Commission warns U.S. biotech leadership at risk; urges regulatory overhaul, data hubs and manufacturing investment

Senator Todd Young, chair of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, told the House Committee on Armed Services that "the United States needs to lead on biotechnology and our leadership is indeed in jeopardy," urging Congress and the Department of Defense to act quickly to maintain a competitive edge.

The commission's final report, Young said, lays out short-term and multi-year recommendations to accelerate U.S. innovation, shield strategic biological data and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains. "Our strategy is twofold: make America innovate faster and slow China down," he said, adding that the commission recommends dedicating significant resources over the next five years.

Why this matters: Commissioners and witnesses described biotechnology as a cross-cutting field with applications for defense, health care, agriculture and manufacturing. They warned that advances in AI-enabled biology could be applied to military systems, supply chains and pharmaceuticals, and that failing to respond could create strategic vulnerabilities.

Most of the hearing focused on the commission's core recommendations. Dr. Rosa, vice chair of the commission, described the arriving technological moment as "what we refer to as the chat GPT moment for biotechnology," and highlighted two research challenges the commission recommends Congress prioritize: making biotechnology predictably engineerable, and making biomanufacturing scalable, cost-competitive and predictable. She told members that DARPA-supported work could, for example, produce shelf-stable blood useful in remote or combat settings.

Members pressed practical follow-up steps. Witnesses proposed a small interagency entity to help innovators navigate duplicative regulation, a secure "web of biodata" to make curated, AI-ready biological data available to vetted researchers, and demand-side tools — such as DOD offtake agreements or advanced market commitments — to give companies assurance there will be customers for defense-relevant biotech products. The commission also recommended a nongovernmental-managed investment fund to attract private capital and a congressional advisory body on ethics and responsibility in biotechnology.

Speakers repeatedly pointed to supply-chain and competitive risks from China. Representative Ro Khanna, the committee's ranking member, said China is investing heavily in industrial lending and biotech companies and stressed the need to "stay ahead of China in this area." Senator Young and Dr. Rosa described examples they said show China expanding capacity across research, manufacturing and data collection; Young cited BGI as an example of a company that has acquired U.S. intellectual property and grown global sequencing capacity.

Witnesses and members raised funding and workforce concerns. Several members said recent proposed cuts to federal research agencies could weaken U.S. competitiveness; Dr. Rosa and others recommended channeling targeted research investments and using grand-challenge prizes to solve hard engineering and scale-up problems without creating costly new standalone facilities.

The commission said its final report will be released this week and that commissioners plan to remain available to provide technical assistance to Congress as legislation is developed. No formal votes or committee actions occurred during the hearing.

The hearing included a substantive Q&A from multiple members of the House Committee on Armed Services, covering: how to make military specifications compatible with bio-manufactured products; how to reduce the "valley of death" for scale-up; which parts of the biotech value chain are strongest in the United States and which are lagging; and how to protect sensitive biological data while enabling AI-driven innovation.

The session closed with members and commissioners urging prompt legislative and executive action to implement the report's recommendations and to use both incentives and safeguards to preserve U.S. leadership in biotechnology. The commission said it will support congressional offices with technical expertise as proposals move forward.