Jason Kelly
Co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks · Former Chair, U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCDB)
“I believe we are very much at the infancy of biotech...the engineering of a cell, the designing of DNA, this is our other sort of programmable substrate alongside computers. And we should not assume the only use of this technology is to make protein therapeutics...it is very clearly a technology that has dual use. Very clearly a strategic technology.”
“I'm watching us offshore that to China and I'm watching us actively US investors, US pharmaceutical companies supporting the offshoring of what I consider to be strategic technology that will ultimately be more important than computers...we saw a decrease of 1100 R&D jobs in 2024. These are like US scientists who cannot get work anymore in the biopharma industry because that work is now happening in China. We have one third of our lab space here in the Massachusetts area empty right now.”
“70% of the profits for therapeutics originate with US consumers who make up 4% of the world's population...When you are 70% of the market, you can set the rules. And there isn't some weaselly way to get around that.”
Jason Kelly
One-line summary: Ginkgo Bioworks CEO and former NSCDB chair. Argues genetic engineering is a dual-use strategic technology analogous to AI (Eric Schmidt's AI commission → NSCDB's biotech analogue); warns US is actively offshoring the biotech innovation frontier to China; 1,100 R&D jobs lost in Massachusetts 2024, 1/3 of MA lab space empty; US pays 70% of global drug profits = US can set the rules.
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Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On us-biotech-strategic-technology-offshoring:
"I believe we are very much at the infancy of biotech...the engineering of a cell, the designing of DNA, this is our other sort of programmable substrate alongside computers. And we should not assume the only use of this technology is to make protein therapeutics...it is very clearly a technology that has dual use. Very clearly a strategic technology." — 2026-05-29-podcast-biotech-hangout-episode-184-may-29-2026 (2026-05-29)
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On us-biotech-strategic-technology-offshoring:
"I'm watching us offshore that to China and I'm watching us actively US investors, US pharmaceutical companies supporting the offshoring of what I consider to be strategic technology that will ultimately be more important than computers...we saw a decrease of 1100 R&D jobs in 2024. These are like US scientists who cannot get work anymore in the biopharma industry because that work is now happening in China. We have one third of our lab space here in the Massachusetts area empty right now." — 2026-05-29-podcast-biotech-hangout-episode-184-may-29-2026 (2026-05-29)
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On us-biotech-strategic-technology-offshoring:
"70% of the profits for therapeutics originate with US consumers who make up 4% of the world's population...When you are 70% of the market, you can set the rules. And there isn't some weaselly way to get around that." — 2026-05-29-podcast-biotech-hangout-episode-184-may-29-2026 (2026-05-29)
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