Wrestling with imponderables: assessing perceptions of biological-weapons utility

Abstract

Understanding states’ perception of biological-weapons (BW) utility is key to understanding the motivations behind states’ development, possession, and use of these weapons. The calculations underlying a determination of utility are complex, having to balance threat perceptions, national scientific and industrial capacities, diplomatic relations, and the importance of prohibitory norms. Case studies of the former US and British offensive BW programs, beginning in World War II, illustrate how perceptions of BW utility evolve under wartime circumstances. The US case also illustrates how perceptions of BW utility heightened during periods of international tension, namely the Korean War and early in the John F. Kennedy administration. Both the US and UK examples also demonstrate how possession of nuclear weapons affected perceptions of BW utility and the role of BW in military doctrine. Given the prohibitions on BW development and possession, BW utility today is limited to small-scale, covert operations, including assassinations, much like the recent assassinations and attempted assassinations conducted by North Korea and Russia. Unlike chemical weapons, BW have the additional characteristics of delaying the onset of effects, mimicking natural diseases, and foiling attribution efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• biological weapons
• biological warfare
• World War II
• United States
• United Kingdom

Notes

1 Caitríona McLeish has defined utility “as being a balance between incentives and constraints, the balance of which needs continuous monitoring if we are to ensure the outcome of non-use. This conceptualization is rooted in the understanding that decisions about utility are based on more than what is technically available to the user. Instead they are complex decisions which are rooted in the relationship between potential user, technology and the wider sociotechnical regime they are both situated in.” See Caitriona MacLeish, “Chemical and Biological Weapons Utility in the 21st Century,” paper presented at a National Intelligence Council workshop on Future Foreign Perceptions of CBW Utility, Washington, DC, October 14, 2010.

2 In its most general respect, “correlation of forces” denotes the relative alignment of two opposing forces or groups of forces, comparing the economic, social, political, and military strengths and weaknesses of each group. See Michael J. Deane, “The Soviet Concept of Correlation of Forces,” Technical Note SSC-TN-4383-1 SRI Project 4383, Strategic Studies Center, Stanford Research Institute, May 1976, <https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a027223.pdf>.

3 Jeanne Guillemin, “Biological Weapons and Secrecy,” FASB Journal, Vol. 19 (2005), pp. 1763–65. Arguably, the adoption of a “total war” doctrine as a perquisite for a offensive BW program is a fallacy. Renewed US interest in offensive BW, especially in incapacitating agents, during the John F. Kennedy administration was due to a perceived need for unconventional weapons for limited wars, ones short of the nuclear threshold (i.e., not total war).

4 Jonathan B. Tucker, “Motivations For and Against Proliferation,” in Raymond A. Zilinskas, Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 2000), p. 28.

5 Marie Chevrier, “Deliberate Disease: Biological Weapons, Threats and Policy Responses,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1993), p. 405.

6 Ibid., p. 409.

7 Ibid.

8 Susan B. Martin, “The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolution,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2002), p. 64.

9 Raymond A. Zilinkas, “Biological Warfare and the Third World,” Politics and the Life Sciences, No. 1 (1990), p. 61.

10 Glenn Cross, Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975–1980 (Solihull: Helion, 2017).

11 Although highly secretive, the Soviet BW program was mammoth, clearly dwarfing any other state BW program in terms of output, personnel, infrastructure, and resources.

12 Shlomo Shpiro, “Poisoned Chalice: Intelligence Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2009), pp. 1–30.

13 The one exception is the public release of documents detailing the policy deliberations surrounding the 1969 US decision to renounce BW and terminate the country’s offensive BW program. Declassified documents on terminated programs provide a retrospective window into views on utility. For interesting discussion on this topic, see W. Seth Carus, “A Century of Biological-Weapons Programs (1915–2015): Reviewing the Evidence,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 24, Nos. 1–2 (2017), p. 147.

14 Rhodesia and South Africa being the exceptions to this statement, and then only in very small-scale special operations use against insurgents or anti-regime dissidents.

15 John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: A Question of Value,” paper presented at a National Intelligence Council workshop on Future Foreign Perceptions of CBW Utility, Washington, DC, October 14, 2010.

16 Namely, the attempted Russian assassinations of Sergei Skripal in March 2018 and Alexei Navalny in August 2020 and the successful North Korean assassination of Kim Jong-nam in February 2017.

17 Mark Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” in Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 35.

18 Ibid.

19 George Merck, “Report to the Secretary of War by George Merck, Special Consultant for Biological Warfare,” January 5, 1946. Commonly referred to as the “Merck Report.”

20 Cross, Dirty War.

21 Timothy V. McCarthy and Jonathan Tucker, “Saddam’s Toxic Arsenal: Chemical and Biological Weapons in the Gulf Wars,” in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). The crash Iraqi BW program in 1990 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait followed an aborted earlier Iraqi BW effort in 1972, which aimed to use BW to target regime opponents, and a renewed Iraqi interest in BW during the Iran–Iraq War.

22 W. Seth Carus, “RISE, the Rajneeshees, Aum Shinrikyo, and Bruce Ivins,” in Filippa Lentzos, ed., Biological Threats in the 21st Century (London: Imperial College Press, 2016), pp. 171–97.

23 Milton Leitenberg, Raymond Zilinskas, and Jens Kuhns, Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 631–78.

24 Brian Nordmann, “The Tyranny of Experts: Analytical Misperception and the Rise of State-Run Biological Weapons Programs,” PhD dissertation, George Mason University, 2008.

25 Some commentators (notably Jeanne Guillemin and Bernstein, among others) have pointed to Theodor Rosebury and Elvin Kabat as influential advocates for a US BW program. In fact, no evidence points to either Rosebury or Kabat having any impact on US wartime policy discussions about the utility of BW. Although he was a wartime researcher at Camp Detrick, Rosebury’s most influential publications on BW were only published after World War II, and likely had an as great (if not greater) impact on the Soviet BW program as on the US effort. Perhaps the most influential advocate for the US BW program was Harvey Bundy, father of McGeorge Bundy. During World War II, Harvey Bundy served as Secretary of War Stimson’s special assistant for atomic matters and was the liaison between Stimson and George Merck at the War Research Service (WRS). Email to the author from Peter Roman, September 15, 2019.

26 For discussion of the importance of scientists to offensive BW programs, see Jeanne Guillemin, “Scientists and the History of Biological Weapons: A Brief Historical Overview of the Development of Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century,” EMBO Reports, Vol. 7 (July 2006), <www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1490304/>.

27 Sheldon Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945 and the American Coverup (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. xii.

28 See Nordmann, “The Tyranny of Experts.”

29 Carus, “A Century of Biological-Weapons Programs.”

30 Ibid.

31 The Rhodesian and South African BW efforts also highlight the utility of BW for those diplomatically isolated states seeking to ensure regime survival through combating insurgencies or eliminating regime opponents.

32 Martin Sixsmith, The Litvinenko File: Politics, Polonium, and Russia’s War with Itself (New York: Macmillan, 2008).

33 Atsuhito Isozaki, “The Kim Jong-nam Assassination and North Korea’s Unpredictability,” The Diplomat, April 22, 2017, <https://thediplomat.com/2017/04/the-kim-jong-nam-assassination-and-north-koreas-unpredictability/>.

34 BBC, “Russian Spy: Nerve Agent ‘Used to Try to Kill’ Sergei Skripal,” March 7, 2018, <www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43323847>.

35 The Soviet Union, like Russia, attempted to eliminate dissidents and defectors using poisons, and it supported allies in operations against targeted individuals, e.g., Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov’s 1979 death in a ricin attack. For a detailed description of Soviet assassination operations, including use of CW agents, see the CIA’s 1964 memorandum, “Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping,” reprinted in Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1975), approved for release January 26, 2005: CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010014-6, pp. 1–10.

36 Andrew Hessel, Mark Goodman, and Steven Kotler, “Hacking the President’s DNA,” The Atlantic, November 2012, <www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/hacking-the-presidents-dna/309147/>.

37 Brian Jones, “Nuclear Blindness and the Silent Rise of BW,” 2006, <www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/spru/hsp/documents/2006-0313%20Jones%20-%20Nuclear%20Blindness.pdf>.

38 Notable Soviet defectors who reported on BW developments as revealed in the public literature have included Vladimir Pasechnik (1989), Kanatjan Alibekov (aka Ken Alibek) (1992), and Sergei Popov (1992).

39 This skepticism may not have been entirely shared by the CWS, which remained interested in developments relating to BW, according to the official CWS history. Leo P. Brophy, Wyndham D. Miles, and Rexmond C. Cochrane, The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field, Technical Services, United States Army in World War II (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, US Army, 1959), p. 101. This statement seems to undercut Sheldon Harris’s statement about the skepticism of US military planners. Harris likely has overemphasized the impact of the article by a US Army Medical Corps major: Leon A. Fox, “Bacterial Warfare: The Use of Biologic Agents in Warfare,” Military Surgeon, Vol. 72, No. 3 (1933), pp. 189–207.

40 Rexmond C. Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” Vol. 2, (Historical Section, Plans, Training, and Intelligence Division, Office of Chief, Chemical Corps, November 1947), DTIC ADB228585, p. 28.

41 Ibid.

42 Harris, Factories of Death, p. 202.

43 Leo P. Brophy and George J.B. Fisher, The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War, Technical Services, United States Army in World War II (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, US Army, 1989), p. 43.

44 Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” p. 29.

45 Ibid., p. 30.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., p. 24.

48 Ibid., p. 23.

49 W. Seth Carus, “The History of Biological Weapons Use: What We Know and What We Don’t,” Health Security, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2015), p. 238.

50 Brophy et al., The Chemical Warfare Service, pp. 102–03.

51 Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” p. 32.

52 The research at this point likely was largely focused on the feasibility of BW use and defensive countermeasures. Development and production of biological agents for offensive research did not take place until Stimson authorized them in 1944. See Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” pp. 32–33.

53 Ibid., p. 34.

54 Barton J. Bernstein, “The Birth of the US Biological-Warfare Program” Scientific American, Vol. 256, No. 6 (1987), p. 116.

55 Brophy et al., The Chemical Warfare Service, p. 104.

56 Barton J. Bernstein, “Origins of the US Biological Warfare Program,” in Susan Wright, ed., Preventing a Biological Arms Race (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990), p. 13.

57 Barton J. Bernstein, “America’s Biological Warfare Program in the Second World War,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1988), p. 307

58 Bernstein, “The Birth of the US Biological-Warfare Program,” p. 119.

59 Email to author from Peter Roman, September 15, 2019.

60 Brain Balmer and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “British, United States, and Canadian Biological Warfare Programs,” in in Filippa Lentzos, ed., Biological Threats in the 21st Century (London: Imperial College Press, 2016), p. 54.

61 See J.J. Kershaw, “Will Bacteria Be Used in War? Insurmountable Difficulties Stand in the Way of Employing Disease-Causing Organisms,” Scientific American, Vol. 165, No. 2 (1941), pp. 56–58; Journal of the American Medical Association, “Feasibility of Bacterial Warfare,” Vol. 12, No. 122 (1943), p. 810.

62 Bernstein, “The Birth of the US Biological-Warfare Program,” p. 118.

63 Theodor Rosebury, Peace or Pestilence: Biological Warfare and How to Avoid It (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), p. 5.

64 Later published as: Theodor Rosebury and Elvin A. Kabat, “Bacterial Warfare: A Critical Analysis of the Available Agents, Their Possible Military Applications, and the Means for Protection against Them,” Journal of Immunology, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1947), pp. 7–96.

65 Rosebury, Peace or Pestilence, p. 6.

66 US Department of the Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1977), p. 27.

67 US military leadership, in response to these reports in the runup to the June 1944 Normandy invasion, advocated that US landing troops be inoculated against botulinum toxin. British counterparts reportedly protested that the plan to inoculate US forces against botulinum toxin prior to the invasion of Normandy was unnecessary. British experts, they reported, had reached a different conclusion and did not foresee any danger from this agent. See Rexmond C. Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” Vol. 2, (Historical Section, Plans, Training, and Intelligence Division, Office of Chief, Chemical Corps, November 1947), DTIC ADB228585, p.188. See also Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” p. 78.

68 Merck, “Biological Warfare.”

69 Bernstein, “The Birth of the US Biological-Warfare Program,” p. 119.

70 Brophy et al., The Chemical Warfare Service, p. 107

71 Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” p. 79.

72 Ibid.

73 Merck, “Biological Warfare.”

74 Cochrane, “Biological Warfare Research in the United States,” p. 526.

75 Merck, “Biological Warfare.”

76 John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “US Biological Warfare Planning and Preparations,” in Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 254.

77 Project 112 was a US program of CBW land and sea experimentation that lasted from 1962 through 1973. See <www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/shad/basics.asp>.

78 Van Courtland Moon, “US Biological Warfare Planning and Preparations.”

79 National Security Council Report, NSC 5602/1, “Basic National Security Policy,” March 15, 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1955–57, National Security Policy, Vol. 9, <https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d66>.

80 US Department of the Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, p. 32.

81 John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: A Question of Value,” paper presented at a National Intelligence Council workshop on Future Foreign Perceptions of CBW Utility, Washington, DC, October 14, 2010.

82 “Report of the Secretary of Defense’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Warfare” (“Stevenson Committee”), June 30, 1950, declassified October 24, 1983, p. 11.

83 Ibid., p. 15.

84 Ibid.

85 Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects to Wage War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 163.

86 Moon, “The US Biological Weapons Program,” p. 28.

87 US Department of the Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, p. 41.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid., p. 43.

90 Memorandum, Discussion at the 435th Meeting of the National Security Council, February 18, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower Papers, 1953–60 (Ann Whitman file), p. 5.

91 Ibid., p. 2.

92 Ibid., p. 3.

93 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1958–60, National Security Policy, Arms Control and Disarmament, Vol. 3, <https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v03/d92>.

94 US Department of the Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, p. 45. The JCS estimated the cost of a “complete spectrum BW/CW capability” to be $4 billion.

95 Ibid., pp. 44, 46.

96 US Department of the Army, US Army Activity in the US Biological Warfare Programs, volume 1, dated 24 February 1977, p. 49.

97 Jonathan Tucker and Erin R. Mahan, President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the US Offensive Biological Weapons Program (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2009), p. 1.

98 Ibid., pp. 1–2.

99 Ibid., p. 4.

100 “President Nixon’s Remarks Announcing Decisions on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs,” November 25, 1969, <www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-announcing-decisions-chemical-and-biological-defense-policies-and-programs>.

101 David I. Goldman, “The Generals and the Germs: The Army Leadership’s Response to Nixon’s Review of Chemical and Biological Warfare Policies in 1969,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 73, No. 2 (2009), p. 533.

102 Moon, “The US Biological Weapons Program,” p. 43.

103 League of Nations, “Report of the Committee Appointed to Consider the Question of Chemical and Bacteriological Warfare,” July 30, 1924.

104 Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 40.

105 See Ibid., pp. 40–43; Brian Balmer, “Biological Warfare: The Threat in Historical Perspective,” Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2002), p. 125; Martin Hugh-Jones, “Wickham Steed and German Biological Warfare Research,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 379–402.

106 Balmer, “Biological Warfare,” p. 125.

107 PRO, CAB 81_53, Report (Appendix), Subcommittee on Bacteriological Warfare, Committee on Imperial Defence, CBW 13, March 17, 1937, p. 9.

108 Guillemin, Biological Weapons, p. 45.

109 PRO, CAB 81_53, Medical Research Council, “Some Notes on Defences against Bacteriological Warfare,” October 29, 1939, p. 1.

110 Ibid., p. 5.

111 Balmer, “Biological Warfare,” p. 127.

112 Guillemin, Biological Weapons, p. 42.

113 PRO, CAB 65/2/30, War Cabinet Minutes, WM 36 (40), February 8, 1940, p. 280.

114 PRO CAB 81_53, Committee on Bacteriological Warfare, War Cabinet, BW (40) 3, February 7, 1940, pp. 1–2.

115 Balmer, “Biological Warfare,” p. 127.

116 PRO, CAB 65/2/30, War Cabinet Minutes, WM 96 (39), November 27, 1939, p. 233.

117 Ibid.

118 PRO, CAB 67/2/63, War Cabinet, Bacteriological Warfare, “Note by the Minister for Co-ordination for Defence,” November 21, 1939, p. 2.

119 PRO, CAB 81_53, Report, “Experiments on the Spread of Bacteria,” Subcommittee on Bacteriological Warfare, Committee on Imperial Defence, CBW 14 (40), April 3, 1940, p. 2.

120 PRO, CAB 81_53, Lord Rothschild, “Discussions on Bacteriological Warfare with the French,” CBW (40) 15, April 15, 1940.

121 Ibid.

122 Oliver Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1921–26,” in Erhard Geissler and John Ellis van Courtland Moon, eds., Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 70–90.

123 War Cabinet, Subcommittee on Bacteriological Warfare, “Experiments on the Method of the Spread of Bacteria,” BW (40) 14, April 3, 1940, p. 7.

124 Balmer, “Biological Warfare,” p. 123.

125 War Cabinet, Subcommittee on Bacteriological Warfare, Memorandum by Dr. P. Fildes, “Bacteriological Warfare: General Review (Annex II),” BW (42) 2, April 2, 1942 p. 10.

126 As quoted in Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxton, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 88–89.

127 Jeane Guillemin, “Scientists and the History of Biological Weapons,” EMBO Reports, Vol. 7 (2006), p. 46. According to Fildes, the fall of France in June 1940 marked the turning point in Hankey’s thinking and his acceptance of offensive BW as the best means of defense. See Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare; Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–1965 (London: Palgrave, 2001), p. 38.

128 War Cabinet, Subcommittee on Bacteriological Warfare, “Note of an Informal Meeting on the 7th October, 1942, in the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s Room at Kinnaird House, 1, Pall Mall East, S.W.1.,” BW (42) 14, October 19, 1942.

129 Balmer (2001), pp. 29–54.

130 Ibid.

131 Domagoj Valjak, “Operation Vegetarian: In 1942, the British Planned on Killing Millions of Germans by Dropping Anthrax onto Their Pastures,” Vintage News, January 10, 2018, <www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/10/operation-vegetarian/>.

132 Balmer, “Biological Warfare,” p. 128.

133 Ibid., pp. 130–31.

134 Evidence of the Secretary of State for Defence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, July 18, 1968, quoted in Jones, “Nuclear Blindness and the Silent Rise of BW,” p. 6.

135 The clandestine use of BW by special-operations units or in assassinations was not lost on the South Africans, who clearly were aware of the Rhodesian CBW program and its lessons. In 1981, South Africa began its BW program, codenamed Project Coast. Its objective was to develop CBW “to ensure maximum disruption of the enemies of the state.” This goal was accomplished by providing BW agents to covert special-forces units for use in assassinations, although in at least one case a community was targeted. See Cross, Dirty War.

136 Rodney Jonew, Lewis Dunn, Aaron Arnold, Jonathan Fox, James Scouras, Paul Bernstein, and Jennifer Jack, “WMD Forecasting in Historical and Contemporary Perspective,” report prepared for US Defense Threat Reduction Agency Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (Report Number ASCO 2010 001), pp. 1–11.

137 Vladimir V. Putin, “A Smart Defense against New Threats,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 19, 2012, quoted in Raymond A. Zilinskas and Philipp Mauger, Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2018), p. 1.

138 Jacqueline K. Olive, Peter J. Hotez, Ashish Damania, and Melissa S. Nolan, “The State of the Antivaccine Movement in the United States: A Focused Examination of Nonmedical Exemptions in States and Counties,” PLOS Medicine, Vol. 15, No. 6 (2018), <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002578>

139 Aristos Georgiou, “Anti-vax Movement Listed by World Health Organization as One of the Top 10 Health Threats for 2019,” Newsweek, January 15, 2019, <www.newsweek.com/world-health-organization-who-un-global-health-air-pollution-anti-vaxxers-1292493>.

140 The term “chimeric viral vaccine” generally refers to a vaccine that is based on a recombinant virus consisting of a combination of the genomes of two viruses and may display biological properties characteristic of both parent viruses.

141 Sang-Im Yun and Young-Min Lee, “Japanese Encephalitis,” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2014), pp. 268–69.

142 See J.O. Almosara, “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens,” Counterproliferation Papers, Future Warfare Series No. 53, USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air University, June 2010, pp. 9–10.

143 See Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Possible Terrorist Use of Modern Technology Techniques,” paper presented at the Conference on Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Instituto Diplomatico “Mario Toscano,” Villa Madama, Rome, September 18–19, 2000.

144 According to Nick Bostom, “Information hazards are risks that arise from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm.” See N. Bostrom, “Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge,” Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 10 (2011), pp. 44–79. See K.M. Esvelt, “Inoculating Science against Potential Pandemics and Information Hazards,” PLoS Pathogens, October 4, 2018 <https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/ journal.ppat.1007286>. Also see K.M. Esvelt, “Information Hazards for Practicing Scientists,” Arizona State University Biosecurity Workshop, 13 December 2018.

145 Elliot Kagan, “Bioregulators as Instruments of Terror,” Clinics in Laboratory Medicine, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2001), pp. 607–18.