On Tuesday, I linked to a Technology Review article, “The Knowledge,” about the accelerating spread of bioweapons gear and know-how. The story has touched off a big debate in the community that tracks biological threats. So I thought I’d give SUNY Purchase environmental science professor (and long time bioweapons researcher) Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s scientists working group — a chance to respond.
1. [The story’s lead example, Russian bioweapons researcher Serguei] Popov, is a convenient tool for raising a number of ideas that have been around for awhile, and not just in Russia. The BWC [Biological Weapons Convention] does not prohibit research, and the US has been doing some of the same sorts of things for at least 20 years.
2. Terrorists would have to be crazy to spend time and other resources on long-term BW agent development, risking detection without any certainty of success. They dont need MORE virulent agents. They dont need to synthesize agents. Anthrax can be isolated from cowfields all over the place. Unless and until real defenses against the standard agents are universal, the latter will do the job. ( And an even better job is done by explosives. ) The agent is just the first, easiest, step. Weaponization and delivery are harder. Testing is required if they dont want to fizzle. Testing is much more likely than genetic engineering to be detected.
3. If terrorists actually wanted novel BW agents, the way to get them is to buy/steal/infiltrate a biodefense lab, as [Rutgers researcher Richard] Ebright says.
4. The most notable information in the article is the description by Popov of how he was co-opted into working on BW, drawn in without at first knowing it until his career, his income and his future depended on it. To say nothing of patriotism. There are similar stories from S. Africa. Would a scientists code of conduct have mattered?
5. Interesting that the article brings up pacification of a subject population and other modification of behavior with non-lethal weapons. This is a very popular research topic in a lot of countries these days, especially since the Moscow theater hostage event — the Manchurian Candidate concept, essentially. [Harvard University molecular biology professor Matthew] Meselson has been fighting this for years. Tell the public, please, that this kind of research is likely to be turned against themselves, ultimately, rather than terrorists.
As for terrorists developing such things I dont see why they would even want them. But if they did, they would know where to get them. Lets stop focusing our fears on hypothetical terrorists, when governments are actually preparing the tools!
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Exactly. I’m racking my brain for an example where terrorist or guerrillas developed or produced an advanced weapon instead of buying or stealing it from a “legitimate” source. All I’m coming up with is the cult that released Sarin in Tokyo’s subways and managed to kill far fewer people than the kids who bombed London’s Tube.
The critical work here will not be done in clandestine labs; it will be done in modern research facilities funded by our own government. Just like the anthrax attacks. That investigation is stalled, even though the implied threat if far greater than the threat of another 9/11. Once again, the priorities of our government astonish me.
“Weaponization and delivery are harder.”
I started reading about this area extensively starting about four years ago, when it became crystal clear that GWB was GOING to invade Iraq no matter what happened or didn’t happen in the course of the “negotiations”.
The information I mined out of places like Ken Alibek’s autobiography, Johnathan Tucker’s book about smallpox, Jeanne Guillemin’s recounting of the investigation of the Sverdlovsk accident, and other similar sources was quite alarming.
But upon further research and reflection, the quote above seems the most relevant answer to the issue raised in the Technology Review article. Unless the attacker is going to use a supercontagious agent like smallpox, which virually guarantees blowback. Weaponization, testing, mass production, and reliable competent delivery are going to be the real showstoppers.
You can’t just strew an agent like anthrax around like some sort of evil pixie dust and expect much result. The letter attacks were successful as _terrorism_. As biological attacks per se … well, I can almost hear the derisive laughter of 10,000 Russian scientists. People for whom a half-dozen or so victims doesn’t register as an “attack”, but as an “industrial accident”. And they had bigger ones than that, too, by at least an order of magnitude. Like Sverdlovsk.
The Soviets’ program succeeded because they were willing to spend multiple decades and tens of billions and the labor of tens of thousands to build a real supporting infrastructure. One that could define and solve the problems surrounding the competent testing, production, and delivery of biological weapons.
The Soviets grew _tons_ of smallpox, and _thousands_ _of_ _tons_ of anthrax every year. They could and did perform open-air testing. They could and did maintain more than a hundred facilities at fixed locations. They could and did erect multiple concentric rings of extremely effective security around the entire project.
Terrorists operating out of caves aren’t going to be able to do any of these things at all easily.
I should point out at this time that while we have what _purports_ to be an immunization against anthrax, it is neither safe nor effective. This fact has been made public on multiple occasions.
Our vaccination against smallpox is effective enough. But it is sufficiently _proven_ unsafe to have been removed from general use for more than thirty years now.
Given this, why on earth should any actor in the offensive biowar business, whether a state or a non-state actor, look very much further than pulmonary anthrax?
It is well-understood, easy to obtain samples of, very much easier to grow than any virus, and the yield is tough spores that retain their viability and lethality for decades. Not fragile virions which need artificial protection against solar UV and oxygen to remain viable for more than a small handful of hours.
I don’t think that the issues raised by the Technology Review article are either baseless or trivial.
But _right_ _now_, our biggest worry shouldn’t be OBL, who has yet to even make a _credible_ _threat_ of a B/W strike, let alone actually put one in. Unless we are actually going to DO SOMETHING CONCRETE about our lack of vaccines against anthrax and smallpox which are safe enough to use in peacetime, to protect populations numbering in the hundreds of millions.
I _really_ don’t think that last is going to happen on GWB’s watch. “Bioshield” has been roundly and soundly criticised, here and elsewhere, as a boondoggle. It needn’t be and shouldn’t be. But that would require a chief executive whose vision extends further than providing loot and plunder for his corporate sponsors and handlers.
Rather than OBL, our present worry should be a _known_ _and_ _proven_ bioterrorist, with a track record uncounted thousands of years and billions of corpses long. One who is cooking up a new and lethal supercontagious agent even as I write this. One whose alpha-test version is known to be present RIGHT NOW on the eastern edge of the East Atlantic Flyway, whose western terminus lies on the North American continent.
You know who this terrorist is, don’t you? Easy answer.
_That_ malefactor’s identity is the common knowledge of suffering mankind. Out of whose mass, cholera carries off millions each and every year. Stupid well-understood preventable treatable cholera.
The prof is no doubt correct, and in his position we would expect a coal-face expert to have the last word on the technical side of CWB terrorism.
However, I am uncomfortable with blind assumptions olong the lines of “what a sensible terrorist might do”. A plague on the enemy would have great resonance, and our enemy is able to make the leap from a doctor of children to a bomber of children in the case of Zarquawi.
I think the ultimate threat is a weaponised nasty stolen or bought from the former Sov inventory, or a nasty prepared from loose research.
BTW, as I understand, the Russians used huge doses of an established anasthaetic at the theatre siege, not a spooky James Bond knockout gas.
First of all I thank the SOF to bring this life of a true love.
I have adult, I was boring, so I into the SOF, 92 levels, I have not yet fight equipment and earn much Scions of Fate gold. Once have a friend call me, to know his friends knife mad. He is a master of the equipment. On the phone, I asked him to help me with equipment; he is very willing to accept. Then he finished my 90 levels equipments.
Together and he is not a very long time, but I feel very comfortable. He was sometime as a child, lovely, simple, not too many worries, likes a fish in a pure travel freely in the sea. He often took his only cheap GW gold send to me. His world simple, but he is happy.
So I decided to closed my own heart, I played lonely, I gave up to find, put aside feeling. I upgrade, take account and earn goonzu money a person. I live a little good; I think I have been really put aside.
During the time pass, my union was larger; my union members are very solidarity, when some people have difficult, we all go to help. I also remembered once a people
Looking back at the past, in those days, we played together; we have no much rappelz money, we have no need equipment and no senior friends too us, but I am still playing very happy. Rappelz left everywhere in our laughter. There is only one reason is that I have her around, I would meet, everything becomes unimportant. One thing I feel very sorry, that is when I married her, mo gorgeous fireworks, mo friends of blessing. Now I have heart, I feel wronged her, I am sorry to her.
The friend took me to the game, but she own was leaving the game. A person to game is boring, every day, I only know to upgrade and earn ro zeny. I can not sad dot this mess of feelings and moving. Once, the two boys for me quarreled utterly, until I leaved and tool sad. Later, I found a boy to married, I think perhaps all this to change, and I pray to become a reality, a few days after he disappeared. A person was playing a marriage number, what would it have taken place.