Biological warfare is our worst-case scenario

While the world is captivated by COVID-19 and its source, biosecurity experts nominate a very different kind of threat as the worst-case scenario: ultra-targeted biological warfare.

Filippa Lentzos is a senior research fellow at King’s College London and associate senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

From 9/11 to the election of Barack Obama, no epoch-making event seems complete these days without a plethora of conspiracy theories to accompany it.

The genesis of coronavirus COVID-19 — believed to be a case of animal-to-human transmission at Wuhan wet market — is proving no exception. Some suspect research gone awry at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Or according to a tweet from a Chinese government spokesman, “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

The spread and mutation of these theories rival the virus itself.

But while the world is captivated by this indiscriminate global pandemic and its source, biosecurity experts nominate a very different kind of threat as the worst-case scenario: ultra-targeted biological warfare.

“The possibilities to cause harm are significantly expanding with emerging technologies,” says Filippa Lentzos, a senior research fellow at King’s College London and associate senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“Genomic technologies are driving a vast expansion in genomic data which is becoming increasingly digitised. The overriding security concern of mining genomic data sets for genetic markers and gene functions, pharmacogenomics, drug development and personalised medicine is ultra-targeted biological warfare.

“Now, advances in biotechnology may mean that a malicious actor could deploy a biological agent over a broad geographic area but only affect targeted individuals, or a specific group of individuals based on their genes, prior exposure to vaccines or known vulnerabilities in their immune systems. It is highly improbable that we would know who deployed such a weapon, even whether a weapon had been used.”

Biosecurity has arguably been overshadowed by other security and defence concerns across the past two decades, such as terrorism, cyber, and counterinsurgency warfare. Following the anthrax letter attacks in the US in 2001, there was a large influx of research funding into certain aspects of biosecurity including lab infrastructure, dangerous pathogens projects, ­biosensors, and threat assessment.

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‘History has shown, however, that states have had both capacities and intent to develop biological weapons.’
— Filippa Lentzos

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Lentzos, both a biologist and ­social scientist by training, argues that there is still a misplaced focus on the risks of biohackers, lone wolf scientists, criminals, extremists and terrorists.

“The focus of political responses to scientific developments has been on non-state actors,” she says.

“Yet there is no public reporting that any non-state actors have the capability to inflict mass casualties using biological agents, and there is little evidence of past interest from non-state actors to develop mass casualty biological capabilities ­either.

“Terrorists tend to be conservative and use weapons that are readily available and have a proven track record, not unconventional weapons that are more difficult to develop and deploy.

“History has shown, however, that states have had both capacities and intent to develop biological weapons.”

According to Lentzos, about 25 countries are believed to have possessed a biological weapons program in the past 100 years. Besides the US and Soviet Union, most programs were of a short duration and produced unsophisticated capabilities. She argues further work needs to be done to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, especially in the research “grey zones” with obvious potential civilian-to-military crossover.

“The focus has to shift to seriously consider what professional scientists, working in interdisciplinary teams in labs with sustained funding, are able to do if they apply scientific advances to deliberately develop sophisticated biological weapons,” she says.

But while bad actors will undoubtedly be looking at the sheer stopping power of coronavirus, Lentzos doesn’t think this particular virus could ever be used to significant effect as a bioweapon.

“If, for instance, the intent is to contaminate terrain for long periods, or to target particular subgroups of the population, coronavirus would be a poor choice of weapon,” she says.

“Even if the intent is to trigger a major epidemic, any future use of this particular coronavirus would in some respects make a poor weapon in that the cat’s already out of the bag. Populations are already building up individual immunity and herd resistance to the virus, and vaccines are in development and will be coming shortly. There would be no shock of the ‘unknown’.”

In Australia, biosecurity is most often associated with ensuring crop pests and animal diseases are not imported. But notably examples of serious national security-focused programs exist, such as the National Medical Countermeasures program run by a collaboration between Defence Science and Technology, CSIRO and DMTC (formerly, the Defence Materials Technology Centre). Priorities including sovereign manufacturing of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for the protection of military and civilian personnel against chemical, biological and radiological threats, emerging infectious diseases and pandemics.

Additional federal government funding has already begun flowing, with $220m recently pledged to upgrade a CSIRO biosecurity research facility in Geelong. Lentzos believes there will be a COVID-19-inspired funding boom focusing on biopreparedness, testing, hospital surge capacities, stockpiles, plus international co-operation and response mechanisms.

“The US and the UK have traditionally been the principal research hubs on biosecurity, but Australia has also been building a significant research force in this area over the last few years,” Lentzos says. “The first international conference on global health security was held in Sydney last year, and the second one is scheduled to take place in 2021, again in Sydney.”

Lentzos reflects on a career spent warning about low-probability, high-impact risks: “It’s a delicate balance to highlight the potential severity of biothreats while at the same time not coming across as alarmist.”

But the irony is even if coronavirus COVID-19 is convincingly proved to have originated with animal-to-human transmission in the Wuhan wet market, the mere fact of all the conspiracy theories has caused it to intersect with another emerging field in security: disinformation and information warfare.

“Coronavirus COVID-19 is now clearly a ‘security’ issue if only due to the virulent disinformation that it is a bioweapon,” Lentzos says.