“Building the equipment is one thing. Delivering it to the front line is a completely different situation. So having distributed manufacturing capability enables you to move manufacturing as far forward as possible. In my ideal world, you have outposts in the Pacific where you’re able to produce equipment on-site. I think additive manufacturing is a core unlock of frontline manufacturing and it’s a theme we’ve spent a lot of time on.”

“As concerns mount that artificial intelligence could make creating dangerous pathogens even easier, U.S. government–funded scientists who make and manipulate DNA sequences will face tougher regulations. The National Policy for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening, released on 5 November, will for the first time require these researchers to procure synthetic nucleic acids and benchtop synthesis equipment from U.S.-approved suppliers. Those vendors must verify their customers’ identities and screen orders for potentially dangerous sequences that, for example, could encode toxins or pathogens.

The policy, whose requirements will roll out in stages over the next 340 days, replaces a voluntary system of self-regulation, and some biosecurity experts view it as an important, if partial, step in the right direction. ‘It’s great, because it does something instead of nothing,’ says Kevin Esvelt, a biotechnologist and biosecurity expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘It will make it harder to misuse DNA.’”