CRISPR and new genetic-engineering techniques: emerging challenges to strategic stability and nonproliferation

ABSTRACT

This article explores the potential for new biotechnologically enabled weapons to compete with nuclear weapons in the context of strategic stability, assesses how such new technologies may affect assumptions in traditional strategic-stability models when applied to such scenarios, and how changing capabilities and adversaries may shape approaches to nonproliferation, verification, and monitoring. Among the most recent additions to the genome-editing arsenal is CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), a bacteria-derived system that is among the simplest genome-editing tools. The CRISPR-Cas9 system—and emerging variants of the system—enables unprecedented control and ease when editing the genome. With parallels to remote “command and control” of the genome, this aspect makes the technology different from earlier gene-editing methods. This article furthers the scholarly work on the biosecurity implications of CRISPR, gene editing, and broader issues of biotechnology by addressing these emerging life-science technologies in the context of nuclear strategic stability and implications for balance of power, nonproliferation, and international security.

KEYWORDS:

• biological weapons
• CRISPR
• strategic stability
• biosecurity

Notes

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58 Antonio Regalado, “China’s CRISPR Twins Might Have Had Their Brains Inadvertently Enhanced,” MIT Technology Review, February 21, 2019, <www.technologyreview.com/s/612997/the-crispr-twins-had-their-brains-altered/>.

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60 “The Federal Select Agent Program is jointly comprised of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Division of Select Agents and Toxins and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service/Agriculture Select Agent Services. The Federal Select Agent Program oversees the possession, use and transfer of biological select agents and toxins, which have the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Federal Select Agent Program,” n.d., <www.selectagents.gov/>.

61 David Cyranoski, “Russian Biologist Plans More CRISPR-Edited Babies,” Nature, June 10, 2019, <www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01770-x>.

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67 United States Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report, 2010, viii, <https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/2010_Nuclear_Posture_Review_Report.pdf>.

68 Ibid.

69 United States Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Executive Summary, 2018, <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872877/-1/-1/1/EXECUTIVE-SUMMARY.PDF>.

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72 For example, see Kathleen Vogel, Phantom Menace or Looming Danger? A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats (Baltimore, MD: JHU Press, 2013), for analysis of socio-technical factors.

73 Motoko Araki and Tetsuya Ishii, “International Regulatory Landscape and Integration of Corrective Genome Editing into in Vitro Fertilization,” Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, Vol. 12, No. 108 (2014), <www.rbej.com/content/12/1/108>; Andrea Boggio, Jessica Almqvist, and Cesare P.R. Romano, eds., Human Germline Genome Modification and the Right to Science: A Comparative Study of National Laws and Policies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

74 EU Directive 2001/20/EC “provides that no gene therapy trials may be carried out which result in modifications to the subject’s germ line genetic identity.” See “Regulation (EU) No 536/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on Clinical Trials on Medicinal Products for Human Use, and Repealing Directive 2001/20/EC,” Official Journal of the European Union, <https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/files/eudralex/vol-1/reg_2014_536/reg_2014_536_en.pdf>.

75 NIH–RAC, “NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules” (NIH Guidelines), April 2016, <http://osp.od.nih.gov/office-biotechnology-activities/biosafety/nih-guidelines>; Terence R. Flotte, “Therapeutic Germ Line Alteration: Has CRISPR/Cas9 Technology Forced the Question?” Human Gene Therapy, Vol. 26, No. 5 (2015), pp. 245­–46.

76 Peter Emanuel and Diane DiEuliis, “Want to Grow the Economy? Try Fermenting it Instead,” personal communication.

77 Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), <https://lccn.loc.gov/2009373884>.

78 Margaret E. Kosal, Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense (New York: Springer Academic, 2009).

79 John Hart and Ralph Trapp, “Science, Technology, and the Biological Weapons Convention,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 42, No. 8 (2012), pp. 15–21; Roffey and Gould, “Preventing the Misuse of the Life Sciences”; Jean Pascal Zanders and Amy Smithson, “Creating a More Robust BWC Regime: A Time for Action,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2011), pp. 583–90.

80 Marc Ostfield, “Pathogen Security: The Illusion of Security in Foreign Policy and Biodefense,” International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, Vol. 12, No. 204 (2009), pp. 204–21.

81 The politics, institutional aspects, and technical challenges of attribution are another area of inquiry more than deserving of attention, especially in the context of emerging technologies.

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83 Nino Kharaishvili, Toni-Marie L. Hudson, Jaya K. Kannan, Vera Ettenger, and Seema Mirje, “Global Health Security Risk Assessment in the Biological Threat Reduction Program,” Health Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2020), pp. 177–85; Kenneth Yeh et al. “Achieving Health Security and Threat Reduction through Sharing Sequence Data,” Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2019), p. 78, <https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed4020078>; Rich Pilch, “Engaging China on Bioweapons and Beyond,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, May 28, 2020, <www.nonproliferation.org/engaging-china-on-bioweapons-and-beyond/>.

84 Alexander Kelle, “Health Governance and the Biological Weapons Prohibition Regime,” Global Governance, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007), pp. 217–35; Tine Hanrieder and Christian Kreuder-Sonnen, “WHO Decides on the Exception? Securitization and Emergency Governance in Global Health,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2014), pp. 331–48; Sandra J. Maclean, “Microbes, Mad Cows and Militaries: Exploring the Links between Health and Security,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 39, No. 5 (2008), pp. 475–94; William Aldis, “Health Security as a Public Health Concept: A Critical Analysis,” Health Policy and Planning, Vol. 23, No. 6 (2008), pp. 3369–75; Jiyong Jin and Joe Thomas Karackattu, “Infectious Diseases and Securitization: WHO’s Dilemma,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011), pp. 181–87; D. L. DeLaet, “Whose Interests Is the Securitization of Health Serving?” in Simon Rushton and Jeremy Youde, eds., Routledge Handbook of Global Security (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 339–48; S. Rushton, “Global Health Security: Security for Whom? Security from What?” Political Studies, Vol. 59, No. 4 (2011), pp. 779–96.

85 For this paper, “dual-use” and the “dual-use conundrum” refer to the fact that almost all the equipment and materials needed to develop dangerous or offensive agents, particularly biological and chemical agents, have legitimate uses in a wide range of scientific research and industrial activity, including defensive military uses. Within this context, “dual-use” does not refer to the demarcation between civilian and military uses. The evolving meanings and implications of the term for export control and nonproliferation warrant more investigation.

86 Harry S. Truman, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1949, American Presidency Project, <www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13282>.

87 Ola Dahlman, Frode Ringdal, Jenifer Mackby, and Svein Mykkeltveit, “The Inside Story of the Group of Scientific Experts and Its Key Role in Developing the CTBT Verification Regime,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 27. Published ahead of print, June 3, 2020, <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10736700.2020.1764717>.

88 John Lewis Gaddis, Philip H. Gordon, Ernest R. May, and Jonathan Rosenberg, eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1999); Siegfried S. Hecker, ed., Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers (Los Alamos, NM: Bathtub Row Press: 2016).

89 Richard Lugar, “Cooperative Threat Reduction and Nuclear Security,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 10 (2009), pp. 183–89; Congressional Research Service, “The Evolution of Cooperative Threat Reduction: Issues for Congress,” November 2015, R43143.

90 This framework was initially presented by the author in remarks titled “On the Role of Science Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” prepared for the 2nd Annual Neuriter Roundtable on Science Diplomacy, Washington, DC, December 18, 2013.

91 “Amerithrax” is the name given by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to the series of bioterrorism incidents in September 2001 that employed envelopes containing Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, mailed through the US Postal Service.