Global networks are also a source of U.S. power across myriad biological technologies, as U.S. strategic high ground within high-performance poultry-rearing illustrates. China’s high-tech chickens may now grow twice as fast and big as a standard Chinese chicken, but they depend on the West. Those chickens are fifth-generation descendants of pedigree birds that never leave maximum security farms in America and Britain. Such vulnerabilities have no quick, cheap or certain solutions.

Even without malign intent, supply chain vulnerabilities are dangerous, as fear can provoke even allies to act selfishly. When Italy desperately needed PPE in March 2020, Germany impounded vital supplies stored in or transiting through Germany—even when bought and paid for others. Such scrambles may, in future, seem tame as the coronavirus is far from the worst-case scenario amongst naturally emerging pathogens, let alone increasingly cheap and easy to make bioweapons. 

Economics alone is unlikely to cause large-scale relocation or even diversification of many key supply chains by Western firms. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is often considered a prime case, but it has pushed back strongly and argued that building a new biopharmaceutical facility can take five to ten years and cost $2 billion. Indeed, German exporters drove the recent EU-China trade deal.  

So how might the United States build more effective supply chains? Again, a “national networked” approach can help to balance globalization’s economies-of-scale, alongside the resilience gained from more dependable suppliers both domestically and in allies and partners.  

Nationally, new government funding is required to establish and sustain structures and expertise that can: identify and analyze key supply chains (a tough task as pharmaceutical ingredients show); and plan for additional manufacturing capacity and stockpiling required for reasonable contingencies (like a pandemic). It also requires the political will—and cooperation—to fund and regulate these capabilities.  

Global networks for supply chains—as for innovation—can be considered as concentric rings, which range from the most trusted allies through to supply chains including, but not being dependent on, China. The United States can also reduce risk by promoting a strategy of hedging that builds alternative capacity elsewhere, like India, even if this incurs additional initial costs—and in biotech that also plays to the existing strengths of U.S. partners like India, the UK or EU. Given that companies now expect a month-long disruption to hit their supply chains on average once every 3.7 years, this isn’t just an anti-China strategy. Additionally, it will help shape globalization’s next phase a little further in favor of global democracies. 

Global Rivalry and Cooperation 

It matters which country invents and builds the biological technologies of the future. For the United States to compete effectively, it must avoid extreme decoupling, which severs innovation ecosystems and supply chains. Also, it must avoid extreme dogmas that treat globalization as if it cannot be controlled or shaped. Working with networks like the Five Eyes community, the D-10 grouping, and managed cooperation with China, the United States can prosper from the invention, development and commercialization of next-generation biological technologies. It can also ensure that the vast new DNA databases and mass personalization, which reflect the future of healthcare everywhere, are the servants of democratic societies and not just further levers of authoritarian control. 

Dr. Nicholas D. Wright is a medical doctor, publishes on technology and global politics, and is affiliated with Georgetown University Medical Center, University College London and New America. He works closely with the Pentagon Joint Staff and collaborates with Peking University. He has many academic publications, more generally in the Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Interest etc. and has appeared on BBC and CNN. See www.intelligentbiology.co.uk.

Dr. James Giordano is Professor of Neurology; Chief of Neuroethics Studies; and Co-Director of the Program in Brain Science and Global Law and Policy at Georgetown University. Author of over 300 publications, he is also Senior Fellow in Biosecurity, Technology and Ethics of the US Naval War College, and has served as senior advisor to the OECD on trans-Pacific biotechnology issues.

Dr. Diane DiEuliis is a Senior Research Fellow at National Defense University, focusing on biothreats and emerging biotechnologies. Previously, she coordinated policy in support of domestic and international health emergency preparedness and response at Health and Human Services, and from 2007 to 2011 was the Assistant Director for Life Sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.

Image: Reuters