Download or read book Phantom Menace or Looming Danger written by Kathleen M. Vogel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-11-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horrifying terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the anthrax strikes that soon followed gave the United States new reason to fear unconventional enemies and atypical weapons. These fears have prompted extensive research, study, and planning within the U.S. military, intelligence, and policy communities regarding potential attacks involving biological weapons. In Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?, Kathleen M. Vogel argues for a major shift in how analysts assess bioweapons threats. She calls for an increased focus on the social and political context in which technological threats are developed. Vogel uses case studies to illustrate her theory: Soviet anthrax weapons development, the Iraqi mobile bioweapons labs, and two synthetic genomic experiments. She concludes with recommendations for analysts and policymakers to integrate sociopolitical analysis with data analysis, thereby making U.S. bioweapon assessments more accurate. Students of security policy will find her innovative framework appealing, her writing style accessible, and the many illustrations helpful. These features also make Phantom Menace or Looming Danger? a must-read for government policymakers and intelligence experts. -- Lynn Eden, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Download or read book Genome Editing and Biological Weapons written by Katherine Paris and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph introduces current genome editing technologies—clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems, transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs)—and provides an assessment of the risk of misuse of these technologies based on the following parameters: accessibility, ease of misuse, magnitude of potential harm, and imminence of potential misuse. The findings from this assessment are applied to analyze and evaluate the threat posed by the intentional misuse of genome editing technologies to develop biological weapons. Furthermore, the book discusses the implications of misuse for different applications of genome editing, such as making existing pathogens more dangerous, modifying the human microbiome, weaponizing gene drives, engineering super soldiers, and augmenting the general population to confer economic advantages. Technologies that enable genome editing with programmable nucleases—including CRISPR, TALEN, and ZFN—allow for the precise genetic modification of organisms and cultured cells. While these technologies are used for a variety of beneficial applications, intelligence and defense experts have raised concerns that genome editing technologies, especially CRISPR, could be misused to develop new and improved biological weapons. Furthermore, experts worry that the number and type of actors who could potentially misuse genome editing is dramatically increasing given the democratization of biology, which is allowing biology to become more accessible to everyone including nonexperts. The book provides a comprehensive assessment of how feasible it is for users with different levels of knowledge and skill to acquire and then to apply the technologies to develop a biological weapon. It also provides an assessment of governability and a tailored set of recommendations that address security concerns. These recommendations are sensitive to the cost-benefit trade-off of regulating genome editing technologies. The book targets researchers as well as intelligence analysts, defense and security personnel, and policymakers.

Download or read book Barriers to Bioweapons written by Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In both the popular imagination and among lawmakers and national security experts, there exists the belief that with sufficient motivation and material resources, states or terrorist groups can produce bioweapons easily, cheaply, and successfully. In Barriers to Bioweapons, Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley challenges this perception by showing that bioweapons development is a difficult, protracted, and expensive endeavor, rarely achieving the expected results whatever the magnitude of investment. Her findings are based on extensive interviews she conducted with former U.S. and Soviet-era bioweapons scientists and on careful analysis of archival data and other historical documents related to various state and terrorist bioweapons programs.Bioweapons development relies on living organisms that are sensitive to their environment and handling conditions, and therefore behave unpredictably. These features place a greater premium on specialized knowledge. Ben Ouagrham-Gormley posits that lack of access to such intellectual capital constitutes the greatest barrier to the making of bioweapons. She integrates theories drawn from economics, the sociology of science, organization, and management with her empirical research. The resulting theoretical framework rests on the idea that the pace and success of a bioweapons development program can be measured by its ability to ensure the creation and transfer of scientific and technical knowledge. The specific organizational, managerial, social, political, and economic conditions necessary for success are difficult to achieve, particularly in covert programs where the need to prevent detection imposes managerial and organizational conditions that conflict with knowledge production.

Download or read book As Gods written by Matthew Cobb and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling and terrifying history of genetic engineering In 2018, scientists manipulated the DNA of human babies for the first time. As biologist and historian Matthew Cobb shows in As Gods, this achievement was one many scientists have feared from the start of the genetic age. Four times in the last fifty years, geneticists, frightened by their own technology, have called a temporary halt to their experiments. They ought to be frightened: Now we have powers that can target the extinction of pests, change our own genes, or create dangerous new versions of diseases in an attempt to prevent future pandemics. Both awe-inspiring and chilling, As Gods traces the history of genetic engineering, showing that this revolutionary technology is far too important to be left to the scientists. They have the power to change life itself, but should we trust them to keep their ingenuity from producing a hellish reality?

Download or read book The Genetic Age written by Matthew Cobb and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TIMES ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 'The ideal guide to what is not just a fiendishly complex area of science but also an ethical minefield' Mail on Sunday A new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite precision, CRISPR has given scientists a degree of control that was undreamt of even in science fiction. But CRISPR is just the latest, giant leap in a long journey to master genetics. The Genetic Age shows the astonishing, world-changing potential of the new genetics and the possible threats it poses, sifting between fantasy and the reality when it comes to both benefits and dangers. By placing each phase of discovery, anticipation and fear in the context of over fifty years of attempts to master the natural world, Matthew Cobb, the Baillie-Gifford-shortlisted author of The Idea of the Brain, weaves the stories of science, history and culture to shed new light on our future. With the powers now at our disposal, it is a future that is almost impossible to imagine - but it is one we will create ourselves.

Download or read book Absence in Science Security and Policy written by Brian Balmer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the absent and missing in debates about science and security. Through varied case studies, including biological and chemical weapons control, science journalism, nanotechnology research and neuroethics, the contributors explore how matters become absent, ignored or forgotten and the implications for ethics, policy and society.The chapter 'Sensing Absence: How to See What Isn't There in the Study of Science and Security' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Download or read book Phantom Menace or Looming Danger written by Kathleen M. Vogel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call for a new way to assess bioweapon threats—recognizing the importance of the sociopolitical context of technological threats. The horrifying terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the anthrax strikes that soon followed gave the United States new reason to fear unconventional enemies and atypical weapons. These fears have prompted extensive research, study, and planning within the U.S. military, intelligence, and policy communities regarding potential attacks involving biological weapons. In Phantom Menace or Looming Danger?, Kathleen M. Vogel argues for a major shift in how analysts assess bioweapons threats. She calls for an increased focus on the social and political context in which technological threats are developed. Vogel uses case studies to illustrate her theory: Soviet anthrax weapons development, the Iraqi mobile bioweapons labs, and two synthetic genomic experiments. She concludes with recommendations for analysts and policymakers to integrate sociopolitical analysis with data analysis, thereby making U.S. bioweapon assessments more accurate. Students of security policy will find her innovative framework appealing, her writing style accessible, and the many illustrations helpful. These features also make Phantom Menace or Looming Danger? a must-read for government policymakers and intelligence experts. “This is an engrossing book that exemplifies what STS can bring to broader issues of policymaking in the US and potentially beyond, and it is well worth reading.” —Carla Nappi, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society “Kathleen Vogel has authored one of the most important books written about biological weapons in recent years. . . . Vogel tackles head-on the conventional wisdom regarding the biological weapon (BW) threat, successfully, challenging assumptions that have gone largely unexamined by the broader biodefense community. . . . She also uncovers some deeper organizational and social forces that have shaped US intelligence and threat assessments since the end of international security, not just those with an interest in biodefense or intelligence. This, this book is a must-read for scholars and practitioners in the field of international security, not just those with an interest in biodefense or intelligence.” —Gregory D. Koblentz, Nonproliferation Review “Intriguing, original, and deeply informed. Focusing on potential threats, Vogel shows in engaging historical detail that technical problems are inherently social. She has made an important scholarly contribution to science and technology studies and to studies of intelligence. At the same time, she speaks directly to the policy world. The combination of depth of scholarship and practical implication is remarkable.” —Lynn Eden, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Download or read book Planet in Peril Planetary Dangers Planetary Solutions written by Michael D. Bess and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an award-winning historian of science and technology, Planet in Peril describes the top four mega-dangers facing humankind – climate change, nukes, pandemics, and artificial intelligence. It outlines the solutions that have been tried, and analyzes why they have thus far fallen short. These four existential dangers present a special kind of challenge that urgently requires planet-level responses, yet today's international institutions have so far failed to meet this need. The book lays out a realistic pathway for gradually modifying the United Nations over the coming century so that it can become more effective at coordinating global solutions to humanity's problems. Neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but pragmatic and constructive, the book explores how to move past ideological polarization and global political fragmentation. Unafraid to take intellectual risks, Planet in Peril sketches a plausible roadmap toward a safer, more democratic future for us all.

Download or read book The Nuclear Terrorism Threat written by Brecht Volders and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the threat of a terrorist organisation constructing and detonating a nuclear bomb. It explores the role and impact of the organisational design of a terrorist organisation in implementing a nuclear terrorism plot. In order to do so, the work builds on the organisational analogy between an assumed nuclear terrorism scenario and four case studies as follows: the construction of the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos; South Africa’s Peaceful Nuclear Explosives (PNE) program; Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical-biological armament activities; and Al Qaeda’s implementation of the 9/11 attacks. Extrapolating insights from these case studies, this book introduces the idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off. On the one hand, it will be argued that a more organic organisational design is likely to benefit the effective implementation of a nuclear terrorism project. On the other hand, this type of organic organisational design is also likely to simultaneously constitute an inefficient way for a terrorist organisation to guarantee its operational and organisational security. It follows, then, that the implementation of a nuclear terrorism plot via an organic organisational design is also likely to be an inefficient strategy for a terrorist organisation to achieve its strategic and political goals. This idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off provides us with a tool to strengthen the comprehensive nature of future nuclear terrorism threat assessments and sheds new light on the ongoing debates within the nuclear terrorism literature. This book will be of particular interest to students of nuclear proliferation, terrorism studies, international organisations, and security studies in general.

Download or read book Biosecurity Dilemmas written by Christian Enemark and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biosecurity Dilemmas examines conflicting values and interests in the practice of “biosecurity,” the safeguarding of populations against infectious diseases through security policies. Biosecurity encompasses both the natural occurrence of deadly disease outbreaks and the use of biological weapons. Christian Enemark focuses on six dreaded diseases that governments and international organizations give high priority for research, regulation, surveillance, and rapid response: pandemic influenza, drug-resistant tuberculosis, smallpox, Ebola, plague, and anthrax. The book is organized around four ethical dilemmas that arise when fear causes these diseases to be framed in terms of national or international security: protect or proliferate, secure or stifle, remedy or overkill, and attention or neglect. For instance, will prioritizing research into defending against a rare event such as a bioterrorist attack divert funds away from research into commonly occurring diseases? Or will securitizing a particular disease actually stifle research progress owing to security classification measures? Enemark provides a comprehensive analysis of the ethics of securitizing disease and explores ideas and policy recommendations about biological arms control, global health security, and public health ethics.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of War Law and Technology written by James Gow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an authoritative, cutting-edge resource on the characteristics of both technological and social change in warfare in the twenty-first century, and the challenges such change presents to international law. The character of contemporary warfare has recently undergone significant transformation in several important respects: the nature of the actors, the changing technological capabilities available to them, and the sites and spaces in which war is fought. These changes have augmented the phenomenon of non-obvious warfare, making understanding warfare one of the key challenges. Such developments have been accompanied by significant flux and uncertainty in the international legal sphere. This handbook brings together a unique blend of expertise, combining scholars and practitioners in science and technology, international law, strategy and policy, in order properly to understand and identify the chief characteristics and features of a range of innovative developments, means and processes in the context of obvious and non-obvious warfare. The handbook has six thematic sections: Law, war and technology Cyber warfare Autonomy, robotics and drones Synthetic biology New frontiers International perspectives. This interdisciplinary blend and the novel, rich and insightful contribution that it makes across various fields will make this volume a crucial research tool and guide for practitioners, scholars and students of war studies, security studies, technology and design, ethics, international relations and international law.

Download or read book Biological Threats In The 21st Century The Politics People Science And Historical Roots written by Filippa Lentzos and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2016-07-13 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological Threats in the 21st Century offers a fresh understanding of contemporary biological threats to national security. Readers are introduced to the politics, people, science and historical roots of contemporary biological threats through up-to-date, rigorous and accessible chapters written by leading academics and supplemented by expert point-of-view contributions and interviews.The book provides inspiration and resources for students and researchers, as well as policy makers in government, the public policy sector and the wider community. It is particularly pertinent for those interested in biological disarmament, non-proliferation, counterterrorism and health security.

Download or read book Defense Against Biological Attacks written by Sunit K. Singh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-30 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first volume of a two-volume set describes general aspects, such as the historical view on the topic, the role of information distribution and preparedness of health-care systems and preparedness in emergency cases. Part two describes and discusseses in detail the pathogens and toxins that are potentially used for biological attacks. As such, the book is a valuable resource for faculties engaged in molecular biology, genetic engineering, neurology, biodefense, biosafety & biosecurity, virology, and infectious disease programs, as well as professional medical research organizations.

Download or read book Health Security Intelligence written by Michael S. Goodman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-19 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health Security Intelligence introduces readers to the world of health security, to threats like COVID-19, and to the many other incarnations of global health security threats and their implications for intelligence and national security. Disease outbreaks like COVID-19 have not historically been considered a national security matter. While disease outbreaks among troops have always been a concern, it was the potential that arose in the first half of the twentieth century to systematically design biological weapons and to develop these at an industrial scale, that initially drew the attention of security, defence and intelligence communities to biology and medical science. This book charts the evolution of public health and biosecurity threats from those early days, tracing how perceptions of these threats have expanded from deliberately introduced disease outbreaks to also incorporate natural disease outbreaks, the unintended consequences of research, laboratory accidents, and the convergence of emerging technologies. This spectrum of threats has led to an expansion of the stakeholders, tools and sources involved in intelligence gathering and threat assessments. This edited volume is a landmark in efforts to develop a multidisciplinary, empirically informed, and policy-relevant approach to intelligence-academia engagement in global health security that serves both the intelligence community and scholars from a broad range of disciplines. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Intelligence and National Security.

Download or read book American Biodefense written by Frank L. Smith III and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological weapons have threatened U.S. national security since at least World War II. Historically, however, the U.S. military has neglected research, development, acquisition, and doctrine for biodefense. Following September 11 and the anthrax letters of 2001, the United States started spending billions of dollars per year on medical countermeasures and biological detection systems. But most of this funding now comes from the Department of Health and Human Services rather than the Department of Defense. Why has the U.S. military neglected biodefense and allowed civilian organizations to take the lead in defending the country against biological attacks? In American Biodefense, Frank L. Smith III addresses this puzzling and largely untold story about science, technology, and national security.Smith argues that organizational frames and stereotypes have caused both military neglect and the rise of civilian biodefense. In the armed services, influential ideas about kinetic warfare have undermined defense against biological warfare. The influence of these ideas on science and technology challenges the conventional wisdom that national security policy is driven by threats or bureaucratic interests. Given the ideas at work inside the U.S. military, Smith explains how the lessons learned from biodefense can help solve other important problems that range from radiation weapons to cyber attacks.

Download or read book Insecurity and Emerging Biotechnology written by Brett Edwards and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how emergent trends in innovation and its governance are raising new and old questions about how to control technology. It develops a new framework for understanding how emergent fields of science and technology emerge as security concerns; and the key challenges these fields pose from a global security perspective. The study focuses on the politics which have surrounded the emergent field of Synthetic Biology, a field which has become emblematic of both the potentials and limits of more preemptive approaches to governance. This highly accessible work will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners working on the ethical responsibilities of innovators and the assessment of emergent technology as well as the global governance of weapons.

Download or read book A Research Agenda for Intelligence Studies and Government written by Robert Dover and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-04 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Research Agenda explores the academic field of intelligence studies and how it is developing into an increasingly international and diverse area of study.