Transcripts For CSPAN2 Rep. Wenstrup Holds Discussion On Bio

Sleep tonight, but i think it will be worth it. The covid19 pandemic has shown the devastating impact can be due to a moderate pandemic. And we can imagine the impact of biological threat here or in the horizons that have more than a 1 fatality rate. The biological threats that are enabled by advances and Synthetic Biology is make possible to design pathogens that are even more severe, even more deadly than what we find in nature and the capabilities are accessible not just to state and biological weapon programs that unfortunately persist today but also to individuals. To help us understand the threat we face and what we can do about them, we are fortunate to have two congressional leaders on National Security issues and the distinguished panel of experts including one of my mentors on the topic for 15 years. Im honored to first welcome that distinguished guests, representative mike turner that represents the tenth Congressional District in southwestern ohio which includes dayton and Wrightpatterson Air Force base and in addition to serving as the Ranking Member of the house Intelligence Committee, also a Senior Member of the House Armed Services committee and representative ben wenstrup who represents ohios second Congressional District that includes part of cincinnati and counties east of the city i recognize representative turner to give remarks thank you, jason, for having us today and i want to thank the corporation for hosting us this is an effort on the part of the members of the Intelligence Committee to engage with the think tank and academic communities for the purposes of gaining information and understanding about the topics within our jurisdiction to make sure that we focus on National Security its been one of our main goals to refocus the Intelligence Committee back to National Security threats posed to the nation by adversaries and this session today that you are hosting fits greatly into our ability to get information from those individuals that are experts, have expertise to take back to congress that we can translate into actual policies. I want to thank you for coordinating this and for being the lead on this. As you indicated, the topic today is of course biological threats and weapons. Doctor wenstrup in addition to incredible career in the army in which hes been decorated for heroism as a result of the mass shooting that occurred and was perpetrated against the. On the Intelligence Committee, his expertise as a doctor on the path for being served in combat has been incredibly important. His focus and his ability to advocate for these issues as an Intelligence Community focus and as a threat to the nation has caused us to give more to these issues, and of course i think it is on the pandemic focused us all once again on the threats that we have here. I want to thank doctor wenstrup for his contribution to the Intelligence Committee and for his being the convene her with these experts and we look forward to the expertise from the experts today. Thank you. For the efforts to drive the committee to have further engagements with experts and leaders in the National Security field, you know, i think congressman turner and i and at least those members on the Intelligence Committee that are engaging in these events, we all sit there and we are focused on wanting to work with the Intelligence Committee. As congress we have oversight roles, but we are determined to do more than just a fact. More than just to say okay we will fund you. We want to be engaged in the conversations and engage with our National Security risks. And to be able to move forward. So, as legislators it is important that we not only engage with the Broader Community to learn from them but have the opportunity to inform the public about the work that we do on the Intelligence Committee to the extent that we can considering we deal with so many things that are classified secret. I want to thank the Rand Corporation for hosting this event. Its a great opportunity for us and of the leaders on so many issues. So it was a natural fit for us to want to engage on the National Security issues, and the topic here today which is bio defense. You heard of some of my background. Im a physician, iraq war veteran and the reserves for 25 years and in congress for ten years. So, with that background, i think when the covid pandemic hit it was particularly eyeopening because we saw in real times where we might be with preparedness for biologic events and maybe a lack thereof as far as preparedness. Through my time in congress ive been focused on National Security and National Health security at every level, whether its access to care in the community is or a situation like this that affects the National Security. And you know, one of the things that we have as reserve physicians in the military, we have two missions. We have a medical first and ready force, so its extremely important that we engage in these type of issues across the board. We see rapid technological advancements. That can enable novel biological weapons perhaps and with the detection and attribution and treatment and with covid, just remember it was named immediately a novel coronavirus. So the discussion today with the experts is timely and is hopefully going to be informative and helpful and will have an opportunity at the end for people to ask questions either virtually or here in the audience. And so i will go into that a little bit for those participating virtually and if you would like to ask a question, we will be using the platform. If you are watching online, go to the site and enter the event code hashtag bio defense if you want to submit a question. Im excited to have the panelists today that bring unique experiences and research to the table. And i want to start with the senior fellow for Global Health at the council on foreign relations. Shes also a venture partner and capital firm that provides earlystage Venture Capital for Technology Firms and Information Technology like sciences and physical sciences. Specializing in bio defense, emerging infectious diseases, medical Product Development and complex Public Health emergencies. She was formerly the Vice President at an independent nonprofit strategic Investment Firm that works to identify and deliver Innovative Technology solutions to support the missions of the United States Intelligence Community. She also previously served as director for medical and bio defense at the National Security council and served as the acting chief scientist of the u. S. Food and Drug Administration and the assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy at the fda. Youre going to be able to tell we have some very qualified people here today. Public Health Security professional Whose Research and programmatic emphasis has been on practical academic and political. So she served in the u. S. House of representatives as a senior professional staff ran a subcommittee staff director of the committee on Homeland Security in the 110th and 111th congress. Shes worked for a variety of organizations including government contractors, foundations and nonprofits as a contractor she supported and worked with all federal departments especially the department of Homeland Security and the department of health and Human Services. Also as a military Intelligence Officer and is a decorated desert storm veteran. Senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation previously served at the u. S. Department of Homeland Security is an undersecretary and deputy undersecretary in the science and technology directorate. He has extensive experience in Security Defense while serving as a Senior Executive civilian and uniform and industry. Before joining dhs, the principal director for her counter wmd. Also served on a delegation that negotiated the peace settlement and established the cybersecurity facility following 9 11 and developed bio Surveillance System for the dod. Doctor john is a Senior International science researcher and former director of the intelligence policy center. His primary areas of research include intelligence, counterterrorism, weapons proliferation and hes led projects on interest and acquisition of chemical biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Open Source Intelligence and emerging technologies. Previously he served as the executive director of the Washington Office of the Monterey Institute of International Studies center for nonproliferation studies. Before that he was a senior associate at the Henry L Stimson center, where he focused on a nonproliferation and arms control issues. Doctor tricia stapleton, political scientist at the Rand Corporation, her Research Interests include science and technology policies, Risk Perception and regulation of emerging technologies and risk assessments and communication. In particular, doctor stapletons Academic Work has focused on the adoption and regulation of emerging technologies and Food Production and assisted reproductive technologies with recent attention to human germline editing. She also investigates topics in Food Security particularly in the context of climate change. Before aranda, she was the director of the Society Technology and policy program atassistant professor of politil scientist at worchester public institute. And with that, i think ive covered everyone. I do want to say if you hear those long introductions, its important because you get an understanding of where everyone is coming from. So, what id like to do is start in 60 seconds or so and have you characterized the threats we face when it comes to bio weapons and our own bio defense and what you focus on when it comes to studying the issue. Lets go down the line. Thank you for having me. Its a pleasure to be here today. I have spent my career working on bio defense both on the deliberate and naturally occurring side. And sadly, both continue to grow as a threat. The naturally occurring side and then with monkeypox and polio. I remember i used to have this global map with all the hotspots and it was covered around the globe with hot spots of things i was tracking and i did it on purpose. I use to line my binder with of that map because it was easy for the folks that work in the National Security to forget about the bio threat. Theres so many of the matters that they are kind of invisible, sometimes they go away. But i remember they would glance at that and to say is that what you are tracking today and it was important to keep that under the path of the binder. And of course on the deliberative site if they continue to do it well. So, i would argue that the u. S. Has the unparalleled capabilities to respond and to address this. We have the vibrant science and technology infrastructure, the vibrant technology infrastructure, and the covid vaccines are a good example. No country has been able to come both said that shannon incredible sexy no matter how imperfect they are but we have a fundamental problem and how we organize and leverage the capabilities. If it is a very complex enterprise to maintain and to adapt and to execute against the capabilities and we still havent found a way to properly organize effectively so that we can use the tremendous cap abilities that we have to lament the threat. The sad part is we dont get to choose what part of the enterprise because it just doesnt work unless all the parts are working together and to their capacity. And we can talk about more about that. Im the executive director, and we look at all of the biological spectrums and sadly most of them now have a National Security implication. For us when it comes to biological weapons, weve been focusing quite a great deal, so they released a Compliance Report last year complying or describing compliance with biological weapons conventions and other conventions for that matter. And in the report they stayed clearly russia and north korea have active biological weapons programs anna china and iran are close behind. What they are doing this technology and Everything Else they are involved in especially with their work and their investments in the bio economy. So thats fine. We are looking at those like everybody is looking at the four countries for a variety of reasons, but i would say that from the Public Health perspective, we usually say whenever you have one case or a number of cases you are aware of there are six more that are definitely out there but you dont know where they are and by the way, homicide detectives think the same thing. So its an interesting mathematical observation. So, that being the case, we have to look at the same to say that for these countries that we know about, there are 24 others out there just doing their thing, pursuing whatever reasons they are pursuing. Some of it has to do with competitiveness, just youve got some so weve got to have some. Some of it has to do with fear, some of it is the asymmetric advantage on the battlefield. To some of it has to do if you are talking about the terrorist organizations with just their philosophies on what kind of weapon would be the scariest and the worst to accomplish their motives so that is what we are focused on. But i want to add one other thing about attribution it is unfortunate we are in a position now that we just are not ever sure, and theres nothing wrong with acts asking the question from a scientific or congressional perspective, but that we cant answer it in a logical and relatively short timeframe is not great. We need to make some more investments and give more production i think to the Intelligence Community. And other communities. Healthcare and Public Health as well. All of them to get us to the point that we can answer these questions more quickly. Otherwise, from the preparedness perspective we will be stuck trying to do something impossible that would be everything as a bw event or treat everything like its not and that isnt going to help with the National Security. Is it not or could it be. It certainly is tough to go after. I was taking off my mind and you got them all. Let me put this in a little bit of the way i like to think about the framework. When you talk about this spectrum of biological risk, it encompasses things on one side of that are naturally occurring such as a pandemic and on the other side we talk about the deliberate use of weapons, whether it is from a state or a terrorist. But in the center is also something very interesting. They are all related to human activity. We know for example not only that of the pandemic has some relationship to humans getting exposed. Im not taking that on here but its interesting its part of hn activity. And the further that we encroach upon the native lands, the more likely we are to find ourselves encroaching and getting attacked by diseases. Thats an important part. Human activity is something we need to think about. And of the accident scene at the sabotage of the human activities as well and having come from running the lab thats something that we worried about on a daily basis and despite our best efforts there were times when accidents did occur and hopefully we were doing the right thing. We were doing the reporting. But if people are not doing that reporting, then we have to think about that. And now lets turn to that other part of the spectrum and that is the deliberate use. Putting this in a bit of Historical Context when we think about the state biological programs over the course of human history, theres been some 25 nations that have at some point have some sort of biological program. During Synthetic Biology<\/a> is make possible to design pathogens that are even more severe, even more deadly than what we find in nature and the capabilities are accessible not just to state and biological weapon programs that unfortunately persist today but also to individuals. To help us understand the threat we face and what we can do about them, we are fortunate to have two congressional leaders on National Security<\/a> issues and the distinguished panel of experts including one of my mentors on the topic for 15 years. Im honored to first welcome that distinguished guests, representative mike turner that represents the tenth Congressional District<\/a> in southwestern ohio which includes dayton and Wrightpatterson Air Force<\/a> base and in addition to serving as the Ranking Member<\/a> of the house Intelligence Committee<\/a>, also a Senior Member<\/a> of the House Armed Services<\/a> committee and representative ben wenstrup who represents ohios second Congressional District<\/a> that includes part of cincinnati and counties east of the city i recognize representative turner to give remarks thank you, jason, for having us today and i want to thank the corporation for hosting us this is an effort on the part of the members of the Intelligence Committee<\/a> to engage with the think tank and academic communities for the purposes of gaining information and understanding about the topics within our jurisdiction to make sure that we focus on National Security<\/a> its been one of our main goals to refocus the Intelligence Committee<\/a> back to National Security<\/a> threats posed to the nation by adversaries and this session today that you are hosting fits greatly into our ability to get information from those individuals that are experts, have expertise to take back to congress that we can translate into actual policies. I want to thank you for coordinating this and for being the lead on this. As you indicated, the topic today is of course biological threats and weapons. Doctor wenstrup in addition to incredible career in the army in which hes been decorated for heroism as a result of the mass shooting that occurred and was perpetrated against the. On the Intelligence Committee<\/a>, his expertise as a doctor on the path for being served in combat has been incredibly important. His focus and his ability to advocate for these issues as an Intelligence Community<\/a> focus and as a threat to the nation has caused us to give more to these issues, and of course i think it is on the pandemic focused us all once again on the threats that we have here. I want to thank doctor wenstrup for his contribution to the Intelligence Committee<\/a> and for his being the convene her with these experts and we look forward to the expertise from the experts today. Thank you. For the efforts to drive the committee to have further engagements with experts and leaders in the National Security<\/a> field, you know, i think congressman turner and i and at least those members on the Intelligence Committee<\/a> that are engaging in these events, we all sit there and we are focused on wanting to work with the Intelligence Committee<\/a>. As congress we have oversight roles, but we are determined to do more than just a fact. More than just to say okay we will fund you. We want to be engaged in the conversations and engage with our National Security<\/a> risks. And to be able to move forward. So, as legislators it is important that we not only engage with the Broader Community<\/a> to learn from them but have the opportunity to inform the public about the work that we do on the Intelligence Committee<\/a> to the extent that we can considering we deal with so many things that are classified secret. I want to thank the Rand Corporation<\/a> for hosting this event. Its a great opportunity for us and of the leaders on so many issues. So it was a natural fit for us to want to engage on the National Security<\/a> issues, and the topic here today which is bio defense. You heard of some of my background. Im a physician, iraq war veteran and the reserves for 25 years and in congress for ten years. So, with that background, i think when the covid pandemic hit it was particularly eyeopening because we saw in real times where we might be with preparedness for biologic events and maybe a lack thereof as far as preparedness. Through my time in congress ive been focused on National Security<\/a> and National Health<\/a> security at every level, whether its access to care in the community is or a situation like this that affects the National Security<\/a>. And you know, one of the things that we have as reserve physicians in the military, we have two missions. We have a medical first and ready force, so its extremely important that we engage in these type of issues across the board. We see rapid technological advancements. That can enable novel biological weapons perhaps and with the detection and attribution and treatment and with covid, just remember it was named immediately a novel coronavirus. So the discussion today with the experts is timely and is hopefully going to be informative and helpful and will have an opportunity at the end for people to ask questions either virtually or here in the audience. And so i will go into that a little bit for those participating virtually and if you would like to ask a question, we will be using the platform. If you are watching online, go to the site and enter the event code hashtag bio defense if you want to submit a question. Im excited to have the panelists today that bring unique experiences and research to the table. And i want to start with the senior fellow for Global Health<\/a> at the council on foreign relations. Shes also a venture partner and capital firm that provides earlystage Venture Capital<\/a> for Technology Firms<\/a> and Information Technology<\/a> like sciences and physical sciences. Specializing in bio defense, emerging infectious diseases, medical Product Development<\/a> and complex Public Health<\/a> emergencies. She was formerly the Vice President<\/a> at an independent nonprofit strategic Investment Firm<\/a> that works to identify and deliver Innovative Technology<\/a> solutions to support the missions of the United States<\/a> Intelligence Community<\/a>. She also previously served as director for medical and bio defense at the National Security<\/a> council and served as the acting chief scientist of the u. S. Food and Drug Administration<\/a> and the assistant commissioner for counterterrorism policy at the fda. Youre going to be able to tell we have some very qualified people here today. Public Health Security<\/a> professional Whose Research<\/a> and programmatic emphasis has been on practical academic and political. So she served in the u. S. House of representatives as a senior professional staff ran a subcommittee staff director of the committee on Homeland Security<\/a> in the 110th and 111th congress. Shes worked for a variety of organizations including government contractors, foundations and nonprofits as a contractor she supported and worked with all federal departments especially the department of Homeland Security<\/a> and the department of health and Human Services<\/a>. Also as a military Intelligence Officer<\/a> and is a decorated desert storm veteran. Senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation<\/a> previously served at the u. S. Department of Homeland Security<\/a> is an undersecretary and deputy undersecretary in the science and technology directorate. He has extensive experience in Security Defense<\/a> while serving as a Senior Executive<\/a> civilian and uniform and industry. Before joining dhs, the principal director for her counter wmd. Also served on a delegation that negotiated the peace settlement and established the cybersecurity facility following 9 11 and developed bio Surveillance System<\/a> for the dod. Doctor john is a Senior International<\/a> science researcher and former director of the intelligence policy center. His primary areas of research include intelligence, counterterrorism, weapons proliferation and hes led projects on interest and acquisition of chemical biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Open Source Intelligence<\/a> and emerging technologies. Previously he served as the executive director of the Washington Office<\/a> of the Monterey Institute<\/a> of International Studies<\/a> center for nonproliferation studies. Before that he was a senior associate at the Henry L Stimson<\/a> center, where he focused on a nonproliferation and arms control issues. Doctor tricia stapleton, political scientist at the Rand Corporation<\/a>, her Research Interests<\/a> include science and technology policies, Risk Perception<\/a> and regulation of emerging technologies and risk assessments and communication. In particular, doctor stapletons Academic Work<\/a> has focused on the adoption and regulation of emerging technologies and Food Production<\/a> and assisted reproductive technologies with recent attention to human germline editing. She also investigates topics in Food Security<\/a> particularly in the context of climate change. Before aranda, she was the director of the Society Technology<\/a> and policy program atassistant professor of politil scientist at worchester public institute. And with that, i think ive covered everyone. I do want to say if you hear those long introductions, its important because you get an understanding of where everyone is coming from. So, what id like to do is start in 60 seconds or so and have you characterized the threats we face when it comes to bio weapons and our own bio defense and what you focus on when it comes to studying the issue. Lets go down the line. Thank you for having me. Its a pleasure to be here today. I have spent my career working on bio defense both on the deliberate and naturally occurring side. And sadly, both continue to grow as a threat. The naturally occurring side and then with monkeypox and polio. I remember i used to have this global map with all the hotspots and it was covered around the globe with hot spots of things i was tracking and i did it on purpose. I use to line my binder with of that map because it was easy for the folks that work in the National Security<\/a> to forget about the bio threat. Theres so many of the matters that they are kind of invisible, sometimes they go away. But i remember they would glance at that and to say is that what you are tracking today and it was important to keep that under the path of the binder. And of course on the deliberative site if they continue to do it well. So, i would argue that the u. S. Has the unparalleled capabilities to respond and to address this. We have the vibrant science and technology infrastructure, the vibrant technology infrastructure, and the covid vaccines are a good example. No country has been able to come both said that shannon incredible sexy no matter how imperfect they are but we have a fundamental problem and how we organize and leverage the capabilities. If it is a very complex enterprise to maintain and to adapt and to execute against the capabilities and we still havent found a way to properly organize effectively so that we can use the tremendous cap abilities that we have to lament the threat. The sad part is we dont get to choose what part of the enterprise because it just doesnt work unless all the parts are working together and to their capacity. And we can talk about more about that. Im the executive director, and we look at all of the biological spectrums and sadly most of them now have a National Security<\/a> implication. For us when it comes to biological weapons, weve been focusing quite a great deal, so they released a Compliance Report<\/a> last year complying or describing compliance with biological weapons conventions and other conventions for that matter. And in the report they stayed clearly russia and north korea have active biological weapons programs anna china and iran are close behind. What they are doing this technology and Everything Else<\/a> they are involved in especially with their work and their investments in the bio economy. So thats fine. We are looking at those like everybody is looking at the four countries for a variety of reasons, but i would say that from the Public Health<\/a> perspective, we usually say whenever you have one case or a number of cases you are aware of there are six more that are definitely out there but you dont know where they are and by the way, homicide detectives think the same thing. So its an interesting mathematical observation. So, that being the case, we have to look at the same to say that for these countries that we know about, there are 24 others out there just doing their thing, pursuing whatever reasons they are pursuing. Some of it has to do with competitiveness, just youve got some so weve got to have some. Some of it has to do with fear, some of it is the asymmetric advantage on the battlefield. To some of it has to do if you are talking about the terrorist organizations with just their philosophies on what kind of weapon would be the scariest and the worst to accomplish their motives so that is what we are focused on. But i want to add one other thing about attribution it is unfortunate we are in a position now that we just are not ever sure, and theres nothing wrong with acts asking the question from a scientific or congressional perspective, but that we cant answer it in a logical and relatively short timeframe is not great. We need to make some more investments and give more production i think to the Intelligence Community<\/a>. And other communities. Healthcare and Public Health<\/a> as well. All of them to get us to the point that we can answer these questions more quickly. Otherwise, from the preparedness perspective we will be stuck trying to do something impossible that would be everything as a bw event or treat everything like its not and that isnt going to help with the National Security<\/a>. Is it not or could it be. It certainly is tough to go after. I was taking off my mind and you got them all. Let me put this in a little bit of the way i like to think about the framework. When you talk about this spectrum of biological risk, it encompasses things on one side of that are naturally occurring such as a pandemic and on the other side we talk about the deliberate use of weapons, whether it is from a state or a terrorist. But in the center is also something very interesting. They are all related to human activity. We know for example not only that of the pandemic has some relationship to humans getting exposed. Im not taking that on here but its interesting its part of hn activity. And the further that we encroach upon the native lands, the more likely we are to find ourselves encroaching and getting attacked by diseases. Thats an important part. Human activity is something we need to think about. And of the accident scene at the sabotage of the human activities as well and having come from running the lab thats something that we worried about on a daily basis and despite our best efforts there were times when accidents did occur and hopefully we were doing the right thing. We were doing the reporting. But if people are not doing that reporting, then we have to think about that. And now lets turn to that other part of the spectrum and that is the deliberate use. Putting this in a bit of Historical Context<\/a> when we think about the state biological programs over the course of human history, theres been some 25 nations that have at some point have some sort of biological program. During Early Research<\/a> and development into some of them were giving it a little bit further. They might have done some testing on animal models and as such. Some even went further in terms of open air testing and stockpiling. We know for example the soviet union has Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles<\/a> fitted with smallpox that have been. It would have been absolutely devastating. And thats something i think we need to consider in terms of the history. But where are we today . It was some foreign nations or so and i think thats what the state Department Says<\/a> right now. I think that is a decent number. But the question comes down to code a state, any state create a biological weapon. An advanced state can absolutely. Even a smaller states now have that capability. Lets turn to the actor we havent talked about and that is bioterrorism. And here i think it is interesting to understand whats happened. It doesnt take very much biological material in order to have a very potent biological weapon. One that could kill on the order of what weve seen through this pandemic but in a single attack. What i want to leave you with here is biological weapons do not actually function the same way that naturally occurring diseases do. If you are in a biological attack in the main plume, you are going to get ten, 100, 1,000, 10,000 times the lethal dose. The normal incubation times. We will not apply to those sorts of attacks. And so, when i think about this problem, we need to look at the entire range and thats what i want to leave you with. I hope to be able to answer your questions. Dan has laid out the entire range that i think is useful for the actual empirical record of the states or nonstate actors is small and as the congressman is before the intelligence and Armed Services<\/a> committee, there are all sorts of demands and the nation faces a wide range of security threats. So that is the challenge that we face. And particularly in light of our having experienced a global pandemic, which we talk about as a once in a century event but as we look over the last years thereve been more or more viruses that have struck the global community. How can we harness the potential of the biotechnology revolution that is upon us. I think a little bit as we heard in the introduction my interest the changes the tools that allows us to more easily do the experimentation and that is for the speed of research and experimentation we might see he isalso comparatively cheaper and more accessible so sort of on that threat of who has the capabilities and what that might mean and how challenging that can be of that first surveillance into visibility and whos working on those things and how they are working on them and for different purposes as weve heard not necessarily for the creation of bio weapons but it can be all sorts of things. Then also as a political scientist who is interested in risk regulation, what is the Regulatory Environment<\/a> look like and what are some of the challenges we might have coming to some global consensus amount of the risks associated with this kind of work into this kind of development where i think we can reserve collectively about who they are bad and we know why they are bad. But we may begin to see very different responses to the types of experimentation that might happen around the gene editing and how that can be very challenging globally to come up with a regulatory approach, to come up with a set of shared values around that kind of experimentation. So the questions with accessibility and who has access to the tools and techniques for creating new materials and what that might mean for the regulatory approach and understanding it and what can we as the United States<\/a> do to position ourselves as a leader and in some of the global decisionmaking around it. You can tell we have a very welleducated panel here as you are looking at the situations at hand, this is a group of people here that you can tell dont go through the process of heres what we know as a fact, heres our hypothesis now lets try to verify it or not and be able to say what we do know and what we dont know and how we are trying to find those answers and thats the key to success as we try to prepare for the threats we face. This is more of a roundtable. Feed off of each other. Thats fine. Lets take the approach that way. And i think you did that already in this first round. First question, how have emerging technologies potentially changed the capabilities and Threat Landscape<\/a> in the past ten years and what does the Threat Landscape<\/a> look like for nonstate actors to utilize biological weapons in the future whether it is organized, a terrorist organization or even individuals. Individuals. I might start by observing you would see greater interest on the part of took her wrists to pursue the biological weapons because look at what the pandemic has done and yet ironically, we have not seen that. Producing and deploying biological weapons is very difficult. Given alternatives what weve seen as they moved to others for conducting things we havent imagined before so we need to make sure that we are not pursuing what we fear the most into that we think they will do as opposed to what they have done. It is a benchmark. The future is hard to foresee but we shouldnt overdraw the threat. We should make sure we understand how to calibrate it. Because in the 1990s, there was a time when the former secretary of defense held up a bag of sugar into said if this were anthrax it could cover the whole washington metropolitan area. My mind goes to how we have very educated scientists in mexico creating sentinel. I think the issue of imagination, what we imagine is happening before we are in a new age now and combination weapons are possible, taking advantage of vulnerabilities like the vulnerabilities that have been revealed across the world because of covid, these things are possible now. What people are doing and why they are doing it those are questions we have to answer. I dont think we should be Setting National<\/a> policy on what happened before all by itself. I think not every committee on capitol hill and not every part of the white house should be focusing on the possibilities and endless imagination, but of some of them have to and it has to be someones job to predict what could happen. It doesnt mean we take the entire National Budget<\/a> and put it all into one place. But preparedness, military readiness, those two things are about not just probabilities but also possibilities and begin sure people are prepared when is something unusual that we havent seen comes down the pike. We are at a place in terms of scientific where things are possible and we have to figure out how we are going to prepare. With convergence of science and computing and Data Sciences<\/a> proliferated the barrier to the position that are lower now and we are in a very dangerous situation and it would be misguided to minimize. On behalf of the department of Homeland Security<\/a>, we were asked to think about how is biotechnology going to affect with the bioterrorist code to do. We look from affectionately what we call state sponsored a terrorist sand we look at the range and thought about it we quickly got down to 21 different technologies in 2018 and 2030 what we expected to see and what is fascinating is denise going d skilling onthe democratizatiof capabilities that become readily available. Moving it forward and drawing edits of the steps you have to accomplish. What happens in the community now the first three steps after you acquired the pathogen or a single Desktop Configuration<\/a> and if you set the concentration, you put in the proper feed, you turn it on and could have 24 7 harvesting and thats just on the front end. On the backend it will take it in another desktop equivalent and do the milling into the perfect respirable size. We have de skilled a lot of these for legitimate purposes we now have heroes all delivered insulin, which is a wonderful thing. But on the other hand, the same technology could be used to develop a tabletop approach to bioterrorism so we have to think about not necessarily all the combining. Those are highend skills and theres a lot of hurdles associated. Theres less hurdles associated with getting the pathogen and then running it through that kind of machine. I would say on the front and it has proven historically to be very difficult for her to her to get a pathogen. And they generally settled for something other than they were originally going for. They tend to be not necessarily mortality as we are thinking about at the high end. So, i think the point is well taken that we dont want to be so focused in one area that we ignore some of these tried and true other methods particularly talking about terrorism or other types of ways to inflict violence on a population. But i think that we are in a period of high uncertainty and touching upon this i think as well where there is an intersection of different types of technology. And everything is moving at a speed that we are not quite sure yet how these things will work or how they can be leveraged in different ways. So it is important to sort of i think imagine some of these possibilities at the intersections between these type of technologies and how they can be leveraged to do new amp sort of terrible things, sometimes good things for insulin as an aerosol but sometimes as well i think the things weve seen stayed with some of the impacts on society and social media. We just didnt anticipate. We didnt effectively anticipate the risk in advance and regulate appropriately going into it. And so at least thinking through some of these issues disturbed and thinking about what the approach might be until we understand what the risk might be is important. To think maybe we can fly these into buildings one day and kill people, so good intentions for people to find a nefarious use first. My next question, some of the questions i had have kind of been answered here already, but what role should the private Public Partnerships<\/a> with the private sector more broadly have in helping the United States<\/a> government prepare for and respond to violence and threats . Our commission came up with an idea called the apollo program. Its grand project i think like many of the other Grant Programs<\/a> like going to the moon, we can is a world but within the United States<\/a> and leadership positions take pandemics off the table in ten years. With the correct amount of funding and Everything Else<\/a>, when we did the research to come up with the report and recommendations, we looked at all the other programs that have occurred to see what were these success factors, what made them successful. Why is it that we were able to accomplish what we did. There are six factors and you can tell again one of them, one of the most important is publicprivate partnerships and whether its partnering or not having it involved is extremely important. It doesnt go to the moon just because the United States<\/a> government decided we are going to the moon. We didnt map the human genome because a government person said we are going to map the genome and so forth. I think it is critically important we have seen demonstrated over and over again and i think that when we look at what happened with covid lets face it we couldnt have gotten to where we were without the private sector involved in. That is just a small way or partly or 50 way, but in the leadership positions to get us where we need to be with that. If we had in the event occur or we are trying to prepare the military forces and citizenry and allies and everybody, we are going to have to do that handinhand with the private sector. If i go to jump in on this just to make sure that im interpreting this correctly, youre not saying that the government isnt involved. What we are really talking about here, i think what we are really talking about, the government has a role and that role is important early on trying to identify funding and resources and help promote and even to identify areas where there are interests for the broad technology. Then we have the sort of enterprise across the science and technology. It was characterized and is still the same way a knob system. We kind of allow it to organically find itself. Part of that are Venture Capital<\/a>ists that come in and help stimulate. So, where the government has a Critical Role<\/a> is to be able to identify in broad terms what is it that we seek to do. Ive heard like even in apollo, they talk about time frames for being able to have countermeasures. That is a broad goal. How that gets it done and gets run through the Venture Capital<\/a> leaned on to industry that is something that can grow organically but having that i think is really important. If you look at space today, it is for me a very important demonstration of how the government can lead early on but then moved out of the way and allow the industry to continue to move forward. Had the government not invested in things like the human genome and the encyclopedia, dna elements and all the other genomic work thats gone on, it ushered in an entire new era that we are going to be the beneficiaries of for a long time in the future. And i think thats important with values and resources and studies and providing the competitive science that is if people realize that and the then we have such an incentive, it is a lot of research that was done before, and before that for the hiv spike protein and cross pollination. But i think we have accepted that and in defense we rely on the private sector with the communications and we saturate and integrate a lot into the national defense. For Public Health<\/a> and response to bio, we still have this mindset that the private sector will only be called upon if needed and i think its a mistake i think the private sector especially nowadays, and its going to grow its importance in the future where it should be the default tools that we rely on because of where innovation is. We shouldnt rely on the Public Health<\/a> lot to provide a diagnosis. They should be pushed out to commercial lots and they should be supported by the government to be able to be a part of the response system. There are so many other examples that we can talk about. But its very critical and we are not doing enough to include the private sector as part of the national defense. It shouldnt be an afterthought only when the government capabilities demand exceeds what we can provide. There is an Important Role<\/a> for congress and the the u. S. Government since the 1990s has been spending billions and billions on the various preparedness and bio defense measures. The question is what has been the return on that investment or the taxpayer dollars and particularly in operation warp speed, which was hugely successful although the pfizer virus and the vaccine was developed without the government support. It is a legitimate question what is the return on the taxpayer dollar and how do we ensure that going into the future we learned the lesson from the experience we had at the pandemic and with that i think we did learn a lot and it is bleeding into other areas of the government to say maybe we do have too much red tape and i do want to emphasize because we were very much involved in operation warp speed and talking to the scientists on a regular basis and understanding that technology the technology andhow the trial. And honestly, we knew that it didnt prevent everyone from getting covid, but the results were tremendous and at a time that nobody predicted. So a lot of Lessons Learned<\/a> and i think that what i will do now is i do have a question thats come in and probably parlays with what we were just talking about. What does the pandemic taught us about our institutions and organizations in the International Community<\/a> . Not just the u. S. But as well as the national, state and local levels. After covid was discovered and its sort of along it wasnt until we saw calls for who reform and in fact there were Health Organizations<\/a> that spent the better part of a year looking at itself and theyve come to some conclusions and they develop thousands of pages of documentation. It does have an executive summary, but they recognize that the reform is necessary. With the international concern, we might not think about that given the angst that has been expressed and i understand that, but the institutions that we had to include the International Institutions<\/a> have been stressed by this. The World Health Organization<\/a> performed the way you did. We can do something about it as one of the member nations of the 190 plus in the world part of that. At the international level, we have work to do. At the national level, ive called in a recent oped for a 9 11 commission to holistically the entirety of covid we have things going on that i consider to be really detrimental. Within health and Human Services<\/a> you have the assistant secretary for preparedness response and you have the cdc centers for Disease Control<\/a> and prevention trying to reform themselves and from what i can tell it is largely uncoordinated and they are in the same department. Likewise, within the department of Homeland Security<\/a>, fema is looking at itself and saying since it is going to follow us, we have to be ready for the next pandemic and they dont really have that authority to do some of that so this is how we come up with a frankenstein and we need to have some sort of approach where we think about what needs to be done and then do a reform of areas. Part of that means we need definitions. Why did they underperform in some regards . We have to ask. They were not operational. Who is that operational entity . We dont have one of the government for health and Human Services<\/a> for Public Health<\/a> emergencies. Ask yourself and this goes back to the last discussion of why is it that the cdc is trying to develop diagnostics. We have a vibrant industry that ought to be told what it is we are interested in being able to do and allow them to work through the diagnostics. We have opportunities that we need to take a hold of. Going down, we have underfunded Public Health<\/a> in the United States<\/a> over the course of the last three administrations. This is a bipartisan issue from bush to obama to trump its been underfunded, and we have seen reductions in the funding for nih and cdc. And this isnt consistent across all but what they did was those reductions wound up taking out of state and local tribal and territorial capability funding. When you say why didnt we do Contract Tracing<\/a> the answer is that people who did Contract Tracing<\/a> are the state and local level wing and they are no longer there because they are no longer on the payroll. So we have the sort of overarching requirements to think differently about our institutions. Its important to realize that it is a state function. We have to find a way and our system looks because it is distributed and we have this innovation it is great for creativity but in a crisis we have to find a way to organize, and we are so protective of the way things occurred on the daytoday. Its our achilles heel and the same of Contract Tracing<\/a>. We couldnt even talk about that because of the past privacy issues and they are louder than the people for to say maybe we can find a way to at least assess the technology and the use of the technology in a way that still protects our values for privacy but we cant even talk about it. So on the international and domestic, it is the hard part of the response. How all the nodes are connected and what are the legal authorities. And of the International Arena<\/a> how are we working at the liability issues it is right there and available but we cannot be used because we havent resolved these legal issues. One of the things we might have looked at differently i think we also needed more people at the table and discussing the pandemic where it was beyond the other affect us and the todepression and things taking place in the home, all those factors need consideration. Also at the beginning it was very frustrating for me because i had some hospitals where there were no cases in the county but they were shut down and we actually had. We need a more global approach to the health of america if we are in this environment. So a little bit of a switch but maybe someone has some time to say they might want to respond to this. What type of bio surveillance framework would be necessary to counter the threats that we are talking about is such a framework, technologically feasible and detection and things like that. Detection is largely now. We are following whats happening. We are looking at wastewater which is a useful way to detect something thats already happening. But even then its only in a small group of cities. So getting data and sharing it and part of the challenge is because of our state focus Public Health<\/a> system the data gets collected and its in different formats and different places and as pointed out it doesnt all come up to a central format. We have the centralized Healthcare Systems<\/a> and the other is thinking about the Data Analytics<\/a> and we are in a Data Revolution<\/a> and we ought to be able to harness that power to analyze the health data in a way that helps us sequenced faster and figure out how to provide better information. Feel free to come up to the microphone and we will be glad to hear from you. That has made the news and ukraine but thats done under Reduction Program<\/a> there are smaller countries and it doesnt actually scale perhaps, but he is right. State control of the Public Health<\/a> is very problematic if you are thinking about a national bed and so how we work our way through that is very important. When you look at operation warp speed, it was also clear one of the failings probably the only failing of operation warp speed was we had a hard time getting the vaccines below the state level because there wasnt a Public Health<\/a> infrastructure so it took kind of federal workers and National Guard<\/a> so you had a variety of people who were pushing forward. And once we got that going as a nation, then you started to see the numbers of the vaccines dramatically improve and how to move through them. Federalism is an issue i wish each state was totally squared away and know exactly what was happening or getting the information up to the federal government. Part of it has to do with infrastructure, and part of it just has to do with of the differences among all the states and all the things they have to deal with and address. I would be thrilled if we could get each of the states to Pay Attention<\/a> and figured out how they are going to address it. The difference between ohio and North Carolina<\/a> is great when it comes to understanding what was going on but there is no reason for that its not like the people in ohio are capable. This just different approaches that have been taken by each of the two governors. We need to work with of the states for tribes and territories and see what we can do at that level to help them to get to the point that they are comfortable and can figure out whats going on with that. That has become a matter of communicating to the feds that we have the big Data Analytics<\/a>. But i dont think that we can focus continually at the federal level. I thought that we were lucky as a country to have 50 labs out there. All working on things so you have greater opportunities. Sometimes maybe the decisions are based on what type of research is taking place in your state that may drive some of the differences. We do have a question. Thank you for the opportunity to ask the question. Preparedness is the key watchword for bio defense. For the bioethics and whether or not but prevents or enables the responses in the bio defense world. Thank you. A big piece of my interest that is what i was talking about earlier when we had different ethical approaches to what may happen, for example with Human Health Research<\/a> into some of my work logging out research for human embryos and the differences across countries. Talking about a bio weapons and the type of work that might be happening. Its a tough line and tied a rope to walk because we have the opportunity. Thereve been great leaps in the extermination and gene therapy is available. Some of that research, that really can help. I think it comes back to some of johns point he was making earlier, that if you focus too much on the one thing, the ignorance of other types of approaches, attacks that might happen, that you are focused too much on something that might never happen. And that can really, really hinder the type of Research Going<\/a> on. I would love to see more and within the science of a is not an agreement right now for some these tools and techniques coming around. So i can be really difficult to get Regulatory Environment<\/a> when they are themselves an agreement on the approach. Parks or tricia points to the challenge of preparing for a low probability event like a very high consequences. In the dual use opportunities to explore the great power of biotechnology. In the hedge against a low probability of the. But its a balancing act that congress and the executive branch face all the time. Congress has a role that is very helpful on oversight. Getting the threat right. Figuring out what is the right balance across the range of things. The conundrum of the biological weapons threat as we have not seen it as much as we would anticipate. Until the research that needs to be done is what dan pointed to. There are these barriers are. How do we make sure these barriers are robust and increase over time particularly as technology changes. Collects one quick thought on this and then ill pass it down. It strikes me one of the problems we have at trying to understand what kind of controlled, ethics that need to be put in place really comes down to earlystage basic applied research you may not even understand the cases enough to articulate the harms and develop the ethical. You look at organizations like this, theyre doing the best they can. At a lot of instances its all of us looking in the Rearview Mirror<\/a> on some of these technologies moving so fast. Until part of this is a permeability how it all works together. Some of that comes up in venture capitol. Others in places where you have people doing the early stages of development. Thats normally not the large integrator. The word of those concerns and codes of ethics, or do they get baked in . Drugs we prefer the real one ethical answer that applies across every field, every domain every situation. For the United States<\/a> we think grabbing someone elses intellectual Property Rights<\/a> is illegal, unethical and not something we should be doing. Meanwhile we are an entire country. What are you talking about . Theyre not horrible terrible people. That is their perspective. I think when youre look at military versus non military theres plenty that goes on and the military arena that we stay we have to do because of a variety of reasons. When you to prepare for certain warfare situations. Our soldiers are different than our civilian populace and so forth. And then in the midst of an emergency the fda has emergency use authorization. Something they go to every single day for everything you do. Things change depending on circumstances in some cases. It is not easy and its not something that easily put into a process. But it does have to be taken into consideration when it comes on with preparedness issues. Or would like to come by in a couple of questions as they came in. Greater visibility into our adversary capabilities. That is one thing. I think the play off of that is the pandemic cause nation to seal borders and create silos of National Protection<\/a> is impaired what have we learned about bio risk and International Relations<\/a> . Its a combination of how do we Work Together<\/a> with other countries . And especially our allies not only for surveillance or whatever, knowing what her adversaries doing hard work at other countries including our abbott series . Is a former military Intelligence Officer<\/a> in the Intelligence Committee<\/a>s like everyone elses communities. Its got silos its got intra competitiveness against agencies. The worry and concern, share something with our allies . We have ridiculous stories, theres one that happened during the Bush Administration<\/a> or the bricks gave Us Intelligence<\/a> and somebody marked it we did a little bit more at that and the british found out about said hey, we do not want all of your intelligence we just want to know you thought about this one thing. United states of america said no we cannot give it to you spent all the be up to the president from the Prime Minister<\/a> to just say this is completely ridiculous. President bush himself had to come out of the white house, go over insight knock it off it. Figure how to share this one thing with the brits. We are going to have to overcome that kind of thing. But i think in particular were going to have to pray that everything is going to conveniently arrive within our individual nations just for us to deal with. Were talking about put damp pandemic no matter what the cause global by definition. We are going to have to figure out how we are going to trust our allies and trust other countries. And get the intelligence and information we need to understand what we are up against. One of the upsides of the pandemic as you have seen more of that collaboration occur. Its often a crisis that forces new developments. One example of that is some of the secrecy of the variants were done in other countries, south africa for example. That was shared with the United States<\/a> and other countries. I think there is a positive story that comes out of this terrible tragedy but theres more sharing the question is can we build upon it . Can we institutionalize it . It would make it solid enough it helps us mitigate or prevent the future pandemic . I think we need to really take a look most aerobic travel restrictions . Theres one thing about travel measure which are measures one can take as part of a response. The other thing is restrictions. In my opinion have been very effective. Special in cases here are much higher than the number of cases going on and other countries who might have flagged as significant covid activity. There is more activity in the local Grocery Stores<\/a> flagged as higher activity. And how do we square that . These decisions have to be discussed frankly with the disincentive for countries we have the tools to dramatically improve the threat i feel its not a high priority as it should be for collection. And of course what we know is already very scary. Thats a way of collecting more. But i am just using some humor. It is incumbent upon us to resource this. Left flank were the the challenges is making it more actionable. Its very difficult to pass on information for those who are responsible for responding. Its a good segue to them the things i think one of the biggest Lessons Learned<\/a> and we need to do better in the. Manngh a little more bedside we did a thing with people who were hesitant to take vaccine. Roy spoke to them as a doctor like they are in my office and i take them through what operation warp speed was, how people were in the trials, but we actually found you would still get coed but less likely to get sick. And china. 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