Biotechnology Commission Recommends Rapid Research and Development Investment

The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) delivered its major report and action plan to Congress in early April with a blunt message: the world is entering a new age driven by the intersection of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and the United States is at risk of falling behind China in this critical emerging technology area.

“China is quickly ascending to biotechnology dominance, having made biotechnology a strategic priority for 20 years. To remain competitive, the United States must take swift action in the next three years. Otherwise, we risk falling behind, a setback from which we may never recover,” the report states. 

It explains, “We are entering the age of biotechnology, a time when biology is the basis of innovation,” and adds a dire warning. “Every strategic sector—including defense, healthcare, agriculture, energy and manufacturing—can be advanced by biotechnology, but also breached by it, too. These are not just matters of scientific achievement; they are questions of national security, economic power, and global influence.”

The report/action plan offered 49 recommendations to Congress, including investing a minimum of $15 billion over the next five years on emerging biotechnology; establishing a National Biotechnology Coordination Office within the Executive Office of the President; mobilizing industry to scale biotechnology products; treating biological data as a strategic resource; building a biotechnology workforce and leveraging the collective strengths of allies and partners.

The NSCEB is a legislative advisory board created by Congress for Congress. Michelle Rozo, co-chair of the NSCEB, explained the growing importance of biotechnology during an interview with Navin Girishankar, president of the Economic Security and Technology Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on CSIS’s Betting on America show on YouTube. “Biotechnology is going to have enormous impact across national security. This means traditional defense but also economic security, food security, health security, and we are also coming up to this inflection point of the technology.” 

Rozo, who also serves as vice president of technical capabilities at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit that accelerates the development of national security-related technologies, explained that the inflection point includes biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation. “We can train foundational models on biological language—the A’s and C’s and G’s and T’s that make up the genetic code—or the images of protein structures, which underly how they function. In doing so, scientists can now more exquisitely be able to ask a foundation model [to] design me a biological system that can perform this function, like a drug function, and accelerate this design, build, test, learn cycle and really transform biology into an engineering discipline.”

When that inflection point arrives, she said, it will “impact every aspect of our economy, from medicine to food to agriculture to industry and defense.” She also noted that, according to analysts, up to 60% of economic inputs—plastics, chemicals and materials, for example—could be produced with biotechnology.

Rozo described biotechnology as a game changer for national security and defense. “You can think about logistics in Japan, secure supply chains, operational readiness and military medicine. The United States has to use sole sources or foreign sources for major components of the supply chain. The DoD is, right now, innovating and working with industry to develop biomanufactured routes of production of critical chemicals and components that make up the DoD supply chain. That can be here in America, but it can also be forward deployed to solve for logistics on demand.”   

Julie Heng, a research associate with Renewing American Innovation at CSIS, told SIGNAL Media that biotechnology could affect nearly any supply chain. “The numbers on biotech’s impact right now are already in the trillions and projected to grow immensely. We can take a ton of different defense applications, medical applications, and think about how biotech might affect that. There are interesting questions for armor, for example, that’s made out of certain kinds of spider silk, which is much stronger than silkworms’ and used to be, historically, very difficult to cultivate because spiders are cannibals.”

She also cited “dynamic camouflage” inspired by birds and animals as an example of biotechnology affecting warfighters. “Some animals have different color properties in their feathers or their scales or whatever. Would it be possible that we’ll have some things that are able to mimic that kind of work?”

One option, she added, is to use biotechnological processes to create existing materials; another is to produce novel materials. Generating synthetic blood on the battlefield to treat wounded soldiers might become a reality, for example.

The NSCEB spent two years researching and collaborating with subject matter experts to form its final report and recommendations. For example, the commission tasked the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to examine AI/biotechnology issues specifically affecting national security and defense. NASEM’s number one recommendation was the creation of an extensive research and development network known as the Biotechnology Coupled with Artificial Intelligence and Transformative Automation for Laboratory Yielding Strategic Technologies (BioCATALYST) network. The network would be co-led by the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

SIGNAL Media attempted without success to interview individuals who contributed to the NASEM report, which was published prior to the full commission’s final report. 

But the NASEM report itself is comprehensive in its support for the creation of the network. It explains that progress at the leading edge of the AI, machine learning and biotechnology convergence “requires a new infrastructure that can keep pace with rapid advances and involves large datasets, large-scale computing, fast networks, and laboratory automation.”

Heng noted “a lot of synergies” between the BioCATALYST recommendation and other recommendations from the NSCEB. The two reports locate some of the authorities in different places, but it comes down to a few of the same central points, she indicated. “One, the recognition that AI, automation and biology must be intertwined and are going to bring us a lot of progress in the future.”

They also identify some of the same bottlenecks to progress, she pointed out. “For example, we have a lack of large-scale, high-quality data, and while the two different reports suggest different ways of where you could locate that or who might manage that, both identify data as an issue.”

And both address difficulties scaling early-stage technologies. “In emphasizing the interdisciplinarity of everything, the question of test beds that might be located within the government, as well as these—they go by a lot of different names—but like self-driving labs or cloud labs or labs [that] might have digital twin kind of stuff. There are all these different possibilities of a lab that has robotics that could really accelerate the timelines of whether this drug might work or whether this prototype might work, and we’re able to potentially remotely control labs all over the world.”

The NASEM committee envisions the development of a robust national network of AI-biotechnology hubs. “The BioCATALYST network would provide a unique combination of high-performance AI and data analytics resources, large-scale datasets, and core experimental resources,” the report states. 

It also would help overcome challenges in translating basic and applied research on biobased materials and living systems with novel functions for national security and defense applications, as well as provide opportunities to sustain and grow organizations critical to such research. At the same time, it would help overcome or reduce barriers that limit advancement and use of biotechnologies for national security impact—data curation, network protocols, software setup and heterogeneous laboratory interfaces, NASEM explained in its report.

NASEM suggested the network include both the unclassified level to “maximize collaboration and sharing of scientific data, knowledge, and tools,” and the classified level to “enable secure analysis, design, development, and application of biotechnology innovations that support the unique needs of the national security and defense communities.”

If it materializes, BioCATALYST might be described as a whole-of-government effort. NASEM noted that the Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships “are well placed to plan and develop the experimental hubs, including integration of cloud lab-based infrastructure and technologies within the basic and applied research infrastructure.” And the National Institute of Standards and Technology plays a crucial role in establishing standards for integrating data and workflow processes linking multiple hubs.

For BioCATALYST to become reality, “legislative actions, whether changes to existing authorities for the Defense Department and director of national intelligence, authorization of a new program, and/or appropriation of funds for strategic, long-term investment in such a network likely will be needed,” NASEM reported. 

The cost of such a network is hard to calculate, however, for a number of reasons, including: costs may vary by the organizations involved in the effort; the degree to which existing research can be built upon versus having to create newly for the Defense Department or national security agencies; the degree to which existing infrastructure for data storage and analysis can be used; the amount of indirect costs for compliance with all federal, state, local, tribal and territorial laws; the degree to which a ready workforce exists and/or has to be trained; the cost of computing infrastructure; the cost of cybersecurity protections; and other similar factors.

NASEM estimated that it would take one to three years to create the foundational infrastructure, initial databases and associated infrastructure, and proof-of-concept for integrating AI, machine learning and automated experimentation; four to five to scale the network, expand the datasets and refine AI and machine learning models; six to seven years to integrate AI and machine learning and full-scale automated experimentation; and eight to 10 years to achieve full network maturity.

Once the BioCATALYST network has successfully demonstrated its utility to the national security-oriented research and development ecosystem and the broader research enterprise, international collaborators can be added, NASEM wrote. “Biotechnology, in particular, is a domain that thrives on international collaboration from shared challenges posed by biological threats, health crises, and environmental concerns, which provide common ground for the United States to engage with its international allies and partners.” 

Nazish Jeffery, a bioeconomy policy manager with the Federation of American Scientists, indicated that the United States needs to collaborate with international partners in the biotech arena. “When we think about the bioeconomy at large, it’s not just a U.S.-driven endeavor. It is a global initiative. You’re seeing the European Union, Brazil, India, all having some type of initiative around the bioeconomy and biotechnology as a result,” she said. “So, maintaining our alliances and our partnerships is essential to help us develop and maintain our edge. When we talk about supply chain resiliency, I don’t think there is a way to produce 100% everything within the United States. Maintaining relationships, maintaining the integrity and the scientific nature of sharing, is really crucial for this.”