The book The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History by Milton Leitenberg and Raymond A. Zilinskas is scheduled to be published on May 14, 2012 by Harvard University Press. This book describes and analyzes in detail the Soviet biological warfare (BW) program, from its inception in 1928 to likely termination in 1992. The two most vexing questions that the authors attempt to answer are; in the final analysis, what were the Soviet BW program’s accomplishments? Second, might Soviet accomplishments related to enhancing biological weaponry be made available to future national or terrorist BW programs? This presentation will explain why these questions are difficult to answer but nevertheless will propose answers to them. The authors have a basis for doing so because they have been able to collect and analyze information from primary resources in archives and special collections, as well as in the course of hundreds of hours spent on interviewing scientists who operated the Soviet BW program. During his presentation, Zilinskas will discuss tentative findings that encompass subjects such as whether the application of genetic engineering, which resulted in among other accomplishments the development of multiantibiotic resistant Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, and Yersinia pestis, actually resulted in improved weaponry and whether genetically engineered strains remain in Russian cell culture collections and from there might escape or be made available to those who seek to acquire biological weapons.

About the speaker: Raymond A. Zilinskas, formerly a clinical microbiologist, is the director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He is the editor of Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense (Lynne Rienner, 1999) and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense (Wiley, 2005). He received a PhD from the University of Southern California and a BA in Biology from the University of Stockholm.

Russia has had a long history of opposing US missile defense activities. Most recently, Russian concern focused on the alleged capability of the "third site" to intercept Russian ICBMs. The "third site" was a plan to place 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and a large X-band radar in the Czech Republic proposed by the Bush Administration prior to its cancellation in 2009 by the Obama Administration. Now this same Russian concern has arisen regarding phases III and IV of the Phased Adaptive Approach to European missile defense proposed by the Obama Administration. This talk will assess the extent to which Russian concerns are valid in military/technical terms.

Speaker Biography:

Dean Wilkening is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford. His major research interests include nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, bioterrorism, ballistic missile defense, and energy and security. His most recent research focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of ballistic missile defense deployments in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Europe. Prior work focused on the technical feasibility of boost-phase ballistic missile defense interceptors. His recent work on bioterrorism focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological attacks and the human effects of inhalation anthrax, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses. He has participated in, and briefed, several US National Academy of Science committees on biological terrorism and consults for several US national laboratories and government agencies.

Exponential advances in the life sciences, particularly in the realm of biotechnology, have been held to raise the classic concerns of "dual-use" research: the same technologies that propel scientific advances critical to human health, the environment and economic growth also could be misused to develop biological weapons, including for bioterrorism.  However, there is significant disagreement as to whether this depiction appropriately frames the nature of the problem.  Some scientists have characterized the prevailing policy discourse on the life sciences as the "half-pipe of doom," a bipolar approach that artificially disaggregates and decontextualizes the promise and peril of advances in the life sciences.  The panel will discuss proposals to address such concerns, focusing on whether the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers a transferable model of scientific and policy consensus-building for issues of safety and security of biotechnology.      

Stephen J. Stedman joined CISAC in 1997 as a senior research scholar, and was named a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC and professor of political science (by courtesy) in 2002. He served as the center's acting co-director for the 2002-2003 academic year. Currently he directs the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies at Stanford and CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. His current research addresses the future of international organizations and institutions, an area of study inspired by his recent work at the United Nations. In the fall of 2003 he was recruited to serve as the research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Upon completion of the panel's report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Annan asked Stedman to stay on at the U.N. as a special advisor with the rank of assistant secretary-general, to help gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. Following the U.N. world leaders' summit in September 2005, during which more than 175 heads of state agreed upon a global security agenda developed from the panel's work, Stedman returned to CISAC. Before coming to Stanford, Stedman was an associate professor of African studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on issues of peacekeeping in civil war, light weapons proliferation and conflict in Africa, and preventive diplomacy. In 2000 Scott Sagan and he founded the CISAC Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. Stedman received his PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1988.

Donald Kennedy is the editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a CESP senior fellow by courtesy. His present research program entails policy on such trans-boundary environmental problems as: major land-use changes; economically-driven alterations in agricultural practice; global climate change; and the development of regulatory policies.

Kennedy has served on the faculty of Stanford University from 1960 to the present. From 1980 to 1992 he served as President of Stanford University. He was Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration from 1977-79. Previously at Stanford, he was as director of the Program in Human Biology from 1973-1977 and chair of the Department of Biology from 1964-1972.

Kennedy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He served on the National Commission for Public Service and the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, and as a founding director of the Health Effects Institute. He currently serves as a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as co-chair of the National Academies' Project on Science, Technology and Law. Kennedy received AB and PhD degrees in biology from Harvard University.

Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist with the Stanford Department of Bioengineering. He was a junior fellow and later an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT prior to coming to Stanford in September 2008 as an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering. Endy's research focus is on synthetic biology. With researchers at MIT he works on the engineering of standardized biological components, devices, and parts, collectively known as "BioBricks." He is one of several founders of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and invented an abstraction hierarchy for integrated genetic systems. Endy is known for his opposition to limited ownership and supports free access to genetic information. He has been one of the early promoters of open-source biology, and helped to start the Biobricks Foundation, a non-profit supporting open-source biology.

Tarun Chhabra is a JD candidate and Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow at Harvard Law School, and a doctoral candidate in international relations at Oxford University.  Tarun previously worked in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and on the staff of Annan's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.  He also served as a consultant-advisor to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament initiatives. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) and received a Marshall Scholarship to study at Merton College, Oxford, where he earned a MPhil in international relations and was an instructor in international relations at Stanford House.  He holds a BA from Stanford University, where he worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project and was in the honors program at CISAC. Tarun is a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. He also is co-chair of Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and will lead the fifth assessment report on climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.  The author of more than 200 scientific publications, Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. Field’s work with models includes studies on the global distribution of carbon sources and sinks, and studies on environmental consequences of expanding biomass energy. Field has served on many national and international committees related to global ecology and climate change and was a coordinating lead author for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Field has testified before House and Senate committees and has appeared on media from NPR “Science Friday” to BBC “Your World Today”. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Field received his PhD from Stanford in 1981 and has been at the Carnegie Institution for Science since 1984.