This interview first appeared on www.nct-cbnw.com.
August 6, 2024 - Dr. Jeff Brodeur speaks with CBNW Magazine Editor Patrick Norén about CBRN threats since the year 2000, current challenges in global CBRN counter-proliferation, and information management during CBRN events.
How would you characterize the evolution of global CBRN threats since the year 2000 and how has this picture evolved in Europe?
This century, actors have persistently chosen the path of least resistance. In a post-2000 world we are witnessing the rise of non-state actors that have allied themselves with nation state sponsors, and we are witnessing the second and third order effects of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
The CWC has been incredibly successful in facilitating the destruction of existing stockpiles, securing other stockpiles, and imposing import-export constraints on information, materiel, and technology for the production of chemical weapons. When Novichok reared its head in the U.K., violating the CWC’s restriction on using any chemical for nefarious purposes, the OPCW considered it important to include language prohibiting precursors for Novichok into the CWC.
The second and third order effects of the CWC are the following: they told the world which chemical agents you are prevented from having, and the world listened. This caused almost everyone to skirt the treaty, researching and developing more dual-purpose chemicals that have the same incapacitating effects without violating international law. Nation states cannot get along in this globalized economy if they are in violation of something like the CWC. One of the challenges to the CWC is the innovation and energy dedicated to finding alternative chemistries that dodge the convention.
Artificial intelligence presents another set of challenges. It gives the ability to quickly find alternative solutions that are just as lethal, as well as being dual-use. Wherever a chemist is, whatever their goal is, they can set a query and have an answer the following morning. The challenge is no longer the creation of a new chemical warfare agent, but finding the most effective way to synthetize and produce it. Applying the same logic to synthetic biology, I can make the same argument for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The only difference between the BWC and CWC is that from 1972 until the year 2000 it was pretty difficult to synthesize your own DNA inexpensively, and with a small footprint.
There is currently much discussion about the proliferation of CBRN weapons into the hands of non-state actors. How do you assess these concerns?
A UN report published in June of last year documented that, with help from Iran, ISIS engaged in the synthesis, production, and weaponization of eight different chemical agents or improvised toxins. I personally came across improvised mortar munitions equipped with chemical agents. Our challenge as western actors is the over-engineering of our products, whether chemical or nuclear: it always has to be perfect. But a chemical weapon does not have to be high-grade to have the desired effect as a tactical asymmetrical weapon.
The global CBRN counter-proliferation community has a huge blind spot. There are more chemical, biological, and radiological attacks than we know about. Documentation of such attacks requires either a sensor or a casualty. A casualty allows you to study the body and find out which agent was used. Without those two, one can employ chemical and biological agents in the middle of the woods, and, in the absence of casualties or sensors, you can’t tell if anything happened. It is a little bit like Schrödinger’s Cat.
Within a month, there would no remaining indicators for forensic analysis. This is not the case with an IED, for example. If an IED goes off there will be evidence, things you can analyze: a crater, fallen trees. Chemical and biological are different. In 1995, Aum Shinrikyo employed sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, but it took two years for Japanese law enforcement to discover that the organization had conducted over 30 attempts with chemical, biological, and radiological agents.
In 1993, Japanese law enforcement was called to one of the Aum Shinrikyo buildings. The neighbors hadcomplained about a smell, but when the cops came, it stopped and the smell went away. In fact, someone was dispersing liquified anthrax from atop the roof, but no-one was any the wiser. If we knew what was happening and knew how to respond in 1993, we could have stopped 1995. Through technology we can plug our blindspot and we can better understand the threat. Because CBRN is considered low-frequency and high-consequence, we do not appreciate the threat leading to the blind spot. How can you call it low-frequency if we don’t really know how often it is happening?
The challenge for state actors is being able to protect themselves against the full range of agents. We cannot have a myopic understanding of what the threat is; it is not just one of them, it is all of them. These actors choose the path of least resistance. Whatever is available becomes a weapon of opportunity and until hospitals around the world put armed guards protecting their pharmacy departments, you will have soft targets where non-state actors can acquire precursors.
What needs to be done in policy-making, research, and procurement to reduce this blind spot?
In October 2023 the Biden administration published an executive order trying to get their arms around what is exacerbating the problem: artificial intelligence. The Department of Homeland Security has already published a plan of action for executing it, and this has been one mechanism at the policy level. Regulating AI is a challenge for many governments because implementing something on private industry can inadvertently stifle innovation. With such measures, the possible benefits of AI will be now out of boundaries as it is considered high-risk.
For example, some governments were ready to quickly put constraints on drone technology because they thought that eventually one would be able to affix ordnance to the bottom and fly it into critical infrastructure, people, or other targets. They were ready to clamp down on it while not understanding that drones could also be used, for example, to rapidly transport organs destined for transplant in heavily congested cities such as Tokyo.
That is the kind of ethical conundrum that we are in. Governments need to be careful with regulations and constraints on dual-purpose items because it drives up cost. If you have to protect them, purchases licenses, there will be higher costs that companies will not absorb but pass on to the consumer.
How should governments balance being prepared for all eventualities vs. trying to identify the path of least resistance that non-state actors will try to exploit?
Governments must train and organize response forces to mitigate threats as soon as they are presented. If you only get 30 minutes of news coverage before technical forces can come through, execute decon, and allow civilian passage, you make such attempts increasingly expensive for these actors given their need to purchase and import equipment and train people.
If the recovery of chemical or biological weapons is immediate, IEDs become the more attractive option. Moreover, sensing and networking – at least your populated areas – is very important. If governments have the capability to mitigate the threat, it ceases to be attractive to non-state actors.
Remember the old days when we only had one cellphone tower per area code, instead of the networks of them we have now? We installed more when we realized their importance to resilience. Now, if one goes down the signal gets bounced around to another tower: they are not attractive targets for non-state actors anymore. The goal is to reach that with chemical, biological, and radiological. Radiological is particularly easy to mitigate, it gives off a signature. I just need to pick up on it, separate the hazard from the people, give myself the time to remediate, and get the people back in there. It is not hard, it just requires resources.
What must government, industry, and academia do to overcome society’s public information challenges such vulnerability to misinformation and a lack of education about CBRN and CBRN events?
My experience with COVID-19 was that most people never took a biology course. They had no idea how viruses work. They can spell the word but outside of that they have no idea. It is not necessarily just about CBRN. Our educational system in the U.S. has chosen to eliminate certain core competencies, most people do not understand biology or chemistry. You can go through the entire U.S. education system, get a post-graduate degree, and not understand what a virus is. So when a pandemic comes around, even very smart people start to question the government.
One of the most important aspects about effective communications is understanding the perspective of the receiver of information. If the receiver thinks the government is blowing smoke and they can find one fact that contradicts the government line, they begin thinking that government information is wrong and that their information is correct. The government has a completely different perspective, but just pointing the finger and accusing people or governments of spreading misinformation gets us nowhere, it just bruises egos.
Government can fix this by adopting a technique that the intelligence community came up with after 9/11. Before 9/11 they would present information and say “this is the case”, but if you asked them a few questions you’d find out that was just a best estimate or observation based on some other facts. They revised their strategy and began quantifying things, saying stuff like “I am 90% certain this is true”. Doing this demonstrates transparency and admits that there are pieces of information that can change the assessment. Governments didn’t do this at the outset of COVID-19.
The government should have come out and said that we are making assumptions on how COVID-19 will behave based on how other coronaviruses behave, but with incomplete data. If you continue doing that, and as long as the public know that you have only a certain percentage of the information available, they will get it and they will understand it. This way you eliminate the opportunity for misinformation to present itself at the table.
How do you communicate with people who don’t appreciate that scientists must make assumptions based on incomplete data, and are rather attracted to claims that offer simplistic solutions based on false information?
All kinds of information will always be available, probably more today than at any other time. We are never going to stop the pipeline of misinformation or disinformation. We need to separate ourselves from misinformation and disinformation. And how do you do that? Through credibility. If you don’t have credibility, people will believe something else. It is a credibility issue, and therefore transparency is incredibly important.
Describe what you know and what you don’t know, as long as it doesn’t create a larger problem, and keep updating your information. In my mind, when you have something like a pandemic that takes months or years, politics enters the conversation. This is a “known known” and we are not going to get our arms around that. Don’t try to change that, just make sure that experts in key positions managing the pandemic are trustworthy and credible.