Biotech boosters win big in both HASC, SASC defense policy bills for FY26 - Breaking Defense

While the usual hot-button issues like Ukraine aid and the budget deficit dominated Tuesday’s marathon House Armed Services Committee markup of the annual defense policy bill, advocates of cutting-edge biotechnology quietly won passage of at least eight significant provisions to boost Pentagon use of biotech.
The specific items passed by HASC range from streamlined acquisition and bio-wargames to infrastructure expansion and ethics guidelines. The committee also added a total of $34 million for several categories of biotech research and data gathering.
Two of the SASC biotech provisions direct DoD to develop both a department-wide strategy to advance biotech and guidelines on “ethical and responsible development and deployment of biotechnology.” HASC has similar but not identical language.
The third SASC provision, which has no direct counterpart in the HASC bill, would create a “Biotechnology Management Office” run by a “senior official with relevant biotechnology experience” to develop the aforementioned strategy and coordinate biotech efforts across DoD. The fourth SASC provision, which was not mentioned in SASC’s official summary of the bill released last week, would empower the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to coordinate biodefense with allied nations.