MITRE CTO Charles Clancy Testifies on How to Secure the Bioeconomy and Mitigate Increasing Risks

McLean, Va., March 4, 2024 – With the Chinese Communist Party actively racing against the United States to overtake our leadership position in the bioeconomy, the U.S. federal government is examining how to secure and augment our biotech research.

"We’re sitting at an inflection point where our understanding of cellular biology offers huge potential to fundamentally transform society for the better. But we’re also in a global competition and need to align policies and resources, and plug security holes, to be successful,” says Charles Clancy, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief technology officer, MITRE. Clancy is a witness at the March 7th U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, at its hearing entitled, “Growing Stakes: The Bioeconomy and American National Security.”

Clancy states in his prepared remarks, “The U.S. research security apparatus needs to be updated to reflect risks across all critical emerging technologies. With bioindustrial systems not designated as a critical infrastructure sector on its own, or identified as a critical manufacturing sector, key parts of the bioeconomy are not able to benefit from federal cybersecurity resources.

"Decentralization of the bioeconomy is also needed. For instance, at MITRE we are leading an initiative to build a BioNet. With standardized interfaces and data formats to virtualize and automate biochemical laboratories, we can achieve interoperability at scale to advance the bioeconomy.

“Plus, the majority of research conducted in critical emerging technologies like biotechnology is designated fundamental research and is exempted from certain cybersecurity requirements. We need an intermediate category of research security for federally funded work.”

To learn more about MITRE’s recommendations for growing the bioeconomy, read the 2022 whitepaper, Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Advanced Biotechnology & Growing the Bioeconomy. Written testimony for the hearing is available on request at media@mitre.org, or watch the full hearing at selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/committee-activity/live.