Response to Better Biosecurity for the Bioeconomy by David Gillum.

David Gillum makes a compelling and urgent case for improving oversight of high-risk biological research and proposes a National Biosafety and Biosecurity Agency to coordinate what is currently a fragmented federal process. His call for reform comes at a critical moment. As he notes, COVID-19 has created “a rare policy window to design oversight that’s adaptive, collaborative, and capable of earning public trust.”

Yet alongside the structural reforms Gillum proposes, we must address another challenge: the increasing politicization of biosecurity that threatens to undermine any new framework before it can take root.

Historically, biosafety and biosecurity enjoyed broad bipartisan support. In recent years, however, topics that were once confined to small expert circles, such as gain-of-function research aimed at genetically altering a pathogen to enhance its biological function, have become politicized. The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14292 directed agencies to revise or replace the Biden-era Policy on Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential, calling out that administration for allowing “dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight.” While oversight gaps existed, this framing of previous efforts as dangerous failures rather than imperfect frameworks needing refinement is particularly troublesome because it strips away the nuance that biosecurity requires and works against the adaptive, flexible oversight Gillum advocates. When biosecurity becomes partisan, oversight frameworks risk becoming rigid and politically motivated rather than adaptive, shifting with each administration rather than evolving with scientific understanding. Four-year policy cycles cannot build the institutional capacity and expertise that effective biosecurity requires.

Politicization also threatens the public trust that Gillum emphasizes is essential. The COVID-19 response illustrated this issue, where public health guidance became divided along partisan lines. Biosecurity policy risks following the same path, with technical terms such as “dual use research of concern” and “enhanced pandemic potential” increasingly used as political signals rather than carefully defined technical categories.

The stakes of politicization are particularly high given how rapidly the field is changing. Recent work on artificial intelligence-assisted genome design illustrates how biological risks are shifting beyond historic paradigms of physical containment and select agent lists. The oversight frameworks Gillum describes must not just address traditional dual-use research concerns centered on lab-based research, but also must anticipate and react to evolving technological capabilities.

Biological risks don’t respect election cycles or party platforms. If we’re serious about seizing this policy window, we need to actively protect biosecurity from partisan capture. Gillum is right that we need better biosecurity infrastructure for the bioeconomy. But that infrastructure must be built to last beyond any single administration. Only by consciously depoliticizing biosecurity—treating it as the complex, evolving technical challenge it is—can we create the adaptive, collaborative oversight system and public trust necessary to sustain it.