BioWarfare and Cyber Warfare a new Kind Of War: Biowarfare And Info warfare

3.1Germ Warfare Agents

Biological warfare (BW) involves the use of living organisms for military purposes. The weapons can be viral, bacterial, fungal, rickettsial, and protozoan. The agents can mutate, reproduce, multiply, and spread over a large geographical terrain by wind, water, and by insect, animal, and human transmission. Once released, biological pathogens are capable of developing viable niches and maintaining themselves in the environment indefinitely. Conventional biological agents include Yersinia pestis (plague), tularemia (a plague-like disease), rift valley fever, botulism (caused by a toxin from the common food-poisoning bacterium Clostridium botulinum), Coxiella burnetii (Q fever), eastern equine encephalitis, anthrax, and smallpox.

Biological weapons have never been widely used because of the danger and expense involved in processing and stockpiling large volumes of toxic materials and the difficulty in targeting the dissemination of biological agents. Advances in genetic engineering technologies over the past two and a half decades, however, have made biological warfare viable for the first time.

Breakthroughs in genetic engineering technologies provide a versatile form of weaponry that can be used for a wide variety of military purposes, ranging from terrorism and counterinsurgency operations to a large-scale warfare aimed at an entire population. Unlike nuclear technologies, genetic engineered organisms can be cheaply developed and produced. They also require far less scientific expertise, and can be effectively employed in many diverse settings. These factors rekindle military interest in biological weapons. But at the same time, it also generates grave concern that an accidental or deliberate release of harmful genetically engineered microbes can spread genetic pollution around the world, creating deadly pandemics that destroy plant, animal, and human life on a mass scale.

Recombinant DNA designer weapons can be created in various ways. The new technologies can be used to program genes into infectious microorganisms to increase their antibiotic resistance, virulence, and environmental stability. It is also possible to insert lethal genes into otherwise harmless microorganisms, resulting in biological agents that the body recognizes as friendly and does not resist. It is even possible to insert genes into organisms that affect regulatory functions that control mood, behavior, and body temperature. It is also possible to clone selective toxins to eliminate selective racial or ethnic groups whose genotypic makeup predisposes them to certain disease patterns. Genetic engineering can also be used to destroy specific strain or species of agricultural plants or domestic animals, if the intents are to cripple the economy of an adversarial country.

The widespread use of the basic tools of industrial biology has put the power to create ‘traditional’ biological weapons in the hands of tens of thousands of people. Advanced biological technologies have spread all over the world. There are many more people who are technically trained, and the methods for culturing large quantities of bacteria are well worked out and commonly employed.

The number of trained biologists has been soaring. Life science Ph.D.s awarded in the U.S. increased by 30 per cent between 1975 and 1991 to more than 5,700 a year. By 1994 England alone had 5,700 biology graduate students. American industry now employs around 60,000 life scientists. There are over 1,300 biotechnology companies in the U.S. and about 580 in Europe. Only 25 years ago there were none. Moreover, many less developed countries, including Iraq, have their own biotechnology industries.

A person who is smart, determined, trained in basic microbiological techniques, and willing to take a few short-cuts on safety and go at a few technical problems in mildly unconventional ways, could conceivably do some horrible things.

Two factors have made the threat of a bioterrorist attack greater than ever before:³

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  First, the unspoken taboo that previously dissuaded terrorists from using chemical or biological weapons against civilians has now been broken. On 20 March 1995, the nihilistic Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and hospitalizing five thousand. Aum was also developing biological weapons.
  
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  Second, with the explosive growth of basic biological research and biotechnology, what was once regarded as esoteric knowledge about how to culture and disperse infectious agents has spread among tens of thousands of people.