Transcripts For CSPAN2 Intelligence And National Security Co

[inaudible conversations] our second panel of the day will tackle the dangers of biotech, biological warfare agents and biotech innovation. Addressing these issues requires focused on both on the Intelligence Community but also development of national and international strategies, consensus on laws, standards and authorities. We have an Awesome Group to shed some light on these issues. Moderated by my good friend frank says no, George Washington university, dr. Charles, the honorable senator Joe Lieberman the we are thrilled to be able to get back on campus and doctor william roper. So over to you guys. Thank you, frank. [applause] good morning, everyone. We are delighted, i think we are to be here afterward the conversation such a delight but i think it will be. Its one that i i think were l looking forward to. I i thought maybe what would do before we actually dive into the topic itself is to connect each of you with the topic area and your areas of interest and focus. Charles, europe bio scientist what else can kills about what you do on a daily basis . Well, im a scientist who explain Scientific Concepts and technology to nonscientist. I dont actually practice sites in a lab anymore but i use my skills and background to write and communicate for the policymakers we need to provide about implications of those technologies. With a focus on National Security. My area is in bio weapons and my background is in microbiology. Senator lieberman, we all know you from your many incarnations, campaigns. But you had throughout your career a very serious focus on National Security, now, in fact, will talk about this, you are also focused on biological crimes and terrorism. Tell us more about that. Thanks, frank. Just thinking, charles said he was teaching science to nonscientist. When it went to college there was still a science requirement but they had a special chart science for nonscience majors. I did one of those, too. Its like physics for the intimidated. [laughing] i took a course, half the year was astronomy, half geology and, of course, we called it rocks and stars or stars and rocks. Anyway, so for the last three years ive been privileged to cochair with former homeland secure to secretary tom ridge. A Blue Ribbon Study Panel, bipartisan, bio defense. This was not created by executive or congressional branches of our government that sprang up because of concern individuals, particularly a think tank in town called the hudson institute. At a asked tom to chair it, and while i was happy to do because of involved in national and homeland security, i always avoid about the threat of both bioterrorist attacks but also the very related in some sense similar risk of Infectious Disease pandemics, which we probably wont talk much about today. So for the last three years weve done a series of reports and, unfortunately, the conclusion is that the threat of both bioterrorist attack and Infectious Disease epidemics is real and growing, at a government is not organized to protect us adequately from it. We will talk about all of that. I was trying to find the most interesting profile of you, and i think i did, from foxnews not too too long ago. Ropers resume reads like a character back story from the big bang theory. Graduate summa cum laude from georgia tech with a master degree in physics, a doctorate in mathematics at oxford, rhodes god, trivets color, president ial commendation for founding and directing a tutoring program the served 400 georgia schools, and he is a published poet and essayist come Second Degree black belt, tae kwon do and is performed in a chamber choir. [laughing] [applause] its interesting today the secretary defense tells the world what you do. For a long time the job i do in the Defense Department was not something we could talk about publicly. So ill be very interested to discuss that with you today, especially as it applies to biology. Its very interesting winter brought out from behind the door, and there is no paper trail about to unwind and get a news article that pulls together your 18yearold college of because are still is a description on the internet with your 38yearold modern still. Suffering much of frankenstein of the two worlds. My job and pentagon is very simple. Its to get the Department Ready for the next war. Theres been a lot of special efforts of the past decade to do with terrorism and thats not going away. We havent had a lot of thinking about how to get the military has been relatively predictable but unstoppable of the last 25 years, how to get get ready tol with modern competition, modern warfare. And bio continue that very strongly because it is a new kid on the block. It is not something that has been at this level of maturity with his level of investment from private sector for medical research that could create new Strategic Effects for Foreign Governments, Foreign Countries that dont have the same ethic standards that we have. My fear and bio is will be playing defense while the rest of the world may choose to play offense, and defense is always harder. Well have to start earlier. Lets dive in. The issue of the biothreat is really reflects a twosided coin. It in many cases is direct result of the opportunities, the breakthroughs that come from biotechnology and bio discovery. I just very quickly would like to ask each of you, when you think about biotechnology, where do you see the greatest breakthroughs . Before we go to the perils im just interested in what you see as the opportunity. I think speaking broadly, even look at the news and you see the headlines and whatnot, those approaches potential enable the creation of a lot of animal models to study diseases and pathogenesis in ways we couldnt do before because we had inadequate model systems. And those models come scientist need models to test hypotheses and basically discover, make new discoveries. Those models have been lacking. There were few but there were not as good but now with these tools we have the potential to really improve our ability to make the models and make the models faster. That will enable to experimentation to occur to build that knowledge in science that can be misused but can also be used for great things. Senator. Let me say a word about the two sides of the coin first. This is not new with human history. Weve got a long track record of people taking advances to improve the way to live and then using them for warfare or some other you can go back to the creation of fire which enable people to do a lot they couldnt do before but also enable them to hurt each other in different ways. You can take it right through todays headlines with the extraordinary growth of information, technology, social media. Now we find that hostile countries use facebook, twitter, et cetera to try to control our elections. Pretty amazing. And unnerving. So were dealing here with a problem that the human race has faced before. But as the answers have suggested, biotechnology evolution is moving not only to different areas but rapidly, incredibly rapidly. Also beginning to use information technology, cyberspace. So what are the really great potentials . Great potentials, in some ways you could say this is going to be the century of biotechnology, positively speaking. Things will happen as result of biothreat technology that will cure diseases that are shortening our lives, that will enable us to live better in many ways. Just a quick example of the Infectious Disease, a pandemic fear, you can imagine a case, you know, next year is the 100th anniversary of the influenza epidemic of 1918. Between 50100 Million People died in that epidemic, pandemic. And we were not anywhere near as globalized. So now biotechnology, just as was said through genomic sequencing, editing, et cetera, developments, you could step in quickly to try to figure out a medical countermeasure. Thats the bright side of what was quite bright. What excites me is anytime youve got to field that about overlapped before, thats exciting. Thats as exciting as as a refm to scientist that now has the government bureaucrat. I would lump to be at the intersection of biology, Computer Science which is what gene editing represents the upper lump to be at the intersection of analogy and designbased engineering which is what some of the, the recent nobel prize in chemistry is given for the ability to be able to image molecules at this of molecule level, the atomic level. That would be exciting to be a a researcher. You have people working together who havent worked together before. Biologists who dont understand Computer Science and compare scientist who dont understand biology. I think it will accelerate research. There would be greater leap ahead on scientific fronts. The scary site is we will be producing data, new results, new technologies, new findings at a rate of the policy and government wont be able to keep up with. It goes back to the early point of if we are primarily playing defense on this and the u. S. Will be, defense means well have to be better, faster, stronger than any Foreign Government that may be tempted to make modern biological weapons or future biological weapons the next class of strategic weapons. I worry because i find the u. S. Government is not good about recognizing a longterm trend or the slow ticking clocks are eventually going to go off and making sound investment overtime to get ahead of them. If we think about some of the bioTechnology Breakthroughs, we know they have led to vaccines, hundreds of them that have been developed or in development. Much more rapidly to the digitization of biology. I was talking with food expert who was talking with taking literally a gene from a a came, putting it into rice so that it needs less water. Logical. Humpy rice. Producing Technology Breakthroughs are more available to people saw this effort is going on. I want to ask as we turn to the threat side of this with the proliferation of these technologies and access to data and information around them, how much more vulnerable are we and to what . I can address one element of that in the sense that while technology is becoming more democratized or available, what you have to marry up with that is knowledgebased and skills it actually use to technology in a way you want to use it, to achieve some outcome. Scientists have the ability to troubleshoot problems with biology that arent just something you find on the internet. Theres certain knowledge that comes with being a scientist. It does temper which are synced a little bit but on the flipside, its true as this knowledge and approaches proliferate, that discoveries made in medicine could be picked up by a bio weapon youre in some dark corner order that we to do what . To do anything with a evident by the creativity of the individual who is applying to some and. What is a scenario . Theres of right of things to worry about. I think thats what its tough for us to pull the trigger on getting it started, is what is the top priority. I could imagine that actors in future think i would like to edit your gina. Not in with her do anything today but in a way that will let me commercial and acting the way that i want. Basically, a long ticking clock, a long fuse bit of tnt that i know will go off that would be a huge psychological impact. That would be a strategic class of weapon in my opinion. I worry about artificial biology. I worry about taking biological mechanisms that been involved for billions of years that are well adapted to live in a world around us and giving them features that would never are likely never happen unless we get in and influence and not being able to contain a potential like leak or contamination. The whole idea of how to do research will change when you start mixing the artificial and rita. Biological machines, thats [inaudible] thats where a lot of recent research go in and try to see the basic mechanical mechanisms that make molecules work. Thats what the recent nobel prize were given about. We are really where our counterparts worker were trying to find wheels and levers and pulleys but not at the stone level there were trying to find about the molecular or atomic level. Once were able to engineer those, maybe future militaries have huge components that you cant even see. So we are back to offense will always be easier than defense. So if thats a possibility, in the not too far future, then its an Strategic Investments picture were not caught offguard. Before we go on, senator, i want to come to you but your job is to imagine huger wars, right . When youre thinking about that what does it future war that you think about looks like . Let me play what a foreign country, not the u. S. Will do. I might decide as opposed to going into Nuclear Weapons which i i may decide are too difficult for me to make or too costly or that i dont have that Technical Research inhouse. I might decide to go down this biological path because it may be cheaper, faster. I could always couch it under the auspices of medical researc research. You are one step away from hurting yourself. I worry about that because its a kind of development that would be hard to put your finger on it and say that is surely for mal purposes because of the always be the flipside of, as the senator keyed up. I worry about back in the future. I the future where the significant human performance, and hence that which again we will have lots of ethical barriers in the u. S. But other countries wont. And how do with our operators, as also as they are, one of the great privileges his job is getting to work with our operators, and while i could work everyday despite all of the things i worry about, but i dont like the idea of them going against the deck that is continually stacked against them because of enhancements. I think those of the first areas that you will see people think of. The artificial biology and the biological machines will be a step beyond. That is me we shouldnt be worrying about them and investing to do with the consequences. Senator. Well, just to really, right now we have a pretty good reason to believe that our countrys that dont wish as well have biological warfare capacity. You could name the russians, the iranians, the north koreans, the syrians we know. So, so the short run danger here that we talked about in our own investigations is that, and nonstate actors who have been very clear, terrorists have been very clear they are working on biological warfare capacity, probably at a level that is relatively primitive compared to what we have just been talking about but still capable of doing a lot of damage and taking a while for us to detect. Beyond that, i was thinking as listening to my colleagues that i spent a fair amount of time on cyber to get at the last four or five years i was in the senate and what was clear to me was, no spies anybody in this room, we were way ahead in our offensive cyber capacity we were way behind in our defensive capacities. And i think thats where we are now in terms of the misuse of biotechnology. We still invest more in biotechnology and any country. Most of it from the private sector but a lot of it assisted by government. But we dont invest hardly anything in coordinated defense to the misuse of biotechnology, and obviously there are other countries including china, particularly both for commercial and potentially belligerent uses that are investing a lot of money in biotechnology. Let me ask you about something that was quite controversial and notable at the time, and this is a piece from the bulletin of the atomic scientists that i pulled this from people in the director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, about genetic editing. The headline here how genetic editing became a National Security threat. Director of National Intelligence jane clapper sent shock waves that a National Security secured with his assertion in his worldwide threat assessment testimony to the Senate Armed Services committee that genome editing has become a global danger. He went so far as to include it in the reports weapons of mass destruction section. He said since the discovery of double helix and all the rest, exceeding arguably any other technology in human history. Biotech is a weapon of mass destruction . I think the statement is leaning towards biological weapons or future biological weapons could become the next strategic classic weapon, the way when Nuclear Weapons were first made we realize these are very different than a conventional bomb. Whats different about them and what a think will be scared to think about policies and laws that govern them is that this s a strategic weapon that in many cases you could reverse the effect of, that you could pull the trigger and then unfolded trigger. I think on pole the trigger strategic weapons will have more likelihood of use. What are you talking about exactly. Was if you could edit the gino to putting things that are harmful for the person or people that are targeted, then in three you can and do those. Youve got the poison and the antidote. The way a Nuclear Weapon has no antidote once you pull the trigger, you have to do with the consequences and is consequences are dire. So its the scalability, that capability, its the reversible of the strategic effect i think will be very difficult and challenging for us here because it will feel like it has the effect of weapons that you cant take back but it will have that take back ability. That means well need to think hard about what that means for warfare, and we are, i could think hard about what it means a war to keep up with the site and to the point earlier, a lot of the Defense Department is well trained in things we built