Bioterrorism: Threat is underrated

"Now normally in the national security community, when people refer to long-term threats, they are talking about a couple of decades," Larsen explained. "But I'm only talking about a very short timeframe--2013 and beyond. That is because of the very rapid pace of change in the biotechnical revolution. What Nobel prize-winning microbiologists are working on today, graduate students will be working on in two years. There is an incredibly rapid pace of change, which means the threat is only going to worsen as we move forward."The caveat? Larsen confessed he could be wrong about the short-term threat. An attack could occur tomorrow, as the short-term threat is only sometimes overrated in his estimation. "But I'm completely confident when I say the long-term threat is frequently underrated. That's my big concern," Larsen elaborated. "We are way behind the power-curve right now with readiness to respond. With the rapid pace of change in the biotechnical revolution that is going to give more and more power and lethality and capability to a non-state actor seeking to launch an act of bioterrorism, we are going to get further and further behind that power curve unless proper priority and funding is put into biodefense."
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