Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009 - 20

FEATURE ARTICLE weapon than a nuclear weapon.” This view is echoed in the U.S. National concentrations equal to or greater than 93 percent) into fuel for civilian Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World report: nuclear power reactors. The issue at hand is to what extent a terrorist “One of our greatest concerns continues to be that terrorist or other group might be able to exploit security vulnerabilities where HEU or malevolent groups might acquire and employ biological agents, or less plutonium stocks are used or stored, and steal enough materials for use likely, a nuclear device, to create mass casualties.” in an IND. The threat of bioterrorism is receiving increased attention by According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there national leaders for three reasons. First, global advances in biosciences have been 15 known instances of individuals or groups engaged in and biotechnology have increased the risk that deadly microorganisms illegal trafﬁcking – including possessing, selling, and smuggling across national borders – of either high enriched uranium or plutonium may fall into the wrong hands. As compared with the nuclear industry, between January 1993 and December 2006. However, over the same dangerous pathogens are far more pervasive than are ﬁssile materials period, 332 cases involving theft or loss of nuclear or radioactive sources suitable for use in a weapon. Nuclear power plants are designed and protected according to strict security and safety rules and laws, and are occurred. The bad news that a staggering 67% of cases involving lost or typically built far removed from local population centers. A robust stolen materials have not been recovered to date; the good news is that security culture in the United States with respect to sensitive nuclear since September 11, 2001, there have been no reported cases of theft of materials has been institutionalized over time through oversight any radioactive sources above more than a few grams. of powerful regulatory organizations like the Nuclear Regulatory Even in the presence of this data, however, we can never know Commission (NRC). There are no equivalent with certainty how many incidents have gone security mandates in place for the bio-industry. undetected or unreported. Furthermore, the Concurrently, the biotechnology revolution and the accuracy of the reporting is always subject to doubt Many experts now prevalence of bioscience research in universities, since it may not be in a state’s interests, for political argue that a biological government laboratories, and pharmaceutical and other sensitive reasons, to openly admit companies worldwide has broadened the availability how vulnerable their laboratories and research terrorist attack, also facilities are to exploitation by unauthorized of dual-use materials, and expanded exponentially known as bioterrorism, individuals. One positive consequences of this is the number of individuals with the knowledge could supersede necessary to engage in nefarious biological weapon that potential buyers of illicit WMD materials on the black market are susceptible to hoaxes, such nuclear terrorism as the research and development. The second cause for concern is the potential as fake or diluted material, and are vulnerable to quintessential threat of lethality rate of a biological attack with a highly sting operations by security and police services. st the 21 century. contagious virus like Variola major (the cause These high transaction costs present a nearly of smallpox, for which most people around the insurmountable barrier of entry to even the most world are not immune and there is no cure), which could eclipse that determined and sophisticated group. of even a large nuclear weapon explosion. Take as an example the Because of the extraordinary difﬁculties that any terrorist group best known and probably the deadliest pandemic in human history, faces in gaining access to a sufﬁcient amount of ﬁssile material, and the 1918 outbreak of Spanish Inﬂuenza, in which upwards of 50 the required scientiﬁc know-how to properly use a nuclear weapon, million people died worldwide. For a group like al Qaida that is not nuclear terrorism is properly categorized as a high-consequence, lowprobability event. discriminating in who it murders, the prospect of death on a biblical scale would stand as a fulﬁllment of their messianic ideology. Biological Weapons The third challenge associated with biological weapons is that the Biological terrorism often takes second-place in the WMD terrorism timeline for terrorists to produce and use them is likely shorter than discourse, largely because there is no historical memory of a largethat of nuclear weapons, giving intelligence and security agencies a scale biological weapon attack, as there is with nuclear weapons (two smaller window of opportunity to disrupt the plot. Signiﬁcant national were used by the United States against Japan in World War II) and investment in bioterrorism research centers may improve our ability nuclear reactor meltdowns (think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl). to detect the outbreak of an intentional infectious disease early on, Nevertheless, a successful biological attack could decimate large but prevention is far more difﬁcult to achieve. Vaccine development, swaths of populations across multiple continents in short order. And for instance, is a time consuming process subject to rigorous controls as compared to a nuclear attack, in which the most deadly effects and testing procedures to ensure that they do not result in large-scale are relatively localized and instantaneous, a biological attack could health complications. The rapid pace of breakthroughs in life sciences go undetected in a target population for days or weeks afterwards, such as synthetic biology and genetic engineering could outstrip our increasing the likelihood of massive infection rates, and vastly ability to protect a signiﬁcant portion of our population from attack. complicating response efforts and consequence management. Fortunately, there are some barriers to entry for would-be Many experts now argue that a biological terrorist attack, also known bioterrorists. Apart from manufacturing or acquiring a biological as bioterrorism, could supersede nuclear terrorism as the quintessential weapon, terrorists have to make sure that their device successfully reaches its intended target. This is no easy task. Because biological threat of the 21st century. The recently published Prevention of WMD weapons are living organisms and are susceptible to damage from a Proliferation and Terrorism Commission report speciﬁcally warns, range of factors, they may be rendered inert by environmental exposure, “terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological 18 | Homeland Defense Journal Visit www.homelanddefensejournal.com
Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009
