The bioinformational dilemma: where bioinformational diplomacy meets cyberbiosecurity

ABSTRACT Bioinformational diplomacy is a field of practice that emerges from the politics of biological information exchange during global public health emergencies. Cyberbiosecurity is a field of practice that emerges from the need to secure material at the interface of the digital and biological worlds from misuse and exploitation. Bioinformational diplomacy arises from the intersection of biologically-derived information becoming acutely valuable to national security actors, and the secrecy with which some valuable bioinformation is handled during global public health emergencies. This article analyses bioinformational diplomacy in relation to cyberbiosecurity and shows that both fields of practice are anchored by the concept of bioinformational secrecy. This paper explores the cooperative exchange and competitive exfiltration of bioinformation using the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study. During the COVID-19 pandemic, states sought to protect and covertly acquire certain types of bioinformation. This highlighted a potentially destabilising security dilemma that requires ongoing management via the practice of bioinformational diplomacy.