecurity gets harder. We must do better.
7. Countering the threat of biology requires a massive investment in intelligence. On par with the biggest intelligence failures this century has been America’s inability to conclusively answer the question of COVID-19’s precise origin. This creates distrust and mistrust along with political and societal upheaval. Not knowing means we can’t be totally secure in our response, and can prevent us from moving forward to productive solutions. It also invites adversaries to favor biology as a means of war that isn’t easily attributable. This failure has its roots in a missing category of intelligence drawn from both a reorientation of current priorities and the creation of widespread, persistent monitoring of biological threats and environmental baselines. Just like geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) was needed in the early 1950s, we now need biointelligence (BIOINT). Early warning and attribution of bioevents depends on developing these capabilities.
8. We need to start by building a global radar network for dangerous biology. Defense must catch up. It will only do so if we build better technology. It’s not complicated; it just takes willpower and intention. In the 1930s, Alfred Loomis dragged the U.S. Army and Navy into the era of physics. Leading the investment in and development of radar at a time when it wasn’t well understood, his teams gave the Allies amazing tools and foundational innovation that helped win WWII.
Today, the most important single thing we can do is change how we think about continuous monitoring for biothreats. Biothreats are invisible — collection and detection make it visible. We need a global radar network looking for dangerous biology. To do this, we need to leverage modern biotechnology and embrace the era of thinking about DNA and RNA the way we think about code. We should use the lessons of wastewater monitoring and other non-traditional sampling to monitor areas of potential biorisk more aggressively.
Borders, airports, BSL 2, 3, and 4 labs with high degrees of biosafety risk, and areas that carry a high-risk for zoonotic spillover (including those caused by climate-related changes) should represent strategic nodes in a global early warning network. These are NAIs that every junior officer learns to identify for collection prioritization. Building this early warning network will buy precious time for a public health response and medical countermeasure developments, while helping to detect and, crucially, to deter malicious uses of biotechnology in service of national and global security.
Andy Weber and the team at the Council on Strategic Risks published some great thoughts on what can be done to improve our preparedness. Within its report, this is the key message: Biosecurity investment should come from both public health and national security budgets. This is the biggest change that can make a real difference in our overall defensive posture.
As the General Manager, Biosecurity at Ginkgo Bioworks, I reflect on the broader world of biosecurity / intelligence / national security more than anything else. These are my personal opinions as someone who is thinking about this topic 24 hours a day.
