Erratum on Obama Administration Gets an “A” for Enhancing Biosecurity
Having received an email from Katie Mounts at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation I realize that I have made, like, a bit of an error in my blog post on biosecurity below.
I had assumed that the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation response to the Congressional Commission on WMD threats, that I cited from in support of my thesis, was made by the State Department arms control and non-proliferation agency.
I had overlooked that the Centre is an NGO!!!!. I had written in my post that the Centre response was the Administration's response.
Still, I think my conclusion is accurate. Moving funds from Bioshield both during and after the swine flu outbreak is an implicit if not explicit admission by the Obama administration that the bioterrorist threat has been inflated.
So Obama should still get an "A" for moving funds from Bioshield to flu virus defence. That would be like Obama getting an "A" for space security if the White House were to transfer funds from missile defence to defending Earth from Near Earth Objects.
On the error, in my defence, there is an explanation. Whilst blogging I was listening to Aleksandar "Aca" Sisic, like, very loudly and this had affected my mental capacities. It did this to such an extent that I was not able to discern the difference between the Government and an NGO.
I admit, that's bad.
I promise not to do that again.
Obama Administration Gets an “A” for Enhancing Biosecurity
The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, a Congressional panel, has given the Obama administration an "F" for countering bioterrorism.
That means that the Obama administration gets an "A" for enhancing biosecurity.
According to the Commission, citied in the above linked report,
...The United States is seriously lacking in each of these vital capabilities," according to the report, which gives the federal government an F for acting on the commission's 2008 call to augment the nation's ability for rapid response to prevent biological attacks from inflicting mass casualties...
Earlier in the month the Obama administration moved a good chunk of funds from Project Bioshield, a project for countering bioterrorism, towards dealing with flu virus threats
...Roughly $609 million was shifted in this fiscal year from the Project Bioshield Special Reserve Fund, according to the Consolidated Appropriations Act. Lawmakers moved $304 million to the Health and Human Services Department's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and approved a White House request to transmit $305 million to an account within that department's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority...
A lot of nonproliferation and arms control experts protested loudly, naturally.
But as I have pointed out before the leading biosecurity threat comes from nature, not necessarily biological weapons and certainly not bioterrorism. Mitigating bioterrorism has been over resourced compared with flu virus defence. Crucial to this resource misallocation has been bioterrorism threat inflation. During the peak of the Swine Flu event the US was actually forced to transfer funds from Project Bioshield to the attack on Swine Flu.
That should tell us something about biosecurity and resource allocation.
In fact, take a look at the Obama administration response to the "F" from Congress
...Today the nongovernmental Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation released a five-page response to the commission's report card. The document says the bioterrorist threat "has been greatly exaggerated" and that such threats "need to be seen and addressed within a wider public health context" as just one of the many possible ways in which infectious agents might spread...
I say Obama, mate, well done! That's, like, telling it like it is.
Now, if he would just do the same for nuclear terrorism!!
Defending Humanity from Near Earth Objects
The Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board of the the US National Research Council has just released a most fascinating report on defending Earth from the impact of Near Earth Objects.
The prepublication of this report has been made available by National Academies Press.
When we think of biosecurity we tend to focus on biological weapons and bioterrorism and ignore such matters as influenza virus. A global pandemic is probably a greater biosecurity threat than either an attack on the US by a hostile state with biological warheads or a large-scale bioterrorist attack.
The report, Defending Planet Earth, should be do for space security what Swine Flu has done for biosecurity. What is more likely? A "space pearl harbour" or a large-scale impact by a Near Earth Object? When we talk about space security let us talk about defending the Earth from impacts. The report makes clear that more money and effort needs to be invested in order to defend the Earth from NEO impact.
Compare. More money has been poured, and will be poured, into other aspects of space security such as Ballistic Missile Defence and counterspace capabilities than NEO mitigation. That seems to be on a par with the biosecurity situation.
The report has some really interesting passages on using nuclear explosions to deal with the NEO threat. The report notes that currently nuclear explosions are really our only line of defence for catastrophic levels of risk associated with NEOs >500-1000m. However, there exists a "latency time" between the identification of a probable impact and the configuring of a nuclear interception device. One issue deals with the development of a fuze capable of dealing with the timing constraints involved in the spacecraft velocity, i.e. the delivery vehicle, near the NEO impact.
The report notes that pre-testing of these components can reduce the latency time by up to 100. Would this require an actual test explosion? A global test ban treaty would prevent this. Could this become an issue? How can it be handled whilst retaining the non-proliferation benefits of a CTBT?
The bigger problem, however, is with nuclear abolition. The report does mention the issue. With adequate warning a Manhattan Project like effort to rebuild sufficient nuclear weapons could be possible, but if we are worried about the latency time the report suggests that retaining some nuclear weapons, with adequate safeguards, might be necessary in order to protect humanity from mass extinction level impacts.
Let us think about our good friend the W76 warhead and Fogbank. According to a GAO report the US lost, then regained, the ability to manufacture Fogbank. If we go to zero nuclear weapons, that means we would not retain a weapons complex (assuming abolition includes no virtual or latent nuclear weapons complex). Perhaps the epistemic foundations needed to develop complex nuclear weapons would gradually erode, in which case we would have to partially re-invent the damn things again to save humanity.
When it comes to the debate on the abolition of nuclear weapons defending the Earth from NEO impact should be included. This should not be a controversial statement. I am just saying we should seriously think through the issues.
New Scientist has a useful summary of some of the main findings of the report. This summary focuses on the report's call for an international agency to deal with the NEO threat. Perhaps such an agency could also deal with some of the future potential policy issues, such as nuclear testing (if any) and nuclear abolition.
This is something, in all seriousness, nuclear policy wonks should sink their teeth into.
A New Intelligence Assessment on Iran’s Nuclear Program?
It would seem that the US IC is to change its assessment on Iran from the 2007 Iran NIE. The changed assessment, according to reports, is actually pretty nuanced
...The updated U.S. assessment is expected to make a distinction between the alleged studies, which Iran is believed to have pursued, and efforts to build a nuclear weapon, which it has not, two of the U.S. officials said...
This is an assessment that is in line with my own "minimal latency" hypothesis on Iran's nuclear program; that's still not in sync with, say, Israeli assessments. As the above cited official makes clear
..."Are they acting as if they would like to be in a position to do what the supreme leader orders if he gives the thumbs up at some point down the road? The answer to that is indisputably yes," the official said...
We must keep this nuance in mind when we start to read the dramatic headlines when the new NIE is released.
The relationship between this and the UD3 neutron trigger story is important. This assessment strongly suggests that the US IC finds that the documents that underlie this story are credible, which flatly contradicts the Porter thesis blogged on previously which comes from leaks from the US IC. Either Porter is (a) wrong or this new assessment is (b) politically motivated.
(b)Is possible because we know that Obama's political appointee's have been trashing the 2007 Iran NIE from the get-go, a campaign that they have recently intensified. Until very recently it was stated that the 2007 NIE still stands, so the UD3 neutron triggers and Fordow must have played huge roles in this changed assessment.
I simply am not in a position to assert which of (a) or (b) is correct. But, I can't help but think, that the story of the 2007 Iran NIE is not yet over and has to be properly written.
More revelations, I am sure, are yet to come.
Minimal latency, we might add, is a posture consistent with deterrence. It really isn't consistent with a hell bent drive to develop a strategic coercion capability so that Iran may extend Persian hegemony over the Persian Gulf, as many would have it.
That's another bit of nuance worth reflecting upon, in my opinion.
Obama’s Space Posture Review is Delayed
We know already that the Nuclear Posture Review has been delayed, likely to be completed in early March. Now the Space Posture Review is to be delayed as well, perhaps by up to a year according to DefenseNews.
The relationship between these delays and the QDR, which is what these posture reviews are supposed to feed into, is worth reflecting upon. According to DefenseNews
...Despite two of the three contributing analyses facing delays, the quadrennial review is slated to be completed on time. The Pentagon plans to deliver the QDR to Congress and publicly unveil it, along with the 2011 budget request and missile review, on Feb. 1...
The BMD review will, according to this report, be completed in sync with the QDR. As the recent Chinese BMD test demonstrated, there is overlap between BMD and space security. Could it be possible that the respective policies, i.e. nuclear and space, have been largely developed but that the delays are largely politically motivated? The more that needs to be done on both reviews the more impact that these reviews would have on the thrust of the QDR.
I'm thinking that perhaps the policies have been largely set already because, in going ahead with the February release of the QDR, it is generally understood that the two posture reviews won't radically change the conclusions of the QDR. A QDR subject to revision in two crucial strategic areas isn't much of a QDR.
But that's just a hunch. Surely the QDR will have something to say about nuclear and space security. Surely what it would say would not be open to repudiation by subsequent posture reviews.
By the way, according to a report in the neocon version of Pravda, i.e. The Weekly Standard, a former Bush era national security official has an interesting line on the Nuclear Posture Review
...About four months ago, the Guardian reportedthat Obama rejected an early draft of the NPR and told planners, in effect, not to show him another until it came back with a deployed warhead level of three figures; that is, take the arsenal down to fewer than 1,000 warheads...
...But I asked around and experts assured me that the report was not true; the real floor was going to be 1,500, a level most (but not all) nuclear professionals—uniformed and civilian—could live with....
If that is true we might be able to make two inferences. (1) That the arms control accord that is supposed to come after the one being framed now , which we are always told is due any day, won't cut beyond 1,500 without another major nuclear policy review. This goes against the standard position on these topics. (2) That the NPR won't necessarily lead to a change in guidance i.e. away from NSPD14.
We can only wait and see. Maybe at least this much (1,500) the QDR will tell. But if it does then drawing these reasonable implications would actually be telling us a lot about the final product.
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.