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“Current biological agents and rapidly advancing biotechnology underscore the diverse and dynamic nature of deliberate biological threats. Rapid advances in dual-use technology, including bioinformatics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and genomic editing, could enable development of novel biological threats.”
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, February 2024.
The United States and its allies and partners face a rapidly expanding array of biothreats, to include the potential employment of increasingly sophisticated and lethal biological weapons (BW). Given the potentially devastating costs of a major BW attack, deterring these types of attacks is simultaneously an urgent national security priority and also an increasingly challenging mission set. At present, however, the United States lacks a holistic BW deterrence strategy. The U.S. Government faces challenges in keeping pace with the growing capability requirements to deter these types of attacks; moreover, it has not fully promulgated, implemented, or communicated a whole-of-government deterrence strategy for current or emerging BW threats. This study was undertaken to examine current deterrence tools for BW, through original research, subject matter interviews, and the completion of two roundtable workshops held at National Defense University in the winter/spring of 2025.
This paper:
•Describes the Department of Defense’s (DoD) framework for, and present approach to, deterrence, to include the key components of an effective deterrence strategy.
•Discusses the history of the U.S. Government’s approach to BW deterrence.
•Describes ways and means associated with the current U.S. government approach to defending against biothreats.
•Identifies key challenges an effective U.S. BW deterrence strategy will need to address.
•Describes findings and discussions from two roundtables held with subject matter experts from across the Interagency and other stakeholders.
Implementing an effective deterrence strategy to address metastasizing biothreats will require a whole-of-government approach, to include the expertise and capabilities of the DoD’s U.S. Government Interagency partners. The DoD cannot deter BW threats acting alone. The DoD’s deterrence framework, however, provides a useful model for conducting a preliminary assessment of the U.S. Government’s present approach to deterring biothreats. In addition to potentially identifying possible seams and gaps within this approach, it can also help catalyze discussions and engagements across the U.S. Government aimed at improving and bolstering ways and means to realize a robust BW deterrence strategy.
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