by Veronika Kyrylenko, The New American:
Last week, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. set out his plan to “restore trust” in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he placed one idea at the very top of his agenda: a new Biothreat Radar. The tool, he said, would “detect and defeat infectious diseases” through enhanced respiratory surveillance and the latest molecular technologies.
Kennedy pointed to the global reach of the CDC:
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The CDC also now operates in 63 countries, monitoring biothreats before they reach our shores. Its Biothreat Radar Detection System — an advanced early-detection tool — can spot pathogens like H5N1 [bird flu] or MERS [Middle East respiratory syndrome] early enough to prevent catastrophe.
Notably, that reach also reflects the CDC’s ongoing collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), where its laboratories and experts feed into global networks that track emerging pathogens (more on that later).
Skeptics were quick to observe that no such program seems to exist yet. But the vision is not a fantasy. It is written directly into next year’s CDC 2026 budget request (pdf here), which commits, among other priorities, to
protecting Americans from infectious diseases by creating enhanced respiratory threat detection and a Biothreat Radar program that incorporates progress made in advanced molecular detection to rapidly detect emerging threats.
In its design, the project mirrors the World Economic Forum’s “Biothreat Radar,” launched under its BRIDGE Alliance (Biosecurity Readiness through Intelligence, Data, and Global Engagement) last year.
Funding the Radar
The Biothreat Radar is pitched as a “cross-CDC” initiative, cutting across the agency’s many divisions. In bureaucratic language, that means it is meant to be a system-wide priority, not just a single program tucked into one office.
The budget request starts with Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which comes to $963,291,000, an increase of $44 million over the previous year. The justification is clear. The extra funds are “necessary to keep the nation prepared for the next public health threat.” They will also support “cross-CDC investments in the proposed Biothreat Radar Detection System.”
The request highlights the dangers of “vaccine preventable diseases” that can “easily overwhelm” health systems. Influenza, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), and “novel respiratory viruses” are listed alongside H5N1, polio, and MERS. The plan calls for a larger public health workforce, stronger data collection systems, and expanded laboratory networks. And the budget details three priorities: using advanced technologies and analytics to track pathogens, characterizing what drives epidemics, and developing mitigation strategies through vaccines, drugs, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and “behavioral” controls.
Pentagon Joins the Effort
The initiative goes beyond the CDC’s core programs. The CDC is asking for $870,486,000 for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, $58 million more than last year, to “prioritize emerging and re-emerging” infectious diseases and launch a new Biothreat Radar program. It adds:
In coordination with the White House, CDC and the Department of Defense (DoD) will work to establish a new biodetection system that can rapidly detect novel pathogens with 24-hour turnaround times.
Described as “pathogen agnostic,” the system is designed to detect any disease-causing organism, not just a known few. It comprises four components “across DoD and HHS/CDC.” Three are CDC-based: Advanced Molecular Detection, Traveler Genomic Surveillance, and Response Ready Enterprise Data Integration Platform (RREDI) — which serves as an “emergency response operations component” within the One CDC Data Platform (1CDP).
The fourth component is housed within the DOD, though the budget request does not explicitly name which one.
What is clear is that the DOD has long maintained a central role in global disease tracking through its Global Emerging Infections Surveillance (GEIS) program, established in 1997. GEIS coordinates a global network of military and partner laboratories that monitor pathogens relevant to service members worldwide. It has increasingly adopted pathogen-agnostic sequencing tools — such as next-generation sequencing and wastewater surveillance — to detect emerging threats even before they are identified.
The blending of military and civilian systems may seem like a straightforward upgrade. In fact, it continues a long-standing trend. After the anthrax attacks that started in 2001, federal agencies expanded biosurveillance networks. SARS and Covid-19 deepened the integration of public health and defense agencies, merging labs, data, and infrastructure. Kennedy’s Biothreat Radar would carry that fusion forward by making the DOD a core part of the CDC’s data framework.
Eyes at the Borders
Surveillance will not be confined to laboratories. The CDC is also asking for $79,772,000 for its Travel and Port Health Protection program. The request says the money will “implement a new Biothreat Radar capability established through the Traveler-Based Genomic Surveillance program.”
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