Tacit knowledge and the biological weapons regime

Bioterrorism has become increasingly salient in security discourse in part because of perceived changes in the capacity and geography of life science research. Yet its salience is founded upon a framing of changes in science and security that does not always take into consideration the somewhat slippery concept of ‘tacit knowledge’, something poorly understood, disparately conceptualised and often marginalised in discussions on state and non-state biological weapons programmes. This paper looks at how changes in science and technology—particularly the evolution of information and communications technology—has contributed to the partial erosion of aspects of tacit knowledge and the implications for the biological weapons regime. This paper concludes by arguing that the marginalisation of tacit knowledge weakens our understanding of the difficulties encountered in biological weapons programmes and can result in distorted perceptions of the threat posed by dual-use biotechnology in the 21st century

Technology and Biological Weapons: Future Threats

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SARS-CoV-2 Reveals that Chimeric Agents are the Bioweapons of the Future

Bioweapons programs have existed since their development during the Cold War. These biowarfare programs initially utilized naturally occurring pathogens capable of infecting crops, livestock populations, and human populations. Anthrax is a widely exploited bioagent responsible for attacks ranging from the Germans’ deployment in World War I to the mailing of anthrax through the postal service in attempts on U.S. senators’ lives. With the development of genetic manipulations, the Soviet Union began modifying anthrax to resist detection and treatment. With the continued advancement of science and technology, a new bioagent has entered the scene – the man-made chimeric virus. Chimeric viruses typically only infect a certain species, however with genetic alteration they develop characteristics required to infect other species. SARS-CoV-2 and its apparent genetic changes could prove a prime example of how a bat virus underwent genetic mutations that allow it to infect humans. Ultimately, SARS-CoV-2 reveals how chimeric viruses are the bioweapons of the future

The Killers in the Lab

New York Times Op-EdIn order to combat the threat of biological weapons, more than $20 billion has been spent on bio-defense research since 2001.This has led to a an increase of research facilities as well as the number of people who have access to the materials. However, the 2001 anthrax mailings were conducted by a top Army bio-defense scientist, Dr Bruce Ivins and the anthrax powder originated from the Army bio-defense research center at Fort Detrick, MD. This suggest that the bio-defense program risks creating the very threat it is meant to fight. Elisa D. Harris recommends that a full public examination of all the governments evidence in the 2001 anthrax mailings should occur in order to determine what went wrong. Then the overall bio-defense research strategy must be re-examined, along with the setting of clear priorities, strengthening safety, and ensuring security and oversight of laboratories working with dangerous agents. Harris suggests that the probability of an attack on the American public is low, but any such attack would be devastating. Therefore, the US cannot meet the threat safely or effectively with a strategy that puts bio-weapons agents in more and more people’s hands

Technological Advances and Evolution of Biowarfare: A Threat to Public Health and Security

Research in public health and medical sciences has always placed a high priority in managing disease outbreaks, effective treatment capacities, and overall human health and wellbeing. Despite the fact that advances in biology, biotechnology, and medical research have proven to have sufficient value in terms of lifesaving treatments, these have also presented major challenges in their effective utilization. Hence, potentially posing serious risks in the form of bioweapons, thereby, endangering governance frameworks that prioritize biosecurity and counter-biological warfare. In this review paper, a thorough literature review has been conducted to explore the critical aspects between advances in biology and their potential misuse, which could result in serious risks to public health and security. The history of biowarfare has been studied, and the results identify major criteria that have been used in deeming a biological agent fit for the use in mass destruction programs. Five historical biological warfare agents (Bacillus anthracis, smallpox, Yersinia pestis, Vibrio cholerae, and Francisella tularensis) have been studied critically to conclude that not all biological agents may act as bioweapons, but only those agents meeting these criteria may cause catastrophic damage. This paper examines key risks associated with bioweaponry posed by the convergence of biotechnology and artificial intelligence as evident in today’s world of innovation. Based on the situational analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the author also discusses some of the major shortcomings of the international framework and the healthcare system in handling future biological attacks having the potential of mass destruction. Through this paper, associations between different stakeholders, scientific communities, and research groups are highly recommended along with identifying the problem at its roots. Keywords: bioweapons, biological toxin, biotechnology, artificial intelligenc

BioWar

The program was produced for Background Briefing, ABC Radio Nationalâs flagship investigative journalism program. The programs listed below are each 54 minutes in duration and the product of 6-7 weeks of intensive research, interviewing, editing, sound design, writing and production. America has beefed up biological weapon research by $6 billion, and 11,000 people now have hands-on access to virulent biological agents. Scientists and analysts question the sanity of such a strategy. Remember anthrax was dispersed by an American

Synthetic Biology: Caught Between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons

Synthetic biologists aim to make biology a true engineering discipline. In the same way that electrical engineers rely on standard capacitors and resistors, or computer programmers rely on modular blocks of code, synthetic biologists wish to create an array of modular biological parts that can be readily synthesized and mixed together in different combinations. Synthetic biology has already produced important results, including more accurate AIDS tests and the possibility of unlimited supplies of previously scarce drugs for malaria. Proponents hope to use synthetic organisms to produce not only medically relevant chemicals but also a large variety of industrial materials, including ecologically friendly biofuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. The relationship of synthetic biology to intellectual property law has, however, been largely unexplored. Two key issues deserve further attention. First, synthetic biology, which operates at the confluence of biotechnology and computation, presents a particularly revealing example of a difficulty that the law has frequently faced over the last 30 years -- the assimilation of a new technology into the conceptual limits around existing intellectual property rights, with possible damage to both in the process. There is reason to fear that tendencies in the way that the law has handled software on the one hand and biotechnology on the other could come together in a perfect storm that will impede the potential of the technology. Second, synthetic biology raises with remarkable clarity an issue that has seemed of only theoretical interest until now. It points out a tension between different methods of creating openness. On the one hand, we have intellectual property law\u27s insistence that certain types of material remain in the public domain, outside the world of property. On the other, we have the attempt by individuals to use intellectual property rights to create a commons, just as developers of free and open source software use the leverage of software copyrights to impose requirements of openness on future programmers, requirements greater than those attaching to a public domain work

Synthetic biology and biosecurity: challenging the "myths"

Synthetic biology, a field that aims to "make biology easier to engineer," is routinely described as leading to an increase in the "dual-use" threat, i.e., the potential for the same scientific research to be "used" for peaceful purposes or "misused" for warfare or terrorism. Fears have been expressed that the "de-skilling" of biology, combined with online access to the genomic DNA sequences of pathogenic organisms and the reduction in price for DNA synthesis, will make biology increasingly accessible to people operating outside well-equipped professional research laboratories, including people with malevolent intentions. The emergence of do-it-yourself (DIY) biology communities and of the student iGEM competition has come to epitomize this supposed trend toward greater ease of access and the associated potential threat from rogue actors. In this article, we identify five "myths" that permeate discussions about synthetic biology and biosecurity, and argue that they embody misleading assumptions about both synthetic biology and bioterrorism. We demonstrate how these myths are challenged by more realistic understandings of the scientific research currently being conducted in both professional and DIY laboratories, and by an analysis of historical cases of bioterrorism. We show that the importance of tacit knowledge is commonly overlooked in the dominant narrative: the focus is on access to biological materials and digital information, rather than on human practices and institutional dimensions. As a result, public discourse on synthetic biology and biosecurity tends to portray speculative scenarios about the future as realities in the present or the near future, when this is not warranted. We suggest that these "myths" play an important role in defining synthetic biology as a "promissory" field of research and as an "emerging technology" in need of governance