Anthony F.

Hillen
5/12/2007

Biological Weapons amidst the Biotech Revolution

The End of a Looming Threat or a Nightmare Exacerbated?
The world is on the cusp of a biotech revolution that portends a myriad of salubrious scientific
breakthroughs that will undoubtedly change our lives for the better. Nevertheless, some potentially
catastrophic security concerns are likely to accompany the development of these otherwise
propitious technological achievements. History suggests that emerging political, business and social
structures are more adept at utilizing nascent technologies than their more established counterparts.
The biotech revolution stands to alter the conduct of warfare more dramatically than the infotech
revolution. Biotechnology affords sub-state groups the type of destructive power previously
available only to the superpowers. The production of biological weapons has become an increasingly
diffuse scientific enterprise since the end of the Cold War, and as far as terrorists are concerned,
they represent the ultimate means of sewing political discord and instigating economic disruption.

Deploying biological weapons has become exceedingly simple, their development is not capital-
intensive and they do not require sophisticated delivery systems to be lethally effective. Unlike
nuclear weapons that destroy everything within a certain radius, biological weapons are uniquely
advantageous in that they can shutdown vital activity without destroying physical infrastructure. At
the height of its biological weapons program, the Soviet Union had ICBMs loaded with several
kilograms of highly infectious pathogens processed into a powder finer than bath talc that can drift
in the air for miles at a time. Pathogens are ideally dispersed in an aerosol cloud of particles
measuring about one to five microns in diameter (in other words, a line of a hundred particles in a
row would scarcely equal the thickness of a human hair), inhaling just one of these particles can be
lethal.

In general, there are two types of biological weapons: the contagious variety (like smallpox) that
spread rapidly, potentially resulting in unrestricted chaos and death; and then there are those with
limited lethality that cannot be spread from person to person, such as cutaneous Anthrax. Modern
research efforts aimed at developing militarily effective biological agents often “weaponize” certain
diseases by increasing their pathogenicity and refining their deliverability. Genetically altering the
pathogenicity of infectious organisms can boost their lethality and make them more resistant to
treatments and vaccines. Weaponization can also involve a refinement of the toxin’s means of
delivery and release. Biological weapons offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of delivery systems,
they can be unleashed on their targets using missiles with toxin-loaded explosive warheads, cluster-
bombs, crop-dusting aircraft, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or even simple hand-
delivery.

Several pathogens can be used as weapons, but the unique virulence of four toxins in particular
suggests that they are the most likely candidates for weaponization. Smallpox is a particularly
attractive choice because, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), it was officially
eradicated in 1977. As such, it is no longer vaccinated against because the mortality-rate associated
with the vaccine was no longer considered to be worth the risk for an extinct disease. The vaccine
only lasts for about 15-20 years, so even individuals that received the last few vaccinations in the
early 1980s are no longer protected, making it a very attractive pathogen to weaponize. Anthrax is a
non-communicable but notoriously infectious disease, contracted by touching or inhaling Bacillus
anthracis spores. Contracting anthrax cutaneously is fatal in two out of ten cases, but inhaling the
spores is typically fatal regardless of treatment. The second disease likely to be used is Botulism, a
toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria that causes muscular paralysis and often leads to fatal
respiratory failure. In its natural form, Botulism is generally treatable, but a weaponized toxin could
be orders of magnitude more lethal. Finally, Pneumonic Plague is caused by the Yersinia pestis
bacteria typically found in rodents, the organism responsible for the 14th century global pandemic
that killed approximately 75 million people. Plague symptoms are typified by fever, chest pain,
bloody sputum, and eventually death. The disease can be treated by modern medicine, but the
symptoms’ slow onset (usually about three days) increases the speed at which the disease propagates
itself, which makes containment extremely difficult.

The United States operated an offensive biological weapons program at the United States Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
President Nixon shut down the program in 1969, for fear of pioneering weapons that could later be
turned against the United States or its allies. Although some of them may have been designed to
spread disinformation, a significant number of news articles and journal publications since the 1970s
suggest that biological weapons are ineffective as a strategic deterrent and operationally impractical
at the tactical level. Logic, however, suggests that those assertions are incorrect. Pathogens can be
highly effective weapons, researchers need only “test them to find out [which ones hold the most
promise], and then learn how to make them work” says Ken Alibek (formerly Dr. Kanatjan
Alibekov, a Soviet biological weapons engineer at Biopreparat). Alibekov insists that biological
weapons can be effective because he developed one: a durable, highly infectious, and vaccine-
resistant strain of Anthrax.

Should it choose to mount an attack on a densely populated metropolitan area, one of the
challenges a rogue state or terrorist organization would face would be to locate individuals with the
appropriate scientific background and then convincing (or more likely, coercing) them to support
their cause. Very few individuals outside the United States and the former Soviet Union are
technically competent enough to dry and process virus and bacteria samples into protectively-coated
micro-particles capable of being inhaled. Monitoring the employment and international travel habits
of scientists with backgrounds in fields like micro-biology used to be relatively simple when they
were predominantly trained at Western universities and easily identifiable. But after the events of
September 11th 2001 and the anthrax-letter attacks a month later, the US dramatically curtailed its
acceptance of foreigners to its universities and research institutions. International students seeking
an American education have been discouraged from doing so by recently implemented visa
restrictions and steadily increasing tuition costs. However, it would be a negligent mistake for policy-
makers to assume that the expertise necessary for manipulating pathogens is exclusively available in
the West; there are a number of first-rate biological science institutions around the world.
Furthermore the widespread availability of online research data, including step-by-step production
protocols, means that terrorists can clandestinely obtain the knowledge to produce biological
weapons from practically anywhere.

Compared to the task of acquiring rare scientific expertise, obtaining the hardware necessary to
produce biological weapons is surprisingly far less daunting. Research involving “hot” viruses
(airborne infections without a known cure) like Ebola or Marburg virus, generally require a Bio-
Safety Level 4 laboratory, facilities featuring multiple air-locked chambers with closely monitored
directed air flow. Technicians in BSL-4 labs wear protective suits with individual oxygen supplies
and work on samples enclosed in a specialized cabinet with an air supply of its own. Although the
technical requirements associated with facilities considered BSL-3 and above have been considered
to be too demanding for their construction in less developed countries, certain technological
breakthroughs allow modular mobile BSL-3 labs to be constructed on short order and in the most
inhospitable environments. Another disconcerting fact is that the virus-propagating flasks known as
“bioreactors” are available for as little as $25 on eBay. Once produced, delivering the pathogen to its
target is relatively simple. A “line-source laydown” by a modified commercial helicopter or crop-
dusting aircraft could disperse enough weaponized powder over an open-air stadium or music
concert to kill thousands of people directly and hundreds of thousands indirectly through contagious
infection.

The global diffusion of information pertaining to the production of biological weapons is a

serious cause for concern, but even more disconcerting is the relative simplicity of acquiring
pathogenic organisms. Before genetically-modified viruses became the pathogen of choice for
biological weapons, South African and Iraqi scientists were significantly impressed with the potential
military value of naturally occurring and widely available pathogens. Some of the more promising
ones include fungal toxins like mycotoxins and aflatoxins; commonly occurring anthrax spores; and
other viruses, toxins, and bacteria that result in botulism, cholera, polio, or influenza. The lethality
and widespread availability of such pathogens suggests that terrorists will likely attempt to use them
at some point in the future. The small-scale production of pathogens using cloning technology is
another source of biological weapons that has been negligently underestimated. Once a disease-
causing gene has been identified and its location published in an academic journal, scientists or
terrorists can use cloning kits (available from typical lab equipment catalogs) to clone that gene and
then splice it into a common host bacteria.

Emerging Defense Technologies

The biotech revolution has spawned a number of cutting-edge technologies; some of which
could potentially provide a significant advantage against the threat of biological weapons. The US
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) realized the significance of biotechnology
for defense applications in the mid-1990s. By 1999 the agency funded more than $40 million dollars
worth of bio-defense research projects. That budget grew to nearly $150 million in 2002, primarily
due to DARPA Director Larry Lynn’s emphasis on pathogen countermeasures. (Marshall)

In 1996 DARPA began funding a project that focused on removing foreign bodies from the
bloodstream, a concept originally developed by Dr. Ronald Taylor at Dartmouth University.
According to Taylor, a receptor located on the surface of red blood cells known as CR1, is primarily
responsible for removing materials that the immune system’s complement-cascade-proteins have tagged as
foreign. The alien substances are then bound to the CR1 receptor and flushed out of the body
through the liver. This particular technology has the potential to purge any known virus from the
human body in less than two hours.

Another ambitious research effort bankrolled by DARPA in the late 1990s involved
manipulating mesenchymal stem cells to detect and respond to biological threats. Mesenchymal stem
cells constitute the primary source of bone, cartilage, fat, and muscle tissue. The general idea is that
these cells can be “preprogrammed” with a number of transplanted genes, which would then
populate the tissues of the recipient into which they are injected. Theoretically, these cells could
identify specific pathogens and activate certain genes to trigger a curative biological response. This
approach circumvents the troublesome need for multiple injections, depending instead on cells
engineered to automatically vaccinate the body against pathogens. The primary drawback of such
methods is their dependence on the pharmaceutical industry. DARPA may fund their initial research
and development, but it is unlikely to provide the financing necessary to transform prototype
vaccines into functional and available countermeasures to biological weapons.

According to its FY2007 budget expenditures, DARPA invested heavily in three specific “bug to
drug” research endeavors. The first research effort involves protein design processes and is intended
to make the human body synthesize an antidote to a contagion in less than 24 hours. The project
depends on mathematically calculating the structure and function of certain vaccine components in
order to spontaneously customize the design of certain analeptic proteins, specifically antibodies.
The second area of bio-defense research supported involves rapid vaccine assessment. Such a
technology would have to include immune cells and micro-scale immune structures, perhaps
eventually manifesting itself as a chip-based human immune system capable of rapidly screening
potential vaccines in a matter of weeks instead of years. Finally, one of the fundamental problems
associated with defending against biological weapons is that in the event of an attack, even if the
vaccine or antibody were known and readily available, it could not be produced and stockpiled
rapidly enough to be of any significant value to the majority those afflicted. However, DARPA
evidently perceives that to be a surmountable obstacle, investing heavily in its Accelerated
Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals program, intent on exploring various challenging but
technologically feasible methods of producing millions of doses of a complex new therapeutic in 12
weeks or less.

Although unrelated to any current DARPA initiatives of which the author is aware, there is
another very promising, albeit relatively long term and unconventional, approach to pathogen
countermeasures. This approach would involve the use of inhibitors to disrupt protein enzymes
such as proteases which are instrumental to pathogenic invasion. For instance, the botulinum toxin
could be effectively neutralized by using inhibitors to target the zinc endopeptidase in its light chain
(the polypeptide subunit of an antibody). Similarly, anthrax could also be detoxified with inhibitors,
by using them to target the source of its lethality: zinc protease. The diffuse applicability of this
approach hinges on the fact that all pathogen invasions are enzyme-contingent. The pathogenic
enzymes can be inhibited without the risk of crippling those required for normal functions, primarily
due to the characteristically high substrate specificity among viral and bacterial enzymes. Although
the validity of this approach has been repeatedly confirmed by the clinical use of protease inhibitors
to successfully treat infections, at present it must be considered a long-term solution. By today’s
technological standards, it takes about ten years to produce an effective protease inhibitor. However,
that development time could be drastically reduced by using advanced supercomputers in the drug
discovery process.

One final emerging technology that may prove to be invaluable against an adversary armed with
biological weapons is the Femtosecond Adaptive Spectroscopy Techniques for Remote Agent
Detection (FASTREAD). The FASTREAD program is designed to detect biological agents at a
standoff distance using coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy, laser pulse shaping techniques, and
adaptive optics in conjunction with other efforts to better elucidate the agent under interrogation,
such as return signal optimization strategies. Primarily based on coherence theory (the optical effects
resulting from partially coherent light and radio sources), FASTREAD exploits the spectral and
temporal information provided by the backscatter from short-pulse lasers to identify specific
biological agents. The system is extremely promising but must first overcome several technological
and developmental challenges before its true potential can be fully realized. First, the program
requires a thorough evaluation of the effect of environmental congruities on the system’s ability to
identify anthrax spores. Such factors include common atmospheric properties, molecules of equal
size, and molecules with similar physical and chemical attributes. Second, the project requires further
technical research aimed at developing more effective high-fidelity pulse-shaping techniques, capable
of delivering an accurate pulse shape at a target despite unfavorable atmospheric conditions. Finally,
FASTREAD must prove the efficacy of its backscattered S/N by modulating the spectral content of
its pulses, pulse sequence timing, and the intensity of each pulse.

Nuclear vs. Biological Weapons

A common misconception among technologists is that human beings reached the zenith of their
destructive power with the advent of the hydrogen bomb. When comparing these weapons of mass
destruction, one should keep in mind that the destruction wrought by a single nuclear weapon is
inherently limited by the laws of physics, whereas a highly contagious biological weapon has neither
a calculated blast radius nor an upper limit death-toll. At first glance, states seem to have typically
abided by the rules of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) that categorically banned
the production of biological weapons. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), on the
other hand, appears to have been somewhat less successful. However, such perceptions can be
misleading; the reality is that they are probably equally dysfunctional.

The BWC has likely been violated more than the general public will ever know or want to
know, but although the NPT is probably violated less often, its occasional infractions are highly
publicized due to the compliance watchdog known as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the
paladin of the NPT, capable of referring violators to the UN Security Council. The fact that the
BWC lacks a counterpart institution to the IAEA may suggest a simple and reasonable explanation
for the regimes regulatory weakness. One might go as far as to say that the evidence supports the
efficacy of institutional oversight mechanisms in enforcing arms control regimes, but it would be
slightly presumptuous to hastily make that conclusion as it fails to take one important factor into
account. There is a logical reason why more states do not “go nuclear”, and it has very little to do
with the NPT. Unless motivated by strategic concerns or nationalist impulses, countries like Uganda,
Sri Lanka, or Chile refrain from developing nuclear arsenals because they would gain nothing
(except international condemnation and notoriety) and it would cost them everything (politically and
economically). Recent members of the nuclear club, like Pakistan and India, maneuvered themselves
into a security dilemma destined to result in the mutual development of nuclear weapons, whereas
South Africa geopolitically isolated itself to the point that it had nothing to lose by building the
bomb. The new “club” members also had a technological head-start in their nuclear development:
the US “Atoms for Peace” program. However, it is highly unlikely that a sub-state actor could obtain
the materials and expertise necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons, especially when one
considers that, even when supported by the resources available to an entire nation-state, developing
nuclear weapons represents a political, financial, and especially technological feat of the highest
order.
 Terrorists are unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons when a cheaper and potentially more potent
alternative exists. Not only are they technically daunting to manufacture, nuclear weapons generally
require elaborate and cost-prohibitive delivery systems. Thus, for a suicidal sub-state actor intent on
indiscriminately killing as many people as possible, a nuclear weapon is neither feasible nor
desirable.

Conclusion

The anthrax attack on Capitol Hill in October 2001 provided stark evidence that biological
weapons can allow a single individual with an unknown cause to attack and inflict significant damage
on a nation-state. That particular attack may not have killed scores of people, but for only a few
ounces of anthrax and postage stamp, the attacker managed to disrupt Congress for several months,
ramp up operating costs for the USPS (and federal government) by imposing additional screening
requirements, and incurred hundreds of millions of dollars worth of clean up costs. One could
hardly ask for a more cost effective weapon to advance one’s political agenda. If the biological
weapon enclosed in those envelopes were weaponized smallpox, a single envelope could have
resulted in three times the casualties on September 11th alone. With the necessary expertise and
equipment, increasing the virus’ pathogenicity would not be difficult, the complete smallpox genome
can be found online in less than ten minutes.

In 2001, the US DoD conducted an exercise code-named “Dark Winter”, simulating the effect
of a smallpox attack against three US metropolitan areas. In less than two weeks, the disease infected
25 states and had already spread to 15 different countries in several epidemiological waves that left
several hundred thousand Americans dead. The exercise was terminated prematurely when
authorities calculated that a fourth generation of the disease would have resulted in the infection of 3
million people, killing at least a third of them. Biological weapons are capable of killing many more
people than a nuclear attack. Given the current trend in biotechnology, small groups or perhaps
even individuals may soon be able to take the sort of virus used in the “Dark Winter” simulation and
increase its lethality three-fold.

Traditional arms control regimes are unlikely to be efficient in preventing the covert
development of biological weapons programs by either state or sub-state actors. The last effort to
revise the 1975 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention was in 2002. A draft protocol was
submitted but the United States rejected it out of hand, asserting that it did not strengthen existing
arms control strategies, benefited potential proliferators, and compromised American national
security as well as proprietary business information.

An alternate approach to these antiquated, Cold War-era control strategies could involve
categorizing potential threats based on their geographic origin, individually customizing the security
resources dedicated to each category. For example, Tier I would include countries with biotech
industries considered to be cutting-edge like the US, Japan, Europe, China, and India. Tier II would
include countries with differing levels of international engagement and commitment to biological
weapons conventions. Countries in this category would include those with significant agricultural
biotech development like Brazil and Argentina, but would also include states with advanced R&D
operations like South Africa, Egypt, Cuba, Israel, and South Korea. Tier III would include countries
with relatively undeveloped biotech industries that are unlikely to bridge the economic and
technological expanse between themselves and the Tier I & II countries in the foreseeable future.
Countries like Dubai, UAE, Kenya, and Thailand act more like tax shelters, labor reserves, or junior
partners to multinational biotech companies. Finally, Tier IV countries would include failed-states
like Somalia as well as countries with large and ungoverned territories that could potentially provide
sanctuary for terrorist activity.

The biotech revolution is already underway, but the risks and dangers which will surely
accompany it have only just begun to reveal themselves. With the dawning of new technological eras
come new and previously unimaginable threats, often taking the form of sociopolitical or military
challenges. Dual-use emerging technologies could potentially provide militant organizations or
groups of disaffected individuals with highly effective means of challenging state-level actors. The
strategically disruptive effect this could have on the geopolitical environment merits serious
consideration by policy-makers and the scientific community in general.