Twentieth-century nonproliferation meets twenty-first-century biotechnology

ABSTRACT This article explores emerging science and technology advances relevant to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), and existing and needed frameworks for their identification, risk assessment, and evaluation of benefit. Threats from biological weapons continue to be a major concern as state and non-state actors have developed, used, or expressed interest in these types of weapons. International nonproliferation instruments and related efforts in health security, specifically the 2005 International Health Regulations and the 2014 Global Health Security Agenda, recognize deliberate biological incidents as one of three threats to address (the others being natural and accidental biological events). To date, these instruments and their subsequent regional and national-level implementation efforts focus primarily on pathogens and toxins as biological threat agents. Unlike the other instruments, the BWC focuses on preventing the diversion of peaceful and prophylactic uses of biology to the development, production, stockpiling, or dissemination and delivery of biological weapons. Accordingly, the BWC recognizes the importance of scientific and technological advances in enabling different actors to develop or disseminate biological agents, altering the risk profile of deliberate biological threats. To identify and discuss advances that may affect implementation of the BWC, the US National Academy of Sciences and the BWC Implementation Support Unit conducted or sponsored several activities to explore science and technologies that may be most relevant to the BWC. However, the biotechnology landscape continues to change drastically, expanding the focus of security risks beyond pathogens and toxins to include other biological data and materials, such as synthetic organisms. Factors promoting the development of biotechnology capabilities include new funders and funding models, practitioners from other disciplines leveraging the tools of biology, new nations investing in the biological sciences, and research leveraging advances in engineering, computer, data, materials, physical, and chemical sciences. These advances may reveal new capabilities that significantly alter biological nonproliferation efforts, including both new security threats and benefits to society.