The Next Technology Revolution

During the covid pandemic, we got a taste of the incredible potential of biotechnology. Only days after the virus was identified, the genetic code was read and shared with scientists around the world. Four weeks later, the mRNA vaccine was ready for testing. That it saved millions of lives worldwide in record time is thanks to an increasingly advanced biotechnology toolkit that allows us to decode, program and design biology.

But the pandemic was also a foretaste of the threats posed by biotechnology: When the genetic recipe for smallpox virus or the Spanish flu can be ordered on the internet, it doesn't take much imagination to realize that biotechnology can also be used in ways that are harmful to society. In the worst case scenario, technology could threaten our existence.

At the crossroads we now face, we must navigate both opportunities and threats.

On the team with nature in the green shift

The possibilities lie, among other things, in the green shift, where biotechnology allows us to work with, not against, biology.

Sixty percent of everything we physically consume could potentially be made with biology.

In food production, we can replace chemical pesticides, antibiotics and chemical fertilizers with sustainable biological solutions. Examples include gene-edited plants and livestock that do not contract disease or gene-edited bacteria that fertilize plants with nitrogen from the air. Such products are now on full speed out on world markets.

Biotechnology is also our best defense in the face of climate change. With gene editing, we can accelerate the development of food plants that better withstand droughts, floods and other demanding climate conditions.

At the same time, we can also use biotechnology to prevent climate change, for example by making photosynthesis -- a 3-billion-year-old carbon storage technology -- even more efficient.

In California growing gene-edited trees with optimized photosynthesis 50 percent faster than regular trees because they suck up carbon from the atmosphere much more efficiently. As a bonus, these trees are also “programmed” to soak up heavy metals from the soil of the old mining areas they grow on. In the next few years, these could become a significant contribution to America's climate accounting and nature restoration.

KI and biotechnology in combination

This is just the beginning. At the intersection of biotechnology and artificial intelligence, we can take biological design to unprecedented heights.

You may be impressed by the thank-for-food speech ChatGPT wrote for you at the Christmas party, but just wait until you see what such KI models can do with the language of life: genetics.

Fed with genetic information from hundreds of millions of species, they can design new biological molecules that have never previously existed. This is how synthetic biology will give us the medicine, food and industrial raw materials of the future.

The importance of this crossroads -- that we can take control of the very matter of life, the biology -- cannot be overstated. Analyses show that Sixty percent of everything we physically consume could potentially be made with biology. And it is predicted that the bioeconomy — the creation of value from biological resources — by 2030 could grow to around $30 trillion, a third of the world's GDP today.

Biotechnology is our best defense in the face of climate change.

It is perhaps no surprise then, that countries such as the US, China and the UK have lofty ambitions to become world leaders in this area.

Norwegian leadership

There is no reason why Norway should not be as ambitious. We have access to world-class knowledge, capital and renewable biological resources. Gene-edited potatoes which is not attacked by dry rot, salmon-resistant salmon and genetically modified microorganisms that convert CO₂ into acetone with positive climate contribution are examples of biotechnological concepts under development here in the country.

Here are four measures to put Norway at the forefront in the face of the biorevolution:

• Build good value chains for bioinnovation in both medicine, food and industry in Norway, so that the good ideas are not left in a drawer or sold out of the country to get to market.

• Make the regulations more accurate. Today, the regulatory hurdles are so great that many of the best innovations in practice will never be realized in Norway. We need to slack up where the usefulness obviously outweighs the downsides, while at the same time we should tighten up on areas where the threats are really great, particularly relating to bioweapons.
• We can take biological design to unprecedented heights.

• Establish a solid knowledge-based political governance foundation. A multidisciplinary strategy group can advise policymakers on how to position Norway in the global bioeconomy, and a biosafety council can keep an eye on threats on the horizon and strengthen preparedness for the worst-case scenarios. Perhaps Jonas should do as his Swedish colleague and establish a new unit for national security and future analyses at the Prime Minister's Office?

• Last but not least, think long-term. The greatest opportunities and threats of paradigm shifts like this materialize over a much longer period of time than a single election term.

Biotechnology is the next technology revolution, and it will turn society upside down.

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