Invisible Arsenals. Developing a Medical Intelligence Capability to Understand Current Biosecurity Threats

Ryan Clarke, LJ Eads, Xiaoxu Sean Lin, Robert McCreight, Hans Ulrich Kaeser

Abstract

Biological warfare and bioterrorism have a long history, ranging from ancient times to the present, in which they have maintained their appeal to superpowers and lone wolf terrorists alike. Throwing a rotten camel into a water well illustrates their most convincing features: low cost of development, potentially devastating and large-scale effect, limited traceability. For a while, international efforts culminating in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972, kept a lid on the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons. But the post-Cold War period witnessed significant shifts in the landscape of biological warfare and bioterrorism threats. As the world becomes more multipolar, biological warfare moves back to center stage of global security threats. The development of asymmetric warfare capabilities, including biological weapons is experiencing a new surge. Meanwhile, an increasingly interconnected and globalized world with rapid transportation networks and growing urbanization present a target far more vulnerable to the devastating potential of biological warfare and infectious diseases. Western countries are lacking fully integrated intelligence networks to properly assess the threat. Starting with the systematic collection of relevant epidemiological and medical information to the systematic integration with civil and military intelligence to the deployment of trained rapid reaction task forces to deal with public health emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies this new reality. Heated debate lingers four years after the outbreak. Was it a naturally occurring disease or a synthetic agent? Was the outbreak an accident or deliberate? Maybe even state-sponsored? Are we looking at the once-in-50-years pandemic or a persistent global threat? Much too little was known about the pathology of the virus, even though it had been studied for over two decades. Equally no common understanding of the challenges it posed to public health systems, which, in many cases, collapsed locally. Speculation, political meandering and conspiracy dominated the public debate. Assessing and responding to the current and future threat environment will require quite the opposite: A professional and fully integrated medical intelligence practice and a structural shift in the approach to strategic threat assessment. This article tries to convey a cursory understanding of the current threat environment through the eyes of an intelligence analyst, looking for the confluence of capability and intent. It dives deep into scientific research programs developing deadly biological agents and molecular delivery methods to understand existing and future capabilities for biowarfare and bioterrorism. It will end incomplete, missing a critical piece to understanding the threat and devising the strategies to counter it. At this stage, the article can only offer a few recommendations on how to build the missing piece.