/// Who We Are ///
Built By People Who Have Seen The Threat Firsthand
ABI's leaders spent their careers tracking how predatory states move on America's critical technologies. They ran the assessments and briefed the decisions that followed. This is not secondhand. The patterns they watched for years are now visible in the medicines Americans depend on. ABI brings together leaders from intelligence, defense, diplomacy, and public health, alongside the partners who can document the threat in the open.
/// Leadership ///
Executive Director
Jennifer A. Crook
Executive Director, American Biosecurity Initiative
Jennifer Crook is a retired CIA clandestine operations officer. Over more than 25 years across the U.S. Intelligence Community, foreign governments, congressional oversight, and the defense and homeland security sectors, she led intelligence operations, threat assessments, and strategic planning. She worked where the country's gravest threats are confronted, arming policy-makers with the clear, factual intelligence those choices demand.
For the last decade of her career, she led Agency China-focused work on threats to U.S. emerging technology, intellectual property, supply chains, and data. As Chief of Targeting and Data Exploitation, she built the Agency's first combined risk identification and data science program, integrating advanced analytics into threat mapping alongside the FBI, NSA, the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, and foreign intelligence partners to protect U.S. critical infrastructure.
Her decision to lead ABI comes from a conviction that U.S. national security depends on the availability, safety, and continued innovation of American medicine. The patterns she tracked for years, including state-directed acquisition, compelled data sharing, intellectual property theft, and military-civil fusion, are now visible across the medicines Americans depend on. The national security community has not organized around this problem. ABI exists to change that, and she leads it because she has spent her career on the front lines of this threat and knows what is at stake.
/// What We Stand For ///
We Compete By Building Strength
Five principles guide every position the American Biosecurity Initiative takes. Two objectives focus the work. They hold one line. The threat is real. Restriction is the wrong tool. The work that matters is rebuilding American strength.
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01
Clearly Communicate Threats, Foreign and Domestic
The challenge comes from two directions. Predatory statecraft abroad and policy erosion at home both weaken American biosecurity. Sanitizing either produces bad policy or surrenders the strongest argument available.
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02
Do No Harm to Domestic Capacity. Unleash the Private Market.
No policy should weaken America's ability to research, develop, or make its own medicines. The private market carries discovery to patients. Protect the capital, research base, and talent the ecosystem runs on.
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03
Solidify Leadership Through Trusted Networks
Domestic capability is the foundation. Trusted partners, shared standards, and redundancy across allied networks make it durable. American presence carries American standards.
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04
Protect the U.S. Workforce and Retain the Best and Brightest
The scientific workforce is one of the country's most durable advantages. Screening people by ethnicity or national origin treats that advantage as a threat and hands adversaries a recruiting argument.
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05
Value and Invest in Biosecurity as a National Defense Asset
America funds its defense assets through public investment paired with private capital. Price controls drain the development side of that partnership. A country that cannot secure its own medicines has surrendered its own defense.
The Two Objectives
Stop penalizing domestic capacity
Defend American presence in global markets
/// Advisory Council ///
The Council, In Formation
The threat is documented. The response needs people who have managed it. ABI is assembling an Advisory Council of leaders who have spent their careers at the center of national security, intelligence, and public health. We are recruiting from these ranks.
Flag and General Officers
Military leaders who have commanded at the strategic level and understand critical infrastructure as a defense problem.
Intelligence and Counterintelligence Officers
Careers spent tracking state-directed acquisition, compelled data, and military-civil fusion before they reach the headlines.
State Department and Diplomatic Leaders
Diplomats who built and held the alliances that trusted networks depend on.
National Security Council Directors
Policy leaders who have set strategy at the highest level of the U.S. government.
FDA, HHS, BARDA, and ASPR Officials
Public health leaders who have run the systems that keep American medicine safe and available.
Defense and Advanced Research Leaders
Defense Department and DARPA veterans who know how the United States builds and protects a technological edge.
Homeland Security and Supply Chain Officials
Leaders who have secured the physical and logistical backbone of critical sectors.
Researchers in Biosecurity and Public Health
Scientific voices who can document the threat and ground the policy response in evidence.
What binds the Council is a shared reading of the threat and a commitment to a response that strengthens American capacity rather than retreating from the world.
The inaugural Council is being assembled now. Candidates can reach us through the form below.
/// Partners ///
Who We Work With
ABI partners with think tanks, research organizations, and academic institutions that study the threat and shape the policy response. Their analysis grounds our work and their independence strengthens it.
Research Institutions and Think Tanks
Independent analysis of supply chains, biosecurity, and strategic competition.
Universities and Academic Centers
The scientific and policy research base that keeps ABI's case anchored in evidence.
Professional and Industry Associations
Organizations that represent the workforce and the sectors at the center of American biosecurity.
We are expanding this network. Organizations that share the analysis are invited to join it.
/// Join the Effort ///
Add Your Name
Interested in the Advisory Council, or in partnering as an organization? Tell us who you are and we will be in touch.