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The misalignment of the traditional view of the patent system with an expansive, modern critical infrastructure can be demonstrated with a graphical representation in Figure 3. As national cybersecurity technologies have increasingly connected data to the critical infrastructure, more of the critical infrastructure is becoming a public good. By contrast, the patent system, which scholars have commented provides incentives for physical creations, has remained rooted in providing a market-based innovation mechanism for the physical world. 274 The physicality in the form ofthe invention, whether by actual reduction to practice or constructive reduction to practice, suggests that the patent system historical basis for incentivizing innovation is in the physical world.2TS Commentators have noted that the patent system is ineffective for software-based and digital inventions, which obfuscate the underlying innovation and do not promote adequate incentives. 236 The misalignment of the proper innovation mechanism, with the changing nature of critical infrastructure, suggests that another type of innovation mechanism is more appropriate for fostering the developing national cybersecurity for critical infrastructure-2

Thus, the benefits of patent protection on national cybersecurity inventions would be mostly absent, and there would be a significant societal cost. Exclusive rights for national cybersecurity inventions would produce deadweight loss, which is deleterious for protection of critical infrastructure. Moreover, extending patent rights to national cybersecurity too far could even dissuade would-be inventors oftechnologies that would protect the critical infrastructure, resulting in perhaps decreasing national cybersecurity innovation. It appears that introducing exclusive rights and profit motives for national cybersecurity may actually undermine efforts to protect the critical infrastructure. For these reasons, extending exclusive rights to national cybersecurity innovations would be ineffective and is ill advised for innovation policy.

Lastly, the perceived informational benefits of utilizing patents and markets to allocate resources for national cybersecurity innovation would not apply and are largely inapposite. A classical argument in favor of patents for technological development is that market exchanges create price signals that allocate resources for invention more efficiently than centralized planning. While the information efficiency of markets justifies the patent system in many technological contexts to incentivize research and development, it fares poorly when the market signals are weak. In the case of national cybersecurity innovations, their demand does not translate into commensurate market demand since there are few purchasers (other than government) who value the innovation and there is risk of govemment secrecy and eminent domain.

Even if national cybersecurity inventions were kept patentable, exclusive rights would not be a prudent innovation policy instrument for incentivizing them. Patents (in theory) represent an intrinsic tradeoff: they enhance incentives to invent, but at the expense of providing disclosure to the public.267 In the context of national cybersecurity inventions, the benefits of patent protection are nearly nonexistent since they can be commandeered by the government and the costs of losing patent protection would be highly deleterious to potential national cybersecurity inventors.26S On the benefits side, patents resolve market failures by granting patentees a right to exclude others from using their inventions, thus shoring up incentives to invent, assuming that, however, those rights will not be taken by the government. 269 Thus, although patents enable market incentives to incentivize inventors to invent, they do not create market incentives.270 Ultimately, it is the market demand that drives the generation of patented technologies.

The patent paradigm fails to translate to national cybersecurity inventions, for almost by definition, there is relatively little market demand for such innovations. That is, assuming the government is the main potential purchaser of national cybersecurity inventions and there is not a private sector market for them, patenting of national cybersecurity invention would be unlikely to generate significant revenues, thus defeating incentives for invention. Additionally, even if exclusive rights provided significant financial return on national cybersecurity inventions, such incentives are not particularly germane to them. As noted earlier, the motivations underlying national cybersecurity inventions are generally economic only when the invention would be known to advance a corporate cybersecurity interest. In particular, the challenge of determining whether a cybersecurity innovation benefits only corporate interests provides ample motivation for society to consider alternative innovation policies aside from the patent system. Furthermore, profit motives are not the driving force for creating technological solutions for achieving national cybersecurity. Moreover, exclusive right on national cybersecurity innovations are plagued by difficulties of patent enforcements, which is more difficult than other technologies. National cybersecurity inventions are subject to government patent use, which allows the government to use patented inventions through a taking of a patent license.271 Even if national cybersecurity inventions were subject to exclusive rights, patentees would face significant challenges in bringing enforcement actions against the government, 232 which further depresses incentives to patent national cybersecurity inventions in the first place.

One seemingly obvious incentive mechanism candidate for accelerating national cybersecurity innovation is to extend and promote exclusive rights over such technological inventions. For a variety of reasons, however, this Article argues against patents as such a potential incentive policy intervention. Exclusive rights in national cybersecurity inventions would not be a prudent innovation policy instrument, since the societal costs would be high relative to benefits. Patent law's conception of legally protectable innovation includes assigning individual exclusive rights in inventions, requiring robust disclosure to meet statutory patentability requirements, and emphasizing discrete patent claiming2S7—each of these facets of patents makes patented technologies to be tradable in markets.2Sg Thus, in the classic profit-driven formulation for innovation, markets motivate the generation of new technologies and help to disseminate them in the commercial marketplace, such as through licensing, mergers, and acquisitions.2S9 This model, of course, works best for technologies that are disclosed through quid pro quo, whereupon patent protection for inventions is attained in exchange for robust disclosure and patented technologies enter the public domain upon the expiration of the patent.260 This market-driven model does not work well for innovations with any semblance of national security concerns, which present risk of government intervention of some sort and inadequacies with the patent system.

Notwithstanding potential difficulties with patenting national security inventions, such as those established by the Invention Secrecy Act,261 other considerations should represent formidable obstacles to societal benefit from patenting of national cybersecurity technologies. As mentioned, many national cybersecurity inventions are not strictly patentable since they raise national security implications and are subject to govemment secrecy suppression. 262 Even if a national cybersecurity invention might technically meet patentability, it would likely be subject to government Datent use and subject the government to exemption from patent infringement.26 Further complicating attempts to patent national cybersecurity is the mysterious nature of the secrecy criteria, which the USPTO has noted is held under national security.264 As previously mentioned, the patent system is typically not meant to keep innovation secret, 26 S and in fact aims to disclose and disseminate inventions to the public through its quid pro quo.266 Unless the practice of the government commandeering national security inventions is made less secretive (which seems highly unlikely), the Invention Secrecy Act and government patent use will continue to defeat attempts to patent national cybersecurity inventions.

“I don’t think the threat to reliability is imminent” even as more operational technology (OT) is internet accessible, said Lila Kee, general manager for GlobalSign’s North and South American operations. “Attackers are getting smarter and as we move OT online the threat surface will be wider, but what these hackers are doing is espionage. They’re going after data, they’re going after [intellectual property].”

“Most cyber attacks today are financially motivated.”

While IP laws provide legal mechanisms to protect intellectual property, they alone cannot address threats from cybercriminals. This is where cybersecurity comes into play. Taking inventory of your valuable IP assets, knowing where they are located and who has access to them are essential first steps in preventing innovative ideas from being stolen in a cyber-attack. A comprehensive cybersecurity program should also include:

Encryption of sensitive data to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches

The countries leading the way in cybersecurity patent applications

Competition between countries can be fierce when it comes to innovation, but the data shows there are clear winners when it comes to the offices receiving the most cybersecurity patent filings.

The number of cybersecurity patent applications per year shows that the amount of investment, research, and development going into finding new ways to help prevent cyber attacks is huge. Since the turn of the millennium, there have been 2,269 applications filed to date that relate to cybersecurity. Applications have accelerated over the last 10 years, which can be linked to a rapid growth in innovation. In the early 2000s, crime organizations started to heavily fund professional cyber attacks, and governments clamped down, holding hackers accountable with criminal penalties and serious sentences. However, cyber attacks continued to rise, and the 2010s saw many high-profile breaches and attacks impact national security across the globe, costing businesses millions. This could explain the jump in cybersecurity patent applications during this period, as inventors worked to find new and innovative ways to prevent attacks. In 2020, filings peaked with a total of 453 applications received by patent offices around the world. That number dropped in 2021, indicating that cybersecurity advancements slowed down because of the global pandemic’s impact and the disruption caused to the economy. What’s clear from the data is that the last few years have seen a huge spike in innovation. The widespread adoption of mobile and cloud applications, as well as the use of artificial intelligence (AI), introduces new vulnerabilities that call for a different approach, and therefore new security solutions.

Earlier this year, when we released the Department’s initial projections for 2020 at USDA’s Agricultural Outlook Forum, the immediate future looked to be improving (www.usda.gov/oce/ag-outlook-forum). We were expecting better weather, improved trading relationships, and global economic growth that would fuel demand for US agricultural exports. The COVID-19 outbreak has severely dampened expectations for 2020 and 2021. And while the timing and pace of the economic recovery remain uncertain, the fundamentals of U.S. agriculture are sufficiently strong to withstand the crisis.

The sector continues to chart productivity gains; and smart policies, technology, and innovation are helping farmers deal with the effects of adverse weather conditions. Although the early August derecho in the Midwest, the severe fires in the West, and the more recent Hurricane activity in the Gulf have caused localized losses, from a national perspective weather conditions have improved relative to 2018 and 2019, signaling a more bountiful harvest in the fall. Record levels of meat and dairy production are expected in 2020 and 2021.

Despite significant disruption to the agriculture and food supply chains, particularly in the first half of 2020, most sector shocks were absorbed rapidly, with trade and markets recovering during the year. Average gross farm receipts for OECD and emerging economies actually increased in 2020, and the sector was the best performing or least affected economically in several countries. At the same time, restricting measures impacted the food security of many low income or unemployed consumers.

This relative economic resilience of the agriculture and food sector was largely due to sector specific policy measures undertaken by governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions. Many governments moved swiftly to keep agricultural supply chains functioning, including by designating agriculture and food as an essential sector and by ensuring international co-operation to limit trade disruptions.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that there is little scholarly merit in the notion that a short-term reduction in access to food increases the probability that conflict will break out. This is because to start or participate in violent conflict requires people to have both the means and the will. Most people on the brink of starvation are not in the position to resort to violence, whether against the government or other social groups. In fact, the urban middle classes tend to be the most likely to protest against rises in food prices, since they often have the best opportunities, the most energy, and the best skills to coordinate and participate in protests.

Accordingly, there is a widespread misapprehension that social unrest in periods of high food prices relates primarily to food shortages. In reality, the sources of discontent are considerably more complex – linked to political structures, land ownership, corruption, the desire for democratic reforms and general economic problems – where the price of food is seen in the context of general increases in the cost of living. Research has shown that while the international media have a tendency to seek simple resource-related explanations – such as drought or famine – for conflicts in the Global South, debates in the local media are permeated by more complex political relationships.

Existing studies suggest that the agricultural sector in many developing countries is particularly vulnerable to armed conflict because violence undermines food production and accessibility. Armed conflict reduces farmers ability to uphold their economic activity, because the risk of violence leads farmers toward lower-return activities (Rockmore, 2020, d’Hôtel et al., 2023, Fadare et al., 2022). Armed conflict also affects agricultural production due to theft and destruction of land and livestock, as well as reduced access to land, labor, and credit (Blattman and Miguel, 2010, Nillesen, 2007, Verpoorten, 2009). To illustrate with some examples, Adelaja and George (2019) found that Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria significantly reduced agricultural productivity, primarily by reducing output of staple crops. The attacks also seem to have reduced hired labor on farms and agricultural wages. Also, Baumann et al. (2014) reported high farmland abandonment in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1991–1994. Investigating agricultural activity in IS-seized areas in Iraq and Syria, Eklund et al. (2017) identified multiple trajectories of changes in cropland cultivation, including expansion of cropland to formerly uncultivated areas, cropland abandonment, and a reduction of high- intensity cropland. In addition, focusing on agricultural activity in post-conflict Cambodia, Lin (2022) found that unexploded bombs on fertile land leads to short-term adjustments in agricultural methods, contributing to long-term underdevelopment and poverty.

Rudolfsen, Ida (2021) Fighting for Food? Investigating Food Insecurity as a Source of Urban Unrest. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Uppsaliensis. 194 pp. ISBN: 978-91-513-1320-7 Read more about this book at www.avhandlingar.se

Is food security a source of urban unrest, and if so, under what conditions? Rudolfsen addresses these questions in novel and sophisticated ways, employing cross-national data from Africa as well as in-depth surveys from South Africa. She begins by observing that food insecurity is widespread but conflict is relatively rare. Social organizations critically mediate between food insecurity and unrest as they mobilize supporters and frame issues in terms that resonate with followers. Her dissertation consists of four essays. The first provides a comprehensive literature review, accounting for a variety of mechanisms by which food insecurity may induce conflict. The second provides a cross-national analysis across Africa. Rudolfsen demonstrates that increasing food prices leads to urban unrest, but the degree to which states repress societal organizations moderates this effect. The next two chapters examine micro-level data drawn from surveys in South Africa. One study finds that increases in food prices lead to individual participation in social conflict, but the price of other commodities such as fuel and electricity yield broadly similar results. This leads the reader to question if food prices are indeed unique or if inflation in general lies at the heart of social grievances. The final chapter returns to the mediating role of social organizations and finds that individuals are more likely to engage in protests over food prices if they are a member of a civic organization such as a party or a union. Scholars interested in the political economy of social conflict will find this short book to be invaluable. It highlights a timely and important problem and advances our knowledge about the link between food insecurity and conflict considerably.

Innovation in emerging technology areas may face unique challenges because of the restricted scope of patent-eligible subject matter, as well as the variability in how such standards are interpreted by patent examiners and the courts. For example, one area of policy concern relates to patent-eligible subject matter standards as they apply to innovations in AI. Though the number of patent applications pertaining to AI has increased over the past 10 years, some stakeholders have reported concern that AI inventions are at risk of patent ineligibility under the current framework because “they may be characterized as methods of organizing human activity, mental processes, or mathematical concepts.”

Given the growing importance of AI technologies, USPTO analyzed patent examination data to study the effect of the Alice/Mayo framework on AI. USPTO’s study evaluated whether the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Alice, which rejected a patent claim on a method of mitigating settlement risk in financial transactions using a computer, impacted the agency’s allowance rates for patent applications containing AI. USPTO reported suggestive evidence that Alice impacted AI technologies differentially.

However, there are some reasons to think that naturally occurring pathogens are unlikely to cause human extinction. Firstly, Homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years and the Homo genus for around six million years without being exterminated by an infectious disease, which is evidence that the base rate of extinction-risk natural pathogens is low.82 Indeed, past disease outbreaks have not come close to rendering humans extinct. Although bodies were piled high in the streets across Europe during the Black Death,83 human extinction was never a serious possibility, and some economists even argue that it was a boon for the European economy.84 Secondly, infectious disease has only contributed to the extinction of a small minority of animal species.85 The only confirmed case of a mammalian species extinction being caused by an infectious disease is a type of rat native only to Christmas Island. Having said that, the context may be importantly different for modern day humans, so it is unclear whether the risk is increasing or decreasing. On the one hand, due to globalisation, the world is more interconnected making it easier for pathogens to spread. On the other hand, interconnectedness could also increase immunity by increasing exposure to lower virulence strains between subpopulations.87 Moreover, advancements in medicine and sanitation limit the potential damage an outbreak might do.

Does agriculture indeed no longer have any place in national defense strategies? If the European and OECD examples encourage an affirmative answer, the counter-example comes from the United States of America, which considers agriculture and food issues as an integral part of national security. In the US defense doctrine, food security not only concerns the food industry, but it also concerns all areas of security. Agriculture seems, a priori, to be off of the agenda when it comes to building a strategy or a security and defense system. The latter is mostly attached to military structures. The only area where agriculture is combined with security is that of food security, which many countries keep as a virtually independent sector from the national defense system. Even when it comes to power factors, farming is rarely mentioned. Europe provides the example of separation between agriculture, and security and defense strategies. Indeed the documents that layout the main defense policies for most countries make no reference to the food issue, and therefore to agriculture . Food security is only mentioned in European countries’ security doctrines in terms of a source of conflict that may affect the neighborhood, and not in terms of a direct threat to Europe’s security. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) follows the same approach as European countries. Thus, in its booklet on agriculture, OECD claims that: "The objective which was to produce sufficient food for a reasonable price in order to feed a growing urban population in a society in the process of industrialization has now lost its relevance in OECD countries." When China recently proposed to acquire the agrochemical group Syngenta headquartered in Basel,2 some US senators asked the Treasury Department to study this Chinese proposal in order to detect "potential consequences for US national security and the American food system."3 In the letter to the Treasury Secretary by US senators, the food system is directly related to national security. In addition, in the American defense doctrine, stability and world peace are dependent on global food security. For the USA, the issues of agriculture and food impact both domestic policy and foreign policy.

Q: What are common knowledge gaps for agtech startups regarding farmers’ needs?

FLC: Agtech startups are often centered around a great idea or technology that’s looking for a problem to solve — but it’s hard for a specific technology to meet the needs of a variable problem. Farmers’ needs and priorities (e.g. pests, nutrients, etc.) are incredibly diverse, varying dramatically by crop and location, even from one field to the next on the same farm, or even within the same field. Today, it is very hard to get an accurate understanding of what is needed or desired at the farm level because there is no easy way to connect with growers on a broad scale. Farm papers have diminished in popularity just like mainstream papers, radio has diminished as well. Unless you have the email address or cell phone number of a farmer, it is hard to connect directly with them now, and most farmers don’t like doing surveys of any type anyway — and those that do aren’t that representative of the industry. I think this is why most types of polls are becoming less accurate as it is increasingly more difficult to get a representative sample of opinions.

However, research and development of new agricultural biotech products can be expensive and time-consuming, due to the large physical scale and long timelines of field trials. At the same time, federal funding for agriculture research has historically paled in comparison to funding for defense, energy, and human health. For example, in 2022, the NIH’s R&D budget was more than 16 times that of the USDA’s.

The Biden administration has demonstrated its recognition of the need to accelerate research and development in agricultural biotechnology, featuring it prominently in 2022’s Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. Additionally, a bill to expand authorization of funding for a moonshot USDA research grant program, AgARDA (Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority), has broad bipartisan support. At the same time, there has been a commensurate increase in private funding.

Q: What can the U.S. government do to provide a supportive landscape for new agricultural biotechnology?

Fall Line Capital: I think the biggest hurdles are regulatory. If the government wants to be truly supportive and innovative, it should be working to revamp the convoluted regulatory environment. The current system wasn’t designed to handle all the new technology being developed with novel mechanisms of action, so hurdles to creating and commercializing stifle innovation even more than they did in the past.

The GM industry has been promising for decades that genetically modified crops will revolutionise farming, and even solve world hunger. But none of their promises have come to fruition. There is little if anything to suggest the ‘next generation’ GM technology will be any different. Meanwhile, GM remains a distraction from the critical issues facing food and farming that can’t simply be solved by tweaking genes. What does GM really look like? Nearly all commercially released GM crops are produced by three chemical companies: Monsanto, Syngenta, and Bayer. Despite the pro-GM lobby’s promises that these products would lead to decreased pesticide use, the truth has proven to be quite the opposite: The use of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller, Round-up, has skyrocketed since the introduction of glyphosate-resistant GM crops, becoming the most used weed-killer in the world. The blanket spraying of these weedkillers on GM crops is associated with environmental damage in North and South America, from degraded soils to the loss of food plants for wildlife such as the iconic Monarch butterfly. And these crops create herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’, trapping farmers into an increasingly expensive arms race where the only winners are the chemical companies. There is also a long history of these GM crops contaminating other farms, which can be financially disastrous and poses a huge problem for organic farmers. At present, there are no commercial GM crops grown in the United Kingdom But we are still supporting these GM systems by importing them for much of our animal feed. If you buy: non-organic eggs, milk, yoghurt, cheese, meat or farmed fish from UK supermarkets, the chances are the animals behind those products were fed GM feed. We need a shift in priority to food security “GM is a huge distraction. It is diverting a massive amount of time, effort and attention from the really crucial issues facing food and farming - like looking after our soils. We have already degraded 25 to 40% of soils worldwide and unless we work very hard to reverse this damage, it will be impossible to feed the growing population healthily. GM is dangerous because it allows us to accelerate in the wrong direction for a short while longer.” Helen Browning, Soil Association Chief Executive We need to see a shift in priority to solving our underlying food problems. Techno-fixes like gene editing mustn’t distract from this. We need to: regenerate soils, diversify crops, use fewer chemicals, bring back wildlife and switch to foods that are better for us and the planet. This needs a dramatic shift towards farmer-led innovation and agroecology to create a climate and nature friendly future. Currently farmer-led research sees less than 1% of public research and development funding. Find out what our asks to the Government are around this and others here.