Who: Matt McKnight is General Manager, Biosecurity at Ginkgo Bioworks, a U.S. company building a platform to enable industry to program cells as easily as programing computers. The company’s platform is powering biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals
Topic: Why industry needs to think about biosecurity
Quote: “The threat envelope from biology is changing dramatically, making it a matter of national security. Biorisk is accelerating across the board (natural, accidental, and intentional) and it’s intersecting with climate change, geopolitical instability, disinformation, and other major issues of our time. Biothreats are also an economic problem, they can affect food systems and critical infrastructure, they can destabilize society and political systems. For industry specifically, they can have massive implications for global supply chains, operations, and work forces. Industry should really think about these threats as equally critical to mitigate as cyber. You wouldn’t dream of a modern enterprise without cybersecurity tools.”
