WHY BIOTECHNOLOGY MATTERS AS A TECHNOLOGY
Biology is the next-to-mature general purpose technology.4 Anything whose production or
behavior we can learn to encode in DNA becomes growable or deployable when and where
needed. We already use biotechnology to grow essential medicines, foods, fuels, and some
materials.5 Going forward we can leverage biotechnology to help grow data storage systems,6
electronics,7 energetics, consumer biologics,8,9,10 advanced cellular agents,11 living materials,12
pervasive bio-sentinels,13 and more. Emerging biotechnologies will also give us the option of
working to make infectious diseases obsolete and of securing biology.14
BIOTECHNOLOGY IN CHINA
China has embraced biotechnology via an all-of-nation approach since ~2000.15,16 One basic
motivation includes food security. Compared to the United States, China must feed ~4-fold more
people with ~25% less farmland.17 Another motivation is unbridled curiosity and boundless
possibility. The homepage for the Institute of Synthetic Biology at the Shenzhen Institute of
Advanced Technology is representative, declaring “与其期待未来，不如自己创造” (“instead of
waiting for the future, create it yourself”).18
Students, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and leaders in China have together created a
biotechnology behemoth operating on a national-scale. Many practitioners in China view
biotechnology as a domain of multilateral collaboration and opportunity. Debating if China is
ahead of the United States in emerging biotechnology is like arguing if the truck in the passing
lane full of kids having a good time making money has overtaken the rear or front bumper of
your station wagon. In too many key areas including biotechnology education, foundational
research, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing China has or will soon pass the United States.19
For more information please consider my February 2025 testimony before the U.S.-China
Economic & Security Review Commission.20
Read more here.