Thesis: Biosecurity. Well, the lack thereof.
Hunting for the next-generation biosecurity unicorn in the fertile ground of biology.
This piece was guided by the great work done by Andrew Hessel, Mackenzie Morehead, and James Lin. Read Andrew’s call to action to build the next Anduril for biosecurity here. Mackenzie has written great pieces on investing in biosecurity (part 1, part 2). James has a biosecurity syllabus that was developed for Stanford Biosecurity here.
I’ve been thematically interested in security since Crowdstrike went public (I know, a little late to the game). There are many parallels between how the cybersecurity industry evolved and where the current biosecurity industry is.
A big catalyst was the exponential growth of computational technology in the world economy, and the dual-use nature of that. Biotechnology today sits at similar early innings: our ability to engineer and deploy biothreats is exponentially easier thanks to innovations in biotechnology.
The pandemic was a call on needing better biosecurity. However, conventional thought seems to think the government needs to be the one that underwrites it as a public good. And I don’t think so. It can and will be provided by the private sector.
—Andrew Hui
You can find the thesis in the PDF attached or within this post itself. Do let me know what your thoughts are in the comments, I am looking forward.
1. There is a rise in novel infections which creates more advanced persistent threats
2. Security growth needs to be parallel to the slope of the biotechnology curve
3. Value creation in biosecurity will be found in the security value chain
4. An effective response requires good monitoring
5. Incident response is the tip of the biosecurity spear
6. Endpoint security will come from using advances in diagnostic technology
7. We can learn lessons from the history of firewalls to build biological firewalls
8. The Crowdstrike Playbook: The more data you have, the better you are
9. The endgame is biosecurity ecosystem control
10. Predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does
Before you go…
If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or feedback, please drop me a line - I would love to chat! You can find me on X at @backshui or email (andrewhui65 [at] gmail).
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