A New Paradigm for Threat Agnostic Biodetection: Biological Intelligence (BIOINT)

BIOINT must be a core organizational paradigm for the biological century and a core component of the new wave of multilateral intelligence.

by Thomas Knight and Swati Sureka
Health Security

Biotechnological advancements are giving us unprecedented access to information about the world’s biological environment. Gathering and making sense of that information is a vital and urgent task as we seek to build a world free from the looming specter of the next global pandemic and resilient to the destabilizing effects of a crowded and manipulable information landscape. Moreover, as with satellite imagery, a wide variety of important collateral applications exist, ranging from environmental monitoring to enhancing bioengineering, to help unleash a sustainable bioeconomy. This is an ambitious project that certainly will not be built all at once—but the tools to realize this vision are within our grasp. We need a collective commitment to laying the global foundations to collect, analyze, and share biological intelligence.