Managing Chaos: Biosecurity in a Post-COVID-19 America

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has asserted new pressures on the United States’ national security space due to the exponential nature of biological threats and the lack of a coordinated response. The response has publicly demonstrated the United States’ failure to develop and implement a coherent plan, leading the Trump Administration to cease U.S. funding of the World Health Organization, exposing the Administration’s tendency for harried decision-making processes. More alarming is how the United States’ adversaries seek to exploit similar threats of biological warfare using emerging technologies. These topics are intimately interconnected, and this current crisis elucidates the United States’ fragile ability to handle biological threats.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt off Manila Bay in 2018. The captain, facing a growing outbreak of the coronavirus, asked the Pentagon for permission to move most of his crew to shore. (Bullit Marquez/AP)

Emerging technologies, including biotechnology, accelerate the lethal use of unconventional weapons due to its increasingly disruptive capabilities. It is their synergistic properties that make threats enabled by emerging technologies more tangible today. Artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and biotechnology are precisely the hazardous triumvirate that has raised concerns in the technology and national security communities. These emerging technologies can enable our adversaries, both state and non-state actors, to more effectively and expediently develop unconventional weapons advantages under the radar. The trend of technology democratization is exhaustive and, in the case of biotechnology, produces ominous implications. For example, additive manufacturing reduces the barriers to entry for a variety of technological fields and allows malicious state actors to accelerate the production and weaponization of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. In the post-COVID-19 world, these technologies will raise the stakes associated with preventing and mitigating the disruptive effects of biological threats, due to the simultaneous lack of controls on them and the United States’ readiness to respond. Artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing can enhance our adversaries’ ability to develop biological weapons and exploit the United States’ national security vulnerabilities, currently exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, dialogue regarding emerging technology by scholars at the RAND Corporation and the Federation of American Scientists has centered on the growth, acquisition, and evolution of artificial intelligence, and its potential to create unintended consequences and undermine the United States’ strategic stability. Artificial intelligence encompasses an overarching umbrella of technologies that enable machines to simulate the behavior of human beings. The commercialization of this technology has resulted in its democratization. As posited by Michael C. Horowitz, there are clear first-mover advantages in employing narrow artificial intelligence technologies, especially within military institutions that can affect the global balance of power. States with demure conventional capabilities compared to the United States can gain access to artificial intelligence due to its commercial nature and affordability. For example, many deep learning frameworks—such as TensorFlow, and PyTorch—are open-source information, and their algorithms are accessible to the public. Advancements in bio-warfare can be further empowered by artificial intelligence, as it facilitates better data insights, automates parts of the testing process, and makes the creation of biological agents and weapons more efficient, and affordable. For example, analyses of genetic data using machine learning techniques would only take a few days, instead of a status-quo operation of several months through traditional processes. This method of optimization enables the rapid creation of effective bioweapons. Biotechnologies like synthetic biology serve a dual-purpose, because they are commercially-driven in sectors such as medicine and agriculture, and possess military applications due to their ability to create biological agents and diseases. The capability of artificial intelligence to accelerate the growth of the future biotechnology space, especially in its military application is extensive and worrisome.

Additive manufacturing and biology (Cellink)

Additive manufacturing, commonly referred to as 3D printing, is the other emerging technology changing the landscape of biotechnology capabilities. This technology encompasses a variety of processes in which a synthetic or other material is layered to create a three-dimensional object. In recent years, 3D printers became capable of printing objects with several material inputs including metal, plastic, ceramic, cement, wood, and—most importantly here—bio-organics. Much like artificial intelligence, the democratization of 3D printing is already underway, with innovative and advanced capabilities rapidly emerging from both private labs and hobbyist communities. Medical researchers are creating synthetic organs using bio-organic printing material, an innovation that can grow organic incubators for lethal pathogens. Organic fermenters, which are used as a crude dispersal device, were developed and tested by engineers using 3D printers at the University of Seattle in 2017. While these blueprints are proprietary, they are poised to become open-source. This development creates a significant issue for international weapons control regimes that goes beyond the dilemma of dual-use technology. Reliable methods for detecting the production of biological weapons become less useful as production facilities are effectively miniaturized, leaving weapon stockpiles as the only evidence of their existence. In combination with genome sequencing enabled by artificial intelligence, the development of specialized viral and bacterial pathogens is within reach of knowledgeable adversaries. For now, such capabilities still require robust biological and material engineering experience, though this is achievable by any reasonably advanced country.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, such threats could be waved away as unlikely, given the difficulty involved in developing and deploying a biological weapon, the potential for self-harm, and the strength of international norms and institutions against its use. Today, the threat is closer to reality than expected because the United States’ current situation illustrates the potential pay-off. A distracted U.S. provides an excellent opportunity for its adversaries to conduct risky military operations or engage in escalatory behavior that would typically elicit a retaliatory response.

U.S. adversaries have quickly learned from this extended period of vulnerability. They are using it to undermine American cohesion and international influence. After being criticized for its slow response, China promulgated narratives portraying its COVID-19 response more positively and characterized itself as a generous provider of medical supplies and expertise. In conjunction with Russia and Iran, China has also propagated conspiracies about the origin of COVID-19, denying its emergence in Wuhan and suggesting the U.S. deployed the virus as a biological attack. Not only does this disinformation damage the United States’ reputation abroad, it also contributes to a weakening of norms against the use of biological weapons through the mere insinuation a nation-state would conduct a biological attack. China has pushed the boundaries on ethical applications of biotechnology, threatening to take the lead in shaping the norms and principles around its use.

Vulnerabilities displayed by the coronavirus pandemic coupled with opportunistic and capable adversaries produce a new threat environment in which emerging technology-enabled bioweapons figure more prominently. In recent years, Russia has demonstrated a lack of concern for the ban on chemical weapons, using them in clandestine assassinations and covered up Syria’s use of them in 2018. China has also bucked ethical norms on biotechnology and floated ideas of using bioweapons enabled by emerging technology in offensive military actions.

Chemical weapons were used in Syria in 2018. (Time/AFP/Getty)

The future of the biological warfare environment and the costs it imposes on the United States, both material and strategic, are mainly dependent on how its adversaries mobilize their state apparatuses to expand their bioweapons capabilities. In the past, Iran has provided the Houthi rebels in Yemen with missiles and munitions, and it is also known for its special relationship with Hezbollah. Though it is improbable Iran would break international norms and pass its bioweapons to its proxies, the security of its bioweapons programs is still in question. There are Israeli intelligence reports and reporting by Al-Siyasa, a Kuwaiti newspaper, suggesting Hezbollah stockpiled chemical weapons in Southern Lebanon in 2009. With proxies operating in proximity and with privilege, they can take advantage of their position. With a quarter of the world’s biological weapons facilities centered in the Near East, the frequency of regional instability creates opportunities for non-state actors to overstep their bounds.

Direct non-state acquisition could be more probable if tensions continue to accelerate with Iran and its proxy forces, especially with the democratization of emerging technology challenging the attribution tracking process, and increasing production efficiency. Though the circumstance of non-state actors acquiring bioweapons seems improbable, with state support the possibility of this situation is frighteningly realistic. More importantly, there is a new paradigm of non-state actors gaining the technological aptitude to conduct terror attacks independently. Since 2014, the Islamic State has used chlorine and sulfur mustard within battlefield environments in both Iraq and Syria. The growth of accessible emerging technologies is a change agent that will empower non-state actors to resort to unconventional attacks. Biological warfare involving both state and non-state proxy forces would produce catastrophic consequences.

Going forward, the threat emanating from bioweapons enabled by emerging technology will create unprecedented national security risks. Historically, these threats were not as prolific as conventional threats due to the difficulty of carrying out an attack, but these barriers to access are falling. The proliferation of emerging technology is lowering the threshold of bioweapon acquisition for state and non-state actors who seek to disrupt and exploit their adversaries. Emerging technologies extricate malicious state and non-state actors from a sundry of previous limitations, such as weapons detection and vulnerable human-centered pipelines. The efficacy of these weapons lends to intermittent use, which returns when preparedness is low and used in conjunction with information operations and conventional military capabilities for more significant effect.

COVID-19 is an understated watershed moment in U.S. national security, whereby a naturally-occurring virus has thrown individual citizens and the highest levels of leadership into disarray. The COVID-19 pandemic is driving perceptions of U.S. susceptibility to immensely disruptive biological threats and increases the likelihood of an artificial attack. This monumental shift in threat perception creates appealing circumstances for U.S. adversaries to experiment with emergent biotechnology. The United States national security apparatus should hold these considerations in high regard, to prevent the peril of a fractured biosecurity environment in a post-COVID-19 era.

Bilva Chandra is an Analyst with One Defense. Andrew Gonzalez is an Associate with One Defense.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.