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I’m partway through listening to “Biological War” by Annie Jacobsen. So far I rate it very highly:
It’s 50% detailed scenarios on how bioweapons could be used in the modern world, 50% historical analysis of bioweapons
It’s extremely concrete and has plenty of technical details about what powerful bioweapons (and use thereof) would look like
It’s written in a very engaging style
Some nuggets so far
The USSR had an active bioweapons program devoted to developing novel pathogens that would kill large numbers of American citizens. First person accounts of former Soviet scietists indicate this had effectively unlimited budget and remit to command resources.
Terrorists have already used bioweapons at least once - shortly after 9/11, envelopes containing live anthrax were mailed to US senators and news agencies. This resulted in 22 cases and 5 deaths; to this day it’s not clear who perpetrated those events
The US scientist who invented genetic engineering didn’t think it was a big deal. Only later did colleagues convince him that this could cause a catastrophe
The USSR bioweapons program seems to have been started after the research was done in the west and then discussed publicly. In particular a Soviet scientist was deliberately sent to Cambridge to learn the microbiology techniques needed to do such genetic engineering; he then returned to the USSR to lead their bioweapons program
The USSR bioweapons program was very deliberately hidden. The Soviets went to extreme measures like disguising their facility as an insane asylum complete with actors who would pretend to be mad. This worked really well, nobody found out about this until much later when the lead Soviet scientist running their bioweapons program defected to the west