Biological weapons: U.S. must not repeat the failure of imagination

areas. Mistakenly, people within the administration think of SEB as an “incapacitant”, when in fact it is more lethal as an aerosol than Botulin A, Ricin, Vx gas, or mustard gas.

Locking up “loose bugs” should be supported but we must not allow ourselves to think it is a panacea. We cannot lock up nature.

DHS has no responsibility for the production of MCMs. The responsibility lies primarily with DHHS, who as noted above has had limited success in making MCMs, except for smallpox. Anthrax therapeutics have progressed at DHHS while the second generation vaccine work has been a failure to date. The progress on countermeasures against other agents, which have the proven ability to be weaponized and deployed against a large population, is scarce. The most obvious example of failure is the development of a tularemia vaccine.

The lack of urgency and failure to define requirements for MCMs derives from a lack of understanding of how different a BW is from a natural disease. For example, our public health leaders have a misguided overreliance on the ability of antibiotic treatment against tularemia and plague. This faith is justified if one conceives of them as natural disease, but not if one comprehends their power as a weapon.

Considerable effort by both the Bush and Obama administrations has gone into working with first responders and public health officials. Since 9/11, Katrina, and the pandemic flu response, greater awareness of the range of challenges facing our public health system has evolved. Preparation is still inadequate but this failure arises more from the general crisis facing the nation’s endangered public health system than management of U.S. biodefense policy.

HSNW: The 9/11 attacks resulted in a flurry of government spending on homeland security, but given the government’s current budget woes that level of spending appears unsustainable. With future DHS budgets likely to be much smaller, how would you prioritize security expenditures and get the most “bang for the buck” in regards to chemical and biological threats

JM: Without a compelling strategic threat brief and an interagency biodefense solution to offer Congress, biodefense appropriations for DHHS, DHS, and DOD will be vulnerable. The vulnerability is increased by Congressional concerns that not enough progress has been made with the funds already appropriated plus a lack of a shared Congressional understanding of the threat.

The creation of a clear and White House driven inter-agency process would bring much “bang for the buck” to biodefense. Delays, indecisions, poor management, lack of sustained funding and accountability, and inter-agency warfare have dramatically increased expenditures and delayed timelines.

The future focus must be on preparedness. We must invest first and foremost in our resilience – our ability to survive WMD BW attacks. Given the lack of resources we face, we need to focus on countering agents with the potential for existential strikes rather than agents that can do damage. The latter can kill many people but not hundreds of thousands, and cause mass terror but not bring the nation to its knees. The agents with existential potential are fewer in number.

HSNW: Looking ahead, what do you foresee as the main challenges for the next decade?

JM: My concerns are twofold:

One, the global proliferation of dual-use biotechnology, which dramatically increases the threat of a BW attack from a non-state player. What once took state sponsored BW programs, thousands of scientists, new sciences, and vast financial resources in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is becoming accessible to non-state and even “lone wolf” perpetrators.

Secondly, our national security establishment is turning a blind eye to the future BW threat potential of state players. Many national security leaders view BWs as a questionable relic of the cold war rather than a new generation of weaponry. BWs could become the weapon of the future. They might best meet the needs of coming conflicts for natural resources: weapon systems which can covertly defeat an enemy by depopulating their lands without destroying or polluting the very resources and infrastructures sought by the aggressor.

It is a dark concept to entertain, but it must be entertained – the building of BW systems that achieve what Sam Cohen’s sought in the neutron bomb. When President Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara launched Project 112 in 1962, they sought strategic flexibility with BWs. By 1969, the United States had achieved that capability, the non-nuclear neutron bomb. The United States ended its BW program for complex and not yet totally understood reasons, but one factor was the destabilizing potential for BW proliferation of the “poor man’s atomic bomb. Scientific advancements over the last half century have let that dangerous genie out of the bottle.

To avoid the strategic vulnerabilities such weapon systems could produce, we must not repeat the failure, which the 9/11 Commission articulated, a failure of imagination.