National Security and Biotechnology

If advances in biotechnology continue, con­structing a completely artificial organism from the "ground up"—creating synthetic DNA and proteins from raw materials and then combining them to form living cells—may be possible in the not too distant future. The challenge for the federal government is to figure out how to leverage cutting-edge biotechnol­ogy for national security purposes. Before 2001, the Department of Defense (DOD) was the primary arm of the federal government in funding biological defense and research related to national security. The DOD research program focused primarily on the battlefield uses of biotechnology.