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National Institute for Public Policy Senior Scholar Trachtenberg Testifies Before Senate Armed Services Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by David J. Trachtenberg, senior scholar of the National Institute for Public Policy, and former deputy under secretary of Defense for policy, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative:
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Chairperson Fischer, Ranking Member King, and members of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing on President Trump's Golden Dome for America initiative. It is an honor to testify before you today.
Madam Charperson, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by David J. Trachtenberg, senior scholar of the National Institute for Public Policy, and former deputy under secretary of Defense for policy, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative: * * * Chairperson Fischer, Ranking Member King, and members of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing on President Trump's Golden Dome for America initiative. It is an honor to testify before you today. Madam Charperson,I would ask that my full statement be submitted for the record.
I have been asked to comment on the strategic threat environment facing the United States and the larger policy issues relating to the Golden Dome effort. My views on this are a matter of public record and some of my testimony today will reflect what I wrote in an Occasional Paper published last year by the National Institute for Public Policy titled, Next Steps in Homeland Missile Defense.1 I would also like to submit that paper for the record.
I would like to focus on three issues: First, does the strategic threat to the homeland justify the Golden Dome effort? Second, what impediments exist that may stifle progress on Golden Dome? And third, what should be done to overcome these impediments and how might this committee, and Congress more generally, help accomplish this?
Regarding the strategic threat to the homeland, there is no question that the United States is increasingly vulnerable to attack by a variety of missile threats, including ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, as well as from unmanned aerial systems or drones.2 Major adversaries such as China and Russia are expanding their strategic missile capabilities with ever greater numbers of sophisticated nuclear and conventional missile systems. China possesses what has been described as the largest and most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in Asia and is "conducting the most significant expansion of its missile systems in its history."3
Since the end of the Cold War, the missile threat to the United States has evolved in ways that complicate defense of the homeland. Ballistic missiles have been seen as the weapon of choice for states seeking to reign terror upon an adversary, as they are difficult to counter. Today, more than 30 countries possess ballistic missiles of varying ranges and capabilities.4 Moreover, the ballistic missile threat has been augmented by newer, more sophisticated, types of missiles that are even more difficult to counter. These include hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and other types of unmanned aerial systems like drones.
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1 David J. Trachtenberg, Next Steps in Homeland Missile Defense, Occasional Paper, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, January 2025), https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Vol.-5-No.1.pdf.
2 Glen VanHerck, "Why the Golden Dome Is Essential for Homeland Defense," The National Interest, August 24, 2026, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-the-golden-dome-is-essential-for-homelanddefense.
3 Statement by General Michael A. Guetlein before the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Senate Armed Services Committee, April 27, 2026, p. 3, https://www.armedservices.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/guetlein_opening_statement.pdf.
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As the director of the Golden Dome for America initiative, General Michael Guetlein, has testified, "A new generation of advanced air and missile threats, unprecedented in their speed, numbers, and lethality, now holds the American homeland at risk."5 As even the Biden Administration's 2022 Missile Defense Review noted, "missile-related threats have rapidly expanded in quantity, diversity and sophistication. U.S. national security interests are increasingly at risk from wide-ranging missile arsenals that include offensive ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic weapons...."6 And as one former Biden Administration official put it more starkly in congressional testimony, "Offensive missiles are increasingly weapons of choice for Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, for use in conflict and to coerce and intimidate their neighbors."7
The utility of ballistic, cruise, and other types of missiles in combat has been demonstrated by their effective use in recent conflicts. For example, Azerbaijan's extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones in the second war over NagornoKarabakh in 2020 led to an impressive victory over Armenian forces. In addition, in the first two years since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia launched more than 11,000 missiles at Ukraine, including ballistic, cruise, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), and hypersonic missiles.8 By some reports, Russia has fired more than 2,000 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets,9 including launching more than 100 cruise missiles and drones in a single attack in December 2023 and again in November 2024.10 In July of this year, Ukraine reported some 265 cruise missile attacks and more than 8,600 drone strikes.11 In May, Russia targeted Ukraine with nuclear-capable "Oreshnik" intermediate-range ballistic missiles with hypersonic capabilities.12
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4 Kelsey Davenport, "Worldwide Ballistic Missile Inventories," Arms Control Association Fact Sheet, August 2023, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/worldwide-ballistic-missileinventories.
5 Cited in Sana Pashankar, "Pentagon Sets Funds, Dates for Secret Golden Dome Space Program," Bloomberg News, August 7, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-07/pentagonsets-funds-dates-for-secret-golden-dome-space-program.
6 Department of Defense, 2022 Missile Defense Review, p. 1, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSESTRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf.
7 Testimony of Dr. John Plumb before the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, May 18, 2022, https://www.armedservices.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ASD%20Plumb%20SASC%20SF%20Missile%20Defense%20Written %20Statement%20-%20May,18%202022_FINAL.pdf. .
8 Benjamin Jensen and Yasir Atalan, "Assessing Russian Firepower Strikes in Ukraine," Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 23, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-russianfirepower-strikesukraine.
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The growing threat of faster, longer-range, and more deadly ballistic, cruise, hypersonic, and other unmanned missiles and systems means that the United States is increasingly at risk of more complex missile attacks, including those employing sophisticated countermeasures. Consequently, missile defense of the U.S. homeland must address these multiple types of threats, either singly or in combination, on an urgent basis.
Importantly, the growth and sophistication of adversary missile systems complicate overall U.S. force planning and may discourage U.S. military action in theaters where the risk of enemy responses against American and allied personnel, bases, and infrastructure may be considered too great. In this way, adversary offensive missile systems can dissuade U.S. leaders from taking necessary actions in support of U.S. interests abroad. This dynamic may have a chilling effect on U.S. decision making and freedom of action. As missile threats to the homeland grow, the United States may be deterred by adversary coercive nuclear or conventional threats, unwilling to risk the potential consequences of an opponent's response to U.S. military action--even when such action is justified. In this way, missile systems need not be employed in combat to have a significant dissuasive effect on U.S. actions. An effective missile defense system can help to mitigate the dissuasive effect of enemy missile threats. Moreover, as long as the U.S. homeland remains vulnerable to expanding missile threats and the proclivities of opponents to threaten actual nuclear use, the United States may be increasingly reluctant to take military action in support of threatened allies and friends. This would undermine longstanding U.S. extended deterrence policy.
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9 Valentyna Romanenko, "Russia has launched 2,437 cruise missiles since February 2022 - Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson," Ukrainska Pravda, June 3, 2025, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/06/03/7515375/.
10 See Victoria Butenko, Maria Kostenko, Mariya Knight, Svitlana Vlasova and Christian Edwards, "Russia unleashes biggest air attack on Ukraine since start of full-scale invasion," CNN, December 30, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/29/europe/ukrainerussia-airstrikes-intl-hnk/index.html; David Brennan, "Russia launches 'massive' drone and missile energy blitz across Ukraine," ABC News, November 28, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-launches-massivedrone-missileenergy-blitz-ukraine/story?id=116299874.
11 Cited at https://www.facebook.com/themilitarychannelusa/posts/read-ukraines-ministry-of-defensereported-that-russian-forces-launched-265-crui/122225686334902462/.
12 Tetyana Oliynyk, "Putin says Oreshnik missile was fired against Ukraine to 'conveniently observe impact'," Ukrainska Pravda, June 4, 2026, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/04/8037802/; Yuliia Dysa and Max Hunder, "Russia hits Ukraine with Oreshnik missile in one of war's biggest attacks on Kyiv," Reuters, May 23, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-capital-kyiv-hit-by-massive-missile-drone-attack2026-05-23/.
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In 2023, the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission noted that "to date the United States has chosen to not build homeland missile defenses against major powers" and that U.S. homeland defense capabilities "do not adequately protect the critical infrastructure necessary to project power and avoid coercion in light of growing Russian and Chinese nuclear and conventional strike threats."13
Consequently, the Commission recommended that the United States "develop and field homeland IAMD [integrated air and missile defense] capabilities that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China."14 The Trump Administration should publicly endorse the bipartisan conclusions of the Strategic Posture Commission and accelerate efforts to enhance U.S. missile defense capabilities in light of the growing missile threat to the homeland.
Second, what are the most significant impediments to Golden Dome's success? I believe they reflect more political, bureaucratic, and institutional biases rather than technological or fiscal challenges.
Progress in homeland missile defense has been stymied by outdated Cold War nostrums, anemic funding, lack of prioritization, organizational and bureaucratic roadblocks, and ideologically based political opposition. Political opposition to Golden Dome is rooted in the Cold War notion that defending the nation from missile attacks is unnecessary and destabilizing - unnecessary because deterrence is and will remain reliable, and destabilizing because it will spark an arms race as others seek to build even more offensive capabilities to overwhelm the defense. Both notions are seriously flawed and based on dubious assumptions or demonstrably false.
The notion that deterrence can be relied on to succeed indefinitely is a comforting but likely unrealistic proposition, especially in light of Moscow's extensive nuclear building program, its belligerent actions--including its full-scale invasion of Ukraine-- and its numerous bellicose nuclear threats against the West. In addition, China's massive expansion of its own nuclear arsenal, its increasingly aggressive posturing over Taiwan, and its growing military collaboration with Russia as part of what has been called the "Axis of Authoritarians" suggest that the prospect of coercive nuclear threats and opportunistic aggression in a two-nuclear-peer environment is a growing and realistic concern.
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13 Madelyn R. Creedon, Jon L. Kyl, et al., America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, October 2023, p. 28, https://www.ida.org/assets/2026/06/18084611/Strategic-Posture-Commission-Report.pdf.
14 Ibid., pp. X, 72, 105.
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Moreover, the notion that Golden Dome will spark a U.S.-driven "action-reaction" offensive arms race as adversaries seek to counter it is belied by the fact that adversaries have been developing more sophisticated nuclear-capable offensive missiles for years while the United States has not. Indeed, the oft-cited notion that U.S. actions are the primary driver of adversary reactions and the corollary notion that U.S. restraint will engender adversary restraint have been disproven by history.15
In addition, some opponents argue that Golden Dome can never be 100 percent effective against large, sophisticated missile threats. But perfection, of course, is not the objective. Heightening the uncertainty of success in an adversary's calculation of whether to launch an attack in the first place strengthens deterrence. And providing some protection against the possible failure of deterrence is, in my view, the only morally acceptable course of action for a government whose primary constitutional duty is to protect the safety and security of Americans. In light of the growing threats to U.S. security from both peer nuclear adversaries and rogue states, the time has come to abandon the outdated thinking that American vulnerability to missile attack is a stabilizing feature of the international environment.
There is also an institutional bias within the Pentagon and the defense establishment that has worked against progress on improved missile defenses. This bias is the result of many factors, including a lack of understanding of deterrence issues, a belief that nuclear use by adversaries against the homeland is a far-fetched possibility, a focus on speculative and often inflated cost estimates, the desire to spend limited resources on what are perceived to be other more urgent priorities, a culture of risk avoidance, and concerns over technological feasibility, especially defenses in space.
Experts who understand the technical aspects of missile defense, including former directors of the Missile Defense Agency, have stated that Golden Dome is both cost-effective and technologically feasible. As one noted, "Moving to space is the only way to defeat a growing quantity and quality of adversary threats. It is the only means to provide an effective boost/ascent phase missile defense capability essential to defeat current and future threats. There is simply no other technically feasible option...."16 And General Guetlein noted recently that two Golden Dome tests were "phenomenally successful."17 With respect to cost issues, I would like to comment on the various cost estimates for Golden Dome that have been circulating in the media. The CBO, for example, has estimated that the cost of Golden Dome could top $1.2 trillion over 20 years.18 Others have estimated the cost could reach as much as $3.6 trillion over 20 years.19 There are several points that need to be made, however, to put all such cost estimates in proper context.
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15 See, for example, Hon. David J. Trachtenberg, Study Director, Dr. Michaela Dodge, and Dr. Keith B. Payne, The "Action-Reaction" Arms Race Narrative vs. Historical Realities (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, March 2021), https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Action-Reaction-pub.pdf.
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First, estimating the cost of any system over a 20-year period is fraught with uncertainty and likely to be wrong, perhaps wildly so. It is based on certain assumptions regarding technology development, programmatic architecture, industrial base support, and other variables that are not necessarily valid. Indeed, some may be unknown and unknowable at present.20 General Guetlein has stated that the CBO estimate is an uninformed "myth" and does not accurately portray the planned Golden Dome architecture, noting that "sensational cost estimates" are "all false."21 Of course, it is not unusual for the cost of any program to look exorbitant and prohibitive to the average person if extended over a period of two decades. Indeed, the cost of conventional force modernization may be in the trillions of dollars if estimated over a period of several decades, but that is not a valid argument for forgoing necessary conventional force enhancements. The publicly postulated cost estimates for Golden Dome may be right or wrong, but allowing such speculative, crystal ball-like estimates to drive policy decisions, regardless of the methodology used, is shortsighted and unwise.
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16 Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, III (Ret.), Remarks at symposium on "Overcoming the Roadblocks to Homeland Missile Defense," hosted by National Institute for Public Policy, July 20, 2022, printed in Journal of Policy & Strategy, Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 104, https://nipp.org/wpcontent/uploads/2023/03/Proceedings-July-2022.pdf.
17 Thomas Novelly, "'There is no Golden Dome' unless Congress prioritizes funding, general warns," Defense One, August 11, 2026, https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2026/08/golden-dome-congressgeneral/415355/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru.
18 David Arthur and Christopher Martin, et. al., "Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System," Congressional Budget Office, May 2026, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-05/62379-goldendome.pdf.
19 Todd Harrison, Build Your Own Golden Dome: A Framework for Understanding Costs, Choices, and Tradeoffs, AEI Foreign & Defense Policy Working Paper 2025-20, September 2025, https://www.aei.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/09/WP-Estimating-the-Cost-of-Golden-Dome.pdf?x68881.
20 For a critical assessment of the CBO methodology, see Christopher Stone, "A Response to the Opponents of Space-Based Interceptors in Golden Dome," RealClear Defense, June 23, 2026, https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/06/23/a_response_to_the_opponents_of_spacebased_interceptors_in_golden_dome_1190312.html.
21 Novelly, op. cit.; Also see Rachel S. Cohen, "Golden Dome cost estimate draws Pentagon pushback," Federal News Network, August 20, 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defensemain/2026/08/golden-dome-cost-estimate-draws-pentagon-pushback/.
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Second, there is an unfortunate tendency by many to confuse cost with value. The two are not synonymous. The cost of Golden Dome may indeed be high in monetary terms, but that cost may pale in significance to the value Golden Dome provides in defending the nation from the growing threat of missile attack. Indeed, Golden Dome is intended not only to protect the United States against possible missile attack but also to strengthen deterrence of such an attack in the first place by diminishing the odds that an aggressor can count on successfully achieving his military objectives. And in weighing cost, it is important to consider the cost of rebuilding a major American city should deterrence fail, for whatever reason. In this regard, Golden Dome is the nation's ultimate insurance policy, and, in my view, its value as both a deterrent to missile attack and a defense against such an attack far exceeds its cost. If we are not willing to pay the premium for the protection it promises, then we must shoulder the potentially catastrophic consequences that may flow from accepting the risk of deterrence failure.
Finally, those who assert that Golden Dome is "unaffordable" are confusing the issue of affordability with spending preferences. In other words, it is not that Golden Dome is unaffordable, but rather that critics believe the fiscal resources it requires would be better spent on other priorities.22 Let me be clear: There is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper prioritization of limited defense resources, but suggesting that speculative and extreme cost estimates make the Golden Dome effort unaffordable is misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.
Ultimately, it is a question of whether the nation is willing to accept the risk of remaining relatively defenseless in perpetuity against emerging, more sophisticated, and more capable adversary missile threats to the homeland, including those posed by major nuclear adversaries like Russia and China. I would hope the Congress' answer to this question would be a resounding no.
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22 For a discussion of this issue as it relates to spending on nuclear weapons programs, see Dr. Keith B. Payne and Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., et. al., A New Nuclear Review for a New Age (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, April 2017), pp. 185-198, https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/A-NewNuclear-Review-final.pdf.
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Finally, there is the question of what should be done to overcome these impediments and how this committee, and Congress more generally, might help accomplish this. On this question, I would make several observations.
First, it is important for the Congress to reaffirm its clear and unequivocal support for Golden Dome in the NDAA and to codify as a matter of policy that the United States shall be defended against all types of missile threats, of any range, launched from any location. Over the years, congressional language has been schizophrenic on this issue, sometimes expressing support for a more robust missile defense capability, other times favoring a missile defense system that can counter only limited missile threats to the homeland and stating that it is U.S. policy to rely on strategic deterrence and the threat of nuclear retaliation rather than active defenses to protect the nation against more sophisticated long-range missile threats from peer adversaries.
I commend the Congress for modifying U.S. missile defense policy in the FY2026 NDAA by declaring that it is the policy of the United States to defend against "the threat of foreign attack by increasingly complex ballistic, hypersonic glide, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial threats," without restricting this effort to limited missile threats or rogue state actors only.23 While the language also recognizes that our nuclear deterrent remains an essential component of our deterrent posture, it should be augmented by active defensive measures to guard against the risk of deterrence failure.
Golden Dome promises just that.
Second, Congress needs to exercise fully its oversight role to ensure the administration moves out swiftly and smartly to make the promise of Golden Dome a reality. This includes support for, and greater investment in, space-based sensors that can provide early warning, tracking, and discrimination capabilities, as well as kinetic and non-kinetic defensive intercept capabilities, including directed energy systems. In this regard, Israel's experience with its "Iron Beam" system may be instructive. Directed energy technology can potentially change the offense-defense cost curve significantly in favor of the defense, nullifying one of the most frequently cited arguments against missile defense, namely, that defensive interceptors are significantly more costly than the offensive missiles they are intended to counter.
As adversary missile threats grow and become increasingly capable, the role of space-based assets takes on greater significance and should be pursued with all due urgency. The benefits of developing a space-based intercept capability are numerous. It would allow longer-range missiles to be countered in their boost-phase, when they are most vulnerable due to highly visible signatures while their engines are burning, or in their ascent-phase prior to payload separation. A boost- or ascent-phase defense would also allow the destruction of missiles over enemy territory rather than over U.S. soil. This, in itself, could serve as a powerful deterrent to missile attack. And it would also help mitigate the technical challenges faced by terrestrial mid-course and terminal missile defense systems that face geographic, trajectory, and other limitations and are likely to encounter enemy decoys and countermeasures.24 Cold War-era platitudes that space-based defenses will result in the "militarization of space" or the "weaponization of space" ignore decades of adversary efforts to develop and improve anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, fractional orbital bombardment systems (FOBS), and other counter-space activities. In short, the time to debate the value of space for the missile defense mission is over.
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23 Section 1651 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (Public Law 119-60), December 18, 2025, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ60/pdf/PLAW-119publ60.pdf.
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Third, a "business-as-usual" approach to missile defense is inadequate. To its credit, the Trump Administration is seeking to accelerate the acquisition of critical military capabilities, reduce production timelines, and rebuild the necessary defense infrastructure to stay ahead of the threat curve.25 But this will require greater congressional support and commensurate, long-term funding. While there are those inside the defense establishment who will object to the Golden Dome effort as syphoning off needed funds for other priority defense projects, the potentially catastrophic consequences of failing to implement Golden Dome successfully make overcoming the critics' objections imperative. Indeed, Executive Order 14186 makes clear that this initiative is a presidential priority,26 and the administration must communicate forcefully the rationale for and importance of Golden Dome at every opportunity.
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24 Ian Williams and Masao Dahlgren, et al, Boost-Phase Missile Defense: Interrogating the Assumptions, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2022, p. 1, https://csiswebsiteprod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/220624_Karako_BoostPhase_MissileDefense.pd f?VersionId=WjJxlNM58oru1LK21LC9untewoK_UAQD.
25 See, for example, Pranshu Verma, "Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks," The Washington Post, August 8, 2026, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/08/pentagon-presses-defense-firms-buildweapons-iran-war-depletes-stocks/; Filip Timotija, "Pentagon pushing defense contractors to speed up weapons production," The Hill, August 10, 2026, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/6020032-pentagondemands-faster-weapons-production/; Department of War, "Department of War Launches the 'Golden Dome for America Hub' To Accelerate Industry Engagement, Revolutionize Homeland Missile Defense Partnerships," News Release, August 11, 2026, https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4568639/department-of-war-launches-thegolden-dome-for-america-hub-to-accelerate-indust/.
26 The White House, "The Iron Dome for America," Executive Order 14186, January 27, 2025, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-14186-the-iron-dome-for-america.
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Although Program Managers are generally risk averse given that failure is seldom rewarded, true progress is only possible through bold action. Indeed, we often learn more from our failures than our successes, and Congress should encourage boldness in this endeavor. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.
Finally, Congress must provide the necessary fiscal resources to implement Golden Dome over the long term. This means committing to a regular and steady appropriations funding stream that is not subject to the uncertain vagaries of reconciliation bills, continuing resolutions, ill-advised programmatic trade-offs, or partisan hostage-taking. The defense of the American people requires nothing less.
In the past, Congress authorized multiyear advance appropriations to protect the nation against national security threats deemed particularly dangerous.27 While such an approach for Golden Dome may be considered extraordinary and may not engender the requisite bipartisan support, I cite this example to indicate that where Congress has the will, it can surely find innovative ways to ensure that Golden Dome is adequately funded over the long term.
With these initial comments, I appreciate the opportunity to offer my views to the subcommittee and look forward to your questions. Thank you.
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27 "Project BioShield" was one example of a 10-year advance appropriation to defend the nation against the threat of bioterrorism and is discussed in David J. Trachtenberg, The Lawgivers' Struggle: How Congress Wields Power in National Security Decision Making (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2020), pp. 242-246.
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David J. Trachtenberg
The Honorable David J. Trachtenberg is Senior Scholar and former Vice President of the National Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit research center in Fairfax, Virginia. He was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 17, 2017, as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served in this capacity until his retirement from government service in July 2019. Until January 2018, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the principal civilian adviser to the Secretary of Defense on policy matters. He was also the senior Department of Defense civilian official responsible for DoD policy on civilian casualties resulting from military operations.
Prior to his confirmation, Mr. Trachtenberg was President and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting, LLC. Earlier, he was a Vice President at CACI and Senior Vice President for Homeland Security at National Security Research, Inc. Prior to joining NSR, Mr. Trachtenberg was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy in the George W. Bush Administration.
From 1995-2001, Mr. Trachtenberg was a Professional Staff Member with the House Committee on Armed Services (HASC) in Washington, D.C, serving as head of the committee's policy staff and staff lead for the HASC Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism.
Mr. Trachtenberg is a two-time recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. He has testified before multiple congressional committees, is widely published, and is the author of The Lawgivers' Struggle: How Congress Wields Power in National Security Decision Making (2020). He is also a longtime member of the U.S. Air Force Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS), a volunteer network of civilian amateur radio operators who provide contingency communications support to the Department of Defense and the armed forces. He holds an A.B. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and a M.S. degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. An adjunct professor in national security at the Arlington, Virginia campus of Missouri State University's graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Mr. Trachtenberg has also been a Practitioner in Residence at Georgetown University's graduate School of Foreign Service.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/trachtenberg_opening_statement.pdf
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Chairperson Fischer, Ranking Member King, and members of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing on President Trump's Golden Dome for America initiative. It is an honor to testify before you today.
Madam Charperson, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by David J. Trachtenberg, senior scholar of the National Institute for Public Policy, and former deputy under secretary of Defense for policy, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative: * * * Chairperson Fischer, Ranking Member King, and members of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing on President Trump's Golden Dome for America initiative. It is an honor to testify before you today. Madam Charperson,I would ask that my full statement be submitted for the record.
I have been asked to comment on the strategic threat environment facing the United States and the larger policy issues relating to the Golden Dome effort. My views on this are a matter of public record and some of my testimony today will reflect what I wrote in an Occasional Paper published last year by the National Institute for Public Policy titled, Next Steps in Homeland Missile Defense.1 I would also like to submit that paper for the record.
I would like to focus on three issues: First, does the strategic threat to the homeland justify the Golden Dome effort? Second, what impediments exist that may stifle progress on Golden Dome? And third, what should be done to overcome these impediments and how might this committee, and Congress more generally, help accomplish this?
Regarding the strategic threat to the homeland, there is no question that the United States is increasingly vulnerable to attack by a variety of missile threats, including ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, as well as from unmanned aerial systems or drones.2 Major adversaries such as China and Russia are expanding their strategic missile capabilities with ever greater numbers of sophisticated nuclear and conventional missile systems. China possesses what has been described as the largest and most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in Asia and is "conducting the most significant expansion of its missile systems in its history."3
Since the end of the Cold War, the missile threat to the United States has evolved in ways that complicate defense of the homeland. Ballistic missiles have been seen as the weapon of choice for states seeking to reign terror upon an adversary, as they are difficult to counter. Today, more than 30 countries possess ballistic missiles of varying ranges and capabilities.4 Moreover, the ballistic missile threat has been augmented by newer, more sophisticated, types of missiles that are even more difficult to counter. These include hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and other types of unmanned aerial systems like drones.
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1 David J. Trachtenberg, Next Steps in Homeland Missile Defense, Occasional Paper, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, January 2025), https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Vol.-5-No.1.pdf.
2 Glen VanHerck, "Why the Golden Dome Is Essential for Homeland Defense," The National Interest, August 24, 2026, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-the-golden-dome-is-essential-for-homelanddefense.
3 Statement by General Michael A. Guetlein before the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Senate Armed Services Committee, April 27, 2026, p. 3, https://www.armedservices.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/guetlein_opening_statement.pdf.
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As the director of the Golden Dome for America initiative, General Michael Guetlein, has testified, "A new generation of advanced air and missile threats, unprecedented in their speed, numbers, and lethality, now holds the American homeland at risk."5 As even the Biden Administration's 2022 Missile Defense Review noted, "missile-related threats have rapidly expanded in quantity, diversity and sophistication. U.S. national security interests are increasingly at risk from wide-ranging missile arsenals that include offensive ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic weapons...."6 And as one former Biden Administration official put it more starkly in congressional testimony, "Offensive missiles are increasingly weapons of choice for Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, for use in conflict and to coerce and intimidate their neighbors."7
The utility of ballistic, cruise, and other types of missiles in combat has been demonstrated by their effective use in recent conflicts. For example, Azerbaijan's extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones in the second war over NagornoKarabakh in 2020 led to an impressive victory over Armenian forces. In addition, in the first two years since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia launched more than 11,000 missiles at Ukraine, including ballistic, cruise, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), and hypersonic missiles.8 By some reports, Russia has fired more than 2,000 cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets,9 including launching more than 100 cruise missiles and drones in a single attack in December 2023 and again in November 2024.10 In July of this year, Ukraine reported some 265 cruise missile attacks and more than 8,600 drone strikes.11 In May, Russia targeted Ukraine with nuclear-capable "Oreshnik" intermediate-range ballistic missiles with hypersonic capabilities.12
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4 Kelsey Davenport, "Worldwide Ballistic Missile Inventories," Arms Control Association Fact Sheet, August 2023, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/worldwide-ballistic-missileinventories.
5 Cited in Sana Pashankar, "Pentagon Sets Funds, Dates for Secret Golden Dome Space Program," Bloomberg News, August 7, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-07/pentagonsets-funds-dates-for-secret-golden-dome-space-program.
6 Department of Defense, 2022 Missile Defense Review, p. 1, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSESTRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf.
7 Testimony of Dr. John Plumb before the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, May 18, 2022, https://www.armedservices.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ASD%20Plumb%20SASC%20SF%20Missile%20Defense%20Written %20Statement%20-%20May,18%202022_FINAL.pdf. .
8 Benjamin Jensen and Yasir Atalan, "Assessing Russian Firepower Strikes in Ukraine," Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 23, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-russianfirepower-strikesukraine.
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The growing threat of faster, longer-range, and more deadly ballistic, cruise, hypersonic, and other unmanned missiles and systems means that the United States is increasingly at risk of more complex missile attacks, including those employing sophisticated countermeasures. Consequently, missile defense of the U.S. homeland must address these multiple types of threats, either singly or in combination, on an urgent basis.
Importantly, the growth and sophistication of adversary missile systems complicate overall U.S. force planning and may discourage U.S. military action in theaters where the risk of enemy responses against American and allied personnel, bases, and infrastructure may be considered too great. In this way, adversary offensive missile systems can dissuade U.S. leaders from taking necessary actions in support of U.S. interests abroad. This dynamic may have a chilling effect on U.S. decision making and freedom of action. As missile threats to the homeland grow, the United States may be deterred by adversary coercive nuclear or conventional threats, unwilling to risk the potential consequences of an opponent's response to U.S. military action--even when such action is justified. In this way, missile systems need not be employed in combat to have a significant dissuasive effect on U.S. actions. An effective missile defense system can help to mitigate the dissuasive effect of enemy missile threats. Moreover, as long as the U.S. homeland remains vulnerable to expanding missile threats and the proclivities of opponents to threaten actual nuclear use, the United States may be increasingly reluctant to take military action in support of threatened allies and friends. This would undermine longstanding U.S. extended deterrence policy.
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9 Valentyna Romanenko, "Russia has launched 2,437 cruise missiles since February 2022 - Ukraine's Air Force spokesperson," Ukrainska Pravda, June 3, 2025, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/06/03/7515375/.
10 See Victoria Butenko, Maria Kostenko, Mariya Knight, Svitlana Vlasova and Christian Edwards, "Russia unleashes biggest air attack on Ukraine since start of full-scale invasion," CNN, December 30, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/29/europe/ukrainerussia-airstrikes-intl-hnk/index.html; David Brennan, "Russia launches 'massive' drone and missile energy blitz across Ukraine," ABC News, November 28, 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-launches-massivedrone-missileenergy-blitz-ukraine/story?id=116299874.
11 Cited at https://www.facebook.com/themilitarychannelusa/posts/read-ukraines-ministry-of-defensereported-that-russian-forces-launched-265-crui/122225686334902462/.
12 Tetyana Oliynyk, "Putin says Oreshnik missile was fired against Ukraine to 'conveniently observe impact'," Ukrainska Pravda, June 4, 2026, https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/04/8037802/; Yuliia Dysa and Max Hunder, "Russia hits Ukraine with Oreshnik missile in one of war's biggest attacks on Kyiv," Reuters, May 23, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-capital-kyiv-hit-by-massive-missile-drone-attack2026-05-23/.
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In 2023, the congressionally mandated, bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission noted that "to date the United States has chosen to not build homeland missile defenses against major powers" and that U.S. homeland defense capabilities "do not adequately protect the critical infrastructure necessary to project power and avoid coercion in light of growing Russian and Chinese nuclear and conventional strike threats."13
Consequently, the Commission recommended that the United States "develop and field homeland IAMD [integrated air and missile defense] capabilities that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China."14 The Trump Administration should publicly endorse the bipartisan conclusions of the Strategic Posture Commission and accelerate efforts to enhance U.S. missile defense capabilities in light of the growing missile threat to the homeland.
Second, what are the most significant impediments to Golden Dome's success? I believe they reflect more political, bureaucratic, and institutional biases rather than technological or fiscal challenges.
Progress in homeland missile defense has been stymied by outdated Cold War nostrums, anemic funding, lack of prioritization, organizational and bureaucratic roadblocks, and ideologically based political opposition. Political opposition to Golden Dome is rooted in the Cold War notion that defending the nation from missile attacks is unnecessary and destabilizing - unnecessary because deterrence is and will remain reliable, and destabilizing because it will spark an arms race as others seek to build even more offensive capabilities to overwhelm the defense. Both notions are seriously flawed and based on dubious assumptions or demonstrably false.
The notion that deterrence can be relied on to succeed indefinitely is a comforting but likely unrealistic proposition, especially in light of Moscow's extensive nuclear building program, its belligerent actions--including its full-scale invasion of Ukraine-- and its numerous bellicose nuclear threats against the West. In addition, China's massive expansion of its own nuclear arsenal, its increasingly aggressive posturing over Taiwan, and its growing military collaboration with Russia as part of what has been called the "Axis of Authoritarians" suggest that the prospect of coercive nuclear threats and opportunistic aggression in a two-nuclear-peer environment is a growing and realistic concern.
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13 Madelyn R. Creedon, Jon L. Kyl, et al., America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, October 2023, p. 28, https://www.ida.org/assets/2026/06/18084611/Strategic-Posture-Commission-Report.pdf.
14 Ibid., pp. X, 72, 105.
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Moreover, the notion that Golden Dome will spark a U.S.-driven "action-reaction" offensive arms race as adversaries seek to counter it is belied by the fact that adversaries have been developing more sophisticated nuclear-capable offensive missiles for years while the United States has not. Indeed, the oft-cited notion that U.S. actions are the primary driver of adversary reactions and the corollary notion that U.S. restraint will engender adversary restraint have been disproven by history.15
In addition, some opponents argue that Golden Dome can never be 100 percent effective against large, sophisticated missile threats. But perfection, of course, is not the objective. Heightening the uncertainty of success in an adversary's calculation of whether to launch an attack in the first place strengthens deterrence. And providing some protection against the possible failure of deterrence is, in my view, the only morally acceptable course of action for a government whose primary constitutional duty is to protect the safety and security of Americans. In light of the growing threats to U.S. security from both peer nuclear adversaries and rogue states, the time has come to abandon the outdated thinking that American vulnerability to missile attack is a stabilizing feature of the international environment.
There is also an institutional bias within the Pentagon and the defense establishment that has worked against progress on improved missile defenses. This bias is the result of many factors, including a lack of understanding of deterrence issues, a belief that nuclear use by adversaries against the homeland is a far-fetched possibility, a focus on speculative and often inflated cost estimates, the desire to spend limited resources on what are perceived to be other more urgent priorities, a culture of risk avoidance, and concerns over technological feasibility, especially defenses in space.
Experts who understand the technical aspects of missile defense, including former directors of the Missile Defense Agency, have stated that Golden Dome is both cost-effective and technologically feasible. As one noted, "Moving to space is the only way to defeat a growing quantity and quality of adversary threats. It is the only means to provide an effective boost/ascent phase missile defense capability essential to defeat current and future threats. There is simply no other technically feasible option...."16 And General Guetlein noted recently that two Golden Dome tests were "phenomenally successful."17 With respect to cost issues, I would like to comment on the various cost estimates for Golden Dome that have been circulating in the media. The CBO, for example, has estimated that the cost of Golden Dome could top $1.2 trillion over 20 years.18 Others have estimated the cost could reach as much as $3.6 trillion over 20 years.19 There are several points that need to be made, however, to put all such cost estimates in proper context.
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15 See, for example, Hon. David J. Trachtenberg, Study Director, Dr. Michaela Dodge, and Dr. Keith B. Payne, The "Action-Reaction" Arms Race Narrative vs. Historical Realities (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, March 2021), https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Action-Reaction-pub.pdf.
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First, estimating the cost of any system over a 20-year period is fraught with uncertainty and likely to be wrong, perhaps wildly so. It is based on certain assumptions regarding technology development, programmatic architecture, industrial base support, and other variables that are not necessarily valid. Indeed, some may be unknown and unknowable at present.20 General Guetlein has stated that the CBO estimate is an uninformed "myth" and does not accurately portray the planned Golden Dome architecture, noting that "sensational cost estimates" are "all false."21 Of course, it is not unusual for the cost of any program to look exorbitant and prohibitive to the average person if extended over a period of two decades. Indeed, the cost of conventional force modernization may be in the trillions of dollars if estimated over a period of several decades, but that is not a valid argument for forgoing necessary conventional force enhancements. The publicly postulated cost estimates for Golden Dome may be right or wrong, but allowing such speculative, crystal ball-like estimates to drive policy decisions, regardless of the methodology used, is shortsighted and unwise.
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16 Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering, III (Ret.), Remarks at symposium on "Overcoming the Roadblocks to Homeland Missile Defense," hosted by National Institute for Public Policy, July 20, 2022, printed in Journal of Policy & Strategy, Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 104, https://nipp.org/wpcontent/uploads/2023/03/Proceedings-July-2022.pdf.
17 Thomas Novelly, "'There is no Golden Dome' unless Congress prioritizes funding, general warns," Defense One, August 11, 2026, https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2026/08/golden-dome-congressgeneral/415355/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru.
18 David Arthur and Christopher Martin, et. al., "Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System," Congressional Budget Office, May 2026, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-05/62379-goldendome.pdf.
19 Todd Harrison, Build Your Own Golden Dome: A Framework for Understanding Costs, Choices, and Tradeoffs, AEI Foreign & Defense Policy Working Paper 2025-20, September 2025, https://www.aei.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/09/WP-Estimating-the-Cost-of-Golden-Dome.pdf?x68881.
20 For a critical assessment of the CBO methodology, see Christopher Stone, "A Response to the Opponents of Space-Based Interceptors in Golden Dome," RealClear Defense, June 23, 2026, https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/06/23/a_response_to_the_opponents_of_spacebased_interceptors_in_golden_dome_1190312.html.
21 Novelly, op. cit.; Also see Rachel S. Cohen, "Golden Dome cost estimate draws Pentagon pushback," Federal News Network, August 20, 2026, https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defensemain/2026/08/golden-dome-cost-estimate-draws-pentagon-pushback/.
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Second, there is an unfortunate tendency by many to confuse cost with value. The two are not synonymous. The cost of Golden Dome may indeed be high in monetary terms, but that cost may pale in significance to the value Golden Dome provides in defending the nation from the growing threat of missile attack. Indeed, Golden Dome is intended not only to protect the United States against possible missile attack but also to strengthen deterrence of such an attack in the first place by diminishing the odds that an aggressor can count on successfully achieving his military objectives. And in weighing cost, it is important to consider the cost of rebuilding a major American city should deterrence fail, for whatever reason. In this regard, Golden Dome is the nation's ultimate insurance policy, and, in my view, its value as both a deterrent to missile attack and a defense against such an attack far exceeds its cost. If we are not willing to pay the premium for the protection it promises, then we must shoulder the potentially catastrophic consequences that may flow from accepting the risk of deterrence failure.
Finally, those who assert that Golden Dome is "unaffordable" are confusing the issue of affordability with spending preferences. In other words, it is not that Golden Dome is unaffordable, but rather that critics believe the fiscal resources it requires would be better spent on other priorities.22 Let me be clear: There is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper prioritization of limited defense resources, but suggesting that speculative and extreme cost estimates make the Golden Dome effort unaffordable is misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.
Ultimately, it is a question of whether the nation is willing to accept the risk of remaining relatively defenseless in perpetuity against emerging, more sophisticated, and more capable adversary missile threats to the homeland, including those posed by major nuclear adversaries like Russia and China. I would hope the Congress' answer to this question would be a resounding no.
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22 For a discussion of this issue as it relates to spending on nuclear weapons programs, see Dr. Keith B. Payne and Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., et. al., A New Nuclear Review for a New Age (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, April 2017), pp. 185-198, https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/A-NewNuclear-Review-final.pdf.
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Finally, there is the question of what should be done to overcome these impediments and how this committee, and Congress more generally, might help accomplish this. On this question, I would make several observations.
First, it is important for the Congress to reaffirm its clear and unequivocal support for Golden Dome in the NDAA and to codify as a matter of policy that the United States shall be defended against all types of missile threats, of any range, launched from any location. Over the years, congressional language has been schizophrenic on this issue, sometimes expressing support for a more robust missile defense capability, other times favoring a missile defense system that can counter only limited missile threats to the homeland and stating that it is U.S. policy to rely on strategic deterrence and the threat of nuclear retaliation rather than active defenses to protect the nation against more sophisticated long-range missile threats from peer adversaries.
I commend the Congress for modifying U.S. missile defense policy in the FY2026 NDAA by declaring that it is the policy of the United States to defend against "the threat of foreign attack by increasingly complex ballistic, hypersonic glide, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial threats," without restricting this effort to limited missile threats or rogue state actors only.23 While the language also recognizes that our nuclear deterrent remains an essential component of our deterrent posture, it should be augmented by active defensive measures to guard against the risk of deterrence failure.
Golden Dome promises just that.
Second, Congress needs to exercise fully its oversight role to ensure the administration moves out swiftly and smartly to make the promise of Golden Dome a reality. This includes support for, and greater investment in, space-based sensors that can provide early warning, tracking, and discrimination capabilities, as well as kinetic and non-kinetic defensive intercept capabilities, including directed energy systems. In this regard, Israel's experience with its "Iron Beam" system may be instructive. Directed energy technology can potentially change the offense-defense cost curve significantly in favor of the defense, nullifying one of the most frequently cited arguments against missile defense, namely, that defensive interceptors are significantly more costly than the offensive missiles they are intended to counter.
As adversary missile threats grow and become increasingly capable, the role of space-based assets takes on greater significance and should be pursued with all due urgency. The benefits of developing a space-based intercept capability are numerous. It would allow longer-range missiles to be countered in their boost-phase, when they are most vulnerable due to highly visible signatures while their engines are burning, or in their ascent-phase prior to payload separation. A boost- or ascent-phase defense would also allow the destruction of missiles over enemy territory rather than over U.S. soil. This, in itself, could serve as a powerful deterrent to missile attack. And it would also help mitigate the technical challenges faced by terrestrial mid-course and terminal missile defense systems that face geographic, trajectory, and other limitations and are likely to encounter enemy decoys and countermeasures.24 Cold War-era platitudes that space-based defenses will result in the "militarization of space" or the "weaponization of space" ignore decades of adversary efforts to develop and improve anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities, fractional orbital bombardment systems (FOBS), and other counter-space activities. In short, the time to debate the value of space for the missile defense mission is over.
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23 Section 1651 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (Public Law 119-60), December 18, 2025, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ60/pdf/PLAW-119publ60.pdf.
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Third, a "business-as-usual" approach to missile defense is inadequate. To its credit, the Trump Administration is seeking to accelerate the acquisition of critical military capabilities, reduce production timelines, and rebuild the necessary defense infrastructure to stay ahead of the threat curve.25 But this will require greater congressional support and commensurate, long-term funding. While there are those inside the defense establishment who will object to the Golden Dome effort as syphoning off needed funds for other priority defense projects, the potentially catastrophic consequences of failing to implement Golden Dome successfully make overcoming the critics' objections imperative. Indeed, Executive Order 14186 makes clear that this initiative is a presidential priority,26 and the administration must communicate forcefully the rationale for and importance of Golden Dome at every opportunity.
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24 Ian Williams and Masao Dahlgren, et al, Boost-Phase Missile Defense: Interrogating the Assumptions, Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2022, p. 1, https://csiswebsiteprod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/220624_Karako_BoostPhase_MissileDefense.pd f?VersionId=WjJxlNM58oru1LK21LC9untewoK_UAQD.
25 See, for example, Pranshu Verma, "Pentagon presses defense firms to build weapons as Iran war depletes stocks," The Washington Post, August 8, 2026, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/08/pentagon-presses-defense-firms-buildweapons-iran-war-depletes-stocks/; Filip Timotija, "Pentagon pushing defense contractors to speed up weapons production," The Hill, August 10, 2026, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/6020032-pentagondemands-faster-weapons-production/; Department of War, "Department of War Launches the 'Golden Dome for America Hub' To Accelerate Industry Engagement, Revolutionize Homeland Missile Defense Partnerships," News Release, August 11, 2026, https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4568639/department-of-war-launches-thegolden-dome-for-america-hub-to-accelerate-indust/.
26 The White House, "The Iron Dome for America," Executive Order 14186, January 27, 2025, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-14186-the-iron-dome-for-america.
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Although Program Managers are generally risk averse given that failure is seldom rewarded, true progress is only possible through bold action. Indeed, we often learn more from our failures than our successes, and Congress should encourage boldness in this endeavor. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.
Finally, Congress must provide the necessary fiscal resources to implement Golden Dome over the long term. This means committing to a regular and steady appropriations funding stream that is not subject to the uncertain vagaries of reconciliation bills, continuing resolutions, ill-advised programmatic trade-offs, or partisan hostage-taking. The defense of the American people requires nothing less.
In the past, Congress authorized multiyear advance appropriations to protect the nation against national security threats deemed particularly dangerous.27 While such an approach for Golden Dome may be considered extraordinary and may not engender the requisite bipartisan support, I cite this example to indicate that where Congress has the will, it can surely find innovative ways to ensure that Golden Dome is adequately funded over the long term.
With these initial comments, I appreciate the opportunity to offer my views to the subcommittee and look forward to your questions. Thank you.
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27 "Project BioShield" was one example of a 10-year advance appropriation to defend the nation against the threat of bioterrorism and is discussed in David J. Trachtenberg, The Lawgivers' Struggle: How Congress Wields Power in National Security Decision Making (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2020), pp. 242-246.
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David J. Trachtenberg
The Honorable David J. Trachtenberg is Senior Scholar and former Vice President of the National Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit research center in Fairfax, Virginia. He was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 17, 2017, as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served in this capacity until his retirement from government service in July 2019. Until January 2018, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the principal civilian adviser to the Secretary of Defense on policy matters. He was also the senior Department of Defense civilian official responsible for DoD policy on civilian casualties resulting from military operations.
Prior to his confirmation, Mr. Trachtenberg was President and CEO of Shortwaver Consulting, LLC. Earlier, he was a Vice President at CACI and Senior Vice President for Homeland Security at National Security Research, Inc. Prior to joining NSR, Mr. Trachtenberg was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy in the George W. Bush Administration.
From 1995-2001, Mr. Trachtenberg was a Professional Staff Member with the House Committee on Armed Services (HASC) in Washington, D.C, serving as head of the committee's policy staff and staff lead for the HASC Special Oversight Panel on Terrorism.
Mr. Trachtenberg is a two-time recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. He has testified before multiple congressional committees, is widely published, and is the author of The Lawgivers' Struggle: How Congress Wields Power in National Security Decision Making (2020). He is also a longtime member of the U.S. Air Force Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS), a volunteer network of civilian amateur radio operators who provide contingency communications support to the Department of Defense and the armed forces. He holds an A.B. in International Relations from the University of Southern California and a M.S. degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. An adjunct professor in national security at the Arlington, Virginia campus of Missouri State University's graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Mr. Trachtenberg has also been a Practitioner in Residence at Georgetown University's graduate School of Foreign Service.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/trachtenberg_opening_statement.pdf
Center for Strategic & International Studies Missile Defense Project Director Karako Testifies Before Senate Armed Services Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Defense and Security Department, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative:
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Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member King, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on the air and missile defense initiative currently known as Golden Dome for America (GDA). The need ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Defense and Security Department, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative: * * * Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member King, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on the air and missile defense initiative currently known as Golden Dome for America (GDA). The needto revolutionize our nation's approach to air and missile defense capabilities is both strategically necessary and long overdue.
We find ourselves at a moment of unprecedented global demand for air and missile defenses. One has only to open a newspaper or see online video clips of intercepts for its salience to be clear. Missiles and drones have become weapons of choice. Missile defenses have, in turn, become foundational to deterrence and defense. Both here in the United States and abroad, there has never been more demand for ramping up interceptor production. Long-range strike and missile defenses together top the defense modernization priorities for many allies and partners, such as Japan, Australia, Germany, and Ukraine. Missile defenses have helped keep Ukraine sovereign.
Little surprise, then, that the Ukrainians put a Patriot launcher on their currency.
For far too long, U.S. air and missile defense efforts have been characterized by a striking dichotomy. Defenses for the homeland have historically focused on long-range rogue state ballistic threats, while cruise missile defense and other air defense efforts have focused on regional and force protection applications "over there," to the exclusion of the homeland. Such compartmentalization vainly assumes that battles in one place will only consist of certain parts of the threat spectrum, and battles elsewhere will consist of others. That lingering dichotomy creates a vulnerability that near-peer adversaries now seek to exploit. In a sense, that homeland-regional dichotomy ignores the fact that North America is a region, too.1 Complex, structured, and numerous air and missile attacks may soon be coming to a theater near you.
I am privileged today to represent the CSIS Missile Defense Project team, which for the last decade has tried to shape the discussion and develop the literature around countering the full spectrum of missile threats, from drones to cruise missiles to hypersonic glide vehicles to orbital bombardment. CSIS does not take policy positions, so the views represented in this testimony are my own and not those of my employer.
My remarks are organized around the principle that the Golden Dome discourse suffers from insufficient attention to three things: communication, imagination, and institutionalization.
Following that, I offer a few recommendations for the subcommittee's consideration for shaping the future of Golden Dome.
I. COMMUNICATION
Golden Dome suffers from a lack of strategic messaging: a clear and simple explanation of what it is, and what we are trying to do here.2 The executive order spoke generally of a next generation missile defense shield, of deterring and defending against any foreign aerial attack on the homeland, protecting our secure second-strike capability, and opportunities for greater bilateral and multilateral missile defense cooperation.3
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1 Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
2 Tom Karako, "Golden Dome: Loosen the gag order, and start talking," Breaking Defense, November 17, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/golden-dome-loosen-the-gag-order-and-start-talking/.
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Interpretations of what this means have varied widely, contributing to misunderstanding and confusion. The 2023 Strategic Posture Commission likewise remained generic in recommending that "The United States should develop and field homeland IAMD capabilities that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China."4 This formulation is fine as far as it goes. It does not go very far.
Given that Golden Dome is a flagship presidential initiative, one underwritten by the reality of today's strategic environment, the relative lack of communication, explanation, and advocacy by Pentagon leadership is a bit surprising. It was gratifying to see the GDA director publish an opinion editorial this week.5 Considerably more engagement is needed. Keep talking.
The result has been a spectacle of Rorschach tests--where ink blots are subjectively interpreted--as commentators project their prior assumptions into fears or fantasies. One sees Golden Dome referenced as an "impenetrable shield" against all forms of missile attack, even though no such language appeared in the executive order or subsequent documents. Inflated public cost estimates for GDA have soared to the trillions, despite budget requests and official GDA life cycle estimates that are a mere fraction of the speculative numbers.
The initiative known as Golden Dome will become real and durable when its logic is understood on a broad, bipartisan, and public basis. Such understanding requires a communication and education campaign with legislative, public, and international components. Without it, Golden Dome could remain a thick binder of good ideas locked in a Pentagon vault, filed alongside other good ideas which never materialized.
Exact numbers of interceptors, notional salvo sizes, defended asset lists, and sensitive operational details should remain closely held. The need for operational security need not get in the way, however, of sharing a few big ideas about what Golden Dome is, why it is necessary to national security, and why it is doable. Silence plays into the hands of those at home and abroad who caricature the effort as foolhardy or reduce it to a meme. It invites Russian, Chinese, and other propaganda to shape the narrative.
With one exception, every air and missile defense system has in the last several years been successfully and operationally employed in real world engagements--and on hundreds of occasions.6 Hitting bullets with bullets has become routine. Capabilities developed and fielded over the last four decades have proven their value in spades.
Following the Iranian attack on Al Udeid on June 23, 2025, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine publicly praised the exceptional operations of Patriot air defenders.7 But there is a much greater story to be told. For years, polite society doubted one could hit a bullet with a bullet and expressed skepticism about real-world operational reliability versus developmental testing. Now the Pentagon, the several military service departments, US Central Command, and the Missile Defense Agency have an opportunity to describe how missile defenses have been doing in practice. For all the attention to the damage Shaheds have inflicted upon U.S. bases in the Middle East, public affairs officers have missed the opportunity to describe the many Shaheds engaged by Coyote/M-LIDS and other C-UAS interceptors.
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3 Executive Order 14186, "The Iron Dome for America," 90 Fed. Reg. 8767 (February 3, 2025), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/03/2025-02182/the-iron-dome-for-america.
4 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analyses, October 2023), https://pcis.spa.com/assets/pdf/Strategic-Posture-Commission-Report.pdf.
5 Mike A. Guetlein, "Why America needs Golden Dome for protection," Washington Post, September 24, 2026.
6 From the close-in weapon System (CIWS) to SM-3, the one air and missile defense system that has not, thankfully, yet been operationally employed is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) designed to intercept ICBMs.
7 U.S. Department of War, "Hegseth, Caine Hold Press Briefing," June 26, 2025, https://www.war.gov/Multimedia/videoid/968149/.
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The uncommunicated operational and technical successes of air and missile defenders and their systems impair broader understanding. The eye-watering capability of sensors and interceptors built by the American industrial base deserves acknowledgement. The enterprise's broader global reach through C2BMC and the broader Missile Defense System (MDS) merit it too.
Lest this be mistaken for an excess of enthusiasm, one must emphasize that the quest for an impenetrable shield to defend everything is a fool's errand. As a 2022 CSIS study concluded, "The beginning of wisdom for homeland cruise missile defense is to recognize the necessity of preferential defense. Perfect or geographically comprehensive defense is impossible."8
It would be wrong to lampoon the Golden Dome initiative as an effort aimed at achieving such an impenetrable shield. With apologies to Ronald Reagan, missile defenses are not going to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, at least not anytime soon. The realization of meaningful homeland air and missile defense is possible and necessary, but it will not be easy.
An Initiative, not a System
As the title of this hearing reflects, Golden Dome is not a weapon system. It is rather an initiative that comprises a tremendous integration challenge and experiments in defense acquisition reform. As General Michael Guetlein has said, "Golden Dome isn't a technology problem. It is an organizational behavior and social engineering challenge."9
The executive order for GDA emphasized attention to the full spectrum of threats: not just ICBMs and hypersonic glide vehicles, but also cruise missiles and advanced aerial threats like Group 3 drones. A significant amount of capability already exists that may be stitched together to counter these threats.
GDA's first epoch tailored to 2028 is understandably and necessarily focused on producing, fielding, and integrating capabilities that have already been developed. That near-term operational ambition comes at the expense of developmental modesty--and that is just fine. Next generation capability is certainly needed, but decades of development must be leveraged to deliver capability now, in this decisive decade.
Strategic Instability
One of the more frequent issues that has belabored the GDA discussion is whether it will "disrupt strategic stability." The insinuation, informed by phantasms and intellectual baggage from the Cold War, is that too much defense capability will be delivered, and that from behind that impenetrable shield the United States could attack and disarm other nuclear-armed nations. The prospect of that could be destabilizing by encouraging an adversary to strike first in a crisis.
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8 Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, 21, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
9 Tom Karako, "Golden Dome: Loosen the gag order, and start talking," Breaking Defense, November 17, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/golden-dome-loosen-the-gag-order-and-start-talking/.
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Such insinuations have too much faith in missile defenses, too little respect for the gravity of the threat, and insufficient attention to the specter and the problem of non-nuclear strategic attack.
The 1980s called, and they want their intellectual baggage back.
There is another sense in which this intellectual baggage is especially unhelpful, in that it supposes that the status quo is one of strategic stability, and that to preserve it we must simply do nothing. The specter of non-nuclear strategic attack--perhaps a mix of missile, drone, and cyber attacks--could have significant strategic effects without any radiation being released. Stipulating and internalizing this prospect forces one to redefine "strategic stability" more broadly than the legacy Cold War concept of "a big nuclear attack on the homeland."
The development of these threats presents the troubling conclusion that we may not currently be in a situation of strategic stability. The current degree of vulnerability to non-nuclear strategic attack is likewise destabilizing, in the sense that weakness is provocative. Tempting an adversary to attempt a disarming (non-nuclear) first strike is a form of crisis instability.
The pinched Cold War application of strategic stability to only big nuclear attack on the homeland must be expanded to incorporate other threats. This sort of coercive attack, beneath the perceived threshold of nuclear response by the United States, that makes something like the Golden Dome initiative so urgent. The current threat environment is in that sense unstable. Active defenses in support of deterrence by denial help provide or restore stability by raising the threshold for attack. General Guetlein made this connection explicit last week: "The strongest shield is one our adversaries never choose to test because they know they cannot achieve their objectives. That is the purpose of Golden Dome for America. Golden Dome is meant to deny aggressors any expectation that their missiles can be used reliably for coercive purposes. It will therefore strengthen deterrenceby-denial."10
This was the logic for the Biden administration's commencement of the Defense of Guam effort, and those roles were articulated in the 2022 Missile Defense Review.11 It was a sound logic.
Golden Dome is a continuation and extension of that logic, not a departure. It will also be limited, just as every weapon system ever devised and fielded is limited.
Past theoretical predictions about the potential for missile defense to contribute to deescalation and damage limitation have now become real world case studies. In 2024, the combined missile defense of Israel--aided extensively by U.S. Army THAAD air defenders--gave the Israeli government the opportunity, as encouraged by President Biden, to "take the win" rather than massively retaliate.12 Defenses in Ukraine and more recently across the Middle East have provided still more case studies of how missile defense contributes to stability and escalation control even within conflicts.
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10 Mike A. Guetlein, "Why America needs Golden Dome for protection," Washington Post, September 24, 2026.
11 U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, October 27, 2022), https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf.
12 Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, and Rachael Bade, "Playbook: Will Israel heed Biden and 'take the win'?," Politico, April 14, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/04/14/will-israel-heed-biden-and-take-the-win00152137.
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It is especially peculiar that Russia and China have characterized the Golden Dome effort as provocative and destabilizing. Both nations field sophisticated air and missile defenses for their own homelands. Americans sometimes take for granted that our adversaries would field anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubbles for themselves even while doubting the prospect of fielding some for ourselves. In the words of my former boss (and former Deputy Secretary of Defense) Dr. Kath Hicks, from 2016, "Russia has built a thicket of overlapping and redundant A2/AD systems... stretching from the Kola Peninsula in the Russian Arctic to Latakia, Syria, in the eastern Mediterranean."13 Recent military parades and other reporting suggest that more is likely to come on this front. One would therefore not be surprised by the emergence of a "Red Dome" of sorts over China.14
Instead of being the putative cause for Chinese and Russian buildups, Golden Dome is not dissimilar from what they have already been doing. It is a form of playing catch-up, to develop some limited A2/AD thickets for ourselves, to support deterrence by denial.
How the United States government reacts to various other forms of non-nuclear attacks on the homeland has purchase here. Failing to call out, attribute, and punish, say, cyber attacks by foreign actors on utilities infrastructure--non-kinetic attacks with real world kinetic effects--could encourage further bad behavior, and convince adversaries that the United States is likely to accept non-nuclear attacks without significant reprisal. Again, weakness is provocative. A sustained pattern of (even being perceived to be) taking it on the chin could encourage adversaries to wrongly suppose that they would get away with other non-nuclear strategic attack on the homeland.
Allied and Theater Considerations
Another aspect of communication concerns allies and partners. The January 2025 executive order directed an Allied and Theater Missile Defense Review (ATMDR) "to identify opportunities for greater bilateral and multilateral missile defense cooperation." Secretary Hegseth reportedly ordered its completion by May 15, 2025./15 Sixteen months later, many key allies and partners have apparently not yet been consulted, and the document has not been finalized and released.
It would be beneficial to reach out to some of our closest allies whose defense industrial bases can be leveraged. Even without knowing many details, a number of these nations have expressed interest in helping.
This lack of communication with allies seemingly undermines implementation of the White House's February 6, 2026 executive order for establishing an America First arms transfer strategy for getting allies to buy U.S.-made military equipment.16 Germany is moving towards domestic production of PAC-2 interceptors; other countries are exploring the prospect for similar efforts.
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13 Kathleen H. Hicks, Heather A. Conley, John O'Grady, Jeffrey Rathke, and Olga Oliker, "Evaluating Future U.S. Army Force Posture in Europe: Phase I Report," Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 4, 2016, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/160629_Evaluating_Future_US_Army_Posture_Europe_Phase_II_Report.pdf.
14 Kari A. Bingen, Tom Karako, and Heather Williams, "China's Military on Parade," transcript, Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 4, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-military-parade.
15 Theresa Hitchens, "Exclusive: Here's who Hegseth may task to put together Trump's Iron Dome plan," Breaking Defense, February 6, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/exclusive-heres-who-hegseth-is-tasking-to-puttogether-trumps-iron-dome-plan/.
16 Executive Order 14383, "Establishing an America First Arms Transfer Strategy," 91 Fed. Reg. 6497 (February 11, 2026), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/11/2026-02814/establishing-an-america-first-arms-transferstrategy.
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Allies and partners need to understand, however, what the United States would like them to do, and what they should be able to expect from the United States. They would understandably wonder how they will be able to buy more missiles or interceptors after the recent expenditures in Operation Epic Fury. News reports suggest that the United States is exercising its sovereign authority to cut in line and redirect previously agreed foreign military sales to the U.S. military, including PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors already paid for by allies.17
Far more is at stake than foreign military sales. Japan's recent release of draft FY2027 budget documents indicate that their government could drop its planned acquisition of a next generation radar for their Patriot force. Such a change would be a potential setback for US-Japan interoperability and capability in that critical region.18 Communication is a two-way endeavor; it is important to not merely speak to our allies, but also to understand their needs and constraints. In Europe, numerous nations are desirous of procuring and co-producing more missile defense capabilities, both interceptors and continent-wide sensor nets.19 The administration has properly asked our allies to do more. Pursuant to the President's executive order, the United States should look to make it easier for them to do more in "cooperation" with us.
There are significant opportunities here to lead and shape this effort that will enhance defense industrial bases at home and abroad.
America's neighbors to the north are also important. President Trump noted the importance of Canadian participation in an Oval Office announcement last May.20 The contours of that cooperation could include sensor modernization efforts, such as modernization of the North Warning System (NWS), new over the horizon radars (OTHRs), and Aegis-equipped frigates. The F-35 sensor suite will also be important for the NORAD air defense mission.21
As noted in a recent agreement pursuant to the 1951 treaty with Denmark, Greenland may also play a role here. Besides the Cold War-era ballistic missile early warning radar at Pituffik Space Force Base, many sensors and effectors could be usefully fielded there.22
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17 Jen Judson and Sebastian Sprenger, "Switzerland becomes newest customer of most advanced Patriot missile," Defense News, November 1, 2023, https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/11/01/switzerland-becomes-newestcustomer-of-most-advanced-patriot-missile/; Demetri Sevastopulo, "US warns Japan of severe delays in Tomahawk deliveries due to Iran war," Financial Times, May 23, 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/406bc3bb-068b-4f4c-b06423082e8a9f70?syn-25a6b1a6=1; Joseph Trevithick, "U.S. Army Is Buying Older PAC-2 Patriot Missiles for the First Time in Decades," TWZ, July 23, 2026, https://www.twz.com/land/u-s-army-is-buying-older-pac-2-patriot-missiles-forthe-first-time-in-decades.
18 Tom Karako, "Time to decide: A critical moment in Japan-US missile defense cooperation," Breaking Defense, July 28, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/time-to-decide-a-critical-moment-in-japan-us-missile-defensecooperation/.
19 Joseph Serowik, Listening to the Sky: Acoustic Drone Detection in Ukraine, No. 26-1115 (Fort Leavenwoth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned, March 2026), https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2026/04/30/af450e75/no-261115-listening-to-the-sky-acoustic-drone-detection-in-ukraine-mar-26.pdf.
20 Alexander Panetta, "Canada wants to join Golden Dome missile-defence program, Trump says," CBC News, May 20, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/golden-dome-trump-us-missile-defence-canada-1.7539390.
21 Giovanni de Briganti, "How Canada Plans to Integrate F-35 Fighters Into NORAD and Arctic Air Defense Operations," DEFENSE-AEROSPACE, December 18, 2025, https://www.defense-aerospace.com/how-canada-plans-tointegrate-f-35-fighters-into-norad-and-arctic-air-defense-operations/.
22 White House, AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK TOGETHER WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF GREENLAND, September 22, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/09/agreement-betweenthe-government-of-the-united-states-of-america-and-the-government-of-the-kingdom-of-denmark-together-with-thegovernment-of-greenland-to-amend-and-supplement-the-agreement-of-27-apri/.
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Another relevant consideration for ATMDR is the defense of the territory of Guam, part of the U.S. homeland in the Pacific theater. That which cannot be moved or hidden may need to be defended. Given the outsized importance of Guam for operational plans in the Pacific, it is necessary to enhance its defenses.
II. IMAGINATION
A second major shortcoming of the current discussion is a lack of imagination--about the purposes of Golden Dome, the means to realize them, and the extraordinary complexity of the emergent air and missile threat spectrum.
First, Pay Attention
Insufficient attention to both the reported contours of the program and an understanding of the art of the possible has contributed to unimaginative, cookie cutter approaches to public analysis and cost estimating with little relation to what Golden Dome is actually building.
Curiously, there has been insufficient recognition of the possibilities for getting after this initiative, and the means to do so--even in the face of public revelations showing what those means might be. While unlikely to be dispositive of the architecture, an industry day held in August 2025, and other public statements have described several types of various elements and approaches that were not being considered in any of the higher end estimates (which have been in the trillions).23
Reflection upon these elements can inform more imaginative ways and means to field a meaningful defense. Paying attention to what has already been revealed conveys that this is a tractable problem, that it is technically feasible, and that it could be addressed at an order of magnitude less than some of the public cost estimates--in fact, more in line with General Guetlein's public estimate of $185 billion over ten years.24
It seems reasonable to surmise that the architecture will be more modest, more connected to current capabilities, and altogether more achievable than some commentators suggest. Hints for this are found in past industry day slides and a handful of Pentagon requests for information (RFIs).
Industry day slides have referenced "Limited Area Defense" for a select number of areas, as well as "Wide Area Surveillance." Both are terms of art within NORAD and USNORTHCOM for their longtime pursuit of continental air defense. An approach to "limited area defense" is quite different from trying to defend every blade of grass. The word "limited" is literally there, in the name.
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23 Todd Harrison, "Build Your Own Golden Dome: A Framework for Understanding Costs, Choices, and Tradeoffs," American Enterprise Institute, September 12, 2025, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/WP-Estimatingthe-Cost-of-Golden-Dome.pdf?x16878; Congressional Budget Office, Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System, (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, May 2026), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62379 24 Ashleigh Fields, "Golden Dome cost estimate grows to $185B," The Hill, March 18, 2026, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5789969-golden-dome-missile-defense-cost/.
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Preferential Defense
One set of assumptions that has skewed public discourse is about the scope of the defended asset list. There is not, in fact, any reference in the January 2025 executive order to an impenetrable shield. Assumptions about this alone can drive very different conclusions.
By way of comparison, a 2022 CSIS analysis of homeland air and cruise missile defense was dramatically different than the architecture costed by the CBO, largely because of assumptions about the defense design and the defended area. The CBO's cost estimates for a comprehensive cruise missile defense architecture went as high as $466 billion. Focused on preferential defense of fewer areas, the CSIS architecture had a life cycle price tag of $32.7 billion over 20 years.25
Public statements and details suggest that Golden Dome will not try to field a comprehensive or impenetrable defense, but rather a limited but meaningful measure of protection of a finite number of sites. Such a capability might be understood as an effort to counter a fait accompli, cheap shots, or decapitation attacks designed to degrade military means or political will.26 These more limited goals are dramatically more feasible than an impenetrable shield to defend everything against everything, including large-scale nuclear attack.
Home Field Advantage
Once one accepts the necessity of preferential defense, a second critical feature is that this is a home game rather than an away game. Unlike the contested environment overseas, operating at home can contribute to eased manning, ruggedization, and power requirements. While the homeland environment would still be a contested environment, home field advantage also permits different approaches to launcher concepts, sensing architecture, and the employment of enabling capabilities.
Alternative Defense Designs
One aspect of playing the home game is the potential for a disaggregated, network centric approach with distributed elements. A Patriot launcher operating at a military base and integrated into a nationwide network of sensors and effectors would have a lighter logistical footprint than one alone in the middle of a desert. At any given time, local base power could be used, rather than diesel generators. Another positive feature of home field advantage is the potential for robust and resilient terrestrial-based communications infrastructure.
GDA officials have explicitly noted the differences and benefits of the home game, but they have not informed most public cost estimates. This could be enabled by modular and relocatable launchers, with a minimized facility footprint reducing reliance on prepared sites.27 Of course, not all threats need to be engaged by missile interceptors. Various non-kinetic effectors and low-cost gun-based solutions could play important roles for air defense.
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25 David Arthur and Michael Bennett, National Cruise Missile Defense: Issues and Alternatives (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 2021), 4, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56950-CMD.pdf; Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
26 Steve Trimble, "Key Focus for First Golden Dome Rollout: Protect Leadership," Aviation Week, September 18, 2026, https://aviationweek.com/defense/missile-defense-weapons/key-focus-first-golden-dome-rollout-protectleadership.
27 Mr. Stan Stafira, "Architecture," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025.
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Instead of each firing unit having its own complete kill chain, there could be remote operations which "Significantly reduc[e] human-in-the-loop interactions across sensor and effector platforms into a common point of operation and engagement."28 Instead of simply multiplying a lot of ruggedized and mobile Patriot and THAAD batteries, a next generation system might employ containerized launchers integrated with numerous radars and sensors and the nationwide air and missile defense battle management. Remote operations and their attendant characteristics translate into a different structure to cost, one that would "Enhance AI-driven remote operation by developing durable, ID-specific components with predictable maintenance and minimal soldier touchpoints, supported by reliable, sustainable, and practical long-distance communication systems."29
The concept of disaggregated firing units with containerized launchers and its potential for defense concepts of operation was outlined at length in the 2018 CSIS report, Distributed Defense.30
Alternative Sensor Architectures
The home game also permits alternative approaches to sensing. As described in several CSIS reports, this sensor architecture could include a mesh of various active and passive sensors, to include over the horizon radars (OTHRs), and surface-, building-, or tower-based radars.31 Ukraine's passive acoustic sensor network is an example of such mesh sensing, but numerous other possibilities exist by operating in the ambient noise of electromagnetic spectrum, such as passive television or cellular signals.32 Far more than with expeditionary deployments where air defense batteries must operate alone and unafraid, there exist considerable opportunities for widespread passive and active sensing across and around the North American continent.
The Federal Aviation Administration's ARSR-4 air traffic control (ATC) radar replacement program presents one opportunity for stitching together existing assets, both military and nonmilitary. Should higher bandwidth radars be procured, they could contribute to not just the ATC function but also better detection and threat classification of non-cooperative aerial threats. At minimum, priority should be given to providing GDA whatever data feeds are useful, including from non-military and commercial sources.
Given the importance of extending the horizon, aerostats, high altitude balloons (HABs), and other high-altitude platforms may provide improved sensing capability and communication resilience.33 Autonomous maritime platforms off the coasts could contribute further by expanding battlespace and warning time.
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28 Guy Yelverton, "Program Executive Office Missiles and Space," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025.
29 Douglas Williams, "Demonstrating Capabilities at Pace," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025
30 Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh, "Distributed Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 25, 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/distributed-defense.
31 Masao Dahlgren, Patrycja Bazylczyk, and Tom Karako, "Mesh Sensing for Air and Missile Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 21, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/mesh-sensing-air-and-missile-defense; Tom Karako, "Beyond the Radar Archipelago: A New Roadmap for Missile Defense Sensors," War on the Rocks, November 28, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/beyond-the-radar-archipelago-a-new-roadmap-for-missile-defensesensors/.
32 Tom Karako and Masao Dahlgren, "Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat," Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 7, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/complex-air-defense-counteringhypersonic-missile-threat.
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All such homeland-centric efforts would be additive to current global efforts already underway, such as space-based airborne moving target indicators (AMTI), the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the Space Data Network (SDN), and next generation overhead persistent infrared (OPIR).
Battle Management
The principal acquisition managed by the GDA office is to procure a battle management capability for maintaining a common operating picture and simultaneously fighting multiple fire control systems. Addressing the challenge of fire direction and fire control is necessary so that multiple defense systems do not inadvertently try to engage the same threat. Solving this will require innovation by a consortium of new and disruptive companies. It will also require the technical and operational experience of legacy systems and companies that have developed and operated fire control functions for decades. Expectation control will be important, inasmuch as the new integrated battle management layer (I-BML) will not likely replace tactical fire control of the weapon systems. The effort builds upon and will in turn advance recent efforts for the air and missile defense of Guam.
Spectrum
Last year, a topic of particular interest to this subcommittee was that of electromagnetic spectrum--a vital, scarce, and invisible natural resource for national security, air and missile defense, and Golden Dome. It is the medium for many detection, tracking, and communication functions often represented in slide decks as lightning bolts. Of special importance are the S- and Xbands, so that terrestrial radars may accurately detect, track, and classify noncooperative aerial objects.34 While the spectrum auction authorized last year by Congress thankfully avoided some of the more dangerous potential pitfalls, it will remain important for Congress to continue to police the issue and educate stakeholders.
Given the increased importance of bandwidth for national security, it is worth monitoring whether sufficient spectrum remains for military requirements. There is the need for balance between ensuring growth in spectrum as a commodity and prioritizing spectrum access for national security interests in the air and space domains.35 If bandwidth compression and spectrum sharing becomes possible, and as national security needs become greater, some of the auctioned commercial spectrum bands might need to be recovered for national security purposes, whether by legislation or eminent domain.
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33 Wes Rumbaugh and Tom Karako, "Extending the Horizon: Elevated Sensors for Targeting and Missile Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 27, 2021, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/210927_Rumbaugh_Extending_Horizon.pdf?VersionId=4A_Sv5v1HuR5cghHC1proU6iJ1m2gjx1.
34 Tom Karako, "Why Auctioning Military S-Band Spectrum Is a Bad Idea," Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 9, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-auctioning-military-s-band-spectrum-bad-idea.
35 Jean-Francois Morizur, "Mobile networks want to use the satellite airwaves we need to track climate change," Space News, December 5, 2025, https://spacenews.com/mobile-networks-want-to-use-the-satellite-airwaves-we-need-to-trackclimate-change/.
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Space-based Intercept and Space Fires
A final topic meriting greater imagination is space-based interceptors. Critics are not wrong to point to the problem of the absentee ratio and the challenge of deorbiting rapidly from hundreds of kilometers. As noted by the program office, "Advances in technology, manufacturing, and cost curves since the Brilliant Pebbles program make space-based interceptors feasible--but not simple."36 GDA officials have noted that scalability and affordability are the criteria for whether an SBI constellation will be fielded, and of what type.37
To assess prospects for scalability and affordability, there is merit to continuing the experiment and technological demonstration, not just to conduct a boost phase intercept but to explore new concepts of operation. Cheerleaders should abandon their obliviousness to physics and the absentee ratio; these are real problems. Critics should likewise reevaluate intellectual baggage from the Cold War and improved technological feasibility.
The missile threat spectrum of today is not that of 1983, 1991, or 2004. Compared to the mere challenge of SS-18s and SS-19s, the challenge is far more diverse, numerous, and complex.
Nor are the space capabilities of the United States, Russia, or China comparable to that in decades past. The presence of weapons in space, while not exactly news, is now openly acknowledged by military officials.38
The implications of space as a warfighting domain are still beginning to sink in. As they do, our evaluation of military capability in space will continue to mature. In turn, the relative significance of space-based missile defenses will likewise evolve.
The advent of space fires is upon us, both kinetic and non-kinetic. They will include space-to-space, space-to-ground and, yes, space-to-flying missile. Once exotic delivery concepts like space-to-ground orbital delivery, space planes, and fractional and multiple orbital bombardment (FOBs and MOBs) are already becoming a reality and will increase in prominence for both offensive and defensive purposes. Radiation and other forms of hardening for satellites will also rise in importance. From this ferment, space-based interceptors will likely emerge as a subset of a range of space fires.
The supply and demand for space fires is not an American idiosyncrasy. Russia and China have long been reportedly pursuing significant counterspace and space fires capability to deny, threaten, and deter U.S. freedom of action. They are not waiting for American permission to do so.
Whatever inhibitions one may have today about space-based interceptors, one has to wonder how that will change if it turned out that Russia or China was pursuing similar SBI capability to hold at risk U.S. ICBMs or other long-range strike.
Given the dramatic changes to space as a warfighting domain, it will not suffice to merely rinse and repeat with a GPALS architecture of old. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is never a good idea. The real promise is that new things can be done, new capabilities are available, and new and innovative concepts can be devised. The dramatic reduction in space launch costs is significant, but is only one relevant factor. Component miniaturization, size weight and power advances, and other means to conduct orbital maneuver could enhance operational options. The prospect of operating and sustaining satellites in very low earth orbit (VLEO), considerably closer to rising threats, is more viable today than in decades past.
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36 Golden Dome for America Industry Day" briefing slides, Missile Defense Agency, August 7, 2025.
37 Theresa Hitchens, "CBO's $1.2 trillion Golden Dome estimate based on bad data: Guetlein," Breaking Defense, May 14, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/cbos-1-2-trillion-golden-dome-estimate-based-on-bad-data-guetlein/.
38 Steven Beynon, "Air Force secretary acknowledges the US has weapons in space," ABC News, September 15, 2026, https://abcnews.com/Politics/air-force-secretary-acknowledges-us-weapons-space/story?id=136437923; Clayton Swope, Kari A. Bingen, Makena Young, and Kendra LaFave, "Space Threat Assessment 2025," Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 25, 2025, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/202504/250425_Swope_Space_Threat.pdf?VersionId=orhySgjISemJLjhdQKKes2OVb35jwkU5.
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The coming diversity of space fires and the prospect of true maneuver warfare in space will come to make GPALS-like architectures look like child's play.
For both missile defense and other purposes, these current experiments deserve a chance to go forward. I would urge bipartisan patience to let these experiments advance, and render judgment not now, and certainly not on the basis of outdated assumptions and intellectual baggage, but rather in a few years after we have seen what the new American space industry is capable of doing.
III. INSTITUTIONALIZATION
A third topic deserving further attention is how to best institutionalize the efforts now being handled by the Golden Dome office. GDA is led by a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager (DPRM) whose authority is a function of delegation by the Secretary and Deputy Secretary.
By all accounts, the DRPM construct is intended as a temporary solution. Over the last four decades, national missile defense modernization has been embodied in an office, then in an organization, and then in an agency--the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO), the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
It is not too soon to contemplate what should happen next, and to ask how the broader missile defense enterprise should best be organized to be fit for purpose.39 Some kind of new institutional arrangements and organizational structure will almost certainly be needed to tackle the massive organizational, cultural, and social engineering challenges of the undertaking.
Over the past year, the GDA office has not tried to replicate the functions that already exist elsewhere. With the exception of the battle management effort, the vast majority of interceptor, launcher, and radar procurement; systems integration and testing; and construction efforts, for instance, are being handled by others, such as the Missile Defense Agency and the military services.
The authorities of the GDA DRPM have enabled both unity of purpose and more rapid movement than typical Pentagon processes.
Supposing that an initial GDA capability is fielded by 2028, what then? From whence will the continued direction and organization be sustained? What organization or arrangement will continue to advance and sustain the effort?
The United States probably does not need more than one joint, national, missile defense acquisition-centric organization.
One possibility is for the DRPMs to simply go away and have things return to business as usual. This path could jeopardize both the unity of purpose and the continued evolution of the architecture to future epochs. Progress beyond 2028 capability would be doubtful.
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39 Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh, "Reorganizing the missile defense enterprise," Defense News, August 6, 2018, https://www.defensenews.com/smr/space-missile-defense/2018/07/27/reorganizing-the-missile-defense-enterprise/.
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Another approach might be to endow the GDA authorities onto a new entity altogether, perhaps an agency outside the Pentagon building. Such an entity might be led by a four star, and report to the Deputy Secretary rather than an Under Secretary, and have authorities similar to that of the GDA DRPM. The prospect of a new entity would of course require both time to establish and risks the prospect of duplicating functions.
A third path would be to combine the GDA office with the Missile Defense Agency, but in so doing effectively transform the latter. Such a merger could keep the MDA name or perhaps give it a new one. In doing so, it could effectively transform the MDA and perhaps be the vehicle for birthing the GDA-informed vision for the Missile Defense System-Next (MDS-Next). This path would also benefit from a four star rank, direct reporting to the Deputy Secretary, and retention of similar acquisition authorities. Today, MDA reports to the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, with dotted lines as GDA deputy director, and further dotted lines to Acquisition and Sustainment.
Of course, any of these arrangements would need to determine how or if an institutionalized GDA retains the ability to direct or coordinate acquisition by the services. Irrespective of this future organization structure, it is clear that FY 2027 will witness some significant changes to how the missile defense enterprise will develop and procure capabilities. The most notable is the multiyear acceleration of THAAD, PAC-3 MSE, SM-3, and SM-6. Further efforts are likely to include G/ATOR, SPY-6, TPY-6, LTAMDS, and other radars.40 Other movements within the enterprise are also coming. Procurement of the THAAD system, for instance, will this week formally transfer from MDA to the U.S. Army.
Whatever the scope of mission for the future air and missile defense of the homeland, its realization and governance will benefit from unity of effort with clear authority, high level access, control of resources, and appropriate acquisition authorities.
Finally, it is no secret that the "Golden Dome" moniker has contributed to political polarization around the effort. Several options exist to depolarize and depoliticize the effort. It belongs to Congress to name or rename executive departments--witness the pending proposal to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. Congress likewise has legislative power to rename the Golden Dome initiative in a future national defense authorization act.
The threat gets a vote, and it has voted to make missiles weapons of choice. Inbound missile threats will not care about our feelings. Nor will they care about the foibles of American domestic politics. One of the principal challenges for both Congress and the executive branch will be to extricate politics and find a bipartisan solution to field meaningful air and missile defense capability for the American homeland.
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40 Natalie Oliverio, "Pentagon gives industry 21 days to submit plans for 'significantly faster' weapons production," Defense News, August 11, 2026, https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/08/11/pentagon-givesindustry-21-days-to-submit-plans-for-significantly-faster-weapons-production/.
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IV. RECOMMENDATIONS
In closing, allow me to suggest a few ways in which this subcommittee and Congress more broadly might constructively guide, assist, and improve the Pentagon's efforts related to homeland air and missile defense, through both legislative and oversight functions.
* The most urgent congressional action is to appropriate funds, this calendar year, for the missile acceleration ramp and homeland missile defense efforts. Whether it comes in the form of reconciliation, war supplemental, or base budget, both Golden Dome and munitions ramp efforts will stand or fall on FY2027 funding.
* To shore up sustainment and improve oversight, Congress might consider requiring the Golden Dome efforts to be built into base budget planning and budget requests for future fiscal years, along with projections of future year defense program (FYDP).
* Whether by fencing money or some other legislative mechanism, Congress could coerce the finalization and release of:
* The Allied and Theater Missile Defense Review (ATMDR), which will be important to inform and implement further missile defense cooperation with allies and partners; and
* A public report or fact sheets communicating the strategic logic behind Golden Dome and the broad concepts being pursued to achieve those strategic goals. These could be issued by, for instance, the Under Secretary for Policy or the GDA DRPM.
* Congressional defense committees might consider coordination with other committees of jurisdiction to ensure whole-of-government attention to air and missile defense needs of the homeland, including the Federal Aviation Agency and Federal Communications Commission, for selection criteria for air traffic control radars and spectrum availability.
* In exercising both oversight and legislative functions, Congress could encourage new and innovative approaches and technology development for SBI capability development, with particular attention to how the capability could be scaled affordably and incorporate the warfighting functions of maneuver and massed fires.
* Begin consideration of the future institutionalization in some entity with the necessary authorities, high level access, and resources--and the appropriate organization of the broad missile defense enterprise, to implement and over time sustain the broad sweep of the initiative now underway. As part of the reorganization and reform of the enterprise, it may make sense to in some way merge GDA with MDA, and rename the Golden Dome initiative.
By whatever name, initiatives to create and sustain homeland air and missile defense are necessary and long overdue. The relevant technologies and capabilities exist. This initiative is required to bring them together and operationalize them.
This is a tractable problem. With improved communication, imagination, and attention to its institutionalization, these initiatives can buttress today's degraded strategic stability and contribute to homeland defense, which has long been, on a bipartisan basis, our nation's top defense priority.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I look forward to your questions.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/karako_opening_statement.pdf
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Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member King, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on the air and missile defense initiative currently known as Golden Dome for America (GDA). The need ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 -- The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces released the following testimony by Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project, and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Defense and Security Department, from a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing on the Golden Dome for America initiative: * * * Chairman Fischer, Ranking Member King, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on the air and missile defense initiative currently known as Golden Dome for America (GDA). The needto revolutionize our nation's approach to air and missile defense capabilities is both strategically necessary and long overdue.
We find ourselves at a moment of unprecedented global demand for air and missile defenses. One has only to open a newspaper or see online video clips of intercepts for its salience to be clear. Missiles and drones have become weapons of choice. Missile defenses have, in turn, become foundational to deterrence and defense. Both here in the United States and abroad, there has never been more demand for ramping up interceptor production. Long-range strike and missile defenses together top the defense modernization priorities for many allies and partners, such as Japan, Australia, Germany, and Ukraine. Missile defenses have helped keep Ukraine sovereign.
Little surprise, then, that the Ukrainians put a Patriot launcher on their currency.
For far too long, U.S. air and missile defense efforts have been characterized by a striking dichotomy. Defenses for the homeland have historically focused on long-range rogue state ballistic threats, while cruise missile defense and other air defense efforts have focused on regional and force protection applications "over there," to the exclusion of the homeland. Such compartmentalization vainly assumes that battles in one place will only consist of certain parts of the threat spectrum, and battles elsewhere will consist of others. That lingering dichotomy creates a vulnerability that near-peer adversaries now seek to exploit. In a sense, that homeland-regional dichotomy ignores the fact that North America is a region, too.1 Complex, structured, and numerous air and missile attacks may soon be coming to a theater near you.
I am privileged today to represent the CSIS Missile Defense Project team, which for the last decade has tried to shape the discussion and develop the literature around countering the full spectrum of missile threats, from drones to cruise missiles to hypersonic glide vehicles to orbital bombardment. CSIS does not take policy positions, so the views represented in this testimony are my own and not those of my employer.
My remarks are organized around the principle that the Golden Dome discourse suffers from insufficient attention to three things: communication, imagination, and institutionalization.
Following that, I offer a few recommendations for the subcommittee's consideration for shaping the future of Golden Dome.
I. COMMUNICATION
Golden Dome suffers from a lack of strategic messaging: a clear and simple explanation of what it is, and what we are trying to do here.2 The executive order spoke generally of a next generation missile defense shield, of deterring and defending against any foreign aerial attack on the homeland, protecting our secure second-strike capability, and opportunities for greater bilateral and multilateral missile defense cooperation.3
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1 Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
2 Tom Karako, "Golden Dome: Loosen the gag order, and start talking," Breaking Defense, November 17, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/golden-dome-loosen-the-gag-order-and-start-talking/.
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Interpretations of what this means have varied widely, contributing to misunderstanding and confusion. The 2023 Strategic Posture Commission likewise remained generic in recommending that "The United States should develop and field homeland IAMD capabilities that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China."4 This formulation is fine as far as it goes. It does not go very far.
Given that Golden Dome is a flagship presidential initiative, one underwritten by the reality of today's strategic environment, the relative lack of communication, explanation, and advocacy by Pentagon leadership is a bit surprising. It was gratifying to see the GDA director publish an opinion editorial this week.5 Considerably more engagement is needed. Keep talking.
The result has been a spectacle of Rorschach tests--where ink blots are subjectively interpreted--as commentators project their prior assumptions into fears or fantasies. One sees Golden Dome referenced as an "impenetrable shield" against all forms of missile attack, even though no such language appeared in the executive order or subsequent documents. Inflated public cost estimates for GDA have soared to the trillions, despite budget requests and official GDA life cycle estimates that are a mere fraction of the speculative numbers.
The initiative known as Golden Dome will become real and durable when its logic is understood on a broad, bipartisan, and public basis. Such understanding requires a communication and education campaign with legislative, public, and international components. Without it, Golden Dome could remain a thick binder of good ideas locked in a Pentagon vault, filed alongside other good ideas which never materialized.
Exact numbers of interceptors, notional salvo sizes, defended asset lists, and sensitive operational details should remain closely held. The need for operational security need not get in the way, however, of sharing a few big ideas about what Golden Dome is, why it is necessary to national security, and why it is doable. Silence plays into the hands of those at home and abroad who caricature the effort as foolhardy or reduce it to a meme. It invites Russian, Chinese, and other propaganda to shape the narrative.
With one exception, every air and missile defense system has in the last several years been successfully and operationally employed in real world engagements--and on hundreds of occasions.6 Hitting bullets with bullets has become routine. Capabilities developed and fielded over the last four decades have proven their value in spades.
Following the Iranian attack on Al Udeid on June 23, 2025, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine publicly praised the exceptional operations of Patriot air defenders.7 But there is a much greater story to be told. For years, polite society doubted one could hit a bullet with a bullet and expressed skepticism about real-world operational reliability versus developmental testing. Now the Pentagon, the several military service departments, US Central Command, and the Missile Defense Agency have an opportunity to describe how missile defenses have been doing in practice. For all the attention to the damage Shaheds have inflicted upon U.S. bases in the Middle East, public affairs officers have missed the opportunity to describe the many Shaheds engaged by Coyote/M-LIDS and other C-UAS interceptors.
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3 Executive Order 14186, "The Iron Dome for America," 90 Fed. Reg. 8767 (February 3, 2025), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/03/2025-02182/the-iron-dome-for-america.
4 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, America's Strategic Posture: The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analyses, October 2023), https://pcis.spa.com/assets/pdf/Strategic-Posture-Commission-Report.pdf.
5 Mike A. Guetlein, "Why America needs Golden Dome for protection," Washington Post, September 24, 2026.
6 From the close-in weapon System (CIWS) to SM-3, the one air and missile defense system that has not, thankfully, yet been operationally employed is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) designed to intercept ICBMs.
7 U.S. Department of War, "Hegseth, Caine Hold Press Briefing," June 26, 2025, https://www.war.gov/Multimedia/videoid/968149/.
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The uncommunicated operational and technical successes of air and missile defenders and their systems impair broader understanding. The eye-watering capability of sensors and interceptors built by the American industrial base deserves acknowledgement. The enterprise's broader global reach through C2BMC and the broader Missile Defense System (MDS) merit it too.
Lest this be mistaken for an excess of enthusiasm, one must emphasize that the quest for an impenetrable shield to defend everything is a fool's errand. As a 2022 CSIS study concluded, "The beginning of wisdom for homeland cruise missile defense is to recognize the necessity of preferential defense. Perfect or geographically comprehensive defense is impossible."8
It would be wrong to lampoon the Golden Dome initiative as an effort aimed at achieving such an impenetrable shield. With apologies to Ronald Reagan, missile defenses are not going to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, at least not anytime soon. The realization of meaningful homeland air and missile defense is possible and necessary, but it will not be easy.
An Initiative, not a System
As the title of this hearing reflects, Golden Dome is not a weapon system. It is rather an initiative that comprises a tremendous integration challenge and experiments in defense acquisition reform. As General Michael Guetlein has said, "Golden Dome isn't a technology problem. It is an organizational behavior and social engineering challenge."9
The executive order for GDA emphasized attention to the full spectrum of threats: not just ICBMs and hypersonic glide vehicles, but also cruise missiles and advanced aerial threats like Group 3 drones. A significant amount of capability already exists that may be stitched together to counter these threats.
GDA's first epoch tailored to 2028 is understandably and necessarily focused on producing, fielding, and integrating capabilities that have already been developed. That near-term operational ambition comes at the expense of developmental modesty--and that is just fine. Next generation capability is certainly needed, but decades of development must be leveraged to deliver capability now, in this decisive decade.
Strategic Instability
One of the more frequent issues that has belabored the GDA discussion is whether it will "disrupt strategic stability." The insinuation, informed by phantasms and intellectual baggage from the Cold War, is that too much defense capability will be delivered, and that from behind that impenetrable shield the United States could attack and disarm other nuclear-armed nations. The prospect of that could be destabilizing by encouraging an adversary to strike first in a crisis.
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8 Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, 21, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
9 Tom Karako, "Golden Dome: Loosen the gag order, and start talking," Breaking Defense, November 17, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/golden-dome-loosen-the-gag-order-and-start-talking/.
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Such insinuations have too much faith in missile defenses, too little respect for the gravity of the threat, and insufficient attention to the specter and the problem of non-nuclear strategic attack.
The 1980s called, and they want their intellectual baggage back.
There is another sense in which this intellectual baggage is especially unhelpful, in that it supposes that the status quo is one of strategic stability, and that to preserve it we must simply do nothing. The specter of non-nuclear strategic attack--perhaps a mix of missile, drone, and cyber attacks--could have significant strategic effects without any radiation being released. Stipulating and internalizing this prospect forces one to redefine "strategic stability" more broadly than the legacy Cold War concept of "a big nuclear attack on the homeland."
The development of these threats presents the troubling conclusion that we may not currently be in a situation of strategic stability. The current degree of vulnerability to non-nuclear strategic attack is likewise destabilizing, in the sense that weakness is provocative. Tempting an adversary to attempt a disarming (non-nuclear) first strike is a form of crisis instability.
The pinched Cold War application of strategic stability to only big nuclear attack on the homeland must be expanded to incorporate other threats. This sort of coercive attack, beneath the perceived threshold of nuclear response by the United States, that makes something like the Golden Dome initiative so urgent. The current threat environment is in that sense unstable. Active defenses in support of deterrence by denial help provide or restore stability by raising the threshold for attack. General Guetlein made this connection explicit last week: "The strongest shield is one our adversaries never choose to test because they know they cannot achieve their objectives. That is the purpose of Golden Dome for America. Golden Dome is meant to deny aggressors any expectation that their missiles can be used reliably for coercive purposes. It will therefore strengthen deterrenceby-denial."10
This was the logic for the Biden administration's commencement of the Defense of Guam effort, and those roles were articulated in the 2022 Missile Defense Review.11 It was a sound logic.
Golden Dome is a continuation and extension of that logic, not a departure. It will also be limited, just as every weapon system ever devised and fielded is limited.
Past theoretical predictions about the potential for missile defense to contribute to deescalation and damage limitation have now become real world case studies. In 2024, the combined missile defense of Israel--aided extensively by U.S. Army THAAD air defenders--gave the Israeli government the opportunity, as encouraged by President Biden, to "take the win" rather than massively retaliate.12 Defenses in Ukraine and more recently across the Middle East have provided still more case studies of how missile defense contributes to stability and escalation control even within conflicts.
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10 Mike A. Guetlein, "Why America needs Golden Dome for protection," Washington Post, September 24, 2026.
11 U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, October 27, 2022), https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.pdf.
12 Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, and Rachael Bade, "Playbook: Will Israel heed Biden and 'take the win'?," Politico, April 14, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/04/14/will-israel-heed-biden-and-take-the-win00152137.
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It is especially peculiar that Russia and China have characterized the Golden Dome effort as provocative and destabilizing. Both nations field sophisticated air and missile defenses for their own homelands. Americans sometimes take for granted that our adversaries would field anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubbles for themselves even while doubting the prospect of fielding some for ourselves. In the words of my former boss (and former Deputy Secretary of Defense) Dr. Kath Hicks, from 2016, "Russia has built a thicket of overlapping and redundant A2/AD systems... stretching from the Kola Peninsula in the Russian Arctic to Latakia, Syria, in the eastern Mediterranean."13 Recent military parades and other reporting suggest that more is likely to come on this front. One would therefore not be surprised by the emergence of a "Red Dome" of sorts over China.14
Instead of being the putative cause for Chinese and Russian buildups, Golden Dome is not dissimilar from what they have already been doing. It is a form of playing catch-up, to develop some limited A2/AD thickets for ourselves, to support deterrence by denial.
How the United States government reacts to various other forms of non-nuclear attacks on the homeland has purchase here. Failing to call out, attribute, and punish, say, cyber attacks by foreign actors on utilities infrastructure--non-kinetic attacks with real world kinetic effects--could encourage further bad behavior, and convince adversaries that the United States is likely to accept non-nuclear attacks without significant reprisal. Again, weakness is provocative. A sustained pattern of (even being perceived to be) taking it on the chin could encourage adversaries to wrongly suppose that they would get away with other non-nuclear strategic attack on the homeland.
Allied and Theater Considerations
Another aspect of communication concerns allies and partners. The January 2025 executive order directed an Allied and Theater Missile Defense Review (ATMDR) "to identify opportunities for greater bilateral and multilateral missile defense cooperation." Secretary Hegseth reportedly ordered its completion by May 15, 2025./15 Sixteen months later, many key allies and partners have apparently not yet been consulted, and the document has not been finalized and released.
It would be beneficial to reach out to some of our closest allies whose defense industrial bases can be leveraged. Even without knowing many details, a number of these nations have expressed interest in helping.
This lack of communication with allies seemingly undermines implementation of the White House's February 6, 2026 executive order for establishing an America First arms transfer strategy for getting allies to buy U.S.-made military equipment.16 Germany is moving towards domestic production of PAC-2 interceptors; other countries are exploring the prospect for similar efforts.
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13 Kathleen H. Hicks, Heather A. Conley, John O'Grady, Jeffrey Rathke, and Olga Oliker, "Evaluating Future U.S. Army Force Posture in Europe: Phase I Report," Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 4, 2016, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/160629_Evaluating_Future_US_Army_Posture_Europe_Phase_II_Report.pdf.
14 Kari A. Bingen, Tom Karako, and Heather Williams, "China's Military on Parade," transcript, Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 4, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-military-parade.
15 Theresa Hitchens, "Exclusive: Here's who Hegseth may task to put together Trump's Iron Dome plan," Breaking Defense, February 6, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/exclusive-heres-who-hegseth-is-tasking-to-puttogether-trumps-iron-dome-plan/.
16 Executive Order 14383, "Establishing an America First Arms Transfer Strategy," 91 Fed. Reg. 6497 (February 11, 2026), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/11/2026-02814/establishing-an-america-first-arms-transferstrategy.
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Allies and partners need to understand, however, what the United States would like them to do, and what they should be able to expect from the United States. They would understandably wonder how they will be able to buy more missiles or interceptors after the recent expenditures in Operation Epic Fury. News reports suggest that the United States is exercising its sovereign authority to cut in line and redirect previously agreed foreign military sales to the U.S. military, including PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors already paid for by allies.17
Far more is at stake than foreign military sales. Japan's recent release of draft FY2027 budget documents indicate that their government could drop its planned acquisition of a next generation radar for their Patriot force. Such a change would be a potential setback for US-Japan interoperability and capability in that critical region.18 Communication is a two-way endeavor; it is important to not merely speak to our allies, but also to understand their needs and constraints. In Europe, numerous nations are desirous of procuring and co-producing more missile defense capabilities, both interceptors and continent-wide sensor nets.19 The administration has properly asked our allies to do more. Pursuant to the President's executive order, the United States should look to make it easier for them to do more in "cooperation" with us.
There are significant opportunities here to lead and shape this effort that will enhance defense industrial bases at home and abroad.
America's neighbors to the north are also important. President Trump noted the importance of Canadian participation in an Oval Office announcement last May.20 The contours of that cooperation could include sensor modernization efforts, such as modernization of the North Warning System (NWS), new over the horizon radars (OTHRs), and Aegis-equipped frigates. The F-35 sensor suite will also be important for the NORAD air defense mission.21
As noted in a recent agreement pursuant to the 1951 treaty with Denmark, Greenland may also play a role here. Besides the Cold War-era ballistic missile early warning radar at Pituffik Space Force Base, many sensors and effectors could be usefully fielded there.22
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17 Jen Judson and Sebastian Sprenger, "Switzerland becomes newest customer of most advanced Patriot missile," Defense News, November 1, 2023, https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/11/01/switzerland-becomes-newestcustomer-of-most-advanced-patriot-missile/; Demetri Sevastopulo, "US warns Japan of severe delays in Tomahawk deliveries due to Iran war," Financial Times, May 23, 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/406bc3bb-068b-4f4c-b06423082e8a9f70?syn-25a6b1a6=1; Joseph Trevithick, "U.S. Army Is Buying Older PAC-2 Patriot Missiles for the First Time in Decades," TWZ, July 23, 2026, https://www.twz.com/land/u-s-army-is-buying-older-pac-2-patriot-missiles-forthe-first-time-in-decades.
18 Tom Karako, "Time to decide: A critical moment in Japan-US missile defense cooperation," Breaking Defense, July 28, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/time-to-decide-a-critical-moment-in-japan-us-missile-defensecooperation/.
19 Joseph Serowik, Listening to the Sky: Acoustic Drone Detection in Ukraine, No. 26-1115 (Fort Leavenwoth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned, March 2026), https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2026/04/30/af450e75/no-261115-listening-to-the-sky-acoustic-drone-detection-in-ukraine-mar-26.pdf.
20 Alexander Panetta, "Canada wants to join Golden Dome missile-defence program, Trump says," CBC News, May 20, 2025, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/golden-dome-trump-us-missile-defence-canada-1.7539390.
21 Giovanni de Briganti, "How Canada Plans to Integrate F-35 Fighters Into NORAD and Arctic Air Defense Operations," DEFENSE-AEROSPACE, December 18, 2025, https://www.defense-aerospace.com/how-canada-plans-tointegrate-f-35-fighters-into-norad-and-arctic-air-defense-operations/.
22 White House, AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK TOGETHER WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF GREENLAND, September 22, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/09/agreement-betweenthe-government-of-the-united-states-of-america-and-the-government-of-the-kingdom-of-denmark-together-with-thegovernment-of-greenland-to-amend-and-supplement-the-agreement-of-27-apri/.
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Another relevant consideration for ATMDR is the defense of the territory of Guam, part of the U.S. homeland in the Pacific theater. That which cannot be moved or hidden may need to be defended. Given the outsized importance of Guam for operational plans in the Pacific, it is necessary to enhance its defenses.
II. IMAGINATION
A second major shortcoming of the current discussion is a lack of imagination--about the purposes of Golden Dome, the means to realize them, and the extraordinary complexity of the emergent air and missile threat spectrum.
First, Pay Attention
Insufficient attention to both the reported contours of the program and an understanding of the art of the possible has contributed to unimaginative, cookie cutter approaches to public analysis and cost estimating with little relation to what Golden Dome is actually building.
Curiously, there has been insufficient recognition of the possibilities for getting after this initiative, and the means to do so--even in the face of public revelations showing what those means might be. While unlikely to be dispositive of the architecture, an industry day held in August 2025, and other public statements have described several types of various elements and approaches that were not being considered in any of the higher end estimates (which have been in the trillions).23
Reflection upon these elements can inform more imaginative ways and means to field a meaningful defense. Paying attention to what has already been revealed conveys that this is a tractable problem, that it is technically feasible, and that it could be addressed at an order of magnitude less than some of the public cost estimates--in fact, more in line with General Guetlein's public estimate of $185 billion over ten years.24
It seems reasonable to surmise that the architecture will be more modest, more connected to current capabilities, and altogether more achievable than some commentators suggest. Hints for this are found in past industry day slides and a handful of Pentagon requests for information (RFIs).
Industry day slides have referenced "Limited Area Defense" for a select number of areas, as well as "Wide Area Surveillance." Both are terms of art within NORAD and USNORTHCOM for their longtime pursuit of continental air defense. An approach to "limited area defense" is quite different from trying to defend every blade of grass. The word "limited" is literally there, in the name.
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23 Todd Harrison, "Build Your Own Golden Dome: A Framework for Understanding Costs, Choices, and Tradeoffs," American Enterprise Institute, September 12, 2025, https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/WP-Estimatingthe-Cost-of-Golden-Dome.pdf?x16878; Congressional Budget Office, Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System, (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, May 2026), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62379 24 Ashleigh Fields, "Golden Dome cost estimate grows to $185B," The Hill, March 18, 2026, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5789969-golden-dome-missile-defense-cost/.
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Preferential Defense
One set of assumptions that has skewed public discourse is about the scope of the defended asset list. There is not, in fact, any reference in the January 2025 executive order to an impenetrable shield. Assumptions about this alone can drive very different conclusions.
By way of comparison, a 2022 CSIS analysis of homeland air and cruise missile defense was dramatically different than the architecture costed by the CBO, largely because of assumptions about the defense design and the defended area. The CBO's cost estimates for a comprehensive cruise missile defense architecture went as high as $466 billion. Focused on preferential defense of fewer areas, the CSIS architecture had a life cycle price tag of $32.7 billion over 20 years.25
Public statements and details suggest that Golden Dome will not try to field a comprehensive or impenetrable defense, but rather a limited but meaningful measure of protection of a finite number of sites. Such a capability might be understood as an effort to counter a fait accompli, cheap shots, or decapitation attacks designed to degrade military means or political will.26 These more limited goals are dramatically more feasible than an impenetrable shield to defend everything against everything, including large-scale nuclear attack.
Home Field Advantage
Once one accepts the necessity of preferential defense, a second critical feature is that this is a home game rather than an away game. Unlike the contested environment overseas, operating at home can contribute to eased manning, ruggedization, and power requirements. While the homeland environment would still be a contested environment, home field advantage also permits different approaches to launcher concepts, sensing architecture, and the employment of enabling capabilities.
Alternative Defense Designs
One aspect of playing the home game is the potential for a disaggregated, network centric approach with distributed elements. A Patriot launcher operating at a military base and integrated into a nationwide network of sensors and effectors would have a lighter logistical footprint than one alone in the middle of a desert. At any given time, local base power could be used, rather than diesel generators. Another positive feature of home field advantage is the potential for robust and resilient terrestrial-based communications infrastructure.
GDA officials have explicitly noted the differences and benefits of the home game, but they have not informed most public cost estimates. This could be enabled by modular and relocatable launchers, with a minimized facility footprint reducing reliance on prepared sites.27 Of course, not all threats need to be engaged by missile interceptors. Various non-kinetic effectors and low-cost gun-based solutions could play important roles for air defense.
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25 David Arthur and Michael Bennett, National Cruise Missile Defense: Issues and Alternatives (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 2021), 4, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-02/56950-CMD.pdf; Tom Karako, Matthew Strohmeyer, Ian Williams, Wes Rumbaugh, and Ken Harmon, "North America Is a Region, Too: An Integrated, Phased, and Affordable Approach to Air and Missile Defense for the Homeland," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 14, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-america-region-too.
26 Steve Trimble, "Key Focus for First Golden Dome Rollout: Protect Leadership," Aviation Week, September 18, 2026, https://aviationweek.com/defense/missile-defense-weapons/key-focus-first-golden-dome-rollout-protectleadership.
27 Mr. Stan Stafira, "Architecture," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025.
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Instead of each firing unit having its own complete kill chain, there could be remote operations which "Significantly reduc[e] human-in-the-loop interactions across sensor and effector platforms into a common point of operation and engagement."28 Instead of simply multiplying a lot of ruggedized and mobile Patriot and THAAD batteries, a next generation system might employ containerized launchers integrated with numerous radars and sensors and the nationwide air and missile defense battle management. Remote operations and their attendant characteristics translate into a different structure to cost, one that would "Enhance AI-driven remote operation by developing durable, ID-specific components with predictable maintenance and minimal soldier touchpoints, supported by reliable, sustainable, and practical long-distance communication systems."29
The concept of disaggregated firing units with containerized launchers and its potential for defense concepts of operation was outlined at length in the 2018 CSIS report, Distributed Defense.30
Alternative Sensor Architectures
The home game also permits alternative approaches to sensing. As described in several CSIS reports, this sensor architecture could include a mesh of various active and passive sensors, to include over the horizon radars (OTHRs), and surface-, building-, or tower-based radars.31 Ukraine's passive acoustic sensor network is an example of such mesh sensing, but numerous other possibilities exist by operating in the ambient noise of electromagnetic spectrum, such as passive television or cellular signals.32 Far more than with expeditionary deployments where air defense batteries must operate alone and unafraid, there exist considerable opportunities for widespread passive and active sensing across and around the North American continent.
The Federal Aviation Administration's ARSR-4 air traffic control (ATC) radar replacement program presents one opportunity for stitching together existing assets, both military and nonmilitary. Should higher bandwidth radars be procured, they could contribute to not just the ATC function but also better detection and threat classification of non-cooperative aerial threats. At minimum, priority should be given to providing GDA whatever data feeds are useful, including from non-military and commercial sources.
Given the importance of extending the horizon, aerostats, high altitude balloons (HABs), and other high-altitude platforms may provide improved sensing capability and communication resilience.33 Autonomous maritime platforms off the coasts could contribute further by expanding battlespace and warning time.
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28 Guy Yelverton, "Program Executive Office Missiles and Space," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025.
29 Douglas Williams, "Demonstrating Capabilities at Pace," from Golden Dome for America Industry Summit, August 7, 2025
30 Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh, "Distributed Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 25, 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/distributed-defense.
31 Masao Dahlgren, Patrycja Bazylczyk, and Tom Karako, "Mesh Sensing for Air and Missile Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 21, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/mesh-sensing-air-and-missile-defense; Tom Karako, "Beyond the Radar Archipelago: A New Roadmap for Missile Defense Sensors," War on the Rocks, November 28, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/beyond-the-radar-archipelago-a-new-roadmap-for-missile-defensesensors/.
32 Tom Karako and Masao Dahlgren, "Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat," Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 7, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/complex-air-defense-counteringhypersonic-missile-threat.
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All such homeland-centric efforts would be additive to current global efforts already underway, such as space-based airborne moving target indicators (AMTI), the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the Space Data Network (SDN), and next generation overhead persistent infrared (OPIR).
Battle Management
The principal acquisition managed by the GDA office is to procure a battle management capability for maintaining a common operating picture and simultaneously fighting multiple fire control systems. Addressing the challenge of fire direction and fire control is necessary so that multiple defense systems do not inadvertently try to engage the same threat. Solving this will require innovation by a consortium of new and disruptive companies. It will also require the technical and operational experience of legacy systems and companies that have developed and operated fire control functions for decades. Expectation control will be important, inasmuch as the new integrated battle management layer (I-BML) will not likely replace tactical fire control of the weapon systems. The effort builds upon and will in turn advance recent efforts for the air and missile defense of Guam.
Spectrum
Last year, a topic of particular interest to this subcommittee was that of electromagnetic spectrum--a vital, scarce, and invisible natural resource for national security, air and missile defense, and Golden Dome. It is the medium for many detection, tracking, and communication functions often represented in slide decks as lightning bolts. Of special importance are the S- and Xbands, so that terrestrial radars may accurately detect, track, and classify noncooperative aerial objects.34 While the spectrum auction authorized last year by Congress thankfully avoided some of the more dangerous potential pitfalls, it will remain important for Congress to continue to police the issue and educate stakeholders.
Given the increased importance of bandwidth for national security, it is worth monitoring whether sufficient spectrum remains for military requirements. There is the need for balance between ensuring growth in spectrum as a commodity and prioritizing spectrum access for national security interests in the air and space domains.35 If bandwidth compression and spectrum sharing becomes possible, and as national security needs become greater, some of the auctioned commercial spectrum bands might need to be recovered for national security purposes, whether by legislation or eminent domain.
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33 Wes Rumbaugh and Tom Karako, "Extending the Horizon: Elevated Sensors for Targeting and Missile Defense," Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 27, 2021, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/publication/210927_Rumbaugh_Extending_Horizon.pdf?VersionId=4A_Sv5v1HuR5cghHC1proU6iJ1m2gjx1.
34 Tom Karako, "Why Auctioning Military S-Band Spectrum Is a Bad Idea," Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 9, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-auctioning-military-s-band-spectrum-bad-idea.
35 Jean-Francois Morizur, "Mobile networks want to use the satellite airwaves we need to track climate change," Space News, December 5, 2025, https://spacenews.com/mobile-networks-want-to-use-the-satellite-airwaves-we-need-to-trackclimate-change/.
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Space-based Intercept and Space Fires
A final topic meriting greater imagination is space-based interceptors. Critics are not wrong to point to the problem of the absentee ratio and the challenge of deorbiting rapidly from hundreds of kilometers. As noted by the program office, "Advances in technology, manufacturing, and cost curves since the Brilliant Pebbles program make space-based interceptors feasible--but not simple."36 GDA officials have noted that scalability and affordability are the criteria for whether an SBI constellation will be fielded, and of what type.37
To assess prospects for scalability and affordability, there is merit to continuing the experiment and technological demonstration, not just to conduct a boost phase intercept but to explore new concepts of operation. Cheerleaders should abandon their obliviousness to physics and the absentee ratio; these are real problems. Critics should likewise reevaluate intellectual baggage from the Cold War and improved technological feasibility.
The missile threat spectrum of today is not that of 1983, 1991, or 2004. Compared to the mere challenge of SS-18s and SS-19s, the challenge is far more diverse, numerous, and complex.
Nor are the space capabilities of the United States, Russia, or China comparable to that in decades past. The presence of weapons in space, while not exactly news, is now openly acknowledged by military officials.38
The implications of space as a warfighting domain are still beginning to sink in. As they do, our evaluation of military capability in space will continue to mature. In turn, the relative significance of space-based missile defenses will likewise evolve.
The advent of space fires is upon us, both kinetic and non-kinetic. They will include space-to-space, space-to-ground and, yes, space-to-flying missile. Once exotic delivery concepts like space-to-ground orbital delivery, space planes, and fractional and multiple orbital bombardment (FOBs and MOBs) are already becoming a reality and will increase in prominence for both offensive and defensive purposes. Radiation and other forms of hardening for satellites will also rise in importance. From this ferment, space-based interceptors will likely emerge as a subset of a range of space fires.
The supply and demand for space fires is not an American idiosyncrasy. Russia and China have long been reportedly pursuing significant counterspace and space fires capability to deny, threaten, and deter U.S. freedom of action. They are not waiting for American permission to do so.
Whatever inhibitions one may have today about space-based interceptors, one has to wonder how that will change if it turned out that Russia or China was pursuing similar SBI capability to hold at risk U.S. ICBMs or other long-range strike.
Given the dramatic changes to space as a warfighting domain, it will not suffice to merely rinse and repeat with a GPALS architecture of old. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is never a good idea. The real promise is that new things can be done, new capabilities are available, and new and innovative concepts can be devised. The dramatic reduction in space launch costs is significant, but is only one relevant factor. Component miniaturization, size weight and power advances, and other means to conduct orbital maneuver could enhance operational options. The prospect of operating and sustaining satellites in very low earth orbit (VLEO), considerably closer to rising threats, is more viable today than in decades past.
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36 Golden Dome for America Industry Day" briefing slides, Missile Defense Agency, August 7, 2025.
37 Theresa Hitchens, "CBO's $1.2 trillion Golden Dome estimate based on bad data: Guetlein," Breaking Defense, May 14, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/cbos-1-2-trillion-golden-dome-estimate-based-on-bad-data-guetlein/.
38 Steven Beynon, "Air Force secretary acknowledges the US has weapons in space," ABC News, September 15, 2026, https://abcnews.com/Politics/air-force-secretary-acknowledges-us-weapons-space/story?id=136437923; Clayton Swope, Kari A. Bingen, Makena Young, and Kendra LaFave, "Space Threat Assessment 2025," Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 25, 2025, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/202504/250425_Swope_Space_Threat.pdf?VersionId=orhySgjISemJLjhdQKKes2OVb35jwkU5.
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The coming diversity of space fires and the prospect of true maneuver warfare in space will come to make GPALS-like architectures look like child's play.
For both missile defense and other purposes, these current experiments deserve a chance to go forward. I would urge bipartisan patience to let these experiments advance, and render judgment not now, and certainly not on the basis of outdated assumptions and intellectual baggage, but rather in a few years after we have seen what the new American space industry is capable of doing.
III. INSTITUTIONALIZATION
A third topic deserving further attention is how to best institutionalize the efforts now being handled by the Golden Dome office. GDA is led by a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager (DPRM) whose authority is a function of delegation by the Secretary and Deputy Secretary.
By all accounts, the DRPM construct is intended as a temporary solution. Over the last four decades, national missile defense modernization has been embodied in an office, then in an organization, and then in an agency--the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO), the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
It is not too soon to contemplate what should happen next, and to ask how the broader missile defense enterprise should best be organized to be fit for purpose.39 Some kind of new institutional arrangements and organizational structure will almost certainly be needed to tackle the massive organizational, cultural, and social engineering challenges of the undertaking.
Over the past year, the GDA office has not tried to replicate the functions that already exist elsewhere. With the exception of the battle management effort, the vast majority of interceptor, launcher, and radar procurement; systems integration and testing; and construction efforts, for instance, are being handled by others, such as the Missile Defense Agency and the military services.
The authorities of the GDA DRPM have enabled both unity of purpose and more rapid movement than typical Pentagon processes.
Supposing that an initial GDA capability is fielded by 2028, what then? From whence will the continued direction and organization be sustained? What organization or arrangement will continue to advance and sustain the effort?
The United States probably does not need more than one joint, national, missile defense acquisition-centric organization.
One possibility is for the DRPMs to simply go away and have things return to business as usual. This path could jeopardize both the unity of purpose and the continued evolution of the architecture to future epochs. Progress beyond 2028 capability would be doubtful.
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39 Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh, "Reorganizing the missile defense enterprise," Defense News, August 6, 2018, https://www.defensenews.com/smr/space-missile-defense/2018/07/27/reorganizing-the-missile-defense-enterprise/.
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Another approach might be to endow the GDA authorities onto a new entity altogether, perhaps an agency outside the Pentagon building. Such an entity might be led by a four star, and report to the Deputy Secretary rather than an Under Secretary, and have authorities similar to that of the GDA DRPM. The prospect of a new entity would of course require both time to establish and risks the prospect of duplicating functions.
A third path would be to combine the GDA office with the Missile Defense Agency, but in so doing effectively transform the latter. Such a merger could keep the MDA name or perhaps give it a new one. In doing so, it could effectively transform the MDA and perhaps be the vehicle for birthing the GDA-informed vision for the Missile Defense System-Next (MDS-Next). This path would also benefit from a four star rank, direct reporting to the Deputy Secretary, and retention of similar acquisition authorities. Today, MDA reports to the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, with dotted lines as GDA deputy director, and further dotted lines to Acquisition and Sustainment.
Of course, any of these arrangements would need to determine how or if an institutionalized GDA retains the ability to direct or coordinate acquisition by the services. Irrespective of this future organization structure, it is clear that FY 2027 will witness some significant changes to how the missile defense enterprise will develop and procure capabilities. The most notable is the multiyear acceleration of THAAD, PAC-3 MSE, SM-3, and SM-6. Further efforts are likely to include G/ATOR, SPY-6, TPY-6, LTAMDS, and other radars.40 Other movements within the enterprise are also coming. Procurement of the THAAD system, for instance, will this week formally transfer from MDA to the U.S. Army.
Whatever the scope of mission for the future air and missile defense of the homeland, its realization and governance will benefit from unity of effort with clear authority, high level access, control of resources, and appropriate acquisition authorities.
Finally, it is no secret that the "Golden Dome" moniker has contributed to political polarization around the effort. Several options exist to depolarize and depoliticize the effort. It belongs to Congress to name or rename executive departments--witness the pending proposal to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War. Congress likewise has legislative power to rename the Golden Dome initiative in a future national defense authorization act.
The threat gets a vote, and it has voted to make missiles weapons of choice. Inbound missile threats will not care about our feelings. Nor will they care about the foibles of American domestic politics. One of the principal challenges for both Congress and the executive branch will be to extricate politics and find a bipartisan solution to field meaningful air and missile defense capability for the American homeland.
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40 Natalie Oliverio, "Pentagon gives industry 21 days to submit plans for 'significantly faster' weapons production," Defense News, August 11, 2026, https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/08/11/pentagon-givesindustry-21-days-to-submit-plans-for-significantly-faster-weapons-production/.
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IV. RECOMMENDATIONS
In closing, allow me to suggest a few ways in which this subcommittee and Congress more broadly might constructively guide, assist, and improve the Pentagon's efforts related to homeland air and missile defense, through both legislative and oversight functions.
* The most urgent congressional action is to appropriate funds, this calendar year, for the missile acceleration ramp and homeland missile defense efforts. Whether it comes in the form of reconciliation, war supplemental, or base budget, both Golden Dome and munitions ramp efforts will stand or fall on FY2027 funding.
* To shore up sustainment and improve oversight, Congress might consider requiring the Golden Dome efforts to be built into base budget planning and budget requests for future fiscal years, along with projections of future year defense program (FYDP).
* Whether by fencing money or some other legislative mechanism, Congress could coerce the finalization and release of:
* The Allied and Theater Missile Defense Review (ATMDR), which will be important to inform and implement further missile defense cooperation with allies and partners; and
* A public report or fact sheets communicating the strategic logic behind Golden Dome and the broad concepts being pursued to achieve those strategic goals. These could be issued by, for instance, the Under Secretary for Policy or the GDA DRPM.
* Congressional defense committees might consider coordination with other committees of jurisdiction to ensure whole-of-government attention to air and missile defense needs of the homeland, including the Federal Aviation Agency and Federal Communications Commission, for selection criteria for air traffic control radars and spectrum availability.
* In exercising both oversight and legislative functions, Congress could encourage new and innovative approaches and technology development for SBI capability development, with particular attention to how the capability could be scaled affordably and incorporate the warfighting functions of maneuver and massed fires.
* Begin consideration of the future institutionalization in some entity with the necessary authorities, high level access, and resources--and the appropriate organization of the broad missile defense enterprise, to implement and over time sustain the broad sweep of the initiative now underway. As part of the reorganization and reform of the enterprise, it may make sense to in some way merge GDA with MDA, and rename the Golden Dome initiative.
By whatever name, initiatives to create and sustain homeland air and missile defense are necessary and long overdue. The relevant technologies and capabilities exist. This initiative is required to bring them together and operationalize them.
This is a tractable problem. With improved communication, imagination, and attention to its institutionalization, these initiatives can buttress today's degraded strategic stability and contribute to homeland defense, which has long been, on a bipartisan basis, our nation's top defense priority.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I look forward to your questions.
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Original text here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/karako_opening_statement.pdf
Ex-Im Bank First VP Nominee Slade Testifies Before Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by David Slade, President Trump's nominee to be first vice president and vice chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing:
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Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of this Committee. I am very honored to be here today as President Trump's nominee to serve as the First Vice President and Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Thank you for the time many of you and your staff ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by David Slade, President Trump's nominee to be first vice president and vice chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing: * * * Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of this Committee. I am very honored to be here today as President Trump's nominee to serve as the First Vice President and Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Thank you for the time many of you and your staffhave already spent with me in anticipation of this hearing.
I would also like to thank President Trump for the strategic priority he has placed on revitalizing American industry, for the central role he envisions for EXIM in delivering on that priority, and for the position he has asked me to serve as part of that strategic mission.
I am also immensely grateful to the President and Chairman of EXIM, Mr. John Jovanovic, for all his support, and for his great leadership of the Bank.
I'm pleased to say my son Tyler is here with me today, as are many of my EXIM colleagues, for whose support I am very grateful. My daughter Tara and my wife Marilyn unfortunately could not make it in person, but they are here with me in spirit.
Marilyn and I are New Englanders, and we met in high school in Beverly, Massachusetts, a town on the north shore of Boston. Incidentally, Marilyn's family are Italian immigrants who came to America in pursuit of a better life and the promise of the American Dream. Her grandparents worked in what was once a giant shoe factory in Beverly that employed thousands of hardworking people, giving Marilyn's family and so many others the opportunity to realize that Dream. But that factory is no longer in Beverly, a victim of offshoring, like too many other factories in too many other communities across America. This is a story I know all too well, and one of my many inspirations for ultimately working with the Export-Import Bank.
In retrospect, I think my journey to EXIM started for me as a child. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by international affairs. I believe that's because I was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where my father was then serving. That fascination drove me to supplement my law degree from Harvard with a master's degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, thus preparing me for a career in international law and finance.
For more than three decades, I worked as an international finance attorney representing official credit agencies on complex infrastructure, manufacturing, mining, and energy projects all around the world. In what would become the first part of a 35-year career with EXIM, my very first client as a young partner at a major law firm was the Export-Import Bank, which I represented during all those decades on complex projects, all of which were central to the core mission of the Bank.
In 2019, I had the honor and privilege of being appointed as General Counsel of EXIM during the first Trump Administration. This was a difficult time for the Bank, as 2019 was the year when EXIM regained its Board quorum after a four-year lapse, and the year when it was last reauthorized.
On that note, I want to take a moment to thank Congress, especially many of the members of this Committee, for reauthorizing the Bank in 2019, and establishing the all-important China and Transformational Exports Program, CTEP which, as General Counsel, I had a key role in standing up for the Bank.
At the start of the second Trump administration, I had the opportunity to join the Transition Team for EXIM to help align the Bank's strategic priorities with President Trump's vision of revitalizing the American economy. Once Chairman Jovanovic was confirmed to serve at the helm of EXIM, I was honored that he asked me to stay at the Bank to continue implementing his four strategic priorities, namely: getting back to basics to make sure American companies of all sizes win around the world, unleashing American energy dominance with an all-of-the aboveapproach, strengthening American supply chain security, and ensuring America leads in the industries of the future, all to create and preserve well-paying U.S. jobs.
In short, I've had the privilege and opportunity to work with EXIM for 35 years, under six Presidents, half Republican and half Democrat. What I love about the Bank is that it is all about the mission, and my support for that mission has been the one constant theme throughout my entire career. I look forward to the opportunity, if confirmed, to support Chairman Jovanovic and help the Bank fully realize its potential to be a strong and effective tool for maintaining America's economic leadership, for strengthening our domestic industrial base, and for ensuring our nation remains the most prosperous and competitive country in the world, for decades to come.
Thank you again for considering my nomination, and I look forward to your questions.
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Original text here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/slade_testimony_10-1-26.pdf
* * *
Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of this Committee. I am very honored to be here today as President Trump's nominee to serve as the First Vice President and Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Thank you for the time many of you and your staff ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by David Slade, President Trump's nominee to be first vice president and vice chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing: * * * Thank you, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and distinguished members of this Committee. I am very honored to be here today as President Trump's nominee to serve as the First Vice President and Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Thank you for the time many of you and your staffhave already spent with me in anticipation of this hearing.
I would also like to thank President Trump for the strategic priority he has placed on revitalizing American industry, for the central role he envisions for EXIM in delivering on that priority, and for the position he has asked me to serve as part of that strategic mission.
I am also immensely grateful to the President and Chairman of EXIM, Mr. John Jovanovic, for all his support, and for his great leadership of the Bank.
I'm pleased to say my son Tyler is here with me today, as are many of my EXIM colleagues, for whose support I am very grateful. My daughter Tara and my wife Marilyn unfortunately could not make it in person, but they are here with me in spirit.
Marilyn and I are New Englanders, and we met in high school in Beverly, Massachusetts, a town on the north shore of Boston. Incidentally, Marilyn's family are Italian immigrants who came to America in pursuit of a better life and the promise of the American Dream. Her grandparents worked in what was once a giant shoe factory in Beverly that employed thousands of hardworking people, giving Marilyn's family and so many others the opportunity to realize that Dream. But that factory is no longer in Beverly, a victim of offshoring, like too many other factories in too many other communities across America. This is a story I know all too well, and one of my many inspirations for ultimately working with the Export-Import Bank.
In retrospect, I think my journey to EXIM started for me as a child. For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by international affairs. I believe that's because I was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where my father was then serving. That fascination drove me to supplement my law degree from Harvard with a master's degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, thus preparing me for a career in international law and finance.
For more than three decades, I worked as an international finance attorney representing official credit agencies on complex infrastructure, manufacturing, mining, and energy projects all around the world. In what would become the first part of a 35-year career with EXIM, my very first client as a young partner at a major law firm was the Export-Import Bank, which I represented during all those decades on complex projects, all of which were central to the core mission of the Bank.
In 2019, I had the honor and privilege of being appointed as General Counsel of EXIM during the first Trump Administration. This was a difficult time for the Bank, as 2019 was the year when EXIM regained its Board quorum after a four-year lapse, and the year when it was last reauthorized.
On that note, I want to take a moment to thank Congress, especially many of the members of this Committee, for reauthorizing the Bank in 2019, and establishing the all-important China and Transformational Exports Program, CTEP which, as General Counsel, I had a key role in standing up for the Bank.
At the start of the second Trump administration, I had the opportunity to join the Transition Team for EXIM to help align the Bank's strategic priorities with President Trump's vision of revitalizing the American economy. Once Chairman Jovanovic was confirmed to serve at the helm of EXIM, I was honored that he asked me to stay at the Bank to continue implementing his four strategic priorities, namely: getting back to basics to make sure American companies of all sizes win around the world, unleashing American energy dominance with an all-of-the aboveapproach, strengthening American supply chain security, and ensuring America leads in the industries of the future, all to create and preserve well-paying U.S. jobs.
In short, I've had the privilege and opportunity to work with EXIM for 35 years, under six Presidents, half Republican and half Democrat. What I love about the Bank is that it is all about the mission, and my support for that mission has been the one constant theme throughout my entire career. I look forward to the opportunity, if confirmed, to support Chairman Jovanovic and help the Bank fully realize its potential to be a strong and effective tool for maintaining America's economic leadership, for strengthening our domestic industrial base, and for ensuring our nation remains the most prosperous and competitive country in the world, for decades to come.
Thank you again for considering my nomination, and I look forward to your questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/slade_testimony_10-1-26.pdf
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade & Development Nominee Wiggins Testifies Before Senate Banking Committee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by Jeremy Wiggins, President Trump's nominee to be assistant secretary of the Treasury for international trade and development, from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing:
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Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and Members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you as the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade and Development.
I am deeply grateful to President Trump for this opportunity to serve our country, and to Secretary Bessent ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by Jeremy Wiggins, President Trump's nominee to be assistant secretary of the Treasury for international trade and development, from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing: * * * Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and Members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you as the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade and Development. I am deeply grateful to President Trump for this opportunity to serve our country, and to Secretary Bessentfor the confidence he has placed in me. I am also grateful to the Members and staff of this Committee who took the time to meet with me.
Those conversations were valuable, and if confirmed, I look forward to continuing them.
I want to begin by acknowledging my family. My parents, Cheryl and Mark, are here with me today. I would also like to recognize my sister, Jessica, and my grandparents, Patricia and Larry. Nothing I have done would be possible without them, and their love and support mean the world to me.
For the past year and a half, I have had the privilege of serving in Treasury's Office of International Affairs. Before joining Treasury, I spent my career in international markets: on the staff of the President's National Economic Council, as an Advisor to the President of the World Bank Group, and at two American financial institutions. Each of those roles prepared me for the position to which I have been nominated, and I am grateful to the mentors who gave me those opportunities.
More than eighty years ago, at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the Treasury Department helped design the international economic architecture that would define the postwar era. But the system has not kept pace with changing economic and strategic realities. Persistent global imbalances, unfair economic practices, and discriminatory measures aimed squarely against American firms have weakened our competitiveness and exposed vulnerabilities across our industrial base and critical supply chains.
Put simply, as Secretary Bessent has said, economic security is national security.
The international economic system needs real reform, and the office for which I have been nominated has a central role in delivering it.
Treasury's International Trade and Development portfolio carries the Department's responsibility for advancing American interests in international markets, trade, and development finance. The office represents the United States at the multilateral development banks, promotes private investment and economic growth abroad, oversees Treasury's technical assistance programs, and helps shape the Department's trade and investment policies.
If confirmed, three priorities would guide my work.
First, boosting U.S. growth globally. These efforts include expanding market access for American companies abroad, promoting U.S. exports, and confronting unfair and predatory economic practices.
Second, refocusing and reforming the multilateral development banks. These institutions are at their best when they are focused on their core mandate of raising growth and reducing poverty. This means promoting a stronger development agenda centered on broad-based growth, private investment, and core macroeconomic market-oriented reforms that lift productivity, growth, and ultimately, country self-reliance.
Third, using our economic tools to strengthen our ties with emerging economies.
The fastest-growing markets of the coming decades are choosing their partners.
The United States, with the deepest capital markets, the world's reserve currency, and the most dynamic private sector anywhere, should be the partner of choice.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before this Committee. I welcome your questions, and if confirmed, I look forward to working with you and your staff to deliver an economic policy that protects the interests of our Nation and its people.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wiggins_testimony_10-1-26.pdf
* * *
Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and Members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you as the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade and Development.
I am deeply grateful to President Trump for this opportunity to serve our country, and to Secretary Bessent ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 -- The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee released the following testimony by Jeremy Wiggins, President Trump's nominee to be assistant secretary of the Treasury for international trade and development, from an Oct. 1, 2026, confirmation hearing: * * * Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Warren, and Members of the Committee, I am honored to appear before you as the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Trade and Development. I am deeply grateful to President Trump for this opportunity to serve our country, and to Secretary Bessentfor the confidence he has placed in me. I am also grateful to the Members and staff of this Committee who took the time to meet with me.
Those conversations were valuable, and if confirmed, I look forward to continuing them.
I want to begin by acknowledging my family. My parents, Cheryl and Mark, are here with me today. I would also like to recognize my sister, Jessica, and my grandparents, Patricia and Larry. Nothing I have done would be possible without them, and their love and support mean the world to me.
For the past year and a half, I have had the privilege of serving in Treasury's Office of International Affairs. Before joining Treasury, I spent my career in international markets: on the staff of the President's National Economic Council, as an Advisor to the President of the World Bank Group, and at two American financial institutions. Each of those roles prepared me for the position to which I have been nominated, and I am grateful to the mentors who gave me those opportunities.
More than eighty years ago, at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the Treasury Department helped design the international economic architecture that would define the postwar era. But the system has not kept pace with changing economic and strategic realities. Persistent global imbalances, unfair economic practices, and discriminatory measures aimed squarely against American firms have weakened our competitiveness and exposed vulnerabilities across our industrial base and critical supply chains.
Put simply, as Secretary Bessent has said, economic security is national security.
The international economic system needs real reform, and the office for which I have been nominated has a central role in delivering it.
Treasury's International Trade and Development portfolio carries the Department's responsibility for advancing American interests in international markets, trade, and development finance. The office represents the United States at the multilateral development banks, promotes private investment and economic growth abroad, oversees Treasury's technical assistance programs, and helps shape the Department's trade and investment policies.
If confirmed, three priorities would guide my work.
First, boosting U.S. growth globally. These efforts include expanding market access for American companies abroad, promoting U.S. exports, and confronting unfair and predatory economic practices.
Second, refocusing and reforming the multilateral development banks. These institutions are at their best when they are focused on their core mandate of raising growth and reducing poverty. This means promoting a stronger development agenda centered on broad-based growth, private investment, and core macroeconomic market-oriented reforms that lift productivity, growth, and ultimately, country self-reliance.
Third, using our economic tools to strengthen our ties with emerging economies.
The fastest-growing markets of the coming decades are choosing their partners.
The United States, with the deepest capital markets, the world's reserve currency, and the most dynamic private sector anywhere, should be the partner of choice.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before this Committee. I welcome your questions, and if confirmed, I look forward to working with you and your staff to deliver an economic policy that protects the interests of our Nation and its people.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wiggins_testimony_10-1-26.pdf
American Enterprise Institute Visiting Research Fellow Franz Testifies Before House Science, Space & Technology Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Anemone Franz, visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race":
* * *
Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and esteemed members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Anemone Franz, visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and esteemed members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunityto testify today on strengthening the bioeconomy and governing high-risk biological research.
I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame. My work focuses on dual-use research, biosecurity, and emerging technology governance.
The US has historically led in biotechnology, and advances in this field promise unprecedented benefits for human health and well-being, the economy, agriculture, manufacturing, and national security. Sustaining US leadership in this field requires two things: continued investment in biotechnology research and development and safeguards that keep pace with changes in the underlying technology.
In my testimony, I argue that investing in both biotechnology leadership and biosecurity is more urgent now than ever and propose measures that would strengthen security without slowing legitimate research.
Three actions would help close existing gaps:
1. Implement universal gene synthesis screening requirements. No binding federal requirement obliges synthesis providers to screen nucleic acid synthesis orders or verify customers. Congress should establish that requirement through legislation, such as the bipartisan Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act.
2. Fund pathogen-agnostic biosurveillance. Biosurveillance investment has historically surged after each crisis and contracted afterward, and most surveillance targets known diseases rather than novel threats. Congress should provide stable, multiyear funding for detection systems that do not depend on knowing the threat in advance.
3. Close gaps in federal research oversight. The July 2026 Policy for Stopping HighRisk Life Sciences Research does not reach the computational design of biological agents, and binds only institutions that receive federal funding. Statutory action is required to close these gaps.
Biotechnology's Opportunities and Emerging Risks
Biotechnologies have already transformed fields such as medicine, defense, and agriculture, and their impact will increase as the underlying technologies mature. However, the same research and technologies that produce these benefits also create risk. For example, research intended to understand dangerous pathogens to develop countermeasures can generate knowledge that could be misused to make those pathogens more lethal or transmissible. This "dual-use dilemma" makes it particularly difficult to safeguard biotechnologies without slowing beneficial research.
Biological threats are not new. In addition to natural outbreaks, instances of laboratory accidents and deliberate misuse of biological agents have been well documented.12 What has changed in recent years, however, is the pace of scientific and technological progress.
Together with falling costs, barriers that have historically made engineering biology difficult are eroding. AI, in particular, is changing what is possible in biotechnology while also introducing risks with little precedent. Advanced AI models could reduce the level of expertise required to manipulate and potentially weaponize biological agents. This concern has even been raised by the companies that are building these models.34
AI model capabilities are advancing fast and often outpace the safeguards meant to contain them. The July "Hugging Face incident" illustrates this problem. In this incident, several of OpenAI's models, operating under reduced safeguards during internal cybersecurity evaluations, circumvented the controls meant to restrain them and, coordinating through unauthorized channels, "compromised parts of OpenAI's internal research infrastructure and Hugging Face's systems."5
While much attention has focused on large language models, misuse risk is not limited to this model type. Biological AI models, trained on biological data rather than natural language, offer a different set of capabilities and risks. In a recent Science publication, researchers at Stanford and the Arc Institute reported that they had trained such models to generate functional viral genomes from scratch.6 Sixteen of the sequences the models produced yielded viable, infectious viruses.7 The potential to design novel pathogens creates a new risk profile for two reasons. Because these pathogens may not resemble anything found in nature, they may not trigger existing safeguards. Furthermore, if optimized for their potential to cause harm, they may exceed the lethality or transmissibility of anything natural selection has produced.
These risks are substantial, but safeguards needed to address them have been identified, and most can be implemented without constraining the research on which the field's benefits depend. The recommendations that follow set out where federal effort would be most valuable.
* * *
1 https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/bioterrorism/index.html
2 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(23)00319-1/fulltext
3 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026#biological-misuse-sep-26
4 https://openai.com/index/preparing-for-future-ai-capabilities-in-biology/
5 https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/
6 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
7 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
* * *
Maintain US Biotechnology Leadership
The United States leads in biotechnology, but sustaining that position requires continued investment in the underlying research, the skilled workforce, and the manufacturing sector.
In its 2025 report, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warned that the biotechnology sector has not been treated with the same strategic urgency as semiconductors or artificial intelligence, even as competition with China has intensified.8 Federal research, regulation, manufacturing, and workforce development are each handled in isolation rather than as parts of one system, producing a landscape that is difficult to navigate.9 Supply chains are a further point of exposure. Feedstock additives, which are used in most biomanufacturing processes, are one example. Chinese suppliers account for nearly all global production, and a disruption in supply could bring dependent facilities to a standstill.10
Congress should ensure adequate funding for biotechnology research and development, invest in the technical workforce, coordinate these efforts across agencies, and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers for materials that have no domestic alternative.
Secure Access to Synthetic Nucleic Acids
Engineering a biological agent is a complex process requiring a series of steps and access to a range of materials. Some of those steps are difficult to avoid, and identifying and securing these chokepoints is an effective way to reduce risk. A particularly salient chokepoint is access to synthetic nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). Nucleic acids are a key ingredient for life sciences research. Researchers can order custom sequences from commercial providers. To date, no binding federal requirement obliges those providers to screen the sequences they are asked to synthesize or to verify their customers' legitimacy.
Safeguarding DNA synthesis has instead relied on industry-led voluntary screening, coordinated largely through the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, which represents a majority of global commercial synthesis capacity.11 The principal obstacle to stronger safeguards is therefore not industry resistance but the absence of standardized requirements.
Both the executive branch and Congress have moved to close this gap. Executive Order 14292 in May 2025 directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to incorporate enforcement mechanisms into the existing framework and to develop a strategy for achieving comprehensive screening in non-federally funded settings.12 Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of legislators introduced the Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act, which would require mandatory screening for all synthesis providers selling to US customers, establish conformity assessment systems with auditing and adversarial testing, and direct a government-wide assessment of biosecurity authorities to streamline oversight.13 Enacting it would be a significant step toward establishing these safeguards as a common standard.
* * *
8 https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93Single-Pg-%E2%80%93-July-2026.pdf
9 https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93Single-Pg-%E2%80%93-July-2026.pdf
10 https://assets.carnegieendowment.org/files/Fluegel_Biomanufacturing.pdf
11 https://genesynthesisconsortium.org/
12 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-ofbiological-research/
* * *
Uniform screening standards would strengthen, not disadvantage, domestic industry.
Providers meeting US security standards would gain a competitive advantage, while those unwilling to comply would lose access to the world's largest synthesis market.14 Because the requirements would apply to all providers serving US customers, including Chinese firms seeking access to that market, standards established here would function as global standards.
Prevent Biological Misuse of AI Models
Federal oversight of AI models with biological applications depends largely on voluntary commitments by industry and on conditions attached to federal funding, and it is applied unevenly across different classes of models.15 Frontier developers of large language models conduct biosecurity evaluations and implement mitigations, but no federal requirement obliges them to conduct these evaluations or to report their results.1617 Biological design tools receive considerably less scrutiny, despite posing risks that are arguably more consequential.18
Congress should close this gap without extending oversight further than the risk requires.
Only a narrow subset of models requires additional attention, and identifying that subset is the first step. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) conducts pre-deployment evaluations of frontier models, including for biological risk, but does so through voluntary agreements with developers.19 Congress should make these evaluations a requirement rather than a voluntary arrangement, and should fund and direct CAISI to define capabilities of concern for biological AI models.2021 The definitions should be revisited regularly as capabilities advance and should prioritize capabilities that could enable, accelerate, or simplify the creation of pathogens capable of causing a pandemic.2223 As evaluation methods developed for large language models do not transfer to models trained on biological data, distinct approaches will be needed. For models in that subset, evaluation should be required before deployment, and results should be linked to clearly communicated, pre-specified thresholds and corresponding mitigations.24 This includes withholding concerning data from training, restricting access to verified users through secure channels as appropriate, and government risk-benefit review.
* * *
13 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3741/text
14 https://www.precedenceresearch.com/dna-synthesismarket#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%20market%20is%20highly%20competitive%2Cmarket%20in%20 the%20coming%20years
15 https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Belfer_Deterrence%20by%20Resilience_3.2_Digital%20Final.pdf
16 https://openai.com/index/preparing-for-future-ai-capabilities-in-biology/
17 https://www.anthropic.com/research/biorisk
18 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
19 https://www.nist.gov/caisi
20 https://www.csis.org/analysis/opportunities-strengthen-us-biosecurity-ai-enabled-bioterrorism-whatpolicymakers-should
21 https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democratsenergycommerce.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/12.17.2025_oi-hearing_witnesstestimony_pannu.pdf
22 https://www.csis.org/analysis/opportunities-strengthen-us-biosecurity-ai-enabled-bioterrorism-whatpolicymakers-should
23 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
* * *
Strengthen Dual-Use Research Governance
Working with dangerous pathogens entails a certain level of risk. The goal of oversight is not to eliminate that risk but to determine how much risk is acceptable, under what conditions, and who can make that judgment. That determination is difficult because of the dual-use dilemma, and because outcomes of an experiment can be difficult to know in advance. Only a narrow subset of work with dangerous pathogens warrants heightened scrutiny, while most pathogen research should proceed with standard safeguards.
Federal policy has made significant progress on dual-use research governance in recent years. In May 2025, Executive Order 14292 restricted federal support for dangerous gain-offunction research where adequate oversight was lacking, suspended other federally funded work of that kind pending a new framework, and directed stronger oversight, enforcement, and screening measures for high-risk research.25 That follow-on policy, the United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research, was released in July 2026 and applies to every institution and investigator receiving federal funds for life sciences research.26 The new policy abandons static pathogen lists in favor of a risk-based approach, prohibits rather than reviews seven categories of dangerous gain-of-function research, and establishes an independent review body for borderline cases.27
These policies could significantly strengthen oversight. The move to a risk-based approach is particularly valuable. List-based oversight covers only known threats. As biotechnology draws on components from multiple organisms, the species of origin has become an unreliable indicator of risk -- and as the Science study noted above shows, AI can help design viral genomes from scratch.2829 Lists are also slow to update, which is a serious limitation when the underlying technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace.
The policy does, however, place considerable weight on judgment. Investigators and institutions must now predict whether proposed work could produce significant negative societal consequences for public health, agriculture, the economy, national security, or the environment, and several of the policy's central terms are open to differing interpretation.30
* * *
24 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
25 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-ofbiological-research/
26 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
27 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
28 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/hs.2022.0109
29 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
30 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-forStopping-High-Risk-Life-Sciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
* * *
Institutions must screen their entire life sciences portfolio, including non-federally funded work, and the funding and legal consequences attached to uncertain definitions may lead to overconservative interpretations to protect the institution.31 This may result in chilling effects on legitimate research.
This concern can be addressed by working closely with the people tasked with implementing the policy. Scientists and biosafety officers will need to apply these policies, and their cooperation will determine whether they function as intended. Implementation guidance should set out clearly how to identify research within the policy's scope and distinguish good-faith disagreement from deliberate concealment.
Two gaps in the current framework require legislative action. First, the policy does not cover purely computational research unless it involves an entity of concern.32 The policy directs OSTP to convene an interagency group to monitor developments at the intersection of biology and artificial intelligence. Given how quickly these tools are advancing, computational design of biological agents should also be brought under binding oversight.
Second, the policy reaches only federally funded research. Institutions without federal funding are encouraged, not required, to adopt equivalent procedures, and the policy itself notes that statutory action is needed to reach all US entities.33
Build Detection and Attribution Capacity
Detecting and identifying a novel biological threat as early as possible is crucial. Early detection makes it possible to develop and deploy countermeasures quickly and to contain a threat before it reaches catastrophic scale. After detection, investigators must determine whether the agent arose from a natural spillover, a laboratory accident, or a deliberate act. If it proves to have been engineered, investigators must trace its origins to a specific laboratory, country, or actor.
The COVID-19 origins debate illustrates the cost of being unable to answer these questions.
Nearly seven years after the virus was first detected, its origins remain contested. This uncertainty has eroded public trust, strained international relations, and left significant security questions unresolved. Detection and attribution capabilities cannot be built during a crisis. They must be established and maintained in advance to be available when needed.
To improve detection capabilities, three changes are particularly important. First, detection must be pathogen-agnostic. Most surveillance focuses on specific, known diseases and therefore may miss novel biological threats. Second, funding must be sustained.
Biosurveillance investment has historically surged after each crisis and contracted in its aftermath, leaving capacity to erode before the next threat emerges. Third, the United States should sustain and increase investment in monitoring capacity and genomic data-sharing infrastructure with international partners. Pathogens do not respect borders, and a serious biological threat may first appear outside the US. Detection capacity abroad therefore can provide crucial advance warning that domestic surveillance alone cannot.
* * *
31 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
32 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
33 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
* * *
Reliable attribution would strengthen biosecurity in several ways: It can deter actors who realize that their designs could be traced back to them, enable accountability through legal or diplomatic action, and inform outbreak response by revealing critical properties of the engineered pathogen.
Emerging technologies have the potential to advance attribution considerably, and machine learning approaches have produced promising results.34 There has been periodic interest in advancing these technologies. DARPA launched a Bio-Attribution Challenge earlier this year that aims to develop tools to determine the origins of engineered pathogens.35 However, competitions alone will not realize this technology's full potential. Sustained government investment and private-sector collaboration are needed.
Data is a further constraint. Current systems are trained largely on plasmids deposited in academic repositories, which offer limited accuracy when applied to pathogen genomes and exclude the Biosafety Level 3 and 4 laboratories that pose the greatest risk.36 Building adequate and secure training datasets, including from high-containment facilities, is a precondition for advancing attribution technologies.37
Technical capability alone is not sufficient for reliable attribution. A high-confidence finding is only as useful as the system that must act on it, and establishing consensus on what counts as evidence, how it is weighted, and how it informs decisions is as essential as the underlying science. Attribution will also rarely rest on a single source. A mechanism is needed to bring together the different forms of evidence, such as forensic analysis, epidemiological data, intelligence, and records held by commercial providers, into a single assessment. These capabilities take years to build and must be in place before they are needed. Congress has an essential role in establishing and sustaining that investment.
Conclusion
The United States does not have to choose between leading in biotechnology and governing it responsibly. Both, however, require active investment: in the research, workforce, and manufacturing capacity that sustain American leadership, and in safeguards targeted narrowly enough to address real risks without impeding legitimate science.
I would like to thank the Subcommittee for its leadership in addressing these critical questions, and I look forward to hearing your questions.
* * *
34 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35032-8
35 https://www.darpa.mil/research/challenges/bioattribution?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bio-attributionchallenge&utm_term=march-26&utm_content=bto-challenge-announcement
36 https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/tracing-engineered-biothreats-with-ai-forensics-five-steps-to-improveattribution/#post-heading
37 https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/tracing-engineered-biothreats-with-ai-forensics-five-steps-to-improveattribution/#post-heading
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Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/6/5/65b43f59-8eff-4ec8-b306-81f87d4f3183/2DAD661FF8EBBC4C9E2B3AD6B6CD4283B0C3DA46220F74486721605225704C3F.anemone-franz-testimony.pdf
* * *
Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and esteemed members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Anemone Franz, visiting research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and esteemed members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunityto testify today on strengthening the bioeconomy and governing high-risk biological research.
I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at the University of Notre Dame. My work focuses on dual-use research, biosecurity, and emerging technology governance.
The US has historically led in biotechnology, and advances in this field promise unprecedented benefits for human health and well-being, the economy, agriculture, manufacturing, and national security. Sustaining US leadership in this field requires two things: continued investment in biotechnology research and development and safeguards that keep pace with changes in the underlying technology.
In my testimony, I argue that investing in both biotechnology leadership and biosecurity is more urgent now than ever and propose measures that would strengthen security without slowing legitimate research.
Three actions would help close existing gaps:
1. Implement universal gene synthesis screening requirements. No binding federal requirement obliges synthesis providers to screen nucleic acid synthesis orders or verify customers. Congress should establish that requirement through legislation, such as the bipartisan Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act.
2. Fund pathogen-agnostic biosurveillance. Biosurveillance investment has historically surged after each crisis and contracted afterward, and most surveillance targets known diseases rather than novel threats. Congress should provide stable, multiyear funding for detection systems that do not depend on knowing the threat in advance.
3. Close gaps in federal research oversight. The July 2026 Policy for Stopping HighRisk Life Sciences Research does not reach the computational design of biological agents, and binds only institutions that receive federal funding. Statutory action is required to close these gaps.
Biotechnology's Opportunities and Emerging Risks
Biotechnologies have already transformed fields such as medicine, defense, and agriculture, and their impact will increase as the underlying technologies mature. However, the same research and technologies that produce these benefits also create risk. For example, research intended to understand dangerous pathogens to develop countermeasures can generate knowledge that could be misused to make those pathogens more lethal or transmissible. This "dual-use dilemma" makes it particularly difficult to safeguard biotechnologies without slowing beneficial research.
Biological threats are not new. In addition to natural outbreaks, instances of laboratory accidents and deliberate misuse of biological agents have been well documented.12 What has changed in recent years, however, is the pace of scientific and technological progress.
Together with falling costs, barriers that have historically made engineering biology difficult are eroding. AI, in particular, is changing what is possible in biotechnology while also introducing risks with little precedent. Advanced AI models could reduce the level of expertise required to manipulate and potentially weaponize biological agents. This concern has even been raised by the companies that are building these models.34
AI model capabilities are advancing fast and often outpace the safeguards meant to contain them. The July "Hugging Face incident" illustrates this problem. In this incident, several of OpenAI's models, operating under reduced safeguards during internal cybersecurity evaluations, circumvented the controls meant to restrain them and, coordinating through unauthorized channels, "compromised parts of OpenAI's internal research infrastructure and Hugging Face's systems."5
While much attention has focused on large language models, misuse risk is not limited to this model type. Biological AI models, trained on biological data rather than natural language, offer a different set of capabilities and risks. In a recent Science publication, researchers at Stanford and the Arc Institute reported that they had trained such models to generate functional viral genomes from scratch.6 Sixteen of the sequences the models produced yielded viable, infectious viruses.7 The potential to design novel pathogens creates a new risk profile for two reasons. Because these pathogens may not resemble anything found in nature, they may not trigger existing safeguards. Furthermore, if optimized for their potential to cause harm, they may exceed the lethality or transmissibility of anything natural selection has produced.
These risks are substantial, but safeguards needed to address them have been identified, and most can be implemented without constraining the research on which the field's benefits depend. The recommendations that follow set out where federal effort would be most valuable.
* * *
1 https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/bioterrorism/index.html
2 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(23)00319-1/fulltext
3 https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026#biological-misuse-sep-26
4 https://openai.com/index/preparing-for-future-ai-capabilities-in-biology/
5 https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/
6 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
7 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
* * *
Maintain US Biotechnology Leadership
The United States leads in biotechnology, but sustaining that position requires continued investment in the underlying research, the skilled workforce, and the manufacturing sector.
In its 2025 report, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology warned that the biotechnology sector has not been treated with the same strategic urgency as semiconductors or artificial intelligence, even as competition with China has intensified.8 Federal research, regulation, manufacturing, and workforce development are each handled in isolation rather than as parts of one system, producing a landscape that is difficult to navigate.9 Supply chains are a further point of exposure. Feedstock additives, which are used in most biomanufacturing processes, are one example. Chinese suppliers account for nearly all global production, and a disruption in supply could bring dependent facilities to a standstill.10
Congress should ensure adequate funding for biotechnology research and development, invest in the technical workforce, coordinate these efforts across agencies, and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers for materials that have no domestic alternative.
Secure Access to Synthetic Nucleic Acids
Engineering a biological agent is a complex process requiring a series of steps and access to a range of materials. Some of those steps are difficult to avoid, and identifying and securing these chokepoints is an effective way to reduce risk. A particularly salient chokepoint is access to synthetic nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). Nucleic acids are a key ingredient for life sciences research. Researchers can order custom sequences from commercial providers. To date, no binding federal requirement obliges those providers to screen the sequences they are asked to synthesize or to verify their customers' legitimacy.
Safeguarding DNA synthesis has instead relied on industry-led voluntary screening, coordinated largely through the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, which represents a majority of global commercial synthesis capacity.11 The principal obstacle to stronger safeguards is therefore not industry resistance but the absence of standardized requirements.
Both the executive branch and Congress have moved to close this gap. Executive Order 14292 in May 2025 directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to incorporate enforcement mechanisms into the existing framework and to develop a strategy for achieving comprehensive screening in non-federally funded settings.12 Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of legislators introduced the Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act, which would require mandatory screening for all synthesis providers selling to US customers, establish conformity assessment systems with auditing and adversarial testing, and direct a government-wide assessment of biosecurity authorities to streamline oversight.13 Enacting it would be a significant step toward establishing these safeguards as a common standard.
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8 https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93Single-Pg-%E2%80%93-July-2026.pdf
9 https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93Single-Pg-%E2%80%93-July-2026.pdf
10 https://assets.carnegieendowment.org/files/Fluegel_Biomanufacturing.pdf
11 https://genesynthesisconsortium.org/
12 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-ofbiological-research/
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Uniform screening standards would strengthen, not disadvantage, domestic industry.
Providers meeting US security standards would gain a competitive advantage, while those unwilling to comply would lose access to the world's largest synthesis market.14 Because the requirements would apply to all providers serving US customers, including Chinese firms seeking access to that market, standards established here would function as global standards.
Prevent Biological Misuse of AI Models
Federal oversight of AI models with biological applications depends largely on voluntary commitments by industry and on conditions attached to federal funding, and it is applied unevenly across different classes of models.15 Frontier developers of large language models conduct biosecurity evaluations and implement mitigations, but no federal requirement obliges them to conduct these evaluations or to report their results.1617 Biological design tools receive considerably less scrutiny, despite posing risks that are arguably more consequential.18
Congress should close this gap without extending oversight further than the risk requires.
Only a narrow subset of models requires additional attention, and identifying that subset is the first step. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) conducts pre-deployment evaluations of frontier models, including for biological risk, but does so through voluntary agreements with developers.19 Congress should make these evaluations a requirement rather than a voluntary arrangement, and should fund and direct CAISI to define capabilities of concern for biological AI models.2021 The definitions should be revisited regularly as capabilities advance and should prioritize capabilities that could enable, accelerate, or simplify the creation of pathogens capable of causing a pandemic.2223 As evaluation methods developed for large language models do not transfer to models trained on biological data, distinct approaches will be needed. For models in that subset, evaluation should be required before deployment, and results should be linked to clearly communicated, pre-specified thresholds and corresponding mitigations.24 This includes withholding concerning data from training, restricting access to verified users through secure channels as appropriate, and government risk-benefit review.
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13 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3741/text
14 https://www.precedenceresearch.com/dna-synthesismarket#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DThe%20market%20is%20highly%20competitive%2Cmarket%20in%20 the%20coming%20years
15 https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/Belfer_Deterrence%20by%20Resilience_3.2_Digital%20Final.pdf
16 https://openai.com/index/preparing-for-future-ai-capabilities-in-biology/
17 https://www.anthropic.com/research/biorisk
18 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
19 https://www.nist.gov/caisi
20 https://www.csis.org/analysis/opportunities-strengthen-us-biosecurity-ai-enabled-bioterrorism-whatpolicymakers-should
21 https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democratsenergycommerce.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/12.17.2025_oi-hearing_witnesstestimony_pannu.pdf
22 https://www.csis.org/analysis/opportunities-strengthen-us-biosecurity-ai-enabled-bioterrorism-whatpolicymakers-should
23 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
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Strengthen Dual-Use Research Governance
Working with dangerous pathogens entails a certain level of risk. The goal of oversight is not to eliminate that risk but to determine how much risk is acceptable, under what conditions, and who can make that judgment. That determination is difficult because of the dual-use dilemma, and because outcomes of an experiment can be difficult to know in advance. Only a narrow subset of work with dangerous pathogens warrants heightened scrutiny, while most pathogen research should proceed with standard safeguards.
Federal policy has made significant progress on dual-use research governance in recent years. In May 2025, Executive Order 14292 restricted federal support for dangerous gain-offunction research where adequate oversight was lacking, suspended other federally funded work of that kind pending a new framework, and directed stronger oversight, enforcement, and screening measures for high-risk research.25 That follow-on policy, the United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research, was released in July 2026 and applies to every institution and investigator receiving federal funds for life sciences research.26 The new policy abandons static pathogen lists in favor of a risk-based approach, prohibits rather than reviews seven categories of dangerous gain-of-function research, and establishes an independent review body for borderline cases.27
These policies could significantly strengthen oversight. The move to a risk-based approach is particularly valuable. List-based oversight covers only known threats. As biotechnology draws on components from multiple organisms, the species of origin has become an unreliable indicator of risk -- and as the Science study noted above shows, AI can help design viral genomes from scratch.2829 Lists are also slow to update, which is a serious limitation when the underlying technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace.
The policy does, however, place considerable weight on judgment. Investigators and institutions must now predict whether proposed work could produce significant negative societal consequences for public health, agriculture, the economy, national security, or the environment, and several of the policy's central terms are open to differing interpretation.30
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24 https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012975
25 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-ofbiological-research/
26 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
27 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
28 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1089/hs.2022.0109
29 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec2657
30 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-forStopping-High-Risk-Life-Sciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
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Institutions must screen their entire life sciences portfolio, including non-federally funded work, and the funding and legal consequences attached to uncertain definitions may lead to overconservative interpretations to protect the institution.31 This may result in chilling effects on legitimate research.
This concern can be addressed by working closely with the people tasked with implementing the policy. Scientists and biosafety officers will need to apply these policies, and their cooperation will determine whether they function as intended. Implementation guidance should set out clearly how to identify research within the policy's scope and distinguish good-faith disagreement from deliberate concealment.
Two gaps in the current framework require legislative action. First, the policy does not cover purely computational research unless it involves an entity of concern.32 The policy directs OSTP to convene an interagency group to monitor developments at the intersection of biology and artificial intelligence. Given how quickly these tools are advancing, computational design of biological agents should also be brought under binding oversight.
Second, the policy reaches only federally funded research. Institutions without federal funding are encouraged, not required, to adopt equivalent procedures, and the policy itself notes that statutory action is needed to reach all US entities.33
Build Detection and Attribution Capacity
Detecting and identifying a novel biological threat as early as possible is crucial. Early detection makes it possible to develop and deploy countermeasures quickly and to contain a threat before it reaches catastrophic scale. After detection, investigators must determine whether the agent arose from a natural spillover, a laboratory accident, or a deliberate act. If it proves to have been engineered, investigators must trace its origins to a specific laboratory, country, or actor.
The COVID-19 origins debate illustrates the cost of being unable to answer these questions.
Nearly seven years after the virus was first detected, its origins remain contested. This uncertainty has eroded public trust, strained international relations, and left significant security questions unresolved. Detection and attribution capabilities cannot be built during a crisis. They must be established and maintained in advance to be available when needed.
To improve detection capabilities, three changes are particularly important. First, detection must be pathogen-agnostic. Most surveillance focuses on specific, known diseases and therefore may miss novel biological threats. Second, funding must be sustained.
Biosurveillance investment has historically surged after each crisis and contracted in its aftermath, leaving capacity to erode before the next threat emerges. Third, the United States should sustain and increase investment in monitoring capacity and genomic data-sharing infrastructure with international partners. Pathogens do not respect borders, and a serious biological threat may first appear outside the US. Detection capacity abroad therefore can provide crucial advance warning that domestic surveillance alone cannot.
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31 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
32 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
33 https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USG-Policy-for-Stopping-High-Risk-LifeSciences-Research_July-2026.pdf
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Reliable attribution would strengthen biosecurity in several ways: It can deter actors who realize that their designs could be traced back to them, enable accountability through legal or diplomatic action, and inform outbreak response by revealing critical properties of the engineered pathogen.
Emerging technologies have the potential to advance attribution considerably, and machine learning approaches have produced promising results.34 There has been periodic interest in advancing these technologies. DARPA launched a Bio-Attribution Challenge earlier this year that aims to develop tools to determine the origins of engineered pathogens.35 However, competitions alone will not realize this technology's full potential. Sustained government investment and private-sector collaboration are needed.
Data is a further constraint. Current systems are trained largely on plasmids deposited in academic repositories, which offer limited accuracy when applied to pathogen genomes and exclude the Biosafety Level 3 and 4 laboratories that pose the greatest risk.36 Building adequate and secure training datasets, including from high-containment facilities, is a precondition for advancing attribution technologies.37
Technical capability alone is not sufficient for reliable attribution. A high-confidence finding is only as useful as the system that must act on it, and establishing consensus on what counts as evidence, how it is weighted, and how it informs decisions is as essential as the underlying science. Attribution will also rarely rest on a single source. A mechanism is needed to bring together the different forms of evidence, such as forensic analysis, epidemiological data, intelligence, and records held by commercial providers, into a single assessment. These capabilities take years to build and must be in place before they are needed. Congress has an essential role in establishing and sustaining that investment.
Conclusion
The United States does not have to choose between leading in biotechnology and governing it responsibly. Both, however, require active investment: in the research, workforce, and manufacturing capacity that sustain American leadership, and in safeguards targeted narrowly enough to address real risks without impeding legitimate science.
I would like to thank the Subcommittee for its leadership in addressing these critical questions, and I look forward to hearing your questions.
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34 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35032-8
35 https://www.darpa.mil/research/challenges/bioattribution?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bio-attributionchallenge&utm_term=march-26&utm_content=bto-challenge-announcement
36 https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/tracing-engineered-biothreats-with-ai-forensics-five-steps-to-improveattribution/#post-heading
37 https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/tracing-engineered-biothreats-with-ai-forensics-five-steps-to-improveattribution/#post-heading
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Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/6/5/65b43f59-8eff-4ec8-b306-81f87d4f3183/2DAD661FF8EBBC4C9E2B3AD6B6CD4283B0C3DA46220F74486721605225704C3F.anemone-franz-testimony.pdf
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Chief Security Officer Ehrie Testifies Before House Homeland Security Committee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Homeland Security Committee released the following testimony by Greg Ehrie, chief security officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "25 Years Later: Evolutions in Federal, State, and Local Counterterrorism Efforts Since 9/11":
* * *
Good Morning Chairman Garbarino and Members of the Committee, my name is Greg Ehrie and I am the Chief Security Officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Port Authority's security programs and preparedness efforts.
Port ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Homeland Security Committee released the following testimony by Greg Ehrie, chief security officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "25 Years Later: Evolutions in Federal, State, and Local Counterterrorism Efforts Since 9/11": * * * Good Morning Chairman Garbarino and Members of the Committee, my name is Greg Ehrie and I am the Chief Security Officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Port Authority's security programs and preparedness efforts. PortAuthority facilities have the unfortunate distinction of being targeted multiple times by terrorists. In 1993, a truck bomb exploded beneath the North Tower, killing 6 people and injuring more than 1,000.
On September 11, 2001, the Port Authority lost 84 personnel, 37 of which were Port Authority Police Officers. It remains the worst single-day loss of life of any police department in the United States. Since then, we have lost numerous officers due to 9/11 related illness and there are many who are still in the fight.
This tragic legacy has shaped the Port Authority's unwavering commitment to safety and security. This is evident as security accounts for roughly a quarter of both the agency's personnel and its operating budget. Furthermore, since 9/11, $1.8 billion dollars has been invested in capital projects to harden and strengthen our transportation facilities.
Twenty-five years later, the transportation sector continues to be an attractive target for terrorism. This threat is particularly acute for the Port Authority, given the scale and significance of the critical transportation infrastructure we operate, including the nation's largest airport system, the busiest bus terminal, and most traveled bridge in the world.
The Multi-Layered Security Approach
Since 9/11, the Port Authority has built a risk-based, multi-layered security program designed to protect its employees, customers, and transportation assets from asymmetric threats.
This approach includes:
* Risk and intelligence-informed assessments to identify threats, prioritize vulnerabilities, and guide capital security investments.
* Capital hardening and protective design programs, including tunnel hardening, bridge and structural strengthening, bollards and other vehicle-threat mitigation.
* Security technology, including an extensive CCTV system with enhanced analytics, access-control systems, perimeter intrusion detection, license plate readers, CBRN detection capabilities, drone detection, interoperable radio communications, and continuing evaluation of cutting-edge technologies.
* 24/7 security operations centers and trained contract security officers who provide an additional layer of observation, behavioral recognition, access control, and incident reporting.
* A highly trained police department of more than 2,100 officers, with high-visibility counterterrorism teams, Emergency Service Unit capabilities, and explosive-detection canine teams. PAPD also participates numerous federal, state, and local law-enforcement task forces, including the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in New York and New Jersey.
* A dedicated Office of Emergency Management that leads incident coordination, training, and full-scale exercises with regional first responders using the Incident Command System and unified command principles.
* A robust cybersecurity program, including a 24/7 Cybersecurity Operations Center, recognizing that physical and cybersecurity are increasingly inseparable in modern transportation systems.
Additionally, we utilize the Department of Homeland Security SAFETY Act program as an independent third-party validation of security programs and technologies. Port Authority facilities and programs that have received SAFETY Act recognition include the World Trade Center, George Washington Bridge, LaGuardia Airport, and PATH.
Recent Regional Events and the 25th Anniversary of 9/11
This year served as an extraordinary real-world stress test for our security protocols, driven by a series of concurrent major events across the New York and New Jersey region. The simultaneous hosting of the FIFA World Cup, Sail 4th, and the America 250 celebrations successfully drew an influx of over 1.2 million additional visitors to the area.
Last week, we gathered to honor and commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11. This high-profile event was attended by Vice President Vance, the governors of New York and New Jersey, and several former United States presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton, along with many other dignitaries. Flawless interagency coordination and unparalleled security measures ensured this historic event was among the most protected on record.
Success of these security operations demonstrates what twenty-five years of investment and partnership have produced: a security enterprise that is integrated, intelligence-driven, technologically advanced, and operationalized across jurisdictional boundaries.
How Congress Can Help
Congress has been an essential partner in building and sustaining our security capabilities. We respectfully ask Congress to maintain its support in several key areas.
* Increase federal funding of homeland security grant programs. The Transit Security Grant Program, Urban Area Security Initiative, Port Security Grant Program, and other federal funding have supported Port Authority counterterrorism programs, police training and equipment, emergency preparedness exercises, cybersecurity, access-control systems, facility hardening, and other critical security initiatives.
These investments allow state and local partners and transportation agencies to maintain capabilities that protect nationally significant infrastructure.
* Empower states to work with federal partners to perform advanced mitigation against malicious drones. Transportation agencies need timely solutions to support the appropriate response to unauthorized drones impeding transportation operations.
* Continue to support the DHS SAFETY Act program. Independent validation helps organizations measure security programs against best practices and promotes the adoption of effective anti-terrorism technologies and services.
* Protect and strengthen intelligence-sharing and joint task-force capabilities. The ability to move timely, actionable information across federal, state, local, and transportation partners remains one of the most consequential reforms of the post9/11 era.
Conclusion
Since 9/11, the Port Authority has achieved significant, measurable progress across every layer of our security enterprise. Our facilities are more resilient, our law enforcement capabilities are highly specialized, and Intelligence moves faster.
Technology provides tools that did not exist a generation ago. Most importantly, federal, state, and local agencies collaborate in ways that have become routine rather than exception.
On behalf of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, I thank the Committee and our Congressional delegation for their continued support of the programs and partnerships that help us protect our employees, our customers, our infrastructure, and the region we serve.
* * *
Original text here: https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2026-09-16-HRG-Testimony.pdf
* * *
Good Morning Chairman Garbarino and Members of the Committee, my name is Greg Ehrie and I am the Chief Security Officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Port Authority's security programs and preparedness efforts.
Port ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Homeland Security Committee released the following testimony by Greg Ehrie, chief security officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "25 Years Later: Evolutions in Federal, State, and Local Counterterrorism Efforts Since 9/11": * * * Good Morning Chairman Garbarino and Members of the Committee, my name is Greg Ehrie and I am the Chief Security Officer of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Port Authority's security programs and preparedness efforts. PortAuthority facilities have the unfortunate distinction of being targeted multiple times by terrorists. In 1993, a truck bomb exploded beneath the North Tower, killing 6 people and injuring more than 1,000.
On September 11, 2001, the Port Authority lost 84 personnel, 37 of which were Port Authority Police Officers. It remains the worst single-day loss of life of any police department in the United States. Since then, we have lost numerous officers due to 9/11 related illness and there are many who are still in the fight.
This tragic legacy has shaped the Port Authority's unwavering commitment to safety and security. This is evident as security accounts for roughly a quarter of both the agency's personnel and its operating budget. Furthermore, since 9/11, $1.8 billion dollars has been invested in capital projects to harden and strengthen our transportation facilities.
Twenty-five years later, the transportation sector continues to be an attractive target for terrorism. This threat is particularly acute for the Port Authority, given the scale and significance of the critical transportation infrastructure we operate, including the nation's largest airport system, the busiest bus terminal, and most traveled bridge in the world.
The Multi-Layered Security Approach
Since 9/11, the Port Authority has built a risk-based, multi-layered security program designed to protect its employees, customers, and transportation assets from asymmetric threats.
This approach includes:
* Risk and intelligence-informed assessments to identify threats, prioritize vulnerabilities, and guide capital security investments.
* Capital hardening and protective design programs, including tunnel hardening, bridge and structural strengthening, bollards and other vehicle-threat mitigation.
* Security technology, including an extensive CCTV system with enhanced analytics, access-control systems, perimeter intrusion detection, license plate readers, CBRN detection capabilities, drone detection, interoperable radio communications, and continuing evaluation of cutting-edge technologies.
* 24/7 security operations centers and trained contract security officers who provide an additional layer of observation, behavioral recognition, access control, and incident reporting.
* A highly trained police department of more than 2,100 officers, with high-visibility counterterrorism teams, Emergency Service Unit capabilities, and explosive-detection canine teams. PAPD also participates numerous federal, state, and local law-enforcement task forces, including the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in New York and New Jersey.
* A dedicated Office of Emergency Management that leads incident coordination, training, and full-scale exercises with regional first responders using the Incident Command System and unified command principles.
* A robust cybersecurity program, including a 24/7 Cybersecurity Operations Center, recognizing that physical and cybersecurity are increasingly inseparable in modern transportation systems.
Additionally, we utilize the Department of Homeland Security SAFETY Act program as an independent third-party validation of security programs and technologies. Port Authority facilities and programs that have received SAFETY Act recognition include the World Trade Center, George Washington Bridge, LaGuardia Airport, and PATH.
Recent Regional Events and the 25th Anniversary of 9/11
This year served as an extraordinary real-world stress test for our security protocols, driven by a series of concurrent major events across the New York and New Jersey region. The simultaneous hosting of the FIFA World Cup, Sail 4th, and the America 250 celebrations successfully drew an influx of over 1.2 million additional visitors to the area.
Last week, we gathered to honor and commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11. This high-profile event was attended by Vice President Vance, the governors of New York and New Jersey, and several former United States presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton, along with many other dignitaries. Flawless interagency coordination and unparalleled security measures ensured this historic event was among the most protected on record.
Success of these security operations demonstrates what twenty-five years of investment and partnership have produced: a security enterprise that is integrated, intelligence-driven, technologically advanced, and operationalized across jurisdictional boundaries.
How Congress Can Help
Congress has been an essential partner in building and sustaining our security capabilities. We respectfully ask Congress to maintain its support in several key areas.
* Increase federal funding of homeland security grant programs. The Transit Security Grant Program, Urban Area Security Initiative, Port Security Grant Program, and other federal funding have supported Port Authority counterterrorism programs, police training and equipment, emergency preparedness exercises, cybersecurity, access-control systems, facility hardening, and other critical security initiatives.
These investments allow state and local partners and transportation agencies to maintain capabilities that protect nationally significant infrastructure.
* Empower states to work with federal partners to perform advanced mitigation against malicious drones. Transportation agencies need timely solutions to support the appropriate response to unauthorized drones impeding transportation operations.
* Continue to support the DHS SAFETY Act program. Independent validation helps organizations measure security programs against best practices and promotes the adoption of effective anti-terrorism technologies and services.
* Protect and strengthen intelligence-sharing and joint task-force capabilities. The ability to move timely, actionable information across federal, state, local, and transportation partners remains one of the most consequential reforms of the post9/11 era.
Conclusion
Since 9/11, the Port Authority has achieved significant, measurable progress across every layer of our security enterprise. Our facilities are more resilient, our law enforcement capabilities are highly specialized, and Intelligence moves faster.
Technology provides tools that did not exist a generation ago. Most importantly, federal, state, and local agencies collaborate in ways that have become routine rather than exception.
On behalf of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, I thank the Committee and our Congressional delegation for their continued support of the programs and partnerships that help us protect our employees, our customers, our infrastructure, and the region we serve.
* * *
Original text here: https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2026-09-16-HRG-Testimony.pdf
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Professor Gronvall Testifies Before House Science, Space & Technology Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Gigi Kwik Gronvall, professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race":
* * *
Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and thank you for your attention to a topic of critical ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Gigi Kwik Gronvall, professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and thank you for your attention to a topic of criticalnational security importance.
My name is Gigi Kwik Gronvall. I am a Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where I co-direct the Health Security PhD track within the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. I would like to state for the record that the opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Johns Hopkins University or the Johns Hopkins Health System.
My central message is that biotechnology security requires both protection and achievement. Safeguards such as gene-synthesis screening, AI biosecurity evaluations, and intellectual-property protections are important, but they cannot substitute for the scientific talent, research capacity, manufacturing infrastructure, and international relationships needed to detect threats and develop countermeasures. A country that protects its science while allowing its scientific capabilities to decline will not be secure.
My background is in immunology, with training and experience including Johns Hopkins and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). I have served on advisory committees related to biosecurity for the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the NIH, and I was the science advisor to the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (2009-2010). I am currently the co-chair of the Safety and Security Advisory Committee for BioMADE, the DoD-sponsored public-private manufacturing innovation institute that brings together industry, universities, and government to strengthen US biomanufacturing capacity, workforce development, and national security. I helped write and testified in support of AB1963, California's gene synthesis screening legislation.(1) I have advised AI developers, including Anthropic, on biosecurity safeguards, participated in testing safeguards, and received compensation for that work. Neither Anthropic nor any other company contributed to or reviewed this testimony.
Why the US is falling behind in biotechnology and the life sciences
I am pleased this committee is addressing the April 2025 final report of the NSCEB, which concluded that biotechnology will be a defining strategic technology of the twenty-first century and warned that the US risks falling behind global competitors.(2) The picture the NSCEB report paints is one of US complacency about a technology that was born in the US, and in which the US was the unquestioned leader for many years. While many nations see biotechnology as a source of economic growth and prosperity, no country has invested more than the People's Republic of China, which has invested more than $100 billion in talent recruitment programs, government subsidies, research and development, as well as plans to translate research into products.(3-8) China's growth has led to sobering statistics for the US: Chinese researchers now publish more scientific papers than US researchers.
China graduates more PhDs in science and technology fields. China aims for its bioeconomy to "be at the forefront globally" by 2035 to eclipse the US altogether.(9) China's biotechnology investments have yielded world-class scientists and breathtaking innovation. But as the NSCEB report makes clear, not all its successes have come from fair competition.
Since the NSCEB report was released, US policy decisions have further weakened our biotechnology research enterprise, exacerbating an already significant national security vulnerability. Billions of research dollars have been suddenly cut, which were intended to further scientific and medical advances, as well as train students and postdoctoral fellows.
Clinical trials have been stopped. Offers were rescinded. Careers have been derailed. Even when decisions have been overturned after political pressure, the uncertainty lingered, delaying or stopping job offers and student training acceptances. And, research dollars are still not reaching researchers.(10-13)
While there have been news stories about the high-powered researchers who have been recruited to Canada, the EU, and other places including China, there are many more talented students from around the world choosing not to come to the US to study, and potential students in the US who now view the biological sciences as a too-precarious career option.(14,15) It should be noted that the US once was the best place for scientists around the world to work, and it was an absolute requirement to have US lab experience to succeed. But that is no longer the case. There are now many research institutions from which a student can embark on a productive career. As a result, these damaging blows to the US science ecosystem have only led talented scientists and would-be scientists from around the world to make reasonable choices to go elsewhere, and not contribute to US scientific advances.
Over the past several years, US policymakers have mostly reacted to China's rise by introducing ways to protect US research from being stolen. It is indeed important to protect IP and American innovation, and to make sure that CFIUS has relevant expertise to protect US interests in biotech and agricultural technologies (and avoid missteps like allowing BGI to acquire Complete Genomics in 2013, for example). But protection alone cannot preserve American leadership. US science must continue producing something worth protecting.
The US has faced a similar conflict between competitiveness and security before. In 1982, the CIA assessed that "virtually every Soviet military research project" - of which there were thousands, going back decades--benefited from US technical documents and hardware that were acquired through both legal and illegal means.(16) Predictably, there were calls to better protect research, classify information that Russians could use to develop missile guidance systems, cryptography or code-breaking, aerospace engineering, and nuclear weapons development. In an emergency committee formed by the National Academies known as the Corson Report after its chair, it was argued that rigorous, innovative science does not thrive in a classified environment, and that even with the risks, the US would be better off keeping science as open as possible, to practice "security by accomplishment." This became the basis for NSDD-189, which President Reagan signed in 1985, and which has been reaffirmed several times since.
The national security and economic stakes point to openness as being even more critical for the biological sciences. The study of biology occurs everywhere on the planet.
Infectious diseases famously do not recognize national borders. Other nations, not just China, are moving ahead quickly, and will form the biotechnology ecosystem without scientific collaborators from the US. If the US does not practice security by accomplishment, it will not protect the US. It will just mean that the US will not achieve what other nations will. It will mean that the US will be even more vulnerable.
Scientific discovery alone is not sufficient for biotechnology leadership. The United States must also be able to translate discoveries into products and manufacture them at scale.
Domestic biomanufacturing capacity, a skilled workforce, common standards, supply chains that are not entirely dependent upon China, and access to pilot-scale infrastructure are national security assets. Without them, American discoveries will be commercialized and manufactured elsewhere, leaving the US dependent on foreign suppliers for medicines, agricultural inputs, industrial chemicals, and other materials needed during a crisis. Organizations such as BioMADE help bridge the gap between laboratory discovery and commercial-scale production, incorporating safety and security into the development process. But there is much additional work to do to expand domestic biotechnologies, build the workforce needed, and develop a clearer regulatory framework for emerging biotechnology products.
Anthropic recently described five case studies of trained scientists who circumvented, or used intermediaries to circumvent, the company's geographic access restrictions.(17) There are many reasons scientists might use AI models, most of which are not nefarious, and it is not clear those scientists were intending to develop biological weapons. Still, the cases are instructive. Much of the current biosecurity debate focuses on whether AI could give a biological novice access to sophisticated capabilities. These cases instead involved trained scientists using AI to assist their work.
They illustrate a broader reality: advanced biological expertise exists around the world, and potentially harmful activity may evade an American provider's safeguards or never involve a monitored AI platform. Prevention measures remain important. AI developers should evaluate their models for biosecurity risks and have mechanisms to report credible threats.
Gene synthesis providers should screen their orders and have know-your-customer practices. But prevention alone cannot provide biological security. It is critical that the US maintain the scientific expertise needed to identify emerging threats, evaluate their significance, and develop effective countermeasures.
In addition to research funding, activities necessary for US science to advance have been cut or made much more difficult. These actions should be reversed. For example, scientific conferences are not only an important part of communicating science ahead of publications, they are also often integral to scientific innovation: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier met at an American Society for Microbiology conference in Puerto Rico in 2011, and their subsequent collaboration produced the foundational CRISPR-Cas9 work for which they received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.(18) It has been increasingly difficult for scientific conferences to be held in the US, because of the challenges for international scientists to get visas to attend. But now, with incidents of scientists being denied entry or detained by US immigration officials, scientists are deciding not to attend conferences in the US.(19,20) US scientists increasingly do not have the funding to travel, either, to hear the latest scientific advances, or form the collaborations that will deliver future innovations and Nobel Prizes, or to take the next steps in what now is perceived to be an unwise career choice.
Visa challenges and denials were a major reason why the premier synthetic biology competition, the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, moved from Boston to Paris in 2022.(21) The competition originally grew out of a class at MIT, and the first competition had just 5 teams. Now there are over 400 teams from at least 50 countries. The competition has led to over 250 startup companies, and there are more than 86,000 iGEM alumni all over the world. Competitions like this - another is the Biodesign Competition, which is still based in New York City--are an important part of experiential learning in biotechnology, and they are a source of future innovation. The US should consider these competitions strategically.
US interests are also being harmed by detrimental research policies that are extremely vague, and which will make the most innocuous research legally risky. One example is the "United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research," which was released in July, 2026 in response to the May 2025 Executive Order "Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research."(22,23) This policy prohibits "dangerous gain of function research" or DGOF. However, the definitions are exceptionally broad and would prohibit, or create disabling legal uncertainty around, activities that are required for medical countermeasure development, public health surveillance, animal model development, and ordinary research posing minimal biosafety risk. The policy nods to the fact that medical countermeasure development overlaps with what is prohibited, but doesn't offer any path for acquiring an exception.
The policy also creates a category called "International Research of Concern" (IROC). Its language appears to prohibit federal support for any life sciences research conducted in a designated country of concern. It also subjects research in other countries to a vaguely defined assessment of whether local oversight meets US standards. These provisions could impair basic international activities including influenza surveillance, sample sharing, and outbreak investigation.
Even when policies included exceptions for beneficial research, many scientists actively avoided work that could be construed as "GOF"--a term that has become an unstable policy label.(24) In a news report about how these vague policy terms harm true preparedness, one virologist described being able to secure NIH funding for experiments that sounded "less GOF-like" but were also less informative about potential pandemic threats and how to defeat them. As he put it, "The next flu pandemic is brewing in nature, but we have very little means of stopping it, very little means of identifying what the most dangerous viruses are."(25)
I personally witnessed the chilling impact of previous iterations of these policies. At the 2025 Vaccine Congress in Kyoto, Japan, virologists from around the world gathered to discuss the latest scientific research about H5N1 influenza. Hualan Chen, a preeminent Chinese researcher, shed light on one mystery--how dairy cows were spreading H5N1 in the US. She conducted a large study demonstrating how infected cows transmitted the virus by drinking each other's milk, spreading the virus from mouth to teat.(26,27) Instead of getting this important information from researchers in China, US researchers who have the necessary expertise and facilities should have been able to investigate promptly how H5N1 spreads among cattle and which interventions could interrupt transmission.
Answering questions like these is essential to controlling the outbreak and reducing opportunities for the virus to evolve toward efficient human-to-human transmission. Yet at the conference, one US scientist after another described experiments that could resolve important questions about H5N1 preparedness and response, only to explain that the work could not proceed in the existing regulatory and funding environment.
That was before many research activities were outright prohibited. H5N1 preparedness has been further weakened through the May, 2025 cancellation of a major mRNA vaccine contract.(28)
The detrimental actions and policies I described are isolating US researchers and American research, internationally. Many nations see research on pathogens causing human disease as a priority in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-2. Rather than leading the world to maintain and develop safe, secure practices and biosafety norms, which US researchers are exceptionally well-poised to do, US scientists are being hamstrung, unable to lead and influence safety or security practices at the international level. Other nations' scientists will certainly take the lead in understanding important characteristics of emerging pathogens that could lead to better surveillance and better vaccines, and the international norms for research and safety will be set by them--not by US scientists. This will have serious negative implications for the US bioeconomy and international biosafety norms.
Ideally, any additional oversight for virology or any other kind of research should target activities that require the most safety oversight, and should not impose unnecessary burdens that either slow needed advances or encourage work-arounds. There should be clear regulatory lines so scientists know which research activities do/do not require additional oversight or reporting. Such a review should specifically engage many scientists and subdomain experts, as well as safety, security, and regulatory experts. The intent should be to ensure that the rules are clearly understood, effective, and durable. It should be noted that virology research, particularly in high containment, already has a significant amount of oversight.
Similarly, federal agencies should apply consistent definitions and retain specialized expertise necessary for their different missions. NIH, NSF, DOE, USDA, EPA, and DoD fund very different kinds of biological research, and implementing vague or inconsistent rules creates gaps and unnecessary restrictions. Congress should require coordinated implementation guidance, review and appeal mechanisms, and there should be regular evaluation of whether any restrictions are actually reducing risks or displacing valuable research.
Advances in the life sciences and the development of new biotechnologies are essential to American economic competitiveness, public health, and national security. Congress should prioritize NSCEB recommendations to sustain biotechnology R&D, expand domestic biomanufacturing infrastructure and workforce development, strengthen biological data resources, and harmonize federal regulation of biotechnology.
Recommendations:
I respectfully urge the Committee to consider the following actions:
1. Advance the NSCEB's biotechnology competitiveness recommendations.
Congress should require agencies to report on progress toward expanding domestic biomanufacturing capacity, pilot-scale infrastructure, workforce development, biological data resources, and regulatory coordination, including barriers that prevent American discoveries from being commercialized and manufactured domestically.
2. Require accounting and disclosure of undisbursed, appropriated research funds. Billions of dollars in federal research funding that Congress has appropriated -- including funds restored to NIH in early 2026 after being targeted for cuts -- have not reached researchers and institutions in a timely manner. This delay compounds the damage to the US biotechnology ecosystem. I urge the Committee to:
* Direct the responsible agencies to report to Congress, on a recurring basis, the amount of appropriated research funding that remains unobligated or unapportioned more than 60 days after enactment, and the specific reasons for any delay;
* Request that GAO continue and expand its review of the timeliness of apportionment and obligation of appropriated biomedical and life sciences research funding, building on its August 2025 finding, and report periodically to Congress on compliance with the Impoundment Control Act; and
* Make clear, through appropriate oversight action, that delayed or withheld disbursement of appropriated research funds carries the same real-world costs to American competitiveness and biosecurity as a formal funding cut, in lost researchers, canceled trials, and rescinded offers, regardless of the mechanism by which the funds are withheld.
3. I urge the Committee to call for the immediate suspension of the "United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research" and to temporarily use the 2024 United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential while a better policy is developed. The 2024 policy was scheduled to take effect immediately before the May 2025 executive order directed that it be replaced. I do not offer it as an ideal solution. It and its P3CO-era predecessor shared a significant flaw: they required researchers and review panels to predict whether an experiment could reasonably be anticipated to produce consequential societal or public health harms. Such downstream consequences cannot be predicted reliably from a proposed genetic change or an isolated laboratory phenotype. Replication rate, host range, transmissibility, pathogenicity, and immune escape are distinct and complex characteristics, and a change in one does not necessarily predict a change in the others. Nevertheless, the 2024 policy provided a more workable interim framework and would not create the disabling ambiguity that now threatens valuable public health surveillance, animal model research, and medical countermeasure development.
* Require that a successor policy be developed with structured input from the regulated scientific community and independent outside experts.
The responsible agencies should conduct a formal, public process that includes a defined public comment period and structured technical consultation with practicing researchers, institutional biosafety officials, and non-governmental biosecurity experts, before issuing any successor to the current policy. This process should be transparent in its membership and methodology, and should not be limited to internal agency deliberation or a closed advisory process. The current policy's core defect is not simply that its definitions are vague, but that the policy was developed without meaningful input from the community expected to comply with it; a successor policy developed the same way will likely reproduce the same problems.
* Establish a defined exception pathway and appeal mechanism. Require that any successor policy include an explicit, expedited process for medical countermeasure development, public health surveillance, and animal model development to proceed with appropriate oversight rather than default prohibition, and that any "International Research of Concern" designations be subject to a published review standard and a formal right of appeal.
* Commission an independent evaluation of the policy's effects. Request that GAO or the National Academies conduct a biennial assessment of whether these restrictions are measurably reducing biosecurity risk or are instead displacing valuable research, driving it to less-transparent settings, or discouraging expertise the United States needs to detect and respond to emerging threats.
4. Hold a follow-up hearing within 12 months on implementation of the NSCEB's recommendations, with relevant agency leadership reporting on which recommendations have been adopted, which remain outstanding, and why.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
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References:
1. AB 1963 - California Assembly (20212022) - Open States [Internet]. [cited 2022 Dec 19]. Available from: https://openstates.org/ca/bills/20212022/AB1963/
2. NSCEB. Charting the Future of Biotechnology [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 24]. Available from: https://www.biotech.senate.gov/final-report/chapters/
3. Peter RM. Six biotech companies in South Korea you should know about. Labiotech.eu [Internet]. 2023 Jun 23 [cited 2025 Feb 5]. Available from: https://www.labiotech.eu/best-biotech/biotech-companies-south-korea-you-shouldknow-about/
4. The best countries for biotech according to the OECD [Internet]. [cited 2025 Feb 5]. Available from: https://www.labiotech.eu/best-biotech/top-biotech-countries/
5. Cornall J. UK invests pound sterling650M in life sciences. Labiotech.eu [Internet]. 2023 May 30 [cited 2025 Feb 5]. Available from: https://www.labiotech.eu/trends-news/uk-invests-lifesciences/
6. Michelle_Rozo_Testimony.pdf [Internet]. [cited 2025 Jan 18]. Available from: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/Michelle_Rozo_Testimony.pdf
7. Mark Kazmierczak, Ryan Ritterson, Danielle Gardner, Rocco Casagrande, Thilo Hanemann, Daniel H. Rosen. China's Biotechnology Development: The Role of US and Other Foreign Engagement: A report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission [Internet]. Available from: https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-biotechnology-development-role-us-andother-foreign-engagement
8. Moore S. China's role in the global biotechnology sector and implications for U.S. policy. Brookings Institution [Internet]. Available from: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-global-biotechnology-sectorand-implications-for-us-policy/
9. Bioeconomy prominent on growth agenda [Internet]. [cited 2025 Jan 19]. Available from: https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/policywatch/202205/11/content_WS627b169ec6d 02e533532a879.html
10. Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: "The science world is ending." PBS News [Internet]. 2025 Oct 29 [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Available from: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/top-researchers-consider-leaving-u-s-amidfunding-cuts-the-science-world-is-ending
11. POLITICO [Internet]. 2025 [cited 2025 Nov 30]. Top US researchers rush to relocate to Europe. Available from: https://www.politico.eu/article/european-research-councilfunding-us-researchers-relocation-europe/
12. AAMC [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 13]. Tracking NIH Awards in FY 2026. Available from: https://www.aamc.org/about-us/biomedical-research/publication/tracking-nihawards-fy-2026-1
13. House Members Send Bipartisan Letter to HHS on NIH Grant Delays - ASCO [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 13]. Available from: https://www.asco.org/news-initiatives/policynews-analysis/house-members-bipartisan-letter-hhs-nih-grant-delays
14. AAU [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Resources on American Researchers Leaving the United States. Available from: https://www.aau.edu/resource-library/resourcesamerican-researchers-leaving-united-states
15. Before the Exodus? Young Scientists and the Future of U.S. Science - Working Paper Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Available from: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=69201
16. Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology: an Update [Internet]. [cited 2025 Jan 26]. Available from: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500561.pdf
17. Countering misuse of AI: September 2026 / Anthropic [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026
18. NobelPrize.org [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 2]. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020. Available from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/summary/
19. Ledford H, Witze A. 'Anxiety is palpable': detention of researchers at US border spurs travel worries. Nature. 2025 Mar 24;640(8057):13-4. doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00859-w
20. International scientists rethink U.S. conference attendance [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 5]. Available from: https://www.science.org/content/article/international-scientistsrethink-us-conference-attendance
21. Baber S. The Tech [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 23]. Visa issues prevent several international students from attending iGEM Giant Jamboree. Available from: https://thetech.com/2018/11/08/igem-competition-students
22. Executive Office of the President US. Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research [Internet]. 2025 May [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-andsecurity-of-biological-research/
23. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. Trump Administration Releases New Government-Wide Policy to End Dangerous High-Risk Research [Press Release] [Internet]. 2026 Jul [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.hhs.gov/pressroom/stopping-high-risk-life-sciences-research.html
24. Rasmussen AL, Gronvall GK, Lowen AC, Goodrum F, Alwine J, Andersen KG, et al. Virology--the path forward. Journal of Virology. 2024 Jan 3;0(0):e01791-23. doi:10.1128/jvi.01791-23
25. Mueller B, Stolberg SG. Lab Leak Fight Casts Chill Over Virology Research. The New York Times [Internet]. 2023 Oct 16 [cited 2025 Sep 23]. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/covid-lab-leak-research.html
26. Dixit M. 'Milk-stealing' calves spread deadly bird flu virus among US cows, China study reveals. The Transmission [Internet]. 2025 Jul 16 [cited 2025 Oct 4]. Available from: https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2025/07/16/milk-stealing-calvesspread-deadly-bird-flu-virus-among-us-cows-china-study-reveals/
27. Shi J, Kong H, Cui P, Deng G, Zeng X, Jiang Y, et al. H5N1 virus invades the mammary glands of dairy cattle through 'mouth-to-teat' transmission. Natl Sci Rev. 2025 Sep 1;12(9):nwaf262. doi:10.1093/nsr/nwaf262
28. Opinion | Jay Bhattacharya: Why the NIH is pivoting away from mRNA vaccines - The Washington Post [Internet]. [cited 2026 Jan 18]. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/12/nih-mrna-vaccines-jaybhattacharya/
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Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/e/9/e9cdb4d1-6459-4e98-b328-26c8a9b3e805/9DCAA1BC5A8A8053DCAE4660AC7B37547AE6A4BC18035E5717FA1113CB732642.gigi-gronvall-testimony.pdf
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Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and thank you for your attention to a topic of critical ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Gigi Kwik Gronvall, professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me to participate in today's hearing and thank you for your attention to a topic of criticalnational security importance.
My name is Gigi Kwik Gronvall. I am a Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where I co-direct the Health Security PhD track within the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. I would like to state for the record that the opinions expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Johns Hopkins University or the Johns Hopkins Health System.
My central message is that biotechnology security requires both protection and achievement. Safeguards such as gene-synthesis screening, AI biosecurity evaluations, and intellectual-property protections are important, but they cannot substitute for the scientific talent, research capacity, manufacturing infrastructure, and international relationships needed to detect threats and develop countermeasures. A country that protects its science while allowing its scientific capabilities to decline will not be secure.
My background is in immunology, with training and experience including Johns Hopkins and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). I have served on advisory committees related to biosecurity for the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the NIH, and I was the science advisor to the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (2009-2010). I am currently the co-chair of the Safety and Security Advisory Committee for BioMADE, the DoD-sponsored public-private manufacturing innovation institute that brings together industry, universities, and government to strengthen US biomanufacturing capacity, workforce development, and national security. I helped write and testified in support of AB1963, California's gene synthesis screening legislation.(1) I have advised AI developers, including Anthropic, on biosecurity safeguards, participated in testing safeguards, and received compensation for that work. Neither Anthropic nor any other company contributed to or reviewed this testimony.
Why the US is falling behind in biotechnology and the life sciences
I am pleased this committee is addressing the April 2025 final report of the NSCEB, which concluded that biotechnology will be a defining strategic technology of the twenty-first century and warned that the US risks falling behind global competitors.(2) The picture the NSCEB report paints is one of US complacency about a technology that was born in the US, and in which the US was the unquestioned leader for many years. While many nations see biotechnology as a source of economic growth and prosperity, no country has invested more than the People's Republic of China, which has invested more than $100 billion in talent recruitment programs, government subsidies, research and development, as well as plans to translate research into products.(3-8) China's growth has led to sobering statistics for the US: Chinese researchers now publish more scientific papers than US researchers.
China graduates more PhDs in science and technology fields. China aims for its bioeconomy to "be at the forefront globally" by 2035 to eclipse the US altogether.(9) China's biotechnology investments have yielded world-class scientists and breathtaking innovation. But as the NSCEB report makes clear, not all its successes have come from fair competition.
Since the NSCEB report was released, US policy decisions have further weakened our biotechnology research enterprise, exacerbating an already significant national security vulnerability. Billions of research dollars have been suddenly cut, which were intended to further scientific and medical advances, as well as train students and postdoctoral fellows.
Clinical trials have been stopped. Offers were rescinded. Careers have been derailed. Even when decisions have been overturned after political pressure, the uncertainty lingered, delaying or stopping job offers and student training acceptances. And, research dollars are still not reaching researchers.(10-13)
While there have been news stories about the high-powered researchers who have been recruited to Canada, the EU, and other places including China, there are many more talented students from around the world choosing not to come to the US to study, and potential students in the US who now view the biological sciences as a too-precarious career option.(14,15) It should be noted that the US once was the best place for scientists around the world to work, and it was an absolute requirement to have US lab experience to succeed. But that is no longer the case. There are now many research institutions from which a student can embark on a productive career. As a result, these damaging blows to the US science ecosystem have only led talented scientists and would-be scientists from around the world to make reasonable choices to go elsewhere, and not contribute to US scientific advances.
Over the past several years, US policymakers have mostly reacted to China's rise by introducing ways to protect US research from being stolen. It is indeed important to protect IP and American innovation, and to make sure that CFIUS has relevant expertise to protect US interests in biotech and agricultural technologies (and avoid missteps like allowing BGI to acquire Complete Genomics in 2013, for example). But protection alone cannot preserve American leadership. US science must continue producing something worth protecting.
The US has faced a similar conflict between competitiveness and security before. In 1982, the CIA assessed that "virtually every Soviet military research project" - of which there were thousands, going back decades--benefited from US technical documents and hardware that were acquired through both legal and illegal means.(16) Predictably, there were calls to better protect research, classify information that Russians could use to develop missile guidance systems, cryptography or code-breaking, aerospace engineering, and nuclear weapons development. In an emergency committee formed by the National Academies known as the Corson Report after its chair, it was argued that rigorous, innovative science does not thrive in a classified environment, and that even with the risks, the US would be better off keeping science as open as possible, to practice "security by accomplishment." This became the basis for NSDD-189, which President Reagan signed in 1985, and which has been reaffirmed several times since.
The national security and economic stakes point to openness as being even more critical for the biological sciences. The study of biology occurs everywhere on the planet.
Infectious diseases famously do not recognize national borders. Other nations, not just China, are moving ahead quickly, and will form the biotechnology ecosystem without scientific collaborators from the US. If the US does not practice security by accomplishment, it will not protect the US. It will just mean that the US will not achieve what other nations will. It will mean that the US will be even more vulnerable.
Scientific discovery alone is not sufficient for biotechnology leadership. The United States must also be able to translate discoveries into products and manufacture them at scale.
Domestic biomanufacturing capacity, a skilled workforce, common standards, supply chains that are not entirely dependent upon China, and access to pilot-scale infrastructure are national security assets. Without them, American discoveries will be commercialized and manufactured elsewhere, leaving the US dependent on foreign suppliers for medicines, agricultural inputs, industrial chemicals, and other materials needed during a crisis. Organizations such as BioMADE help bridge the gap between laboratory discovery and commercial-scale production, incorporating safety and security into the development process. But there is much additional work to do to expand domestic biotechnologies, build the workforce needed, and develop a clearer regulatory framework for emerging biotechnology products.
Anthropic recently described five case studies of trained scientists who circumvented, or used intermediaries to circumvent, the company's geographic access restrictions.(17) There are many reasons scientists might use AI models, most of which are not nefarious, and it is not clear those scientists were intending to develop biological weapons. Still, the cases are instructive. Much of the current biosecurity debate focuses on whether AI could give a biological novice access to sophisticated capabilities. These cases instead involved trained scientists using AI to assist their work.
They illustrate a broader reality: advanced biological expertise exists around the world, and potentially harmful activity may evade an American provider's safeguards or never involve a monitored AI platform. Prevention measures remain important. AI developers should evaluate their models for biosecurity risks and have mechanisms to report credible threats.
Gene synthesis providers should screen their orders and have know-your-customer practices. But prevention alone cannot provide biological security. It is critical that the US maintain the scientific expertise needed to identify emerging threats, evaluate their significance, and develop effective countermeasures.
In addition to research funding, activities necessary for US science to advance have been cut or made much more difficult. These actions should be reversed. For example, scientific conferences are not only an important part of communicating science ahead of publications, they are also often integral to scientific innovation: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier met at an American Society for Microbiology conference in Puerto Rico in 2011, and their subsequent collaboration produced the foundational CRISPR-Cas9 work for which they received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.(18) It has been increasingly difficult for scientific conferences to be held in the US, because of the challenges for international scientists to get visas to attend. But now, with incidents of scientists being denied entry or detained by US immigration officials, scientists are deciding not to attend conferences in the US.(19,20) US scientists increasingly do not have the funding to travel, either, to hear the latest scientific advances, or form the collaborations that will deliver future innovations and Nobel Prizes, or to take the next steps in what now is perceived to be an unwise career choice.
Visa challenges and denials were a major reason why the premier synthetic biology competition, the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, moved from Boston to Paris in 2022.(21) The competition originally grew out of a class at MIT, and the first competition had just 5 teams. Now there are over 400 teams from at least 50 countries. The competition has led to over 250 startup companies, and there are more than 86,000 iGEM alumni all over the world. Competitions like this - another is the Biodesign Competition, which is still based in New York City--are an important part of experiential learning in biotechnology, and they are a source of future innovation. The US should consider these competitions strategically.
US interests are also being harmed by detrimental research policies that are extremely vague, and which will make the most innocuous research legally risky. One example is the "United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research," which was released in July, 2026 in response to the May 2025 Executive Order "Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research."(22,23) This policy prohibits "dangerous gain of function research" or DGOF. However, the definitions are exceptionally broad and would prohibit, or create disabling legal uncertainty around, activities that are required for medical countermeasure development, public health surveillance, animal model development, and ordinary research posing minimal biosafety risk. The policy nods to the fact that medical countermeasure development overlaps with what is prohibited, but doesn't offer any path for acquiring an exception.
The policy also creates a category called "International Research of Concern" (IROC). Its language appears to prohibit federal support for any life sciences research conducted in a designated country of concern. It also subjects research in other countries to a vaguely defined assessment of whether local oversight meets US standards. These provisions could impair basic international activities including influenza surveillance, sample sharing, and outbreak investigation.
Even when policies included exceptions for beneficial research, many scientists actively avoided work that could be construed as "GOF"--a term that has become an unstable policy label.(24) In a news report about how these vague policy terms harm true preparedness, one virologist described being able to secure NIH funding for experiments that sounded "less GOF-like" but were also less informative about potential pandemic threats and how to defeat them. As he put it, "The next flu pandemic is brewing in nature, but we have very little means of stopping it, very little means of identifying what the most dangerous viruses are."(25)
I personally witnessed the chilling impact of previous iterations of these policies. At the 2025 Vaccine Congress in Kyoto, Japan, virologists from around the world gathered to discuss the latest scientific research about H5N1 influenza. Hualan Chen, a preeminent Chinese researcher, shed light on one mystery--how dairy cows were spreading H5N1 in the US. She conducted a large study demonstrating how infected cows transmitted the virus by drinking each other's milk, spreading the virus from mouth to teat.(26,27) Instead of getting this important information from researchers in China, US researchers who have the necessary expertise and facilities should have been able to investigate promptly how H5N1 spreads among cattle and which interventions could interrupt transmission.
Answering questions like these is essential to controlling the outbreak and reducing opportunities for the virus to evolve toward efficient human-to-human transmission. Yet at the conference, one US scientist after another described experiments that could resolve important questions about H5N1 preparedness and response, only to explain that the work could not proceed in the existing regulatory and funding environment.
That was before many research activities were outright prohibited. H5N1 preparedness has been further weakened through the May, 2025 cancellation of a major mRNA vaccine contract.(28)
The detrimental actions and policies I described are isolating US researchers and American research, internationally. Many nations see research on pathogens causing human disease as a priority in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-2. Rather than leading the world to maintain and develop safe, secure practices and biosafety norms, which US researchers are exceptionally well-poised to do, US scientists are being hamstrung, unable to lead and influence safety or security practices at the international level. Other nations' scientists will certainly take the lead in understanding important characteristics of emerging pathogens that could lead to better surveillance and better vaccines, and the international norms for research and safety will be set by them--not by US scientists. This will have serious negative implications for the US bioeconomy and international biosafety norms.
Ideally, any additional oversight for virology or any other kind of research should target activities that require the most safety oversight, and should not impose unnecessary burdens that either slow needed advances or encourage work-arounds. There should be clear regulatory lines so scientists know which research activities do/do not require additional oversight or reporting. Such a review should specifically engage many scientists and subdomain experts, as well as safety, security, and regulatory experts. The intent should be to ensure that the rules are clearly understood, effective, and durable. It should be noted that virology research, particularly in high containment, already has a significant amount of oversight.
Similarly, federal agencies should apply consistent definitions and retain specialized expertise necessary for their different missions. NIH, NSF, DOE, USDA, EPA, and DoD fund very different kinds of biological research, and implementing vague or inconsistent rules creates gaps and unnecessary restrictions. Congress should require coordinated implementation guidance, review and appeal mechanisms, and there should be regular evaluation of whether any restrictions are actually reducing risks or displacing valuable research.
Advances in the life sciences and the development of new biotechnologies are essential to American economic competitiveness, public health, and national security. Congress should prioritize NSCEB recommendations to sustain biotechnology R&D, expand domestic biomanufacturing infrastructure and workforce development, strengthen biological data resources, and harmonize federal regulation of biotechnology.
Recommendations:
I respectfully urge the Committee to consider the following actions:
1. Advance the NSCEB's biotechnology competitiveness recommendations.
Congress should require agencies to report on progress toward expanding domestic biomanufacturing capacity, pilot-scale infrastructure, workforce development, biological data resources, and regulatory coordination, including barriers that prevent American discoveries from being commercialized and manufactured domestically.
2. Require accounting and disclosure of undisbursed, appropriated research funds. Billions of dollars in federal research funding that Congress has appropriated -- including funds restored to NIH in early 2026 after being targeted for cuts -- have not reached researchers and institutions in a timely manner. This delay compounds the damage to the US biotechnology ecosystem. I urge the Committee to:
* Direct the responsible agencies to report to Congress, on a recurring basis, the amount of appropriated research funding that remains unobligated or unapportioned more than 60 days after enactment, and the specific reasons for any delay;
* Request that GAO continue and expand its review of the timeliness of apportionment and obligation of appropriated biomedical and life sciences research funding, building on its August 2025 finding, and report periodically to Congress on compliance with the Impoundment Control Act; and
* Make clear, through appropriate oversight action, that delayed or withheld disbursement of appropriated research funds carries the same real-world costs to American competitiveness and biosecurity as a formal funding cut, in lost researchers, canceled trials, and rescinded offers, regardless of the mechanism by which the funds are withheld.
3. I urge the Committee to call for the immediate suspension of the "United States Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research" and to temporarily use the 2024 United States Government Policy for Oversight of Dual Use Research of Concern and Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential while a better policy is developed. The 2024 policy was scheduled to take effect immediately before the May 2025 executive order directed that it be replaced. I do not offer it as an ideal solution. It and its P3CO-era predecessor shared a significant flaw: they required researchers and review panels to predict whether an experiment could reasonably be anticipated to produce consequential societal or public health harms. Such downstream consequences cannot be predicted reliably from a proposed genetic change or an isolated laboratory phenotype. Replication rate, host range, transmissibility, pathogenicity, and immune escape are distinct and complex characteristics, and a change in one does not necessarily predict a change in the others. Nevertheless, the 2024 policy provided a more workable interim framework and would not create the disabling ambiguity that now threatens valuable public health surveillance, animal model research, and medical countermeasure development.
* Require that a successor policy be developed with structured input from the regulated scientific community and independent outside experts.
The responsible agencies should conduct a formal, public process that includes a defined public comment period and structured technical consultation with practicing researchers, institutional biosafety officials, and non-governmental biosecurity experts, before issuing any successor to the current policy. This process should be transparent in its membership and methodology, and should not be limited to internal agency deliberation or a closed advisory process. The current policy's core defect is not simply that its definitions are vague, but that the policy was developed without meaningful input from the community expected to comply with it; a successor policy developed the same way will likely reproduce the same problems.
* Establish a defined exception pathway and appeal mechanism. Require that any successor policy include an explicit, expedited process for medical countermeasure development, public health surveillance, and animal model development to proceed with appropriate oversight rather than default prohibition, and that any "International Research of Concern" designations be subject to a published review standard and a formal right of appeal.
* Commission an independent evaluation of the policy's effects. Request that GAO or the National Academies conduct a biennial assessment of whether these restrictions are measurably reducing biosecurity risk or are instead displacing valuable research, driving it to less-transparent settings, or discouraging expertise the United States needs to detect and respond to emerging threats.
4. Hold a follow-up hearing within 12 months on implementation of the NSCEB's recommendations, with relevant agency leadership reporting on which recommendations have been adopted, which remain outstanding, and why.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
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References:
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2. NSCEB. Charting the Future of Biotechnology [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 24]. Available from: https://www.biotech.senate.gov/final-report/chapters/
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8. Moore S. China's role in the global biotechnology sector and implications for U.S. policy. Brookings Institution [Internet]. Available from: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-global-biotechnology-sectorand-implications-for-us-policy/
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10. Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: "The science world is ending." PBS News [Internet]. 2025 Oct 29 [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Available from: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/top-researchers-consider-leaving-u-s-amidfunding-cuts-the-science-world-is-ending
11. POLITICO [Internet]. 2025 [cited 2025 Nov 30]. Top US researchers rush to relocate to Europe. Available from: https://www.politico.eu/article/european-research-councilfunding-us-researchers-relocation-europe/
12. AAMC [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 13]. Tracking NIH Awards in FY 2026. Available from: https://www.aamc.org/about-us/biomedical-research/publication/tracking-nihawards-fy-2026-1
13. House Members Send Bipartisan Letter to HHS on NIH Grant Delays - ASCO [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 13]. Available from: https://www.asco.org/news-initiatives/policynews-analysis/house-members-bipartisan-letter-hhs-nih-grant-delays
14. AAU [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Resources on American Researchers Leaving the United States. Available from: https://www.aau.edu/resource-library/resourcesamerican-researchers-leaving-united-states
15. Before the Exodus? Young Scientists and the Future of U.S. Science - Working Paper Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 12]. Available from: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=69201
16. Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western Technology: an Update [Internet]. [cited 2025 Jan 26]. Available from: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500561.pdf
17. Countering misuse of AI: September 2026 / Anthropic [Internet]. [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026
18. NobelPrize.org [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 2]. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020. Available from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/summary/
19. Ledford H, Witze A. 'Anxiety is palpable': detention of researchers at US border spurs travel worries. Nature. 2025 Mar 24;640(8057):13-4. doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00859-w
20. International scientists rethink U.S. conference attendance [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 5]. Available from: https://www.science.org/content/article/international-scientistsrethink-us-conference-attendance
21. Baber S. The Tech [Internet]. [cited 2025 May 23]. Visa issues prevent several international students from attending iGEM Giant Jamboree. Available from: https://thetech.com/2018/11/08/igem-competition-students
22. Executive Office of the President US. Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research [Internet]. 2025 May [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-andsecurity-of-biological-research/
23. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. Trump Administration Releases New Government-Wide Policy to End Dangerous High-Risk Research [Press Release] [Internet]. 2026 Jul [cited 2026 Sep 11]. Available from: https://www.hhs.gov/pressroom/stopping-high-risk-life-sciences-research.html
24. Rasmussen AL, Gronvall GK, Lowen AC, Goodrum F, Alwine J, Andersen KG, et al. Virology--the path forward. Journal of Virology. 2024 Jan 3;0(0):e01791-23. doi:10.1128/jvi.01791-23
25. Mueller B, Stolberg SG. Lab Leak Fight Casts Chill Over Virology Research. The New York Times [Internet]. 2023 Oct 16 [cited 2025 Sep 23]. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/covid-lab-leak-research.html
26. Dixit M. 'Milk-stealing' calves spread deadly bird flu virus among US cows, China study reveals. The Transmission [Internet]. 2025 Jul 16 [cited 2025 Oct 4]. Available from: https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2025/07/16/milk-stealing-calvesspread-deadly-bird-flu-virus-among-us-cows-china-study-reveals/
27. Shi J, Kong H, Cui P, Deng G, Zeng X, Jiang Y, et al. H5N1 virus invades the mammary glands of dairy cattle through 'mouth-to-teat' transmission. Natl Sci Rev. 2025 Sep 1;12(9):nwaf262. doi:10.1093/nsr/nwaf262
28. Opinion | Jay Bhattacharya: Why the NIH is pivoting away from mRNA vaccines - The Washington Post [Internet]. [cited 2026 Jan 18]. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/12/nih-mrna-vaccines-jaybhattacharya/
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Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/e/9/e9cdb4d1-6459-4e98-b328-26c8a9b3e805/9DCAA1BC5A8A8053DCAE4660AC7B37547AE6A4BC18035E5717FA1113CB732642.gigi-gronvall-testimony.pdf
House Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee Chairman Ezell Issues Opening Remarks at Hearing on USCG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Mike Ezell, R-Mississippi, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, released the following opening remarks from a Sept. 16, 2026, heating entitled "Always Ready: A Day in the Life of a United States Coast Guard Member":
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Today, our subcommittee meets to highlight the extraordinary work the enlisted men and women of the Coast Guard do, day in and day out, to save lives at sea, interdict drugs and migrants, keep our maritime transportation system safe and reliable, and perform all of their other ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Mike Ezell, R-Mississippi, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, released the following opening remarks from a Sept. 16, 2026, heating entitled "Always Ready: A Day in the Life of a United States Coast Guard Member": * * * Today, our subcommittee meets to highlight the extraordinary work the enlisted men and women of the Coast Guard do, day in and day out, to save lives at sea, interdict drugs and migrants, keep our maritime transportation system safe and reliable, and perform all of their otherprimary duties. I welcome our witnesses for this afternoon's hearing: Vice Admiral Nathan Moore, Deputy Commandant of the Coast Guard for Operations; and Master Chief Phillip Waldron, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard's record of achievement is a testament to the skill and bravery of its service members. Just last year, the Service saved 5,220 lives and assisted nearly 20,000 people. Also last year, the Coast Guard interdicted 511,000 pounds of drugs -- stopping 193 million potentially lethal doses from reaching our shores. These missions are carried out largely by the Coast Guard's enlisted workforce. We ask a lot of those enlisted service members who make up a significant majority of the Coast Guard's active duty military population.
Just before this hearing, Members of the Subcommittee had the opportunity to speak with four members of the Coast Guard enlisted workforce over lunch. Those men and women represented different specialties across the Service. I am sure I can speak for everyone on the Subcommittee when I tell you these are impressive individuals and we applaud their service.
Despite their remarkable achievements, the Coast Guard's workforce faces challenges in accessing adequate housing, education, and childcare. I had the privilege to travel this August with the Coast Guard. I went to New Orleans, Pascagoula, Pensacola, and Key West. To be quite frank, I was horrified to see how neglected our service members are. They live and work and protect communities across every corner of our nation, including in some of the most remote parts, where it can be difficult to develop infrastructure. Beyond that, we have boats that are beyond their planned service life, infrastructure dating back to World War II, and planes and helicopters which are way beyond their planned service life. We even have rescue swimmers who train in a recreational pool, because their own training facility suffered a catastrophic failure, and Coasties who do boat maintenance outdoors, uncovered in extreme heat.
This year, we were also reminded of the physical risk that comes with these missions by the death of a rescue swimmer in the line of duty and reports of potentially debilitating brain injuries among boat crews operating in heavy surf.
Vice Admiral Moore, I am sure you will agree that, as a nation, we owe our Coasties adequate living conditions, world-class training, proper working conditions, and, if they're injured on the job, the confidence that they will be taken care of.
While shoreside facilities have fallen into disrepair, impacting the readiness of the Service, I am hopeful the investments made in the One Big Beautiful Bill will begin to improve conditions. But true progress will only happen through annual appropriations at sustainable levels. Neither the budget request nor the Appropriations Committee provide that sustainable level. I am afraid that without continued investment at the levels needed, we will see a catastrophic failure of Coast Guard assets. I look forward to hearing from both of our witnesses how the Service is working to improve conditions for its workforce.
I am also glad to see the Coast Guard respond so quickly to the realization of brain injury risks among crew, but many questions remain. I am interested in hearing greater detail of the Coast Guard's response, and how you plan to restore the confidence of your operators.
Thank you again for joining us. I look forward to your testimony.
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Original text here: https://transportation.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=410258
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Today, our subcommittee meets to highlight the extraordinary work the enlisted men and women of the Coast Guard do, day in and day out, to save lives at sea, interdict drugs and migrants, keep our maritime transportation system safe and reliable, and perform all of their other ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Mike Ezell, R-Mississippi, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, released the following opening remarks from a Sept. 16, 2026, heating entitled "Always Ready: A Day in the Life of a United States Coast Guard Member": * * * Today, our subcommittee meets to highlight the extraordinary work the enlisted men and women of the Coast Guard do, day in and day out, to save lives at sea, interdict drugs and migrants, keep our maritime transportation system safe and reliable, and perform all of their otherprimary duties. I welcome our witnesses for this afternoon's hearing: Vice Admiral Nathan Moore, Deputy Commandant of the Coast Guard for Operations; and Master Chief Phillip Waldron, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard's record of achievement is a testament to the skill and bravery of its service members. Just last year, the Service saved 5,220 lives and assisted nearly 20,000 people. Also last year, the Coast Guard interdicted 511,000 pounds of drugs -- stopping 193 million potentially lethal doses from reaching our shores. These missions are carried out largely by the Coast Guard's enlisted workforce. We ask a lot of those enlisted service members who make up a significant majority of the Coast Guard's active duty military population.
Just before this hearing, Members of the Subcommittee had the opportunity to speak with four members of the Coast Guard enlisted workforce over lunch. Those men and women represented different specialties across the Service. I am sure I can speak for everyone on the Subcommittee when I tell you these are impressive individuals and we applaud their service.
Despite their remarkable achievements, the Coast Guard's workforce faces challenges in accessing adequate housing, education, and childcare. I had the privilege to travel this August with the Coast Guard. I went to New Orleans, Pascagoula, Pensacola, and Key West. To be quite frank, I was horrified to see how neglected our service members are. They live and work and protect communities across every corner of our nation, including in some of the most remote parts, where it can be difficult to develop infrastructure. Beyond that, we have boats that are beyond their planned service life, infrastructure dating back to World War II, and planes and helicopters which are way beyond their planned service life. We even have rescue swimmers who train in a recreational pool, because their own training facility suffered a catastrophic failure, and Coasties who do boat maintenance outdoors, uncovered in extreme heat.
This year, we were also reminded of the physical risk that comes with these missions by the death of a rescue swimmer in the line of duty and reports of potentially debilitating brain injuries among boat crews operating in heavy surf.
Vice Admiral Moore, I am sure you will agree that, as a nation, we owe our Coasties adequate living conditions, world-class training, proper working conditions, and, if they're injured on the job, the confidence that they will be taken care of.
While shoreside facilities have fallen into disrepair, impacting the readiness of the Service, I am hopeful the investments made in the One Big Beautiful Bill will begin to improve conditions. But true progress will only happen through annual appropriations at sustainable levels. Neither the budget request nor the Appropriations Committee provide that sustainable level. I am afraid that without continued investment at the levels needed, we will see a catastrophic failure of Coast Guard assets. I look forward to hearing from both of our witnesses how the Service is working to improve conditions for its workforce.
I am also glad to see the Coast Guard respond so quickly to the realization of brain injury risks among crew, but many questions remain. I am interested in hearing greater detail of the Coast Guard's response, and how you plan to restore the confidence of your operators.
Thank you again for joining us. I look forward to your testimony.
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Original text here: https://transportation.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=410258
House Science Committee Chairman Babin Issues Opening Statement at Hearing on Biotechnology Innovation
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, released the following opening statement from a Sept. 16, 2026, joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race":
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Thank you, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing on an issue with significant implications for our country.
Today, we are here to address a field that is increasingly consequential to our national security, economic competitiveness, and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, released the following opening statement from a Sept. 16, 2026, joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Thank you, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing on an issue with significant implications for our country. Today, we are here to address a field that is increasingly consequential to our national security, economic competitiveness, andscientific leadership.
Biotechnology is a term that many of us hear frequently, but may not fully grasp just how many industries it touches. Biotechnology uses biological systems to develop products, processes, and solutions. As these technologies advance, the field is reaching into an expanding range of industries, including healthcare, agriculture, chemical manufacturing, fuel development, and even artificial intelligence.
Developments in biotechnology can provide tremendous benefits to our communities, industries, and economy. But these advances also present significant risks. Laboratory accidents, deliberate misuse, inadequate oversight, or the release of information or biological materials that could be used to harm the public pose serious threats to our national security and public health. Maintaining leadership in this field therefore requires not only sustained support for research and development, but also strong and effective safeguards.
In May 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14292, Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research, which strengthened federal oversight of high-risk biological research, particularly dangerous gain-of-function research. The order seeks to distinguish legitimate and beneficial biological research from activities that could pose unacceptable risks to public health or national security.
Not every country--or every company operating within it--shares the same concerns about biosafety and biosecurity. That is one reason Congress enacted the BIOSECURE Act last December. The Act establishes restrictions on federal procurement and contracting involving equipment, services, or other capabilities provided by identified biotechnology companies of concern. These actions are critical steps, but more work remains. We must continue developing policies, procedures, and oversight mechanisms that balance American leadership in biotechnology with the responsibility to protect our country from serious risks.
China is not standing still. The CCP is rapidly expanding its biotechnology capabilities. Its biomanufacturing capacity, research and development efforts, and workforce continue to grow. The United States must strengthen and expand our own capabilities--and move faster to stay ahead.
Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific research and manufacturing. The United States must support this growth because it is critical to our economy, national security, and communities. We will only maintain our leadership in the face of strategic competition if we adopt policies that strengthen our domestic capabilities while protecting our research, resources, and people from bad actors.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what more we can do to advance American biotechnology research, domestic biomanufacturing, supply chain security, and innovation while ensuring the United States remains competitive with China.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today and for sharing your knowledge and expertise. And thank you again, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing.
I yield back.
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Original text here: https://science.house.gov/2026/9/opening-statement-of-chairman-brian-babin-at-balancing-biotechnology-innovation-and-biosecurity
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Thank you, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing on an issue with significant implications for our country.
Today, we are here to address a field that is increasingly consequential to our national security, economic competitiveness, and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, released the following opening statement from a Sept. 16, 2026, joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Thank you, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing on an issue with significant implications for our country. Today, we are here to address a field that is increasingly consequential to our national security, economic competitiveness, andscientific leadership.
Biotechnology is a term that many of us hear frequently, but may not fully grasp just how many industries it touches. Biotechnology uses biological systems to develop products, processes, and solutions. As these technologies advance, the field is reaching into an expanding range of industries, including healthcare, agriculture, chemical manufacturing, fuel development, and even artificial intelligence.
Developments in biotechnology can provide tremendous benefits to our communities, industries, and economy. But these advances also present significant risks. Laboratory accidents, deliberate misuse, inadequate oversight, or the release of information or biological materials that could be used to harm the public pose serious threats to our national security and public health. Maintaining leadership in this field therefore requires not only sustained support for research and development, but also strong and effective safeguards.
In May 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14292, Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research, which strengthened federal oversight of high-risk biological research, particularly dangerous gain-of-function research. The order seeks to distinguish legitimate and beneficial biological research from activities that could pose unacceptable risks to public health or national security.
Not every country--or every company operating within it--shares the same concerns about biosafety and biosecurity. That is one reason Congress enacted the BIOSECURE Act last December. The Act establishes restrictions on federal procurement and contracting involving equipment, services, or other capabilities provided by identified biotechnology companies of concern. These actions are critical steps, but more work remains. We must continue developing policies, procedures, and oversight mechanisms that balance American leadership in biotechnology with the responsibility to protect our country from serious risks.
China is not standing still. The CCP is rapidly expanding its biotechnology capabilities. Its biomanufacturing capacity, research and development efforts, and workforce continue to grow. The United States must strengthen and expand our own capabilities--and move faster to stay ahead.
Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific research and manufacturing. The United States must support this growth because it is critical to our economy, national security, and communities. We will only maintain our leadership in the face of strategic competition if we adopt policies that strengthen our domestic capabilities while protecting our research, resources, and people from bad actors.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what more we can do to advance American biotechnology research, domestic biomanufacturing, supply chain security, and innovation while ensuring the United States remains competitive with China.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today and for sharing your knowledge and expertise. And thank you again, Chairman McCormick, for holding this hearing.
I yield back.
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Original text here: https://science.house.gov/2026/9/opening-statement-of-chairman-brian-babin-at-balancing-biotechnology-innovation-and-biosecurity
Hoover Institution Bio-Strategies & Leadership Initiative Visiting Fellow Hodges Testifies Before House Science, Space & Technology Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Joshua Hodges, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race":
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Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, Members of the Subcommittee -- thank you for convening a discussion that carries real implications for our security, our economic future, and, most importantly, for everyday ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Joshua Hodges, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, Members of the Subcommittee -- thank you for convening a discussion that carries real implications for our security, our economic future, and, most importantly, for everydayAmericans.
I serve as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution's Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative.
As you are aware, in addition to my role with Hoover, I hold a range of public and private-sector roles, including as a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and in advisory capacities in the private sector, that expose me to a wide range of information and perspective on this and other strategic challenges. The views I express today are my own.
I have spent most of the last decade studying how China is working to overtake the United States in the technologies and industries it believes will define the current century -- often through asymmetric means. There is a military dimension to that effort, but it is not Beijing's principal weapon. China is pursuing a comprehensive, state-directed strategy to build levers of control over our data, the emerging economic corridors, and the manufacturing base of the future and it competes as an ecosystem, not as isolated firms. Biotechnology is squarely inside that campaign, pursued by a full-scope effort across research, data, manufacturing, talent, and finance.
In October 2025, Hoover released a report, Biosecurity Really: A Strategy for Victory, with the central premise that biosecurity is a solvable problem if we treat it as one. This report was released because advancing and securing biotechnology are linked together. The report itself offers nine recommendations -- a blueprint -- and members of the team have since identified clear metrics to measure our progress against them.
The same advances that create biological risk are also the only means of retiring it -- surveillance, vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. In 2004, Biodefense for the 21st Century stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine for every American, vaccinated over 450,000 service members, and expanded the Strategic National Stockpile so that treatment packages could reach anywhere in the country within 12 hours. In recognition of the threat, the United States removed the value to an adversary of deploying such a weapon against Americans.
The problem we face today has advanced significantly since 9/11. As Biodefense for the 21st Century warned, preventing and controlling future biological-weapons threats will be even more challenging: the dispersion of technology, the application of artificial intelligence, and advances across biotechnology and the life sciences -- including the spread of expertise to create modified or novel organisms -- raise the prospect of new toxins, live agents, and biomodulators that would demand new detection methods, preventive measures, and treatments. These are not new problems; they have advanced. Current detection and intelligence efforts continue to struggle with the dual-use nature of biological technologies and infrastructure, and with the likelihood that adversaries will use denial and deception to conceal illicit activity. Novel tools and safeguards must be considered to address the rapid expansion of these technologies beyond our borders.
From Chatbots to Biological Weapon Pressure Cookers. The danger is escalating from question-and-answer to active assistance -- and the queries are coming from abroad. In just the past six months, biosecurity experts warned it was "disturbingly easy" to get chatbots to advise on making pathogens more dangerous; scientists and AI executives signed an open letter demanding new controls on DNA fabrication because AI can now speed the design of toxins and viruses; researchers reported using AI to build viruses not found in nature; and one leading AI lab announced it had blocked several attempts to use its models to weaponize pathogens.
Today's general-purpose chatbot is a reference tool that experts agree is unlikely, on its own, to help a lone actor invent a deadly pathogen. The newer, biology-specific models are a different machine -- closer to a pressure cooker if the status quo remains. Trained directly on the DNA of millions of species, Stanford and the Arc Institute's Evo2 has generated hundreds of thousands of novel viral genomes and yielded sixteen real, viable viruses -- harmless ones that infect only E. coli -- and its creators acknowledge that a version not deliberately constrained could, in principle, design a variant of a pathogen like smallpox.
Meanwhile the federal backstop meant to catch this -- mandatory screening of synthetic-DNA orders -- was suspended last year and has not been replaced. As my Hoover colleague Drew Endy told the Times, the net uplift today remains "modest," but that will change as models specialize in biology. This is the shape of a weapons race we can still get ahead of -- but only if we "leapfrog ahead... and secure biology" now, rather than wait to be surprised.
The instinct, when a technology can be turned to harm, is to slow it down or wall it off. History has repeatedly shown that approach stunts innovation. In 1865 Britain's Locomotive Act -- "Red Flag Act -- required a man to walk sixty yards ahead of every motorcar waving a red flag, at four miles per hour; Britain eased the flag in 1878 but kept the broader regime until 1896, and handed the early automobile industry to France, Germany, and the United States.
Contrast piped gas: as the United States modernized it spread into American homes offering a variety of benefits despite the danger being real. The US did not rip gas out of the walls. We required a cheap, universal safeguard -- odorization -- so a leak announces itself. The technology kept scaling; the standard made it safe. We have never made a transformative technology safe by refusing to build it; we have made it safe by building the standard alongside it. Verifiable screening of synthetic-DNA orders is the odorant of our age.
In its 2025 Annual Report to Congress, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reached a similar conclusion: we urged Congress to make building a resilient bioeconomy industrial base -- and unlocking biology as a general-purpose technology before the decade's end -- a strategic national objective. Securing biology and leading it are two sides of the same coin. The Commission warned that we are on a path to depend on our principal strategic competitor, China, for the very tools our biodefense will rely on.
I returned from China a little over a month ago as part of a U.S. delegation. Comparing my takeaways with those of private-sector executives and other experts who have made similar trips recently -- each of us there on different business -- the standout point was unmistakable: China feels confident, and it is content to have us remain right where we are.
Today, the United States is still in the lead in some aspects of biotechnology, but our remaining lead has a rapidly dwindling shelf life. We hold the economic fundamentals -- innovation, capital markets, productivity -- and we are losing on coordination and speed. This is not a challenge we can afford to ignore.
The position we are in is the product of a deliberate strategy on China's side and institutional neglect on ours. For too long the United States treated biology as a pharmaceutical lane with a bioweapons problem, at best, and as a compliance file at worst -- not as a strategic domain to be owned. We did not arrive here in the last two years, or because of any single budget cycle. The crossover has been building for over two decades, and it is only now beginning to show.
In 2020, China passed the United States in the total number of clinical trials, and in 2023 in trials for novel medicines -- figures my Hoover colleague Drew Endy presented to the Senate Commerce Committee this July. In 2025, roughly a third of the pharmaceutical industry's global licensing spend went to sourcing new medicines from Chinese companies. Barron's reported this week that China's biotech industry has become as much a challenger to America's technological leadership as China's artificial intelligence upstarts, backed by US investors.
A useful way to see where we stand is the U.S.-China Biomedical Competitiveness Scorecard published this June. It found China leading on clinical trials, manufacturing, and supply chains, and the United States still leading on technology transfer, talent, and finance. That is the honest picture, and it matches what I have increasingly seen across Hoover, the Commission, and private-sector engagement: our lead is in the laboratory, not on the factory floor. Recent evidence suggests that China is on track to bring online more new industrial biomanufacturing capacity than the rest of the world combined.
This massive leap forward is due to a mindset aimed at driving forward. They have built an ecosystem designed to make them the world leader -- their regulation and infrastructure, coupled with China's speed to approve and its tailor-made manufacturing base, together compress the design-build-test-learn cycle in biotechnology in ways that capital alone cannot answer.
Multiple federally funded commissions, the academic community, and the private sector have independently reached the same conclusion and roughly the same deadline -- the next 19 months to three years is the time for swift action to avoid losing long-term U.S. leadership and opportunity.
The competition is simple to state and hard to execute: the United States must invest more smartly, build better, and deploy faster if we wish to compete and win on biotechnology. China is taking an "Operation Warp Speed"-like approach for all of biotechnology. What is our approach? Where is it situated? Who owns it?
The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) concluded in April 2025 that "to remain competitive, the United States must take swift action in the next three years." Hoover's independent BSL report, released in October of last year, set an even tighter clock: begin every Stage 1 action "within one thousand days." And the private sector sees the same window from the economic side -- one joint assessment projects the U.S. bioeconomy, excluding healthcare, will nearly double to roughly $400 billion within that timeframe.
America's advantages are real and structural. What is missing is not capability -- it is the clear intent and the architecture to match the speed at which modern biology now moves.
The United States lacks a full-scale effort equal to the importance and the timeframe it faces. For the sake of time, I will not list the full slate of recommendations across the NSCEB, the Commission, and Hoover; here are a few worth highlighting today that would meaningfully extend the window -- now measured in months (19), not years -- to maintain U.S. economic and scientific leadership.
First, biological intelligence. The United States still lacks a coordinated, real-time capability to see biological threats -- natural, accidental, or deliberate -- as they emerge. We invented technical intelligence for the nuclear and space age; we have not built its equivalent for the biological one. Nucleic-acid synthesis screening, which this Subcommittee has advanced through H.R. 3029, is one leading edge of that capability, but much more is needed. This is not regulation for its own sake -- it is how we know what biological threats are likely to arrive, and when and where. We cannot secure what we cannot see.
Second, supply chains. Our exposure to risk is not only toxins and pathogens; risks run through supply chains. The concentration of active pharmaceutical ingredients and precursor chemicals in a small number of overseas suppliers, principally in China, is a strategic vulnerability that does not require an adversary to build a weapon. It only requires them to close a valve. The remedy is redundancy -- and the tools to build it, including decentralized, agile biomanufacturing platforms, already exist in early commercial form. What they need is deliberate federal investment and a predictable regulatory runway.
Third, measurement. We cannot secure, scale, or win what we cannot measure. Before we choose metrics, we have to define what victory looks like; then we have to be able to make the tools and implement the processes to measure it. Today the country has no dedicated national capability for biological measurement of the kind we long ago built for physics and for materials.
The Commission's 2025 Annual Report ranked establishing that capability -- a Biological Measurement Laboratory at NIST -- among its most urgent recommendations. The bipartisan SCALE Biology Act, introduced in this chamber in May, would build it. Paired with Chairman McCormick's workforce legislation and the Cloud LAB Act, the United States could create and sustain a world-leading, integrated technology, metrology, and employment stack for the future bioeconomy. The clock is ticking.
Fourth, innovation leadership. Let me be direct: China's edge is not in the underlying science -- American platforms in gene editing, mRNA, and AI-driven discovery remain the global standard. China's edge is speed of deployment and a tolerance for ambiguity; its first-in-human approval timelines are now a fraction of ours. The greatest risk to American leadership is not that we lose the science. It is that fragmented, slow-moving federal oversight makes us forfeit ground we never needed to give up.
That is why the legislative architecture before Congress this year matters. H.R. 3029 builds the technical foundation -- voluntary, standards-based, industry-informed. The Senate's S. 3741 builds the enforceable floor beneath it, and directs the cross-agency accounting of fragmented biosecurity authorities that the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology has called for and that mirrors the consolidation the Commission urged in its 2025 report. These are not competing approaches; they are sequential ones, and I would urge the Subcommittee to treat them that way.
Beyond Hoover's prior recommendations, I would add two more recommendations, and one gap Congress should address. First, on U.S. investment in China's bio-ecosystem. If we are serious about the scenario before us, we should finish the job on outbound investment. According to recent reporting, roughly a third of global drug-licensing spend is now flowing to Chinese firms; American pension dollars should not be helping finance a takeover of the very industry we are trying to protect. Adding biotechnology to our outbound-investment rules is a logical next step to securing American competitiveness in this growing market -- and our future safety.
Second, on tax treatment. The 48D credit is semiconductor-focused. A 2025 Commission recommendation urged Congress to consider similar credits for other strategic sectors -- quantum computing, biotechnology, advanced materials -- to build resilience across the technology stack. Congress should explore extending 48D beyond semiconductors.
The gap Congress should address. H.R. 1 moved on several fronts vital to closing critical vulnerabilities -- tax credits for domestic onshoring, energy-resilience restrictions on foreign entities, and resources for critical-minerals investment are essential. But the law created no standalone mechanism for coordinated R&D, supplier integration, and procurement, and it did not address the biotechnology window or the strategic competition and its impact on the future U.S. economy. Biotechnology will help determine the next generation of medicine, enable space exploration, and much else; Congress should fold it into its wider strategic agenda.
Two closing points. First, money alone will not solve this; what matters is spending what we allocate where it will have the most impact. Redirecting even a fraction of our application-focused research toward the foundational science, tooling, and measurement that everything else is built on would do more for American leadership than a larger check spent the same old way.
Second, the prize is not only defensive. Unlocking biology as a general-purpose technology could add as much as a third to our national economy -- growing the American bioeconomy, economy-wide, from roughly one trillion dollars toward ten over the next twenty years. This is one of the rare national-security investments that pays for itself. The global biotechnology market size calculated $2.45 trillion in 2025, grew to USD 2.79 trillion in 2026, and is projected to reach around USD 9.06 trillion by 2035.
I will close with an image that stays with me. China holds a standing monthly meeting whose only purpose is to find what is slowing its biotech firms down, and to remove whatever is in the way. Its cities compete against one another to host the next company. Meanwhile, we are still deciding what department or agency has responsibility -- or whether we want to be in the game.
The assets to win this competition are already in American hands. What remains is the discipline to organize them -- and the seriousness to match a competitor who is very serious indeed.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/6/7/67b3bbc3-895e-453e-adf0-2051fbf9e1da/68741545402CBD657A5E2723F69BE807667F7C790749C8CC31EA012A9041911D.joshua-hodges-testimony.pdf
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Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, Members of the Subcommittee -- thank you for convening a discussion that carries real implications for our security, our economic future, and, most importantly, for everyday ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 -- The House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight released the following testimony by Joshua Hodges, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative, from a Sept. 16, 2026, hearing entitled "Balancing Biotechnology Innovation and Biosecurity: Securing U.S. Leadership in a Global Race": * * * Chairman McCormick, Ranking Member Sykes, Members of the Subcommittee -- thank you for convening a discussion that carries real implications for our security, our economic future, and, most importantly, for everydayAmericans.
I serve as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution's Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative.
As you are aware, in addition to my role with Hoover, I hold a range of public and private-sector roles, including as a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and in advisory capacities in the private sector, that expose me to a wide range of information and perspective on this and other strategic challenges. The views I express today are my own.
I have spent most of the last decade studying how China is working to overtake the United States in the technologies and industries it believes will define the current century -- often through asymmetric means. There is a military dimension to that effort, but it is not Beijing's principal weapon. China is pursuing a comprehensive, state-directed strategy to build levers of control over our data, the emerging economic corridors, and the manufacturing base of the future and it competes as an ecosystem, not as isolated firms. Biotechnology is squarely inside that campaign, pursued by a full-scope effort across research, data, manufacturing, talent, and finance.
In October 2025, Hoover released a report, Biosecurity Really: A Strategy for Victory, with the central premise that biosecurity is a solvable problem if we treat it as one. This report was released because advancing and securing biotechnology are linked together. The report itself offers nine recommendations -- a blueprint -- and members of the team have since identified clear metrics to measure our progress against them.
The same advances that create biological risk are also the only means of retiring it -- surveillance, vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. In 2004, Biodefense for the 21st Century stockpiled enough smallpox vaccine for every American, vaccinated over 450,000 service members, and expanded the Strategic National Stockpile so that treatment packages could reach anywhere in the country within 12 hours. In recognition of the threat, the United States removed the value to an adversary of deploying such a weapon against Americans.
The problem we face today has advanced significantly since 9/11. As Biodefense for the 21st Century warned, preventing and controlling future biological-weapons threats will be even more challenging: the dispersion of technology, the application of artificial intelligence, and advances across biotechnology and the life sciences -- including the spread of expertise to create modified or novel organisms -- raise the prospect of new toxins, live agents, and biomodulators that would demand new detection methods, preventive measures, and treatments. These are not new problems; they have advanced. Current detection and intelligence efforts continue to struggle with the dual-use nature of biological technologies and infrastructure, and with the likelihood that adversaries will use denial and deception to conceal illicit activity. Novel tools and safeguards must be considered to address the rapid expansion of these technologies beyond our borders.
From Chatbots to Biological Weapon Pressure Cookers. The danger is escalating from question-and-answer to active assistance -- and the queries are coming from abroad. In just the past six months, biosecurity experts warned it was "disturbingly easy" to get chatbots to advise on making pathogens more dangerous; scientists and AI executives signed an open letter demanding new controls on DNA fabrication because AI can now speed the design of toxins and viruses; researchers reported using AI to build viruses not found in nature; and one leading AI lab announced it had blocked several attempts to use its models to weaponize pathogens.
Today's general-purpose chatbot is a reference tool that experts agree is unlikely, on its own, to help a lone actor invent a deadly pathogen. The newer, biology-specific models are a different machine -- closer to a pressure cooker if the status quo remains. Trained directly on the DNA of millions of species, Stanford and the Arc Institute's Evo2 has generated hundreds of thousands of novel viral genomes and yielded sixteen real, viable viruses -- harmless ones that infect only E. coli -- and its creators acknowledge that a version not deliberately constrained could, in principle, design a variant of a pathogen like smallpox.
Meanwhile the federal backstop meant to catch this -- mandatory screening of synthetic-DNA orders -- was suspended last year and has not been replaced. As my Hoover colleague Drew Endy told the Times, the net uplift today remains "modest," but that will change as models specialize in biology. This is the shape of a weapons race we can still get ahead of -- but only if we "leapfrog ahead... and secure biology" now, rather than wait to be surprised.
The instinct, when a technology can be turned to harm, is to slow it down or wall it off. History has repeatedly shown that approach stunts innovation. In 1865 Britain's Locomotive Act -- "Red Flag Act -- required a man to walk sixty yards ahead of every motorcar waving a red flag, at four miles per hour; Britain eased the flag in 1878 but kept the broader regime until 1896, and handed the early automobile industry to France, Germany, and the United States.
Contrast piped gas: as the United States modernized it spread into American homes offering a variety of benefits despite the danger being real. The US did not rip gas out of the walls. We required a cheap, universal safeguard -- odorization -- so a leak announces itself. The technology kept scaling; the standard made it safe. We have never made a transformative technology safe by refusing to build it; we have made it safe by building the standard alongside it. Verifiable screening of synthetic-DNA orders is the odorant of our age.
In its 2025 Annual Report to Congress, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reached a similar conclusion: we urged Congress to make building a resilient bioeconomy industrial base -- and unlocking biology as a general-purpose technology before the decade's end -- a strategic national objective. Securing biology and leading it are two sides of the same coin. The Commission warned that we are on a path to depend on our principal strategic competitor, China, for the very tools our biodefense will rely on.
I returned from China a little over a month ago as part of a U.S. delegation. Comparing my takeaways with those of private-sector executives and other experts who have made similar trips recently -- each of us there on different business -- the standout point was unmistakable: China feels confident, and it is content to have us remain right where we are.
Today, the United States is still in the lead in some aspects of biotechnology, but our remaining lead has a rapidly dwindling shelf life. We hold the economic fundamentals -- innovation, capital markets, productivity -- and we are losing on coordination and speed. This is not a challenge we can afford to ignore.
The position we are in is the product of a deliberate strategy on China's side and institutional neglect on ours. For too long the United States treated biology as a pharmaceutical lane with a bioweapons problem, at best, and as a compliance file at worst -- not as a strategic domain to be owned. We did not arrive here in the last two years, or because of any single budget cycle. The crossover has been building for over two decades, and it is only now beginning to show.
In 2020, China passed the United States in the total number of clinical trials, and in 2023 in trials for novel medicines -- figures my Hoover colleague Drew Endy presented to the Senate Commerce Committee this July. In 2025, roughly a third of the pharmaceutical industry's global licensing spend went to sourcing new medicines from Chinese companies. Barron's reported this week that China's biotech industry has become as much a challenger to America's technological leadership as China's artificial intelligence upstarts, backed by US investors.
A useful way to see where we stand is the U.S.-China Biomedical Competitiveness Scorecard published this June. It found China leading on clinical trials, manufacturing, and supply chains, and the United States still leading on technology transfer, talent, and finance. That is the honest picture, and it matches what I have increasingly seen across Hoover, the Commission, and private-sector engagement: our lead is in the laboratory, not on the factory floor. Recent evidence suggests that China is on track to bring online more new industrial biomanufacturing capacity than the rest of the world combined.
This massive leap forward is due to a mindset aimed at driving forward. They have built an ecosystem designed to make them the world leader -- their regulation and infrastructure, coupled with China's speed to approve and its tailor-made manufacturing base, together compress the design-build-test-learn cycle in biotechnology in ways that capital alone cannot answer.
Multiple federally funded commissions, the academic community, and the private sector have independently reached the same conclusion and roughly the same deadline -- the next 19 months to three years is the time for swift action to avoid losing long-term U.S. leadership and opportunity.
The competition is simple to state and hard to execute: the United States must invest more smartly, build better, and deploy faster if we wish to compete and win on biotechnology. China is taking an "Operation Warp Speed"-like approach for all of biotechnology. What is our approach? Where is it situated? Who owns it?
The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) concluded in April 2025 that "to remain competitive, the United States must take swift action in the next three years." Hoover's independent BSL report, released in October of last year, set an even tighter clock: begin every Stage 1 action "within one thousand days." And the private sector sees the same window from the economic side -- one joint assessment projects the U.S. bioeconomy, excluding healthcare, will nearly double to roughly $400 billion within that timeframe.
America's advantages are real and structural. What is missing is not capability -- it is the clear intent and the architecture to match the speed at which modern biology now moves.
The United States lacks a full-scale effort equal to the importance and the timeframe it faces. For the sake of time, I will not list the full slate of recommendations across the NSCEB, the Commission, and Hoover; here are a few worth highlighting today that would meaningfully extend the window -- now measured in months (19), not years -- to maintain U.S. economic and scientific leadership.
First, biological intelligence. The United States still lacks a coordinated, real-time capability to see biological threats -- natural, accidental, or deliberate -- as they emerge. We invented technical intelligence for the nuclear and space age; we have not built its equivalent for the biological one. Nucleic-acid synthesis screening, which this Subcommittee has advanced through H.R. 3029, is one leading edge of that capability, but much more is needed. This is not regulation for its own sake -- it is how we know what biological threats are likely to arrive, and when and where. We cannot secure what we cannot see.
Second, supply chains. Our exposure to risk is not only toxins and pathogens; risks run through supply chains. The concentration of active pharmaceutical ingredients and precursor chemicals in a small number of overseas suppliers, principally in China, is a strategic vulnerability that does not require an adversary to build a weapon. It only requires them to close a valve. The remedy is redundancy -- and the tools to build it, including decentralized, agile biomanufacturing platforms, already exist in early commercial form. What they need is deliberate federal investment and a predictable regulatory runway.
Third, measurement. We cannot secure, scale, or win what we cannot measure. Before we choose metrics, we have to define what victory looks like; then we have to be able to make the tools and implement the processes to measure it. Today the country has no dedicated national capability for biological measurement of the kind we long ago built for physics and for materials.
The Commission's 2025 Annual Report ranked establishing that capability -- a Biological Measurement Laboratory at NIST -- among its most urgent recommendations. The bipartisan SCALE Biology Act, introduced in this chamber in May, would build it. Paired with Chairman McCormick's workforce legislation and the Cloud LAB Act, the United States could create and sustain a world-leading, integrated technology, metrology, and employment stack for the future bioeconomy. The clock is ticking.
Fourth, innovation leadership. Let me be direct: China's edge is not in the underlying science -- American platforms in gene editing, mRNA, and AI-driven discovery remain the global standard. China's edge is speed of deployment and a tolerance for ambiguity; its first-in-human approval timelines are now a fraction of ours. The greatest risk to American leadership is not that we lose the science. It is that fragmented, slow-moving federal oversight makes us forfeit ground we never needed to give up.
That is why the legislative architecture before Congress this year matters. H.R. 3029 builds the technical foundation -- voluntary, standards-based, industry-informed. The Senate's S. 3741 builds the enforceable floor beneath it, and directs the cross-agency accounting of fragmented biosecurity authorities that the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology has called for and that mirrors the consolidation the Commission urged in its 2025 report. These are not competing approaches; they are sequential ones, and I would urge the Subcommittee to treat them that way.
Beyond Hoover's prior recommendations, I would add two more recommendations, and one gap Congress should address. First, on U.S. investment in China's bio-ecosystem. If we are serious about the scenario before us, we should finish the job on outbound investment. According to recent reporting, roughly a third of global drug-licensing spend is now flowing to Chinese firms; American pension dollars should not be helping finance a takeover of the very industry we are trying to protect. Adding biotechnology to our outbound-investment rules is a logical next step to securing American competitiveness in this growing market -- and our future safety.
Second, on tax treatment. The 48D credit is semiconductor-focused. A 2025 Commission recommendation urged Congress to consider similar credits for other strategic sectors -- quantum computing, biotechnology, advanced materials -- to build resilience across the technology stack. Congress should explore extending 48D beyond semiconductors.
The gap Congress should address. H.R. 1 moved on several fronts vital to closing critical vulnerabilities -- tax credits for domestic onshoring, energy-resilience restrictions on foreign entities, and resources for critical-minerals investment are essential. But the law created no standalone mechanism for coordinated R&D, supplier integration, and procurement, and it did not address the biotechnology window or the strategic competition and its impact on the future U.S. economy. Biotechnology will help determine the next generation of medicine, enable space exploration, and much else; Congress should fold it into its wider strategic agenda.
Two closing points. First, money alone will not solve this; what matters is spending what we allocate where it will have the most impact. Redirecting even a fraction of our application-focused research toward the foundational science, tooling, and measurement that everything else is built on would do more for American leadership than a larger check spent the same old way.
Second, the prize is not only defensive. Unlocking biology as a general-purpose technology could add as much as a third to our national economy -- growing the American bioeconomy, economy-wide, from roughly one trillion dollars toward ten over the next twenty years. This is one of the rare national-security investments that pays for itself. The global biotechnology market size calculated $2.45 trillion in 2025, grew to USD 2.79 trillion in 2026, and is projected to reach around USD 9.06 trillion by 2035.
I will close with an image that stays with me. China holds a standing monthly meeting whose only purpose is to find what is slowing its biotech firms down, and to remove whatever is in the way. Its cities compete against one another to host the next company. Meanwhile, we are still deciding what department or agency has responsibility -- or whether we want to be in the game.
The assets to win this competition are already in American hands. What remains is the discipline to organize them -- and the seriousness to match a competitor who is very serious indeed.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/6/7/67b3bbc3-895e-453e-adf0-2051fbf9e1da/68741545402CBD657A5E2723F69BE807667F7C790749C8CC31EA012A9041911D.joshua-hodges-testimony.pdf