Barriers to Bioweapons: The Challenges of Expertise and Organization for Weapons Development
Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley
In both the popular imagination and among lawmakers and national security experts, there exists the belief that with sufficient motivation and material resources, states or terrorist groups can produce bioweapons easily, cheaply, and successfully. In Barriers to Bioweapons, Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley challenges this perception by showing that bioweapons development is a difficult, protracted, and expensive endeavor, rarely achieving the expected results whatever the magnitude of investment. Her findings are based on extensive interviews she conducted with former U.S. and Soviet-era bioweapons scientists and on careful analysis of archival data and other historical documents related to various state and terrorist bioweapons programs.Bioweapons development relies on living organisms that are sensitive to their environment and handling conditions, and therefore behave unpredictably. These features place a greater premium on specialized knowledge. Ben Ouagrham-Gormley posits that lack of access to such intellectual capital constitutes the greatest barrier to the making of bioweapons. She integrates theories drawn from economics, the sociology of science, organization, and management with her empirical research. The resulting theoretical framework rests on the idea that the pace and success of a bioweapons development program can be measured by its ability to ensure the creation and transfer of scientific and technical knowledge. The specific organizational, managerial, social, political, and economic conditions necessary for success are difficult to achieve, particularly in covert programs where the need to prevent detection imposes managerial and organizational conditions that conflict with knowledge production.
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About Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley
Reviews for Barriers to Bioweapons: The Challenges of Expertise and Organization for Weapons Development
Neil Narang
Political Science Quarterly
Barriers to Bioweapons provides a clear and insightful examination of what is a highly technical and complex subject matter.... The book provides a useful template for analyzing and explaining the relative successes or failures of a number of potential large-scale scientific endeavors beyond the realm of Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is a must-read for nonproliferation experts and should be a standard text for understanding biological weapons development for some time to come.
David W. Kearn
Perspectives on Politics
Ben Ouagrham-Gormley's book is a fascinating study of the phenomenology of scientific knowledge, providing a compelling analysis of how knowledge is acquired, developed, transmitted, and, at the same time, diluted or lost as a result of organizational, social, economic, political, and ultimately very human factors that vary widely within countries and over time.
Janne Nolan
Nonproliferation Review
In Barriers to Bioweapons, Ben Ouagrham-Gormley similarly and persuasively argues that the challenges to producing biological weapons—whether by state or non-state actors—are considerable.... The book is an attempt to demonstrate in a rigorous manner that there are significant barriers to producing bioweapons. Given the recent controversy over the publication of several papers on H5N1 influenza research, this is a timely and welcome book that challenges prevailing notions about the ease of bioweapons development. Summing Up: Highly recommended.
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