Bio Action Plan
Five years. Eleven priorities. A coordinated philanthropic, private-sector, and government response to build defenses that outpace offensive biological capabilities.
Global Ambition, Phased Implementation
A biological threat anywhere is a biological threat everywhere.
The threat is global. Any engineered pathogen released anywhere, if undetected or unanswered, becomes everyone's crisis within weeks. The plan is therefore global in ambition — 99%+ of commercial DNA synthesis orders screened worldwide; pathogen-agnostic surveillance at major transit hubs on six continents; 24-hour international data sharing; coordination mechanisms that activate across borders in hours.
Implementation is phased, not universal-from-day-one. Early actions concentrate where regulatory leverage, market share, and research capacity make progress most tractable — often the U.S., EU, and UK — because standards set there tend to propagate. Detection, travel-hub surveillance, and response coordination are international from the outset. The design principle is to generate standards, institutions, and proof points that other geographies can adopt, adapt, and extend over time.
The Argument
Offensive capabilities are proliferating faster than defensive ones.
COVID-19 killed millions of people, caused trillions in economic losses, and disrupted every aspect of global society. But COVID-19 was mild compared to the threats now becoming possible.
Yet the world is not starting from zero. Diagnostic technologies, medical countermeasures, personal protective equipment, pathogen surveillance systems, and built-environment protections have all improved significantly. The cost of synthesizing dangerous pathogens falls every year, while our surveillance systems, stockpiles, and safeguards remain largely where they were after COVID-19. We have created the defensive technologies but we aren’t deploying them at scale. What we don’t have is time. Every month of delay widens the gap between what adversaries can do and what our defenses can stop.
These defenses are all scientifically possible today. The question is how quickly we can deploy them. The window to act is closing.
Architecture
Three pillars. Eleven priorities. One system.
Interlocking layers of defense: stopping misuse upstream, detecting threats that slip through, and responding faster than any pathogen can spread.
"Defend" ≈ "Respond" in the GHSA / JEE framework. This plan complements those frameworks rather than replacing them.
Prevent
Stop dangerous capabilities from being acquired or misused
Prevent stops dangerous capabilities from being acquired or misused before harm occurs. It targets the points in the biological supply chain where offensive capabilities can be constrained, monitored, or blocked.
Detect
Identify threats that prevention misses
Detect builds a pathogen-agnostic early-warning architecture to catch novel or engineered pathogens before they spread widely. Because no preventive system will be perfect, early detection must become fast, continuous, and global.
Defend
Respond faster than the pathogen can spread
Defend ensures society responds faster than any released pathogen can spread. It includes essential workforce protection, biohardening of the built environment, rapid medical countermeasures, and the coordination mechanisms needed to mount an effective public-private response.
The Ask
A coordinated philanthropic investment to supplement government spending and catalyze private-sector action. Sustained capacity ultimately depends on market mechanisms — advance market commitments, volume guarantees, and development finance — building on the G20 HLIP framework.
Per-year phasing is suggested and illustrative. The $2.5B total is the plan's headline figure; annual splits will evolve as the plan is implemented.
The window for this investment to be maximally effective is narrow. As AI capabilities advance and access to dual-use biotechnology expands, the cost of closing defensive gaps will rise. Early investment compounds.
Purpose
The Bio Action Plan exists to turn the growing concern about catastrophic biological risk into coordinated, measurable action. It identifies the most urgent gaps in prevention, detection, and defense; aligns leaders across philanthropy, industry, government, academia, and civil society; and provides a practical roadmap for building a global immune system for the AI-bio age.
Scope
This action plan’s primary focus is on catastrophic deliberate biological threats to humanity and the means to prevent and respond to them in ways that prevent high-level civilizational disruption. But the work in this mission will have great value and relevance to the actions needed to prevent and respond to high-consequence natural and accidental biological threats — whether to humans, animals, or the environment.
Vision
We envision a world in which defensive biological capabilities decisively outpace offensive ones — where any attempt to misuse biology is detected early, attributed rapidly, and met with effective countermeasures. We intend to build this through layered defenses deployed at the speed the threat demands: safeguards for dual-use biotechnology comparable to those in other high-risk industries; systems to detect any catastrophic pathogen before it spreads widely; platforms to develop and deploy countermeasures within weeks; and protections for essential workers and the built environment as insurance against worst-case scenarios.
Join us.
The risk is real. The solutions exist. The time to act is now.
Together, we can build a world in which defensive biological capabilities decisively outpace offensive ones.