Considered opinionThe Invisible Threat
In 1995, during the Monday morning rush hour in the Tokyo subway, thousands of commuters inhaled toxic nerve gas left leaking from little plastic bags. Twelve people died, and thousands more were injured in the deadliest attack in Japan since the Second World War. The attack was the work of Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo. The cult members, many of them students of science, were unsuccessful in launching a true biological attack. They were clumsy and unfocused and the tools too complex to pull off with ease. But those efforts were in the mid-1990s, and the tools for creating bioattacks have become more accessible. The Trump administration, however, is threatening to cut the funding for science needed to defend against such attacks.
In 1995, during the Monday morning rush hour in the Tokyo subway, thousands of commuters inhaled toxic nerve gas left leaking from little plastic bags. Twelve people died, and thousands more were injured in the deadliest attack in Japan since the Second World War. The attack was the work of Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo.
Jenna McLaughlin writes in Foreign Policy that the cult members, many of them students of science, were unsuccessful in launching a true biological attack. They were clumsy and unfocused and the tools too complex to pull off with ease.
They were like “kids playing in a school yard,” Richard Danzig, a former U.S. Navy secretary, who interviewed several cult members and who was a co-author of a 2011 paper on the incident.
McLaughlin continues:
But those efforts were in the mid-1990s, and the tools for creating bioattacks have become more accessible. Yet even as more U.S. government officials and outside experts sound the alarm over the increasing risk of bioattacks, the funding for science needed to defend against such attacks is threatened.
Many top scientific positions in the government that could help call attention to this threat remain open, and President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2018 would eliminate the only federal facility devoted to tracking and analyzing potential bioweapons agents including toxins, poisons, and viruses.
In the meantime, the barriers for a terrorist group or lone wolf to create a biological threat are wearing down. Today, a bioweapon factory like the Japanese terrorists built “could be constructed in a way that was vastly smaller and less visible,” said Danzig, who served on President Barack Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which consulted with the intelligence community on biothreats.
“Imagine that the Unabomber was a biologist and not a mathematician. Instead of making pipe bombs, he’d make pathogens,” he said. “I think we’re a step away from those concerns.”
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Yet even if individuals are now capable of developing bioweapons, countries with malicious programs are still a major concern. “I’ve felt for years that our greatest risk stemmed from North Korea,” Danzig said.
Danzig isn’t alone in those concerns, whether about terrorists or governments. Under Obama, the White House was interested in learning more about scientific problems, and one of the last research topics of the president’s council of advisors on science and technology was about the danger of biothreats.
But “that study came so late in the game that one cannot point to a lot of policy change that resulted from it,” John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, told FP.
As of mid-August, that advisory council has been dissolved, and there are no current plans to revive it. As for the biothreats study it produced, its fate is unclear.
“I have some hope the recommendations will survive across and into the Trump administration,” he said, “but, again, so many of the key positions are vacant it’s hard to tell at this point.”
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Fort Detrick’s NBACC, located about 50 miles northwest of Washington in Frederick, Maryland, is facing closure. The lab employs nearly 200 experts, who pore over nearly 15,000 samples a year, primarily for the FBI.
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FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron told theFrederick News-Post that the lab’s capabilities are “unique and unparalleled.” However, when contacted by FP, the FBI declined to comment on the administration’s proposed budget cuts.
“[I]f this lab were to close and its staff to be dispersed — the nation would lose a scientific treasure that would be difficult if not impossible to replace,” the Frederick-News Post’s editorial board wrote in May. “Even if Congress eventually keeps the lab open, it will have been badly damaged.”
Read the full article: Jenna McLaughlin, “The Invisible Threat,” Foreign Policy (21 September 2017)
