my name is tom dickson and i'm the vice
president for the australian institute
of international affairs in new south
wales
i'm also the manager of national
security
and defence at macquarie university in
sydney and it's at macquarie that i'm
undertaking a multi-disciplinary phd
investigating the impact
of engineering biology on international
relations security incidents
in this presentation i'm going to
discuss the coming age of robust two-way
communication
between living and non-living systems
this is something that a co-author and
colleague of mine at macquarie dr john
williams has called the internet of
biological things
this is tomorrow's world
a world arising from advances in
optogenetics by electrical and biosensor
mediated communication systems
these are the three increasingly
well-defined substrates through
information management and communication
in living systems
like electricity and chemicals
or perhaps in a more fundamental level
photons electrons and the material
structure matter
let's call them the building blocks of
information's physical instantiation in
reality
and this is what i want to make my own
remarks about
that life is information instant
instantiated in reality and therefore
living systems inherit all the strengths
and weaknesses we know so well about
today's digital optoelectronic systems
now in part you're watching this because
you already know about these weaknesses
and you know many of the emerging issues
well far better than i
where i want to go in this talk is to
openly discuss the need for applied
force like anticipating emerging
security vulnerabilities arising from
this transformative moment
and this is what i mean when i use the
word cyber biosecurity
i'm not talking about the protection of
biological information when stored in
inanimate substrates
as important as that issue is rather i'm
focused on the issues that are going to
emerge
from information systems where the
information can transit between a living
organism and an inanimate device
where computers can actuate biological
functionality with low latency
and where biological organisms can
actuate inanimate cytophysical systems
with similar latency
now i've often heard it said about
research interfacing neurological
substrates with opto-electronic devices
that a door once opened can be walked
through both ways
my talk today is about that door
and thinking about the impact that door
might have on our world
that thinking has to happen now before
the door has been opened
let me begin by sharing my screen
this is the puzzle
a simplified map of reality that
outlines the issue i want to address in
this talk
this map covers over length scales on
our planet from small to large
on the left it captures a small
selection of anima information
substrates
and on the right a small selection of
inanimate substrates
at the bottom is a simplification of the
building blocks
in hindsight i would have included rna
dna in humans on the left and i wouldn't
have narrowed the electromagnetic
spectrum to visible light waves but i
hope the image makes its point
there is just as much if not more
information naturally occur on the left
hand side of this map than there is on
the right side and that's the puzzle
now if i separate out the concepts
behind the internet of things the
internet of everything and the internet
of biological things this map becomes
quite useful
the potential of two-way communication
between living and non-living systems
mediated by optogenetic bioelectrical
and biosensor-based systems
means that we need to re-evaluate the
future of networked information systems
till now information has primarily
traveled one way on this map
information has been extracted from
living systems into inanimate systems
where it has been analyzed manipulated
and stored
the security of those endpoint inanimate
systems has been a prime point of
concern
no one seriously countenance the
possibility of hacking those inanimate
systems by compromising the living
systems prior to information harvest
however it is something entirely more
reasonable to suggest the information
that's about to be communicated from the
right hand side of this map over to the
left hand side
could we compromise prior to transfer
those moments when information is still
digitally instantiated comprise a
potential vulnerability
the mrna vaccines a perfect case study
for this designed in silicon
manufactured by cytophysical systems
injected into humans to patch
vulnerability within the mammalian
organism
though the time scale might be long
compared to digital information system
standards the pattern is clear
the era of two-way information
communication between living and
non-living systems has arrived and 2020
marks a point of no return
i think about the mrna vaccination
process as similar to analog computing
engineering prior to the 1950s
it is just the beginning
in the 1940s and 50s how many people
accurately predicted any of the 21st
century's emergent security issues that
have arisen from the progress of
optoelectronic engineering and the
information and computing sciences
we are completely out of our depth when
it comes to predicting anything about
the types of security issues on the
horizon
and
these security issues are going to be
specific to bio-informational
engineering that is engineering the
integration of cyber and biological
information systems
hence there is an urgent need for
horizon scanning of a new client on a
new scale
the key question being how do we
anticipate new and novel threats arising
from the internet of biological things
especially when we have little to no
idea what an ibt enabled world will
actually look like
the canary and the coal mine for this
transition to a bio-informationally
enabled world is the convergence of
synthetic biology and artificial
intelligence
now i'm fascinated by this convergence
because of its value in representing the
current reality
but also because of its symbolic moral
ethical and philosophical value now if
we move past the identification of risks
threats and vulnerabilities for a moment
and consider that new to the world
organisms are being designed by
algorithms
what does that even mean
i've closely followed delphi scans run
by the centre for the study of
existential risk at cambridge university
they've run two scans on issues arising
from advances in engineering biology and
i recommend both of them to you
their scanning technique is based on a
model used to identify issues in
conservation and ecology with a decade
of use behind it
and that delta process in turn is based
on a model that was pioneered by us
defense in the mid-20th century
that one was created to anticipate
technological surprise
and that's where we are again today
living with an urgent need to anticipate
technological surprise
without digressing too far another work
i recommend to you is future shock by
alvin tossler published in 1970 it is an
extremely prescient work
for many the future has arrived too soon
and this experience of the future
arriving unexpectedly is particularly
pronounced among policymakers since
covert 19 reshaped the world
covered 19 was biological and predicted
by a good many experts and pandemics had
sat on international and domestic watch
lists for decades yet it still surprised
many when covert 19 occurred and many
are still suffering future shock because
of it
my contention is a simple one
natural origin biological events though
they are the most likely biological
event to cause catastrophes are not the
only type of biological event out there
engineered biological weapons entered
the playbook sometime during the 20th
century
and there they have stubbornly remained
as high-risk high-impact low-probability
events
but bio-informational engineering has
the potential to create dozens if not
hundreds of new types of biological
events for which we don't even have
words to describe them right now
i would label this black box as an area
of unknown stochastic biological shocks
connecting information systems of the
living world to the non-living world is
going to vastly increase the potential
for stochastic biological shocks why
because we're creating closed and open
control loops between information
systems in the biological world in the
digital
as we know all too well from the digital
world
critical issues in information systems
can scale logarithmically
are we prepared for new kinds of
biological shocks to scale
logarithmically throughout the global
biome of course not
i would suggest that we need to urgently
begin preparing for new types of
stochastic biological shocks be they
natural accidental or engineered in
origin
this means more horizon scaling
constantly iterating innovations in
applied foresight and integrating those
findings into policy and practice in a
preventative manner
on a much faster time scale than occurs
today
now this sketch is of a one-way
information process involving a sentinel
plant
and i'm rather fascinated by sentinel
plants
for those who haven't followed their
development closely they're natural or
transgenic organisms planted among a
crop field and closely monitored because
they provide early warning of various
natural processes being experienced by
the surrounding crops
their heat stress water stress water
stress lack of nitrogen or phosphate
they can also monitor for pest and
blight outbreaks
now at the moment we're going through a
transition
sentinel plants have typically been
monitored by humans or drones at length
scales visible to the human eye
with the invention and development of
some next generation chemical detection
systems think diabetic monitors for
plants
the biochemical signaling mechanism
mechanisms of a sentinel plant can be
hardwired into cyber physical system
control loops
this is still a one-way loop
but i want to emphasize that over the
next decade sentinel plants are very
likely to be incorporating micro and
nanoscale information export systems
that means signals that aren't visible
on the centimeter scale can be monitored
one of these signals i'm particularly
interested in is the immune system
reaction of plants to unknown pathogens
that might have been transmitted to them
by nearby mammals grazing on foliage
indeed one of the more out there
proposals i've made with some of my
co-authors is that we should consider
using sentinel plants in the wastewater
streams of avatars in order to monitor
for disease x encounters
let's get in front of the next zoonotic
biological event rather than wait for it
to occur
but the second point i want to make
about this control loop is that there
are many different points where the
biological information
is transiting an inanimate substrate
these points
to vulnerable to standard cyber issues
however if the inner workings of the
sentinel plant have been monitored by a
device in a crop field
and that device itself is not being
monitored regularly by drones of humans
then compromising the hardware at the
central plan communication system can
offer a pathway into all of the linked
systems
i'd rate that as an unlikely event for a
prop field but if we translate the
scenario into a military context
and sentinel plan is monitoring for
molecular signatures associated with an
adversary's troops assets or chemical
biological and radiological weapons
then the risk and consequences of
hardware being spoofed hacked or
compromised rises
pervasive and persistent living
monitoring systems that target micro and
nanoscale information signatures are a
disruptive
technology they're likely to be
disrupted from a military standpoint the
maritime and land domains but they're
also likely to be destructive from a
civilian standpoint
because their proliferation throughout
urban rural and wild environments seemed
somewhat likely over the coming decades
many environmental monitoring
regulations can be automated by these
systems which may make their uptake by
mining and resources extraction
companies likely
similarly many environmental monitoring
processes in homes and cities can be
automated this way meaning air quality
and the presence of viral particles in
the air can be monitored in close to
real time
and even if we remove the plant entirely
the training towards the molecular
monitoring of the planet is on and it
needs to be prepared for
but again this is only a one-way control
loop we're not yet actuating biological
functionality from an inanimate
substrate
now this is a closed loop by a two-way
bio-informational system
my opinion is that innovations in this
kind of system are going to contribute
to scaling up bioreactor base by
manufacturing
there's probably an inherent limit in
how big a bioreactor can get before the
underlying biomass will start to deviate
from its intended functionality
but optogenetic and bioelectrical
controls may be able to contribute to
increasing the edge of that limit
perhaps more importantly these types of
information based controls are very
likely to optimize production teeter
rates and yields
this is a gateway technology for gaseous
carbon reuse and the inexitable movement
of global manufacturing to a
carbon-negative bioeconomy
this image underpins the potential of
biomanufacturing in the 21st century for
me especially when it comes to circular
economy tools for mitigating and
adapting to climate change
however this system is also a textbook
example of a cyberbiological interface
and though it is a closed-loop interface
it is clearly a hybrid surface that
opportunists and advanced persistent
threats will seek to navigate
now i'm not going to recite to you the
anticipated economic bounty of
tomorrow's bioeconomy but the forecasts
all point one way
the companies that are going to use
these systems or relying on these
systems in their supply chain or in
their waste chain are all going to share
something in common
the cyber biosecurity risks that arise
from reliance on cyberbiological
interfaces
now i've gone quite deep quite fast on
this example and so i want to reel it
back to a singular question
how is a non-technical policy
understand and interact with the
security risks of the system let alone
the economic potential
the answer we need to find a new
language for describing the world
encompassed by this emerging technology
a language that is sufficiently complex
to adequately describe the underlying
scientific and technological reality and
a language that is simple enough so that
policy makers can interpret and
understand the opportunities and
challenges at hand
where is that language going to come
from
well in many ways i think we can learn a
lot from the path of artificial
intelligence over the past decade
i recall when the ai hype cycle was
really setting off a few years ago and
every second week there was an opinion
piece in the content marketing outlets
of the mckinseys and veins of the world
describing how ai was important and why
business leaders needed to pay attention
each one of these articles though it
didn't contribute that much
refined and guided popular culture
understanding of ai's possibilities and
the language used to describe those
possibilities
we need this to happen all over again
for the dawning age of the cyber
biological interface because the cyber
biointerface is fundamentally different
to a cyber physical system
now as you know a cyber physical system
doesn't monitor manipulate or interact
with biological information substrates
in the material reality it is
manufacturing
cyber physical systems do not transfer
information between animate and
inanimate matter
cyber bio interfaces do
and though these interfaces are not all
that common today they do exist and they
are proliferating
cyber bio novelty is going to take many
by surprise but it doesn't need to
now before i conclude this presentation
i want to make a few remarks on
anticipating cyber biotechnology
surprise
and the importance of cyber biosecurity
this is my final slide
and i'm going to conclude with it
this is far more than a hypothetical
situation but it is one that we need to
actively prepare for
this sketch is based on a 2016 proof of
concept study where humans wearing e e g
devices linked up to an optogenetic
system
in a mouse model could activate
engineered e coli
within that mouse model to express
insulin
just by thinking about it
this is the world of bioinformational
engineering we're headed towards where
medication can be switched on by devices
by optogenetic control loops actuating
functionality and engineered microbiomes
and this is just one example
i'm sure you can let your imagination
run a little bit wild on how important
it is
going to be to secure this cyber
biosurface from opportunists and apts
this is the cyber biosecurity
conversation we need to be having
this is the dual use research
conversation we need to be having
perhaps most importantly the med tech
startups of the world that are going to
pioneer this space all need to be
brought into a cyber biosecurity first
way of thinking without bankrupting
their limited venture capital runway
now i fully acknowledge some of the
sketches i've shown in this presentation
may never eventuate in reality
but the science and technology has
sufficiently advanced that
bioinformational engineering is going to
begin appearing in commercial
applications over the coming decade
and there is an obvious first mover
advantage for those companies and
nations that pioneer this technology
especially from a standard setting point
of view
that includes data standardization but
also the standardization of security
protocols or creating long-term
structural weaknesses in the industry
standard security settings
for a bio-informational communication
process
now from my perspective this is what
cyber biosecurity is all about
anticipating and preparing for the
transformative potential of the
cyberbiological interface
and figuring out how to navigate the
attack surface that that is going to
create
it's been an absolute pleasure to
prevent present to you thank you very
much for listening