Chris Chyba on biosecurity

by | Mar 19, 2007


Just back from a seminar on national security issues at Stanford University, where Chris Chyba gave an outstanding presentation on biosecurity. (Chyba’s nothing if not a polymath: as well as being one of the US’s top biosecurity experts, he used to be the Carl Sagan Chair of the SETI Institute‘s Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. There’s an interview with him on his work at SETI here.)

Chyba argues that the term “weapons of mass destruction” is more misleading than clarifying: the kinds of nonproliferation, deterrence and defence strategies needed against nuclear weapons, cyber threats and and biological weapons are entirely different in each. In fact, he says (in a 2005 presentation given at a Carnegie Endowment conference),

“…biological terrorism shares as many or more characteristics with cyberterrorism as with nuclear terrorism. And the trajectory of biotechnology is such that these similarities are only likely to grow—bio is moving closer to the “cyber” end of the continuum.”

See also a 2004 article in the IISS journal Survival here.

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


More from Global Dashboard

Let’s make climate a culture war!

Let’s make climate a culture war!

If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad?  No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...