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Advances in Bio-weaponry
kjh1 writes "Technology Review is running an eye-opening article on how biotechnology has advanced to the point where producing bio-weapons that were once only possible with the backing of governments with enormous resources is now possible with equipment purchased off eBay. You can now purchase a mini-lab of equipment for less than $10,000. The writer also interviewed a former Soviet bioweaponeer, Serguei Popov, who worked at the Biopreparat, the Soviet agency that secretly developed biological weapons. Popov has since moved to the US and provided a great deal of information on the types of weapons the Soviets were developing."
I wouldn't worry about terrorist implications of this, it is actually very difficult for a group without large resources (and even for those with them) to create workable weapons of mass destruction and bioweaponry would deffinately fall into this catergory... From a journal article i read by J. Mueller in Terrorism and Political Violence (vol.17:487-505, 2005)
Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult that had some three hundred scientists in its employ and an estimated budget of $1 billion, reportedly tried at least nine times over five years to set off biological weapons by spraying pathogens from trucks and wafting them from rooftops, hoping fancifully to ignite an apocalyptic war. These efforts failed to create a single fatality--in fact, nobody even noticed that the attacks had taken place.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Nothing to see here. Good article, but the point made is fairly worthless. Technology is getting better and cheaper. Why is it suprising that it should extend to the field of biotech? If the dude next door wants to whack you, I don't think that he needs to produce a virus to do it. I'm pretty sure that guns are still more economical and efficient for personal enterprise of this sort.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Can of tuna packed in oil $0.65 . Garden soil: free. Warm spot on top of your refrigerator: free
... I have no idea. Maybe that's where the $9999.35 comes in.
Some way to aerosolize the resulting cocktail of anthrax and botulotoxin:
It doesn't have to be effective. If they did it five times and killed one person each time the population would be effectively terrorized. The purpose of terrorism isn't to kill people per-se. It's to scare them into some sort of action. Most people are perfectly happy to let any situation ride as long as it doesn't effect their daily lives. The terrorists seeks to effect the daily life of a fat dumb and happy or at least create the perception of the effect.
evil is as evil does
So here is the rub. One not only has to have the equipment and expertise to create the biowepon. One also needs a way to infect people in lethal doses. And, to begin with, one needs to believe the bioagent will be more effecient than conventional weapons. Look at it this way. The allies probably did more damage in Dresden using conventional weapons that in Japan using nukes. However, the Japan attack was much more effecient, posed almost no risk to the Allies, had no real defense, and was not limited by the logistics of flying many planes. For a bioagent to be preferable, it must be like a nuke. If Bush is to believed the Iraqis have a bunch of biological agents, yet we see bombs are used more. Perhpas the Iragis to have WMDs, and bombs are just so much more effecient and dramatic. I mean proving to the US forces that defending against IEDs is hopeless to so mouch more dramatic than simply killing everyone in the green zone with lead poisoning, for instance.
This seems like another fear mongering article planted to create an impression that certain not-so-dangerous things are critical, so that the complex really dangerous things can be ignored. It just shows a true lack of imagination. I tink in most cases the villians just want the drama. That is why they blow up the building after it is evacated, instead of blowing up the location to which the people are evacuated to.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Making HEU is a very difficult task; Zippe-type centrifuges can't be put together in your back shed. More plausibly, they could steal it or buy it on the black market, but even that's going to be very difficult.
WMD's are a bogus category, in my opinion, draw a bogus analogy between nukes, which genuinely can kill tens of thousands of people at a shot without any great operational genius, and chemical and biological weapons, which seem to be very hard to make that lethal, even though theoretically they can be.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You can't stop science.
This isn't like a video game where you need to go down the 'horrible biological weapons' research tree in order to get horrible biological weapons. The same technology that lets you engineer a crop that can end world hunger or create new organs from scratch is the same path that leads to horrible weapons. You can't simply pick the good over the bad. By advancing forward you WILL uncover the bad and make available the tools to do terrible things. The only option you have left is to either grind to a technological standstill or simply do your best to fend off dangers as they come.
The only way to stop technology is to put in place a world wide totalitarian government that ruthlessly enforces 'sustainable' living and the freeze of technology. By "sustainable", I don't mean the crunchy American tree hugger version that involves eating a lot of soy and riding a bike while still enjoying central heating and electricity. I mean brutal Maoist style raw utilitarianism that merrily sheds lives in favor of the higher goal of a "sustainable" society out our present technology level.
This of course is an utter impossibility. Our system is like a shark. It moves forward or we all die. No little tweaks on society is going to make it so that we can maintain this state of technology forever. We will run out of resources and technology will either have an answer waiting or everything collapses.
The only answer is to cross your fingers and hope to hell that a Kurzweil utopia is right around the corner. The best thing we can do now is try and build defense when it is possible and blindly sprint forward hoping to hell that somewhere along the way an answer jumps out before something terrible happens.
You should not.
Everyone and his dog has access to bioweapon design and production capabilities. Once you have got your hands on a sample of virulent bacteria like Antrax producing them is a piece of cake. Viruses are considerably more tricky but it is still feasible to produce the less fussy ones with student lab level equipment. Actually with viruses your biggest problem would be isolation, not production.
So far so good, here everyone would ask why all the dictator wannabies and terrorists are not slugging each other with biowarfare?
Well the answer is simple, while producing bioweapons can be done in a garage, producing a viable delivery system is something much more difficult. Testing it is even more difficult. This is clearly beyond the capabilities of most terrorists and dictatorships out there. And thanks $DEITY, otherwise we all would have been walking around wearing filter masks and wearing biowarfare suits on public transport.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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