From Homeland Security NewsWire:
Joel McCleary, chairman, Q GlobalBiological weapons: U.S. must not repeat the failure of imagination
Published 9 September 2011
Joel McCleary, a biological weapons expert, is the chairman and co-founder of Q Global and the founder of PharmAthene; he argues that the U.S. government has not done enough to protect the nation against a biological attack, warns of the need for presidential leadership, and underscores the dangers of biological weapons
Homeland Security Newswire: Following 9/11 and the anthrax letter attacks shortly after, what measures have been put in place to deter, detect, and prevent similar attacks or even larger scale attacks?
Joel McCleary: Despite a decade of effort, billions spent, and the work of an army of scientists, developers, and government professionals, the United States has made too little progress on biodefense.
Lack of informed, clear, and forceful presidential leadership is the cause of failure. A decade after the attacks, there is no coherent, compelling threat brief to rally Congressional leadership nor is there a precise definition of goals and timelines for agencies to achieve.
The White House has no senior biodefense expert to drive policy and Obama’s nuclear and counterterrorism focus has overshadowed the nation’s biodefense mission.
It is not too late for the administration to lead. The National Security Staff has the capability to reorganize and make progress. Over the last decade significant governmental infrastructures and institutions have been built, which now await directed White House leadership.
As a department, DHS has had the strongest consistent bio-defense leadership. Ridge, Chertoff, and Napolitano understand the threat. Consequently, though their biodefense mandate is limited and only incremental progress has been made for detecting an attack and determining its potential consequences.
Real time detection must be a priority. Sophisticated BWs (biological weapons) are not natural diseases. They deliver massive aerosol doses, which potentially collapse incubation periods and increase virulence. The time frame for saving those within the “blast zone” might be measured in hours, not days. The third generation of sensors will be an incremental step forward in detection, if they work as promised and are affordable.
On sensors and detectors, DOD (Department of Defense) has been an important partner with DHS. This partnership is underlined by the new initiative DOD and DHS have taken with point of care diagnostics.
The most important work done at DHS is the BW consequence assessments. These assessments predict the possible consequences of an attack. The number of projected fatalities is numbing. The White House’s ability to effectively utilize this analysis to rally Congress and create a sense of urgency within the departments is lacking.
Detection and diagnostics are futile if there are no medical counter measures (MCM). MCM development and acquisition policy at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and DOD have not been successful enough, outside the commendable work on smallpox. It is easy to blame DHHS for this failure, but
the failure is presidential. If there is no comprehensive presidential policy with sustained funding, then the professionals at DHHS have no clear guidelines and means to achieve meaningful progress. Without White House leadership, the department becomes vulnerable to industrial lobbying, blind budget cutting, and internal squabbling over priorities in public health.
The failed history surrounding the decades-old effort to develop a second generation anthrax vaccine underscores how broken White House leadership has been under both Bush and Obama.
No assessment of DHS should ignore the commendable work done by DHS’s Secret Service. No department is more aware of the BW danger. No leadership has been more driven to protect against these threats.
Prevention and interdiction are not core DHS responsibilities. DHS only contributes scientifically to the mission. The essential ingredient of BW deterrence is microbiological forensics. Because of the Amerithrax case, extensive work has been done and progress made on forensics. DHS, FBI, and DOD have worked together and must continue to work together to improve this science and convince our potential adversaries we have this capability.
In summary, the ability to prevent or deter a BW attack will always be low because of the nature of BWs. Every effort must be made to do so but no faith should be placed in our ability to do so. The ability to detect an attack and diagnose the agent or agents deployed in real time is a possibility, which the nation is pursuing, but has not yet achieved.
HSNW: Are DHS’s current chemical and biological safety measures adequate effectively to respond to a large scale attack using these dangerous substances? As a follow up, has DHS done enough to work with first responders and public health officials to create disaster plans in the event of a mass casualty chemical or biological attack?
JM: Congress and this administration have given much attention to regulations surrounding the handling of dangerous pathogens. This is useful, but too much credit is given to a plutonium or “lose nukes” paradigm.
Keeping dangerous pathogen from state and non-state players is not easy, especially given the availability of certain agents in nature. In its offensive BW program, the United States created strategic weapons from three agents: tularemia, anthrax, and SEB toxin. These agents can be found in nature. The easiest agent for a terrorist to acquire and produce weapon’s material from is SEB. By 1968, the United States had determined SEB could effectively
neutralize large areas. Mistakenly, people within the administration think of SEB as an “incapacitant”, when in fact it is more lethal as an aerosol than Botulin A, Ricin, Vx gas, or mustard gas.
Locking up “loose bugs” should be supported but we must not allow ourselves to think it is a panacea. We cannot lock up nature.
DHS has no responsibility for the production of MCMs. The responsibility lies primarily with DHHS, who as noted above has had limited success in making MCMs, except for smallpox. Anthrax therapeutics have progressed at DHHS while the second generation vaccine work has been a failure to date. The progress on countermeasures against other agents, which have the proven ability to be weaponized and deployed against a large population, is scarce. The most obvious example of failure is the development of a tularemia vaccine.
The lack of urgency and failure to define requirements for MCMs derives from a lack of understanding of how different a BW is from a natural disease. For example, our public health leaders have a misguided overreliance on the ability of antibiotic treatment against tularemia and plague. This faith is justified if one conceives of them as natural disease, but not if one comprehends their power as a weapon.
Considerable effort by both the Bush and Obama administrations has gone into working with first responders and public health officials. Since 9/11, Katrina, and the pandemic flu response, greater awareness of the range of challenges facing our public health system has evolved. Preparation is still inadequate but this failure arises more from the general crisis facing the nation’s endangered public health system than management of U.S. biodefense policy.
HSNW: The 9/11 attacks resulted in a flurry of government spending on homeland security, but given the government’s current budget woes that level of spending appears unsustainable. With future DHS budgets likely to be much smaller, how would you prioritize security expenditures and get the most “bang for the buck” in regards to chemical and biological threats
JM: Without a compelling strategic threat brief and an interagency biodefense solution to offer Congress, biodefense appropriations for DHHS, DHS, and DOD will be vulnerable. The vulnerability is increased by Congressional concerns that not enough progress has been made with the funds already appropriated plus a lack of a shared Congressional understanding of the threat.
The creation of a clear and White House driven inter-agency process would bring much “bang for the buck” to biodefense. Delays, indecisions, poor management, lack of sustained funding and accountability, and inter-agency warfare have dramatically increased expenditures and delayed timelines.
The future focus must be on preparedness. We must invest first and foremost in our resilience – our ability to survive WMD BW attacks. Given the lack of resources we face, we need to focus on countering agents with the potential for existential strikes rather than agents that can do damage. The latter can kill many people but not hundreds of thousands, and cause mass terror but not bring the nation to its knees. The agents with existential potential are fewer in number.
HSNW: Looking ahead, what do you foresee as the main challenges for the next decade?
JM: My concerns are twofold:
One, the global proliferation of dual-use biotechnology, which dramatically increases the threat of a BW attack from a non-state player. What once took state sponsored BW programs, thousands of scientists, new sciences, and vast financial resources in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is becoming accessible to non-state and even “lone wolf” perpetrators.
Secondly, our national security establishment is turning a blind eye to the future BW threat potential of state players. Many national security leaders view BWs as a questionable relic of the cold war rather than a new generation of weaponry. BWs could become the weapon of the future. They might best meet the needs of coming conflicts for natural resources: weapon systems which can covertly defeat an enemy by depopulating their lands without destroying or polluting the very resources and infrastructures sought by the aggressor.
It is a dark concept to entertain, but it must be entertained – the building of BW systems that achieve what Sam Cohen’s sought in the neutron bomb. When President Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara launched Project 112 in 1962, they sought strategic flexibility with BWs. By 1969, the United States had achieved that capability, the non-nuclear neutron bomb. The United States ended its BW program for complex and not yet totally understood reasons, but one factor was the destabilizing potential for BW proliferation of the “poor man’s atomic bomb. Scientific advancements over the last half century have let that dangerous genie out of the bottle.
To avoid the strategic vulnerabilities such weapon systems could produce, we must not repeat the failure, which the 9/11 Commission articulated, a failure of imagination.
Joel McCleary, chairman, Q GlobalBiological weapons: U.S. must not repeat the failure of imagination
Published 9 September 2011
Joel McCleary, a biological weapons expert, is the chairman and co-founder of Q Global and the founder of PharmAthene; he argues that the U.S. government has not done enough to protect the nation against a biological attack, warns of the need for presidential leadership, and underscores the dangers of biological weapons
Homeland Security Newswire: Following 9/11 and the anthrax letter attacks shortly after, what measures have been put in place to deter, detect, and prevent similar attacks or even larger scale attacks?
Joel McCleary: Despite a decade of effort, billions spent, and the work of an army of scientists, developers, and government professionals, the United States has made too little progress on biodefense.
Lack of informed, clear, and forceful presidential leadership is the cause of failure. A decade after the attacks, there is no coherent, compelling threat brief to rally Congressional leadership nor is there a precise definition of goals and timelines for agencies to achieve.
The White House has no senior biodefense expert to drive policy and Obama’s nuclear and counterterrorism focus has overshadowed the nation’s biodefense mission.
It is not too late for the administration to lead. The National Security Staff has the capability to reorganize and make progress. Over the last decade significant governmental infrastructures and institutions have been built, which now await directed White House leadership.
As a department, DHS has had the strongest consistent bio-defense leadership. Ridge, Chertoff, and Napolitano understand the threat. Consequently, though their biodefense mandate is limited and only incremental progress has been made for detecting an attack and determining its potential consequences.
Real time detection must be a priority. Sophisticated BWs (biological weapons) are not natural diseases. They deliver massive aerosol doses, which potentially collapse incubation periods and increase virulence. The time frame for saving those within the “blast zone” might be measured in hours, not days. The third generation of sensors will be an incremental step forward in detection, if they work as promised and are affordable.
On sensors and detectors, DOD (Department of Defense) has been an important partner with DHS. This partnership is underlined by the new initiative DOD and DHS have taken with point of care diagnostics.
The most important work done at DHS is the BW consequence assessments. These assessments predict the possible consequences of an attack. The number of projected fatalities is numbing. The White House’s ability to effectively utilize this analysis to rally Congress and create a sense of urgency within the departments is lacking.
Detection and diagnostics are futile if there are no medical counter measures (MCM). MCM development and acquisition policy at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and DOD have not been successful enough, outside the commendable work on smallpox. It is easy to blame DHHS for this failure, but
the failure is presidential. If there is no comprehensive presidential policy with sustained funding, then the professionals at DHHS have no clear guidelines and means to achieve meaningful progress. Without White House leadership, the department becomes vulnerable to industrial lobbying, blind budget cutting, and internal squabbling over priorities in public health.
The failed history surrounding the decades-old effort to develop a second generation anthrax vaccine underscores how broken White House leadership has been under both Bush and Obama.
No assessment of DHS should ignore the commendable work done by DHS’s Secret Service. No department is more aware of the BW danger. No leadership has been more driven to protect against these threats.
Prevention and interdiction are not core DHS responsibilities. DHS only contributes scientifically to the mission. The essential ingredient of BW deterrence is microbiological forensics. Because of the Amerithrax case, extensive work has been done and progress made on forensics. DHS, FBI, and DOD have worked together and must continue to work together to improve this science and convince our potential adversaries we have this capability.
In summary, the ability to prevent or deter a BW attack will always be low because of the nature of BWs. Every effort must be made to do so but no faith should be placed in our ability to do so. The ability to detect an attack and diagnose the agent or agents deployed in real time is a possibility, which the nation is pursuing, but has not yet achieved.
HSNW: Are DHS’s current chemical and biological safety measures adequate effectively to respond to a large scale attack using these dangerous substances? As a follow up, has DHS done enough to work with first responders and public health officials to create disaster plans in the event of a mass casualty chemical or biological attack?
JM: Congress and this administration have given much attention to regulations surrounding the handling of dangerous pathogens. This is useful, but too much credit is given to a plutonium or “lose nukes” paradigm.
Keeping dangerous pathogen from state and non-state players is not easy, especially given the availability of certain agents in nature. In its offensive BW program, the United States created strategic weapons from three agents: tularemia, anthrax, and SEB toxin. These agents can be found in nature. The easiest agent for a terrorist to acquire and produce weapon’s material from is SEB. By 1968, the United States had determined SEB could effectively
neutralize large areas. Mistakenly, people within the administration think of SEB as an “incapacitant”, when in fact it is more lethal as an aerosol than Botulin A, Ricin, Vx gas, or mustard gas.
Locking up “loose bugs” should be supported but we must not allow ourselves to think it is a panacea. We cannot lock up nature.
DHS has no responsibility for the production of MCMs. The responsibility lies primarily with DHHS, who as noted above has had limited success in making MCMs, except for smallpox. Anthrax therapeutics have progressed at DHHS while the second generation vaccine work has been a failure to date. The progress on countermeasures against other agents, which have the proven ability to be weaponized and deployed against a large population, is scarce. The most obvious example of failure is the development of a tularemia vaccine.
The lack of urgency and failure to define requirements for MCMs derives from a lack of understanding of how different a BW is from a natural disease. For example, our public health leaders have a misguided overreliance on the ability of antibiotic treatment against tularemia and plague. This faith is justified if one conceives of them as natural disease, but not if one comprehends their power as a weapon.
Considerable effort by both the Bush and Obama administrations has gone into working with first responders and public health officials. Since 9/11, Katrina, and the pandemic flu response, greater awareness of the range of challenges facing our public health system has evolved. Preparation is still inadequate but this failure arises more from the general crisis facing the nation’s endangered public health system than management of U.S. biodefense policy.
HSNW: The 9/11 attacks resulted in a flurry of government spending on homeland security, but given the government’s current budget woes that level of spending appears unsustainable. With future DHS budgets likely to be much smaller, how would you prioritize security expenditures and get the most “bang for the buck” in regards to chemical and biological threats
JM: Without a compelling strategic threat brief and an interagency biodefense solution to offer Congress, biodefense appropriations for DHHS, DHS, and DOD will be vulnerable. The vulnerability is increased by Congressional concerns that not enough progress has been made with the funds already appropriated plus a lack of a shared Congressional understanding of the threat.
The creation of a clear and White House driven inter-agency process would bring much “bang for the buck” to biodefense. Delays, indecisions, poor management, lack of sustained funding and accountability, and inter-agency warfare have dramatically increased expenditures and delayed timelines.
The future focus must be on preparedness. We must invest first and foremost in our resilience – our ability to survive WMD BW attacks. Given the lack of resources we face, we need to focus on countering agents with the potential for existential strikes rather than agents that can do damage. The latter can kill many people but not hundreds of thousands, and cause mass terror but not bring the nation to its knees. The agents with existential potential are fewer in number.
HSNW: Looking ahead, what do you foresee as the main challenges for the next decade?
JM: My concerns are twofold:
One, the global proliferation of dual-use biotechnology, which dramatically increases the threat of a BW attack from a non-state player. What once took state sponsored BW programs, thousands of scientists, new sciences, and vast financial resources in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is becoming accessible to non-state and even “lone wolf” perpetrators.
Secondly, our national security establishment is turning a blind eye to the future BW threat potential of state players. Many national security leaders view BWs as a questionable relic of the cold war rather than a new generation of weaponry. BWs could become the weapon of the future. They might best meet the needs of coming conflicts for natural resources: weapon systems which can covertly defeat an enemy by depopulating their lands without destroying or polluting the very resources and infrastructures sought by the aggressor.
It is a dark concept to entertain, but it must be entertained – the building of BW systems that achieve what Sam Cohen’s sought in the neutron bomb. When President Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara launched Project 112 in 1962, they sought strategic flexibility with BWs. By 1969, the United States had achieved that capability, the non-nuclear neutron bomb. The United States ended its BW program for complex and not yet totally understood reasons, but one factor was the destabilizing potential for BW proliferation of the “poor man’s atomic bomb. Scientific advancements over the last half century have let that dangerous genie out of the bottle.
To avoid the strategic vulnerabilities such weapon systems could produce, we must not repeat the failure, which the 9/11 Commission articulated, a failure of imagination.
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