The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is leading an interagency study at the behest of the Defense Department to examine the potential threat from synthetic biological agents, when these threats could materialize, and steps the government can take to defend against these threats, a department official said on Thursday.
“What we asked the academy to do is kind of separate the science fiction from reality and recognize what reality is today,” Arthur Hopkins, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs, told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. “And help us to understand the national security implications. What is the art of the possible in the near-term, in the mid-term, and the long-term, as well as to identify what can we do about it?”
Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.), said the threat of synthetic agents “Sounds like science fiction but it’s not. It’s here.”
In his prepared remarks Hopkins said that engineered biological threats coupled with advances in areas such improvised delivery systems, gene editing and unmanned aircraft systems “present potential new threats that the nation must anticipate and be prepared to counter.”
Hopkins also said that as the government explores ways to defend and protect against synthetic agents to has to be careful to not hinder the development and application of “peaceful” uses for the technology. He added in his statement that DoD’s own chemical and biological defense efforts include the use of synthetic biology in things such as development of the recombinant plague vaccine and to overcome antibiotic resistance.
There are three areas that DoD confronts any biological threat, Hopkins told the panel. These are detection, which involves technologies, protection, which usually comes down to “a mask, a suit and gloves,” and mitigation, which involves medical countermeasures.
Shari Durand, acting director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said that one of her agency’s top science and technology priorities in the area of chemical and biological threats is “finding an integrated early warning system and process…because finding what’s out there, knowing its coming, is critical.”
Hopkins said he isn’t aware of any imminent threats from synthetic agents but noted that the NAS study will help the department frame and get its arms around this issue. The interagency study will include DoD, and the Departments of Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, he said.