There’s a lot of talk these days about “technology races” and “the future of war.” But in biotechnology, we’re not racing toward some far-off sci-fi battlefield, the future has already arrived.
Chapter 3 of the NSCEB Final Report makes it brutally clear: The U.S. military is not ready.
Not because we lack good scientists.
Not because we lack powerful technologies.
But because we are still trapped in outdated mindsets, treating biotechnology as an experiment, instead of recognizing it as a critical capability that needs to be scaled, fielded, and defended today.
And if we don’t move fast, ethically, operationally, and strategically, our adversaries will.
The podcast audio was AI-generated using Google’s NotebookLM.
Biotechnology and Defense: The Core Challenge
Biology is now a domain of competition, just like air, sea, land, space, and cyber.
It enables on-demand production of food, fuel, and medicines.
It allows synthetic systems that can heal, sustain, or sabotage.
It can enhance performance - whether of humans, machines, or microbes.
It can defend against bioweapons, and it can create them.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has started pilot programs, exploratory projects, and workshops.
But Chapter 3’s warning is blunt: That’s not enough.
The United States needs to scale biotechnology across the entire force structure while ensuring its development aligns with our ethical values and national security priorities.
Chapter 3 organizes the necessary moves into three major actions:
1. Define Ethical Principles for Military Biotechnology
(Section 3.1 – Recommendation 3.1A)
Right now, the U.S. military doesn’t have a comprehensive, public set of ethical principles for how biotechnology should and should not be used.
And that’s a massive vulnerability.
If we don’t define ethical red lines and operational norms now, we leave room for ambiguity, and ambiguity on the battlefield gets people killed.
Recommendation 3.1A says the Department of Defense must:
Consult with broad stakeholders, including scientists, ethicists, legal experts, operational commanders, and national security strategists.
Develop formal principles for military biotechnology use, not just for traditional applications like vaccines, but for frontier areas like human performance enhancement, biomanufactured logistics, engineered organisms for defense purposes, and beyond.
These principles need to answer critical questions:
When is it ethical to use biotechnology for warfighters?
How do we ensure consent in the military chain of command?
What kinds of synthetic biology uses cross into biological weapon territory, and how do we prevent from getting there?
What is the responsibility of the U.S. if adversaries don’t follow similar ethical standards?
This is not academic.
This is operational planning for the 21st century.
If we don’t set the rules for ourselves, and lead our allies in adopting them, our adversaries will set the rules for us.
2. Field Biotechnology at Scale Across the Force
(Section 3.2 – Recommendation 3.2A-E)
This is the heart of Chapter 3, and arguably the hardest lift.
The Pentagon is good at funding research.
It’s good at building prototypes.
It’s bad, very bad, at scaling and deploying new technologies fast enough to matter.
Recommendation 3.2A says it’s time to operationalize biotechnology, not just admire it:
Treat biotechnology as a core logistics capability.
Think biomanufactured fuel on demand, synthetic blood for combat casualty care, biologically-derived coatings and materials for maintenance.
Partner with private sector biomanufacturing companies.
Build commercial facilities distributed across the country that can rapidly scale production when needed for DoD supply chains.
Invest in ruggedization. Battlefield biology can’t require cleanrooms and perfect lab conditions. We need technologies that work at the tactical edge: hot, dirty, mobile, chaotic environments.
Accelerate applications like:
Bio-based production of lubricants, fuels, textiles.
In-field biomanufacturing for critical supplies.
Environmentally adaptive systems that repair, sustain, or even construct operational assets using local resources.
Fielding these capabilities at scale means changing not just procurement processes—but military doctrine itself.
We need commanders thinking: “What is my bio-enabled logistics plan?”
Not just “What is my ammo and fuel resupply plan?”
3. Prevent Adversaries from Using or Developing U.S. Biotechnology Against Us
(Section 3.3 – Recommendation 3.3A-D)
If you think China’s biotech ambitions are limited to agriculture or pharma, think again.
The NSCEB report is crystal clear: China is building military biotech capabilities through aggressive acquisition of Western innovations, including from the United States.
And American venture capital has, often unknowingly, been fueling that growth.
Recommendation 3.3A-D makes a sharp call:
Create outbound investment screening rules specifically for biotechnology.
Ensure that U.S. capital does not fund the development of biotechnologies in China or other adversarial nations that could be turned against us or our allies.
Apply these rules to technologies like gene editing, synthetic biology, biomanufacturing platforms, and human performance enhancement systems.
This is not about stopping all international collaboration.
It’s about stopping the money pipeline that is helping adversaries build the next generation of biological warfare capabilities.
If we’re serious about national security, we can’t just focus on who’s buying American biotech.
We have to focus on where American money is growing foreign biotech threats.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 2 taught us that biotech must scale into national industries.
Chapter 3 teaches us something even harder: biotech must scale into national defense capabilities without losing our soul in the process.
If we get this wrong, we risk two catastrophic failures:
Being outpaced on the battlefield by adversaries who field biotech faster, at scale, without ethical restraint.
Undermining trust at home and abroad if we are seen as crossing ethical lines in pursuit of advantage.
Neither is acceptable.
Getting it right, though?
It’s how we out-compete authoritarian regimes, not just with better tech, but with better values.
It’s how we lead the next era of defense innovation without losing the public trust that underwrites U.S. power.
The frontlines of the future are biological.
The work starts now and the first step is simple: move from exploration to deployment. Move from admiration to action. Move from discovery to defense.
Biotech isn’t the future of conflict.
It’s already the terrain.
Let’s do it responsibly.
-Titus
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