103. DNA of Defense: Alexander Titus on How NSCEB is Advancing Biotech for National Security Challenges

[00:00:03] Karl: All right, Dr. Alexander Titus, we are so happy to have you on the grow everything podcast. We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. , what's going on? Where are you today?

[00:00:14] Alexander: I appreciate you having me today. Physically, I'm in Denver because the ski season starting and the snow. I'm doing my snow dance.

[00:00:21] Karl: Oh, right on. Yeah. Sounds good. So for people who don't know you, you are a commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, the NSCEB, which is an advisory board to the United States Congress. You're wearing your t shirt. Can you give us the who, what, and why of that NSCB in three or four sentences?

[00:00:45] Alexander: Yeah, for sure. it is a mouthful. We love to joke about it. So I just call it the commission. so the commission is, a bipartisan group that was stood up. So we have 11 commissioners. 4 of our commissioners are members of Congress, 2 Republicans, 2 Democrats, 2 from the house, 2 from the Senate, and then, 7 other people who are experienced in government, industry, academia, biotech policy, et cetera. And our job is really to advise Congress on What does it mean to write good legislation for the future biotech in the US and then by extension in partnership with a lot of our partners and allies around the world.

[00:01:18] Alexander: so we talk to experts, think deeply about these issues, debate. Seriously about these issues, so we can come to a really good decisions on how we can make recommendations to Congress about where we should be going from here.

[00:01:30] Erum: yeah, that is amazing. Wow. That's quite the, position that you have. I want to know about debating fiercely with, in Congress. I've seen some things on C SPAN, but I'd love to see videos of this. you've been a proponent of, biosecurity and this understanding biology and how it can be used, , in industry.

[00:01:49] Erum: And you are famous for walking into the defense department meetings With the Biomason brick. And so our listeners are familiar with Biomason. we've had Ginger Dozier founder of Biomason on here a few times, but can you tell us a little bit of that story? Why did you bring the Biomason brick in the department of defense and what kind of impact did it have on the meeting?

[00:02:08] Alexander: Yeah. So I always use a joke that the Pentagon is a rough place. You always got to carry something with you. but in reality. I had the fortunate privilege to be 1 of the 1st people to be the 1st person to lead, the establishment of a. Enterprise strategy for biotech, I was assistant director for biotech department defense, and this was in 2019 when I started and. The pentagon could barely spell DNA, let alone understand why it was important for everyone. And when I talked about biology, biotech, you could see little green blocks of jello shaking around in people's head. That's all I could think about. It's like biology. What? So bringing the green goo to the zoom and boom people is what I said my job was.

[00:02:45] Alexander: And so I wanted to make it tangible, so I found the thing that was the most Appropriately tangible product because, people want capabilities and products when you're working the Department of Defense and the biomass and brick is a really great example because similar, but all of the same kind of performance standards and everything.

[00:03:05] Alexander: It's just a brick. It was a literal drop in replacement from thinking brick to brick, but this is produced with biology doesn't take the same amount of energy. It doesn't have to be fired. It can be set at room temperature. You can have it in a forward deployed environment. so that's why I brought it around.

[00:03:21] Alexander: And it also did make some really interesting icebreakers. you walk into a room and put a brick on the table in a suit and everyone's like, who is this guy? Why is he here with a brick? But it did. it's all about the whole point of your podcast is science communication.

[00:03:36] Alexander: And how do you explain these things and contextualize them in a way that is relevant to the people who are trying to consume that information? And so that's really what it was, is how do I come up with a product that resonates that says, no, we're not talking about. Something crazy and out in left field, , we're really talking about alternative ways to get the resources we need.

[00:03:56] Alexander: and then we talked about a lot of other interesting things that led to discussions of. Can you build growable runways? the Air Force and DARPA, we're working on this with biomass and others to say. Yeah, let's build growable runways. Let's see if we can spray this down and harden the surface.

[00:04:11] Alexander: And then people started having those aha moments like, Oh, I can land a helicopter on sand because now it's hard enough that I could actually touch down on it, things like that. and it became a big joke and I became the brick guy around the Pentagon, but whatever it takes to get the point across, I guess.

[00:04:28] Karl: Yeah, I think it's really good that when you Erum I were coming up with the questions I was like you got to ask the brick question I mean you and I've kind of known each other for a while and that story stood out in my mind and I just attended the bto listening sessions up in boston a couple weeks ago and To me, it's fascinating where they go from, Hey, we've got all these people from industry in this room, we want you guys to understand what we're looking at.

[00:04:52] Karl: And it ranges from things like, how do we keep our warriors safe to how do we go into a location, use the existing materials that are there, maybe do a biotech process on to create. I don't know, buildings, if we want to say, if that's what we need, but then how do we also leave the place? So it's better than when we got there.

[00:05:13] Karl: And so it's really interesting that, DARPA is thinking that way. I don't know if the defense department is thinking that way, but anything that we can do to get people To think about these technologies in a positive light I think is really useful now You're also the founder of xyz. xyz you started that publication and what were the key trends that got you interested in doing that? What did you want to highlight to the public?

[00:05:34] Alexander: started bioeconomy XYZ in May of 2020. , because I had just left my job at the Pentagon when the pandemic started, because we were all dealing with things at that time. the thing that I really realized when I was in that role in government was that there were so many really. Brilliant scientists who were doing things that were highly relevant, but either didn't have the platform or the experience to be able to communicate it to an end user who they don't care if it was made with biology.

[00:06:04] Alexander: They care. It does what they needed to do. bioeconomy X, Y, Z the entire point was to provide a platform for people to learn how to write and express the impact of biology in a way that was visually appealing, interesting to read, and things like that. And it thrived for a long time.

[00:06:22] Alexander: And then, just so happened to the person who was helping me run it. Ended up working in government and having doing other great things. And so it's on set. But then I just started a new newsletter called the Co-evolution tech policy in our lives, which is kind of an evolution of that thinking about how does technology and policy interface in a way that. Both sides can understand each other.

[00:06:44] Erum: Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I'm definitely have to check that out. we'll put that in our show notes as well. So our listeners can access that. we'd love to learn a bit more about it. and just wow, your experiences are incredibly interesting, Your work spans diverse areas.

[00:06:58] Erum: So academic research, government strategy, corporate innovation. So can you help us understand like what experiences have you Uniquely prepared you for your current work on the commission. what are the things besides taking bricks and bringing them to the Department of Defense meetings?

[00:07:14] Alexander: Yeah. I think it's safe to say that of the 11 commissioners. I'm the only commissioner that has worked in industry, academia and government and been a practitioner to try to bring biotech to bear. For, national security purposes, collectively. And so we have commissioners that are really deep on, federal finance are really deep on legislation or really deep in intelligence or really deep in building big technology companies, or being innovators in academia entrepreneurs, I am not.

[00:07:42] Alexander: As deep in any one of those things and I am a living embodiment of the intersection of these technology areas in the respective domains as well. so that, to me, gives me a lot of insight into, oh, actually, this is exactly the same thing we do in industry. We just call it something different.

[00:08:01] Alexander: Oh, or government. Yeah, it's all the same. We just have slices and dices. And One of the cultural differences that I often highlight for people is that, a lot of times government people work, there's no profit motive. There is public impact motive, but they also don't realize that.

[00:08:17] Alexander: Everything they do needs to be funded and industry is the same thing. It's like, why is everything so slow? And it's like, well, because we're using dollars, big, big amounts of dollars to move around and try to have influence on the industry or academia, or, you say, hey, we're going to start a whole funding program out of the NSF or NIH or DoD that shifts.

[00:08:37] Alexander: Whole industries. And so that, overlapping perspective is really useful. And so I can connect dots and then ask my colleagues, how would you do this? If you were receiving this Memo from Congress. How would you have responded? and they could say, Oh, well, we would do it this way. We'd ignore it that way.

[00:08:55] Alexander: We'd have all kinds of interesting approaches. There's too many good things to do for me to do any one thing. It's my greatest flaws. I'm interested in everything. and that actually has been super helpful because a lot of the ways we think about how biology and biotech is impacting National security and industry and things is not actually just biology, It's biology to produce the chemistry that you turn into a material that you put on the tank or a body armor or clothing. and so there isn't 1 vertical in any 1 of these workflows.

[00:09:25] Karl: And do you think that people veering from our questions? keep seeing these quotes. feel like I see him regularly just must be because it's message to us in general that, the biggest breakthroughs that are going to happen in any industry are really going to be much more about, convergence of industries or outsiders looking at an industry.

[00:09:44] Karl: I mean, we're saying, the impact of AI on biotech, the guy from Anthropic, the CEO, just wrote this long essay and, on the biotech side or science side, he's like, we can expect to see, to 100 years acceleration when it comes to discovery over the course of five to 10 years.

[00:10:00] Karl: And Irum and I were just talking about it because we're like, yeah, well, it's easy for him to say that because he can just predict it from the AI side. He's not really having to physically do the work. But do you think that people on the commission, understand the impact of convergence of all these technologies, converging together to impact biotech and how that impacts all other industries.

[00:10:21] Alexander: yeah, we talk about it all the time. the bio conversation, obviously, Dominates a lot of airwaves and a lot of times and we spend a lot of time talking about that. That happens to be what my technical background is, the AI and bio interface, but we also talk about. Lab equipment, manufacturing equipment, that's electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering.

[00:10:41] Alexander: will work across the board, then talk about energy and food and ag and industrial and how those work in each of those. But I think that we are going to see, at least personally speaking, I think we are going to see a massive acceleration in science. I actually funded a workshop when I was at the DoD, to, Explore this concept of the Nobel Turing challenge.

[00:11:02] Alexander: So the Turing challenge is when an AI is indistinguishable, an AI chatbot is indistinguishable from being a person or a chatbot. The Nobel Turing challenge is the idea Is it possible to create a fully autonomous research lab that can do Nobel quality scientific discovery on its own? And then that has lots of implications, both good and bad, benefits and risks for what's possible there.

[00:11:25] Alexander: But there are companies working on this. Now we have these large, massive foundation models that are being much better at doing scientific understanding. So I think that we are going to see leaps and bounds. And I think that A good example of that is AlphaFold that everyone's familiar with and talking about, and they just won a Nobel Prize for their work.

[00:11:43] Alexander: But in reality, a problem that has been studied and thought nearly impossible to solve for, decades, 50 years, was computationally predicted, prediction solved, the release of one model. Now it's still to be determined. Exactly how much impact that has because what you're saying, Carl, you have to actually do it in the real world.

[00:12:03] Alexander: That's the hard part. At this point, predicting design is going to become trivial. you could argue it already is, but then building it. that's much harder problem.

[00:12:13] Erum: Yeah, absolutely. I I saw recently that there was a kid who made a fusion reactor prototype for like, 000 in his bedroom. I don't know which one he used was a cloud or perplexity. I don't know what he used, but just being able to have that conversation with AI and know what types of things he needs to build it and then actually do it in an intelligent way and making sure, you you're troubleshooting and it was very impressive. And they can think the kid was like in college, you maybe younger.

[00:12:40] Alexander: Yeah.

[00:12:40] Alexander: Yeah, but I have a lot of conversations on both sides of the benefit risk equation and when people have pushback again. Well, we're not going to have to think anymore. Things like that. people said that about the calculator, but I actually carry around, An anti electricity advertisement from 1900, because there's this image where power lines is this skull and spider attacking people. And there were people who were against electricity when it was really coming around. we have to do it responsibly, no doubt, but we also are seeing a lot of the similar, it might be accelerating, but we're seeing a lot of the similar.

[00:13:14] Alexander: Conversation around pushback of technology progress because it's scary and it's the unknown.

[00:13:19] Erum: Yeah, that usually happens with the scary unknown. And then all of a sudden it just flips when people just turn on the switch. I'm like, Oh, that was easy. I don't know, like candles anymore.

[00:13:27] Alexander: Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:30] Erum: but for our listeners and just in general, what should they know about emerging biotechnology? Cause this is what the commission's focused on. And when it comes to biosecurity, how does that play a role in emerging biotechnology? And this is something that we've talked to some of your colleagues about in terms of What is biosecurity? How do you define it? What should people know about it? because I think, there's a group of people that see it as pathogens and warfare. There's another group of people that think of it as, Preserving the environment and conservation.

[00:13:57] Erum: So tell us more about emerging biotechnology and especially with regards to biosecurity.

[00:14:02] Alexander: Yeah. So to a lot of this conversation. We're also talking about this convergence. So the authorizing language for the commission actually says emerging biotechnology and related technologies because biotechnology doesn't happen in a vacuum and. Computing and electrical engineering and all these things are involved.

[00:14:19] Alexander: so biosecurity, the traditional definition of biosecurity really is around public health and pathogens and things like that. but are understanding our definition of what biology is and can do, is changing, That's what. Bioengineering CRISPR, all these modern tools, we're unlocking an entirely new domain of what you can do with biology.

[00:14:39] Alexander: so I think of. When I think about biotech, I think about it in two categories, one where biology is the actual product. So this can be a biotherapeutic, or it can be an infectious disease or something like that, where the actor, the thing that does the action is biotic, biology, and then there's a biotic where you use biomanufacturing to produce a product that is not biology in the end state. So whether this is doing nanometallic templating with phages or producing a chemical, you have different considerations for how you think about this in a biosecurity context. no matter what especially in this emerging biotech area, I think of it a lot products that have been engineered in some capacity.

[00:15:21] Alexander: we think about, if you engineer a biome and, a microbe to do manufacturing, if that microbe gets out into the environment, what is the impact? That it has on the environment, even if you didn't have the intention for your product to be a biology, you still have to think about the bio containment and the responsible, manufacturing practices that go into those kinds of things.

[00:15:39] Alexander: It's even more so when your end product is biology, it's different when you're thinking of like an mRNA vaccine versus engineered microbe for bioremediation. So there's different levels of containment and different levels of scrutiny that must go in as you think about whether or not you're releasing these things.

[00:15:56] Alexander: But emerging biotech in the way that I use the definition it's really synthetic biology, genetic engineering. Things that have been engineered to do what it wasn't naturally designed to do, but way more precise than we have ever had the opportunity to do in the past.

[00:16:12] Karl: And is that how you think about, biosecurity? Because you said the traditional definition is, public health. But, when we have talked about it, it's not just public health, it's also, engineered organisms that potentially have an impact on, human security.

[00:16:26] Alexander: Yeah, yes, but I think that the broad sense of public health, there's not just a wear your mask because COVID's happening kind of sense of public health, food insecurity, pandemics for food is a public health issue. Pandemics for animals is a public health issue. environmental degradation in our natural habitat.

[00:16:44] Alexander: That's a public health issue. So I guess it depends on the scope of how you define these things. And so that's how we think about it in the context of. food and ag energy industrial. Each 1 of these domains has massive benefits that we can be building new products and unlocking new markets and bringing new things to people who need them.

[00:17:03] Alexander: And they have. Vulnerabilities and areas that we need to pay attention to because there's just as much concern about engineering a wheat virus that eliminates our wheat supply as there is for, the kind of viruses that go through our livestock saying virus, but it also could be. Bacterial fungal, there's lots of concern and conversation of any of the microorganisms that go into that.

[00:17:26] Erum: Yep. so I wanted to speak to you about a company that you've been affiliate with, which is very interesting. so it's Colossal Biosciences. this company has worked on very high impact, ambitious projects. For example, the extincting the woolly mammoth. So how do you approach balancing the promise of ambitious science, which biology can afford, especially with the tools we have now with the ethical and security concerns that you've mentioned earlier, how do you balance the big vision with.

[00:17:54] Erum: What is practical today and what we need to do in order to protect human and life in general.

[00:18:00] Alexander: for me, because I am an optimist, I'm a glass half full kind of guy, there's not a lot of us in the security world. Usually you're a glass half empty kind of person if you're worried about security, but, I love my glass half empty people. the, way that I think about it, Let me take a philosophical step back because a lot of the concern is coming from now, it's easier to engineer biology bad actors could potentially engineer biology in a bad way.

[00:18:23] Alexander: But a lot of these big ambitious projects are pushing the limits on what's possible and extending how good we are at engineering. I like to think of it as if we have all of these potential routes for scary things, the best way to handle it is to be so good at using biology that we can actually come up with some kind of response or countermeasure or something remediation, to.

[00:18:48] Alexander: Said scary thing. And so that's why I love to work on these big ambitious projects because this actually gets back to the bioeconomy X, Y, Z, and why that was found in everything as well since the human genome project, we haven't had a lot of those big, grand unifying challenges in biology. And the community talks a lot about like, what's our space race or things like that.

[00:19:10] Alexander: I was drawn to colossal because de extincting the woolly mammoth. Is a very tangible, almost visceral example of what we could do because you can imagine for you can feel for in your head. You've pet big, fluffy dogs, things like that. You know what elephants are. so the idea that modern science can bring a species back from extinction is.

[00:19:33] Alexander: Captivating, It is a story that really captivates, but in reality, what it's doing is creating such ambitious goals that we have to, I say, we, I'm no longer there, but the company has to. Advance Science to do it. And so this is true, whether it's colossal or any of these other ambitious projects, same thing with all these companies doing robotics.

[00:19:54] Alexander: I'm just blown away with what we can do with robotics nowadays. you have to actually change the state of science to achieve some of these things. That's what I think is so Wonderful about them, and we actually at the commission talk a lot about what are our grand challenges? How can we foster a grand challenge biology and biotech?

[00:20:12] Alexander: Responsibly, but still to completely move the needle on what is possible. And my, dream is that biology becomes so predictably engineering that it's an electrical engineering. Analog. I can do exactly what I want when I want reproducibility reproducibly. And then that also gives us the opportunity to say, all right, well, here we have a new flu variant.

[00:20:31] Alexander: We can create a vaccine much more easily now because we're so good at doing that kind of engineering. And so that's why I work on these big, crazy things. you have to be a little crazy to work on these big things. And so your colleagues are just. More interesting.

[00:20:46] Erum: we love Colossal. like you were saying that it's such an ambitious project that other science has to be done in order for it to happen and, we had Ben Novak revive and restore come on the podcast and talking about D extincting, but it's also D endangering, There's a lot of animals that are endangered. So how can we use the sciences that colossal? These other companies are doing in order to protect some of these animals that are about to go extinct, How do we. look at that, we need ex vivo wombs.

[00:21:13] Erum: We need other types of things to help with these animals. So, that's really cool. I just think those ambitious projects can help, tell the stories, but then also guide that be the North star. I love that way of thinking.

[00:21:23] Alexander: Yeah. And then we have the commission think, okay, these things are happening and we want people to do great things. How do we provide the right. Incentive structure and guardrails so that can happen for public benefit over time. We grow the net benefit rather than the opposite, whether it's economic productivity or all the wonderful things we can do with health and food and all that kind of stuff.

[00:21:48] Alexander: so the commission is made up of commissioners, and I've talked about them, but there's also an amazing staff of 20 to 30 people who have talked to everyone in the industry. And I'm exaggerating a little bit, but people as possible, hundreds and hundreds of people, both across industry, government and academia to get that collective wisdom of.

[00:22:06] Alexander: What's possible today, where do we need to go that kind of stuff?

[00:22:09] Karl: Yeah, I wanted to just make a comment for our listeners who maybe don't know about colossal and you can correct me on this Titus. But, the idea of bringing back the woolly mammoth is yes, absolutely about driving the science forward because it's a very complicated thing to do. But there also is a yeah, absolutely.

[00:22:26] Karl: Environmental aspect to bring back the woolly mammoth and correct me if I'm wrong, the way I understood it is the reason to bring back the woolly mammoth had to do with grazing in the tundras. And then there was supposed to be like an environmental benefit to that. Is that about right? Yeah, yeah, that is. the theory and the pitch, we're a long way from seeing whether or not that's reasonable. But, again, big, ambitious. Dreams and trying to have big, ambitious impacts.

[00:22:54] Karl: Yeah. you mentioned you've been, in different sectors. you have this unique experience that you bring to the commission. But what are some of the lessons that you've learned, going from D. O. D. to colossal to now the commission and then also starting, these different publications.

[00:23:10] Alexander: My number one guidance North star is to do hard things with cool people.

[00:23:16] Alexander: The reason that I think that's so interesting is I've never had a job that existed before I took it because I've found that the most interesting areas are opportunities couldn't predict and that you didn't know about before. when we're growing up, people say, what do you want to do when you grow up?

[00:23:31] Alexander: What do you want to be when you grow up? What I want to be when I grow up doesn't exist right now. So I'll let you know, when it happens and when I'm doing it. my number one lesson and all the moving between these cool things is that opportunities come up that you will never expect.

[00:23:45] Alexander: And then retrospect, intersect in ways that you couldn't have predicted as well. So, like I was saying, my unique contribution to the commission is having worked across so many of these different industries and verticals and things like that. I wasn't omnipotent. I didn't have this Babe Ruth style approach where I pointed out and left field and said, someday I'm going to be a commissioner on the national security commission for emerging biotech.

[00:24:08] Alexander: So these are the three things I need to do to get there. No, in reality, people call me now because they're saying, we want to try and we don't know anyone dumb enough to try it. So you want to try it, Titus? And time time again, I mean, there's so much of it involves failing at something.

[00:24:24] Alexander: I don't really believe in failure. I believe in just a whole bunch of not yet successes, Edison, he was famous for saying like, Oh. I haven't failed 10, 000 times, I just found 10, 000 ways how not to build a light bulb. It's really true. And it's not sappy. keep working on hard things and you find out that they really have impacts everyone.

[00:24:42] Alexander: My favorite book that really resonated from me was book called range by David Epstein, which talks about this exact concept of bringing ideas across fields. Really has innovative impact and that's actually how we spend a lot of time with the commission talking about how do we figure out how things that are happening in 1 industry?

[00:25:00] Alexander: We can bring them into another, or best practices from government. How do we help incentivize some of those best practices and industry and vice versa? So there's a long winded answer to say, just don't turn down cool opportunities is my number one lesson.

[00:25:13] Erum: Yeah, hard things for sure. You've been working on, I mean, you're working on GenAI before it was term. I think, I mean, that was in 2015. So almost 10 years ago, so yes, cutting edge. but what we'd like to know is that, you go from cutting edge. It's so deep to come up for air when you're talking to people in government and your current position at the commission.

[00:25:32] Erum: So how have your technical skills been essential in your strategic and leadership positions?

[00:25:38] Alexander: oftentimes. So again, it's that overlapping experience skill set. And so I am not the most experienced person in policy. And I am no longer one of the most experienced people in AI. the person who builds AI models 60 hours a week, they're going to have More cutting edge technical knowledge than I am.

[00:25:57] Alexander: But the thing is, I have tried to do a lot of these things on both sides. And so when my AI colleagues or biotech colleagues say, Oh, why doesn't government just move faster? I'm like, that's not how it works. So think of it this way. the department of defense department of health and human services, their annual. Operating budget, the money they spend is the amount of entire industries. So when you think about moving an entire, the total market cap of industries every year. It doesn't just happen on a dime or on the flip side, when I have a lot of conversations with my colleagues in policy who are worried about for example, what is AI going to do to our ability to do bad things with biology? I have long term deep practitioner level experience saying that's not actually possible. It's easy to say, and it's easy to think about, but it is not. Physically possible, technologically possible today, or that's not actually how it works. So, Carl earlier, your comment about biology is hardest to do in the real world.

[00:27:00] Alexander: no matter how good a computer says you have some scary new design, that's not the hard part. That's not the long pole on the tent. Oftentimes. so my technical expertise is invaluable in these conversations. And this is one of my angles to bring to the commission cadre is that, I have built these models.

[00:27:19] Alexander: I have struggled with these things, on the side. And then, if you think about each of the other commissioners, they have their own, deep technical expertise. Like, Dov, who's another one of our commissioners, was the comptroller, the CFO for the Department of Defense. Talk about someone who understands the deep technical process of federal budgets.

[00:27:37] Alexander: That is an expertise I will never have. But that deep understanding then to helping write policy, it's because, well, that policy would never fly because of X, Y, or Z, I'll give you the 15 ways they could ignore that policy. And that only comes from this expertise. And so each of the commissioners have this kind of expertise.

[00:27:57] Alexander: You know, Eric Schmidt built Google. Angie Belcher has been leading science and being an entrepreneur out of MIT For years, Paul, who's another 1 of our commissioners spent his career helping write legislation and get bills passed on the Hill. So the deep technical understanding of the inner workings of Congress, that makes it invaluable when we have these.

[00:28:17] Alexander: Bigger conversations around what do we do and how do we actually get it done? and that's actually why I bring it back full circle again. Why I started by our economies. Five years ago is because there's a lot of people with deep technical expertise who have a hard time tying that high level action impact And that's why I've been blown away at staff and the commissioners and, our ability to tie the most minute to big, big thinking.

[00:28:41] Karl: this is probably a naive question, but is there any equivalent to the commission that's associated with other emerging technologies or is it only around biotech

[00:28:50] Alexander: No, there absolutely has been. so the first one of this flavor was called the cyber Salarian, which focused on cybersecurity. Then there was the national security commission for AI, which cyber solarium happened. And then four or five years later, we had some of our major cyber attacks. The national security commission on AI happened.

[00:29:06] Alexander: And then four or five years later, chat GPT was released. So we have a lot of conversations around. What is our version? What is the biotech version of that? chat, GBT revolutionized , solar winds showed that cyber security vulnerabilities were everywhere. What is biology's thing? what is our chat GBT moment for biology?

[00:29:26] Alexander: but I think that it was roughly four or five years lag after one of these big commissions and that aha moment. So we're hoping to find that, threshold. Responsibly,

[00:29:35] Karl: and when was this commission started?

[00:29:38] Alexander: we officially launched in March of 23. So last year, and we had our interim report that was released in December. We have our final report, which is a collection of. our deep thinking and legislative recommendations and policy recommendations, will come out and sometime in early 25.

[00:29:55] Karl: Do you guys wouldn't think that, the, response to the code pandemic, especially on the, vaccine development and biomanufacturing side would count as our chat moment. The moment.

[00:30:05] Alexander: I certainly wouldn't discount it as a chat moment. I think that ability to produce a vaccine in under a year with a technology that has never produced a vaccine before is. Mind blowing, so that might have been, but I think that for me, the way that I think about these is the. Rapid. this, democratization of the technology.

[00:30:26] Alexander: so chat to BT, everyone now there's a thousand competitors to chat to BT and everyone can find their favorite AI tool anywhere. , versus before it was specialized in Google and Microsoft and NVIDIA's products and things like that. Now cybersecurity, everyone is aware that there are cyber vulnerabilities and things like that

[00:30:46] Alexander: pandemic absolutely brought biology to the forefront of people's minds. in my mind, it was still in the health area and biology is. Health plus so much more. And we haven't had that aha moment for everyone on the so much more to grow everything aspect.

[00:31:01] Alexander: We haven't had the chat GPT moment for that.

[00:31:03] Erum: Yes, we can't wait for that to happen. And when it does, we will have those people that participated in on the podcast. yeah, I mean, it's very interesting you mentioned that you guys at the commission written a report and you'll have something coming out in 2025. So we'll also link that to the show notes if that's something.

[00:31:18] Erum: I'm sure that's public

[00:31:19] Alexander: The interim report publicly available.

[00:31:21] Erum: hmm. Yeah. So, we'll definitely be sure to share that in the show notes. But, what would be helpful for our listeners to know is at least your perspective on what are the potential security risks? And the benefits of biotechnology from your role, any specific examples that either you mentioned in this report or that you want to share just to help us think beyond pathogens. What are those specific stories that we need to wrap our heads around? Because earlier said, it's safe. It's nothing to worry about, but clearly there are things we have to worry about.

[00:31:50] Erum: So if you could give us some stories help think about the potential security risks.

[00:31:55] Alexander: Well, I think that pathogens will always be one of the largest ones. , the world had their painful aha moment with COVID for pathogens. I think that some of the other. Areas that are concerning our environmental release. So the impact on ecosystems, I'll give you actually, so it's another pathogen, but I'll give you 1 that most people don't think about. there's a fungus pandemic epidemic, going on in amphibians called Kittredge and it's killing. 10 to 20 percent of amphibian populations a year. , and that is An impact that the environment will suffer.

[00:32:29] Alexander: As amphibians disappear. so it's not in the same kind of human health immediate like direct, but there is a indirect effect of that And so the environmental release of engineered organisms is one of the risks that I think that we need to be very deliberate about because it's no longer.

[00:32:48] Alexander: Just in drug development, If people are engineering something for bioremediation, a lot of the interesting things I've heard in the remediation story, can we use biology for PFAS and PFOA cleanup, I think that would be amazing, but we have to be very careful about putting an engineered organism into the environment. One of the areas that, is concerning from an engineering risk standpoint is, we're seeing that it's might becoming easier and easier to engineer the production of toxins, into these organisms, right? It's a chemical, smaller molecule. And so I think that's 1 of the biosecurity risks that Is the conversation in the AI space is how do we, put responsible guard rails on these models? The AI safety Institute is doing some really awesome thinking. So about this topic and for anyone listening, their AI safety Institute is popping up in countries around the world. And they're really deep thinkers around how do we.

[00:33:39] Alexander: Move forward, in a societally beneficial way with a I, I'm sure there's plenty more. don't want to speculate. I don't want to make up risks. so I'd be happy to share more later. I'm stuck on the fungus. that's killing the amphibians. where did it come from? That wasn't engineered, right?

[00:33:55] Alexander: no, no. no. no. that's just a naturally occurring fungus, but it's an issue. And so there are, lots of conservation efforts and lots of conservation programs that zoos and others that have amphibian breeding programs. As a way to be able to release healthy amphibians into the population, because it is a major environmental problem,

[00:34:15] Erum: How do we kill the fungus? that's the thing with biology. It's so complicated, right? Like the fungus might be bad for amphibians. It could be helping something else. If we remove it, is it going to mess things up even more? That's always a challenge when it comes to biology. I think of the life cycle analysis is just so challenging.

[00:34:30] Erum: It is

[00:34:30] Alexander: right? And you can't just dump antifungal medicine into the water, because what impact does that have on the rest of the ecosystem? it's, the interconnectedness of biology, especially natural biology Is 1 of the challenges and the amazing parts about it.

[00:34:45] Karl: Yeah, so this morning, Jerome and I were talking about the podcast and I hit Flagged a news item, which I was going to use in the introduction to the podcast, which is also about a human born Pathogen that is a fungus as well. So when you mentioned the fungus, I thought that was what you were going to mention I think it's C RS Which is a fungus that is heat resistant and it's causing a lot of illness among young people.

[00:35:08] Karl: these things are emerging and, they're biosecurity related. I think there's a lot for us to pay attention to there. So, as we close out this, conversation, Titus, the commission's tasked with both protecting and advancing biotech, how do you envision this dual mission shaping the future of policy in the United States?

[00:35:28] Alexander: it's a long and intentional and deliberate process. the commission's final report will come out in early 25 and with that policy recommendations and legislative recommendations, but that is also not exclusive. To the United States where we're a U. S. congressional commission, but we spend a lot of time talking to and thinking about how to work with partners and allies around the world as well, because biology largely doesn't respect international borders as we all learned.

[00:35:56] Alexander: I think it's, in a long term conversation, the commission is actually authorized beyond the release of our final report in early 25. we're authorized through the end of 26. and so this will allow us to then continue to work and advocate for getting some of these policies as many of the policies as possible into action and continuing to build collaborations with industry and international partners.

[00:36:22] Alexander: one of the things that I personally. Really hope that inspires as more of these conversations that are a bit more integrated with the practitioner community and policy does a great job. In general, the broader policy apparatus does a great job of trying to incorporate expert opinions.

[00:36:39] Alexander: But 1 of my favorite. Programs in the US, at least is the triple fellowship, which brings people with PhDs and postdocs into policy conversations to have deeply scientific informed policy. And 1 of the things that we spend a lot of time focusing on. One of the other aspects that we haven't touched on yet is what we call bio literacy.

[00:37:00] Alexander: so how do we help bring better awareness and understanding all the way from K through grad school? And we also include the government. We want to buy a letter of government. so we think of how do we have information and upscaling and rescaling and training programs, even for our government employees who are making.

[00:37:20] Alexander: Purchasing decisions and contracting decisions. How how do we help them understand the trade offs between something that was produced with biology or not? Is that different? Is it the same product at the end? How do we think about changing and shifting our acquisition policies to be more amenable to those kinds of things?

[00:37:38] Alexander: I think that the education component. In the broadest sense of education is something that we're going to continue to focus on. And it's something that I've been passionate about for a long time with bioeconomy and other things like that. so there's. no shortage of work to do. It's not a release our report and hope things happen.

[00:37:54] Alexander: It's the report is going to be a way for us to say, this is the culmination of a lot of, really critical input from a lot of people. And now it's time to go make it reality.

[00:38:05] Erum: It sounds like that big ambitious projects that you're Accustomed to taking on right by literacy of the population. It's a challenge. We're all chipping away at it, but it looks like you have all the experience and people around you and you know, everyone's listening. So it's incredible. One last question.

[00:38:23] Erum: And you touched on this a little bit earlier, but you mentioned the practitioners that we have a lot of emerging biotech professionals listening to the podcast. Can you give a piece of advice on navigating the complexities of innovation and regulation besides during that program that you mentioned, that sounds like a really great program, but again, any advice.

[00:38:41] Alexander: I think the biggest thing is find ways to engage and that doesn't have to be going and engaging in this, with your full time job, there are lots of opportunities to provide input to figure out what policy means to, innovators and then provide. This is what this is how you actually would do that to help inform policy.

[00:39:02] Alexander: So we talked about the listening session with DARPA. starting to write a newsletter. There are lots of forums with which to be able to be engaged. And I think that. Anytime that it feels like policy or regulation gets in the way, there is likely a very good reason for that to be there. at a minimum, it's because someone did something stupid once and we wanted to make sure that didn't happen again, but have a much deeper appreciation for Quote unquote, the bureaucracy, after having been on the other side for quite a bit of time, and it's easy to throw rocks at the castle and say, oh, they're just slowing us down.

[00:39:38] Alexander: But in reality, policy is largely just put in place to try to let things go as fast as possible without having to dramatically walk things back in play damage control. , because that will ultimately slow progress down in a really serious way, There was an AI winter in the eighties because there wasn't a lot of progress happening.

[00:39:58] Alexander: This is not related to policy, but can you imagine if we had a biotech winter? We don't want that to happen. so innovators just know that civil servants who are out there trying to write policy are doing it in your best interest. No one is there saying, how do we stop it?

[00:40:13] Alexander: Everyone's saying, how do we do it so we don't have to stop it? Just get involved.

[00:40:18] Erum: Get involved. Great advice. Thank Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's a great note to end on. Titus, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

[00:40:27] Karl: We'll look forward to hearing more about your progress and maybe having you come back after the commission releases its report.

[00:40:33] Alexander: Yeah, that'd be great. Well, I appreciate it.

[00:40:35] Karl: All right. Thanks a lot.

[00:40:37] Alexander: Thank you.