Policy Implications

• Biotechnological innovation increasingly generates regulatory gaps that international institutions have so far failed to close.
• Insufficient knowledge constitutes a major explanation for institutional drift. The scaling‐up and centralization of scientific assessment processes would thus facilitate adaptation.
• International biosafety regulation requires minimum biocontainment standards and multilateral procedures for the potential release of gene drive organisms.
• In biosecurity, greater emphasis must be placed on bioweapons programs at the level of states relative to nonstate actors.
• Instruments that address the commercial and scientific utilization of genetic resources must reconcile the principle of fair and equitable benefit‐sharing with the new technological environment while avoiding regulatory overreach.