OPINION:
Ask most Americans what is in the National Defense Authorization Act, and they will likely picture fighter jets, aircraft carriers and paychecks for the troops. Fair enough, but defense spending protects us in many other ways that rarely get headlines yet do enormous work to keep Americans safe.
Buried in Section 733 of the fiscal year 2026 NDAA, Congress authorized a pilot program to monitor wastewater at four military installations. The goal is simple: Protect our troops by detecting infectious diseases before they spread through the ranks and onto the base. It is an early warning to safeguard our American heroes.
This technology has proved effective in protecting our soldiers, so why is Congress letting the civilian version go dark?
People were interested in these podcasts
The National Wastewater Surveillance System was designed to detect infectious diseases in communities across our country via wastewater monitoring. It worked by partnering with more than 1,300 wastewater treatment plants that served roughly 147 million Americans, testing wastewater for various infectious diseases such as COVID-19, measles, influenza, West Nile virus, hepatitis and RSV.
Nobody was tested, nobody was tracked. No name, address or medical record was entered into the system. The samples come from the municipal sewer. With wastewater data alone, local officials can see an outbreak coming before it shows up in an emergency room.
Since its inception, the National Wastewater Surveillance System has become a critical component of our nation’s defense against infectious disease.
Yet without congressional action to restore it, wastewater monitoring has already gone dark, putting Americans at greater risk.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating concerns about the development of bioweapons by bad actors. Former White House homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall warned in a Foreign Affairs article in August that synthetic biology is “radically democratizing and dispersing access to the tools used to make bioweapons.”
Work that once required a Ph.D. and a government laboratory, she said, can now be completed with “a laptop and an AI account.”
Rand Corp. reached a similar conclusion in its August report, “Building a Defense-in-Depth Biosecurity Strategy for the AI Era.” In the report, Rand Corp. identifies nine layered interventions needed to counter AI-enabled biological attacks. Central to the framework are detection systems, including wastewater surveillance, that can flag suspicious biological signals before an outbreak becomes a crisis.
Wastewater monitoring is already built and running. Studies have found that wastewater monitoring can flag infectious diseases days to weeks before cases turn up in clinics. In the next era of biological warfare, wastewater monitoring is a frontline defense.
Letting it lapse now as threats accelerate would leave America unprepared for what happens next, despite having the protective tools at our fingertips.
Government spending should be scrutinized, but wastewater monitoring is exactly the kind of investment that should be championed. It is decentralized, noninvasive and cost-effective — and has bipartisan support.
Wastewater monitoring replaces more expensive and more intrusive alternatives, from mass individual testing and blanket school closures to reactive emergency spending that follows every outbreak we fail to see coming.
Congress should fund wastewater monitoring now. The bipartisan PREDICT Act, introduced by Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican, is a step in the right direction and demonstrates support for expanded wastewater monitoring to safeguard our country against future public health emergencies.
The Pentagon has already decided that wastewater monitoring is worth deploying on our bases. It is time to extend that protection to every American community.
• Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the U.S. Senate, White House and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai. This year, the Society of Professional Journalists named him among the best columnists in the Intermountain West.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.