The coronavirus pandemic has shown extremists how vulnerable modern societies are. Are we threatened by future attacks with artificially created pathogens, microorganisms and agents?
Bars and restaurants are open again. Most stores are busy, the number of cases is manageable and yet one question in particular is currently worrying doctors: Are we facing a major new wave of infections in the fall and winter, and if so, how dangerous will it be? An even more explosive topic is now being discussed in security circles: Could corona soon be followed by a man-made disaster? Could a state, an organization or a terrorist network deliberately trigger an epidemic with an exposed virus, manipulated microorganisms or other pathogens? “The Covid-19 crisis has shown that global epidemics can easily develop from small foci and how vulnerable modern societies are to viral infections and their potential for shocks,” says a recent paper by the Council of Europe’s Counter-Terrorism Committee in Strasbourg. UN Secretary-General António Guterres even sees bioterrorism as a potential threat to peace and international stability. The risk of attacks by bioterrorists has certainly increased in recent months, the Portuguese said in a Security Council video conference. “The weaknesses and lack of preparedness exposed by the coronavirus provide insights into what a bioterrorist attack could look like.” Guterres continued: “If non-state groups gain access to virulent strains, it could cause similar devastation to societies around the world as the coronavirus has now.”
A timely warning or exaggerated alarmism? According to Leyla Daskin from the Institute for Peacekeeping and Conflict Management at the National Defense Academy, the threat of bioterrorism should be taken seriously. “Incidents such as the anthrax attacks in the USA immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001 have shown that the psychological, social and political effects are far greater than those of ‘traditional’ terrorist attacks. The so-called ‘anthrax letters’ killed ‘only’ five people,” says Daskin, “but for weeks and months millions of people no longer dared to open their mail. Even comparatively small attacks with bioweapons have the potential to terrify entire societies and disrupt our daily lives.” Such an attack is currently most likely to come from terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State; IS has already distributed instructions on how to produce biological weapons on the internet in the past. It is also conceivable that extremists could get their hands on biological weapons via dark channels in government agencies and armed forces and use them. Following a veritable race between the major powers to develop even more destructive biological weapons during the Cold War, these have been officially banned since 1975, but some states – including North Korea, which is suspected of having done so – are said not to be adhering to the agreements.
Representatives of the Council of Europe are calling for more international cooperation and a joint monitoring system in order to prevent disclosure by potential black sheep and to be able to uncover suspicious cases quickly. The countries should also prepare themselves as well as possible for potential emergencies with practical exercises. Around 100 pathogens, toxins and biological agents are under observation which, according to experts, have properties that are of interest to the military and terrorists. Twelve of these, the so-called “dirty dozen”, are considered to be probable precursors for potential biological weapons: Bacteria such as the pathogens that cause plague and Q fever are among them, as are smallpox and Ebola viruses. “Against this background, we classify terrorism with weapons of mass destruction as a systemic risk, i.e. a risk that endangers Austria’s resilience. Systemic terrorism, especially in the form of bioterrorism, invalidates two basic assumptions of strategic security planning: warning times and probabilities of occurrence. Therefore, risks that were previously assumed to be hypothetical, with a low probability but high impact, so-called strategic shocks, must now be classified as relevant to planning,” says Daskin. For Martin Weiler, Head of Biology and Toxicology at the NBC Defense Center in Korneuburg, the greatest danger comes from biotoxins such as ricin, which also belongs to the “dirty dozen”. “These are toxins that are produced by organisms and are comparatively easy to manufacture.” Although they cannot be used to create weapons of mass destruction or trigger a pandemic with transmissible pathogens, attackers would still be guaranteed international attention. A foiled plan by Islamists from Cologne to use a “ricin bomb” in Germany two years ago made headlines around the world. It was no different in 1978 following the so-called umbrella attack, when the Bulgarian journalist and dissident Gergi Markov was attacked in the street in London by Bulgarian secret service agents with an umbrella whose tip had previously been prepared with a small ricin bullet.
But what about the risk of a large-scale terrorist attack with a new pathogen with great infectious and lethal potential? Could terrorists exploit the possibilities of modern genetic engineering and microbiology to construct a “new super virus” and deploy it globally? Martin Weiler sits at the conference table in a recreation room in the Dabsch barracks and ponders: “Theoretically, of course, it can’t be ruled out,” he says after a few seconds, “but it’s not likely. We are in the realm of absolutely cutting-edge research. It requires a lot of knowledge, an enormous amount of money, time and a highly professional infrastructure. So it’s not something that a group of terrorists could accomplish or implement themselves.” It is easier for terrorists to replicate and multiply existing microorganisms or to provide them with individual additional functions and modify them, for example to increase their health effects or make them easier to transmit. “The procedures required for this are standard in biotechnology, but this would also require a great deal of knowledge and expertise, which extremists will only rarely have access to. There is also the problem of effective dissemination, which is associated with many imponderables and difficulties in practice,” says Weiler. In addition, according to the expert, the question of meaning and purpose must always be asked in such a scenario: “In most cases, terrorist organizations want to attract as much attention as possible in as short a time as possible and be able to pin attacks as clearly as possible on their banner,” says Weiler. “This is comparatively easy to achieve with targeted attacks, but credibly claiming the global spread of a pathogen is something completely different.” Alternatively, extremists could also fall back on existing “bio-warfare agents”, which are available to everyone, easy to reproduce and can be used without great risk, says Weiler with a smile. What does he have in mind? “At first glance, harmless potato beetles are enough,” says the NBC defense expert. “Artificially multiplied and released en masse in a certain area, they can destroy the harvests of entire regions, endangering a country’s food supply, contributing to destabilization and causing massive economic and social upheaval.”
Once before, a state believed itself to be the victim of a Colorado potato beetle attack: when a mass outbreak of the pest occurred in the newly founded GDR in the early 1950s, state propaganda accused the USA of sabotage. In the media and on posters, a broad-based campaign was launched against the “American beetles”, the protection of the harvest became a matter of national security and tens of thousands of citizens had to collect the ravenous pests from the countryside. But the damage had already been done. However, internal documents from the GDR government proved that the enemy was not in the USA, but in their own country. The government had simply failed to prepare for the impending plague of bugs and had failed miserably to combat the voracious bioweapons.
