For decades, America's national security strategy rested on one simple idea.

If an adversary believed an attack would fail—or that the consequences would outweigh any possible gain—they would be far less likely to attack in the first place.

That logic shaped deterrence throughout the nuclear age. It helped prevent conflict between great powers, it influenced how we thought about nuclear proliferation, and it shaped the institutions we built to protect ourselves.

But every security doctrine reflects the technologies and threats of its time, and every doctrine has a shelf life and a zone of applicability.

Today, the world is changing faster than our security architecture. AI, biotechnology, bioengineering, and digital infrastructure are converging in ways that are fundamentally transforming how biological capabilities are developed, who can access them, and what they are capable of doing. 

The opportunities are extraordinary. We are already seeing breakthroughs that promise to transform health care, agriculture, energy, and scientific discovery itself.

But those same technologies are also transforming the biological threat landscape. 

The world of biotechnology is no longer confined to a small number of governments, specialized laboratories, and highly trained experts, nor does it require nation-state scale investments to deliver results.

Biotechnology is moving faster. It can do more.

It’s being supercharged by AI. And access to it has been radically democratized. 

All of these factors change the strategic landscape. 

Innovation is accelerating.

Unfortunately, so are the opportunities for misuse. For decades, our biological security strategy assumed that sophisticated capabilities would remain concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of nation state actors.

Today, we can’t make that assumption. AI is lowering barriers to biological discovery; DNA synthesis continues to become faster and less expensive; laboratory automation is accelerating the ability to experiment with and produce synthetic cells; and new biological tools are expanding access to capabilities that were once available only to a handful of institutions.

That brings us to the central strategic challenge we face today.

Traditional biodeterrence depends on assumptions that are becoming less defensible. It depends on attacks being detected quickly. It depends on perpetrators being identified and biological agents attributed in time. It depends on an effective response limiting the consequences before they cascade. But advances at the intersection of AI, biotechnology, and bioengineering are making each of those assumptions harder to sustain.
A biological attack may not be immediately recognized.

It may spread before anyone understands what is happening.

It may be difficult to determine whether it was naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate. And attribution may never be possible—or may come only after significant harm has already occurred.

Furthermore, our systems cannot yet respond quickly enough to protect the population, reduce negative effects, and recover faster – giving the advantage to the attacker.

That does not mean deterrence no longer matters. Far from it.

It means that deterrence must evolve to be relevant to the era of bioconvergence. The challenge is not to prevent all biological threats. 

No system or doctrine can deliver that. 

But the U.S. can build resilient institutions, partnerships, and plans that ensure that the nation can quickly and meaningfully respond to biological threats, including by keeping the innovation edge on our adversaries. 

That is the foundation of Bio-Deterrence by Resilience.

Bio-Deterrence by resilience represents a different way of thinking about security.

Instead of relying primarily on the threat of punishment after an attack... It seeks to make attacks less likely to succeed in the first place. It recognizes that resilience itself can shape an adversary's calculations. If we can prevent misuse where possible... detect threats earlier... attribute attacks more quickly... respond faster... and recover more effectively, demonstrating our broad and deep resilience... We fundamentally change the strategic equation.

As our systems become harder to exploit and quicker to recover, biological attacks become less attractive because they become less likely to achieve their intended objectives and because the costs of breaking the norm of using a biological weapon will be raised.

That is deterrence.

Not through a single technology. Not through a single government program. But through a self-reinforcing system that strengthens every element of our national preparedness.

Perhaps the most important implication of this new framework is that it changes how we think about innovation itself.

Some choose to view bioinnovation and biosecurity as zero-sum. But this is a false choice.

Innovation is an integral element of bio security. The same artificial intelligence that accelerates scientific discovery strengthens biological monitoring and analysis of the data it generates. The same biotechnology ecosystem that develops tomorrow's life-saving medicines accelerates countermeasure development during a crisis. The same manufacturing capacity that supports the growth of the bio-economy becomes surge capacity when the nation needs it most. 

Innovation infrastructure is security infrastructure. 

Our objective should not be to slow scientific progress. It must be to ensure that America's extraordinary innovation ecosystem also
strengthens America's resilience. 

Because leadership in biotechnology is no longer simply an economic advantage. It is a strategic advantage. And we need to leverage our advantages – our innovation ecosystem, our brilliant scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, to position us to lead and secure our
future. 

The age of AI-enabled biotechnology requires a new framework for meeting this emerging and potentially existential threat.

The question is no longer whether biology will change. It already has.

The question is whether our national strategy to meet this challenge evolves in time.

Because in the age of bioconvergence, America's greatest strategic advantage may not be convincing an attacker that they will be punished. It is more likely to be creating a system that ensures the attack will never accomplish its purpose in the first place.

That is bio-deterrence by resilience.