[Phillip Beall (W5EBC)]

All,

A few days ago I posted the Wall Street Journal article AI Chatbots Know How to Make Deadly Biological Weapons. Some Will Teach You.  That article examined how artificial intelligence may be lowering the technical barrier for people seeking to create biological weapons.

This Washington Post opinion piece by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen takes the discussion one disturbing step further:

The Only Plan After a Biological Attack Is Survival. That Means Devolution.

The previous article was largely about whether increasingly powerful technology could help someone create a catastrophic biological agent.  This one asks what happens if such an agent is actually released—whether deliberately, accidentally or by someone who has gained access to capabilities that were once limited to governments and highly trained specialists.

Jacobsen writes that the federal government has a continuity plan, I was previously ignorant of until reading this piece, known as Devolution.  Its purpose is to disperse designated leaders and transfer authority to protected locations so that lawful government can continue functioning after a catastrophic event.  It is essentially the civilian counterpart to military continuity planning.

That is prudent and necessary.  However, her larger and much more unsettling point is that preserving the government is not the same thing as saving the population.

According to the people Jacobsen interviewed, there may be no meaningful homeland defense against a sufficiently contagious, lethal and untreatable biological weapon.  Authorities could attempt to slow its spread, preserve essential functions and maintain some measure of lawful government—but millions of ordinary Americans could largely be left to survive through whatever preparation, resources and local support remained available to them.

That raises questions extending well beyond biological warfare.  How long would electricity, water, food distribution, medical care, cellular service and public order continue during a rapidly spreading national catastrophe?  How much useful information would reach rural communities?  How quickly would fear, misinformation and distrust overwhelm normal communications?

Those questions are relevant to amateur radio.  Radio cannot manufacture medicine, stop a pathogen or replace the healthcare system.  It can, however, provide a means of exchanging information when commercial communications are overloaded, disrupted or no longer functioning.  In a serious emergency, the ability to communicate locally and independently could become extremely valuable.

I do not post this to be sensational or to suggest that such an attack is imminent.  The article is an opinion piece, and some of the worst-case scenarios discussed are necessarily speculative.  Nevertheless, after reading it alongside the earlier report about AI-assisted biological-weapons research, I think the combined warning deserves serious consideration.

We spend enormous effort planning how the government will survive a catastrophe.  How much effort have we devoted to helping individual families and local communities survive one?

I would be interested in hearing what others think—both about the biological threat itself and about any realistic role amateur radio could play if normal communications and public services began to fail.

73

Phillip Beall (W5EBC)

[Keith Mumaw (KI5VNL)]

Phillip,

Thanks for this read!  This is actually something that came to light several years in some of my reading and I had forgotten about it.  In a sense, it is correct in the assumption that if “government is not preserved”, chaos will rule.  I can’t help but feel if folks would spend some time completing a few of the FEMA courses required by ARES, they might have a better understanding of what potentially lays ahead in our not to distant future.

Even though biological weapons have been outlawed for years, their creation has continued during that time.  Some can and do argue that “Covid” was a “test”, (and I agree) to see just how the world, not jut the US would react to such an outbreak.  I personally feel that this so called “pandemic” has awakened a vast number of people to the need for a more firm “state of readiness” in our lives.

If anyone is interested they can go to the following FEMA site and do some research:  https://www.in.gov/dhs/files/FEMA-Guide-Continuity-For-State-Local-Tribal-Territorial-Governments-July-2021.pdf

I have been involved in following this type of information since the early 90’s, and I have always tried to be prepared for possible events of any kind.

Again, thanks for putting light on this.

 

Keith ki5vnl

 

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