Apr 23rd 2020
Editors note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub
THE CORONAVIRUS that has killed over 180,000 people worldwide was not created with malice. Analysis of its genome suggests that, like many new pathogens, it originated by natural selection rather than human design. But if SARS-COV-2 had been deliberately engineered or launched into the world by malefactors, the consequences might have been much the same. Covid-19 has demonstrated the vulnerability of the US and global economy to biological threats, which exponentially increases the potential impact of an attack, says Richard Pilch of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Those concerns are prompting renewed interest in the threat from biological weapons, a lurid corner of warfare that normally languishes in happy obscurity.
In theory, bioweapons are banned. Most countries in the world are party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1975, which outlaws making or stockpiling biological agents for anything other than peaceful purposes. But some countries probably make them secretly, or keep the option close at hand. America accuses North Korea of maintaining an offensive biological-weapons programme, and alleges that China, Iran and Russia dabble in dual-use research. Toxins like ricin have also been bought and sold on shady recesses of the internet known as the dark web.
Germ warfare briefly rose to prominence in September 2001, when letters laced with anthrax spores were mailed to American news organisations and senators, killing five people. That was a wake-up call. Public health became part of national security. BioWatch, a network of aerosol sensors, was installed in more than 30 cities across America. But in recent years threats from chemical weapons, like the sarin dropped by Syrias air force and the Novichok smeared on door handles by Russian assassins, took priority.
Though the Trump administration published a national biodefence strategy in 2018, it shut down the National Security Councils relevant directorate and proposed cuts to the laboratories that would test for biological threats. Funding for civilian biosecurity fell 27% between fiscal years 2015 and 2019, down to $1.61bnless than was spent on buying Black Hawk helicopters. Its the kind of thing thats very easy to cut where you dont see the damage youre doing until youre in a situation like this, says Gigi Gronvall of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security.
Biological weapons are now likely to rise up the agenda, though the lessons from covid-19 are not clear-cut. The Department of Homeland Security warns that extremist groups have sought to spread the virus deliberately, and Mr Pilch says that it has challenged some long-standing assumptions regarding what biological agent may be used as a weapon. Yet many pathogens used as weapons tend to differ from respiratory viruses in important ways.
Those like anthrax, caused by bacteria which form rugged and sprayable spores, but do not spread from human to human, have the advantage of minimising the risk of rebound to the attacker. With the notable exception of smallpoxa highly contagious and lethal virus that was eradicated in 1979 but preserved by the Soviet Union for use against America (but not Europe), and now exists only in two laboratories, in America and Russiamost biological weapons would therefore have more localised effects than the new coronavirus.
Even so, the slow and stuttering response to the pandemic has exposed great weaknesses in how governments would cope. This outbreak has put stress on pretty much every element you need to respond to a biological attack, says Gregory Koblentz of George Mason University, and yet what were seeing is every part of our public-health infrastructure is either broken or stretched to the max. The centrepiece of Americas biosurveillance programme, a network of laboratories designed for rapid testing, failed, says Mr Koblentz, while the national stockpile of face masks had not been substantially replenished in over a decade. Would-be attackers will take note.
Governments are also worried about a new generation of biological threats. In 2016 American intelligence agencies singled out genome editing as a national-security threat for the first time. Two years later a major study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine warned that synthetic biology, a potent set of methods for tinkering with or creating organisms, could, in time, be used to re-create viruses like smallpox or make existing pathogens more dangerous, such as resistant to antibiotics.
In 2011 Dutch and Japanese scientists said that they had created a version of bird flu that could be transmitted between mammals by the respiratory routean announcement that prompted the Netherlands to treat the relevant academic papers as sensitive goods subject to export controls. In January Canadian scientists funded by an American biotech company used synthetic DNA from Germany to synthesise a microbe closely related to smallpox, indicating the ease with which it could be done. If a potential bad actor pursues a weapons capability using SARS-COV-2, the virus is now attainable in laboratories all around the world, and blueprints for assembling it from scratch have been published in the scientific literature, notes Mr Pilch.
The trouble is that biodefence has evolved slowly, says Dan Kaszeta, a former biological weapons adviser to the White House. Compact devices that can detect chemical threats and warn soldiers to don a gas mask have long been available. That doesnt exist for anthrax or any of the other aerosol pathogens, says Mr Kaszeta. Telling the difference between an anthrax spore and a bit of tree pollen is not something you can do in a couple of seconds.
Internationally, the issue is largely neglected. Theres no single facilitator in the UN system for a high-consequence biological event of unknown origin, says Beth Cameron of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an NGO. The BWC, she says, operates on a shoe-string budget.
Military labs across the world are already heavily involved in the fight against covid-19, but government money is a drop in the ocean compared with the billions of dollars of private funds now being unleashed against the virus. One hope is that the crash efforts to develop better tests and a vaccine may yield so-called platform technologies that would have utility not only against coronavirus, but also a wide range of other biological threats. Anthrax, for instance, has a vaccine but requires a cumbersome five doses. The holy grail, says Mr Kaszeta, would be a broad-spectrum antiviral or vaccinea shield against natural and human foes alike.
Dig deeper:For our latest coverage of the covid-19 pandemic, register for The Economist Today, our daily newsletter, or visit our coronavirus tracker and story hub
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Spore wars"
View post:
The havoc wrought by covid-19 will spark new concern over bio-weapons - The Economist
- Xinhua Headlines: In Harbin's icy embrace, tourists flock to offer condolences, cherish memories - Xinhua - February 11th, 2024 [February 11th, 2024]
- Empires of lies The China Project - The China Project - October 22nd, 2023 [October 22nd, 2023]
- Official records on Japanese Imperial Army unit unearthed | NHK ... - NHK WORLD - August 26th, 2023 [August 26th, 2023]
- Today's Nuclear Balance of Power: The Wells of Doom - Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) - August 26th, 2023 [August 26th, 2023]
- People thought the Beatles were God. That's not correct: the ... - Louder - August 26th, 2023 [August 26th, 2023]
- The startling role that disease played in human evolution - Sydney Morning Herald - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Celebrate Mothers Day With These 15 Stuntcasted Sitcom Moms - Cracked.com - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Smallpox in Canada | The Canadian Encyclopedia - November 27th, 2022 [November 27th, 2022]
- Microorganism - Wikipedia - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Andrew Kaufman on the false germ paradigm - Jerm Warfare - November 16th, 2022 [November 16th, 2022]
- The Strategic National Stockpile failed during COVID and monkeypox. Will it come through next time? - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The SKELP Directives: U.S. Secret Financing of Germ Warfare during the ... - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- Germ Warfare: GSA Supports Rapid Deployment of Xenex LightStrike Germ ... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- You need to watch the most underrated apocalypse movie before it leaves HBO Max this week - Inverse - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- Allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War - Wikipedia - June 24th, 2022 [June 24th, 2022]
- The deadly germ warfare island abandoned by the Soviets - BBC - May 9th, 2022 [May 9th, 2022]
- The Terrifying Cherry Blossoms at Night of the Japanese Military - SOFREP - May 3rd, 2022 [May 3rd, 2022]
- Avoid Chinas stockmarket heres what to invest in instead - MoneyWeek - May 3rd, 2022 [May 3rd, 2022]
- A Perfect Storm Could Make Measles a Nightmare in 2022, WHO and UNICEF Warn - Gizmodo Australia - May 3rd, 2022 [May 3rd, 2022]
- Colwell: Things would surely be different in Ukraine if Trump were president - South Bend Tribune - April 9th, 2022 [April 9th, 2022]
- Patriotic Propaganda: Staying silent as a choice when what is seen does not match with what is believed - Milwaukee Independent - April 9th, 2022 [April 9th, 2022]
- Germ warfare: Saginaw hospital becomes battleground in U.S ... - March 15th, 2022 [March 15th, 2022]
- U.S. Biological Weapons in UkraineSeparating the Facts From the Fiction - Newsweek - March 15th, 2022 [March 15th, 2022]
- Wanted: A rallying cry to hold back the coming 'Dark... - Daily Maverick - March 15th, 2022 [March 15th, 2022]
- Putin's Apocalypse: How Far Is the Russian President Willing To Go? - DER SPIEGEL International Edition - March 15th, 2022 [March 15th, 2022]
- Yamashita: The pandemic generation will learn to succeed - Guam Pacific Daily News - February 17th, 2022 [February 17th, 2022]
- Bill M. McClure Obituary - Times Record - Times Record - February 17th, 2022 [February 17th, 2022]
- Urban explorer sneaks on to top secret germ warfare base known as UKs Area 51 exposing security ris... - The Sun - February 5th, 2022 [February 5th, 2022]
- Modern warfare - Wikipedia - February 3rd, 2022 [February 3rd, 2022]
- US Military Released Bacteria to Test Biological Warfare - February 3rd, 2022 [February 3rd, 2022]
- This week in Texas History: Spanish flu, our ancestors' pandemic - Hays Free Press - February 3rd, 2022 [February 3rd, 2022]
- Yamashita: Boundaries should be respected | Opinion | guampdn.com - Guam Pacific Daily News - February 3rd, 2022 [February 3rd, 2022]
- The Army tested 'germ warfare' on the NYC subway by ... - January 24th, 2022 [January 24th, 2022]
- Biological Warfare: Infectious Disease and Bioterrorism - January 24th, 2022 [January 24th, 2022]
- Opinion: Vaccines are a tool, not a silver bullet. If we'd allowed more scientific debate, we would have realized this earlier - The Globe and Mail - January 24th, 2022 [January 24th, 2022]
- SARS: A Mystery Illness To Impact Air Travel - Aviation Week - December 10th, 2021 [December 10th, 2021]
- We Need To Protect Earth (And Space) From Interplanetary Invaders - IFLScience - November 21st, 2021 [November 21st, 2021]
- Louis Pasteur | Science History Institute - November 19th, 2021 [November 19th, 2021]
- Pontiac's War - Wikipedia - November 19th, 2021 [November 19th, 2021]
- Japan and weapons of mass destruction - Wikipedia - November 19th, 2021 [November 19th, 2021]
- Andreas Kluth - The War of Nerves on Europe's Border Could Turn Hot - Asharq Al-awsat - English - November 17th, 2021 [November 17th, 2021]
- Microorganisms as potent biological weapons The National - The National - November 15th, 2021 [November 15th, 2021]
- Who is and what does the playwright Yunior Garca Aguilera think, the promoter of the new protests in Cuba - Market Research Telecast - November 15th, 2021 [November 15th, 2021]
- Terrorists will wage terrifying new biowar as Wuhan lab leak chaos shows they could get away with mur... - The Sun - November 9th, 2021 [November 9th, 2021]
- US vicious slanders on China over COVID-19 origins tracing and the truth (Part 7) - China.org.cn - November 9th, 2021 [November 9th, 2021]
- Scientists, Emergency Planners Conducting Air Flow Study In NYC This Week To Improve Response Protocols - CBS New York - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- Letter to the Editor - Masks: one of the three best defenses in modern germ warfare - The Havre Daily News - September 27th, 2021 [September 27th, 2021]
- Ancient Greek Medicine: Who Was Hippocrates And What Was The Hippocratic Oath? - BBC History Magazine - September 27th, 2021 [September 27th, 2021]
- The US government's comic approach to information warfare - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - September 20th, 2021 [September 20th, 2021]
- The enduring appeal of the Bond villain - Spectator.co.uk - September 4th, 2021 [September 4th, 2021]
- Letters To The Editor Week of 8/16/2021 | The Press - Press Publications Inc. - August 14th, 2021 [August 14th, 2021]
- Talk of the Town: | Blowing Rocket | wataugademocrat.com - Watauga Democrat - July 29th, 2021 [July 29th, 2021]
- Letter to the Editor: Joe Bialek - Atlanta Jewish Times - July 18th, 2021 [July 18th, 2021]
- America's Impressive History of Bioweapons Attacks Against Its Own People - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch - July 10th, 2021 [July 10th, 2021]
- Lee Camp: Americas impressive history of bioweapons attacks against its own people - RT - July 10th, 2021 [July 10th, 2021]
- Laboratory leaks have happened before more frequently than we would like to believe - Yahoo Eurosport UK - June 4th, 2021 [June 4th, 2021]
- Biden's Renewed Interest in COVID Lab Leak Theory Likely to Worsen Anti-Asian Sentiment - UrduPoint News - June 4th, 2021 [June 4th, 2021]
- 10 Fascinating Facts About The US Army - War History Online - June 4th, 2021 [June 4th, 2021]
- US targeting China to hide its own past: expert - Chinadaily USA - May 31st, 2021 [May 31st, 2021]
- Dr. Fauci Just Discovered What Rush Told Us Last Year - Rush Limbaugh - May 31st, 2021 [May 31st, 2021]
- Everything is reopening. But lets not bring back the handshake, OK? - The Boston Globe - May 20th, 2021 [May 20th, 2021]
- Fake news, conspiracy theories and a deadly global pandemic and that was in 1918 - Salon - May 9th, 2021 [May 9th, 2021]
- North Korea and China Accused America of Biowarfare During the Korean War - The National Interest - April 21st, 2021 [April 21st, 2021]
- Top Secret: Russia Had a Military Accident With Anthrax in 1979 - The National Interest - March 26th, 2021 [March 26th, 2021]
- Chaos Walking: Wanna Hear What Tom Hollands Thinking? Think Again - Rolling Stone - March 7th, 2021 [March 7th, 2021]
- Josh Freed: COVID has robbed us of small talk, and that's a big deal - Montreal Gazette - February 21st, 2021 [February 21st, 2021]
- Letter to Editor | Letters to the Editor - Hermann Advertiser Courier - February 8th, 2021 [February 8th, 2021]
- Letter: Need to return to united, not divided states - Whidbey News-Times - February 8th, 2021 [February 8th, 2021]
- Whats Keeping the Vaccine From Getting to Those Who Need it Most? - The Nation - February 8th, 2021 [February 8th, 2021]
- Letter: Need to return to united, not divided states - South Whidbey Record - February 2nd, 2021 [February 2nd, 2021]
- Bill Gates: 3 innovations that will help America get ahead of the next pandemic - CNBC - February 2nd, 2021 [February 2nd, 2021]
- 1887: The invasion of the rabbit - Stuff.co.nz - February 2nd, 2021 [February 2nd, 2021]
- The Recorder - My Turn: Germ warfare - The Recorder - January 25th, 2021 [January 25th, 2021]
- Paul Kaufman on Trump and nuclear weapons - Newham Recorder - January 25th, 2021 [January 25th, 2021]
- Biological warfare experiment in India and the curious case of yellow fever mosquitoes - Frontline - January 21st, 2021 [January 21st, 2021]
- How the KGB convinced the world that AIDS was a Pentagon invention - Russia Beyond - January 21st, 2021 [January 21st, 2021]
- South African Doctor Who Tried to Wipe Out Black People Still Practising - iAfrica.com - January 21st, 2021 [January 21st, 2021]
- The militarization of American democracy | TheHill - The Hill - January 21st, 2021 [January 21st, 2021]
- The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 1/14/21 ~ State Extends, Expands Eviction and Foreclosure Bans Credited with Saving Thousands of Lives - ebroadsheet.com - January 15th, 2021 [January 15th, 2021]
- Measuring Impact in a Complex and Interconnected World - Chief Executive Group - January 15th, 2021 [January 15th, 2021]