Biotech firms asked to share research with Defense Dept.

Silicon Valley biotech: The Pentagon wants what you’re building.

On Friday, the Department of Defense is holding a workshop in San Jose to learn about local “synthetic biology” research that could help boost homeland security and strengthen the capabilities of the military overseas.

“We’re looking for ideas from the community to help solve problems,” said Alexander Titus, assistant director for biotechnology in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering.

The U.S. military isn’t developing bioweapons, he said. And it has no plans to create a Terminator or other cyborg assassins.

Rather, in the face of new and fast-changing threats, it seeks Silicon Valley’s help to keep the nation’s defenses at the leading edge of biotechnology — for instance, creating chameleon-like camouflage, corrosion-resistant surfaces and more resilient body armor.

Many advances in technology have been spurred by collaborations between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. Most notably, the original Internet was a Defense Department project.

And several tech giants such as Microsoft and Google have already provided technology to the military.

This is sometimes controversial. Earlier this year, Microsoft employees demanded that the company end its $480 million agreement with the Department of Defense to build a headset for augmented reality. Last year, after employee protest, Google canceled its work with the military on an artificial intelligence-based targeting system.

It is part of a larger debate over the pursuit of “dual-use research”: innovations that can both

help and harm.

Friday’s meeting in North San Jose represents the military’s important first step into the new field of synthetic biology: the process of making biology easier to engineer.

It is hosted by the Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Institute, which works with DoD to advance American manufacturing.

The Defense Department wants Bay Area scientists’ input on its plan to establish a new manufacturing institute dedicated entirely to synthetic biology. On Wednesday, it met scientists in Boston.

“This will be a great way to show people what currently exists, what works and what doesn’t work — and then get ideas,” said

Titus at the recent Global Synthetic Biology Summit in San Francisco, sponsored by the Bay Area biotech networking company SynBioBeta.

The DoD is currently funding smaller and more specific projects in “biomanufacturing,” the use of bacteria and other organisms to create objects. For instance, it seeks to use microbes to build aircraft runways in inhospitable place. It is also supporting research into bacteria that churn out anti- corrosion chemicals, to protect military vehicles.

Increasingly, the military worries about weaponized pathogens and seeks better countermeasures, such as advanced vaccines.

“Our crisis management will be enabled by the next wave of synthetic biology,” said Titus.