Even major global powers won’t use hsr, China is failing
Terrorists cant access or disperse material
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- No impact to bioweapons --- they’re too hard to deploy and countermeasures solve
- For the most destructive results, biological weapons need to be dis persed in very low-altitude aerosol clouds.
- Explosive methods of dispersion may destroy the organisms
- After assessing
- The risk is zero – terrorists won’t use – bioweapons too undependable, too difficult to make Zalman
- Too many barriers to biological or chemical terrorism Parachini 1
- When it comes to the feasibility of biological terrorism perpetrated by subnational groups and individuals, the range of capability
Terrorists cant access or disperse material Global Security Newswire 2008 [December 11, http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20081211_8851.php] Even as the United States spends billions of dollars on biological defense initiatives, experts continue to debate the likelihood that terrorists could pull off a major attack using smallpox or another disease agent, ProPublica reported Friday (see GSN, May 20). "I think in the palace of truth, the scientific community will tell you that the threat of the development of a (terrorist) biological weapon was vastly overblown," said Brian Finlay, an analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said in an interview. Still, "the threat of a successful dissemination of a dangerous pathogen has consequences that are potentially so excessively catastrophic that not investing resources to prevent even a remote chance of this occurrence would be an egregious abrogation of our government's responsibility to protect Americans," he added. Significant concerns about bioterrorism first arose in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with experts warning that personnel or pathogens from the Cold War superpower might end up in the hands of rogue nations or extremist groups. Tabletop exercises in 2001 and 2005 portrayed the potentially devastating impact of smallpox attacks on the United States (see related GSN story, today). "The most striking response from the participants in both exercises was that for the most part, they had no idea that something like this was possible," said Tara O'Toole, now head of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity, who helped organize the war games, Dark Winter and Atlantic Storm. However, University of Maryland WMD expert Milton Leitenberg expressed strong skepticism that terrorists could seize smallpox from a biological defense laboratory and then successfully reproduce and disperse the material. "The assumptions that were given [in the exercises] for what the terrorists were capable of doing were completely artificial and fantastical," he said. Leitenberg said he uses information from government and private researchers and security analysts to determine the bioterrorism threat. To date, there are no indications that any group is moving toward a bioweapon capability, he said. No impact to bioweapons --- they’re too hard to deploy and countermeasures solve John Mueller, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ohio State, 2006, Overblown p. 20-22 / Properly developed and deployed, biological weapons could indeed, if thus far only in theory, kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps even mil lions of people. The discussion remains theoretical because biological weapons have scarcely ever been used. Belligerents have eschewed such weapons with good reason: they are extremely difficult to deploy and to control. Terrorist groups or rogue states may be able to solve such problems in the future with advances in technology and knowledge, but, notes scientist Russell Seitz, while bioterrorism may look easy on paper, ''the learning curve is lethally steep in practice." The record so far is unlikely to be very encouraging. For example, Japan reportedly infected wells in Manchuria and bombed several Chinese cities with plague-infested fleas before and during World War II. These ventures (by a state, not a terrorist group) may have killed thousands of Chinese, but they apparently also caused considerable unintended casualties among Japanese troops and seem to have had little military impact.20For the most destructive results, biological weapons need to be dis persed in very low-altitude aerosol clouds. Because aerosols do not appreciably settle, pathogens like anthrax (which is not easy to spread or catch and is not contagious) would probably have to be sprayed near nose level. Moreover, 90 percent of the microorganisms are likely to die during the process of aerosolization, and their effectiveness could be reduced still further by sunlight, smog, humidity, and temperature changes. Explosive methods of dispersion may destroy the organisms, and, except for anthrax spores, long-term storage of lethal organisms in bombs or warheads is difficult: even if refrigerated, most of the organ isms have a limited lifetime. The effects of such weapons can take days or weeks to have full effect, during which time they can be countered with medical and civil defense measures. And their impact is very diffi cult to predict; in combat situations they may spread back onto the attacker. In the judgment of two careful analysts, delivering microbes and toxins over a wide area in the form most suitable for inflicting mass casualties—as an aerosol that can be inhaled—-requires a delivery system whose development "would outstrip the technical capabilities of all but the most sophisticated terrorist." Even then effective dispersal could easily be disrupted by unfavorable environmental and meteoro logical conditions.21 After assessing, and stressing, the difficulties a nonstate entity would find in obtaining, handling, growing, storing, processing, and dispersing lethal pathogens effectively, biological weapons expert Milton Leiten-berg compares Ms conclusions with glib pronouncements in the press about how biological attacks can be pulled off by anyone with "a little training and a few glass jars," or how it would be "about as difficult as producing beer." He sardonically concludes, ''The less the commenta tor seems to know about biological warfare the easier he seems to think the task is.":: The risk is zero – terrorists won’t use – bioweapons too undependable, too difficult to make Zalman. Senior strategist Science Applications International Corporation 2k8 [Amy, “Bioterrorism threat is disputed” July 23rd, http://terrorism.about.com/b/2008/07/23/bioterror-threat-is-hotly-debated.htm] The more I looked into it, I thought, "Jeez, what are these guys talking about?" What are the odds that a terrorist group, no matter how well financed, would be able to create a bioterror weapon? I began looking into what it takes to really make a successful bioterrorism agent, and I just became very skeptical of this whole thing. The (United States ) military gave up bioweapons 30 years ago. They're too undependable; they're too hard to use; they're too hard to make. Then I started checking around, and I found there's a whole literature out there of people who've been screaming for years that this whole bioterrorism thing is really overblown; it's not practical; it's never going to work. Aum Shinrikyo couldn't get it to work; those guys put millions and millions of dollars into it. So you think of a bunch of guys sitting in a cave in Afghanistan — they're sure as hell not going to do it. Is any government going to do it? No. So that made me very skeptical, and I went back to Oxford and said, "This whole thing's a crock. Too many barriers to biological or chemical terrorism Parachini 1 (John, testimony, policy analyst, http://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/2005/CT183.pdf, dw: 10-12-2001, da: 7-9-2011) When it comes to the feasibility of using biological or chemical weapons, states are more likely to have the resources, technical capabilities, and organizational capacity to assemble the people, know-how, material, and equipment to produce such weapons and to be able to clandestinely deliver them to valued targets. Nonetheless, mustering the resources and capabilities to inflict a devastating blow with biological agents has proven to be a formidable task even for states. The United States and the former Soviet Union dedicated considerable national defense resources to their biological weapons programs, and both countries encountered significant difficulties along the way. Iraq also dedicated considerable resources to its biological weapons program; although Iraqs effort was more successful than most experts imagined possible, it still encountered a number of significant challenges. Some of these difficulties are unique and inevitable for state programs that aim to achieve a militarily significant capacity with military-grade agents. Lower standards of achievement are certainly possible. On balance, then, a state’s ability to command resources and organize them for certain priority scientific and industrial objectives presents the potential for the greatest threat of bioterrorism. When it comes to the feasibility of biological terrorism perpetrated by subnational groups and individuals, the range of capability (and level of consequence) depends on whether the groups or individuals are state-sponsored or not. Highconsequence biological attacks would require the assistance of a state sponsor or considerable resources. However, even these conditions do not ensure high-consequence attacks by sub-national groups or individuals. There are no widely agreed upon historical examples in the open source literature of states providing sub-national groups with biological weapons for overt or covert use. Money, arms, logistical support, training, and even training on how to operate in a chemically contaminated environment are all forms of assistance states have provided to terrorists. But historically they have not crossed the threshold and provided biological weapons materials to insurgency groups or terrorist organizations. Even if states sought to perpetrate biological attacks for their own purposes, they would probably not trust such an operation to groups or individuals that they do not completely control. 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