Advances in nanotechnology, genetics and nuclear isomers are permitting the production of a new generation of unconventional weapons. As one of the most rapidly moving areas of scientific research today, biotechnology presents the most immediate emerging threat for weapons development. The revolution in genetic modification (GM) techniques could create even deadlier strains of disease and provide cheaper methods of development, as well as blurring the dividing line between curing disease and causing it. Terrorists and nation-states with adequate biological expertise could capitalise on the GM revolution using minimal resources and equipment. Unscrupulous scientists lending or selling their services to terrorist groups could also exploit many advances taking place at medical and biological institutes as civilian research and development. An obvious conclusion is that smallpox, anthrax and other diseases are deadly enough without being modified. While smallpox itself is believed to kill 30 per cent of the people it infects, it is not likely to affect vaccinated populations; a GM smallpox virus, however, that cannot be countered by vaccination would doubtless be much more lethal. GM weapons are not new. The Soviet civilian biological warfare agency, Biopreparat, from 1973 experimented with various harmful and antidote-resistant organisms, including a combination of smallpox with Venezuelan equine encephalitis, known as ‘Veepox’. Russia also developed ‘Obolensk’ anthrax - a strain resistant to both vaccines and antibiotics.
