“The State of U.S. Biodefense – Written Remarks by Dr. Asha M. George”
As prepared for delivery:
May 8, 2025 – 10:45 am ET
Good morning, Commissioners. I come before you today to speak to the State of our Nation’s Biodefense. As Executive Director of the Commission, I frequently and privately brief you on the threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences that comprise biological risk to the Nation. However, with the current environment of uncertainty and apprehension about the fate of federal biodefense programs – combined with ever-increasing biological threats – I felt it important to brief you during this public meeting and allow the biodefense community and those concerned about our national security to hear this address, as well.
While I realize that the Administration’s cuts and changes to government are top of mind, allow me to talk about the threat and the biodefense enterprise in general before talking about impacts, requirements, and shortfalls, as a starting point for conversations here and among policymakers about the direction of national biodefense in the 21st Century.
Biological Threats
The Department of State recently released its annual compliance and verification report. (This is the one that addresses compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.) This year again, the State Department said that Russia and North Korea possess offensive biological weapons programs. The State Department also added more to their discussions of China and Iran, talking about their inability to prove that historic offensive programs ever ceased, their sociopolitical aims, and their dual-use research. We also know that China is investing tens of billions into their bioeconomy while we are not. We are about to be lapped by China with regard to biotechnology.
No self-respecting military person would ever assume that these are the only four countries in possession of, or actively pursuing, offensive biological weapons. Motivations for proliferation vary, from asymmetric advantage, to mutually assured destruction, to the takedown of society and global order, to the pursuit of something that does not require getting hold of more highly regulated and tracked materials for use in weapons of mass destruction. Whatever the motivation, as a Nation, we must assume that more than just these four countries will develop their own programs or obtain their own weapons.
Bioterrorism remains an issue as well. Ricin events continue to occur throughout the country, threatening individuals, communities, populations, and America. Terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda and ISIL, continue to try and obtain biological weapons and agents to foster fear. Lone wolves see the value as well and have figured out how to create some of these agents by themselves. But we ought not to consider terrorists as always separate from nation states. Nation state-sponsored terrorism continues and we assume that extends to bioterrorism.
Accidents remain problematic. The debate about COVID origins continues, with staunch believers on every side of every argument. I remind you that the Intelligence Community remains divided as to the origins of COVID and our own Commission has declined to pass judgment because we simply do not have access to all of the needed information, classified and unclassified, to make that determination. But other proven accidents continue to occur in laboratories across the world, including in the United States. Fungi grow unobserved, produce toxins, contaminate our food supply, and in some cases, produce cancer. Cross-contamination, improperly disposed of biological materials, and too few people doing the jobs of too many in lab environments still lead to accidents and unintentional exposures.
This leaves us with one category – that of naturally occurring diseases – and there is plenty to bring to your attention. Let us start with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI). You have seen it spreading throughout avian populations with some scary symptoms, such as thousands of infected penguins flinging themselves off of glaciers. The disease has spread to mammals, including cattle, and there have been dozens of human infections in the United States, including at least one death. Tied up in this is fear about: (1) the impact on food and agriculture, and by direct extension, our economy; and (2) the impact on tourism. Our accusations about other countries not reporting their diseases have come home to roost. People are afraid to find out what is going on, so they are simply not finding out. The result is an incomplete picture of where the disease is, and, therefore, how to stop its spread. Of course, that does not seem to make a difference to a disease that has decided it is here to stay.
While we do not usually talk about diseases of purely public health concern – this is not the Bipartisan Commission on Public Health, it is the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense – I do want to call your attention to the increasing disease burden in our country. We have lost control of diseases we thought we had a chance of eradicating. Measles, of course, comes to mind. The best thing I can say about it is that at least elected officials have stopped calling for measles parties after children started dying, but that is what it took, the deaths of children. Other diseases are reemerging in the United States, including most recently tuberculosis, mumps, pertussis, and rubella. I imagine that tetanus, polio, and meningitis are not too far behind. Mpox is now endemic here in the United States. And people are still dying from diseases like influenza and chicken pox.
Our disease burden is increasing and when that happens, the overall health status of our national population decreases. It is going to be hard to Make America Healthy Again while diseases we thought were previously under control are on the rise. Even worse, we are creating ideal conditions for our enemies to use biological weapons to attack our populations, and those weapons need not contain particularly devasting diseases at that. When individuals have weakened immune systems, they more easily fall prey to illnesses that ordinarily would not affect them very seriously or for very long. The same can be said for populations. Some military doctrines call for doing just this – weakening the population so that they are easier to overcome.
The Biodefense Enterprise
Moving on from the threat, let me address how the biodefense enterprise is faring. Prior to the beginning of the current Administration, over the last 10 years, we made it clear that all 15 Cabinet departments, 9 independent agencies, and 1 independent institution (the Smithsonian) possess responsibilities for biodefense. We will hear from one of those independent agencies – NASA – today about their unique responsibilities, particularly for planetary protection. Overall, the biodefense enterprise is in chaos. Everyone that has not been cut is diving for cover, putting out fires, and trying to simply survive.
Defending the Nation against biological threats that affect national security is not a top priority for any of these organizations, including those that most often come to mind – USDA, HHS, and DOD. But they all do recognize that biological threats to the Nation are existential and persistent.
The national biodefense enterprise also exists, but it cannot evolve, not in today’s environment. Agencies are disintegrating, disappearing, changing, and moving.
In 2018, the previous Trump Administration developed and released the first National Biodefense Strategy, the accomplishment of which President Trump was rightly proud. We called for that national biodefense strategy in our first Blueprint for Biodefense – it was our third recommendation. But we also called for a coordinating council and for that to sit at the White House. Our country could still use one. Dr. Gerry Parker, one of our former ex officios, is there now. I hope he can establish that council at the White House and use it to stabilize things. The national biodefense enterprise stands, but on increasingly wobbly legs.
Impact of Recent Cuts
So let me get on to the issue at hand – the impact of the cuts and changes to the US government. The Administration has decided to prioritize cutting, cutting as much as it can, wherever it can.
I remind the Commissioners that we have made recommendations to eliminate or replace government programs that were (and are) not performing as originally intended by previous Administrations and Congresses. We have done the work of leaning into government efficiency when it comes to biodefense. For example, we brought attention to the shortcomings of our national system of biodetectors – BioWatch – and called for replacing the 22-year-old technology or shutting the program down altogether. We also talked about the challenges that the Hospital Preparedness Program has experienced since its inception. In both cases the requirements were right – we need to detect biological agents in our major metropolitan areas, and we need to prepare hospitals for large-scale biological events. If programs cannot address these and other requirements successfully, though, we felt they should be shut down.
But the requirements remain and upon those requirements, we must remain focused.
Biodefense has always been disgracefully, woefully, and incomprehensively underfunded. As a Nation, we have never been adequately prepared for the biological events that occur, and we know that, because we never do seem to avoid the deaths of hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions when those events occur. The cuts already implemented, the cuts revealed in the top line discretionary request (more commonly known as the skinny budget), the cuts we expect to find in the President’s Budget Request, the cuts in the Reconciliation package, the cuts in Appropriations and Mandatory Spending, the cuts in personnel, and the cuts in things we thought were safe (like Medicare, federal retirement benefits, intelligence operations, and defense spending) may feel good at the time to some, but do not, and will not, for long.
The biodefense community is in for the fight of its life to get the funding it needs. It was starving before. It is going to be anorexic soon.
I know you want to hear specifics. But the situation is changing daily, if not more frequently, and the facts remain unclear. And there is no doubt that this constant uncertainty is impacting and disrupting capabilities and operations. Decisions have not been made, or when they have been, some are undone. Sometimes there is follow-through, sometimes there is not. Sometimes responsibilities are reassigned, sometimes they are not. Announcements are made and then withdrawn. But this is what I can say.
Our Nation has certain requirements. Many in both the public and private sectors are driven by requirements. We engage in requirements-driven planning. We know we cannot do and pay for everything, so we identify what absolutely has to be done – requirements – and then set about fulfilling them. The requirements remain. And while the Administration is making all of these cuts, the biodefense community cannot adequately fulfill those requirements.
The good people throughout and outside the government are not just trying, they are struggling mightily, and they are fighting to defend the Nation against biological threats that are here now and coming on inexorably. You asked me what the impacts of the actions of the Administration are as of now, and I will tell you.
- As of now, our grasp on biological intelligence is weak at best.
- As of now, we are losing programs that – by their very existence – were thought to serve as a deterrence.
- As of now, we are still not prepared to deal with large-scale and other biological events that affect national security.
- As of now, we are increasingly reverting to what I call the human sentinel surveillance system, in which we are waiting for people to get sick before we detect diseases that are emerging, reemerging, and spreading.
- As of now, we are not capable of responding efficiently and effectively to biological events.
- As of now, our ability to attribute biological events to sources, nation-states, criminals, and terrorists is compromised.
- As of now, we are still recovering from the last pandemic, while outbreaks, epidemics, and seven other pandemics are either already here or on their way.
- As of now, the very last to ever get funding and support, mitigation, barely has a heartbeat.
- And as of now, talented public servants are being let go, with real pain and consequences felt across the country.
Biodefense is in crisis and has long been in crisis.
But the biodefense community has not given up and the public and private sectors are aware of, and engaged in, biodefense (to the extent they can be). They are doing their best to preserve capabilities in everything from biosurveillance to attribution to medical countermeasure development. We need to maintain those capabilities no matter where entities in the organizational chart land.
In addition to telling you that times are tough and that we are at great risk of losing millions again to the ravages of disease, I want to end with a few other observations.
Members of the national biodefense enterprise are all for efficiency. Most have had no choice for decades but to do the best they could with what little funding they got. This is why we have advocated for so long to move money from failed programs to those that are successful. The Administration needs to consider reinvesting some of the funds they are saving into programs that actually work. And the Administration needs to make future cuts with current and previous cuts in mind.
I have told the Department of Defense for years that they can stand up and say that dealing with anything other than attacks on the United States is someone else’s job, and that is fine, until those entities can no longer fulfill that responsibility. The Department of Defense needs to prepare for the worst, a situation in which they are left holding the bag. A situation in which all of biodefense becomes their responsibility. They will do it. They will continue to defend the Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But that will come at great cost to that Department.
In addition to national defense, other areas are being affected that are not usually thought of as biodefense, such as emergency management, agriculture, and homeland security. The idea may be to save money, but we are not saving anything if all we are doing is shifting costs and that includes to the states. I know the Governors agree.
It is every Administration’s prerogative to reorganize the White House and reorganize the Executive Branch. It is also Congress’ responsibility to ensure that congressional intent for the Departments and agencies in the Executive Branch is not thrown out. The Administration can make cuts and reorganize, but at the end of the day, they and Congress cannot allow the Nation to be caught flat-footed. They cannot allow America to cede the high ground to disease or any other enemy of the State.
As a former congressional staffer, I may be biased, but the Dome still shines on the Hill. Congress is the stabilizing force in government, not the Presidency. It still does the work of the people. And while all of this is going on, that work is crucial.
With regard to biodefense, there are ways for Congress to operate during this time of profound change. If Congress wants the best people to be named to political appointments, they do not have to give up that responsibility because they want to work with the Administration. Saying no does not mean that the other party automatically wins. There are other Republicans in the country that can take those appointments.
Whenever the Administration thinks there is a problem in the government, the relevant congressional committees can and should immediately open an investigation into that problem.
If Congress has concerns about all of this being too much and too fast, they are perfectly capable of conducting oversight.
If someone in Congress thinks that the Nation needs something other than the few must-pass bills that move, they do not need to wait to start drafting that legislation. They do not need anyone else’s permission to draft legislation (like the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act) and get ready for when those bills can be taken up again.
And the Constitution is clear. No matter what the President’s Budget Request says, the power of the purse remains with Congress. Congress decides on mandatory spending and Congress decides on appropriations.
There are people holding the line. Our government is the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Nothing has changed about that.
Biodefense rests in the hands of state, local, tribal, territorial, and federal governments, as well as academia, industry, and nongovernmental organizations. What they do is important. They themselves are important.
The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense is a problem-solving, solution-oriented Commission. We stand up for biodefense and help in whatever way we can. We have a record of working with the previous Trump Administration and with all Administrations since 2014. We are willing to do so again but will say what cuts and other actions concern us, as well as what we agree with. We stand ready to assist and share the decades of the combined expertise of the Commissioners, ex officios, and staff with the Administration and with Congress.
If Elon Musk called to ask our opinion about increasing government efficiency in biodefense, we would take that call.
The former co-chair of this Commission, Senator Joe Lieberman, often talked about the need to examine and learn from the past, while also looking to the future.
It is our duty to ensure the safety of all Americans, to anticipate threats, and to create strategies that safeguard our future. Together, we will meet any challenge, strengthened by past wisdom, present innovation, and hope for the future. Let us move forward with courage, and as the good Senator said, we and the national biodefense enterprise shall prevail.
See more from this event here.