Traveling Salesmen, Old Pitch

The Graham-Talent bioscare show is still touring the United States. This week, they went to Jim Talent's current employer, The Heritage Foundation, which always enjoys a good escape from reality. There isn't anything new to report - well, the study was just completed six months ago - but I wonder if they confuse people with their statements that, while a bioterrorist incident is easier to prepare for as opposed to a terrorist nuclear incident, our government remains woefully behind. These guys, as former senators in Congress, aren't used to having to justify the remarks they make, and that's clear whenever they talk about this subject. In CQ Homeland Security (subscription required), there's a longer version of this event that includes a few key quotes.

"It has been very difficult to get the American people and its elected officials to focus on the immediacy and the severity of WMD use somewhere in the world,” said Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator from Florida who serves as the commission’s chairman.

Yeah, funny about that - seems that whenever eight years go by since the last "WMD" incident in America, the public tends to downplay the event. Maybe it's the daily routine of other more visible dangers like a war in the Middle East, pandemic flu, identify theft, being out of work for months, you know, silly stuff like that. Or maybe we can just blame American Idol for dumbing down Americans.

“We’re more vulnerable today than we were 10 years ago,” Graham said, adding later that a complicating factor is the decentralization of leadership in al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in recent years. “Our opponent has become more nimble."

Interesting observation, considering the billions of dollars invested into not just biodefense measures but counterterrorism measures since 9/11.  Probably a mistaken observation too. And as for our dangerous opponent... nimble? Not the word I would use, no evidence that the generic terrorist front has anything more sophisticated than internet recipes for ricin and hydrogen cyanide devices, neither being a mass-casualty weapon. 

Talent said biological compounds are much easier to adapt, weaponize and stockpile than nuclear materials.

"Part of the problem is institutional, he said. From the start, nuclear scientists knew they were working with potentially dangerous materials. Biological and life sciences, on the other hand, have been around much longer, desensitizing scientists to the idea that these disciplines can pose a threat.

That's a vast oversimplification. Biological compounds are not easy to grow, weaponize, or stockpile because they are living organisms requiring pretty particular conditions to 1) create in significant quantity, 2) disperse effectively to create a mass casualty event, and 3) keep alive in a stockpile. Fissile materials, once you get the right technology, stay around for years and years without much maintenance. Anyone who's worked in this area understands this. Talent obviously doesn't understand or is deliberately exaggerating. And as a matter of history, the mature effort to develop biological weapons is not really any older than the corresponding efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

This attitude is underscored by the fact that three federal agencies regulate the life sciences, creating regulatory redundancies and other problems, Talent said.

“It’s everything that’s bad about oversight and nothing that’s good,” he said.

Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services alone should be responsible for regulations, streamlining oversight to make it more sensible and safer, Talent said.

Yes, because DHHS has done SO WELL in executing BioShield and developing new products. Five years after it was given the responsibility, the national strategic stockpile still only has anthrax and smallpox vaccines, along with a collection of general medical treatments and other equipment. The problem has been and continues to be the lack of solid leadership and the inability to fix the FDA's snail-slow regulatory stranglehold on the process of developing medical countermeasures.

This WMD commission's report has good recommendations, don't get me wrong. Suggesting that the vice president be the WMD czar isn't one of them, but let's let that one go for now. The Graham-Talent show has to pack up its bags and quietly go home. They did their job. They shouldn't continue to embarrass themselves by overhyping this threat and showing their ignorance.

Comments

[NVH]

J., I'm with you, and they need to stop piling on, you're right. But they got it right with regards to it being bio over something else don't you think?

[J.]

I personally think it's going to be chem or rad terrorism first, it's even easier and more likely as an improvised weapon. May not cause mass casualties but it will still be "WMD terrorism", no? We still ought to take measures to those more probable threats. And if we stop the terrorists in general through law enforcement and counterterrorism operations, I'll bet the threat of bio/nuke terrorism drops pretty dramatically without all these hysterics.

[Kilo]

""And as for our dangerous opponent... nimble?""

Yeah, you'd all remember when aQ tried to pull off a economic nuclear strike when they tried to drive some HE into a Saudi oil facility back in 2004.

Whereas in 2007 when oil prices were skyrocketing and their plan could have rippled around the planet they tried to... what? Shoot some Jews somewhere? Yeah, master criminals with sophisticated planning coming out their arse. So adaptable to exploit such strategic weaknesses.