Fixing America’s Biodefense Strategy | Novichok Terrorism | Explaining UFOs, and more
TikTok’s Link to China Sparks Privacy Fears and Exposes U.S. Inaction (Drew Harwell and Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post)
The wildly popular app’s link to China has sparked fears over propaganda and privacy. It’s also exposed America’s failure to safeguard the web.
Virus Experiments Like Boston University’s COVID “Chimera” Aare Going to Happen. How Should We Regulate Them? (Dan Vergano, Grid)
Debate over whether research is “gain of function” or not misses what really matters — whether an experiment is really dangerous.
Lab Manipulations of Covid Virus Fall Under Murky Government Rules (Carl Zimmer and Benjamin Mueller, New York Times)
Mouse experiments at Boston University have spotlighted an ambiguous U.S. policy for research on potentially dangerous pathogens.
To Fix America’s Biodefense Strategy, Think Smaller (Al Mauroni, Breaking Defense)
Overly broad strategies can confuse everything from prevention to response, for crises in which specificity is key.
Preventing and Preparing for Pandemics with Zoonotic Origins (Neil Vora and Jay K. Varma, CFR)
Every viral pandemic since 1900 has been the result of spillover from animals to humans. Public health systems should take the steps outlined by Jay Varma and Neil Vora to limit the potential for spillover and the rapid spread of pathogens.
Novichok Terrorism: Prospect or Fever Dream (Markus Binder, NCT Magazine)
There has been an explosion of public and official interest in the so-called novichok family of fourth generation nerve agents following their high-profile use by state actors. The Islamic State’s use of chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria, and chemical plots by other groups oblige us to consider whether terrorists, or other violent non-state actors, will attempt to obtain and use novichoks, and if so, could they do so successfully?
Controlling Novichok Nerve Agents after the Skripal and Navalny Incidents (Stefano Costanzi and Gregory D. Koblentz, NCT Magazine)
Novichok agents are a class of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union beginning in the 1970s. In recent years, these once obscure agents have become notorious due to their use in the assassination attempts of Sergey Skripal in 2018 and Alexei Navalny in 2020. The chemical structures of Novichoks, also called A-series agents, were publicly revealed in the 2009 book State Secrets by Vil Mirzayanov, an analytical chemist formerly involved in the Soviet chemical weapons program. Of note, these structures are different from those of the better known, canonical nerve agents of the G series, such as sarin or soman, and the V series, such as VX or VR. Because of these differences, Novichoks and precursors for their synthesis ended up not being included in lists of chemicals that support chemical weapons disarmament and nonproliferation frameworks. In fact, Mirzayanov suggests in his book that, as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), was under negotiation, one of the motives behind the development of the Novichok agents was the intention to the obligations of the forthcoming treaty.
The Time for Geoengineering Is Now (Robert Litan, Foreign Affairs)
“Geoengineering” can mean a number of things, but it usually refers to the attempt to offset the rising global temperatures that result from the greenhouse effect by introducing particles in a systematic and sustained way into the earth’s atmosphere so that it better reflects the sun’s rays. Although the idea sounds futuristic, the basic concept has been around for a long time. In 1965, a group of scientific advisers to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson suggested that some kind of tinkering with the planet’s mechanics might be necessary.
