Abstract
The pathogenicity, transmissibility, environmental stability, and potential for genetic manipulation make microbes hybrid threats that could blur the distinction between peace and war. These agents can fall below the detection, attribution, and response capabilities of a nation and seriously affect their health, trade, and security. A framework that could enhance horizon scanning regarding the potential risk of microbes used as hybrid threats requires not only accurately discriminating known and unknown pathogens but building novel scenarios to deploy mitigation strategies. This demands the transition of analyst-based biosurveillance tracking a narrow set of pathogens toward an autonomous biosurveillance enterprise capable of processing vast data streams beyond human cognitive capabilities. Autonomous surveillance systems must gather, integrate, analyze, and visualize billions of data points from different and unrelated sources. Machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms can contextualize capability information for different stakeholders at different levels of resolution: strategic and tactical. This document provides a discussion of the use of microorganisms as hybrid threats and considerations to quantitatively estimate their risk to ensure societal awareness, preparedness, mitigation, and resilience.
Highlights
Known and unknown transboundary infectious diseases that can affect humans, animals, and plants continue to emerge, reemerge, and persist in different locations worldwide [1, 2]
In addition to environmental factors, human activity contributes to the increasing emergence and reemergence of pathogenic microorganisms [8]
Travel and trade are associated with 61% of the infectious disease outbreaks, and public health system failure and sociodemographic factors are accountable for 21 and 18% of these incidents [1]
Summary
Known and unknown transboundary infectious diseases that can affect humans, animals, and plants continue to emerge, reemerge, and persist in different locations worldwide [1, 2]. Because hybrid threats aim to destabilize and undermine societies, microbes are ideal agents to be used within a range of modes for sabotaging and attacking soft targets such as public health systems, agricultural production, and the food supply. Counteracting these hybrid threats requires a highly adaptable and resilient response. Pathogens can be introduced in asymptomatic and diseased coldor warm-blooded species and plants as a threat multiplier to produce the loss of lives of humans, animals and crops, triggering food product shortfalls, travel and trade restrictions, price spikes, and market distortions These systemic failures can affect the capability of a nation and cause severe or catastrophic events [27]
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