Terrorists likely to have been inspired by pandemic to launch biological attacks, leading chemical expert warns

Victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. Experts warn biological weapons could be just as devastating and perhaps easier to produce.  - Alaa Alyousef
Victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. Experts warn biological weapons could be just as devastating and perhaps easier to produce. - Alaa Alyousef

Terrorists are likely to have been inspired by the pandemic to launch biological attacks, the UK's leading expert on chemical and biological warfare has warned in a new paper.

The “devastating global impact” of Covid-19 will have been noticed by rogue states and terror organisations.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former head of Britain’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear regiment, has warned of the “very real possibility that in the future, bad actors will try to engineer, steal or obtain a highly transmissible and highly virulent virus and unleash it onto the world”.

In an article for the Combating Terrorism Centre in the US, Mr de Bretton-Gordon says advances in synthetic - or man-made -  biology have created tools that could be put to “malevolent use”.

“We should think of weaponised biology as no less of an existential threat to the planet than weaponised atomic science," he said.

“The fear and panic that even a medium-scale bioterror attack could create could have dangerous implications that may rival or even surpass the immediate loss of life.

"Toxic industrial chemicals like chlorine have been used for horrific effect in Syria and have kept Assad in power.  These readily available and unregulated toxic materials are cheap and plentiful and their effect will not have gone unnoticed by bad actors the world over."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson views a PCR diagnostics machine with biomedical scientist Jodie Owen, left, in a laboratory during a visit to the Public Health England site at Porton Down science park near Salisbury. Friday Nov 27, 2020. -  Adrian Dennis/POOL AFP
Prime Minister Boris Johnson views a PCR diagnostics machine with biomedical scientist Jodie Owen, left, in a laboratory during a visit to the Public Health England site at Porton Down science park near Salisbury. Friday Nov 27, 2020. - Adrian Dennis/POOL AFP

The capacity for extremely dangerous viruses to be engineered in laboratories, and the growth in research facilities, means the chances of theft or accidental loss has increased in recent years.

There are now around 50 Biosafety Level 4 facilities around the world, where the deadliest pathogens are stored and worked on.

Of greater concern are the thousands of Biosafety Level 3 labs, which handle deadly pathogens like Covid-19.

The number of people with access to potentially dangerous ‘dual use’ technology has greatly expanded making malevolent use of such technology ever more likely.

Tom Tugendhat, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: "this is something we need to think hard about and address".

"This is not a totally new type of warfare but there are new ways of doing it, new signatures to diseases and cultures that can be used against us."

In August scientists at the US Military Academy at West Point warned that the reducing cost of engineering viruses has “placed the ability to recreate some of the deadliest infectious diseases known well within the grasp of the state-sponsored terrorist and the talented non-state actor".

Speaking to the Telegraph, Mr de Bretton-Gordon said: “Everybody is fixated on the here and now but we can’t have this happening every ten years and we can’t allow bad actors to have an impact on us.

“We must do something about it, now people realise it’s a problem.”

The expert on chemical and biological warfare says biosecurity has been “the poor relation of other securities” because policymakers and analysts have failed to grasp how devastating highly transmissible viruses in the interconnected world could be.

A sign in Polish and German warns visitors entering the Polish city of Zgorzelec from the German city of Goerlitz that face masks must be worn in all public areas in Poland due to the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. Goerlitz, Germany. Nov 26, 2020. - JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP
A sign in Polish and German warns visitors entering the Polish city of Zgorzelec from the German city of Goerlitz that face masks must be worn in all public areas in Poland due to the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. Goerlitz, Germany. Nov 26, 2020. - JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP

The government’s 2015 National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies said the absence of early or effective interventions to deal with a pandemic would lead to: ‘significant social and economic disruption, significant threats to the continuity of essential services, lower production levels, and shortages and distribution difficulties.’

Such warnings were ignored, Mr de Bretton-Gordon says.

“The current pandemic has exposed the weakness, lack of preparedness, and poor responsiveness of healthcare systems of even highly developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom,” he said.

The stark warning has been reiterated to Boris Johnson and the incoming US administration of President-elect Joe Biden. The US Foreign Affairs Committee has seen a copy of the report.

The biological warfare expert is calling for the UN’s Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention to have an enforcement agency similar to that supporting the ban on chemical weapons.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the intergovernmental organisation and implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, based in The Hague, is regarded as the world’s top chemical weapons watchdog.

In April 2018 Dutch intelligence services foiled an alleged plot by Russian spies belonging to the GRU’s unit 26165 to hack the OPCW as it investigated the novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury the previous month.

Mr Tugendhat said the OPCW's attribution of Russia's responsibility for the Salisbury attack was "extremely important".

"It demonstrated countries around the world are willing to call this out and identify the culprits.

"The fact the international community not only acted on that but then also expelled Russian diplomats...was a very clear demonstration of intent and willingness to act."

BIOLOGICAL SAFETY LEVELS

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services there are four biosafety levels, from BSL-1 (lowest) to BSL-4 (highest).

BSL-1 laboratories are used to study infectious agents or toxins not known to consistently cause disease in healthy adults.

BSL-2 facilities are used to study moderate-risk infectious agents or toxins that pose a risk if accidentally inhaled, swallowed, or exposed to the skin. 

BSL-3 laboratories study infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infection through inhalation exposure.

BSL-4 laboratories study infectious agents or toxins that pose a high risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease for which no vaccine or therapy is available.