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#BiologicalWeapons #Epidemic #Preparedness #Cooperation #Plague Pneumonic plague in Russia exposes a world still dangerously divided thehill.com/homenews/6148864… [...] Without appropriate biosafety controls, hazardous research risks exposing lab workers and causing leaks that could trigger major outbreaks. Currently, there are no international systems aimed at regulating or inspecting facilities that undertake gain-of-function research, establishing mandatory biosafety standards for labs or monitoring AI capabilities that could enhance and weaponize existing pathogens or create new ones. The need for better global biosafety and biosecurity rules is clear. The state of biosecurity worldwide has always been fragile. Unlike its counterpart, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention is brief, weak and lacks a robust system of verification and enforcement. It is likely that 50 or more governments actively support dual-use research allowed under the treaty that could be adapted for prohibited purposes. [...]

#BiologicalWeapons #Plague #Russia #GainOfFunction This is an important element in the #Irkutsk plague outbreak. Quote: "Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute’s own research summary appears to describe deliberate virulence enhancement by serial passage." ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

#BioSecurity #GeneticEngineering #SyntheticBiology #ArtificialIntelligence This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature nytimes.com/2026/08/06/scien… For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens. Synthesizing viruses from scratch is hardly new. Researchers long ago learned how to manufacture viral genomes; they are used to investigate antiviral drugs and vaccines, as well as to learn how viruses work. But the new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, goes well beyond duplicating viral genes. Scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute, a research organization in Palo Alto, Calif., taught A.I. to recognize patterns of DNA structure in nature, and then to use that data to write recipes for entirely new viruses. [...]

#BiologicalWeapons #Threat #Epidemic No One Makes Good Policy Based on Worst Case Scenarios almauroni.substack.com/p/no-… [...] Let’s look closer at her op-ed, which focuses on efforts to prepare the United States from a biological attack. One of the most significant problems with the article (and her book) is that she does not differentiate between a biological weapon and a pandemic event. It doesn’t seem to matter to her. “The release, deliberate or accidental, of [a genetically modified] pathogen could trigger a global pandemic, mass death, widespread insurrection and ultimately societal breakdown.” The source does in fact matter if you want to prevent this event. More to the point, it’s far more probable that the United States will have to face the challenge of an endemic natural disease outbreak than a biological weapon incident or a genetically modified pathogen from a lab accident. It’s a mistake to deliberately take what’s possible and conflate that with acts that are plausible and suggest this will become a catastrophic event. Yet this is what people do when they use the term “biological threat.” [...]

#BiologicalWeapons #Investigation #UNSGM Report of a Workshop on Preparing for Biological Weapons Investigations in Non-Permissive Environments stimson.org/2026/report-of-a… The Stimson Center’s Mission Ready project, funded by the U.S. Department of State, aims to identify and recommend measures to address specific training and capability gaps facing the UN Secretary General’s Mechanism (UNSGM) in preparing for investigations of alleged use of biological weapons (BW) in non-permissive environments (NPE). The Stimson project team convened a workshop in December 2025, bringing together negotiators, planners, and practitioners with direct experience in missions deployed to NPEs to examine how such environments might shape future UNSGM investigations of alleged BW attacks. This report synthesizes the workshop’s principal insights and recommendations for strengthening UNSGM preparedness, effectiveness, and resilience in carrying out investigations in NPEs.

#Poisoning #Russia #UkraineRussiaWar Russian soldiers in Zaporizhzhya Oblast die en masse from poisoned alcohol english.nv.ua/nation/mass-de… In an intercepted conversation, two Russian soldiers discussed an observation post where many of their comrades, referred to as “200s” (killed in action), died from “blue” — a reference to toxic alcohol. One soldier recalled “a lot, a lot of 200s” at the site, while the other confirmed that eight to 10 bodies lay there, covered with sleeping bags but not evacuated for at least five or six days. [...]