Preface

What Is Biotechnology, and How Will It Shape America’s Future?

Preface

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The United States is locked in a great-power competition with China that will define the coming century. This contest will shape the security of our nation, the strength of our economy, and the well-being of our people. Unlike the great-power struggles of the past, this one is playing out less through arms races, land grabs, and proxy warfare than through the quest to dominate cutting-edge technology.

Biotechnology, the design and engineering of biological systems, is the next battlefield of this great-power competition. Biotechnology starts with the cell and provides the tools to reprogram it. It allows scientists to grow everything from medicines to crops to materials, enabling “biology by design,” in the words of one pioneering U.S. company.17 In short, biotechnology allows humans to program life itself.

Emerging biotechnology holds exhilarating potential for the United States. If a product is too expensive to make or an industrial process too difficult to carry out, biotechnology allows us to grow an alternative. The applications reach into every sector: biotechnologies that already exist today have the power to transform America’s military capabilities, end our dangerous supply chain dependencies, strengthen food security and agricultural resilience, and cure life-threatening diseases. And developments in this sector are advancing at blistering speed.

Biotechnology Represents the Next Transformative Leap for Human Potential

Human development has always been driven forward by technological revolutions. The prehistoric Agricultural Revolution saw the domestication of plants and animals that radically transformed civilizations.18 The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought about mechanization that vastly increased economic output.19 And in our own time, the Information Age has revolutionized the way we live and work.20

Now, the biotechnology revolution is here. And its transformative power is nearly unlimited. Although biotechnology has not yet reached its inflection point, it is coming, faster now than even two years ago when the Commission began its work.

Biological systems are uniquely powerful because they have adapted to perform complex chemistry naturally. But biology’s complexity can also limit scientists’ ability to harness its full potential. For example, there are 20,000 individual genes in the human genome, which contains the code that instructs cells to produce proteins, most of which perform multiple jobs within a cell. The same DNA code produces distinct functions across hundreds of cell types, each of which fulfill specialized roles and work in concert with one another. Biology is not yet fully engineerable because of this complexity.

Enter artificial intelligence (AI). Today, AI is beginning to decipher the patterns that govern the behavior of biological systems. Thanks to AI’s tremendous modeling power, in the future we will no longer need to know (or expend the human effort and time determining) exactly how a biological system works in order to harness it. Instead, we will be able to program cells as we program computers, accurately and precisely engineering biology in order to achieve desired results.

Take the problem of figuring out what shapes proteins fold into, which was a “grand challenge” for biology for more than 50 years until researchers from DeepMind released the AI system AlphaFold in 2021. By human calculations alone it would take longer than the age of the known universe to enumerate all 10^300 possible shapes of a single protein.21 AlphaFold can accurately predict most protein structures to within the width of an atom, a feat that earned the team behind it the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.22

Nobel-Worthy Biological Data: An AlphaFold Case Study

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is a testament to the potential of artificial intelligence and biotechnology (AIxBio) innovation.ⁱ One recipient, the American scientist David Baker, used computational resources to design novel proteins with new functions. The other two recipients, the British scientist and entrepreneur Demis Hassabis and the American scientist John Jumper, worked at Google DeepMind on AlphaFold, an AI model that predicts with high accuracy the three-dimensional shape of proteins, one of the hardest and most important problems in biological research.ⁱⁱ

Most medicines are designed to interact with the specific shape of a protein, like a key in a lock. Many antibiotics, for example, target and deactivate proteins that bacteria need to live and kill the bacteria by binding to those necessary proteins. Determining the 3D shapes of proteins accurately and rapidly can aid in quickly designing new antibiotics or vaccines for emerging diseases.ⁱⁱⁱ

The computational efforts that earned these Nobel Prizes would not be possible without the decades of work done to build meticulous datasets. One database, the Protein Data Bank (PDB), is filled with 3D protein structures, primarily determined one at a time in low-throughput labs, which helped researchers understand the logic of protein structures and how those structures relate to their functions.ⁱᵛ The PDB is an outstanding test case in AI-ready data, because each data submission has rigorous metadata and quality measure requirements.ᵛ These requirements have made the data particularly useful to computational researchers, who can use it to develop pioneering AI models like AlphaFold.

AI is well-suited for biology; once models can become as fluent in DNA and other biological molecules as they now are in human language, the results will be profound. Soon, decades of biotechnology breakthroughs will happen in mere years. Already, there are glimpses of the improvements that AI-enabled biotechnology will unlock. In 2023, for example, Insilico Medicine, whose R&D facilities are located in Hong Kong, announced that it had produced the first fully AI-generated drug, a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a deadly lung disease.23

Just as people today can freely leverage the power of computers, which once required specialized coding skills, soon they will be able to engineer biology just as easily.

Already, the cost of sequencing a human genome has plummeted from the hundreds of millions of dollars it took in the early 2000s to less than $1,000 today.24 DNA synthesizers, which allow researchers to print bespoke strands of DNA to make everything from heat-tolerant crops to vaccines, cost just tens of thousands of dollars.25 As costs come down, more people will be able to solve more problems more cheaply and quickly than ever. Soon emerging biotechnology will change nearly every sector of our economy and touch every aspect of our daily lives, with profound implications for economic competitiveness and national security.

If the United States Wins the Biotechnology Race, Our Nation Will Be Stronger, Safer, Richer, and Healthier

We are in a race to win the biotechnology future. Countries that master the AI-biotechnology convergence will gain tremendous strength and prosperity. They will also get to shape how these technologies are used for decades, if not centuries, to come.

For the United States, achieving global biotechnology superiority is an imperative. If America secures its position as the greatest biotechnology power in the world, we will see major gains in five critical areas: defense, supply chains, agriculture, healthcare, and computing.

Biotechnology Today,
Biotechnology Tomorrow

Emerging biotechnologies will help America maintain U.S. military superiority.

Advances in biotechnology represent a paradigm shift in how conflicts can be fought and won. The countries that seize the moment will retain or achieve superpower status. Those that fail to do so will not only fall behind but also become vulnerable to the use of biotechnology against them.

In the 1900s, the United States was the first to take flight but fell behind in the military development of airpower going into World War I.26 Nevertheless, once it recognized that airplanes could become central to military doctrine, from force projection to reconnaissance to logistical support, the U.S. military prioritized airpower in time to reap its enormous advantages in World War II.

Just as aviation fundamentally changed the nature of military operations, so too can biotechnology.

For example, biotechnology could revolutionize logistics by linking strategic objectives with tactical flexibility. Where planes shortened resupply times and extended operational reach, synthetic biology could enable on-demand production of essential resources such as fuel, food, and medicine, reducing reliance on vulnerable supply chains. Imagine a battlefield where shelf-stable synthetic blood removes the need to refrigerate and transport multiple blood types. Such advancements could simplify logistics, allow warfighters to safely extend their operational range, and enhance battlefield survivability.

Biotechnology is also the best defense against bioweapons. The United States does not and will not have an offensive bioweapons program. Other countries do.27 The best deterrent is to master biotechnology so that the United States can prevent, detect, and respond to any biological event.

Fielding biotechnology for defense requires a mindset shift. Instead of viewing this technology as a collection of separate tools, we need to see it as a comprehensive framework that transforms the military’s approach to logistics, surveillance, operations, and, ultimately, deterrence.

Biotechnologies can rebuild global supply chains for the critical components powering our economy.

By the end of the decade, according to one estimate, biomanufacturing will be used extensively in more than a third of traditional manufacturing industries, representing nearly $30 trillion in global value.28

Plastics, cement, metals, and textiles could someday all be grown rather than produced.

In addition to providing new and safe domestic methods of production, biomanufacturing also offers good, high-skilled jobs.

One area with especially promising biotechnology applications is the mining and processing of rare earth elements, which are essential components of everything from cars to computers to cell phones.29 Today, China produces about 60 percent of these minerals and processes as much as 90 percent of them.30 Some of these minerals sit unused in the United States because they are too hard to separate out from mining waste.31 Companies are now using biotechnology to create enzymes that can specifically target and extract minerals from deposits that are currently impossible to separate.32 At scale, this new method of sourcing critical minerals could help meet demand from semiconductor and advanced weapons manufacturers, while insulating our economy from the CCP’s exploitation of this critical industry.

Biotechnology can revolutionize agricultural production in America.

Biotechnology is already the norm in much of American agriculture. Over 90 percent of U.S. soybeans, corn, and cotton are enhanced using biotechnology to help farmers reduce the need for land, water, and chemical inputs.33 We are already starting to see the benefits of biotechnology for agriculture, with cattle that can stay cooler and continue to produce milk in hot conditions and custom soil microorganisms that can pull nitrogen from the air and reduce fertilizer needs.34 These technologies will be a game-changer for America’s farmers, while giving consumers across the country access to less expensive and more nutritious food.

Biotechnology can transform healthcare in America.

Biomanufacturing will enable better and less invasive treatments that extend and improve lives. In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first CRISPR-based gene therapies for sickle cell disease, a life-threatening condition afflicting some 100,000 Americans.35 Similar gene therapies could provide targeted and effective treatments for many other diseases. According to one estimate, 45 percent of the total global burden of disease could be treated with existing biotechnologies.36

Biomanufacturing could also reduce U.S. dependence on foreign supply chains for pharmaceuticals. Starting in the 1990s, American producers began offshoring drug manufacturing made through the traditional chemical process because it involves toxic chemicals.37 But as many as half of the drugs on the FDA’s list of essential medicines could be produced using biomanufacturing instead.

Biotechnology can also protect Americans from public health threats such as toxic waste.38 American researchers are developing biomanufactured materials that can break down chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), persistent toxic substances that are used in many consumer goods and often end up in the water supply.39 PFAS is found in drinking water for an estimated 95 million Americans, including a number of military personnel and their families.40 The Department of Defense has determined that 722 military sites across the country may be contaminated with PFAS.41 Biotechnology offers a solution, such as sponges that promote natural microbial growth that can soak up and break down PFAS.42

Biotechnology can change the future of computing power.

There are limitations to silicon-based computers. As the world continues to generate massive volumes of data, one major concern is the difficulty of building enough physical storage. Football field-sized data centers are cropping up across the country, taking up vast amounts of land and straining the electrical grid.43 Biotechnology has the potential to reimagine data storage and computing power by replacing silicon-based parts with DNA. DNA can hold an unbelievable amount of information. The entire Library of Congress holds approximately 24 petabytes of data, a quantity that could fit in a poppy seed-sized amount of DNA.44

Biology also holds the potential to tackle computational problems that are challenging for traditional computers, and replace, modify, or create the semiconductors that are so critical to the field of computing.408

If America’s Adversaries Win the Biotechnology Race, They Will Use These Technologies to Try to Surpass Us or Even Deploy Them Against Us

The United States (our government and our people) is committed to using biotechnology to improve lives and strengthen our country. But not everyone has the same motives. Bad actors, whether state or nonstate, can harness the power of biotechnologies to disrupt societies, destroy economies, and undermine the international order.

Bioweapons have been a part of great-power conflicts for millennia. As early as 1500 BC, the Hittites of Anatolia deliberately drove victims of a plague into enemy lands to set off an epidemic.45 During the Cold War, the Soviet Union ran an industrial-scale bioweapons program called “Biopreparat,” which by 1987 was producing more than 5,000 tons of anthrax a year.46

Today, the theoretical bioweapons capabilities of both state and nonstate actors could be orders of magnitude more powerful. Bad actors could exploit biotechnologies to devastating effect. Imagine a world where an adversary engineers new lethal pathogens or toxins, whose origins are impossible to trace.47 Consider a future where adversaries can edit or select a person for genetic attributes—such as intelligence, speed, and strength—and use brain-computer interface technology to fuse that optimized human intelligence with artificial intelligence. The result would be a seamless human-machine team to outpace our decision making and outperform our forces.

The future of warfare will no doubt involve biotechnology, whether or not the United States takes the lead in that field. There is no sensible choice but to ensure that America maintains superior and overwhelming capabilities, while maintaining our prohibition on the development and use of bioweapons.

China’s Vision for Biotechnology

China has made no secret of its goal for biotechnology: to use it to achieve global economic and military supremacy.

For decades, the CCP has pursued Military-Civil Fusion (MCF), an aggressive strategy that, among other things, governs how it will use biotechnology. By 2049, the CCP aims to use MCF to turn the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a world-class military that can rival or defeat our own.48 Biotechnology is a critical component of this strategy, and China is striving to develop and integrate biotechnology into its warfighting capabilities before anyone else. 49

In 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed the CCP to “incorporate biosecurity into the national security system.”50 Although President Xi made this statement to push for legislation on biosecurity, the CCP and PLA have taken this message to heart. The CCP has launched an aggressive, whole-of-nation effort to develop the most cutting-edge biotechnologies and use them to advance its military and economic objectives.51

China is investing heavily in gene editing, bionic robots, human-machine teaming, and biomanufacturing, and it is targeting these technologies for military applications. To accelerate its progress, it has collapsed the barriers between civilian and defense research. As a result, ostensibly private Chinese companies such as BGI, one of the world’s largest genome research organizations, effectively serve to implement the CCP’s technology policies.52 While super soldiers may sound like science fiction today, in reality the CCP has long called for “population improvement,” and has backed research into topics like the genetic basis of intelligence.53 Experts interpret this as willingness to pursue eugenics.54

Indeed, some Chinese scientists are already turning to gene editing to achieve population improvement. In 2018, a Chinese biophysicist created the world’s first genetically modified babies, shocking the international scientific community, which had called for a pause on this type of genetic modification research.55 The genetic modifications were intended to produce humans that were more resistant to infections.56 One can easily imagine a future where embryos are edited for intelligence and other desired traits.

The defense implications of such innovations are alarming. If China wins the military biotechnology race, its forces will gain advantages that ours will lack.

The consequences for human rights are just as troubling, given the CCP’s lax attitude toward eugenics and obsession with surveillance. Beijing could wield biotechnology to control its population, intimidate ethnic minorities, and perpetrate genocide. In Xinjiang, Chinese authorities have already collected genomic data on millions of people to identify those who are ethnically Uyghur, contributing to genocide against this group.57 It is easy to imagine the CCP collecting the DNA of outspoken dissidents in the diaspora to identify and punish their families back in China.

China has also repeatedly failed to honor international commitments—including withholding critical information and samples during the early stages of COVID-19—and engaged in nontransparent, nonreciprocal, and coercive behaviors that undermine meaningful engagement on biotechnology.

The United States Is Falling Behind in Key Areas

For most of the twentieth century, the United States dominated the field of biotechnology. American research institutions and scientists unlocked cutting-edge innovations that were the envy of the world.

In the 1940s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working with the private sector, discovered how to produce new strains of penicillin and began mass producing the drug, saving untold millions of lives.58 In the 1970s, American biochemists were the first to learn how to “cut” DNA fragments from one source and join them with another. They founded the world’s first biotechnology company, Genentech, which produced the first synthetic insulin and has since created dozens of other medicines to treat everything from cancer to multiple sclerosis.59 In the 1990s, the United States led the Human Genome Project, a massive international effort that identified and sequenced the full human genome for the first time.60

The United States owes these successes to its tremendous underlying strengths. We are home to many of the world’s premier biotechnology experts and leading public and private research institutions. Our open innovation ecosystem attracts top talent from across the globe. Both our government and our private sector emphasize funding foundational research and development (R&D), rather than funding only fully realized products. We have more biotechnology patents, companies, and Nobel Prize winners than any other country.61

Modern biotechnology is an American innovation.

Unfortunately, many of these strengths have begun to atrophy. Above all, biotechnology companies are struggling in today’s market environment. At the beginning of the biotechnology boom in the early 2000s, abundant private capital poured into fledgling companies that were pushing the boundaries far beyond traditional biopharmaceutical applications. But when the market recently contracted and lending became more expensive, many biotechnology companies were hit hard.62 Investors fled to safer investments, returning to biopharmaceuticals with defined return profiles and moving away from cutting-edge biotechnology applications in medicine, agriculture, industrial manufacturing, energy, and defense.

The United States Lacks a Federal Strategy

To win the biotechnology race, we need to start by getting our own house in order.

Currently, the U.S. government has no cohesive, intentional biotechnology strategy, while China is gaining ground thanks to its aggressive and carefully coordinated state-led initiatives.63

Support for biotechnology investment is bipartisan and widely championed across the United States. But our policymaking is fragmented. Coordination between the executive and legislative branches of government and within the executive branch is poor. And the federal government’s regulatory system is complex and outdated due to a patchwork of laws and authorities.

Our Federal Funding Has Stagnated

In the 1960s, federal R&D spending reached nearly 2 percent of GDP. Today, it has declined to just 0.6 percent.64 The problem is not just how little funding there is but also what gets funded. With fewer federal dollars available and funding agencies less tolerant of failure, researchers and their institutions tend to pursue less risky, more incremental research. Far too little federal funding goes toward innovative, disruptive projects whose breakthroughs will shape the future of biotechnology.

The administrative requirements of federal funding—lengthy paperwork, evidence of previous success, and the like—also mean that it is easier for established researchers and well-resourced institutions to capture these dollars than their less experienced or smaller counterparts. Researchers should be able to spend less time writing grant proposals and filling out paperwork for dwindling pots of federal funds and more time innovating.

We Fail to Sufficiently Commercialize Innovations

While the United States has long excelled at advancing our fundamental understanding of science, it has focused less on converting ideas into products, particularly those with strategic promise. Moreover, poor infrastructure, a lack of long-term capital investment, and confusing market signals all serve to shrink America’s share of the global biotechnology market. China, by contrast, picks national champions and aggressively advantages them through CCP policies to ensure that they seize as much global market share as possible.65

In addition, American biotechnology companies have to navigate a thicket of slow, unpredictable, and complex regulations to bring products to market while regulatory agencies face repeated legal challenges to their enforcement of outdated rules. Until we fix both these commercialization problems, our innovation edge will continue to erode.

Our Innovation Edge Is Eroding

The future of biotechnology is inextricably linked with that of AI, and the more researchers use AI to power biotechnology discoveries, the more essential high-quality biological data will become. But the United States has failed to amass a large repository of biological data that could be leveraged by researchers, thereby forgoing a game-changing strategic resource.

Federal funds also do not adequately support research infrastructure, such as lab space, equipment, and computing power, which researchers and innovators need to generate the high-quality biological data that lead to discoveries.66

The combination of less federal funding for biotechnology research and insufficient data to drive AI-powered discovery puts America’s innovation edge at risk, compared to countries such as China that are willing to invest heavily in biotechnology research and data.

America Is No Longer the Premier Destination for Top Talent

As impressive as it has been over the years, the American education and training system is not producing enough skilled workers to meet the demands of the biotechnology industry, particularly outside of the major hubs of Boston and San Francisco.67 While we remain a leader in attracting international talent, China is quickly catching up. We desperately need a more aggressive strategy to attract, develop, and retain the best minds in the field.

We Fail to Harness the Strengths of our Allies and Partners

As with many other aspects of technological dominance, the United States cannot win the biotechnology race alone. We must work with other countries to solve hard problems and build an international ecosystem that fills the gaps in our own capabilities. For example, in 2012 American and French scientists worked together to understand and characterize the CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissor tool, which led to its adaptation into the revolutionary CRISPR technologies available today.68

Many U.S. allies and partners offer unique capabilities. Companies in Denmark are driving advances in biomanufactured chemicals, including for use in healthcare.69 Germany is doing the same for biomass for energy.70 The United Kingdom is leading efforts in computational biology research.71 South Korea is establishing itself as a hub for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.72 Japan is advancing regenerative medicine and biomanufacturing.73 And India is prioritizing cost-effective biomanufacturing, particularly of vaccines.74 We must do more to take advantage of our partners’ unparalleled strengths, which could include entering into reciprocal data-sharing agreements or pooling demand for biotechnology products.

China Is Closing the Gap

President Xi has made it clear that emerging technologies such as biotechnology will shape the future. And he has moved quickly to seize the advantage. China has long relied on aggressive industrial policies to get ahead in the sectors it considers vital. This track record gives it a clear playbook for how to win the biotechnology race and then translate that victory into military and economic power.75

China Emphasizes Biotechnology as a “Strategic Emerging Industry”

For nearly two decades, China has made biotechnology a priority.76 As early as 2007, the CCP announced plans to “set up high-tech industrial bases for biotechnology,” and in 2011, it designated biotechnology as a “strategic emerging industry,” unleashing a comprehensive package of financing, subsidies, and diplomatic support for the Chinese biotechnology sector.77

In 2014, President Xi declared to the Chinese Academy of Sciences that his country could not become a “technological vassal of other countries” and insisted that it pursue a path of independent scientific innovation.78 In an April 2020 speech, he elaborated on this vision:

“We must place greater emphasis on basic research in heredity, genetics, virology, epidemiology and immunology, accelerate R&D and technological innovation of related drugs and vaccines, and attach greater importance to applications of information and data technologies in these fields.”79

Later that year, China enacted a biosecurity law, further enshrining biotechnology, genomics, and other life-sciences research under CCP and state control, including under the PLA.80

China Provides Massive State Support for Hand-picked Winners

The CCP lavishes its chosen domestic firms with subsidies and preferential regulatory treatment that advantage them at the expense of foreign competitors. It complements this strategy by helping Chinese firms acquire U.S. companies that are developing promising technologies. In 2012, for example, BGI bought the U.S.-based sequencing company Complete Genomics, bringing American technology under CCP control.409 Today, BGI is a world leader in sequencing, thanks in no small part to the support that the CCP has given it to undercut the competition with below-market prices.

The Chinese government has made tremendous investments in its domestic biotechnology industry, plowing money into developing talent and building research infrastructure, unlike the United States, which has no strategic vision or coordination for federal biotechnology funding.81

In agriculture, the Chinese government uses its regulatory system to delay approval for American-developed seeds and require larger-than-normal samples of seeds. This allows China to develop its own versions of American seed varieties in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.82

China now boasts over 100 biotechnology research parks and 17 industrial clusters where researchers can conduct biological research and use AI in biodiscovery.83 These sites offer Chinese researchers everything they need to scale up innovations, from the laboratories to test their ideas to the infrastructure to bring their products to market.84 China’s rapid investment into these sites could allow the country to surge more students into its biotechnology workforce, creating a feedback loop that would expand its biotechnology industry faster than we are able to grow ours.

China Deploys Predatory Capital and Acquires Intellectual Property (IP)

China regularly exploits America’s open market by funding acquisitions of U.S. biotechnology startups solely for the purpose of acquiring their IP. A telling example is Chinese pharmaceutical company WuXi AppTec, which has purchased a number of U.S. firms, granting it access to the best technology in the world.85 Thanks to acquired American IP, it now dominates the biomanufacturing of pharmaceuticals and has earned a reputation among biotechnology companies as a critical firm that can solve the hardest manufacturing problems in as little as a week. Because of WuXi AppTec’s edge, the American biopharmaceutical industry is now utterly reliant on it. In 2024, an industry group surveyed U.S. biopharmaceutical companies and found that 79 percent of those companies depend on it and other Chinese-based contractors for manufacturing.86 WuXi AppTec’s success was built on the back of U.S. technology.87 But now it is the United States that is vulnerable. In that sense, WuXi AppTec is the new Huawei.88

China Prioritizes Data Control and Security

China understands the importance of genetic data, and its investments in genetic sequencing services have given it vast amounts of genomic information. National champions such as BGI collect data on behalf of (and are functionally indistinguishable from) the Chinese state, granting the CCP access to massive troves of data that power developments in biotechnology.89 The CCP’s 2020 biosecurity law established a national biosecurity information bank with which companies must share all their “biosecurity data and materials.” If interpreted broadly, the law would require sharing data for all “human genetics resources” (human tissue, DNA samples, and so on), including all clinical trial data.90

China is Working to Win the Competition for Talent

Fewer Chinese students are choosing to pursue higher education abroad now than in previous years. The number of Chinese students studying abroad increased year-by-year from 2013 to 2019; however, that number has steadily declined since the COVID-19 pandemic.91 More than 80 percent of Chinese PhDs who do study abroad return home after, where they can end up working in Chinese firms or directly for the CCP.92 In this regard, 20 years of Chinese investment in its domestic biotechnology industry are paying off. Indeed, Americans and Europeans with biotechnology expertise are also studying and working in China, drawn by the vast government resources available to researchers and students.93

China’s Strategy is Working

As part of its strategy, the CCP seeks to dominate the global biotechnology industry so that other countries, including the United States, are dependent on the channels it controls. China is already deeply embedded in the United States’ critical biotechnology supply chains, including those for life-saving medicines and agriculture. Every year from 2014 to 2022, the United States sourced up to 28 percent of total active pharmaceutical ingredient imports from China.94 Chinese state-owned Syngenta is now the world’s largest seed and agricultural chemicals conglomerate, with $27 billion of annual sales and unprecedented global influence.95 These dependencies make us highly vulnerable to Chinese pressure.

$300 billion

increase in market value of Chinese biotechnology firms

From 2016 to 2021, the market value of Chinese biotechnology firms grew 100-fold, to $300 billion.96 These companies’ combined market capitalization is second only to that of U.S. companies, and Chinese firms are on track to catch up quickly.

2x

Increase in number of Chinese biotechnology deals

The share of clinical trials launched by Chinese-headquartered biopharmaceutical companies rose from just three percent in 2013 to 28 percent in 2023.97 And the global share of China’s pharmaceutical output increased from just over five percent in 2002 to nearly 25 percent in 2019.98 The number of deals Chinese biotechnology companies struck to license their own IP to others more than doubled from 15 in 2019 to 33 in 2023, mostly in oncological therapeutics.99 In 2023, the FDA approved three new drugs biomanufactured in China.100

22%

In 2019, China applied for 22 percent of all international patents, surpassing the United states and the EU.

In recent years, China has become the largest funder of agricultural R&D in the world, surpassing the United States and the EU407. In 2019, for the first time in history, China applied for more international patents than the United States.101 Many of these Chinese applications were for agricultural patents that use CRISPR.102

China’s advances in R&D are paying out across the biotechnology landscape, most notably in synthetic biology. In 2010, researchers in the United States published 45 percent of the world’s most highly cited papers on synthetic biology, with Chinese researchers accounting for just 13 percent. By 2023, that ratio had flipped: Chinese researchers published 60 percent of the most-cited papers while U.S. research accounted for just 7 percent.103

The United States Must Win the Biotechnology Race

China is using every tool at its disposal to replace the United States as the global leader in biotechnology. The CCP’s strategy is to make its firms less dependent on the world, and the world more dependent on them. And it is succeeding.

In the face of this onslaught, no single action will be enough; there is no silver bullet that will singlehandedly delay China’s progress by a decade or secure U.S. dominance for a generation. Rather, the U.S. government must aggressively deploy all the tools at its disposal to preserve American biotechnology leadership.

China has run its playbook before with other technologies, and we have lessons to draw on for how to counter it. Consider semiconductors. Chips were originally an American invention, and China had lagged far behind. In recent years, however, China began to close the gap, while the United States itself all but lost the ability to produce leading-edge chips.104

In 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which seeks to stimulate the production of semiconductors on U.S. and allied soil, and the Commerce Department enacted export controls to prevent advanced semiconductor technology from getting into China’s hands.105 As a result, the United States has again become a global hub for advanced chip manufacturing.106 China’s climb up the chip-manufacturing value chain has slowed; it has continued to struggle to produce advanced chips at scale, in part hindering its progress in AI and other dual-use and military applications.107

While we can apply lessons learned from our experience with semiconductors and other technologies, we are in fact in a much better position when it comes to biotechnology.

The inflection point for biotechnology has not yet arrived. Ultimate leadership of the sector is still up for grabs. With chips and advanced telecommunications we were caught flat-footed. But with biotechnology, fortunately, we can act early and decisively.

We can still secure our position as the world’s biotechnology leader if we act now. If we fail to meet the moment, however, U.S. economic and military leadership will be weakened for generations.

How to Win the Biotechnology Race

To make up for two decades of complacency, we must launch a whole-of-government strategy to promote the U.S. biotechnology industry. We must mobilize our private sector so that American products dominate the global biotechnology market. We must attract private capital through such mechanisms as an Independence Investment Fund and advance purchase commitments from the federal government to smooth out demand. We need to create public-private partnerships so that companies can get the support (such as guidance on navigating the government contracting and regulatory processes) and financial backstop they need to test innovations early and scale what works. We also need to invest in our talent pipeline, make it easier to collect and use standardized biological data, and boost funding for R&D.

We must do all of this in a manner that aligns with American values and prioritizes safety, security, and responsibility. Our values are one of our key enduring advantages; they are what unites us with our allies and differentiates us from our adversaries. Sacrificing our values for short-term gains would only serve to imperil U.S. leadership in the long-term.

The government can be a force multiplier that reinvigorates the United States’ historic strengths and helps ensure that the country finishes the biotechnology race in first place. These long-term measures to promote domestic technologies and companies will ensure that we can outrun China in this contest and avoid needing to make a CHIPS Act–sized investment to catch up.108

Our strategy must not just promote American technology, but protect it, too. The U.S. government has an array of tools at its disposal to prevent transactions that would harm the United States. Applying them to biotechnology should prevent the transfer of sensitive biological data that could be used against the United States. The government should reform the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) so it can better block predatory Chinese investments in the U.S. biotechnology industry. It should impose restrictions on outbound investment to prevent U.S. investments from supporting Chinese biotechnology companies that pose national security risks. It should enact new export controls on specific types of biotechnology equipment that would threaten our national security if they fell into the hands of the PLA. And it should require firms whose supply chains rely on China to publicly disclose their dependencies and prohibit U.S. government contractors and grantees from procuring goods from Chinese biotechnology firms that could create such dependencies.

The U.S. government cannot adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to the biotechnology sector. In devising export controls, for instance, the Administration should remain flexible. It should be willing to deploy them in areas where they could have a strategic benefit, including on a country-wide basis, but also be willing to amend them if they risk ultimately setting back U.S. biotechnology leadership. Biotechnology supply chains are particularly diffuse, with important technologies dispersed across the world, a characteristic that requires export controls to be surgical and nimble to be effective.109 When it comes to reducing investment and supply chain risks, by contrast, the Administration should pursue wider-ranging protection measures, since these pose fewer downside risks to domestic industry.

Biotechnology is a less consolidated industry than others, such as the semiconductor sector, and technological breakthroughs regularly occur at startups and small firms. But small biotechnology companies often face a tough choice: doing business with China or going out of business. That is why protection must go hand in hand with promotion. A comprehensive strategy should not just restrict transactions with China that could pose national security risks but also open up new market opportunities within the United States and allied and partner nations.

No single step on its own will ensure that the United States can outrun and slow down China in biotechnology. But together, our recommendations offer the best chance of success.

Following this strategy, we can ensure that the biotechnology century is an American century.

There is still time, but the window is rapidly closing.

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