![]() ![]() Unpredictable winds, changing terrain, or incorrect dosage could all lead to failure. Launching a successful large-scale attack is also difficult. And target populations can protect themselves with vaccines and other countermeasures. From a tactical perspective, the time lag between exposure and symptoms has limited the utility of biological weapons on a battlefield. Biological weapons also offer deniability: attacks can look like natural outbreaks, and they are difficult to attribute.īut in practice, biological weapons also pose tactical and technical challenges, which led many decision-makers to question their overall value. And states pursuing biological weapons can readily obtain the necessary equipment, which is the same as what is needed for medical or defense research. Many pathogens, such as the one that causes anthrax, don’t need to be developed in a lab they can be found in nature. The materials needed to develop biological weapons are easy to access and relatively cheap. ![]() Stalin even considered using the organism that causes plague to assassinate Marshal Tito, then the president of Yugoslavia. In addition to lethal uses, for example, they explored targeting agriculture to damage an enemy’s food stocks, economy, and morale. During the Cold War, the Soviets also conceived of a range of strategic and operational uses for biological weapons. Initially, this program was designed as a deterrent, but American researchers also came to value the flexibility of biological weapons, which could temporarily sicken or disable people rather than kill them. Seth Carus has pointed out, states have pursued these weapons for a number of different reasons.īetween 19, the United States developed a highly advanced biological weapons program, which was capable of large-scale lethality. Since 1945, only six countries have publicly admitted developing biological weapons, although sufficient evidence exists to suspect a dozen or more. Understanding the risks that biological weapons pose today requires a closer look at how states have historically weighed their benefits and drawbacks. But failing to anticipate and manage the significant risks, including the resurgence of state biological weapons programs, would be equally problematic. Fear-mongering or overregulation could undercut the almost unimaginable benefits of the biotechnology revolution. A revitalization of state biological weapons programs could trigger new conflicts or rekindle old arms races, destabilizing the international order.įaced with extremes of promise and peril, policymakers must proceed with a sense of perspective. Such an outcome would drastically undermine the progress of the last several decades. One of the most worrisome questions today is whether advances in biotechnology could tempt states to revive their old biological weapons programs or start new ones. And laboratories, appealing to parents’ instincts to offer advantages to their children, could modify embryos in ways that cross ethical boundaries. Some fear that terrorists with even moderate capabilities could develop deadlier pathogens. But it’s not hard to imagine how gene-editing technologies could be misused. Top scientists at Harvard are pursuing medical applications once thought to be out of reach, such as age reversal and transplanting pig organs into humans. Researchers are studying the use of new gene-editing techniques to fix deadly genetic mutations, create disease-resistant crops, and treat cancer. ![]() These technologies offer vast potential for global good. Katherine Charlet was the inaugural director of Carnegie’s Technology and International Affairs Program. The full range of potential applications is hard to predict, but CRISPR makes it much easier for scientists to produce changes in how organisms operate. Using gene-editing tools, including a system known as CRISPR, scientists are now able to modify an organism’s DNA more efficiently, flexibly, and accurately than ever before. Recent breakthroughs in gene editing have generated massive excitement, but they have also reenergized fears about weaponized pathogens. Today, no country is openly pursuing biological weapons. Over the last several decades, most states have given up their programs. But despite the deadly potential of biological weapons, their actual use remains rare and (mostly) small scale. “Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies only but whole districts-such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing,” Winston Churchill lamented in 1925. Military and political leaders have worried about large-scale biological warfare for more than a century. ![]()
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