Matt Watson

Never Again! - DA Henderson

Chinese AI models have flooded the global market in a year. Americans are building on them and handing over code, strategy, and sensitive data along the way. ow.ly/QoGR30sULZI

Full proposals are now open for our Universal Fabricators programme. Biology has proven that proteins can produce materials with almost any function from only locally abundant molecules – yet today, our use of proteins is mostly limited to drugs and enzymes. Backed by £50m and led by Ivan Jayapurna, the programme will leverage breakthroughs in protein engineering + build a new, interdisciplinary community that can harness proteins to produce a functionally universal range of materials at scale. We’d like that community to consist of experts in protein engineering, self assembly, complex matter physics, inorganic materials engineering, process engineering, and reactor design. They’ll be challenged to develop scalable processes that use proteins to template the assembly of inorganic + composite materials with structures that can’t currently be mass manufactured. Submit your proposal by 5 May: link.aria.org.uk/UF-X

What if YOUR local infectious disease risk were as easy to check as the weather, or the pollen forecast? In a @NatureMedicine Correspondence, Natalie Dean & Caitlin Rivers argue for local, interpretable disease data to support everyday decisions. 🔓 nature.com/articles/s4159…

@rbarishansky @BrianCCastrucci 💯

"The Pitt" gets it exactly right—burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s what happens when systems are understaffed, underfunded, and overloaded… and we expect people to absorb the gap. #burnout @BrianCCastrucci forbes.com/sites/briancas…

“AI will not make all biology predictable. What it will do is make clearer predictions — where prediction is possible — and identify where it is not. This distinction matters because it is likely that the next decade of biotechnology will be shaped by breakthroughs in these specific areas where biology, computation and society align. The next phase of biotech will be defined less by the data we can generate and its analysis, and more by what we choose to prioritize.”

C.D.C. Pauses Testing for Rabies and Mpox nytimes.com/2026/04/01/hea…

Russia’s new genetic data law centralizes DNA information under state control for military and security purposes, limiting science and international cooperation. Article is in Russian. svoboda.org/a/suverennaya-…

👉 Where is H5N1 hiding on farms? Milk-exposed surfaces = hotspots. Environmental surveillance could be an early warning system. 🔗 doi.org/10.3390/microo… #H5N1 #Dairy #OneHealth

My coworkers on the biosecurity team are looking to direct at least $100 million this year. But they need more leads on work that could prevent or blunt the impact of a future pandemic Apply here! coefficientgiving.org/funds/biosecur…

While impressive in its own right, it’s worth remembering that predicting protein-drug interactions is like 0.01% of the drug discovery and development pipeline and the spare change part of it. Saying that that’s revolutionizing the process is like convincing someone, in Derek Lowe’s memorable words, that you’ve invented a revolutionary new car because its windows go up and down ten times faster.

Frontier AI companies already outsource lots of evaluation work to METR, Apollo, and others. I think a similar logic extends to safeguards development – classifiers, data generation, KYC. And that such outsourcing is could be both in companies' interest and good for the world.

Come for a deep dive into why splitter usage across baseball has risen by nearly 120% since 2018. Stay for the incredible graphics work by my @WSJ colleague, @brian_mcgill. wsj.com/sports/basebal…

Over the last 30 years, biotechnology has been driven by the genome sequencing revolution. For the next decade, it will be artificial intelligence that leads the charge in translating the biological complexity that results from these data go.nature.com/4sLrzhi

While I certainly agree, I would slightly reframe to: We need 10x more institutions investing in biosecurity capabilities.

New paper by Gavin Harris and me detailing the importance of ICU personnel recognizing and treating emerging infectious diseases and biothreat agents they may be confronted with sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

U.S. venture capital firms are no longer waiting for Chinese biotech assets to surface before investing in them — they’re moving upstream, embedding themselves inside labs and courting scientists before they publish their research statnews.com/2026/03/31/ven…

Today on PHRME: Jason Asher explores the innovative work of @CDCgov's Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, focusing on how predictive analytics and real-time data are transforming public health decision-making. 🎧: discover.astho.org/4cfHMps.

Today, we're opening a new Request for Proposals in Biosecurity. Broadly speaking, we want to support work aimed at preventing engineered biological threats from emerging and improving our response should prevention fail. 🧵

"In the history of the modern FDA, essentially every company implicated in a foodborne outbreak has agreed to a recall—until now," @NicholasFlorko reports. theatlantic.com/health/2026/03…

2 years ago now the world learned US dairy cows were being infected with #H5N1 #birdflu, raising concern the virus would find a new route to move from animals to humans. Cow infections seem to have slowed & many questions remain, @sciencecohen reports. science.org/content/articl…