Last week, we hit “publish” on a major milestone for the U.S. biotechnology industry: the final report of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB). Two years of work. Over 1,800 experts. 180+ pages. And now the real work begins.
Last week, I introduced the report with the very direct ask: “Senator, we recommend you take biotechnology seriously.” This week, I want to dive into Chapter 1, the section that doesn’t just kick off the report but sets the tone for a new national strategy. If you care about technology, security, resilience, or the economy, this isn’t just a policy proposal. It’s a wake-up call.
America Still Leads, But Only Just.
I serve as a Commissioner on the NSCEB and I write this newsletter in my personal capacity.
The podcast audio was AI-generated using Google’s NotebookLM.
For most of modern history, the United States has had an outsized impact on the world, not just because of military might or GDP, but because we’ve been the engine of innovation. From space exploration to the internet, the world’s most transformative technologies were born here.
But biotech is different.
Biotechnology isn’t just a technology sector, it’s an enabler. And yet, as Chapter 1 bluntly outlines, the U.S. government has not prioritized biotechnology the way it has with semiconductors or artificial intelligence . There’s no coordinated strategy. No whole-of-government effort. Instead, we’ve taken a “decentralized” approach that the report more accurately describes as “piecemeal.”
Let me be clear: this disjointed strategy isn’t just inefficient. It’s a strategic weakness.
And as the report makes painfully clear, if the U.S. doesn’t act, we will lose our global edge. Because while we’ve been dithering, China has been doing. They’ve spent 20 years building a biotechnology behemoth: AI-driven drug discovery, industrial biomanufacturing, and genomic surveillance rolled into one authoritarian feedback loop.
Chapter 1: A Blueprint for Urgent Action
The first chapter of the NSCEB report is titled “Prioritize Biotechnology at the National Level”, and the four sections that follow outline an ambitious, but absolutely necessary, restructure of how the U.S. government handles biotechnology.
The day after the final report was released, April 9th, the four Congressional Commissioners from the NSCEB introduced the first piece of legislation to authorize the National Biotechnology Initiative, implementing the recommendations of Chapter 1 of the report and establishing the legislative infrastructure to support all six of the report’s strategic pillars.
And the first step? Establish a central node.
1. Establish a National Biotechnology Coordination Office (NBCO)
This is the big one. The NBCO would live in the Executive Office of the President, with a Senate-confirmed director who becomes the nation’s principal advisor on biotech.
This office wouldn’t just convene meetings, it would coordinate everything:
National biotechnology strategy
Budgetary oversight across federal agencies
Strategic R&D guidance
Regulatory harmonization
Public-private partnerships
Annual reports to Congress
And even a single web platform (biotech.gov) to make the U.S. biotech ecosystem accessible and navigable
This would finally give biotech the central nerve system it’s lacked. Today, regulatory, research, manufacturing, and workforce efforts are spread across so many offices that even seasoned insiders get lost. With the NBCO, the United States would have a strategic command center for biotechnology.
2. Elevate Biotechnology Across the Executive Branch
Biotech isn’t a “health” issue. It’s not a “defense” issue. It’s a national strategic asset, and every agency has a role to play.
That’s why the second recommendation is to have each major federal agency appoint a senior biotech lead at the assistant secretary level. These leaders would become both internal champions and external collaborators, finally giving us a structure for interagency alignment.
Think about that: instead of isolated bio-efforts at USDA, DOE, and DOD, we’d get coordinated efforts driven by empowered, accountable officials who could work across silos, report up to the NBCO, and drive agency-level execution.
It’s not rocket science, it’s organizational design. And we’re overdue.
3. Establish the Office of Global Competition Analysis (OGCA)
This is where it gets even more interesting. The U.S. doesn’t currently have a federal office that conducts holistic, data-driven assessments of technological competitiveness, especially in biotech. The OGCA would fill that gap.
But it wouldn’t stop at spreadsheets. The OGCA would include a “strategic foresight library” - a public resource to help agencies model the future, forecast disruptions, and conduct scenario planning.
This capability is critical because right now, we have almost zero central government capacity for long-range bio-strategic thinking. Each agency builds foresight programs from scratch (if at all), wasting time, money, and institutional memory. The OGCA would change that.
4. Include Biotechnology in Global Competition Strategy
This last point underpins everything else. America’s edge in biotech isn’t just scientific, it’s geopolitical. And we’re in a race we didn’t choose but must win. As I wrote last week, “We can’t win this race by accident. We need a deliberate, strategic approach”.
Biotech is no longer a back-office lab science. It’s front and center in the next great industrial revolution. It determines how we produce food, make medicine, build materials, protect the environment, and deter adversaries.
And to lead, we need policy muscle that matches our scientific ambition.
The Bottom Line
Chapter 1 of the NSCEB report doesn’t mince words. It’s not a recommendation, it’s a roadmap. It says clearly what many of us in the field have been saying for years: we need to treat biotechnology like the strategic domain it is.
Not with platitudes. With structure. With leadership. With institutions.
If we act now, we can secure the benefits of biotech for national security, economic prosperity, public health, and global leadership. But if we wait, or worse, assume our lead is permanent, we risk forfeiting the future.
So what comes next?
Next week, I’ll cover Chapter 2: how to mobilize the private sector to get U.S. biotech products to scale. But until then, I’ll leave you with this:
We’re not behind yet. But we’re not ahead by much. And in biotech, the gap between first and second place is the difference between shaping the future, or being shaped by it.
Let’s lead.
—Titus
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