GOV.UK. Cabinet Office. Policy paper. UK Biological Security Strategy (HTML). Published 12 June 2023
Foreword
Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In the dark days of 2020 and 2021, we witnessed the devastating impact of a novel infectious disease outbreak spreading across the world. To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 200,000 people in the UK, close to seven million globally. It ravaged health systems, destroyed economies and damaged livelihoods.
It has been the biggest crisis the UK has faced in generations, and the greatest peacetime challenge in a century. And it has taught us a number of things since the last Biological Security Strategy was published in 2018.
First, our world is increasingly vulnerable to biological threats with catastrophic impacts – whether it is another pandemic, a terrorist attack or antimicrobial resistance. Those threats have only multiplied in recent years, and they overlap and intersect with each other in increasingly complex ways. Second, the pandemic demonstrated the sheer ingenuity and innovation of the UK’s Life Sciences sector, including the phenomenal success of the COVID-19 vaccine development and rollout programme. The partnerships forged between the public, private and philanthropic sectors, allied in their determination to defeat the virus, were an unqualified success, saving countless lives.
We can defeat the threats of the future – but only if we refuse to stand still, and instead continue to innovate and strengthen our health resilience to protect the future wellbeing and economic security of the UK. This new Biological Security Strategy contains a number of new commitments to achieve those aims, including:
- Launching a real-time Biothreats Radar to monitor threats and risks as and when they appear
- Establishing a dedicated minister for the Biological Security Strategy, who will report regularly to Parliament
- Carrying out regular domestic and international exercises
- Creating a UK Biosecurity Leadership Council, to work with businesses and organisations on the ground
Our vision is that by 2030 the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological threats and a world leader in innovation. We will continue to work with like-minded partners and allies globally to move away from the ‘one bug, one drug’ approach of the 20th century, and to ensure the biotechnology innovations of the future are used to help improve our lives and the health of the planet, rather than as a tool for spreading fear.
This strategy plays to our strengths as a country. We are home to some of the best universities in the world. We have the highest number of unicorns in Europe, and we are the continent’s leading biotech hub in breakthrough life-sciences start-ups. The UK is well positioned not just to respond to the biological threats of the future, but to seize the opportunities associated with tackling them – stimulating growth, creating high tech jobs and attracting investment across the country. As the last five years has shown, this work could not be more important.
The Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP,
Deputy Prime Minister
Executive Summary
This Strategy sets out our renewed vision, mission, outcomes and plans to protect the UK and our interests from significant biological risks, no matter how these occur and no matter who or what they affect. It provides the overarching strategic framework for mitigating biological risks within which a number of threat and disease specific UK strategies critically contribute.
Our vision is that, by 2030, the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological threats, and a world leader in responsible innovation, making a positive impact on global health, economic and security outcomes.
Our mission: To implement a UK-wide approach to biosecurity which strengthens deterrence and resilience, projects global leadership, and exploits opportunities for UK prosperity and science and technology (S&T) advantage.
Part One – The Context
Part One describes the strategic drivers and context for the strategy, the nature of the risks we face out to 2030, and the opportunities for UK growth and strategic advantage.
Part Two – Our Response
Part Two sets out our strategic framework, including how we will organise to deliver the priority outcomes.
The Strategy describes the four pillars of our response to biological risks:
- Understand the biological risks we face today and could face in the future.
- Prevent biological risks from emerging (where possible) or from threatening the UK and UK interests.
- Detect, characterise and report biological risks when they do emerge as early and reliably as possible.
- Respond to biological risks that have reached the UK or UK interests to lessen their impact and to enable a rapid return to business as usual.
In addition, three crosscutting enablers run through all four pillars and are drawn out separately:
- UK Leadership, Governance and Coordination: formalise central leadership, governance and accountabilities to strengthen collective decision making and preparedness across the UK.
- UK Science Base, Health and Life Sciences Sectors: strengthening and protecting our specialist biological security capabilities, and stimulating innovation and growth in the Health and Life Sciences sectors across the UK.
- International Leadership: UK engagement to strengthen global health security, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, international biosafety and biosecurity practices and non proliferation instruments and mechanisms.
This Strategy is accompanied by an implementation plan. A high level summary is provided overleaf.
High Level Strategy Implementation Plan
A summary of short, medium and longer term commitments.
| Short Term | |
|---|---|
| Understand | • Scope the development of a Biothreats Radar, assured by experts.
• Increase data and intelligence capture on biological threats to the UK. • Facilitate simpler exchange of data across UK government. • Develop a coordinated biological security communications campaign. |
| Prevent | • Establish a new UK Biological Security Leadership Council: a forum to engage strategically with the Life Sciences and Biotechnology sectors, and develop proportionate and pro-innovation approaches to risk management.
• Work with our allies and partners to build the case for, and consensus on, proposals to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). • Use findings from the Call for Evidence on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to inform the next National Action Plan. |
| Detect | • Scope a networked biosurveillance capability across the UK, linked to the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN), and a strategic approach to diagnostics.
• Continue to mature detection technologies for in-field use, and pilot new environmental threat monitoring systems. • Conduct an audit of, and develop plans to strengthen, the UK’s leading microbial forensics capabilities. |
| Respond | • Lead efforts to implement the 100 Days Mission, including support to the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat.
• Publish generic invasive non-native species contingency plans that cover terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments. • Develop a roadmap towards comprehensive response plans against a spectrum of biological threats. |
| Crosscutting | • Implement formalised leadership and governance structures for oversight of biological security. Establish a dedicated coordination unit in the Cabinet Office.
• Periodically review capability health and take action to address identified gaps. • Stimulate innovation and growth via a pipeline of biological security S&T Missions. |
| Medium Term | |
|---|---|
| Understand | • Deliver a UK biothreats R&D package to strengthen the use of advanced analytics, modelling and simulation in decision making.
• Deliver a coordinated package of exercises on priority biological security scenarios to improve UK preparedness. • Test a UK-wide biological security communications campaign. • Develop a plant health data system to support outbreak response. |
| Prevent | • Undertake a programme of work to minimise the risks from biodata without stifling innovation.
• Introduce new Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures at the Border. • Publish the new National Action Plan for AMR (2024 • 2029). |
| Detect | • Further develop a system-wide approach to UK surveillance capabilities, including developing new nodes or networks towards a pathogen agnostic approach.
• Continue to provide assistance with the development of effective pathogen security, biosafety, diagnostics and disease surveillance in partner countries. • Further develop the UK’s microbial forensics capability. |
| Respond | • Develop a new strategic approach to pandemic preparedness across government.
• Participate in negotiations towards a legally binding instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response with international partners. • Develop an updated capability to effectively remediate a scene contaminated with biological threat material. |
| Crosscutting | • Develop a roadmap for UK specialist biological security S&T infrastructure, capability and skills.
• Scope a new, agile procurement mechanism for commissioning S&T from UK academia and industry, using simplified processes to stimulate innovation. |
| Long Term | |
|---|---|
| Understand | • Implement continuous improvement of the Biothreats Radar, and foresight analytical products.
• Project UK standards and protocols, and sustain support for global initiatives promoting safe data use. • Incorporate behavioural science research into biological security communications campaigns to better inform, test and assess their effectiveness. |
| Prevent | • Continue to promote and develop responsible innovation practices across the UK and internationally.
• Promote UK innovation in biosecurity technologies internationally, attract inward investment, and support UK exports. • Regularly assess and update export controls for dual-use biotechnologies, in collaboration with industry. |
| Detect | • Continue to develop biodetection and monitoring capabilities, collaborating with allies and partners.
• Implement a new strategic approach to diagnostics, including prototype diagnostics against priority pathogens. • Sustain development of UK microbial forensics capabilities. |
| Respond | • Develop and evaluate prototype vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for priority pathogens of pandemic potential.
• Continue to strengthen the UK’s vaccine capability, capacity and resilience, including the supply chain. • Implement, with international partners, a legally binding instrument for pandemic preparedness. |
| Crosscutting | • Continue to play a leading role in international fora to strengthen pandemic preparedness and response.
• Implement the roadmap to develop specialist biological security S&T infrastructure (including high containment laboratories), capability and skills across the UK. • Conduct a stocktake of the Strategy implementation plan to inform future iterations of the Strategy. |
LEARN MORE
- FT. Opinion . Biotech. Governments are waking up to biosecurity risks — but we must act fast.
- We have a narrow window during which to harness AI for good, rather than ill.
- The former Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes AI-designed bioweapons as “a very near-term concern”
- Ultimately, we need to create a series of chokepoints to limit access to dangerous tools. These could include removing information about harmful biology from the training data for AI systems, inserting stringent content controls, and preventing the distribution of software used to design deadly biological agents.
- But at the same time, advances such as mass genetic sequencing and rapidly deployable mRNA vaccines could render bioweapons obsolete and end pandemics for good.
09 JULY 2023
The writer is head of biosecurity policy at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, a UK think-tank
Researchers at MIT recently conducted an experiment. They asked undergraduate students to test whether AI-driven chatbots could be prompted to assist non-experts in causing a pandemic. Within an hour the chatbots had suggested four potential pandemic pathogens, explained how they could be created from synthetic DNA using reverse genetics, and supplied the names of DNA synthesis companies judged unlikely to screen orders.
Developing bioweapons is not that easy, and chatbot instructions currently only go so far, but the experiment shows what can happen when AI technology barrels through scientific knowledge. The troubling fact is that large language models and new biological design tools are dramatically lowering the barriers to engineering the next pandemic. The former Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes AI-designed bioweapons as “a very near-term concern”.
Governments are finally waking up to the scale of emerging biological risks. Last month the UK published its Biological Security Strategy, and committed £1.5bn in annual funding to counter the threat. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is concluding its first Biodefense Posture Review, assessing how prepared the US is to deal with bioweapons and future pandemics. Globally, 194 countries are currently negotiating a pandemic treaty, which will strengthen international resilience to biological events.
But more is required, and the UK now needs to move quickly on three fronts. The first undertaking must be to develop evaluations of large language models and biological design tools to determine capabilities and gauge the risks. These should be conducted by the Foundation Model Taskforce, the new body responsible for safe AI development in the UK. But they need biosecurity expertise, which the newly announced UK Biosecurity Leadership Council — which will convene academic and industry leaders with government — is well-placed to provide. Ultimately, we need to create a series of chokepoints to limit access to dangerous tools. These could include removing information about harmful biology from the training data for AI systems, inserting stringent content controls, and preventing the distribution of software used to design deadly biological agents.
Second, the UK needs to advance efforts to detect new pathogens rapidly in the event of a release. As the world leader in metagenomic sequencing — which offers the possibility of detecting previously unknown pathogens at the very beginning of outbreaks — the government could do much more both at home and abroad. The development of a National Biosurveillance Network will help provide an improved early warning system within Britain. But to achieve its full potential this must be linked to a global system that can sound the alarm on potential pandemics. This is where the power of AI can be harnessed to help with early detection, if distributed to countries with less-resourced healthcare systems.
Finally, we need to bring nations together to focus on the converging risk of AI and biotechnology. The UK will be hosting the world’s first summit on AI safety this autumn — as the most tangible near-term extreme risk presented by the technology, biosecurity needs to be on the agenda. Progress requires global coverage and should be linked to multilateral efforts, including the pandemic treaty.
As biosecurity specialists well know, recent technological developments have made our future prospects significantly darker. But at the same time, advances such as mass genetic sequencing and rapidly deployable mRNA vaccines could render bioweapons obsolete and end pandemics for good.
We have a narrow window during which to take targeted and effective action, and bring the world along. To act before the risks are upon us, our policymaking and statecraft will need to be just as good as our science.