Fortress America: The Appointment of Anna Eshoo and the Neo-Colonial Architecture of 'Biodefense'

Introduction: A Ceremony of Power

In a move framed as a routine appointment within the Washington policy ecosystem, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense has welcomed former Congresswoman Anna Eshoo as a new Commissioner. The announcement, emanating from the Atlantic Council, celebrates Eshoo’s legacy: a decades-long congressional career marked by spearheading pivotal legislation such as the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), which established the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and her work on the 21st Century Cures Act and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Praised by fellow commissioners like former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Eshoo is positioned as a paragon of bipartisan, forward-looking leadership in the face of escalating biological threats. On the surface, this is a story of experienced governance. But beneath the veneer of technical preparedness lies a far more consequential narrative about power, priority, and a global order designed to protect the few at the potential expense of the many.

The Factual Landscape: Building the American Biodefense Edifice

The article presents a concise history of U.S. biodefense institutionalism. Anna Eshoo’s tenure, particularly as Ranking Member of the Health Subcommittee, was instrumental in crafting the legal and financial scaffolding for America’s response to biological crises. The creation of BARDA under PAHPA in 2006 was a landmark, centralizing the development and procurement of medical countermeasures—vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics—for national security purposes. Her continued advocacy for its reauthorization, alongside collaborations with figures like former Commissioner Fred Upton on the 21st Century Cures Act and Commissioner Susan Brooks on PAHPA reauthorizations, demonstrates a sustained commitment to this architecture.

The Commission itself, a privately-funded body housed within the Atlantic Council—a think tank with deep ties to transatlantic and U.S. security policy—exists to “evaluate US biodefense and propose actionable recommendations for improvement.” Its membership, comprising former senior policymakers like Shalala and Ridge, signifies its role as an exclusive council of the established security state, guiding strategy from outside the direct tumult of electoral politics. Eshoo’s statement, “We cannot fear to hope,” juxtaposed against her warning of increasing biological threats and a biodefense posture “in flux,” frames the mission as both urgent and noble. The factual core is clear: a respected U.S. legislator, specializing in health security, is moving to a influential advisory role to continue fortifying the nation’s biological defenses.

The Unspoken Context: A World of Deliberate Disequilibrium

To understand the full import of this appointment, one must step outside the Beltway and view it from the perspective of the Global South. The U.S. biodefense apparatus, so meticulously built by figures like Eshoo, is not constructed in a vacuum. It is the medical-security wing of a broader imperial project. The same legislatures that authorize billions for BARDA and ARPA-H consistently uphold intellectual property regimes that choke vaccine access in developing nations. The same national security mindset that drives biodefense also drives the securitization of borders and the hoarding of resources during crises, as witnessed tragically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Commission’s work, while couched in the bipartisan language of public good, operates within a paradigm that is fundamentally Westphalian and exclusionary. Its goal is the defense of the nation-state of America. This is in direct conflict with the civilizational and interconnected worldview of states like India and China, where security is increasingly understood as inherently collective and cannot be achieved by walling oneself off. The “biological threat” the Commission seeks to manage is often discursively linked to origins in other parts of the world, reinforcing a narrative of external peril that justifies inward-looking, militarized responses. The resources funneled into this fortress-building are resources not invested in equitable global health infrastructure, in dismantling patent monopolies, or in respecting the scientific sovereignty of emerging powers.

Opinion: The Irony of ‘Preparedness’ and the Shadow of Neo-Colonialism

Anna Eshoo’s appointment is not merely a career transition; it is a symbol of consolidation. It represents the deepening of a system that prepares for biological catastrophe by reinforcing the very inequalities that make catastrophes so devastating for most of humanity. There is a profound and painful irony here. The sophisticated legal frameworks Eshoo helped author—PAHPA, the 21st Century Cures Act—are testaments to American legislative capability. Yet, their application remains geo-politically myopic. They create a dazzling capability for reaction within the U.S. but do nothing to address the root causes of vulnerability globally: poverty, climate change, and the structural violence of an economic order that treats low-income nations as reservoirs of raw materials and disease, not as equal partners in survival.

When Donna Shalala speaks of Eshoo’s “bipartisan approach,” we must recognize that this bipartisanship exists within an extraordinarily narrow Overton window of American exceptionalism. Republicans and Democrats may debate the funding levels for BARDA, but they share a foundational commitment to U.S. primacy. There is no bipartisan push to cede vaccine technology to the WHO’s mRNA hub network, to permanently waive the TRIPS agreement for pandemics, or to fundamentally restructure global health governance away from donor-driven models. The Commission’s “actionable recommendations” will, by its own mandate, be directed at the “highest levels of [U.S.] government.” The rest of the world is an afterthought, a contingent variable in America’s security calculus, often appearing only as a source of threat or a site for surveillance.

This is the essence of neo-colonial biodefense. It is not overt occupation, but the quiet, technical dominance exercised through legal regimes, intellectual property, and the monopolization of scientific capital. It ensures that when the next pathogen emerges—as it inevitably will from the ecological disruptions wrought by a global economic system the West designed—the cutting-edge tools to combat it will be owned and controlled by a handful of corporations and nations. Countries like India, which were forced into the role of “pharmacy of the world” during COVID under immense duress and unfair conditions, are expected to be resilient without being granted the autonomy or the technological parity to build their own sovereign health security architectures.

Conclusion: Beyond the Fortress, Toward Common Security

The welcome extended to Anna Eshoo is a moment for sober reflection, not celebration for those committed to a truly just and secure world. The individuals named—Eshoo, Shalala, Ridge, Upton, Brooks—are not villains; they are actors within a system they believe they are improving. But the system itself is pathological. Its definition of “biodefense” is a nationalist distortion of a profoundly global challenge.

True biosecurity cannot be achieved by one nation, no matter how wealthy or technologically advanced. It requires a paradigm shift from national defense to common security. It demands the democratization of science and technology, the rejection of knowledge hoarding as a tool of geopolitical competition, and the recognition that the health of people in Wuhan, Mumbai, or Lagos is indivisible from the health of people in Washington or Silicon Valley. The passion and knowledge Eshoo brings to the Commission could be a force for transformative global good if directed toward dismantling the barriers her life’s work has, perhaps unintentionally, helped to fortify. Until the mission expands beyond the walls of Fortress America, such appointments will remain stark reminders of a divided world, where preparations for disaster themselves perpetuate the conditions for future injustice and suffering.