By Frank L. Smith III
Biological guns have threatened U.S. nationwide protection considering that no less than international conflict II. traditionally, even if, the U.S. army has ignored learn, improvement, acquisition, and doctrine for biodefense. Following September eleven and the anthrax letters of 2001, the us all started spending billions of greenbacks consistent with yr on clinical countermeasures and organic detection platforms. yet such a lot of this investment now comes from the dep. of healthiness and Human providers instead of the dep. of protection. Why has the U.S. army missed biodefense and allowed civilian corporations to take the lead in protecting the rustic opposed to organic assaults? In American Biodefense, Frank L. Smith III addresses this confusing and mostly untold tale approximately technology, expertise, and nationwide security.
Smith argues that organizational frames and stereotypes have triggered either army forget and the increase of civilian biodefense. within the armed prone, influential principles approximately kinetic struggle have undermined security opposed to organic struggle. The impression of those rules on technological know-how and know-how demanding situations the normal knowledge that nationwide protection coverage is pushed through threats or bureaucratic pursuits. Given the guidelines at paintings contained in the U.S. army, Smith explains how the teachings realized from biodefense may also help remedy different very important difficulties that variety from radiation guns to cyber attacks.
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Additional resources for American Biodefense: How Dangerous Ideas about Biological Weapons Shape National Security
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99 These kinetic solutions were later incorporated into the Nike, Sentinel, and Safeguard missile defense systems. I will consider modern cyber security in the concluding chapter of this book. Given this historical context, however, the military’s use of computers appears evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and many of the problems that the armed services chose to solve using information technology support rather than refute my argument. It might also be argued that the kinetic frame is not uniquely American and that all militaries share these same assumptions and heuristics.
What determines the outcome of bureaucratic struggles between and inside military and civilian agencies? Since all of the players want the same resources, generic interests in funding and autonomy cannot explain the difference between winners and losers. This means that these questions cannot be answered by simply citing bureaucratic interests—at least not without also relying on other theories or tautological arguments. The tautological argument is that winners are those who won: an answer as accurate as it is useless.
On the other hand, “offensive possibilities should be known to the War Department. ”8 So one reason for giving the BW program to civilians was to assure the public that the military was not considering offensive applications, when, in fact, it was doing just that. Another important inconsistency seen here is the association between biological weapons and chemical warfare. This is a socially constructed relationship between very different threats, and it illustrates how the military understood—or more accurately, misunderstood—BW at an early stage.