[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




   BIOSECURITY FOR THE FUTURE: STRENGTHENING DETERRENCE AND DETECTION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

 SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA, THE PACIFIC, CENTRAL ASIA, AND NONPROLIFERATION

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            December 8, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-95

                               __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs






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                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                 
46-227 PDF              WASHINGTON : 2023 

                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                      COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                  GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York, Chairman

BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Ranking 
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey                  Member
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
KAREN BASS, California
WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
AMI BERA, California
JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
DINA TITUS, Nevada
TED LIEU, California
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota
COLIN ALLRED, Texas
ANDY LEVIN, Michigan
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
SARA JACOBS, California
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
JIM COSTA, California
JUAN VARGAS, California
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas
BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois

                                     CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
                                     STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
                                     SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
                                     DARRELL ISSA, California
                                     ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
                                     LEE ZELDIN, New York
                                     ANN WAGNER, Missouri
                                     BRIAN MAST, Florida
                                     BRIAN FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania
                                     KEN BUCK, Colorado
                                     TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
                                     MARK GREEN, Tennessee
                                     ANDY BARR, Kentucky
                                     GREG STEUBE, Florida
                                     DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
                                     AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
                                     PETER MEIJER, Michigan
                                     NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
                                     RONNY JACKSON, Texas
                                     YOUNG KIM, California
                                     MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida
                                     JOE WILSON, South Carolina

                    Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director

               Brendan Shields, Republican Staff Director
                                 ------                                

 Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation

                    AMI BERA, California, Chairman,

BRAD SHERMAN, California             STEVE CHABOT, Ohio, Ranking Member
DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY LEVIN. Michigan
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
GERALD CONNOLLY, Virginia
TED LIEU, California
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, Virginia
KATHY MANNING, North Carolina

                                     SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
                                     ANN WAGNER, Missouri
                                     KEN BUCK, Colorado
                                     TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee
                                     MARK GREEN, Tennessee
                                     ANDY BARR, Kentucky
                                     YOUNG KIM, California

                      Jamie Morgan, Staff Director  
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                      
                            C O N T E N T S

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                                                                   Page

                               WITNESSES

Yassif, Dr. Jaime, Senior Fellow, Global Biological Policy and 
  Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative............................     8
Weber, The Honorable Andy, Senior Fellow, Council on Strategic 
  Risks..........................................................    17
Adalja, Dr. Amesh, Senior Scholar, Center for Health Security, 
  Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.....    26
Esvelt, Kevin, Director, Sculpting Evolution Group, Massachusetts 
  Institute of Technology........................................    34

                                APPENDIX

Hearing Notice...................................................    63
Hearing Minutes..................................................    64
Hearing Attendance...............................................    65

                        STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD

Statement for the record from Representative Connolly............    66

            RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Responses to questions submitted for the record..................    68

 
                      BIOSECURITY FOR THE FUTURE: 
                 STRENGTHENING DETERRENCE AND DETECTION 

                      Wednesday, December 8, 2021

                          House of Representatives,
                 Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific,
                 Central Asia, and Nonproliferation
                      Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., 
via Webex, Hon. Ami Bera (chairman of the subcommittee) 
presiding.
    Mr. Bera. Virtual gavel is banged. The Subcommittee on 
Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation will come 
to order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any point, and all members will have 
5 days to submit statements, extraneous material, and questions 
for the record subject to the length limitation in the rules.
    To insert something into the record, please have your staff 
email the previously mentioned address or contact full 
committee staff.
    Please keep your video function on at all times even when 
you are not recognized by the chair. Members are responsible 
for muting and unmuting themselves, and please remember to mute 
yourself after you finish speaking.
    Consistent with remote committee proceedings of H. Res. 8, 
staff will only mute members and witnesses as appropriate when 
they are not under recognition to eliminate background noise.
    I see that we have a quorum and will now recognize myself 
for opening remarks. I want to thank my good friend, the 
ranking member, Mr. Chabot, the members of this subcommittee, 
our witnesses, and the members of the public for joining 
today's hearing.
    For almost 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged 
communities, devastated economies, and disrupted the fabric of 
our international global system. It is a reminder of the grave 
consequences that low-probability, high-impact biological 
threats can have our daily lives if we are not prepared.
    Moving forward, we can do better. As chair of the 
subcommittee, I have convened multiple hearings related to the 
2019 novel coronavirus, including the first congressional 
hearing on this topic in early February 2020 and on enhancing 
U.S. and global biosecurity.
    In the near 2 years since the first hearing on COVID-19, we 
have thankfully seen meaningful efforts and expanding 
investments in technologies and practices such as gene 
sequencing, biosurveillance, and detection.
    Many of these efforts have been crucial in the global fight 
against this pandemic thus far. For example, advances in rapid 
sequencing and diagnostic capabilities in South Africa allowed 
the government to correctly identify and report a new variant 
of concern to the international community in record time.
    New technologies also enabled partnerships between 
governments and pharmaceutical companies to develop, test, 
manufacture, and begin distribution of vaccines and 
therapeutics in timeframes that were previously thought 
impossible.
    Such developments do not occur overnight. They require 
time, dedicated staff, and resources well before an incident.
    As we continue to combat the coronavirus, we were reminded 
of the importance of making long-term investments in the global 
health infrastructure and taking other steps to help prevent 
such catastrophe in the future.
    That is the primary focus of today's hearing, to take stock 
of current resources dedicated to this critical field and to 
assess what more needs to be done to work with international 
partners to strengthen biosecurity and about biosurveillance 
practices globally.
    These conversations are particularly relevant when one 
factors in the possibility of facing pathogens and diseases 
intentionally created by bad actors.
    Biological weapons, and especially dangerous pathogens, 
existed before COVID-19, but the threat they pose today is now 
undeniable. Laboratories around the world regularly handle 
dangerous pathogens, and these threats are only amplified by 
the widespread availability of new gene-editing technologies 
such as CRISPR.
    It is imperative that we ensure our government has the 
right strategy and resources to prevent naturally occurring, as 
well as manmade pathogens from causing the next pandemic. We 
cannot afford to be stagnant in our preparations and planning 
for the biological threats of tomorrow.
    The pandemic also reaffirms the need for continued U.S. 
global leadership for a proactive biological security and 
defense strategy.
    Prioritizing investments to counter and prepare for 
biological threats ranging from research-related or medical 
center accidents to naturally occurring pathogens to deliberate 
biological weapons attacks is a national security imperative 
and requires appropriate resourcing and sustained attention.
    Much like the counterterrorism and countering weapons of 
mass destruction proliferation, the field of biosecurity 
measures success through the absence of an incident.
    But, as the pandemic clearly demonstrates, we must not wait 
for a devastating crisis to start investing in biosecurity. 
Particularly in today's interconnected world, a deadly pathogen 
unleashed in the opposite corner of the world would be upon our 
doorstep shortly thereafter. Therefore, we must be proactive.
    The international community has a collective responsibility 
to work together to improve biosecurity systems and regimes 
worldwide. We need to examine how we are making investments in 
deterrence and detection and ensure that we have well-resourced 
mechanisms to prevent and defeat both naturally occurring 
health challenges, as well as acts of bioterrorism.
    I want to thank our witnesses today in advance for sharing 
their expertise with us as we consider this crucial matter.
    And, with that, let me go ahead and yield 5 minutes to my 
good friend from Ohio, our ranking member, Representative Steve 
Chabot, for any opening comments he may have.
    Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
calling this important hearing today. I would also like to 
thank our witnesses for being here and for providing us their 
uniquely qualified insights.
    It is important to be discussing the threats posed by 
potential new diseases, as well as a new generation of 
bioweapons, so I commend you for doing this.
    This hearing comes at a pivotal time. COVID-19 has taught 
us, like nothing else, the devastation that can be caused by a 
previously unknown disease.
    The Chinese Communist Party hid the emergence of the 
disease from the world, allowing it to become a global 
pandemic. This shows just how crucial it is to detect and 
address a new disease early on.
    But such a contagion could easily begin somewhere that has 
a less malevolent government but a weak health system. In fact, 
Ebola did just that.
    The bottom line is the world needs to be better prepared to 
detect and combat new diseases before they get out of control. 
It is possible, of course, that even deadlier diseases and 
viruses than COVID-19 could threaten us as well as chemical 
compounds.
    Syria, Russia, and North Korea, for example, have used 
chlorine gas, Novichok, and VX nerve agent to murder dissidents 
and perceived enemies both in their own countries and across 
the globe.
    To make matters worse, the Biological Weapons Convention, 
the international treaty, banning biological weapons lacks 
enforcement while the U.N.'s Implementation Support Unit has 
three people on staff and a budget smaller than that of a 
McDonald's.
    Further, according to the State Department, North Korea and 
Russia have current, offensive bioweapon programs which are 
illegal under treaty, and China and Iran are engaging in dual-
use research in violation of the treaty as well.
    All this is compounded by new and emerging science and 
technologies that have made it easier than ever before for 
individuals, even with a limited amount of training and 
knowledge, to genetically engineer new threats.
    Such advances, which could potentially do wonders in the 
fields of health and medicine, are inherently dual-use and, in 
the hands of our adversaries, pose a threat to our national 
security.
    Unless we take this threat seriously, countries that have 
already violated their legal obligations not to use chemical 
weapons could see advances in biotechnology as offering a new 
range of weapons that are targeted, deniable, and incredibly 
lethal.
    COVID-19 has raised questions about the nature of this 
technology itself, including around the issue of gain-of-
function research. As we now know, scientists have the ability 
to genetically manipulate and modify viruses without leaving 
any evidence.
    They can even create synthetic viruses from scratch, 
choosing the level of transmissibility and lethality in humans.
    Even before the current pandemic, groups of researchers 
around the world were using existing techniques to create 
hybrid viruses known to have pandemic potential and testing new 
and novel viruses.
    Going forward, we must balance our need to predict and 
detect new diseases that could cause pandemics with the 
potential for accidents or for the weaponization of new 
discoveries.
    Supporters argue that gain-of-function research is critical 
to safeguarding public health and that lab accidents are rare 
and isolated, but they downplay the inherent risks posed by 
progressive experimentation.
    The level of sophistication seen in terrorist groups like 
the Islamic State makes it more likely, not less, that these 
new technologies will be exploited by terrorist organizations 
seeking new asymmetric weapons.
    There is no need to hijack an airliner when you can simply 
release a weaponized virus in an airport terminal. The death 
toll from the resulting pandemic could be in the millions.
    Worse, it might not even take a terrorist acting 
intentionally. History shows us that lab accidents are 
frequent. For instance, in 1979, anthrax was accidentally 
released from a Soviet military research facility.
    Despite assurances to the contrary from American and Soviet 
scientists, we know that this lab leak resulted in infections 
and the deaths of close to a hundred people.
    Moving forward, it is clear that we need to rebalance our 
priorities to better prepare for such threats.
    Chairman Bera, I look forward to working with you as we 
consider how to respond to these challenges. We are facing a 
very real threat, one that we are not adequately addressing, I 
believe, at the present time.
    So, again, I want to thank the witnesses for being here 
today, look forward to their testimony, and I yield back.
    Mr. Bera. Thank you, Ranking Member Chabot. Let me go ahead 
and briefly introduce our witnesses. First we have Dr. Jaime 
Yassif, senior fellow for global biological policy and programs 
at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Dr. Yassif was previously a 
program officer at Open Philanthropy where she led the 
biosecurity and pandemic preparedness initiative.
    Prior that, she was a science and technology policy adviser 
at the U.S. Department of Defense where she focused on 
oversight of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and East 
Asia security issues.
    Next, we welcome the honorable Andy Weber, senior fellow at 
the Council on Strategic Risks, Janne E. Nolan Center on 
Strategic Weapons. Mr. Weber has had a long career of U.S. 
Government service, including as Assistant Secretary of Defense 
for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs from 
2009 to 2014.
    He also coordinated U.S. leadership of the international 
Ebola response for the Department of State. He serves on the 
boards of Healthcare Ready and the Arms Control Association, 
among others.
    Next, we have Dr. Amesh Adalja, who is the senior scholar 
at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an adjunct 
assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of 
Public Health, and affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for 
Global Health.
    Among his many accomplishments and contributions, Dr. 
Adalja has served on U.S. Government panels tasked with 
developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, 
and anthrax in mass casualty settings for the system of care 
for infectious disease emergencies.
    Last but not least, we have Dr. Kevin Esvelt, an assistant 
professor at the MIT Media Lab where he leads the Sculpting 
Evolution group in exploring evolutionary and ecological 
engineering.
    Professor Esvelt helped pioneer the development of CRISPR, 
the powerful new method of genome engineering, and is the 
inventor of synthetic viral ecosystems for the directed 
evolution of biomolecules.
    I want to thank all of you for participating in today's 
hearing, and I will now recognize witnesses for 5 minutes.
    Without objection, your prepared written statements will be 
made part of the record. I will first invite Dr. Yassif to 
share her testimony.

STATEMENT OF DR. JAIME YASSIF, SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL BIOLOGICAL 
         POLICY AND PROGRAMS, NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE

    Dr. Yassif. Thank you. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member 
Chabot, and other members of the subcommittee. Thank you for 
the opportunity to join today's hearing to share my perspective 
on biosecurity for the future. I am a senior fellow at NTI, 
which is a nonpartisan, global security organization focused on 
reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity.
    Over the past 21 months, COVID has revealed that national 
governments and the international community are unprepared to 
respond to pandemics, underscoring our shared vulnerability to 
future catastrophic biological threats that could match the 
impact of the current pandemic or cause damage that is much 
more severe.
    To effectively guard against these risks, the world needs a 
layered defense, comprised of measures for prevention, 
detection, and response. I will focus my testimony today 
primarily on actions necessary to prevent catastrophic 
biological events, and specifically I will discuss three 
initiatives that NTI has been working to advance.
    First, I will start with NTI's work to reduce emerging 
biological risks associated with rapid technology advances. 
Bioscience and biotechnology offer tremendous benefits. They 
are vital for fighting disease, protecting the environment, and 
promoting economic development.
    However, these innovations can also pose unique challenges, 
increasing the risks of lab accidents or deliberate misuse by 
malicious actors.
    This threat becomes increasingly pressing as the technical 
barriers to manipulating biological organisms continue to fall. 
Governments are key to safeguarding the life sciences, but they 
have struggled to keep pace with rapid technology advances.
    And, at the international level, governance is also weak. 
There is no existing international entity dedicated, as its 
primary mission, to strengthening biosecurity and bioscience 
governance, notwithstanding the importance work of WHO and the 
Biological Weapons Convention.
    To address this gap, NTI is working to develop the 
International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative For Science, 
or IBBIS. We envision that this new organization will work 
collaboratively to strengthen global biosecurity norms and 
develop innovative and practical tools to uphold them.
    And the underlying goal would be to safeguard science and 
to reduce the risk of catastrophic events that could result 
from deliberate abuse or accidental misuse.
    IBBIS will begin with a narrow focus on improving DNA 
synthesis screening practices internationally with the 
understanding that its remit can expand over time.
    NTI is working with international partners to continue 
shaping the vision for IBBIS, and we aspire to launch this new 
organization in 2022.
    We encourage Congress, and specifically members of this 
subcommittee, to support the goals of this initiative and to 
help us build broad international support for this effort.
    The second portion of my remarks will focus on our 
initiative for investigating high-consequence biological events 
of unknown origin. An effective deterrence strategy rests in 
part on the ability of the international community to 
demonstrate, to would-be developers or users of bioweapons, 
that there is a reliable system for attribution and 
accountability for such actions.
    But, to do that, it will be important to bolster the 
capabilities of the U.N. system to investigate pandemic origins 
whether naturally emerging, accidental, or deliberate.
    And this includes investing more resources in the U.N. 
Secretary General's Mechanism, which has the authority to 
investigate alleged deliberate weapons use.
    We must also fill gaps, however, specifically in the 
capabilities to investigate the source of biological events of 
unknown origin. This important work falls at the seam between 
existing mechanisms, including the outbreak investigation 
capabilities of the World Health Organization and the U.N. 
Secretary General's Mechanism.
    To meet this need, NTI is pursuing the establishment of a 
new joint assessment mechanism for investigating high-
consequence bio events of unknown origin. We envision that this 
mechanism would take an approach that is rapid, transparent, 
evidence-based, and legitimate in the eyes of the international 
community.
    I hope Congress and this subcommittee will support the 
establishment of this type of multilateral mechanism, which 
will be critical for mitigating pandemic effects in real time 
and for deterring future bioweapons development and use.
    The third initiative that I will very briefly address is 
financing for pandemic preparedness. Building strong systems 
for early detection and robust response is critical for 
stopping outbreaks from evolving into global pandemics, and it 
can also contribute to deterrence.
    But none of this can happen without resources. As 
documented by the 2021 Global Health Security Index, which we 
are releasing this morning, most nations have not made 
dedicated financial investments in pandemic preparedness.
    The current shortsighted approach to financing doesn't make 
a lot of sense because investing in pandemic preparedness is 
highly cost-effective.
    COVID has led to trillions in economic losses and extensive 
damage to global economies, and yet the international community 
can effectively guard against these risks with a global 
investment on the order of 1 to several hundred billion 
dollars.
    To achieve and sustain this level investment, we need to 
redesign our collective approach to financing. That is why NTI 
is working with partners to advocate for a new catalytic, 
multilateral financing mechanism forpandemic preparedness in 
countries around the world.
    We applaud the leadership that the U.S. has already 
signaled by championing the establishment of a new multilateral 
financing mechanism at the recent Global COVID-19 Summit.
    Now, it must follow through with funding to set the bar for 
others and challenge them to step up and contribute. The U.S. 
should contribute at least $2 billion in seed funding and work 
with partners to mobilize at least $10 billion annually.
    Such an investment would constitute a tiny fraction of the 
potentially catastrophic cost of inaction.
    To conclude, COVID has served as a warning shot, 
highlighting our shared vulnerability to global pandemics, 
while national and global leaders are understandably focused on 
the current crisis but cannot afford the essential work to 
prevent and respond to future, high-consequence bio events.
    Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Chabot, and other members of 
this subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today, 
and I look forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Yassif follows:]

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    Mr. Bera. Thank you. I now invite Mr. Weber for his 
testimony.

 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANDY WEBER, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL 
                       ON STRATEGIC RISKS

    Mr. Weber. Thank you. Chairman Bera, Ranking Member Chabot, 
and members of the committee. I am honored to appear before you 
today. I would like to applaud the committee for hosting this 
hearing on what I believe is one of the most consequential 
issues for the United States and the international community: 
deterring biological weapons threats and preventing pandemics.
    I have focused on countering biological threats for the 
bulk of my career. In the 1990's, I worked with the Department 
of Defense Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and 
saw firsthand the massive scale of the Soviet Union's offensive 
biological weapons complex.
    One facility we completely dismantled, at the request of 
First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, was capable 
of producing 300 tons of anthrax agent during a mobilization 
period of about 8 months.
    Another laboratory in Koltsovo, Russia, perfected viral 
weapons to cause horrific diseases like smallpox, Marburg, and 
Ebola.
    Biological weapons threats are increasing due to several 
factors, including advanced North Korean and Russian offensive 
programs, China's huge investments in dual-use biotechnologies, 
and a revolution in biotechnology that is making it easier and 
cheaper for even small groups or individuals to misuse biology.
    The United States should now pursue a strategy based on two 
reinforcing goals. The first is preventing future outbreaks 
from ever again reaching pandemic scale. This goal is more 
achievable than ever. Though it will take leadership and 
sustained investments in biodefense, the U.S. bio economy, and 
international partnerships.
    The second focus ox on deliberate biological threats, which 
are increasing.
    The United States should lead the world in making 
biological weapons the first category of weapons of mass 
destruction to be effectively eliminated or rendered obsolete.
    Deterrence is at the heart of this proposal. Specifically, 
we are calling for a U.S. strategy of deterrence by denial. 
This type of deterrence strategy would focus on ultimately 
denying the attackers' success in their aims regarding 
biological weapons.
    Today, U.S. innovation has created a new paradigm. We now 
have the technologies and tools needed to make deterrence by 
denial, regarding deliberate biological threats and pandemic 
prevention, a reality.
    Our task today is to deploy such advanced technologies 
effectively and integrate them via a systems approach to 
addressing the full range of biological threats. We need fast 
and precise pathogen early warning.
    We need these systems to produce and share robust data that 
can be used for rapidly characterizing pathogens and tailoring 
diagnostics and countermeasures, vaccines, and medical 
treatments to help stop them.
    One of the top opportunities to enhance early warning stems 
from the Biological Threat Reduction Program at the Department 
of Defense. This program, which I helped create, has long been 
used for advancing biosurveillance and biosecurity with many 
partners around the world.
    This paid off heavily. Several U.S. allies and partners 
have been leaders in detecting and monitoring COVID-19. I 
deeply appreciate that this year, you, in the House of 
Representatives, on a bipartisan basis, restored the severe and 
inexplicable Pentagon cuts to the Biological Threat Reduction 
Program.
    It will also be critical to revitalize and expand another 
Department of Defense program that has suffered budget cuts and 
underutilization in recent years, the Pentagon's Chemical and 
Biological Defense Program, or CBDP.
    Despite a strong track record of performance and extensive 
national capacities, in recent years Department leaders have 
slashed CBDP's budget, even during a pandemic, and restricted 
its ability to respond to COVID-19 early in the pandemic.
    I am heartened, however, that, in launching the first ever 
Pentagon Biodefense Posture Review last month, Secretary of 
Defense Lloyd Austin commanded the Department of Defense to 
prioritize biodefense across the full spectrum of biological 
threats, from naturally occurring to accidental and deliberate 
biological incidents.
    To enact a national strategy to take biological weapons off 
the table as a weapon of mass destruction threat and to prevent 
future infectious disease threats from growing to pandemic 
scale, I and my colleagues recommend an investment plan that we 
call ``10 plus 10 over 10.''
    This entails investing $10 billion per year for 10 years 
for deterring and addressing biological weapons threats, plus 
$10 billion per year for 10 years for global health security 
and direct pandemic prevention initiatives.
    The details of this $200 billion, 10-year plan will be 
published in our forthcoming handbook for deterring biological 
weapons and preventing future pandemics. The Council on 
Strategic Risks will release it this month.
    In conclusion, the United States has made significant 
progress in addressing biological threats over the past several 
decades. The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call.
    The good news is that it is within our reach to take 
biological threats off the table. To do so, we must summon the 
political will to set a bold strategy for the United States and 
our partners around the world. Thank you very much, and I look 
forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]

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    Mr. Bera. Thank you. I now invite Dr. Adalja for his 
testimony.

   STATEMENT OF DR. AMESH ADALJA, SENIOR SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR 
 HEALTH SECURITY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF 
                         PUBLIC HEALTH

    Dr. Adalja. Chairman and Dr. Bera, Ranking Member Chabot, 
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the 
opportunity to offer testimony today on the biosecurity for the 
future, strengthening deterrence and detection.
    I am a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for 
Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public 
Health. The opinions expressed herein are my own anddo not 
reflect the views of Johns Hopkins University.
    As our country and the rest of the world continue to 
grapple with the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, 
it is appropriate and important to put surveillance systems and 
strategies in place to detect in the future the emergence or 
reemergence of dangerous viruses with pandemic potential.
    Because many infectious diseases are contagious and transit 
between humans easily, infectious disease threats anywhere can 
universalize very quickly.
    We are now seeing firsthand that pathogens no longer travel 
at the speed of a steam ship. They travel at the speed of a 
jet. Borders are porous, and diseases seep through them 
quickly.
    The U.S. needs to have as comprehensive global situational 
awareness of infectious disease threats as possible.
    As the U.S. Government decides how to best invest limited 
resources in early warning systems for detection of future 
viral threats, it is critical to prioritize surveillance 
activities that, one, are the most likely to uncover actual 
rather than hypothetical threats; and, two, are practical and 
add value every day to preparedness even between outbreaks.
    Too often our limited surveillance dollars are funding 
overly broad surveillance and basic analysis that includes a 
vast collection of animal samples with the goal of identifying 
potential infectious diseases emanating from animals in 
spillover or zoonotic events.
    Given the history of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, Nipah, 
Ebola, and HIV, zoonotic spillover events are an appropriate 
priority. However, focusing our surveillance efforts on the 
constant sampling of animals can be like looking for a needle 
is a never-ending haystack.
    While this type of surveillance can play a part in early 
warning systems and it helps us to improve our understanding of 
disease in animal species, we should be careful not to place an 
overemphasis on viral cataloguing efforts.
    These are indeed essential virologic and scientific tasks 
but should not be construed to be synonymouswith early warning 
or a substitute for pandemic preparedness activities.
    We should complement the broad sampling of animal species 
with a more targeted type of surveillance, focused on sampling 
of viruses present in patients in clinical environments.
    A microbe most likely to cause a pandemic or a disruptive 
outbreak is likely one that possesses the ability to infect 
humans to some extent now. These are infections that are 
occurring in humans by pathogens--these are infections that are 
occurring in humans by pathogens that have the capacity to do 
so now.
    Such a microbe may go unnoticed, mistaken for other causes, 
or occur in populations where diagnostic technology is not 
available and may be spread by the respiratory route and cause 
a respiratory infection such as pneumonia. It may also have 
characteristics that can cause a brain or central nervous 
system infection like meningitis.
    And critically it is likely to result in sepsis or septic 
shock as the final common pathway to severe disease and death.
    The majority of these cases go without identification of 
the virus and without a specific diagnosis. The empiric 
treatment either works or it doesn't. This is something I 
witness in the United States, and it is very common 
internationally.
    I liken the undiagnosed syndromes to biological dark matter 
which likely contain key information about what is making 
people sick, some deathly, today, right now, everywhere.
    The first COVID-19 cases in Wuhan were mixed in with 
influenza, and they were missed. A few weeks would have saved 
lives if there was early detection. The first U.S. case of the 
novel 2009 H1N1 pandemic virus was only identified because 
people went to a naval surveillance study site and got this 
virus identified much earlier.
    Whether what is lurking in the biological dark matter is 
the first human foray for an emerging pathogen, a change in 
behavior of a known pathogen, or an ordinary infection that 
went undiagnosed, it is valuable information.
    We need to commit and spend more time diving deep to 
understand this dark matter. This is a no-regret investment 
because it is likely to uncover actual, rather than 
hypothetical, threats.
    The value is fivefold. First, if it is a new emerging 
pathogen that is obscured because it is causing a familiar 
clinical syndrome, its discovery could be an early warning for 
the entire world.
    Second, if a new property has evolved in a known pathogen, 
it can be valuable clinical information.
    Third, inappropriate use of antibiotics for these 
undiagnosed syndromes contributes to antimicrobial resistance 
worldwide.
    Fourth, we will learn a lot about the epidemiology of what 
is circulating.
    And, fifth, we will engage in global health diplomacy.
    I believe Congress should prioritize augmentation of 
diagnostic technologies as part of the international 
biosurveillance enterprise. These technologies exist today. It 
doesn't necessarily involve building a very big lab. I think it 
is about improving bread-and-butter diagnostic capacities, and 
I think it will help us all.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Adalja follows:]

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    Mr. Bera. Oops. Professor Esvelt? Did we lose Professor 
Esvelt? Looks as though we may have lost Professor Esvelt.
    Staff. Sir, we are just getting back on here.
    Mr. Bera. OK. Professor Esvelt?
    Dr. Esvelt [continuing]. Individuals.
    Mr. Bera. Teresa, can you work with Professor Esvelt?
    Staff. Chair Bera? Oh, there--so we are seeing Dr. Esvelt 
on the line again. Dr. Esvelt, if you wouldn't mind----
    Dr. Esvelt. Apologies. Could you not hear me?
    Staff. No, sir.
    Mr. Bera. We couldn't hear you. We lost you for a moment 
there. If you want to start your 5 minutes of testimony.
    Dr. Esvelt. [Inaudible.]
    Mr. Bera. Teresa, we have lost him again. Is that correct?
    Staff. Yes, sir. Sir, if you wouldn't mind, we will work 
with Dr. Esvelt on his bandwidth issues, and we can come back 
to him if that is OK with you.
    Mr. Bera. OK. That sounds fine. Why do not we, in the 
interest of time, we will now move on to questions, and then, 
when Professor Esvelt gets back on, we can allow him to do his 
opening testimony.
    I will now recognize members for 5 minutes each, and 
pursuant to House rules, all time yielded is for the purpose of 
questioning our witnesses.
    Because of the virtual format of this hearing, I will 
recognize members by committee seniority, alternating between 
Democrats and Republicans. If you miss your turn, please let 
our staff know, and we will circle back to you.
    If you seek recognition, you must unmute your microphone 
and address the chair verbally.
    With that, we will see if Professor Esvelt is on, and not 
seeing him at this moment, I will recognize myself for 5 
minutes of questioning.
    You know, Mr. Weber, I applaud your optimism that we could 
actually reduce the threat significantly down to zero, but I do 
worry about the readily available technology and the fact that 
high school students are learning how to use CRISPR technology, 
which isn't a bad thing.
    You know, as a doctor, you know, we have made remarkable 
achievements in the therapeutics that we have to treat 
oncology, you know, cancers, and remarkable advances. But I do 
worry about the down side.
    I am going to ask, you know, I guess each of the witnesses 
one thing that we touched on was biosurveillance and how we 
ought to use biosurveillance.
    We have invested, you know, billions of dollars into gene 
sequencing, which was woefully inadequate here in the United 
States but also worldwide, and we are doing a much better job 
around COVID-19 in terms of addressing those threats.
    You know, maybe starting with Dr. Yassif, as we, in 
Congress, think about these investments, beyond COVID-19, what 
are the regimes and biosurveillance that we should be thinking 
about both here domestically but then also internationally to 
identify as quickly as possible, naturally occurring pathogens 
but also manmade pathogens?
    Dr. Yassif. Thank you, Chairman Bera.
    I appreciate that really timely and important question. 
Certainly biosurveillance is critically important for part of 
the layered defense that we need to protect against high-
consequence biological risks. I will share three quick points.
    One is that we really need to integrate gene sequencing 
technology, as you have mentioned, into biosurveillance 
systems, both domestically and internationally. I would argue 
that, before COVID, that wasn't really in place, and I think 
that is still a work in progress.
    Second, we need to ensure that our biosurveillance systems 
and data-sharing capabilities are integrated across countries 
and across regions. This has been a significant challenge that 
experts in the community have been discussing for years, and we 
have a long way to go to create an integrated global system.
    I think, third, I would offer that we need to have a 
combination of a baseline set of data so we know what normal 
background, biological noise looks like, and so we can detect 
unusual events and new pathogens that we might not have been 
looking for, so we can detect unknown unknowns, especially as 
we are looking to the future where we might have to contend 
with engineered pathogens. So those are some recommendations 
that I would offer. Thank you.
    Mr. Bera. Mr. Weber, do you want to add?
    Mr. Weber. Yes. I completely agree with you that these new 
technologies, like metagenomic sequencing, give us incredible 
capabilities to improve our biosurveillance and early warning 
systems, which are the key to both preventing pandemics, 
isolating outbreaks before they become epidemics and pandemics.
    But also an important part, just as we have a nuclear 
detection system to prevent biological terrorism, having early 
warning against deliberate biological threats needs to be a big 
part of our deterrence strategy. Our adversaries need to know 
that they will be detected and caught if they launch biological 
weapons attacks.
    So I think it is an exciting time. And one of the tools 
that the U.S. Government has is the Biological Threat Reduction 
Program that is implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction 
Agency.
    I was involved in that for decades, and one of the goals 
was to enhance global biosurveillance, working with partners 
all around the world, and I think, in the next phase, with 
sufficient funding from Congress--it is a shame that the 
Department cut over a hundred million dollars from this program 
in the current year, Fiscal Year 2022 budget request, but if we 
can restore that funding, we can use those dollars to surge 
technologies that will enable genomic sequencing to be used 
broadly as part of our early warning system against pandemics 
and bio attacks. So the opportunity is really incredible.
    Also, metagenomic sequencing gives us new opportunities to 
identify unknown pathogens. We do not have to just test for a 
list of 10 or 12 specific pathogens, but we can take a sample 
and test it for everything, virtually hundreds of potential 
pathogens. And it is getting much cheaper and faster to do 
this.
    So I agree, we need to, both domestically and abroad, 
deploy these new capabilities on a massive scale.
    Mr. Bera. Right. Wonderful. I see I am out of time. I do 
see Professor Esvelt on.
    Professor, do you want to give your testimony? And then we 
will come back to the ranking member, Mr. Chabot.

STATEMENT OF KEVIN ESVELT, DIRECTOR, SCULPTING EVOLUTION GROUP, 
             MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

    Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Chairman Bera, Ranking Member 
Chabot, members of the subcommittee. First, I am going to 
check, can you hear me now?
    Mr. Bera. Yes, we can.
    Mr. Esvelt. Wonderful. Thank you for inviting me here today 
and additional thanks to my fellow witnesses for outlining the 
situation. As a practicing biotechnologist, I am deeply 
concerned that pandemic viruses pose a proliferation threat 
greater than that of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Government can 
take specific steps that would greatly reduce this risk.
    The threat is severe because new technologies have given 
thousands of skilled individuals the ability to assemble 
infectious viruses using materials and equipment that can be 
ordered online.
    If scientists learn and share which viruses could cause new 
pandemics, no matter how pure our motives, everyone with these 
skills will be getting access to credible weapons of mass 
destruction.
    For example, even though there are no virologists in my own 
lab at MIT, perhaps a third of us could order synthetic DNA in 
the mail and successfully follow published, step-by-step, 
virus-assembly protocols.
    Thankfully scientists do not yet know of any animal or lab-
created viruses that would cause another pandemic, but some 
well-meaning programs that aim to prevent or mitigate natural 
pandemics are trying to identify all of the viruses that could 
cause them and publish a list of the most threatening ones. 
This inadvertently threatens U.S. national security and the 
world's future.
    I do not believe that there are remotely commensurate 
benefits. The vast majority of the pandemic viruses would never 
naturally jump into humans, and finding the remainder would not 
speed vaccine development.
    The main proliferation risk comes from laboratory 
experiments performed by EcoHealth Alliance and similar 
programs to determine which viruses would likely cause 
pandemics.
    These experiments are the equivalent of nuclear tests. They 
first received Federal support back when it was much harder to 
make viruses, and funding has continued under administrations 
of both parties.
    Nations from the Netherlands to China to Germany have also 
funded these kinds of experiments. In my opinion, they should 
be stopped, not just in China and in the U.S., but everywhere.
    If successful, pandemic virus prediction will give 
thousands of actors the ability to ignite more pandemics at the 
same time than would normally occur in a century. If there is 
published, peer-reviewed research describing the potential of 
these viral weapons, threats to use them will be all too 
credible.
    Imagine a rogue State warning that infectious samples of 
all the top-ranked pandemic viruses will be released in 
airports if their regime is overthrown. Extremist groups, 
apocalyptic cults, or even a lone wolf bioterrorist could kill 
more people than any nuclear weapon.
    So what can be done to minimize our vulnerability to 
pandemic proliferation? First, Congress should issue a finding 
that pandemic virus prediction threatens the security of the 
United States. That alone would change the tenor of the 
discussion and leave Federal agencies with little security 
expertise to rethink their support and oversight of such 
experiments, which are only performed by a tiny fraction of 
virology labs.
    Second, the U.S. and other governments should limit access 
to synthetic viral DNA. The California State legislature 
recently passed well-targeted legislation with this intent, but 
it was vetoed on the grounds that security bills should be 
enacted federally.
    Third, the U.S. could work with China on these issues, 
because this is one case where our interests are aligned. Both 
Nations have little to gain and much to lose if pandemic 
viruses become widely accessible. Any diplomatic benefits or 
leverage that we gain here could be applied to more sensitive 
challenges.
    Fourth, as the other witnesses have emphasized, we should 
invest in detecting biological threats early. A sequencing-
based nucleic acid observatory focused on travel hubs, such as 
airports, could reliably detect any emerging biological threat, 
and it could be done using current technology, we believe, for 
less than a billion dollars a year. This would improve our 
response time to all pandemics and deter attacks.
    Last, Congress could amend the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 to 
regulate all viruses with evidence suggestive of pandemic 
potential through the Federal Select Agent Program, which 
applies to all research as well as export control.
    If we act now, we can greatly reduce the chance that 
viruses will be used as weapons. Pandemic virus prediction is a 
needless game of Russian roulette, and we keep adding more 
ammunition. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Esvelt follows:]

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    Mr. Bera. Thank you.
    Let me now recognize my good friend, the ranking member, 
the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Chabot, for 5 minutes of 
questioning.
    Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and, again, 
thank you for holding this, what I think is a very, very 
important meeting, and I want to commend all of the witnesses 
for their testimony this morning.
    Dr. Esvelt, I am going to turn to you if I can. Since the 
beginning of this pandemic, I think, to a considerable degree, 
the American public has been misinformed, kind of misled, first 
of all, obviously, by the PRC but to some degree, the coverage 
in the media as far as the relative likelihood that a lab leak 
actually caused this pandemic. So I have a few questions.
    First of all, it is my understanding that lab leaks, even 
in this country but especially in other parts across the globe, 
are, you know, pretty safe, but that lab leaks do happen, in 
fact, much more often than the general public or the media seem 
to appreciate. Could you comment on that, and you know, how 
frequently do such lab leaks actually occur?
    Mr. Esvelt. That is an excellent question, Ranking Member 
Chabot. There is well-documented evidence that hundreds of lab 
leaks, involving dangerous pathogens, occur around the world. 
This evidence is so substantial--of course, most of them do not 
involve potential pandemic viruses--but nevertheless we know 
that the risk is nontrivial.
    To the extent that we add one more to the list, whether or 
not we can do so, doesn't change our assessment of the risk, 
which is that it is definitely nontrivial. I am not saying that 
some of these experiments cannot be performed safely in theory, 
but in practice, we are all human, and humans do make mistakes.
    Mr. Chabot. Thank you. Let me ask you specifically this. 
How many times, for example, was there a SARS leak in the PRC, 
in a lab in China?
    Mr. Esvelt. There were two known occasions--at least two 
known occasions confirmed of leaks of SARS 1 after the initial 
outbreak. One of them actually did lead to a chain of 
transmission through people associated with the laboratory 
members that experienced the leak.
    Mr. Chabot. Thank you. And I think, you know, much of the 
world, unfortunately, is woefully behind in getting their 
healthcare systems up to the standards that are set by the 
international health regulations, and that is why I have been 
working very closely with my Democratic colleague, Gerry 
Connolly, on the Global Health Security Act.
    We have been working on that now for a number of years, and 
I would want to add that it was somewhat prescient, and I want 
to say, particularly on Mr. Connolly's part, because we 
introduced this prior to COVID. It was almost a year prior to 
COVID that we introduced this legislation, and then the COVID 
came around, you know, was facing us around the corner.
    So could you talk about, right now, even, you know, if our 
standards are very good here in the United States, if they are 
not up to par in other countries across the globe, how it can 
affect us here at home? And obviously COVID is the best 
example, but why should we care? Why should we--for example, 
you know, we give assistance across the globe, with all kinds 
of recommendation how that assistance or requirements of how 
that assistance is utilized.
    How do things across the globe, how can they affect us here 
at home? Why should we care about that?
    Mr. Esvelt. Well, unfortunately, a leak of a pandemic-
capable virus anywhere in the world will most certainly come to 
affect us here in the United States unless it can be contained 
elsewhere. And, as noted, many countries have much less 
sophisticated systems for detection and containment.
    It is also certainly true that, even in the United States 
in well regarded labs, leaks do happen. So the risk is not zero 
anywhere in the world, and it is arguably more severe elsewhere 
for certain.
    So I do not mean to say that we should not support other 
countries in monitoring the animal-human interface, as Dr. 
Adalja suggested, and in assisting them in detecting threats as 
early as possible and containing them before they get to 
American shores.
    But supporting other nations in directly culturing these 
kinds of viruses in the lab does risk lab leaks. Or what is 
more, if we identify a pandemic-capable virus anywhere in the 
world and we publish it, then a malevolent actor, anywhere in 
the world, could assemble it using available published 
protocols and deliberately release it as a weapon of mass 
destruction.
    So that kind of research, pandemic virus prediction, simply 
cannot be performed safely anywhere in the world.
    Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much, Doctor.
    Mr. Chairman, my time is expired, and I yield back.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
    Let me now recognize the gentlelady from Nevada, Ms. Titus, 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank our 
witnesses. I am glad that Dr. Esvelt made it back. I had a 
question for him. And I know he is an expert on this, and if we 
didn't know it from his resume, we could tell it from the white 
board behind him. It is very impressive.
    We have talked a lot about what happens in the lab, but I 
would like to extend that and talk about the relationship 
between biosecurity and climate change. Climate change leads to 
demographic changes. People move, animals move, the weather 
changes, patterns that affect growth of crops.
    All of those things seem to be related in some way to 
biosecurity, and I wonder if you could address that 
relationship and how we might look at this bigger picture, not 
just the labs.
    Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Congresswoman. So the idea you have 
so well articulated is often called One Health, and the idea is 
that the health of animals and the environment and people is 
all connected, most obviously because viruses and other 
pathogens can spread between animals and people. And, as we 
have seen with SARS 2, that can even occur back, and possibly 
back and forth. We are not certain.
    So monitoring the health of the environment and animals and 
detecting animal outbreaks could potentially allow us to 
anticipate threats to humans. Whether the risk of natural 
pandemics resulting from spillover from animals to humans is 
greater now than before is--has been advanced as a hypothesis. 
There isn't a lot of data to support that one way or another.
    To the extent that we are forcing wild animals into contact 
with humans as we advance into the environment, that should 
increase the risk.
    On the other hand, more people now live in cities than 
before, which might imply fewer people in direct contact with 
those animals.
    But it is certainly true that the impacts on the 
environment can come back to affect our health in direct ways. 
So I fully support the sorts of monitoring programs that 
examine the animal-human interface, as those really could 
detect nascent pandemics before they actually spread out of 
control.
    That is very distinct from surveying for animal viruses, 
the vast majority of which will never actually come in contact 
with humans but, if identified, could be deliberately assembled 
and released as a weapon.
    Ms. Titus. Well, thank you for that answer. It kind of 
confirms what I just suspected on an informal level, and I 
would like it if we could look into that, Mr. Chairman, see if 
there is some way we can be supportive of that kind of 
research.
    Thank you, Doctor.
    I would ask Dr. Yassif, we have had different responses to 
the COVID. Different States have different degrees of 
prevention or cure. Different countries have come on earlier, 
later.
    Do you think it is better for us to have universal 
standards that everybody follows so we are all on the same 
page, or is it better to respond individually with 
circumstances that differ how we can meet those as opposed to 
being bound by one set of rules?
    Dr. Yassif. Well, thank you so much for that really 
important and timely question. I think the challenge of finding 
a way for every country to lead its own pandemic responses and 
mitigation efforts while having an integrated global response 
is not trivial, but it is important to get it right.
    I think the short answer is it is sort of a balance between 
the two sort of poles that you are talking about. One is having 
a shared global standard while still allowing countries the 
flexibility to respond, as appropriate, based on their needs 
and capabilities. And I think this has got a few pieces.
    So, first, I think at the international level what we 
really need is a more integrated and effective early warning 
system associated with the WHO sort of alert and warning 
system, the Public Health Emergency of International Concern 
declaration.
    That needs to be strengthened, and we at NTI have 
recommended that it shift from a binary sort of yes/no signal 
to something that is more--to something that has multiple 
grades so that it provides information to countries about how 
bad an emerging pandemic risk might be.
    So we just need to strengthen that system so countries have 
better sense of what the risk is over the horizon even, 
perhaps, before it might have materialized. And I think to make 
that really--you can think about the early stages of COVID, 
perhaps in February and March 2020, when we saw it start to 
break out in certain parts of the world, but we weren't really 
sure how serious it was. And we need to really do better in 
terms of early intelligence--epidemic intelligence in sort of 
thinking about the emerging risks of a new pandemic.
    Second I would offer is that countries--you know, I think 
the shared approach that countries should offer is proactive 
response, that is, you know, triggered early response to 
emerging pandemics, not wait for mounting case counts and 
fatality because then it is too late.
    But, fundamentally, countries around the world have 
different populations and different capabilities, and so they 
will have to have flexibility within that system to respond 
effectively. Thank you.
    Ms. Titus. Thank you.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Let me now recognize the 
gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Houlahan, for 5 minutes of 
questioning.
    Ms. Houlahan. Hi all, and thank you so much for the 
conversation. It has been riveting and terrifying all at the 
same time. And I have been trying to compose my questions, and 
I have so many of them and no real good way to articulate them 
into one cogent question.
    Dr. Esvelt, I think your testimony was perhaps the most 
devastating, and so, at the same time, I hear optimism coming 
that we will be able to manage and control future pandemics, 
but I am concerned and confused where the advice is, you know, 
basically, not to make it too exaggerated, but we should stick 
our heads in the collective sand and not look up or around 
because of the implications that bad actors would have if we 
were to be able to understand what the threats are.
    So I also look at the response that the Nation took and the 
world has taken to COVID-19--and this has something to do with 
Representative Titus' line of questions--which is, we have done 
horribly as a collective in terms of managing what happened 
with COVID-19.
    And even had we had advance warning and a couple weeks of 
warning, I am not certain that we would end up in much of a 
different place than we are. And so here we are, optimism 
coming from you all and advice to, you know, not look around, 
but we really have mismanaged this one.
    How can we possibly do this better, and what is your 
prescription for the average person, citizen, to be able to 
prevent this from happening and for it to, you know--I am just 
trying to figure out, like, what do we do to prevent another 
pandemic from happening if we are not going to look around and 
understand what it is, if we are not going to develop cures or 
techniques to address those issues, and if we have got a 
population that is uncompliant? And I would love to turn that 
over to my fellow MIT person, Dr. Esvelt.
    Mr. Esvelt. Thank you for that very difficult question. So 
I think, to be blunt, we are in a very bad place, and even with 
very substantial investments, we will still struggle against a 
truly nasty pandemic.
    In my assessment, something deliberate could be much worse 
than anything that is natural, simply because something that is 
natural is a single point of spillover and involves a single 
virus, where something deliberate could be multiple points in 
travel hubs with multiple viruses. So that is why I say 
deliberate would be worse.
    Also, engineered would be worse, but that is something that 
I really would prefer that we not discuss today.
    If we want to be actually immune to future pandemics, as 
The Honorable Andy Weber has indicated, I think we need early 
warning, metagenomic sequencing systems, especially in travel 
hubs, so we know what it is.
    Once we know what it is, then we can figure out where it is 
with diagnostics.
    But then we need to ensure that food distribution, water 
distribution, and power all stay on, healthcare remains 
operational in the teeth of a 30 percent-plus lethality 
pandemic.
    And I think that can only be done by investing in new 
personal protective equipment. Make it comfortable, as good as 
a powered air purifying respirator today. And it needs to be 
reliable enough that all essential workers can be confident 
going out there in that kind of a pandemic and keeping our 
civilization intact.
    If we do that, then I think we will be resistant to just 
about any kind of pandemic. I am not confident in our ability 
to reliably come up with vaccines or any kind of countermeasure 
against every kind of threat.
    Note that we still do not have an HIV vaccine. Note how 
long it took us to get Paxlovid, although I would love to see 
that approved immediately. These things are amazing when you 
can get them, but we should not assume they are possible.
    Whereas gear that can prevent Americans from getting 
infected in the first place, that will always work. And I am 
not saying stick our heads in the sand on this. I am saying 
build a network to ensure that whatever it is, we can see it 
when it comes. But that the vast majority of pandemic-capable 
viruses out there, whether they are in nature or whether they 
do not exist yet and scientists are trying to evolve them, the 
vast majority of those would never hit us anyway.
    Even if we had advance warning of a particular one, mRNA 
vaccine design can be done in a day now. So, if we can get a 
virus, we are going to have it almost immediately. And so 
advance knowledge of a particular virus out there that is going 
to come and bite us actually doesn't save us any time, as long 
as we are willing to combine Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials, which 
I would like to think we would certainly do in a pandemic.
    So that is why I say I do not think knowing a particular 
virus as a threat is going to help us respond, and I also do 
not think we are really going to invest the kind of money 
needed to develop vaccines for what are probably hundreds of 
existing pandemic-capable viruses out there in nature. That 
just doesn't seem practical to me.
    So I would prefer to work on preparedness plans that would 
work for everything across the board.
    Ms. Houlahan. And so these detection systems that you are 
talking about that are at airports, et cetera, I am assuming 
that these are some sort of passive detection systems, that 
they do not require anybody participating in them in any way, 
shape, or form?
    And, you know, help me understand as a layperson, how would 
a passive detection system, where you do not have a cataloguing 
of what it is that you are looking for, do you even know that 
you have seen something? If that makes any sense.
    Mr. Esvelt. That is a great question, and briefly, the 
answer is, any serious biological threat must be growing 
exponentially. So, if we sequence all the nucleic acids out 
there, all of the RNA and DNA, because viruses can come in 
either form, and we just look for the sequence fragments that 
are growing rapidly in abundance, that is a biological threat. 
And every biological threat will display that signature. And we 
think that by looking for it, we can reliably find anything of 
that variety.
    So that is when I say, even if an adversary designs 
something to be undetectable by targeted probes, looking for 
the kinds of viruses we know are threats, we will still be able 
to detect it using metagenomic sequencing in that way.
    Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Doctor.
    Is my time out?
    Mr. Bera. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Houlahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Bera. Let me go ahead and recognize the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Lieu, for 5 minutes of questioning.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you, Chair Bera, for holding this important 
hearing.
    My first question goes to Dr. Adalja. I saw that in your 
biography, you previously worked on the anthrax issue.
    I note that I was vaccinated for anthrax when I served on 
Active Duty in the military. I served overseas, and my question 
to you is about vaccines. Would you agree with me that vaccines 
are one of the best ways to mitigate pandemics?
    Dr. Adalja. Thank you for that question. Yes. I think when 
it comes to any infectious disease, prevention is always better 
than treatment, especially if you have a safe and effective 
vaccine. So vaccines have to be a cornerstone of our medical 
countermeasure policy because that is what takes a threat off 
the table, that is what reduces severity from illness, and that 
ultimately is what we have to aim for by looking at what is out 
there in the threatscape that we know can cause infection and 
starting to work toward vaccines. Even if it may not be the 
exact vaccines that is used during an epidemic or a pandemic, 
making those steps down the road will get us a much faster 
response. The work that people did on the first SARS and Middle 
East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS, made it much easier to develop 
a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 because they already knew, for 
example, that the spike protein was an important target for 
immunity.
    So, yes, vaccines are always going to be one of the 
cornerstones for medical countermeasures.
    Mr. Lieu. And it also turns out that our immune system is 
pretty smart. So, when we put vaccines in and train our immune 
system, even with the variants, our immune system still sort of 
figures it out, that, oh, maybe, this is something we need to 
take care of. So, while the vaccines may not be a hundred 
percent effective, they are still somewhat effective at making 
the immune system better against even a variants. Isn't that 
correct?
    Dr. Adalja. Right. If you have an effective vaccine, it is 
very hard for a variant or a mutation to erase all the 
protection the vaccine gives you. Vaccines are not all or none. 
It is not an on-or-off switch. It is a spectrum of protection.
    So, even if a vaccine may allow you to get infected, other 
arms of the immune system, other than the antibodies, may 
protect you against the severe consequences. So, even when you 
have a vaccine that is not 100 percent, that is not a magic bug 
zapper, you still get benefits from them, and they are 
beneficial.
    This underscores what we do with the influenza vaccine 
every year. We know it is much more protective against severe 
disease than it is protection against mild disease, and that is 
also true for the COVID-19 vaccines.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you. This question is for Dr. Esvelt. You 
said something interesting about combining Phase 1 and Phase 2 
trials. Can you explain the difference between Phase 1 and 
Phase 2 trials for vaccine development?
    Mr. Esvelt. Thank you, Representative. Yes. A Phase 1 trial 
normally seeks to establish the safe dosage and doesn't try to 
figure out whether or not a vaccine actually is effective 
against the given pathogen.
    Phase 2 is when we give it to enough people, some of whom 
we know will become infected, that we will be able to tell how 
effective the vaccine actually is.
    So, when I suggest combining Phase 1 and Phase 2, if there 
is a pandemic there is very high lethality, much higher than 
SARS 2, then, in all likelihood, we would want to get shots 
into arms sooner rather than later, if necessary, trying 
multiple different doses of the same vaccine in different 
cohorts.
    Honestly, if we are serious about it, we would actually run 
challenge trials in which we take volunteer cohorts, guarantee 
them the best medical care and deliberately infect them, some 
of whom would have vaccinated with different vaccines in 
different amounts.
    Mr. Lieu. In a high-lethality pandemic, would the FDA have 
authority to do this, or would there need to be a change to a 
law for them to combine the trials and speed things up?
    Mr. Esvelt. That is an excellent question. I am afraid I do 
not know. I suspect Dr. Adalja may know.
    Mr. Lieu. Does anyone on the panel know?
    Dr. Adalja. If I can, sir, I do think that this is 
something that has been--that is in the public health authority 
laws of the FDA. I do not know that for sure, but I do think 
there has been a lot of discussion about running Phase 1 and 
Phase 2 simultaneously. And I think that there is not any 
obstacle to doing so, and it would be necessary during a 
pandemic to get the vaccine as quickly as possible to meet 
these hundred-day goals that we hear talked about.
    Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
    And now let me speak to my Republican colleagues across the 
aisle. We need your help to counter vaccine disinformation. As 
you have just heard, vaccines are one of the most effective 
ways to mitigate a pandemic, and yet we have lots of folks 
believing that these vaccines have microchips in them or that 
they cause autism or that they are going to give you COVID or 
other crazy things, and all of that is false.
    And so we simply need Republican colleagues to step up and, 
when they go on Fox News, just push back on their hosts who are 
saying crazy stuff about these vaccines because that is how we 
can beat this pandemic by getting as many people vaccinated as 
quickly as possible.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
    Let me now recognize the gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. 
Spanberger, for 5 minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Spanberger. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to 
our witnesses today, thank you so much for being here. This has 
been extraordinarily interesting, frightening, but I believe 
that the way that we prepare ourselves for the threats that 
exist is by facing them head on. So I truly appreciate your 
honest assessments and the information you shared.
    I also am thankful that the chair and the ranking member 
included the term ``deterrence'' in the title of today's 
hearing, because, you know, frankly the best defense against 
future biothreats is our ability to quickly mitigate the spread 
of them and the effects of any biological agent.
    And a critical part of any biosecurity deterrence strategy 
is ensure that the United States has the manufacturing capacity 
to quickly ramp up our production, if necessary, medical 
countermeasures in the event of an emergency.
    And I am sure all of our witnesses know, active 
pharmaceutical ingredients are the base ingredients for 
producing essential generic medicines, but, unfortunately, 87 
percent of facilities that produce APIs are overseas.
    Our healthcare system suffers routine shortages, even 
outside of emergencies, and our reliance on foreign suppliers 
really jeopardizes our ability to keep Americans healthy.
    For example, the U.S. has lost the capacity to produce 
penicillin here at home. That should be kind of a flashing 
warning sign to those who are focused on how prepared we may be 
into the future to ultimately deter or respond to future 
biosecurity threats or even supply chain challenges.
    I introduced a bill called the PREPARE Act. It is a 
bipartisan piece of legislation to identify the essential 
generic medicines that are necessary for us to have, as a 
Nation, available at all times and to authorize the creation of 
a stockpile of active pharmaceutical ingredients so that we can 
ensure that our pharmaceutical supply chain is always able to 
produce the essential medicines that we need in the event of an 
emergency.
    Certainly my district in central Virginia is leading the 
way in ensuring robust domestic supply of essential medicines, 
which is why I am so focused on this issue.
    The bipartisan PREPARE Act would provide statutory 
authorization for this important Federal effort and would 
create thousands of well-paid jobs, improve patients' access to 
medicines, and bolster our national biosecurity.
    And all of this kind of preface leads me to my question. 
Either for Mr. Weber or for Dr. Adalja, how does strengthening 
the domestic production capacity of essential medicines and 
other medical countermeasures improve our Nation's ability to 
deter biosecurity threats?
    Again, assuming you agree with that assertion, if you could 
comment on that.
    Mr. Weber. Yes, yes, thank you for your leadership in this 
area. It is very important, and I will just give you one 
example. Smallpox. We vaccinate our forces against smallpox. We 
have a stockpile of enough for every American in our Strategic 
National Stockpile, and I think just that fact is deterrence.
    It tells our adversaries that smallpox would not be 
successful as a weapon against the United States and its 
citizens.
    So that kind of preparedness deterrence, by having those 
capacities to respond, I think, are key. And onshoring those 
capabilities here in the United States to surge and rapidly 
manufacture all of these medical countermeasures is vital to 
not just public health but to U.S. national security.
    Ms. Spanberger. Thank you, Mr. Weber.
    Dr. Adalja, would you add anything to that?
    Dr. Adalja. I completely agree. I liken medical 
countermeasures to almost an anti-ballistic missile defense 
system, that the more prepared we are for these threats, 
natural or deliberate, the less likely they are to be used. And 
I think the smallpox example is a great one, and I think--and I 
applaud your leadership on the PREPARE Act because I have 
worked on this issue in the past, where we know that there are 
many active pharmaceutical ingredients that all trace back to 
one place. And, if there is a supply chain disruption, it 
becomes really disastrous.
    And I think we need a lot more redundancy when it comes to 
certain medical countermeasures that should be thought of as 
part of national security.
    Ms. Spanberger. So, Dr. Adalja, just following up briefly 
on that point, you know, the World Health Organization 
maintains the list of essential medicines since I guess at 
least 2007, but only in 2020 did FDA publish its first list of 
essential medicines.
    As new pathogens and biothreats emerge, how can the 
government identify the essential medicines and medical 
countermeasures for the threats that exist, that we, as a 
Nation, will want to have to protect our people and our 
servicemembers?
    Dr. Adalja. It will have to have a lot of clinical read-in 
to what is actually effective, what drugs are being used, which 
ones are in trials, which ones are promising but not yet 
approved.
    All of those should be on the radar of people that are 
trying to figure out how to augment the Strategic National 
Stockpile and how to think about what needs to have redundancy 
in supply chains.
    Ms. Spanberger. Excellent.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Again, to our witnesses, thank you so much for your time 
today. It is extraordinarily helpful as we think about what 
Congress' role should be in making sure we are protecting our 
people.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
    Let me now recognize the gentlelady from North Carolina, 
Ms. Manning, for 5 minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our 
witnesses for being with us today on this important topic.
    Mr. Weber, I am interested in what you started talking 
about at the beginning of your testimony about the strategy of 
deterrence of denial.
    And I am wondering what exactly that would have meant, how 
could it have been used to prevent COVID from becoming 
international? What systems did we not have in place, and why?
    Mr. Weber. Well, we didn't have a system of early warning 
rapid detection--a global system. This pandemic could have been 
stopped in its tracks in China if they had had a robust system 
of early warning.
    And then the other part is rapid diagnostics, testing, and 
contact tracing, and then countermeasures like platform--
programmable platforms like the mRNA vaccine. If we could have 
had that not in 10 months but in a hundred days or even less, 
that would give us tools to respond to any biological threat, 
whether it is engineered as a biological weapon or naturally 
occurring.
    So it is that system; it is all about time, time to detect, 
to know there is a problem, and then to isolate it and have 
those rapid countermeasures available so we can prevent them 
from spreading from the source to different places around the 
world.
    Ms. Manning. So would that have required cooperation or 
first steps by the Chinese, or could we have had people in 
place who could have instigated that kind of a deterrence-by-
denial system?
    Mr. Weber. Well, the deterrence-by-denial strategy that I 
laid out is primarily to prevent the deliberate use of 
biological weapons against the United States, its partners, and 
its allies around the world.
    Pandemic prevention is a subset of that, I believe, and 
yes, we could have had in place a system of information-sharing 
and metagenomic testing that would have given the Chinese a 
better capability and prepared us better for a possible spread 
to this country. But we didn't have----
    Ms. Manning. I am sorry. We didn't have?
    Mr. Weber. We didn't have those systems in place.
    And it is going to require a sustained investment. I do not 
want to say this is going to be easy.
    [inaudible.]
    Ms. Manning. OK. All right. Thank you.
    Mr. Adalja, I appreciated your answer to Mr. Lieu that 
vaccines are a critically important first line of defense 
against a pandemic, and I certainly echo Mr. Lieu's comments to 
our colleagues, because we have seen an almost unimaginable 
level of vaccine hesitancy and an anti-vax movement that has 
dramatically harmed our effort to prevent the spread of COVID.
    I would like your thoughts, Dr. Adalja, about what steps we 
could take to get ahead of this problem the next time around, 
and by ``this problem,'' I mean vaccine hesitancy or an anti-
vax movement.
    How can we develop our population in a way that the people 
are not just willing but anxious to get vaccinated to prevent 
the spread of a future pandemic?
    Dr. Adalja. Thank you for that question. I think this is 
one of the most important aspects of the pandemic that we did 
to think about and reflect on to get us prepared for the next 
pandemic, because vaccine hesitancy is a major threat.
    No one imagined that we would, in the United States, still 
be facing the onslaught of this pandemic, not because we didn't 
have a vaccine but because people chose not to take the 
vaccine.
    And I think that this self-inflicted wound is really 
something that is going to make us all think about how to make 
us--how we make ourselves more resilient, even if we have these 
great tools, if no one wants to utilize them.
    So I think that we, as a medical community, and I am an 
infectious disease physician, have to be very proactive. The 
vaccine hesitancy movement has been something that has been 
coming at us for some time, basically since the dawn of 
vaccines.
    But, with measles, mumps, rubella, with Gardasil, they 
continually meet each new vaccine with misinformation, and I 
think we have to really call it out as something that takes 
lives, and we can't be passive and try and debunk them only 
after they bring these things up.
    We have to have a tool kit to talk to people, to train 
physicians, train healthcare providers to be able to almost 
vaccinate people against the anti-vaccine movement by showing 
them how to think about this data and allowing them to really 
actually just open their eyes and see the benefits of vaccines, 
the fact that decades have been added to all of our lives 
because of vaccines, hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
    And to me it is mind-boggling, and it is frustrating. It is 
almost as if it is the voice of the Dark Ages that has gained 
access to internet technology and has allowed itself to spread 
so much bad information out there.
    But this is--I do not think it is going to be one single 
solution. It really has to be the whole healthcare community, 
the whole medical community, scientific community, as well as 
policymakers that call this out for dangerous it is and take 
the fight to them, instead of being merely reactive.
    Ms. Manning. Thank you.
    My time has expired. I yield back.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Let me recognize the gentlelady 
from Missouri, Mrs. Wagner, for 5 minutes of questioning.
    Mrs. Wagner. I thank the chair very much, and I think our 
witnesses for their time today.
    The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense suffering, and we 
grieve the millions of victims who have lost their lives.
    As we continue to combat COVID-19, we must acknowledge 
that, right from the outset of this devastating crisis, the 
Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, suppressed, misrepresented, 
and falsified information necessary to prevent a pandemic in 
clear violation of the international health regulations.
    Holding the CCP accountable is the only way to deter the 
release of another deadly virus on the global community in the 
future and ensure that the Communist Party stops violating 
international laws.
    That is why I introduced the Compensation for Americans 
Act, which will establish a compensation fund for those 
affected and allow the President to freeze Chinese assets to 
bring the Communist Party to the negotiating table and give the 
United States a comprehensive toolbox of punitive measures to 
further incentivize China's cooperation.
    However, the United States must also lead efforts to reform 
the international organizations and laws governing pandemic 
prevention and response to ensure there are real consequences 
for putting all nations at risk of a deadly outbreak.
    The United States alone cannot prevent the next pandemic. 
Every member of the international community must honor their 
legal obligations to defend against emerging biothreats.
    And the World Health Organization's failure to combat 
China's coronavirus-related misinformation campaign in the 
early days of the pandemic cost the international community 
precious time it needed to avert a crisis.
    And the WHO remains a deeply flawed institution and is 
highly susceptible to China's malign influence.
    Assist Secretary Weber, what reforms to the WHO are needed 
to prevent authoritarian States like China from co-opting 
global health policy to serve their interests? What leverage, I 
would say, does the United States have to secure these badly 
needed reforms?
    Mr. Weber. Well, I think the first thing that was 
unfortunate was several years ago we pulled out of the WHO and 
lost our influence there.
    It is great that the United States is back at the table and 
using our influence, but we need to strengthen the 
international health regulations.
    We need to support this new pandemic treaty initiative that 
will close some of the gaps that exist in the IHRs, and we need 
to make this a priority.
    But it should be in the interest of all nations to work 
together against what is clearly a global and increasing threat 
of pandemics and biological weapons.
    And I think it is very important that this hearing is being 
held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, because it is a 
global problem, and there is no, you know, single-nation 
solution to it.
    We have to work with partners around the world, even 
difficult partners, if we are going to get ahead of this 
problem.
    Mrs. Wagner. Dr. Esvelt, the State Department's 2021 arms 
control report States that the People's Republic of China has 
been, quote, engaged in activities with dual-use applications 
and that the U.S. does not have sufficient information to 
determine whether China eliminated its biological weapons 
program.
    Can you tell me what type of dual-use activities are 
scientists in the PRC engaged in, and do you believe the PRC is 
complying with its obligations under the Biological Weapons 
Convention? Dr. Esvelt?
    Mr. Esvelt. Thank you for the questions. The scientists in 
China, like those elsewhere in the world, have definitely been 
attempting to identify pandemic-capable pathogens.
    They have, additionally, in pursuit of that goal, been 
exploring whether combinations of potentially risky viruses are 
more infectious and more transmissible than the natural wild 
versions.
    Whether that is a violation of the Biological Weapons 
Convention is very much a legal and international question. If 
it is, then many nations would need to change their behavior on 
this.
    But whether or not it is true, pandemic virus prediction 
definitely contributes to proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction and undermines our national security.
    Mrs. Wagner. I am very concerned about these dual-use 
applications.
    My time has expired. I would like to explore this further, 
and I thank the chairman for this very important hearing. Thank 
you.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. I am going to take chairman's 
prerogative, if I can, and ask an additional question. And I am 
told Mr. Levin may be joining us shortly.
    You know, we talked a little bit about countermeasures as 
one of our best strategies for deterrence. I think it is quite 
remarkable that we were able to come up with a vaccine within 
10 months' time.
    I have heard several of you suggest that if we can narrow 
that down to a hundred days, that would--obviously the shortest 
possible time. My sense is, with the mRNA technology, we can 
achieve that hundred-day goal. Is that the right target at this 
point that we should be thinking about, Dr. Adalja, or any of 
the witnesses?
    Dr. Adalja. Thanks for that question. I think 100 days is 
what has been articulated, and I think that is something to aim 
for. Whether it is a hundred days or 180 days or 150 days I 
think doesn't matter so much. The point is that we have the 
technology to speed vaccine development, and even just a week 
faster would have saved lives in the United States, for 
example, if the Pfizer vaccine was available a week later.
    So we do have to be much more innovative harnessing these 
vaccine technologies at the same time, but we also have to be 
cognizant of the fact that the vaccine hesitancy movement is 
going to say this happened even faster, and that may end up 
becoming a problem.
    But I do think that it is not a scientific problem now to 
get vaccines faster, and I think we have to really incentivize 
companies to move quickly and rapidly characterize these 
threats and develop vaccines, and I think it can be done.
    Mr. Bera. So the scientific component of it might be 
easiest component, looking at the regulatory process of having 
Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials ready to go in a pandemic, and then 
obviously the faster they are, how we market those vaccines and 
address the hesitancy.
    I have got one last question, then I will turn it back over 
to Mr. Levin and recognize Mr. Levin.
    We have also talked about surveillance a little bit. 
Something I have explored and talked to some of our technology 
companies is how we use technology, you know, search terms, et 
cetera, as a form of surveillance.
    And, you know, I would be curious if, you know, any of the 
experts that we have on as witnesses have any thoughts on that. 
You know, if all of a sudden a certain area people are 
searching ``fever,'' searching particular search terms, is that 
an area that we should explore in terms of biosurveillance, how 
we work with the tech sector? Maybe Dr. Yassif.
    Dr. Yassif. Thank you, Chairman Bera. I really appreciate 
that question. I do think that we need to think creatively 
about using all the different and emerging new technologies 
that are at our disposal to take creative approaches to 
biosurveillance.
    So the kind of Google search and base strategy that you are 
describing is something that, you know, Google and others have 
tried to do in the past I think with some success, but you 
know, in some ways, mixed results.
    But I think over time we are seeing more and more different 
types of data streams come online that we could think about 
integrating into a 21st century strategy for biosurveillance.
    And I think that could be really useful for early detection 
of emerging infectious disease outbreaks so that we can stop 
outbreaks at the source, which is critical as the other 
witnesses have shared.
    And it may also perhaps yield other types of information 
that could help us more reliably attribute the source of 
outbreaks in the event that we are not sure if they were 
natural or not, and we are thinking about that in the context 
of our joint assessment mechanism that I discussed in my 
testimony.
    And, if I may, I just wanted to offer one more thought 
about the role of vaccines and the other capabilities for 
ensuring that the United States and the globe can respond 
effectively to pandemics.
    And I absolutely agree with all the comments that have been 
made about the critical importance of vaccines and the critical 
importance of platform technologies and that the most robust 
thing we can do is to be prepared to be surprised and that we 
shouldn't assume that we will know in advance where the next 
pandemic threat will emerge from, and we absolutely need to 
have a flexible and adaptable response, and it has to be quick. 
I could not agree more.
    But I would also offer that we need nonpharmaceutical 
interventions in the interim. So, when we saw with COVID it 
took us well over a year and actually quite a lot longer to 
have a vaccine that was developed, tested, and ready to go. And 
we should absolutely accelerate those timelines. I think that 
is a high priority.
    But we need to acknowledge that there is going to be a lag 
time, and in that interim, the virus will spread, and lives 
will be lost, and economies will be damaged.
    And social distancing and nonpharmaceutical interventions 
can be incredibly valuable for slowing the chains of 
transmission and saving lives during a public health emergency 
of international concern.
    And we shouldn't be winging it during a pandemic. We should 
have plans in place. We should have--national governments 
around the world should have response plans in place for a 
high-consequence biological event where you are triggering 
proactive early response that incorporates these kinds of 
provisions for national and global response in addition to all 
the other important medical countermeasures and other 
provisions that we have been discussing. Thank you.
    Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you.
    Let me now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. 
Levin, for 5 minutes of questioning.
    Mr. Levin. Thank you so much, Chairman Bera, for holding 
this really important hearing and for your leadership on these 
issues.
    I want to talk about arms control and its relationship with 
biothreats.
    You know, the COVID pandemic has made the importance of 
international cooperation in the face of emerging biothreats 
abundantly clear, and it appears that all the witnesses before 
the subcommittee today would agree that we have to improve 
international cooperation among national governments and 
international organizations on biosecurity issues if we hope to 
prevent more severe threats in the future.
    Despite the U.S. and Russia being in communication on arms 
control, which is certainly an improvement from the last 4 
years, it is my sense that real progress toward another major 
arms control agreement is stalled.
    So I am curious whether you think that investing in 
international cooperation and negotiations with other 
governments on biosecurity would also yield benefits for 
broader arms control efforts.
    For instance, could the U.S. leverage cooperation on 
biosecurity as we seek to address the arsenals of other nuclear 
powers?
    Now, Mr. Weber, you Stated in your testimony that we could 
more effectively deter the use of bioweapons if U.S. policy 
were explicitly to State that U.S. nuclear weapons' sole 
purpose was to deter the use of nuclear weapons.
    Why is the threat of nuclear use not credible in deterring 
biological attacks? Could you explain that?
    Mr. Weber. Yes. And I certainly support what Candidate 
Biden said, that we should adopt a sole-purpose strategy, that 
nuclear weapons are for deterring nuclear weapons.
    Traditionally, we have included biothreats, Big Cyber 
threats, chemical threats, as something that we think that 
nuclear weapons are useful in deterring. But the truth is they 
are just not credible. No nation thinks that we would actually 
use nuclear weapons in response to a biological attack. They 
are not credible.
    And that is why we are favoring a deterrence-by-denial 
strategy by having such good early warning and defenses against 
infectious disease--afterall, biological weapons are infectious 
disease--that our adversaries will decide that it is not worth 
pursuing biological weapons because they won't be very 
effective.
    So that is the approach that we are recommending, is 
investing in our biodefenses to make these threats obsolete as 
weapons of mass destruction.
    And we also need to support the efforts to strengthen the 
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which bans biological 
weapons. These activities that are happening in North Korea and 
Russia are already prohibited by the international community, 
and we need to work harder to find mechanisms to strengthen 
that international convention against the development and 
stockpiling of biological weapons.
    Mr. Levin. All right. Well, thanks, and hopefully we can, 
you know, in tandem, improve our, you know, cooperation on 
biological weapons with a revamped effort on arms control in 
terms of nuclear weapons.
    Now, COVID-19 has proved that we can't prevent future 
pandemics alone. It has just blown up the idea of a go-alone 
strategy on foreign policy generally and that expanding health 
capabilities around the globe requires sharing financial 
resources and making strategic investments.
    I understand that Dr. Yassif, in her testimony, has 
recommended that the United States invest in a new multilateral 
financing mechanism for pandemic preparedness that would 
incentivize other governments to invest in their own readiness 
to respond to future pandemics.
    And you were just touching on this, so Dr. Yassif, how can 
we ensure that U.S. investments in international pandemic 
preparedness efforts are targeted effectively?
    Dr. Yassif. Well, thank you, Representative. The issue of 
financing is absolutely critically important, and thank you for 
raising the multilateral pandemic preparedness financing 
mechanism that we have been advocating for.
    And I would also thank the House for being so proactive and 
forward leaning on this issue. We are hoping that Congress can 
really advance this important initiative and get it across the 
finish line, understanding that it is currently the matter of 
active discussion.
    And, you know, we are advocating for this financing 
mechanism because everything we have had in place so far hasn't 
worked. You know, we have seen a cycle of panic and neglect in 
the runup to COVID that has left us woefully unprepared and has 
really led the U.S., and the globe I think, to inadequately 
respond. And so we need a better approach.
    We do not think the United States can or should do it 
alone. We absolutely think other governments should step up and 
put their money on the table and contribute to their own 
pandemic preparedness.
    But absolutely it should be targeted, and it shouldn't just 
be based on the fashion of the day. We should move money to the 
most--to the places where it is most needed and where it can 
have the greatest impact on reducing global biological risks. 
You know, there are a number of tools at our disposal to figure 
out what that is.
    I will share that today NTI, in partnership with the Johns 
Hopkins Center for Health Security, we released 2021 Global 
Health Security Index, which it has a lot of data about 
pandemic preparedness and biosecurity capabilities in countries 
around the world, including gaps and where there is room for 
improvement.
    We put that forward as a tool to help funders within 
government and in the private sector to think about how they 
can most effectively invest their resources to target the areas 
that need the most investment.
    As part of our financing mechanism, the other provision 
that we are thinking about is that countries should absolutely 
be part of the discussion to think about what their own 
internal priorities should be and where they need the greatest 
investment to shore up their vulnerabilities.
    So appreciate the question about targeted financing, I 
couldn't agree more, and fortunately we have at our disposal a 
number of tools that can help make that effective. Thank you.
    Mr. Levin. Thanks. Well, Mr. Chairman, it looks like my 
time is expired, but I will just say, in closing, if I am not 
able to ask this as a further question, that, you know, clearly 
we need to--a multilateral financing mechanism like this would 
need to incentivize efforts to improve transparency and data-
sharing and support countries in doing that as we prepare for 
future biosecurity threats because the kind of idea that South 
Africa and other countries did such a great job in sharing and 
then they seem to be penalized for it, you know, we have to 
figure out ways to get beyond that.
    So thanks, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it.
    Mr. Bera. Thank you.
    And, you know, I think, with that, we have asked all the 
questions. It doesn't look like the ranking member, Mr. Chabot, 
has a closing statement.
    So I want to, you know, commend, you know, each of the 
witnesses for your testimony and look forward to working with 
the other members on this subcommittee, full committee, and 
Congress, to address some of the issues that were raised and 
again defeat COVID-19 but, at the same time, make sure we are 
prepared for the next pandemic or any other biothreats.
    So, again, thank you for the testimony. It was timely.
    And, with that, I will go ahead and bang the gavel, and the 
hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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