Synthetic blood and instant runways: How biotech can benefit the warfighter

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week on “Rebuilding American Critical Minerals Supply Chains,” Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, pointed out that the U.S. is more than 90 percent “import-reliant for around 25 critical minerals, and over 50 percent reliant on foreign sources for more than 50” others.

He added that “a significant and, in some cases, dominant share of the global processing capacity for these and other minerals is consolidated within China’s borders.”

In fact, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology — of which I am a member — has reported that the U.S. “is almost entirely reliant on China for over half of its annual consumption for 31 of 35 critical minerals.” These critical minerals and rare earths are key components of everything from cell phones and medical devices to semiconductors and nuclear reactors.

Moreover, as the commission also has noted, China has not hesitated to exploit America’s dependence on its minerals and rare earths. In late 2024 China cut off U.S. access to gallium and germanium, jeopardizing U.S. semiconductor production, and in April 2025, China tightened exports of six rare earth metals, effectively restricting U.S. access.

There is no way to assure that Beijing would not employ this tactic again in future; it could elect to further restrict rare earths and mineral exports to the U.S. in order to pressure Washington to accede to its objectives.

For that reason, both Congress on a bipartisan basis and the Department of War have recognized the urgent need to formulate and implement an all-out effort to ensure that, in coordination with its closest allies, America can become materials- and rare-earths-independent.

To do so, it must exploit the promise that biotechnology offers. This is why the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act includes no less than seventeen provisions “designed to increase the focus on emerging biotechnology access in the defense and intelligence communities.” What we need are a new War Department Biotechnology Management Office and a new strategy for exploiting the benefits of emerging biotechnology.

All of these efforts will reinforce the government’s role in supporting private sector development and manufacture of new biotechnology advancements to support the warfighter. We are talking about synthetic blood, for example for treating the wounded without the need to refrigerate and transport multiple blood types; bio-cement for rapid runway construction; and heat-resistant materials for weapons systems such as hypersonic missiles.

The National Defense Authorization Act stresses the need for coordination with NATO allies, many of whom are actively pursuing such biotech advancements. At the same time, NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic has launched a major program to support human resilience and biotechnologies.

The National Defense Authorization Act also calls for the establishment of new biotech leads across the intelligence community and requires expanded intelligence gathering regarding China’s efforts to take the lead in all aspects of biotechnology.

The War Department is moving quickly to respond to its Congressional mandate. The offices of the Under Secretary for Research and Development and the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment are collaborating to develop a comprehensive plan to stop the gradual erosion of America’s lead in biotech.

In his testimony, Cadenazzi outlined a variety of steps that the Department is taking to achieve this objective. One effort that he highlighted is DARPA’s EMBER program, which aims “to develop a biotechnology-based separation and purification strategy for Rare Earth Elements from underutilized domestic sources such as phosphate mine waste.”

The War Department is also focused on biomanufacturing, to ensure that new biotech products can be produced at scale, thereby obviating the need for companies to produce their products offshore, which is currently most often the case.  Finally, the War Department is planning a series of what it terms “technology sprints” that under the leadership of Office of the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, seeks to field biotechnology products within as little as 24 months.

Maximizing the benefits that biotechnology brings is not solely a Pentagon effort. Biotechnology involves a whole-of-government national security enterprise that ranges from agriculture, to energy, to health, to education. China President Xi Jinping has assigned top priority to his country’s attaining world leadership in biotechnology, and Beijing has been working toward that objective for the past two decades.

For that reason, Congressional support and the War Department’s initiatives — and indeed those of other agencies — could not be coming a moment too soon. 

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.

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