Biological Weapons and the Nuclear Posture Review

In January 2017 and again during his presidential campaign, then-Vice President Biden said that "I believethat the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack." The Biden Administration is now undertaking its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR),in which it is possible that the United States would, for the first time, formally adopt such a "sole purpose" or perhaps even "no first use" policy for its nuclear weapons. Yet some former government officials, as well as press accounts, have publicly reported that the possibility of a biological weapons attack that might cause casualties comparable to a nuclear attack prevented the adoption of a no-first-use or a sole-purpose policy in previous administrations' NPRs. Should that be the case again? I will present a technical and policy analysis of this question, concluding with a set of options informed by that analysis.

Christopher Chyba is professor of astrophysical sciences and international affairs at Princeton University,where he currently directs the Ph.D. program in security studies at the School of Public and International Affairs. As an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University before coming to Princeton, he co-directed the Center for International Security and Cooperation and held the Sagan Chair at the SETI Institute. He has been a Marshall Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow.

During President Clinton's first term, Mr. Chyba served on the staffs of the National Security Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, entering as a White House Fellow. He served for a decade as a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) from April 2009 through January 2017, on which he co-chaired the working groups on antibiotic resistance and on biodefense. He has served as a member of the external review committee for LLNL's Global Security Directorate. He served on the national security and foreign policy team for the Biden-Harris transition.