I’m not sure what you mean by “groups/institutes” vs. “programs.” It’s not clear to me which is a subset of which.
It wasn’t clear to me that the OP was referring to the goal of achieving the same bioweapon potency by switching or escalating. Instead, it seemed like they were referring to a situation in which threat A had been countered and was no longer viable. In that situation, to have any threat at all, they can either “escalate” A to A’ or switch to some alternative B, which might less potent than A was prior to the countermeasure, but is still better than A now that it’s been countered.
In a case like this, the adversary will probably find it easier to switch to something else, unless the countermeasure is so broad that all presently-existing pathogens have been countered and they have no other options.
But I think this points not to a flaw in the OPs argument, but to a general need for greater precision in discussing these matters. Defining the adversary, their goals, their constraints, and the same characteristics for their opponents, would all make it much easier, though still difficult, to make any empirical guesses about what they’d do in response to a threat or countermeasure.
I’m not sure what you mean by “groups/institutes” vs. “programs.” It’s not clear to me which is a subset of which.
I was using “program” in the sense of the “Soviet bioweapons program” – a large government program spanning many different scientists at many different institutes. Hence the principal/agent problem gestured at by the OP.
In a case like this, the adversary will probably find it easier to switch to something else, unless the countermeasure is so broad that all presently-existing pathogens have been countered and they have no other options.
I disagree, for the reasons already stated.
But I think this points not to a flaw in the OPs argument, but to a general need for greater precision in discussing these matters. Defining the adversary, their goals, their constraints, and the same characteristics for their opponents, would all make it much easier, though still difficult, to make any empirical guesses about what they’d do in response to a threat or countermeasure.
I agree different types of adversary will likely differ on this sort of thing, but this particular part of the OP was fairly explicitly talking about the Soviet program and potential future programs like it. You disagreed with that part and made a strong and general statement (“Switching is almost certain to be much easier than escalating.”). I think this statement is both plausibly wrong for the scenario specified (Soviet-like programs) and too strong and general to apply across the space of other potential adversaries.
When we look at the Soviet BW program, they engaged in both “switching” (i.e. stockpiling lots of different agents) and “escalating,” (developing agents that were heat, cold, and antibiotics-resistant).
If the Soviets discovered that Americans had developed a new antibiotic against one of the bacterial agents in their stockpile, I agree that it would have been simpler to acquire that antibiotic and use it to select for a resistant strain in a dish. Antibiotics were hard to develop then, and remain difficult today.
Let’s say we’re in 2032 and a Soviet-style BW program was thinking about making a vaccine-resistant strain of Covid-19. This would have to be done with the fact in mind that their adversaries could rapidly make, manufacture, and update existing mRNA vaccines, and also had a portfolio of other vaccines against it. Any testing for the effectiveness of a vaccine and the infectiousness/deadliness of any novel would probably have to be done in animals in secret, providing limited information about its effectiveness as an agent against humans.
Depending on the threat level they were trying to achieve, it might be simpler to switch to a different virus that didn’t already have a robust vaccine-making infrastructure against it, or to a bacterial agent against which vaccines are far less prevalent and antibiotic development is still very slow.
So I agree that my original statement was too sweeping. But I also think that addressing this point at all requires quite a bit of specific context on the nature of the adversaries, and the level of defensive and offensive technologies and infrastructures.
I’m not sure what you mean by “groups/institutes” vs. “programs.” It’s not clear to me which is a subset of which.
It wasn’t clear to me that the OP was referring to the goal of achieving the same bioweapon potency by switching or escalating. Instead, it seemed like they were referring to a situation in which threat A had been countered and was no longer viable. In that situation, to have any threat at all, they can either “escalate” A to A’ or switch to some alternative B, which might less potent than A was prior to the countermeasure, but is still better than A now that it’s been countered.
In a case like this, the adversary will probably find it easier to switch to something else, unless the countermeasure is so broad that all presently-existing pathogens have been countered and they have no other options.
But I think this points not to a flaw in the OPs argument, but to a general need for greater precision in discussing these matters. Defining the adversary, their goals, their constraints, and the same characteristics for their opponents, would all make it much easier, though still difficult, to make any empirical guesses about what they’d do in response to a threat or countermeasure.
I was using “program” in the sense of the “Soviet bioweapons program” – a large government program spanning many different scientists at many different institutes. Hence the principal/agent problem gestured at by the OP.
I disagree, for the reasons already stated.
I agree different types of adversary will likely differ on this sort of thing, but this particular part of the OP was fairly explicitly talking about the Soviet program and potential future programs like it. You disagreed with that part and made a strong and general statement (“Switching is almost certain to be much easier than escalating.”). I think this statement is both plausibly wrong for the scenario specified (Soviet-like programs) and too strong and general to apply across the space of other potential adversaries.
Thanks for clarifying what you mean by “program.”
When we look at the Soviet BW program, they engaged in both “switching” (i.e. stockpiling lots of different agents) and “escalating,” (developing agents that were heat, cold, and antibiotics-resistant).
If the Soviets discovered that Americans had developed a new antibiotic against one of the bacterial agents in their stockpile, I agree that it would have been simpler to acquire that antibiotic and use it to select for a resistant strain in a dish. Antibiotics were hard to develop then, and remain difficult today.
Let’s say we’re in 2032 and a Soviet-style BW program was thinking about making a vaccine-resistant strain of Covid-19. This would have to be done with the fact in mind that their adversaries could rapidly make, manufacture, and update existing mRNA vaccines, and also had a portfolio of other vaccines against it. Any testing for the effectiveness of a vaccine and the infectiousness/deadliness of any novel would probably have to be done in animals in secret, providing limited information about its effectiveness as an agent against humans.
Depending on the threat level they were trying to achieve, it might be simpler to switch to a different virus that didn’t already have a robust vaccine-making infrastructure against it, or to a bacterial agent against which vaccines are far less prevalent and antibiotic development is still very slow.
So I agree that my original statement was too sweeping. But I also think that addressing this point at all requires quite a bit of specific context on the nature of the adversaries, and the level of defensive and offensive technologies and infrastructures.