NatSec Biotech Prologue: Rewriting the DNA of Global Power
If I were to write Chip War for biotech, this is how I would start the book
I wake to my phone vibrating angrily on the nightstand. 6:30 AM. A red notification pulses on the screen: “DELIVERY FAILED.” My stomach twists. Today was the day OncoCure was due, my daughter Maya’s next dose of the therapy that keeps her cancer at bay. For the past year, a monthly vial of this miracle drug has arrived at our doorstep like clockwork. And why not? OncoCure is nothing short of a medical miracle, a gene-engineered infusion capable of eradicating malignant cells, the cure that was supposed to end cancer as we know it. It’s the reason my ten-year-old is upstairs sleeping safely in her bed instead of wasting away in a hospital.
But now the lifeline we’ve come to depend on is missing.
Bleary-eyed, I tap the alert for details. Instead of the usual shipment tracker, an error message greets me: “Service unavailable. Please contact your provider.” Something’s wrong. My first thought is mundane: a shipping glitch, maybe a server outage. But a prickle of dread rises. OncoCure isn’t something that just gets “lost in the mail.” It’s distributed under strict protocol, monitored by both our hospital and the biotech firm. Maybe it’s just a delay, I tell myself, throwing on yesterday’s jeans. I try the 24-hour pharmacy hotline, but after fifteen minutes of hold music and no human response, I’m already grabbing my keys. I need to see our oncology pharmacist, now.
The drive through town feels eerily normal at first. Commuters fill the streets, morning talk radio jabbers about the weather. For a second I consider turning around, telling myself I’m overreacting. But then the radio crackles: “…reports coming in from medical centers across the country of sudden shortages… critical medications on backorder… authorities are investigating….” I nearly run a red light as I turn up the volume. The news anchor sounds as perplexed as I feel, cycling through phrases like “supply chain disruption” and “national security implications” in the same breath. I catch a few specifics: “Nationwide scarcity of OncoCure, the breakthrough anti-cancer therapy… hospitals from Seattle to Miami reporting they’ve received no new supply this week… The manufacturer, Shenzen Advanced Biotech, could not be reached for comment….”
This is a science fiction story inspired by my real-world work in biotech policy. This may be fiction, but it’s my way of exploring the world around me.
If I were to write Chip War for biotech, this is how I would start the book.
My heart kicks into overdrive. This isn’t just us. It’s everywhere. At the next intersection, the light is red but my foot barely taps the brake. Horns blare as I swerve into the hospital parking lot at a dangerous clip.
Inside the pharmacy, it’s chaos. A normally polite line of patients has devolved into a cluster of desperate faces. I recognize a few from the pediatric oncology ward: parents like me, who just heard the same news. A mother near the counter is pleading with the pharmacist. “Please, my son needs his dose. Isn’t there any left? He’s relapsed once before….” Her voice cracks. Behind the counter, the pharmacist, Dr. Nguyen, who knows us all by name, shakes her head with a stricken expression. “I’m so sorry,” she says, loud enough for all of us to hear. “We received nothing in our shipment today. Not just OncoCure, other medications too. I’ve been on the phone with our suppliers all morning. They’re telling me…they’re telling me it’s an issue overseas.”
Overseas. We all know what that means, even if she doesn’t say it outright. OncoCure was a Chinese breakthrough. A year ago, when researchers in Shanghai unveiled a therapy that could hunt down and destroy cancer cells, it was heralded as a gift to humanity. Our doctors here in the U.S. quickly secured access for patients like my daughter through international trials and partnerships. At the time, no one cared that it was developed and manufactured in China, only that it worked. We celebrated when Maya qualified for the program. I remember hugging Dr. Nguyen in this very room, crying tears of joy because for the first time in years, hope was on the horizon.
Now that hope is evaporating. The crowd presses in on the counter, voices rising in panic. “How long until more comes? When will it ship?” demands a man in a Marine Corps jacket, fists clenched on the counter. His wife hovers behind him, eyes hollow. Their teenage daughter shifts uncomfortably in a wheelchair; I see the gray scarf covering her scalp. She must have started OncoCure recently, I recall seeing them in the infusion clinic. Dr. Nguyen bites her lip. “I don’t have an answer. It could be days… or longer.”
“Longer? We don’t have days,” the mother with the relapsed son cries. “Without his treatment…” She doesn’t finish, voice choked by sobs. A few people start shouting over each other. One man slams his palm on the counter. I stand there holding my breath, one arm wrapped protectively around my own supply bag (I always carry an emergency dose of Maya’s older medication, ordinary chemo drugs that seem feeble compared to OncoCure, but it’s something).
Dr. Nguyen raises her hands to quiet us. “All we know is the manufacturer hasn’t sent the shipments. There’s speculation it’s tied to the…to the situation abroad.” She lowers her voice on the last word, as if not to scare the children in the room. But we all know what she means. For weeks, tensions between the United States and China have dominated the news. Naval standoffs in the South China Sea. Fiery speeches at the U.N. Taiwan looming over every diplomatic exchange. Just two nights ago, the President addressed the nation, reassuring us that the U.S. would stand firm against aggression. Beijing, in turn, accused America of interfering in “internal affairs.” It’s been a war of words and posturing, until now. Now it’s hitting home in the form of empty syringe barrels and anxious tears on the hospital floor.
I leave the pharmacy empty-handed, head spinning. How am I going to tell Maya that I don’t know when she can get her medicine? In the car, I catch a snippet of a press briefing streaming on my phone. A grim-faced White House spokesperson is at the podium: “…the administration is aware of the sudden cutoff in biopharmaceutical supplies and is treating it as a matter of urgent national security. We are working closely with our allies and industry partners to find alternative sources and reconstitute production domestically….” The phrase sticks out: alternative sources. Production domestically. Translation: we didn’t make a backup plan. The reporter’s questions come rapid-fire: “Is China deliberately withholding critical medications in response to the Taiwan situation?” “How many Americans are affected by this?” The spokesperson dodges: “We’re still gathering information. I won’t speculate on motives at this time.” But the implication is clear.
I drive home with a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. An anger is starting to bubble up beneath the fear. How did we let it come to this? Millions of Americans, people like my little girl, utterly dependent on a foreign power for our survival. Everyone knew China was a major supplier of drugs and biotech, but I never imagined it could all just stop overnight. Sure, I’d heard the warnings on the news, seen the occasional think-tank report about supply chain vulnerabilities. Some senator or other would sound alarm bells about our over-reliance on Chinese pharmaceutical ingredients, only to have the issue buried in partisan squabbling the next week. It always felt abstract, like background noise. Until this morning.
At home, Maya is awake, curled on the couch with her sketchbook. She looks up with hopeful eyes, “Did you get it?” I force a smile and kneel beside her, brushing a curl from her forehead. My brave girl. She’s been through a lot in ten years: rounds of chemo that stole her hair and energy, clinical trials that gave us only temporary victories, and finally OncoCure, which brought her back to life. How do I explain to her that this lifeline has been snatched away by something as distant as geopolitics? I can’t. “Not yet, sweetie,” I say softly. “There’s a delay…but people are working on it. We have your old medicine if we need it.” Her face falls, she remembers the old medicine’s side effects too well, but she nods and tries to be strong. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she whispers, though I can hear the quiver.
I retreat to the kitchen to make her breakfast, fighting the urge to crumble. My phone buzzes with messages: other parents from the ward exchanging whatever scraps of info they have, neighbors asking if the news is true. One text catches my eye, my friend Ravi from college, now a researcher at a biotech start-up. “This is unreal,” he writes. “We warned them years ago that this could happen.” I pause and stare at that line. Ravi had worked for a big pharmaceutical company before, and I vaguely recall him talking about China’s dominance in drug manufacturing. At the time, he’d mentioned something about 80 or 90 percent of certain medications coming from China or that one Chinese company, WuXi, handling a huge chunk of America’s drug production. I’d brushed it off, so much of our stuff is made in China, that’s just globalization, right?
Now globalization’s dark side is here in my kitchen, and my daughter’s life hangs in the balance.
The hours drag by in a haze of uncertainty. By afternoon, the story is on every channel and website: “Biotech Blackout: Chinese Firm Halts Critical Drug Supplies to U.S.” The stock market is in freefall, and cable news pundits look genuinely frightened. One medical correspondent reports that hundreds of thousands of cancer patients are immediately impacted, and millions more could be if the standoff continues. A crawl at the bottom of the screen lists other drugs reportedly affected: an insulin analog, a Parkinson’s gene therapy, even some routine antibiotics. It’s a biotech shockwave ripping through the healthcare system. Hospitals are activating emergency plans, rationing what limited stock of these medicines they have on hand. Social media is exploding with hashtags: #BioBlockade, #GenomicBlackmail, #TaiwanTradeOff.
Outside, I hear sirens. Our local news app shows footage of a protest downtown. Dozens of patients and families have gathered in front of the federal building with signs: “Don’t Make Us Choose Between Health and Taiwan!” one reads, while another simply says “We Need Our Medicine.” One particularly striking image flashes on the screen: a man in his 60s holding up an IV bag for his wife next to a placard that says “CHOOSING SIDES = DYING PATIENTS.” It’s raw and heart-wrenching.
By evening, the crisis escalates to a new level. The President addresses the nation from the Oval Office. We gather around the TV, Maya, my wife, and I, huddled on the couch. The President’s face is ashen but resolved. “My fellow Americans,” she begins, “today we face a grave challenge not on some distant battlefield, but in our own homes and hospitals. A foreign power has cut off access to critical medications and biotechnology upon which millions of Americans rely. This act is deliberate and unlawful. We are deploying every resource to mitigate the impact on our people and to resolve this crisis swiftly.”
She doesn’t explicitly say China, but the implied adversary is clear. When she speaks of “unlawful act,” I think back to how we got here. Just yesterday, Chinese state media blared with indignation at a U.S. naval exercise near Taiwan. The showdown had reached a fever pitch. Now Beijing’s retaliation has taken an unthinkable form: weaponizing the very biology that keeps us alive.
The President’s speech is strong on promises, airlifting supplies from allies, invoking emergency powers to kickstart domestic production, but I can hear the strain underneath. Replacing an entire biotech supply chain isn’t like flipping a switch. It could take weeks or months to produce complex therapies like OncoCure on U.S. soil. And many of these treatments are proprietary, with manufacturing secrets closely guarded by the original developers. There is no quick “plan B.” We have been caught flat-footed.
“We will not be blackmailed,” the President continues. “We will not abandon our commitments to our allies.” I know she’s referring to Taiwan without saying it. “But neither will we abandon our own citizens. This is a time for resolve, unity, and swift action.” She announces the creation of a Biomedical Crisis Task Force and the deployment of military cargo planes to ferry whatever substitute drugs can be scrounged from overseas partners. A photo flashes of an Air Force transport on a tarmac in Germany being loaded with medical crates, Europe apparently still has some supply of OncoCure’s precursor compounds. It’s something, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
After the address, I put Maya to bed. We’ve stretched her previous dose as much as possible, and tonight, reluctantly, I give her a small infusion of the old chemo cocktail. It’s a stopgap and I pray it’s not needed for long. She winces as the drug enters her vein; we both know this routine too well. “Daddy,” she asks in a small voice, “why would someone do this? Don’t they know we need it?” I gently squeeze her hand, searching for an answer. “They do know,” I say quietly. “That’s why they’re doing it.” Her eyes widen in confusion and fear. I immediately regret saying it that way. How do you explain to a child that she’s become a pawn in a geopolitical chess match? That some distant government sees her cure as leverage? I force a smile. “It’s complicated, sweetie. Grown-up problems between countries. But a lot of smart people are working very hard to fix it, okay? We just have to hang on.”
She nods, but I can see tears welling up as the chemo fatigue sets in. Within minutes she’s asleep, the teddy bear from her last hospital stay tucked under her arm. I watch her tiny chest rise and fall, and a surge of determination steadies me. This cannot stand.
In the living room, I open my laptop. If I can’t sleep, I might as well try to understand how things unraveled. I search for that commission report Ravi mentioned. It doesn’t take long to find, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. They released their final report just a couple years ago. I skim through the digital pages, and it’s like reading a play-by-play of today’s nightmare. One section title catches my eye: “Imagine a Not-So-Distant Future…” It describes a scenario in eerily familiar detail: a breakthrough cancer drug developed in Shanghai, geopolitical tensions flaring, and then China hoarding the treatment under the guise of national security, cutting off supply to the United States. My breath catches. This was predicted, almost exactly. The report goes on: “After years of access, this lifesaving drug is immediately in shortage, requiring doctors to ration it while American companies scramble to reconstitute production. The streets and social media overflow with people demanding that the U.S. abandon Taiwan. The Administration faces an agonizing choice between geopolitical priorities and public health.”
Agonizing choice indeed. I think of the protests brewing, the impossible position our leaders are in. The report’s next line feels like a punch: “This scenario is fiction. But something like it could soon become reality as biotechnology takes center stage in strategic competition.” They saw it coming. They saw it coming and still, as a nation, we strolled right into this trap.
I keep reading, now hungry for answers. The commission’s findings pull no punches. China has spent 20 years making biotechnology a strategic priority, while the U.S. treated it as just another sector. We have no cohesive national strategy, they warned; our innovation lead was shrinking. I find a section on supply chains and feel a chill: the Chinese Communist Party seeks to dominate global biotech so other countries are dependent on channels it controls…China is already deeply embedded in U.S. critical biotech supply chains, including for life-saving medicines. These dependencies make us highly vulnerable to Chinese pressure. It’s all there in cold print, what we’re living through in real-time. They even named the culprit: a Chinese pharma giant called WuXi AppTec that most American patients have never heard of but on which an “utterly reliant” U.S. industry has been built. “In that sense, WuXi AppTec is the new Huawei,” the report said, a warning that our biotech infrastructure had a hidden choke point, just like when we realized our 5G networks could be hijacked by foreign tech.
I rub my temples, overwhelmed. Late-night television is playing softly in the background, an economist is comparing this crisis to the 1970s oil embargo and last year’s semiconductor ban. “In the 20th century, it was oil,” he says. “In the 21st century, it was silicon chips. Now it’s DNA. It’s the biological stuff of life itself that’s become the lever of global power.”
I close the laptop, exhausted. The commission’s final recommendation echoes in my mind: take swift action or risk falling behind, a setback from which we may never recover. They urged us to act within three years. But those years passed with half-measures and endless debates. And now here we are.
That night I barely sleep. I dream of contracts filled with fine print and hidden clauses. In the dream I’m back at the hospital, signing the forms to get Maya into the OncoCure program. The representative is smiling, congratulating me on securing the “Platinum package” of life. I flip through the dense pages. Somewhere in there, I sense a shadow, an invisible string leading overseas. I wake up with the echo of a nurse’s voice in my head saying, “They don’t put this part in the brochures, do they?”
By morning, the second day of the Bio-Blackout, reality is biting hard. Maya has a fever, likely a side effect of last night’s backup chemo. I manage to get her pediatrician on the phone; she sounds harried. “Bring her in if it hits 102,” she instructs. “We’re slammed here. Half my patients are affected by this thing… kids who were stable now back in precarious territory.” Her usual calm professionalism is fraying at the edges. “We’re advising everyone to dust off their old treatment plans for now. The hospital is prioritizing the sickest for what limited OncoCure stock remains.” I swallow, realizing that Maya, thank God, isn’t yet considered among “the sickest.” How long before she might be?
I turn on the TV to catch any updates. Congress has convened emergency sessions. One channel shows live footage of a heated hearing. A lawmaker is yelling at an FDA official and a pharma CEO sitting side by side. “How did we let one country become the sole source for the crown jewels of modern medicine?” he thunders. The FDA official stammers about cost savings and industry decisions over decades, how manufacturing migrated offshore in the 1990s because it was cheaper and less toxic to do it in China. The CEO interjects that no one anticipated a hostile cutoff: “Our partnerships in China were built over years of trust, this was unprecedented.” The lawmaker’s face turns red. “Unprecedented? We have repeatedly warned about this exact scenario!” He slaps a thick binder of reports on the desk, and I realize it’s not just the one I read, there have been warnings from multiple commissions, security briefings, even Chinese officials themselves hinting at this leverage. I recall reading that 97% of U.S. antibiotics came from China, and a Chinese economist bragging in state media that if they withheld those, Western healthcare would falter. We were at the mercy of others for chips, and now for cures. And we knew it.
The hearing devolves into partisan point-scoring, but the anger is bipartisan for once. I turn it off, disgusted. The clock is ticking for so many families.
By Day 3, the human toll is mounting. Front-page headlines tally the damage: patients left untreated, surgeries postponed, emergency rooms swamped with people whose conditions are destabilizing. The New York Times runs a gut-punch of a profile: a young father with stage IV melanoma who had been given new hope by OncoCure now facing the prospect of saying goodbye to his toddler twins because his next dose is nowhere to be found. Cable news shows maps of the U.S. with blinking red dots where shortages are most acute, it’s practically the whole map. The crisis has touched every corner: big coastal research hospitals and small rural clinics alike.
In our town, the local government declares a public health emergency. Volunteers coordinate to help those who can’t get their meds, swapping whatever surplus insulin or drugs people might have, a kind of underground medicine exchange. I manage to trade some of Maya’s unused older pills for a dose of OncoCure that a patient with slower-progressing cancer was willing to part with. It’s a tiny vial, likely only a partial dose, but it’s hope. When I show it to Maya, she brightens. I tell her a kind stranger helped us, leaving out that the stranger’s own need was perhaps a little less. Triage by charity, this is what we’re reduced to.
That afternoon, an alert buzzes on my phone: a newsflash that the Chinese government is about to make a statement. I turn on a live stream. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson stands in front of a wall of Chinese flags, face impassive. “The People’s Republic of China has been forced to take protective measures in response to external aggression,” he says in measured English. “Certain biomedical exports are being temporarily redirected to meet internal needs, as matters of national security and public health.” It’s galling, couching this chokehold as a public health measure. “We urge the United States to reconsider its provocative actions….” Everyone knows what he means: back off on Taiwan. He doesn’t say the word, but he doesn’t have to. The message is clear: Choose. Your principles, or your people’s health.
I’ve never felt so helpless, and so angry, watching a news conference. It’s a hostage situation, but the hostages are millions of sick Americans. In our living room, my wife throws up her hands at the blatant extortion. I hold Maya a little tighter on the couch, my jaw clenched. On the TV, one reporter boldly asks the spokesperson, “What about the international ethical responsibility to patients? Aren’t you weaponizing medicine?” The spokesperson dodges: “China is a responsible power. We continue to supply critical medicines to the world. But like any sovereign nation, we must prioritize our own citizens and security.” Lies and truth blended in a toxic mix, China does continue to supply many countries, just not us. In fact, some reports suggest they’ve increased shipments of OncoCure to nations that toe Beijing’s line. A commentator later quips, “Cancer cures for oil, some countries are already bargaining with them.” It’s a grim new calculus: trade loyalty for life-saving drugs.
That night, Day 3 bleeding into Day 4, the unthinkable debates begin to swirl in Washington. Leaks to the press say there’s a fierce argument in the Situation Room about whether to temporarily ease tensions with China in exchange for relief. Surrender by any other name. Others argue that giving in now will only embolden more deadly blackmail later. Behind closed doors, they’re weighing how many lives might be lost if we hold firm versus what freedoms are lost if we capitulate. Watching these rumors on TV feels surreal. We’re truly at a junction where global power politics and personal biology intersect.
Meanwhile, the first deaths directly attributed to the shortage make headlines: a child in Ohio, a woman in Texas. “Potentially preventable,” the doctors say, had the treatments been available. The stories break me inside. I cannot let Maya become one of those stories. I find myself shaking with rage one moment, overcome with fear the next.
On the evening of the fourth day, I step outside to clear my head. The neighborhood is quiet, but the tension is palpable even in the air, fewer people out and about, an ambulance siren wailing faintly in the distance. My neighbor Dan, an Army reservist, is on his porch, scrolling his phone. He calls out, “Hey, you holding up?” I shrug, walking over. Dan’s a blunt guy. “My unit’s on standby,” he says. “Things are dicey in the Pacific.” He doesn’t need to elaborate, military forums have been buzzing that China moved some missile batteries and the U.S. responded by repositioning carriers. Both nations are digging in. “What do you think happens next?” I ask quietly. Dan sighs. “Honestly? Either we find a workaround and tough it out, or someone blinks. And I don’t think Beijing is blinking.” He kicks at a loose porch plank. “They got us by the throat. We never should’ve let it get this far. First it was rare earth minerals, then it was semiconductors…now our damn medicine cabinets.”
I nod. Rare earths, China had briefly banned exports of some critical minerals last year, causing a scramble in the tech industry. And semiconductors…well, that was the reason the U.S. started restricting high-end chip sales to China, which many say lit the fuse for this biotech retaliation. Tit for tat, escalation upon escalation. Only this time, the collateral isn’t higher smartphone prices or delayed car deliveries, it’s human lives.
Before turning in, I check my laptop one more time for any promising news. An email from our hospital: they’ve managed to compound a makeshift alternative to OncoCure in their research lab, an experimental cocktail that might help a little for the worst-off patients. It’s a long shot and unproven, but it’s something. There’s also a note about support groups and counseling services. The psychological toll is massive, people are terrified, and some are furious in ways that can’t be contained. There are reports of violence at a pharmacy in California, and security is being increased at hospitals nationwide.
Scrolling further, I come across a blog post from a science policy analyst friend of mine. The title: “Never Again: Learning from the Bio Blackout.” It stops me in my tracks. Never again. The phrase rings with resolve. The post argues that this crisis, as awful as it is, might finally shock America into action, much like the Sputnik launch did in another era, or Pearl Harbor in an era before that. “We can’t undo the suffering caused this week,” she writes, “but we can make sure this never happens again. Biotech must be treated as critical infrastructure - as critical as energy, as chips, as our military itself. We need genomic sovereignty, supply chain resilience, and a national strategy to regain control of our biological destiny.”
Genomic sovereignty. The words remind me of that leaked memo I read about in the commission report, where a U.S. general wrote, “We can no longer assume operational continuity in a population that does not control its own genome.” Back then it was a hypothetical warning about a future crisis. Now it’s splashed in bold letters across every screen in America. We ceded control over the very code of life, our medicine, our enhancements, our food supply, all of it, and now we’re paying the price.
I shut the laptop and rub my eyes. A heavy truth settles over me: this is bigger than my family, bigger than this one terrible week. It’s about how we built the modern world, and how we need to rebuild it differently if we want to survive in the new era. We outsourced and optimized without thinking of the strategic risk. We let the fine print go unread. And now the bill is due.
I get up and check on Maya one more time. She’s sleeping fitfully, but peacefully for now, her body fighting off both cancer and the rough medicine we’ve had to substitute. I lean over and kiss her forehead, whispering a promise: “Hold on, kiddo. We’re going to fix this. We won’t let them do this to you, to us.”
As I stand there in the pale glow of her night-light, I realize this nightmare, as brutal as it is, has ripped the veil off a stark reality. National security isn’t just jets and tanks anymore. It’s vials and genes and supply chains. It’s my little girl’s IV bag and the database that holds her DNA profile, and who controls each. Power in the 21st century has a new DNA.
This crisis, I sense, is a turning point. In Washington, they may still be debating whether to blink or not. But out here, among ordinary people, there’s a dawning resolve that we will never be this helpless again. The public will demand change, is demanding it, in the streets and online. We won’t forget this week anytime soon.
I certainly won’t. In a way, a foreign adversary has done what no policy paper or politician could: it’s awakened an entire nation to the biotech stakes of global power. The question is, what do we do with that awakening?
In the coming months, there will be investigations, hearings, reforms. Companies will be pressured to diversify production, maybe even nationalize certain capabilities. We’ll pour billions into biotech research at home, and into alliances with trusted partners. Perhaps we’ll even negotiate a truce to get through this immediate emergency, albeit at a moral cost. But one thing is certain: nothing about our world will look the same after the Bio Blackout of 2030.
As I gently close Maya’s door, I catch my reflection in its glass pane. I see a father, yes, but also an unwitting soldier in a new kind of war, one fought not with bullets or bombs, but with vials, code, and DNA sequences. We’ve learned the hard way that outsourcing our biology can be as dangerous as surrendering our weapons.
In the darkness, I make a quiet vow: Never again. Never again will we be so vulnerable, so naïve about the dependencies woven into our lives. The cost, paid in fear, in suffering, in lives cut short, is too high.
This time, we’ll read the fine print. All of it.
And then we’ll rewrite it, so that never again can a hostile power hold our very biology hostage.
(This scenario is fictional, but barely. Every technology, every dependency, and every tension described above is rooted in reality.)