Evolution or Revolution in WMD Advances: Are We Ready?

By BG (Ret.) William King, Senior Fellow and Executive Advisor Booz Allen Hamilton Inc

The mission to counter threats posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has taken on renewed urgency due to the troubling developments in recent years that have contributed to a more volatile and complex threat landscape. There now exists an unprecedented range and mix of threats, including major conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear, space, and cyber threats and violent non-state actors. These developments have produced increased uncertainty and risk.

Russia and China are acquiring new advanced types of nuclear capabilities and giving those nuclear forces increased prominence in their plans and strategies. North Korea is developing and testing weapons and missiles that can deliver those weapons across continents, in defiance of international law and widespread condemnation. North Korea also continues to pursue chemical and biological weapons that could also be delivered by missile. And Iran, while it has paused its nuclear program for now, is believed to possess the capacity necessary to develop a nuclear weapon within one year.

Perhaps even more troubling is the rising WMD threat from non-state actors, such as violent extremist organizations (VEOs). The potential threat of non-state actors getting their hands on a nuclear weapon remains at the front of all of our minds. Nuclear terrorism is still a major threat in this century, and one we must work to mitigate at every opportunity.

The evolving tactics and operation strategies employed by terrorist organizations have compressed the time and space needed to plot and carry out attacks, further challenging traditional U.S. counter-terrorism approaches. Now they have become highly networked online, allowing them to spread propaganda worldwide, recruit online, evade detection by plotting in virtual safe havens, and crowd-source attacks. The result is that our interagency partners and allies have tracked a record number of terrorism cases. Certain WMDs, once viewed as out-of-reach for all but nation states, are now closer to being attained by non-state actors. Unfortunately, the WMD threat today is not strictly academic — chemical weapons have been employed repeatedly with devastating consequences by both state and non-state actors.

Further complicating the threat landscape is the fact that the know-how and materials needed to produce WMDs continue to proliferate, and commercial technologies that enable hostile actors to obtain and deploy these weapons continue to advance.

These troubling developments challenge traditional CWMD paradigms and test the ability of government organizations to keep peace. We talk about evolving threats and recent CBRNE/WMD incidents such as: North Korea’s use of binary VX in Malaysia; the Syrian and ISIS use of nerve agents in the Middle East; the Russian use of the Novichoks in UK; VEO development of toxins; Ebola on the African continent; the concerns over use of Pharmaceutical Based Agents like Pentenyls; and the concerns over Synthetic Biology and the potential re-emergence of Ancient Diseases i.e. the need for expansion of what BSL4 means.

There are tremendous positive potential opportunities with regards to synthetic biology advancements and the renewed interest and national-level encouragement in STEM learning. With this there come obvious concerns about how easy and cheap it has become to develop genuine intentional or accidental WMDs. What do you believe are some of the policies and control mechanisms that must be put in place to ensure we can minimize the potential for global destruction?

We are rethinking homeland security for a new age. We sometimes speak of the ‘home game’ and ‘away game’ in protecting our country, with the US’ DHS especially focused on the former. But the line is now blurred. The dangers we face are becoming more dispersed, and threat networks are proliferating across borders. The shifting landscape is challenging our security, so we need to move past traditional defense and non-defense thinking.

The abovementioned issues discussed are just ‘stray voltage’ and it is my intent to spark debate and discussion. To make you the reader uncomfortable and wanting to take action in order not to be the victim waiting to be attacked. We must stop simply just examining the problem and instead commit ourselves to doing something today, and again tomorrow, to be better prepared to respond to and defeat WMD threats.

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