In association with the UK Science and Technology Network and the University of Bristol
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“I am heartened to see the dire threat of antimicrobial resistance brought into the light not only as a public health crisis, but being rightfully framed as a national security threat that transcends boundaries and risks leaving us defenceless against infection. I look forward to working together, across sectors, to strengthen global security and resilience.”
Professor Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR
Through the Kaleidoscope: New facets and frontiers of biosecurity took place in August 2024 and was the first Wilton Park dialogue on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), security, and technology organised by a collaborative team across the University of Bristol and the UK Science and Innovation Network (SIN).
Kaleidoscope emerged from a need to address the nexus of emerging biological, technological, health, and social threats driving and driven by complex drug resistances, rethinking and building new intersections between AMR and the wider security and defence communities. This nexus is continually reshaping our world, and we have a vital role to play in setting technological and political trajectories that will enable inspirational change rather than entrenching exiting inequalities.
The dialogue convened over 40 high-level experts from the UK and US drawn from military and civilian government ministries, funders, academia, and non-profit and private sectors to co identify and create new relationships and opportunities for collaborative research and policy generation. This report captures key findings identified during the dialogue to improve national and global strategic positions for tackling AMR, illustrating the importance of AMR as an overlooked high-threat risk for defence and security.
Kaleidoscope is a first step in navigating this complex landscape by building an action-oriented community of shared interest. It aims to influence and inform current strategic planning, research agendas, and future collaborative action.
Executive summary
A Call to Action for Security and Defence Partners
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR): A Silent Threat to Global Stability
AMR is not a distant or silent crisis. AMR poses an urgent, multifaceted challenge both shaping and shaped by changes in global health, security, and resilience. The insights gained from the Kaleidoscope dialogue illustrate how limiting ourselves to addressing AMR as siloed Public Health crisis, we risk overlooking the multiple – often hidden – intersections with national and global security.
AMR is tightly bound to public health, health security, and biodefense (or biosecurity) and continually reshapes national and global security dynamics. Historically, AMR responses have often been neglected by Governments, deprioritised in security strategies, and have faced stark resource challenges, but growing awareness of AMR as a threat to national and global security offers us important new lenses to this persistent problem.
AMR is not uniquely complex or intersectional. Many of our greatest contemporary challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource scarcity defy command-and-control interventions due to their interdependent and intractable natures. AMR exemplifies this type of ‘wicked problem’ – a crisis deeply rooted in biological evolution, historical inequities, systemic vulnerabilities, socio-political concepts and perceptions of risk in a dynamic risk-filled landscape.
AMR as a Security Imperative: A Threat Multiplier
The Kaleidoscope community identified the ways in which AMR can shape security and defence environment by magnify vulnerabilities in health systems, disrupting economies, and compromising nations abilities to defend and protect their populations. Left unchecked, its impacts ripple far beyond healthcare:
- Erosion of Defence Readiness: Rising AMR diminishes a country’s capacity to mobilise against threats, undermining stability and global peace; AMR threats are further amplified in areas of conflict and crisis.
- Global Inequities: Underinvestment in WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) and healthcare infrastructure exacerbates AMR in vulnerable regions, amplifying global disparities.
- Emerging Risks: The dual-use potential of technology poses dangers ranging from misinformation-driven unrest to the malicious exploitation of drug resistance.
Why Security and Defence Partners Must Act Now
The international community recognises that framing AMR solely as a human health challenge may limit engagements with the social, cultural, economic, and political foundations which can amplify threats and limit response capacities. This landscape underlines the importance of AMR as a core security issue; security and defence stakeholders have a vital role in driving innovation, fostering resilience, and forging alliances that transcend sectoral boundaries.
The Kaleidoscope dialogue demonstrated that by connecting security perspectives we are able to redefine AMR as a more-than-health crisis, creating opportunities to build systems that safeguard against tomorrow’s biosecurity threats.
This report is a call for action, setting out key current and emerging issues and highlighting innovative strategies forward. The fight against AMR requires new alliances, fresh thinking, and decisive action. Security and defence partners hold the keys to unlocking solutions that will shape a safer, more resilient future. By framing AMR within the broader context of global security, we can inspire collaboration and ignite a sense of urgency among those uniquely positioned to address this critical challenge, transcend the challenges of today, and secure a healthier tomorrow.
Click here to read the full report.
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