Securing Biology Requires Critical Action, Hoover Scholars Urge in New Report

Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) - Biosecurity Really: A Strategy for Victory, a landmark report calling for urgent action to secure biology now and in perpetuity, was released today by the Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative (BSL) of the Hoover Institution.

The report warns that biosecurity risks are increasing. Emerging technologies and other trends are making biological threats more numerous, frequent, and consequential. The authors outline how emerging biotechnology must itself be used to secure biology, akin to how software is required to secure software.

"Advancing and securing biotechnology innovation is essential for securing biology," stated Drew Endy, PhD, lead author and science and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Added Distinguished Visiting Fellow Mike Kuiken, "Biosecurity requires US leadership in emerging biotechnology. Leadership means innovation. We must advance the field to secure it."

Biosecurity Really urges attention to trends impacting the biosecurity landscape. "Yes, we have to buy time by minding existing (biosecurity) risks," noted Endy, "but we must also understand how the threat landscape is fundamentally changing. A stable, secure, and prosperous future is possible, but we must act. All hands are needed."

Recommended actions include the following:

• Creating a sustained biological intelligence (BIOINT) program.
• Managing mutual distrust via private-sector bio-audits.
• Governing research with pandemic-potential pathogens more strictly and on a multilateral basis.
• De-escalating and disarming nation-state bioweapons programs.
• Creating a national biosecurity institute.
• Creating new public leadership roles and coordination offices.
• Leading on critical emerging biotechnologies, including DNA synthesis and generative biology.
• Strengthening indoor air quality standards.
• Promoting bio-literacy and rewarding biosecurity leadership.

Biosecurity Really breaks new ground by reframing biosecurity around several key principles:

• "Pricing in" Pervasive AI and Biotechnology. Biotechnology will become a general-purpose technology. Artificial intelligence will be pervasive. Such shifts mean we can no longer rely on strategies that only seek to limit access to powerful tools.
• Distrusting but Verifying. Biosecurity strategies must assume distrust as the default state. A private-sector system of "bio-audits" is needed to oversee research at labs, companies, and universities to certify safety, catch risks early, and enable public trust.
• Using Biology to Secure Biology. We must harness the very technologies that create potential risks to strengthen surveillance, vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments.
• Developing Biological Intelligence (BIOINT). Biology is the only domain in which we wait for something bad to happen. New technologies can enable real-time, threat-agnostic monitoring of potential biological threats.
• Changing Our Governance Regimes for Pathogens Research. Rules from when creating viruses was difficult no longer suffice. Research with live pandemic-potential pathogens should follow a "default-no" rule, subject to multilateral review and approval and only allowed if needed for diagnostics, treatments, or vaccines.
• Preventing Stupidly Assured Destruction (SAD). In pursuing bioweapons out of mutual fear and suspicion, nations risk repeating historical mistakes, but with the tools of the twenty-first century.

"We can make a world in which we are safe from preventable biological harms. We can make a world in which COVID-19 is the last pandemic humanity ever faces," conclude the report's authors.

Biosecurity Really is the first major publication of BSL, which ensures that the United States and its allies understand biology as a strategic domain and empowers leaders to act soon enough for their actions to matter. Learn more online via victory.stanford.edu or contact Sarah Moront ([email protected]).

To learn about matters involving other critical and emerging technologies visit the Hoover Institution's Technology Policy Accelerator online at tpa.stanford.edu.