Reagan institute. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage director of the Ronald Reagan institute, mr. Roger zakheim. [applause] mr. Zakheim i appreciate it. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today at the Ronald Reagan institute. Which as those in the room no, carries on the legacy of our nations 40th president here in washington, d. C. As mentioned i am roger zakheim, director of the institute. And we are excited to host this event as part of our center for peace through strength, National Security innovationbased programs. In collaboration with congressman Brad Wenstrup and the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence for their really consequential series, beyond the skiff. And for those who are not aware of this series, what it means is you get to interact with the members of congress that never see sunlight outside our nations capital. Not that there is much sunshine today. But in reagan country is always sunny, so we will bring some into this discussion. The program is dedicated to assessing the health and effectiveness of americas National Security innovation ecosystem. Much of our work focuses on unlocking the potential of emerging technologies and capabilities like Artificial Intelligence, which as you all know, brings enormous promise for progress across all of our National Security endeavors. And i will shamelessly self promote here. Outside we have our National Security innovationbased report card, which actually tries to harness and understand how the United States is doing in terms of realizing where we need to be as a country when it comes to the nsib. But more relevant to today just as innovation is creating more opportunities to benefit our National Security, it is also creating vulnerabilities. And the domain of bio security is no exception. The democratization of emerging technologies like ai has only made it easier for our competitors and adversaries to engineer lethal new pathogens to wreak havoc on bio security. Sciences have already demonstrated how Large Language Models can be tasked to develop cookbooks for novel agents, lowering the barrier of entry from line actors without significant and sophisticated bioengineering expertise. So todays panel of experts bring deep experience across the public and private sectors at the nexus of bio security and technology, and led by my friend, congressman Brad Wenstrup, the panel will analyze the horizon of emerging threats, assess the state of our bio security, and make policy recommendations that will help safeguard our National Security and the health of the american people. But first, a few words from the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on intelligence, congressman mike turner. Please Pay Attention to the screen behind me. Rep. Turner good morning, everyone. I am sorry i could not be with you all in person today, but i want to start thinking the Ronald Reagan institute and dr. Brad wenstrup for hosting this crucial conversation. We are kicking off the eighth installment of the beyond the skiff series in the 118th congress with dr. Wenstrups panel, bio security and the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence. I would like to share some background on this series. The beginning up 2023, the intelligence commit he was tasked by former speaker Kevin Mccarthy to restore the House Intelligence Committee focus on National Security. Were committed to revitalize the committees oversight of the Intelligence Community. As part of our strategy be opened our committee to experts and leaders in National Security and in the intelligence field to better counter the threats facing our nation. It was this component of our approach that resulted in our establishing this beyond the skiff series. These discussions are important in making sure that the House Intelligence Committee is instrumental in any intelligence or National Security conversations. It allows for our members to receive feedback and new information from individuals and organizations on what reforms and legislation house intelligence republicans should be focused on. For the first installment of 2024, dr. Brad wenstrup has assembled an excellent panel to discuss bio security and the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence, in partnership with the Ronald Reagan institute. Dr. Wenstrup represents ohios second congressional district. He brings experience as a doctor , an army reserve officer, and a veteran. He is the chairman of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. His experience and background are violent our ability to focus on bio defense and National Health security. Americans, government officials, and our allies experienced a sense of urgency for further work on this committal critical issue following the pandemic. This timely discussion will bring to light the risks that we can face, and how we can combat those threats. And with that, i will turn it over to my good friend and fellow ohioan, dr. Wenstrup and todays panelists. Thank you. [applause] rep. Wenstrup it is much appreciated. I appreciate all of you being here as well. I thank him for making that appearance, because it is his efforts to make the committee more engaged, more engaged with experts, so that we can even have some level of expertise and not just be relying on others to come in and tell us things. We want to be engaged with the Intelligence Community firsthand, to be partners with the Intelligence Community. As legislators it is so important we not only engage with the Broader Community to learn with them, but we have the opportunity to inform the public about the work we do on the Intelligence Committee. On the Intelligence Committee, we not only represent the people of the United States of america, we represent other members of congress who are not in the room with us, who dont always have access to the things that we know. And so it is a great opportunity for us to share even more. So i would like to think the Ronald Reagan institute for hosting this event, being leaders on so many issues about National Security. They have been an outstanding resource for me in my time in congress for sure. And that includes this topic today, which is bio defense and Artificial Intelligence. In particular, the work the Reagan Institute is conducting through its National Security innovationbased will help fill some critical gaps in the u. S. National security innovation system. Congressman turner gave you some of my background. I have been on the Intelligence Committee for almost 10 years now. And the only position on there for some time. I was interested in bio weapons even before covid. But when covid hit, another doctor and i were in lockdown, so he is not working as a doctor, we are just doing research. We wanted to know how to treat people. What is going on inside the body when they get covid. There are no tests, no definitive treatment. In that process, around february 2020, we find an article from 2015, we find an article from 2015 with our scientists and chinese scientists where they create a new virus. I did not know that technology existed. That thought is going into a lot of Different Directions as we look into this. With that background, the pandemic was eyeopening because what we were seeing in realtime regarding our nations preparedness for a biologic event or lack thereof. Throughout my time in congress, ive been focusing on National Security and National Health security to ensure we have access to care and medications. These are some of the challenges we face. In february 20 23, the Intelligence Community noted the global shortcomings and preparedness for the pandemic and we can see it could inspire many adversaries to consider options related to biological weapon development. According to the same assessment , new technologies in ai and biotechnology are proliferating faster than companies and government can shape norms, protect privacy and prevent dangerous outcomes. These developments could enable novel biological weapons and could complicate efforts to detect, contribute and assess the threat to treat it. Ideally we want to lead to accelerating detection attribution and treatment. So its timely and hopefully informative for those watching. Before i begin, i will let everyone know we have a q a session following the moderated discussion. Im excited about the panelists we have that bring unique experiences, some from different angles, to talk about. I would like to thank the panelists for joining us today and introduce them. First, mr. Jain, the head of Public Health and Senior Vice President for Public Affairs where he oversees the deployment of software, hhs, fda, nih and other Public Health partners. Since 2020, he has led the work supporting the federal covid19 response and expansion of covid19 specific investments and other Health Problems across Clinical Research and supply chain management. He has previously Held Technology roles at google, jane street, and within the department of defense and graduated from Harvard University with degrees in mathematics and computer science. Dr. Michelle rose know is Vice President of technical a nonprofit strategic investor for cuttingedge technologies to enhance the National Security of the United States. She is also the vice chair of the National Security commission on emerging biotechnologies and thats the capacity in which she is here today. Previously, she was director of technology and National Security at the u. S. National Security Council she advised the president and National Security advisor on biotechnology and National Security policy. She is a molecular biologist by training and studied severe Infectious Diseases as a staff scientist with the Naval Medical Research Center in maryland and holds a phd in biology from the developmental biology and Biophysics Program at the Johns Hopkins university and a ba in biology from northwestern. Welcome. Senator jim tell, u. S. Senator from missouri, which time he was a member of the Senate Armed Services and energy and National Resources committee. He was vice chair of the Bipartisan Commission of the prevention of wmd proliferation and terrorism. It has concluded that unless action is taken, a biological event in the United States is likely. He has criticized the federal governments readiness to deal with major Public Health crises. So have i, senator. Mr. Kenneth wayne steen serving as the undersecretary of intelligence and analysis at the department of Homeland Security. He was confirmed by the United States senate in june 2022. The office of intelligence and analysis, hes a member of and the Department Liaison to the u. S. Intelligence community. He serves as the chief Intelligence Officer for dhs and reports directly to the dhs secretary and director of National Intelligence. He also previously served as a commissioner on the Bipartisan Commission on bio defense as a member of the Public Interest declassification board, and several other National Security organizations. He previously spent over 20 years in Law Enforcement and National Security positions. He was a federal prosecutor, acting United States attorney, general counsel of the fbi and Homeland Security advisor with president george w. Bush. This is quite an accomplished group here today and i think we will have a very interesting time. With that, time for you to come on board. [applause] you are here. Im at that end. Why dont we start asking everybody in 90 seconds or so if you could, how would each of you characterize the threats we face when it comes to bio weapons and Artificial Intelligence, and what do you focus on when it comes to studying the issue . I will give you a chance to reintroduce yourself and put a face to the name and if you can answer that as quickly as you can, we will get into more detail. Thank you for moderating and thank you to the Reagan Institute for allowing us to be here. Palantir is a software company, i am a technologist by trade. We specialize in helping federal agencies and partners make that her use of their data to drive position making. We are were born in the aftermath of 9 11 so our roots are in National Security and protecting National Intelligence , and weve seen how readily that approach of connecting the Data Organization to analysts scale and can be widely applied. Weve gone from being the backbone of just the federal government response to covid to serving as a backbone across a number of other Public Health areas of interest. As well as helping manage federal supply chain and visibility into medical countermeasures. Today, in some ways i think this is the nexus of the investment weve made in health care over the last five plus years as well as the roots in National Security. I think any technology historically that can be engineered has been used with opportunity for investment and growth. Theres also risks that come from that. From an infrastructure and technology and how we make use of the tools and data we have, where we are focused is on what a national bio security infrastructure looks like and what intelligence looks like and the partnerships between the public and private need to be to make sure we are safe. Thank you congressmen and thank you to the Ronald Reagan institute. Im delighted to be here. We just released our interim report about two weeks ago. I encourage everyone to check it out at biotech. Senate. Gov. I come through my role as Vice President of the commission and molecular biologist by training. I studied stem cells and Infectious Diseases. With this lens i can say that one of the threats that we are facing is the risk of being overmatched in the critical convergent area of ai and biotechnology by a strategic competitor. Ar is revolutionizing biotechnology and the applications go far beyond the pharmaceutical domain which i think is the domain most people think about first when they hear about biotechnology. Really these technologies can be applied throughout the whole breadth of our economy and change the way we think about agriculture, energy sectors, Industrial Production and means of manufacturing, and of course our defense and military applications. Our adversaries are keenly aware of the breadth of potential and are investing heavily across these domains. Losing ground at the critical intersection of ai and biotechnology to these adversaries would risk ceding enormous geopolitical advantage and risk National Security. At the commission, we are examining these risks and identifying policy options to keep the u. S. At the forefront of this critical competition. Thank you. Senator . Thank you, congressman. I am grateful to be here and this brought back memories for me. I would sum up the threat or implications of this, ai is another aspect of the technological domain bringing the capabilities or bringing asymmetric capabilities within the purview, in particular i think of nonstate actors who think asymmetrically anyways. This Technology Enables the good guys to do a lot of really good things but also enables the bad guys to do bad things. We are vulnerable to the, the oceans no longer protect us. My experience goes back to the late oughts when Mitch Mcconnell and harry reid asked bob greene and me took cochair a commission represented by the 9 11 commission on the dangers of proliferation of wmd to terrorists and we were looking at bio weapons. We were increasingly convinced that the bio threat was much greater. If you are a nonstate actor looking to do real damage, its easier to develop bio and stockpile bio, transport bio and that enables you to reload so you can hit more than once. We began to focus on how to control the proliferation of this technology but also realized controlling the technology would be difficult and probably playing defense alone would not reduce the risk for an acceptable level. Then we look at how we can prepare effectively with a bio attack and naturally occurring pandemic event which weve had. So as such an attack would not be a weapon of mass destruction. We respond so quickly and so well that it does damage, it is bad, but not that big of a threat. That led us to start a nonprofit under the firstever stem to stern analysis of americas Pandemic Response system and reproduced a report in october 2011. I dont know that anybody has updated the it would be worth doing. A number of years later, i cochaired with bob work with a National Security innovationbased task force, thats a continuing enterprise. We made recommendations for monitoring and updating. A lot of those issues overlap because one of the constant challenges whenever you are trying to innovate a fed effectively for National Security is how the government can send a consistent demand signal and align the way it operates with the incentives in the private Tech Community so that we get out of that community what we need to get in that challenges across all the domains of technology. That is where my focus is now and im looking forward to learning a lot about ai from the people around me who know something about it. Thanks very much and thanks to the institute for putting this on and having me. I have been asked to give a general overview of the laydown of the intelligence picture this debate sort of resides within. I will not be the ai expert so dont look at me for that expertise. Im not a technologist or microbiologist, i spent my life running from math and hard sciences. Those are the ai experts. Also, at dhs, i do the intelligence work. We have a lot of people and operations focusing on this issue and we have the science and technology group. We have people zeroed in on this issue and working hard on biotechnology and ai and we also have eric hyson, the cio overseeing the ai task force. We have others who are expert in that area. I want to speak on the general intelligence picture covered by my experience on the Bipartisan Commission on bio weapons. I sat on that commission with Joe Lieberman and the governor and others for seven or eight years. They let us testify at one of the other hearings. They let us testify. And i think it is useful to point out a framing exercise that today in this session is really a followon to a series of alarms that have been sounded over the years probably back from the 19 90s and then the 9 11 commission, right after 9 11 and the wmd commission, and the work ive been developing with the Bipartisan Commission. Theyve all said this is an issue that has not gotten the attention it needs, and its real. Weve seen the threat and its manifested in a variety of ways. Point back to the japanese developing and testing biological war in world war ii, someone vanilla poisonings salmonella poisonings in the 1980s, al qaeda we learned was trying to get an anthrax operation. We found evidence of that after 9 11. The anthrax letters and ricin letters over the next decade or two. Weve seen that manifest. Of course in terms of state sponsoring bioterrorism efforts, we know the soviet union had a very elaborate program, south africa and others had bioweapon programs. Still now, the Intelligence Community assesses that the russians and north koreans have programs. There are concerns about compliance under the Bio Weapons Convention on the part of iran and china. The concerns about biotech and bio weapons by regular actors and terrorist organizations and individuals and via state actors is very real. Only exacerbated by the advent of Technology Like ai which can make it a, easier to generate complicated pathogens, and lowers the barrier to entry who people who might not have sophisticated education and make use of that technology. If anything, today is the moment not only to resound the alarm from before and prior commissions but sound it even louder. Thank you all. I think one of the things that plays into where we are today, which has been a series of alarms, and i dont know that we gave them all the attention as a nation we should have throughout that time. Theres no doubt that emerging biotechnologies have changed the capability and the Threat Landscape for sure in the last five to 10 years noticeably. Lets go to some questions here. Covid19 dramatically exposed failures and weaknesses in the u. S. And International Communities bio defense capabilities, so its not just the u. S. , it is across the globe. Furthermore, weve seen time and time again how adversaries, namely the peoples republic of china who will alter, shape Public Information and opinions and protect their own interests in this space. I think its been a problem for the world, the who, and everyone watching. How has the Chinese Communist party action toward and reaction to the covid 19 pandemic impacted our bio Defense Strategy including the prospect of future bio weapons deployments postmark who wants to start . I did eight years on the China Commission and we produced a 550 page report every year about china. When i saw on the news that day and this is just my opinion, not necessarily the Reagan Institute, when i saw they had a level four bio lab in wuhan, i said i bet Good American money thats where the covid came from. Because i know the prcs approach to life science. They want to dominate the field. They put immense pressure on their researchers to come up with discoveries, they dont sit share the same ethical constraints, safety is not as big of an issue for them. All that means, the lab leak which is a danger anyway, anyone who works with the pathogens nose, it is focal to handle them. It made that more likely. I dont know whether thats true. That is what i think. Im not as concerned particularly with regard to china about them creating a bioweapon as a deliberate strategy. Its very risky for them. Its difficult to control although i understand you can try to structure pathogens to target one particular set of people, particularly if you have enough data. But they have a bunch of other tools that are working well now. Im much more concerned about the size of the navy and the nukes and technonational toolbox and wolf warrior diplomacy, and the economic leverage. Having said that, i think the lesson of covid is that we cant count on them to cooperate a response unless they believe its in their National Interests and objectives. The other objectives that beijing has. And we know this also, they have a deliberate strategy to penetrate International Institutions and subvert them to the ends of the Chinese State and they have had some success in doing it. I think Going Forward, our attitude including the who, needs to be trust but verify. In other words, we have to keep working with them, we should. They have many good scientists. Theres a lot of good partnerships. But we have to watch it. Going forward, that is probably the most important lessons i get from the Covid Response related to beijing in particular. And i can verify we spoke with dr. Fauci last week and talked about the u. S. Funding research in china, not necessarily level four, but level two and asking the oversight on the lab and he said, i wouldnt know how to do that. Its difficult. Theres a whole set of issues involved, which is we cannot be linked entirely without cutting off our nose to spite our faces. So how do we conduct this relationship Going Forward is mark that applies to a broad range of policy areas. If i can add, one area im worried about with respect to the prc is the strategic competition in biotechnology. We recognize biotechnology has been around for a long time, but with advances in engineering and other tools like intelligence and automation, we are at the cusp of what folks are calling a bio revolution. We have not hit that yet, not yet at the chatgpt moment, but it is coming and we are on the upswing. The race is up against china in particular. This is the backdrop in which the commission was created and china has stated they intend to win out in the race for biotechnology and use this technology for economic and military gain. We know we are facing a competitor who has a policy of Civil Military fusion. Meaning anything they gain will be applied to military operations. I mentioned the potential benefits, when we master this technology, not just pharmaceutical but energy, and our own capabilities in bio defense. We can get into that later how biotechnology nai is revolutionizing our ability to respond and prepare for a pandemic. Of course like all emerging technologies, this can be misused. It can be weaponized for bio weapons and misuse to create new military capabilities that differ from the way we might use them. So its important we remain at the leading edge of these technologies. We have two options. We can run faster or we can slow them down. I think weve counted for a long time on being able to run faster. I dont think that remains an option for much longer. At the commission we are looking at policy recommendations for legislators that align to buckets. One is strengthening the Biotech Sector. A strong Biotech Sector is a prepared Biotech Sector whether it be a naturally occurring pandemic or handmade. We are also looking at technology chokepoints, critical areas of biotechnology that are both necessary and limited. If we maintain a chokepoint over an adversary or if an adversary maintains a toy point over us, it can be used against us. The areas are under investigation at the commission and we look forward to continuing the conversation and recommendations to keep us at the leading edge. I want to set you up here little bit. It was mentioned, and i think you might comment, on nonstate actors in this realm. So if you care to comment on those. Sure. I want to hammer down on the point both of you made about the concern that there would be chinese efforts to steal our technology in the biotech speak space. No question. As a policy matter, its important we manage a relationship with china. We have to have interaction with them. Theres a benefit to having exchanges so we need to be clear eyed about this. For 20 years or so, weve seen a pattern on the part of the prc going very methodically industry by industry to try and steal technology we develop and put it to their own use. Weve seen it in all industries. Here we have a situation where biotech is now stated policy as a pillar of their industrial policy and strategy Going Forward. Nothing more important to the prc then developing that technology, therefore nothing they are more motivated to steal than our technology in that area. We need to be clear eyed about it. We were just meeting yesterday with some customs and Border Protection folks telling stories about finding folks over here who are acting as students in american institutions who are caught stealing technology and had hidden affiliation with the pla. While we need those exchanges, we have to be careful. We need to take the intelligence we have and others in the Intelligence Community have and make sure its used with security measures and Cyber Security measures in the private sector to prevent that kind of theft. You mentioned the thing that keeps a lot of us up at night, the prospect of terrorist groups or terrorists getting access to this kind of technology and with ai and other advances, it is easy youre now to conceive of an individual or terrorist group weaponizing a bioweapon and unleashing death and destruction. We saw that with al qaeda. Weve seen other terrorist who try to do it. It is worth putting in the current context of the post october 7 environment. October 7 unleashed a lot of passions, resentments and biases that weve seen here in this country and around the world. It also raises the prospect that we could get into crisis mode with some foreign adversaries to an extent we have not been for quite some time. That raises the prospects of people going and being very aggressive in their effort to get to us and may be israelis. So i think all the more important in this environment, no matter what happens militarily in gaza, the heightened tension will remain with us for quite some time and its important we make sure that wmds of all kind, we keep them out of the hands of these actors. Ive always operated that on the assumption that in the long run, its probably easier to control the bad guys than the bed technology. I dont know if thats still true. You mentioned the bottlenecks, and there are leverage points. It would be great if you could identify them and we could control them. The second point is, i hope particularly the Intel Community that we dont overlook simple threats. If i was out there, a bad actor trying to decide how to hit the United States, yes ai could teach me how to design a new pathogen. On the other hand, anthrax is all over the place, easy to isolate, fairly easy to weaponize, easy to transport, and in fact dhs did a model on anthrax 10 to 12 years ago and releasing it. So we have to stay after it because even if they dont use real sophisticated technology, there are ways to hit us. Concerning the most recent annual worldwide threat assessment this year, mentioning Rapid Advances in technology could lead to novel biological weapons and the development of such could complicate detection, attribution, and treatment. Treatment is one thing i would like to see us focus on as much as anything else. But surveillance varies. Lets talk about viruses. Surveillance of nature is different from surveillance of lab work, somewhere else especially in a foreign land or a chinese owned lab in california. A russian lab in the middle of siberia perhaps. Those are the things to worry about. How can we on our own or working with allies and partners especially develop greater visibility into adversarial capabilities . I can take the first part of that. I think this ties into what we talked about in as far as lessons weve learned postcovid. One of the biggest lessons we learned and what got exposed about our government response to manmade or natural threats is the need for a whole of government response for something weve not established protocols for. We talk about the Intel Community, state department, Public Health, all covering different terrain. The reality is india in the event of a crisis, we need to move. The potential is so high because there is software and technology to allow these components to interact. What does that look like from a detention of threat to the ability to mitigate them . We need a threestep process. One, high skill collection federally driven of data, whether biological, voice model, using appearing information in public, existing genomic sequencing. We then need detection on top of that that allows us to identify threats whether manmade or foreign, anthrax, or new variants of diseases and critically, we need response. This is the component thats been so lacking. Once you identify a potential threat, what does that actually trigger in Government Systems or private sector . What kind of policy guidance, what kind of research is immediately activated, and how can we tighten feedback loops between collection, detection and response as rapidly as possible . Weve learned the time to do that will not be on the scale of years or even months. It will be days or hours to mitigate these threats in a firstclass way. I think thats where private sector and Public Sector cross agency or protester come together to get ahead of any crisis or biological threat whether its natural or manmade. I think that a protester be being able to navigate these problems. I appreciate the whole of government. A couple things and anyone can comment, i mentioned a question like with our allies. If we develop technology with early detection, the pandemic went rapidly around the world. The earlier something can be detected, it may be in europe. We want our allies in europe to have that technology. I think that is spot on. It is a place we are explicitly not succeeding. Even using covid still, detection of variants right now across the world, we are largely sharing with allies and vice versa through the open internet. That is not a good level of experience sophistication that we have in the dod and intelligence spacers spaces. We dont have anything like that for biological threats or data in the first place. Investing in not just the whole of government but across allied nations, a Real Infrastructure that leverages the technology we have to share that information, detect threats and be able to make decisions across the ecosystem is critical. You mentioned Publicprivate Partnership. I wonder if anyone wants to talk about the advantages of that and where we can do better in that regard. I think im sorry. I think if we dont do that, theres just no way to succeed. This security enterprise is not like the cold war where there was basically one buyer, the government, basically the department of defense. Over time, a dozen or so prime contractors developed and they learned how to work through the procurement processes of the government and the dod did not really have to adjust to them. All the research we need now is dual use and an enormous part of the ecosystem is funding. And actors that i think would be perfectly willing to work with the government and would like to help with this enterprise, but the culture in that part of the market is different from the government. This is one of the things i was going to recommend. Constantly executive Branch Agencies know they need to do this, but to get them to work on being innovative rather than being incremental, that was the recommendation of the lieberman ridge panel. And to be willing to take risks. I testified before Seth Moultons committee couple years ago and the message to bureaucrats ought to be, if everything you do is succeeding, you are not trying enough. Their attitude, i can understand it. If we try something and it fails, they will hang us up i the thumbs. I think the highest levels of Political Authority need to send a message, we dont have to do anything foolish. If we send out the right signals, the private sector will be incentivized to overcome the obstacles. I think exactly right. Knowing how you are failing and reiterating on that. There are good examples in the pandemic of translational investments. Not Just Research but getting products from lab to market in a way that was not possible before. We had things like mrna technology that had been funded for decades but were never really ready for prime time. Through public pertinent Publicprivate Partnerships, that became mass produced, reviewed, determined to be safe. Now researchers are looking for mra technology mrna technology for good use like curing cancer. Its an example of taking risk and investing in translational work. We will not know what we need before we need it. Companies need to understand how they fit into the ecosystem and whether thats a vaccine or pandemic that is coming or supplychain shock that prevents our ability to source a critical chemical from china, biotech could be the solution to both problems. But right now these companies are not oriented to the defense supplychain and dont understand how they fit or they dont know the demand signals. Thats important to the government to communicate early and often and be able to create that. And coordinate a clear consistent which means more of these integrating apparatus you can create in the executive branch like the bio Steering Committee we have now or national bio Surveillance Integration Center where all the agencies you and the executive branch or setting to architecture up but the question is, is it working . I would even add that for truly Innovative Companies like technology, weve made it incredibly challenging to work for the government. The amount of regulation and process required to be in a place where you can actually land a government contract is an arms, and i say that with the privilege of an organization that invested for 15 years before the majority did. So us widening the tent of how Software Companies and Biotech Companies and Technology Companies can interact and sell to the government and not need to have invested in a 50 Person Organization that only navigates federal regulation and contracting law, and really working with the government to make sure that path is as easy as possible while still ensuring all of the security and regulation that needs to be upheld is upheld, is so important. We are thinking of the investments weve made over the last 20 years to develop our own software and what it looks like to broaden that to the private sector to leverage investments weve made to really be able to focus on building differentiated biotechnology and Technology Offers it offerings and get those in the government. We have found that is hopefully scalable and theres a lot of opportunity there for the broader private sector and Technology Industry to be part of the way the government solves these problems, but i think its more than just the orientation toward the defense. Theres also the incentives towards being able to do well and do good all at once. I think operation warp speed was an example of the government engaging with the private sector and being able to do something quickly. I also saw within our own communities from the medical side that war is war and that doesnt mean civilians are exempt. With the pandemic, civilians are not exempt. We have seen communities developing what would be a Quick Reaction force. We will set up hospital in the convention center, all these things we should be engaging in and promoting on a local level no matter what the problem may be. That is something we should be promoting, getting communities ready for Something Like that. So i want to get to some of the lessons learned. What should be learned or have we learned from the covid19 pandemic, regarding our approach to bio security and preparedness and address a broad range of biological threats we face . You were talking about mrna technology. I heard early on as well we sequence the virus, we plug it in and it tells us what to produce. But theres a broad range of things. Any thoughts on that approach to preparedness across a broad range of threats that may be out there. I can start. The lens of the commission is looking at this issue, specifically how emerging technologies are changing the landscape and we mentioned some of the potential uses of ai and biotechnology and you look at every step in the process of responding to a threat and how Artificial Intelligence and biotech can change that landscape. The next response could be assisted or made better through that convergent technology. Everything from detection, we talked about bio surveillance, to designing a new therapeutic or countermeasure and scaling that up, testing that at clinical trials, and being able to distribute that effectively. All of those aspects include massive amounts of data. To sift through that data, Artificial Intelligence is the way to do that. One of the things in lessons weve learned is how critical these tools are for us in the mastery of them is essential to be prepared for whatever we may face. Just one example because i think it has helped to center this into something tangible is researchers at Harvard Medical School and university of oxford using whats called a biological design tool or ai Model Trained on biological information. In doing so, they are able to predict the next variant that might be coming. You think about being able to share that information with developers and countermeasures and prepare for therapeutics and vaccines before you even see something hit the world. Any technology that enables us to keep doing that is exciting for me and where i think we need to focus a lot of work and investment. Even if its something seen in nature that can help us predict whats coming next. I will jump in, i think i agree strongly with all of that. The biggest thing are the whole of government and whole of world response will be critical to how we navigate bio threats. Two, rapid integration of the private sector is how we achieve speed in a Public Health emergency. All lot another thing we have not talked about tied to warp speed is we really revealed how critical medical supplychain and the security of medical supplychain is in the ability to respond to a threat. In both the last years, its not just covid, it includes the infant formula shortage, another other key shortages that we are not able to allocate to people who need it. Having visibility into private sector supply change chains and implement countermeasures is extremely important in times of peace, but in times of war, it will be really important when times are stressed. Your question about what we learn from the pandemic, i would put it in the continuum of history to go back to a senators work, and the work that i did with the partisan Bipartisan Commission on bio defense. My government experience was how do we get the federal government to work with other parts of government and the private sector to anticipate, prepare for, respond, to bio threats manmade or naturally occurring. So i can speak to the bio Defense Strategy this administration put out in 2022. Which is a good whole of government response. Back in 2015, we put out our first product from the Bipartisan Commission and the focus was on, we need and all of government response and it requires centralization, coordination, and leadership within any administration. If you look at the pandemic and the difficulties with the pandemic, you can see that is a case study and the need for that centralization, akin to what we did on somewhat of a lesser scale after 9 11. The problem here is that this 9 11 required access from all levels of government working in different ways they had not before to prevent the next 9 11 and take on foreign terrorism. Here we have an even broader set of actors, Public Health, first responders. It is everybody. Government really needs a centrally driven organization to make sure that happens. That was sort of the initial recommendation, and after the pandemic, there was the apollo project which is basically do what weve done, starting in 1961, you get to the moon which of course was accomplished by the end of that decade. To look at bio defense from that perspective and put resources into it, i think im seeing movement in that direction over the last couple years which is refreshing. You mentioned supplychain and that has become a harsh reality. Early on in the pandemic i realized we relied on foreign adversaries, for as a surgeon, protective equipment. And pharmaceuticals. If you had told me when i was in iraq as a surgeon in the army that my protective equipment and medications relied on an adversary, how did the military get there . Its a threat to all of us. Lets just start with battlefield medicines and make sure that we can incentivize a way to have them 100 percent domestic here in the United States or with allies, thats fine. And we learned a lesson with puerto rico as far as supply chain. Puerto rico is large in medical manufacturing. They get to hurricanes, we cant get celine. Which is like water for doctors. We have to open our eyes to have a diverse supplychain and domestic supply chain to go with it. So i think we touched on some things, the medical countermeasures, etc. And talked about the United States ability to respond. I think weve had really good suggestions, whole of government, or at least work with allies to have a response. It would be a nice and ideal thing if the who could function in a way that its there to serve all of humankind and every participant was from stubble and everything is verifiable. I think we need to work toward that kind of assistance across the globe. If anyone wants to add something to that, please do. Otherwise i would like to open it up to some questions. The application of epigenetic [inaudible] sorry, i will start again. The application of epigenetics for detection, diagnosis and treatment by turning onandoff genomic markers, what is your assessment of the prospects there. I dont know what if i can speak directly to that, but i can say that we are at the cusp of a lot of advances here. We dont understand everything we need to understand about biology. So potential treatments still exist in a lot of different domains and applications and Artificial Intelligence is making that helping us to discern and decipher through information at a scale that was previously not possible. Whether it is epigenetic or mrna, those are still on the forefront and new types of therapeutics and countermeasures are available every day. Thank you. A comment and question. Acquisition always comes up in these conversations. This is a comment. Acquisition always comes up in these conversations and its a constraint particularly when it comes to dod which is only one pillar of what you are addressing. I would say you might want to watch the planning programming and budgeting Execution Commission final report coming out march 5 which is giving a lot of suggestions, how to be more agile in terms of making funding available and then how to acquire much more. I think that could be applied across the whole interagency. The question as we talked a lot about detection as part of this challenge in terms of bio defense and im curious where we are relative to a National Infrastructure to really detect at the human level any potential incoming biological element, where we are on that from a funding point of view and understanding implementation. I can go first on this. Its a great question and something i really want to see us invest in. I think pieces of it are there but the integrated ecosystem is not there. What does it look like to have a National Infrastructure do Something Like that . This must go handinhand, you need securing of biological samples. I think cdc has made some strides on this with the way the traveler genomic sequencing works, collecting waste water of airplanes. Theres also wastewater collection that similar, but that is ultimately so small and limited to seven airports and a small sampling of where we can do wastewater sequencing. The second step is actually synthesizing that into meaningful insights and being able to drive Public Health response. Thats where theres a huge dropoff in the ability right now for us to use that information in the real day to day Public Information for driving mental cool medical counter being tightly tied into how the Public Health ecosystem operationalizes information. I think what this will require is a much more comprehensive approach across intel agencies, cdc and Public Health agencies who do have a lot of expertise in the scientific component of this but not necessarily operational components. And the state department and ability to gather foreign intelligence. This is something i would be eeriest to get your thoughts on, where that leadership will have to come from outside individual agencies to drive that level of ordination and orchestrated funding. I think the potential is there in the private sector has technology, but teasing that together is something the government is not power to do. I noticed something we are still discussing where the right leadership is, but i think you are right, the number of stakeholders is so large and spreads across so many federal agencies that having a centralized authority or someone overseeing all of this is critically important. Where that is and how it looks is still under discussion but still something we are critically aware of and looking further into. This is at heart a political problem, not in the sense of politics, but in the sense that our government is obviously very big and those who work in the executive branch known this, the only centralizing node is the office of the presidency. Their band width simply not big enough. Its the only office that all the agencies respond to, the president , because he or she is the chief executive. What has to happen is we have to develop workarounds that are able to sort of simulate that or create interagency coordination. It is very difficult because in washington, the people who have power control budgets and personnel. Those are agency heads. Can create a czar if you want. How many president s have created czars over something . What they dont have authority over personnel or budgets, so they are authorities only insofar as the president backs them up. So its very difficult and i do think though we have models out there and bob work and i recommended this. If you can get the statutory principles or deputies involved and raise the priority of it, you may be able to work around it. The other issue which i think you raised, which i dont know what to do about, is for the government to make these decisions, it has to itself have necessary expertise. It is not resident in these agencies. Its the intel. But they are not necessarily ai experts. It is hard to accumulate that kind of expertise. It is something we are looking deeply at the commission. We focus on what we call bio literacy. How do you improve the understanding of not only the general public, but also of policymakers in biotechnology . This is something we are thinking deeply about. What you described makes it difficult to grapple with these issues without that expertise, so we are looking at things like boot camps that bring some of this technology to policymakers and how that could be operationalized. Just a highlight, the reality that the coordinating mechanism in the government is the office of the presidency. Theres a band with issue and that is a concern. Youre trying to pull together agencies with disparate missions , and when we wrestled with this issue and the Bipartisan Commission on bio defense, that authority resided in the office of the Vice President. There are practical problems but part of the reason behind that recommendation was to highlight that issue. This is the only place where if you have something of absolutely in normas national significance, you are really going to be able to corral all federal players and move them with expedition into the direction of your objective. You need maybe a coordinating council or a scythias idea. Theres a lot of thought about how to create that kind of mechanism, but not at the same time in the middle of the white house that has many things on his plate. I would say within the agencies are looking at the agencies at come congressional committees, everyone has a side load and thats one of the biggest problems. We are reaching out to this agency and that agency, and realizing that if more of you were in the same room at the same time, we might do a little bit better. Lessons learned, this was very novel, but it seems to me at the white house, we needed more people around the table for the daily conversations. But again, lesson learned. Not trying to be critical because this was unique. So if we could have a lesson learned. More questions. Hello, im a tech policy reporter with political. I pretty much know everyone on this panel talked about the importance of making sure the u. S. Biotechnology space continues to lead the world, china being a contender. Ive heard from bio security researchers though that some recent u. S. Government efforts to crack down or make clear that ai and bio security dont become a merged threat could maybe make it harder tolead in the biotech. Im thinking the ai executive order. Some of the gene sequence screening mechanisms. I heard from researchers who say we have enough paperwork to do. We have a ton of basic security things to fill out. Well have to go through this new system for every piece of dna we order. It is going to bring us behind the chinese. What is your response to that . Inherent in the question is a broader concern you here amongst biotechnology people. This focus on existential risk are a little speculative. There is a lot of money from Silicon Valley being put into this research but there is not a lot of realworld elephants to indicate ai is going to supercharge the buyer security threats. They are a little worried when things like that you, it is going to make it harder to do research grounded in empirical data. Specific responses with the eo, and in the broader concern seems to be about the issues with potentially focusing on existential risk of ai and bio security with what i have heard is the light evidence in terms of how these things play out. This is something we are looking closely at the commission, the intersection of ai and bio and what policy reclamations we could put forward. From my perspective, there are two outcomes that are problematic. One is we dont mitigate the risk and the potential future for ai and bio. The other scenario is we over act. We restricted the ability to use these tools and we have talked about the potential applications for a number of domains but for pandemic preparedness. If we limit our ability to progress and the advances in the model and the associated data, if we lose out on the leading edge, that is a risk which we must be mindful. We are looking at recommendations as a commission that would balance mitigating the risk and ensuring those trying to use the tools for beneficial uses are able to do that and would love to continue the conversation with folks as we test out different policy proposals. We are also looking and understand the risk is not uniform. Policy approaches cannot be a onesizefitsall. Most of the discussion has been around Large Language Models trained on existing information from the internet. It is unlikely. We have not seen these tools are providing information that creates something we have never seen before. The unknown that would evade detection. Things we should be really scared about. That does not exist with the lem. They could get they could make it easier for someone to get access to information. We should be mindful of that risk. The future scenario of this unknown, the good news is there is still time to act and put some of those guard rails in place so we can leverage the tools for our own preparedness and economic benefit but guard against the future outcome we need to prevent against. To what extent do you think it would be possible and maybe you are doing this already, to get groups of people together from the Industry Sectors and get them to tell you what the best practices are . You are probably way ahead . We are definitely doing that. We are talking to a lot of leading companies in this field to understand what they intend to use the tools for. We have researchers and companies that are using not loms but bio design tools. Ai models trained not on natural language but of biological information shared things like dna. They are doing this to design new vaccines and therapeutics to make sense of biology. Lots of beneficial uses. Also the potential someone could miss this information. We are talking to them to understand what the leading edge is and potential guard rails that would impact their ability to achieve those outcomes. It would guard against someone misusing. I wonder if the Nuclear Enterprise might be a model. That has been around a long time. There is a security consciousness within that community. They worked their way into it so it does not obstruct and it is difficult but i wonder if that would not be a model . We are looking at cybersecurity as well. A domain where there is a lot of civilian and commercial uses but also the potential for weapon evasion of that technology. There are good practices from other sectors we could put into play here. The comments i made before we came out here, you always have to be wary of the bad actors. The Wright Brothers im sure were not anticipating their invention can be used to fly into buildings and kill 3000 people in one day. That is what we have to be thinking forward about and how do we protect ourselves from that. Nice to see so many of you. Previously from senate and tell. Thank you so much to my former Sister Committee for hosting this and bringing these important issues to the light. I am divided to listen to you all because the entire reason i left government for the technology was because i think it is the one we must be at the critical edge four. Thank you for your comments. My question is short. When do you think the chatgpt moment for bio is going to happen . It is a great question. I think if we predict that, lots of things become possible. Maybe for this audience and for the committee, one thing we have to understand i dont think we know with as much granularity is where we are in progression towards that moment. Understanding where we stand. Where china stands in much more detail so we can calibrate policy options that we maintain at the leading edge. That is critically important. We dont understand that with enough granularity. There relies on opensource information. We have to get better at that. Slightly different approach to that question is part of what made the chatgpt moment so universal was there was something so illegible to person in the world which is a chat interface to interact with ai. Language models existed for five plus years but that moment of it being so in your face and visible and invisible what it looked like to interact with ai was in some ways helpful because it helped popularize the risks that were posed. I fear we will have a similar moment with biology because it will never be something every person wants to think about everyday. Putting the system in place now is critical because that moment will be more gradual and look at the breaking point of threat in a way that becomes a consent to everyone but will not be a chat interface. I think we have time for one more question. This idea of infrastructure. We talked about identification discovery. One of the big things is our ability to produce. Reduction for dish production. We are in the middle of that with chips did were trying to make up the ability to produce article technology. Produce critical technology. Youre already thinking about this now. How do we make sure our domestic manufacturing infrastructure is there so we dont need a chips for bio act 10 years from now . To refund old state of the past technology do we fund old estate of the past technology . Talk about the chips act. I went to the chips act to be more broad as far as implementation for whatever National Security risk we identify as opposed to the one that was a very specific. If we identify that as a nation and congress and the white house agree, we go ahead with a plan to do that. I think that is something we should still take a look at to address that so we are not behind the curve waiting for it but all we have to do is agree this is risk and we have got take it moving on it to get moving on it. Maybe we have time for one more question. Going to the broader question and i think this panel identifies the breath of Different Actors and players from across the board. What we have seen historically is we have gone from crisis to complacency in terms of political will. We had something happen. Throw lots of money at it in an emergency supplemental. Much of which is bandaid. And then we forget about it in a short order of time or we reallocate it. My company was involved in ebola. We went from ebola to zeek. To zika. There is not a level of sustainability that allows for development, discovery, stockpiling needed to have these responses ready to go before the event happens. How do we break that and provide a across the enterprises needed for the Publicprivate Partnership . That is a big problem. [laughter] i have done a lot of work in the defense area. Our response in the area of Armed Services is we will wait until there is a threat that is so big we have to deal with it and then we build up quickly and beat the crap out of it and go back down again. I have a suggestion and i wonder if the congressman thinks it would work. If you look at the chain of pandemic resilience, there is detection, attribution, communication, medical countermeasure, distribution which we have not talked about. Ai has a lot to do there. And then medical management. There are links in it. Suppose the speaker and the leader, told the authorizing committees we once you in the areas of the you have jurisdiction over these different links, we want you to make it a priority. The chairman and the Ranking Member to achieve progress this year. By the end of this year, we want you to have passed things or funded things that have made progress. Youre going to report back to us. By the way, if you would like to be a chairman or Ranking Member, you need to learn something about this bio preparation issue. Maybe we are going to grade the committees. I was a committee chairman. If you get tasked with this, this is the way i think to energize staff. That will enforce the committees to reach out to the commissions should what are your recommendations . We need ideas in these areas. Something like that where top leadership can institutionalize this as a priority among the people who matter. It would have to be done with the appropriators as well. Whether you can tell the appropriators to do anything is an open question. What can we do that alters incentives so we institutionalize and regularize priorities . It might work. I dont know. My feeling on all of this as this should not be a partisan issue. That is when bullets i think we have largely dodged with this. I dont think it is very partisan. I want to thank everybody for coming. We are going to play this back a few times. I think we got a lot out of today. Talking about the lessons learned. The path forward. The things we still dont know and dont know what the best solutions are but continue to work on those. My take away which has been all along is it is important for congress to work with the leading experts in the field whether they are government experts. It is the combination of the two that are going to advance us. We are just at a different time to where we can rely on a government that creates the newest technology. It is all out of there. Way to work together. Work with our allies. Work with our partners. Counter adversarial threats as we see them developing. Be ahead of the game. As the mantra of the Reagan Institute, peace through strength, we have got to be strong. We have got to be stronger than the other person. We have got to be able to defend our self. It was mentioned nuclear. The Nuclear Model. The Nuclear Model as far as war is, we have got to have it too. We have got to have just as many as you. That is the deterrence. Those are the things we need to consider. There are so many positives that can come out of the work related to this that have no nefarious behavior behind it. I would like to thank the panel for being here today. I thought it was a great group. I hope you all agree. I want to thank the rental Reagan Institute for having us today. I hope we get a lot of hits on this. People watching today. Including members of congress by the way. I look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you all very much for being here today. [applause] [indiscernible conversations]
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.