I first met Ray Zilinskas in 1998, when I was fresh out of graduate school, a young and impressionable postdoc in the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, as it was then known. When we were first introduced, I was a bit intimidated, as he was a well-known former bioweapons weapons inspector in Iraq, but Ray was always gracious and kind. He had a heart for students and young scholars, always welcoming newcomers into the “Monterey Mafia.” Ray also had an adventurous spirit—whether as an UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector or visiting former Soviet bioweapons facilities and interviewing former bioweaponeers, Ray always liked being in the middle of the action on bioweapons policy issues. He held many important policy-related posts during his career, working at the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment and the UN Industrial Development Organization, and also serving as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Department of State on matters pertaining to biological and toxin arms control, nonproliferation, and bioterrorism. Ray joined the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in 1998, and subsequently became the director of its Chemical and Biological Weapons Program. In addition to his many publications and policy engagements, Ray also took a turn in Hollywood, serving as an advisor to the FX television show The Americans, helping the writers to draft plotlines involving dangerous biological agents.
I followed all of Ray’s work, particularly his writings on the Soviet biological weapons (BW) program, including the hefty tome The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History, co-authored with Milton Leitenberg and Jens Kuhn. Ray and I both attended an international conference at the former bioweapons facility at Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan in 1999, when the facility was first opened to the public. I remember Ray mentioning that part of his interest in the Soviet BW program related to his own personal history; his parents were Lithuanians who had gone into exile after the Soviets invaded the country in 1940. Zilinskas was born in Estonia, raised in Sweden, and then immigrated to the United States as a teenager (never quite losing his Swedish accent). Ray worked as a clinical microbiologist for several years before going on to the University of Southern California to obtain his Ph.D. in international relations. His dissertation focused on security policy issues raised by genetic engineering. From the start, his work was engaged with the security and ethical issues raised by advances in the life sciences.
The U.S. and international biosecurity community lost a great figure in Ray Zilinskas. Ray’s work remains relevant—from his understanding of the Soviet BW legacy in Russia (Biosecurity in Putin's Russia, co-authored with Philippe Mauger) to his commentaries on the blockbuster movie Contagion, eerily prescient in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This special issue is offered as a tribute to Ray’s life’s work. It features themes that were important in his own work, including (1) historical perspectives and lessons on chemical and biological weapons; (2) the challenges of new technologies and new security environments; and (3) pressing issues in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
Historical perspectives and lessons on chemical and biological weapons
Seth Carus’ article, “Perspectives on “bioterrorism” in the nineteenth century: the philosophy of mass destruction, fake news, and other fictions,” takes a look at threat narratives of bioterrorism dating back to the late nineteenth century, and how they can help us understand contemporary discourse on the subject. Drawing on British archival sources, Toby Ewin’s piece, “Modern resonances of Imperial Germany's biological-warfare sabotage campaign, 1915–18,” provides new insights into Germany’s attempts to infect draft animals in Allied and neutral countries with anthrax and glanders during the First World War, and what lessons these cases might offer about modern bioterrorist activities. Moving to World War II, Robert Petersen’s article, “The covert battlefield: Doctor Witaszek, the WKZO, and the Polish use of biological and chemical warfare against the Third Reich,” looks at how the Polish resistance movement used chemical and biological agents against the Third Reich, and how the German high command took defensive measures against this threat. A paper by Richard J. Beedham and Carwyn H. Davies, “The UK biological-warfare program: dual-use contributions to the field of aerobiology,” discusses Britain’s biodefense research and development program in the 1940s and 1950s. They look closely at the UK’s work in aerobiology and how this research and applications had important spinoff benefits to the civilian world, illustrating the importance of considering the dual-use implications of defense work. Finally, Brian Balmer’s article, “‘Science was digging its own grave’: the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the campaign against chemical and biological warfare,” looks at the activism of the oldest women’s peace organization in the world against chemical and biological warfare and how it enrolled the scientific community into its efforts in the 1960s and 1970s. In his article, “Wrestling with imponderables: assessing perceptions of biological-weapons utility,” Glenn Cross uses the example of Rhodesian bioweapons efforts and other historical case studies to illustrate how biological weapons can be adopted and used by actors because they have utility, particularly in small-scale covert operations such as sabotage and assassination.
The challenges of new technologies and new security environments
Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley’s article, “From CRISPR babies to super soldiers: challenges and security threats posed by CRISPR,” takes a look at the controversial case of Chinese scientist He Jiankui to examine some of the challenges to and risks of using genome editing for nefarious purposes. In “CRISPR and new genetic-engineering techniques: emerging challenges to strategic stability and nonproliferation,” Margaret E. Kosal also looks at the new security threats posed by CRISPR and how new CRISPR-derived biological weapons could compete with nuclear weapons. In his article, “Biodefense and the return to great-power competition,” Gerald L. Epstein looks at the emergence of new Russian and Chinese security threats that have implications for U.S. biodefense preparedness efforts. Gigi Kwik Gronvall and Brittany Bland examine the state of Russian life-science capability in their article, “Life-science research and biosecurity concerns in the Russian Federation,” exploring what health security and biosecurity implications might emerge from Russian developments in this area. Milton Leitenberg considers Russian biosecurity threats from a very different angle—the generation of disinformation campaigns on bioweapons activities by the Russian government dating back from the end of World War II to the present. (A comprehensive appendix of these activities is included in supplementary materials.) Piers Millett, Christopher R. Isaac, Irina Rais, and Paul Rutten’s article, “The synthetic-biology challenges for biosecurity: examples from iGEM,” examines the history of the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, how biosecurity issues have emerged during this competition, and what biosecurity procedures and practices have been adopted to address these concerns. On a related topic, Kathryn Nixdorff, in her article “Developments in systems biology: implications for health and biochemical Security,” looks at the security threats involved in systems biology and the development of new biochemical bioregulators, the risks surrounding what may be called cyberbiosecurity, and what biosecurity policies would be needed to counter these threats.
Pressing issues in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)
Marie Isabelle Chevrier’s paper, “Compliance mechanisms and their implementation: the contrast between the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions,” looks at the historical and security contexts in which different compliance mechanisms have arisen and discusses the contemporary relevance of arms-control compliance measures. Sonia Drobysz’s paper, “Verification and implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,” examines existing weaknesses and challenges of these issues in the BTWC, as well as also considering verification alternatives and ways to remedy gaps in the laws and regulations related to biological weapons. In her article “Monitoring and verification in the biological-weapons area,” Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack uses the case of the UN Security Council resolution establishing an inspection regime in Iraq after the first Gulf War to explore whether a similar system could be implemented in future cases of bioweapons concern. As a key UK government representative at the time of its debate, John R. Walker, in his paper, “Reflections on the 2001 BWC Protocol and the verification challenge,” revisits what happened during the 1990s BTWC verification protocol negotiations and what this legacy means for the BTWC Ninth Review Conference, to be held at the end of 2021. Filippa Lentzos’s piece, “Dual-use biology: building trust and managing perceptions of intent,” looks at the problem of verification of peaceful dual-use research and explores whether elements of the verification protocol could still be applied outside of a legally binding framework. Caitríona McLeish and Joshua R. Moon take up the thorny issue of investigating allegations of biological weapons use in their paper, “Sitting on the boundary: the role of reports in investigations into alleged biological-weapons use,” and explore how the results of these investigations through UN mechanisms should be communicated. Kavita M. Berger and Rocco J. Casagrande, in “Twentieth-century nonproliferation meets twenty-first century biotechnology,” discuss the changing biotechnology landscape and the new challenges it poses for the BTWC. Katherine Bowman and Jo L. Husbands, in “Engaging scientists in biosecurity: lessons from the Biological Weapons Convention,” discuss the efforts of the InterAcademy Partnership to promote awareness and responsibility among scientific communities in various countries on biosecurity issues and how this work supports and strengthens the BTWC.
All of these papers are a fitting tribute to the life work of Ray Zilinskas and his enduring contributions to the nonproliferation field. We hope you enjoy reading them and that they inspire new thinking on chemical and biological weapons issues for the 21st century.