• What If China Really Did Develop COVID as a Bioweapon? Here Are the Issues Involved

    A recent report by the Sunday Times claims the newspaper has seen evidence that China was developing dangerous coronaviruses in collaboration with the Chinese military for the alleged purposes of biowarfare. This research program was the likely source of the pandemic, the report asserts.So, what could the rest of the world do about these new allegations – if anything? There is no easy answer, because, given the nature of biological research, we may never be able to reach a conclusive answer about the bioweapon question.

  • Fighting Biological Threats

    Modeling the emergence and spread of biological threats isn’t as routine as forecasting the weather, but scientists in two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories were awarded funding to try to make it so. The scientists will work together to advance computational tools and solutions for known and unknown diseases.

  • How Russia Turned America’s Helping Hand to Ukraine into a Vast Lie

    Russia’s sustained disinformation campaign about a fictional U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine is an example of how, “In a world that connects billions of people at a flash, the truth may have only a fighting chance against organized lying,” the Washington Post writes. “Disinformation is not just “fake news” or propaganda but an insidious contamination of the world’s conversations. And it is exploding.”

  • It’s Time to Talk about Food and Agriculture Security

    When large scale threats affect food and agriculture supplies, they become matters of national security. Many different threats to our food and agriculture sector exist, and any disruption to the supply chain can cause shortages at your local grocery store and limit the availability of food.

  • NIST Releases Bioeconomy Lexicon

    Biosecurity, bioenergy, bioinspired, biorisk: If you have ever started to feel like the new trend in security jargon is adding “bio” to an already existing word, then NIST’s Bioeconomy Lexicon  is for you.

  • Pentagon Overhauls Chem-Bio Defense

    DOD last week said it was overhauling its approach to countering chemical and biological weapons. Rather than continuing to focus on developing countermeasures for a specific list of threat agents, the Pentagon will develop measures that can adapt to a range of evolving biological and chemical threats.

  • Yeast Material Developed for Training First Responders on Biothreats

    First responders who train for emergencies involving threats from biological agents such as bacterial or viral pathogens, need to do so in a safe and careful manner. To help meet their needs, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a reference material based on yeast cells.

  • Achieving Foundational Security for Food Systems

    U.S. cereal crops such as corn, rice, and wheat feed hundreds of millions of Americans and millions more around the world. Ensuring active defense of these and other staple food grasses is a critical national security priority. New DARPA project seeks advanced threat-detection and warning capabilities for crop defense.

  • A Growing Threat: Deliberate, Simultaneous Release of Pandemic Viruses Across Travel Hubs

    COVID-19 demonstrated how the world is clearly vulnerable to the introduction of a single pandemic virus with a comparatively low case fatality rate. The deliberate and simultaneous release of many pandemic viruses across travel hubs could threaten the stability of civilization. Current trends suggest that within a decade, tens of thousands of skilled individuals will be able to access the information required for them single-handedly to cause new pandemics.

  • Bolstering Biosafety Education to Address Biosecurity Professionals Shortfalls

    Many countries face an severe shortages of biosafety and biosecurity professionals. To address these shortages, experts call for a multisectoral effort toward a future sustainable workforce by formalizing a biosafety & biosecurity career path within the higher education system.

  • Strengthening U.S. Government’s Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen Framework, Dual Use Research

    Group of scientists, public health experts, policy researchers propose strengthening of U.S. government’s policies regarding enhanced potential pandemic pathogen framework and dual use research of concern.

  • Would Russia Use Bioweapons in Ukraine?

    In March, claims from the Kremlin of a U.S.-funded bioweapon program in Ukraine flooded global media. Those reports were amplified by China and picked up by conservative news outlets and conspiracy groups in the U.S. U.S. warned that Russia could be using this thread of disinformation to stage a false-flag incident using bioweapons, or to justify the use of its own bioweapons against Ukraine. It wouldn’t have been the first time Russia used false-flag tactics, and the threat of Russia using bioweapons in either scenario isn’t an outlandish prospect.

  • The Pandemic: Implications for Terrorist Interest in Biological Weapons

    What if the IS or al-Qaeda obtained and spread a highly contagious virus in a community or country that they sought to punish? With the pandemic highlighting weaknesses in response efforts, will these groups now seek to obtain infectious viruses to achieve these same deadly results?

  • Reforming DHS’s Biodefense Operations and Governance

    Today’s biological threats show no signs of desisting any time soon. Naturally occurring outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics, and laboratory accidents pose a growing challenge – while the number of high-containment laboratories and amount of dangerous research continues to increase unabated. “DHS, as chief among those federal departments and agencies responsible for securing the homeland, must overcome its current state of fractionation and demonstrate to the rest of the government, country, and world that it is capable of coordinating and leading efforts in biodefense and other arenas,” Carrie Cordero and Asha M. George write.

  • Gain-of-Function Studies Need Stricter Guidance: Researchers

    Researchers and biosecurity specialists are calling on the U.S. government to issue clearer guidance about experiments the government might fund which would make pathogens more transmissible or deadly.