The Paradox of Dual-Use Research in the 21st century

Predrag Bokšić | perceptron

A few days ago, I attended a short conference called Dangerous Liaisons held at the Biodesign Institute. Speakers included researchers in genetics and synthetic biology, the chains of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, the senior FBI agent for WMD threats, and a AAAS fellow in biosecurity. The subject of the talk was dual-use research, and how it can be controlled. The problem is that while genetics and synthetic biology offer tremendous benefits for health and new chemical products, at the same time these technologies might empower criminals and terrorists, or even lead to an accidental bio-disaster. How can we regulate dual-use technologies for the safety of mankind?

(As a historical aside, it's only recently that dual-use has taken on these negative connotations. Dual-use used to be good. "Oh, you mean we can use these rockets to kill commies and explore the solar system? Awesome!" But civilian technologies with clear military implications is relatively new phenomenon.)

The primary concern of all the presenters was that whatever form the regulations take, it not impede 'good science.' There were several good justifications for this: regulations that are too stringent will be disliked and evaded by the community, the science is advancing too quickly for central bodies to monitor and control, and impairing biology will both leave America at a disadvantage economically and in terms of responding to an actual incident.

The core problem of dual-use, as identified by NSABB, is research that might make biological agents more deadly or transmissible. Specific research projects include reconstituting the 1918 flu, or improving the deadliness of the mousepox virus, research which could be easily transferred to weaponizing smallpox. In the NSABBs view, the benefits of such research must be carefully balanced against the risks, and such weighing should be carried out at the most basic level, by researchers developing experiments and by existing Institutional Review Boards. The role of groups like NSABB is coordinate and develop guidelines.

NSABB's guidelines might help protect against the accidental release of bioweapon, but what about deliberate attackers? Much of the talk was focused around creating a "culture of security" in biology labs. Background checks to work with select agents may miss many danger signs, and with new techniques, even non-select organism might be dangerous. All presenters spoke about the need for scientists to be alert for dangers in the lab. Special Agent Edward You, in particular, described his job not as catching potential bioterrorists, but about creating a framework so that scientists know who to call at the FBI if they see something. A second side of the culture of security is getting private gene synthesis firms to check orders against known pathogen genomes, and not create smallpox genomes for example, something that firms have current volunteered to do.

On the one hand, this kind of voluntary regulation is the best, and maybe only workable option, on the other hand, I have real concerns about what it means for the actual day to day practice of lab work. Quite literally, it requires that PIs monitor their students, and make sure that they're not spies, terrorists, or psychopaths. Is this really a fair burden to place on scientists, or is it a rerun of the "Red Scare." One attendee asked quite penetrating questions about whether or not he should let Iranian PhD students work at his lab. The universality of science, the concept that a scientist should be judge by the merit of their ideas and not their personal background or place of origin, is not compatible with these kinds of concerns.

While private monitoring among firms is an option now, as the technology becomes cheaper and more widespread (and it will), how can the industry regulate itself against the existence of "grey hat", fly-by-night companies. I'm reminded of the situation with "Research Chemicals", synthetic hallucinogens which are structurally similar to banned substances, but not covered by law, and their production by various shady chemical firms. Particularly, the developing world, where intellectual property restrictions are routinely evade, may offer a fertile breeding group for these malefactors.

So, is there hope for the future? Dr. Kathleen Baily has stated that graduate students with $10,000 in equipment could synthesize substantial quantities of a biological agent. (Although it is worth noting that synthesizing an agent is not carrying out an attack. Many of the more difficult challenges in biological warfare involve distributing an agent, not producing it). Whatever the exact resources requuired, on the spectrum from "the Unabomber in his cabin" to "the Iranian nuclear program", bioterrorism trends towards the lower end. However, while terrorist groups including Al Queda have enthusiastically pursued bioweapons, biological and chemical attacks have so far been extremely dissapointed. The Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subways killed only 13 people, likely fewer than a conventional bomb. I agree with the presenters that the best defense against dual use research is ironically actively pursuing this kind of research, to develop counter-measures against an attack. Despite media hype, terrorists and lone wolves have been not shown even the minimal organization necessary to carry out a bioweapons attack. We can, at least for the moment, trust the biology community.

Democrats, Experts, and STS

Predrag Bokšić | perceptron

Governing is no easy task. While in some idealized, Athenian past, every decision required of the body politic might have drawn solely on common sense, these days every decision is intertwined with knowledge known only to specialists in the relevant field; it is locked behind walls of expertise. The body politic, if it is not to flail randomly in an insensate throes, must rely on the advice of experts. How then can rule by a small elite be reconciled with democracy?

The modern expert advisor is the spiritual descendant of Machiavelli. The brutally realist Italian revolutionized the Mirror for Princes genre, speaking directly in the vernacular, and cloaking his rhetoric in an objective "view from nowhere." To prove his credibility, Machiavelli erased himself, claiming merely to transmit the facts of history and psychology into applicable lessons on power. Early scientists, as exemplified by the British Royal Society of Boyle's era, used the same technique to 'merely transmit the facts of nature,' displaying for the public that which was self-evidently true.

The Machiavellian advisor works primarily at the point of power, at the person of the sovereign, but in a modern democracy, the sovereign is a fiction. The people rule, through their representatives. Though the relation of the people and their representatives is far from straightforward, (representatives speak for the people, make decisions for the people, and serve as targets of blame for the people, among their diverse function), a representative who strays too far from the desires of his or her constituents will soon fall. Therefore, expert advice applied at this level, once it departs from common knowledge, becomes useless. The experts and those who listen to them will be discarded at the first opportunity.

Instead, in a democracy, experts must also address the validity of their claims to the public. The end product of advice, and the advisory process itself, must appear credible. Science (roughly, the process of discovering facts about the natural world) in it's Enlightenment legacy, and the scientifically derived technologies around us, is one means of certifying the validity of expert claims, and representative decisions. Yet, because scientific claims speak to fundamental truths about the world, and can thereby override deliberation, astute politicians have learned to deploy counter-claims and counter-experts. Moreover, political figures has disseminated a narrative that discredits the ability of science to make any epistemically true and relevant claims about the world.

How then can scientists operate in a climate of such hostility? Dewey provides an model; by visualizing society as composed of a network of identities, with individuals belonging to multiple identities at once, he suggests that science can be democratized by tying as many people as possible to the "scientist" network. But what exactly is it that individuals should be educated in? There is no way for people to learn more than a scanty sampling of science. Rather, the chief science, the skill of kings, is learning to evaluate experts and their claims. There are universal patterns to how expert knowledge is created, and the vitamin that the body politic needs today is not more public scientific knowledge, but more public science, technology, and society scholarship.

Lunch with Sheila Jasanoff

Predrag Bokšić | perceptron

Sheila Jasanoff is one of my personal academic heroes*, so her visit to ASU last week was perhaps the highlight of the many lectures I've attended so far. I remember back when I was a sophomore, and Shelley Hurt handed us Designs on Nature and said something like “this is a difficult book, but this is a very important book, so pay attention!” Since then, Jasanoff has come up in nearly all of my ASU classes. Her many contributions to the field include a bunch of brilliant comparative studies on environmental and healthcare regulation in the US, UK, and EU. The idiom of co-production, which explains how “Orderings of nature and society reinforce each other, creating conditions of stability as well as change,” and her latest masterpiece, bio-constitutionality, which I won't even attempt to explain (wait for the book).

Along with a general lecture on bio-constitutionality, Jasanoff spent a lunch with a group of graduate students, with the goal of helping us become wise. She is simply an absolute joy to listen to, intelligent, precise, relevant. She hit us with three solid thesis topics in 15 minutes, which almost makes me wish I didn't have mine set, but onwards to the meat of the issue.

Jasanoff covered several topics of interest to STS practitioners, how to use theoretical paradigms, comparative studies, and the like. STS is a diverse field, but it shares the common question, “What difference does it make that science and technology are forces in our society?” Methodologically, you can attempt to bash everything into a theory, which leads to rigid, wooden papers, or do pure ethnography, where you go in with no preconceptions, take notes on everything, and hope that at the end of the day, something interesting emerges. Realistically, you need some conceptual guideposts, the challenge is to pick ones that help problematize and explore your research question.

A second topic was how graduate students can change the world. Jasanoff explicitly discourages trying to be policy relevant, or an intellectual who changes the world. If you want to change the world, go do it! Be a politician, or an engineer, and make things, don't be a critic or adviser and try and sidle towards influence that way. One person asked about policy relevance, which Jasanoff is also not a big fan of. Being policy relevant means chasing the headlines, trying to use scholarship to beat professional spin-doctors and lobbyists, and that's a race a good scholar will never win. At best, you'll become captured by the kinds of people who control Washington DC, and who wants to work for them? What we should do, “If you succeed in crafting a voice, and talking about interesting things, the right people will find you.”

I asked about my perennial hobby-horse, the lack of conservative scientists, and conversely, the lack of credibility that science has for conservatives. While there is some truth to the idea that scientists like big government because it pays for their labs, that model is overly simplistic. Rather, in her view, scientists have become arrogant, and have failed to justify their support to the public. (True, Science the Endless Frontier is still the primary justification for federal R&D, and it's 60 years old) Scientists shouldn't discredit Palin et al, rather they must be humble, must empathize and understand why arguments about big government encroachment are effective in these situations. Theories of public irrationality are profoundly anti-democratic; it's anthropologists hunting for fuzzy-wuzzies in their backyard. Scientists have effectively abrogated a public position, with disastrous results. “The Enlightenment was not a historical event. It is a process, a mission, a continuous duty to explain yourself.”

*for the record, Sheila Jasanoff is my role model, Bruce Sterling is my guru, and Robert McNamara is my idol.

Serious Games

Predrag Boksic | perceptron

Games have been on my mind more than usual lately, both because of Jane McGonigal's new book Reality is Broken, and Bruce Sterling's review of The Art of Game Design. Games are fascinating because players perform pointless tasks that under any other circumstances would be considered work, and master arcane skills, all in the name of fun. If the energy put into playing games could be harnessed to external reality, whether economic or political, it'd be like building a social perpetual motion machine.

At the Prevail Project, we've been throwing around a few ideas for games. Games are undoubtedly educational, every game must at least teach players how to play the game. The military is investing heavily in games, and in fact, through Axis & Allies and Dungeons & Dragons, many modern games are able to trace their ancestry to Kriegspiel, the war game of the Prussian General Staff. The experiences of games can be immersive, epic, transformative. But aside from warfare, educational games exist in a ghetto of boring vocabulary flashcards and math drills. How can we use games to tell people stories about the world in a way that translates into becoming better citizens? Fate of the World is one such game, where players must solve global crises, learning about energy, climate change, and balancing political constituencies.

Another side of games is socialization. The typical charge leveled against gaming is that it's an anti-social activity that takes a person out of their community. McGonigal presents research saying that gamers are more cooperative that the average person, and that games provide a social space that introverts feel comfortable in. Schell in The Art of Game Design has an interesting anecdote about designing an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Game) for Disney where the mechanics encouraged cooperation and politeness, leading to a better player culture. Multiplayer gaming with people you know can be a great way to bond. The question is how to make the social aspect of games more real, and not 'thin' connections that draw a player away from the real world.

The last area of games that we're interested in, and on which relatively little research has been done, is the use of games to help collective decision-making. If I may get theoretical, there are basically three ways we collectively make decisions. The first is democracy; we vote for some people on the promise that they'll do right by us. The second is expertise; we delegate questions to people who claim to know something, and do what they say. The third is economic; we pay people to do things we want, are rewarded for doing useful things in turn. All of these methods have problems. Democracies are slow to make and implement decisions (“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.”--Winston Churchill). It's hard to evaluate the advice of experts, and expert advice is rarely followed, and the economy is in thrall to next-quarter thinking, and many people find their jobs (if they're lucky enough to have a job) pointless and alienating. But maybe the principles of game design, experiences, flow, the right mixture of emotions and incentives, can be used to improve upon the money economy. If there was a platform for people to experiment with various forms of currency, reputation, and reward, then a diversity of options might help us discover a way to collectively make decisions that is effective, legitimate, and most of all, fun to participate in.