Improving intelligence and early warning on biosecurity threats

This article discusses how national security and law enforcement agencies can improve their early warning capabilities on biosecurity threats, particularly those that may emanate fromdual use bio-technologies. The complex and diverse nature of biosecurity threats presentsimilar challenges to those emerging from cyber'with law enforcement and nationalsecurity intelligence capabilities playing catch-up to understand, disrupt, and preventsuch emerging threats. Additionally, like cyber, biosecurity threats represent a wicked set of problems for intelligence where science, technology, and human factors intersectin ways still poorly understood and unknown. This raises a question for both heads of agencies and the analysts that work for them. How to best manage the dynamic andcomplex nature of evolving biosecurity threats? Also, how can intelligence analysts provideearly warning so that decision-makers can prevent or mitigate risks associated with them? The paper explores these issues in four sections: defining what is biosecurity, assessing the current threat environment, assessing the future threat environment, and finally how law enforcement and national security agencies can improve their strategic early warning practice to better disrupt, dismantle, and counter emerging biosecurity threats.