US Expands National Security Scrutiny of Biotechnology Sector

Biotechnology is increasingly viewed in Washington through a national security lens, and even voices connected to the Council on Foreign Relations are openly warning that the United States risks dismantling the foundations of its own biotechnology leadership. The increased US scrutiny of biotechnology transactions has coalesced around three topics: supply chain dependence, biotechnology competition, and biosecurity, driving an expanding web of investment restrictions, export controls, data-transfer prohibitions, and procurement bans.

China currently commands what some observers have described as a "choke point" of the world’s supply of pharmaceutical ingredients, controlling the raw or key starting materials for 94% of amoxicillin, 74% of heparin, and 70% of acetaminophen. A 2025 report from the congressionally-chartered National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warns that "[d]rone warfare will seem quaint if we are faced with genetically enhanced PLA super-soldiers with fused human and artificial intelligence." In June 2026, the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to various US pharmaceutical companies, requesting information on their reported clinical trials in China, including those conducted at hospitals affiliated with the PRC military.

Biosecurity concerns include potential PRC government access to US biometric data, genomic data, health data, and other sensitive biodata, as well as heightened scrutiny of biolabs. The House CCP Committee reported on an illegal biolab discovered in California, run by PRC nationals, housing infectious agents and laboratory mice without required licensing or biosafety oversight. Legal authorities constraining dealings with PRC biotechnology firms include the Entity List, maintained by the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, maintained by the Treasury Department. In December 2021, the Bureau added the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 of its research institutes to the Entity List based on information that they "use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry."

More recently, the US Department of Defense released a Section 1260H list identifying Chinese military companies operating in the United States, including biotech firm WuXi AppTec, previously named in the BIOSECURE Act as a company of concern due to a claimed affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party. The Pentagon’s list identifies WuXi AppTec as being indirectly owned by the Chinese State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. If the BIOSECURE Act is enacted as planned, after a five-year adjustment period, it will restrict certain named companies — including WuXi AppTec — from receiving US government contracts. WuXi AppTec responded by filing a complaint with the US government, challenging its classification as a military entity and claiming that it is instead an independent company, not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.

Governments including the US, China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and India have formulated strategies that position biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy at the centre of economic growth and technological competitiveness. The US National Security Strategy (2025) identifies biotechnology as part of its core national interest, while the European Union’s proposed Biotech Act emphasises biomanufacturing. Treating biotechnology as a strategic security asset deepens the dual-use dilemma, fuels techno-nationalist competition, fragments research cooperation, and risks worsening biosecurity unless managed through cooperative governance. The convergence of biotechnology with artificial intelligence is underway, exemplified by the first fully AI-discovered drug candidate, rentosertib, discovered by Insilico Medicine in 2025.

Biotechnology is strategic infrastructure underpinning economic resilience, public health, national security, and geopolitical influence. China pursued a deliberate national strategy, investing aggressively in scientific infrastructure, translational medicine, manufacturing, clinical development, and biotechnology financing. Its regulatory system accelerated, clinical recruitment became dramatically faster, development costs fell, and licensing activity exploded. Meanwhile, large pharmaceutical companies increasingly waited to license or acquire assets later in development after risk had already been reduced, and systems optimized entirely around efficiency eventually lose resilience.

Observers argue the solution is rebuilding the conditions that made American biotechnology dominant: stable regulation, credible institutions, faster and less expensive clinical development, strong NIH and FDA leadership, modernized capital formation, advanced manufacturing, and incentives that reward long-term innovation rather than quarterly extraction. Initiatives such as BIOBUILD matter as recognition that biotechnology is a strategic national capability. The United States still possesses the world’s greatest concentration of biomedical talent, scientific institutions, venture capability, and translational expertise. The standoff between the Pentagon and WuXi AppTec has also highlighted the need for an educated and bioliterate public, with the executive director of the BioBuilder Educational Foundation stating that "there is a nationalism in biotechnology" and that people need to understand that if China develops a cure for cancer, that is problematic for the United States.