All language subtitles for Modern.Warfare.2.0.S01E04.The.Unseen.Fear.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

We'll learn that there is
really many, many ways in which

atomic science can be used
for the benefit of mankind.

These are the weapons
at the edge of acceptability.

When you're actually
in a fight for survival,

rules generally tend
to go out the window.

The fear of the weapon may
actually be more impactful

than the weapon itself.

In warfare's deadly arsenal,
chemical, biological,

and other poisonous agents are
the most controversial.

Though each plays a lethal
role, they can be loosely

categorized by what
they're composed of

and how they're deployed.

For as long as there have been
weapons, people have tried

to govern
their use and distribution.

Their implications of use
must be so devastating,

their reach so far ranging,
their implications of usage

so widespread that a group
of the good and the great

determined that
they must be outlawed.

If you look at the evolution
of conflict and warfare,

there's always been
this struggle and this question

of what's right,
what's not right,

what's just,
what's not just,

what's fair,
what's not fair.

in war and conflict.

That kind of sounds good
on paper, but when you're

actually in a fight
for survival, rules generally

tend to go out the window.

Chemical warfare
and biological warfare

are overlapping concepts.

Poisons are a pretty broad
category because almost

everything in nature
is a poison.

Think of this as three circles
that do actually all come

together in the middle.

Poisoning as a method of attack

tends to be focused
and targeted,

as opposed to chemical warfare,
which is,

by definition, indiscriminate,

and actually kind of goes
which way the wind flows.

Biological weapons is basically
the weaponization of natural

agents to cause infection,
like with viruses or bacteria.

Disease spreading agents
take advantage of the fact

that diseases can go from one
individual to the other

and spread more widely,
and therefore attack

or infect a number of people.

The classical biological
weapons are basically

pathogens, things that cause
disease in humans.

So we're talking about things
like bacteria, viruses.

Chemical weapons, in a way,
are as old as science itself.

They date back
at least 3,000 years.

The Persians used to burn
crystals of sulfur to poison

Roman legions,
but more elaborate chemical

weapons were mainly developed
during the Industrial Age.

The OPCW lists
five different types

of chemical weapon systems.

Blood agents,

blister agents,

choking agents,

nettle agents,

and finally, nerve agents.

Blood agents, those that are
absorbed by blood,

depriving vital organs
of getting oxygen.

Blister agents or chemical
compounds that cause severe

irritation in the skin or eyes,

resulting in blisters,
swelling, inflammation,

and leading to the destruction
of tissues.

Choking agents, so chemicals
that cause severe irritation

or swelling of the respiratory
tract, attacking the lung

tissue, causing pulmonary
edema, and basically just

impeding an individual's
ability to breathe.

Fourth, nettle agents,
all chemicals that corrode

the skin and other tissues
upon touch.

They cause intense itching

rashes and things like that,

And fifth and finally,
nerve agents,

organic gases
that affect the nervous system,

preventing it
from functioning properly,

Effective and time-tested,
poisons entered the modern age

with the introduction of mass
produced chemical weapons

during the War to End All Wars.

Within months of the outbreak
of the First World War,

the two belligerent parties
were stuck in a stalemate,

in long trench lines facing
each other in a seemingly

cold and unbreakable impasse.

It was this stalemate
that scientists

came up with a solution to,

the use of chemical agents

dispersed by wind or artillery

to render the adversary
incapacitated or dead.

Tear gas was first seen

at the Battle of Ypres in 1915.

This was a particularly
bloody battle.

But nobody really sat there
and thought through what are

the immediate second,
third order effects

of this battlefield, not only
on the troops and the soldiers,

but on the psyche, on society,
and on innocent bystanders.

It's this lack of ability
to control the secondary impact

of these weapon systems
that has led to the really

consensus efforts to ban them
on the battlefield.

For example,
today, particularly in France,

farmers occasionally find
varied mustard gas canisters.

When these canisters are dug
up, the gas inside them

is still potent.

It goes to show
that these weapons

remain dangerous
decades after their use.

Chemical weapons were
relatively easy

to develop and deploy.

Anyone with a dead pig
and a science lab could start

to develop chemical
and biological agents

that would have
a devastating impact,

or so the science promised.

Story of the Big Four
Geneva Conference.

Seen here arriving
to play their part

in the Geneva Conference.

We'll learn that there is
really many, many ways in which

atomic science can be used
for the benefit of mankind

instead of destruction.
Thank you very much.

The Geneva Protocol was
the first initiative to govern

the use of chemical
and biological weapons

in armed conflicts,

signed on the 17th
of June, 1925.

The Geneva Protocol is not
a very effective document.

It's-- it's pretty thin.
It's a couple of pages.

It's got very loose definitions.

It talks about asphyxiating
gases, and there's a lot

of ways that poisons work
besides asphyxiating.

So it's a technical document

drawn up
by nontechnical people,

so it's not very effective.

Chemical weapons didn't really
live up to expectations

in the First World War.

They really didn't lead to any
major victories on either side.

Somewhere upwards
of 90,000 soldiers

died from chemical
warfare exposure

in the First World War,
and it's really difficult

to point
to any particular battle

where chemical weapons
were truly decisive.

The other issue about chemical
and biological weapons

is they're quite difficult
to control.

Once released, if the wind
changes, the cloud of nerve

and biological agents could
blow back over your own troops.

It requires your own troops
working in that environment

to wear very restrictive

and difficult-to-operate-in
mop suits.

These chemical
and decontamination suits

require a huge amount of effort
and reduce the fighting

effectiveness of your
own soldiers.

There are other ways to achieve
your military objectives.

And one of the problems with
these type of weapons was

you had to store them and keep
them and transport them.

Nobody wanted these types
of weapons around.

Chemical and biological weapons
are just not an effective way

to kill people.

There are better,
cheaper, easier,

and more controllable ways
to do it.

That's simply why Western
powers and Western militaries

just don't like it.

Despite their limitations
and international efforts

to restrict their use,
chemical and biological weapons

never really went away.

In the 1920s and 1930s,
you see use of chemical weapons

in colonial wars.

First big example is what was
called the "Rift War."

Spain was using
aerial bombardment

to deliver chemical weapons

against Berber rebels
in what's now Northern Morocco.

Mussolini invaded Ethiopia,
which at the time

was called Abyssinia.

In the 1930s,
Japan invades China.

And there was a fair amount
of use of chemical weapons

by Japan against China.

And all these cases,

these are disproportionate uses

because one side is actually
poor and not technically

developed versus
an industrially developed,

you know, attacker.

The Japanese established
the infamous Unit 731 that

developed and tested biological
capabilities against their own

subjects in Chinese Manchuria.

Those weapons would later
be used in the battlefield,

including contaminating
the Horustein river

with typhoid fever and bombing
the city of Ningbo

with fleas carrying
bubonic plague.

When you look at those
examples, they're basically

examples of racist ideology,
because these chemical weapons

are used and framed at the time
in a way that sort of paints

the enemy as subhuman.

At the end of
the Second World War in Europe,

the Western Allies and
the Soviets basically stumbled

upon this nerve agent research
program that had been operated

in secrecy by the Nazis.

And it was a fundamental
technological shift in chemical

weapons because these were
far more effective weapons.

During the Cold War,
planning for the use

of chemical weapons
became popular

in some of our war plans.

It offered the ability
to deploy chemicals

where there was a key pass
through mountains

that could deny the enemy
access through it.

Or, if they were gonna travel
through it, they would have

to go to great pains
to prepare themselves to move

through a chemically
contaminated area.

Pressure against the use
of chemicals weapons

by western democracies,
continued to rise

during the latter half
of the century.

The fear of being disadvantaged
in chemical warfare was real

because the real-world impacts
could be so devastating.

Biochemical weapons also have
a fear factor, so to speak.

At times, the fear
of the weapon may actually

be more impactful
than the weapon itself.

The US used a lot of chemicals
in the Vietnam War,

used a lot of tear gas.

They used a lot of defoliants,
like Agent Orange.

You ended up
with many square miles

of South Vietnam
being totally defoliated.

The debate rages to this day
whether or not,

you know, basically
agricultural chemicals

that were available
off the shelf to

American farmers, whether you
really can call them

chemical weapons or not.

And then there were
a series of incidents.

There was this thing called
the "Skull Valley incident."

The US was testing
a chemical agent called VX,

a nerve agent,

and got the weather data
all wrong,

and the VX went the wrong way.

Poisoned and killed
thousands of sheep.

And there was a big cover up,
but then the cover up

was rumbled, and it became
a big embarrassment

for the US Army.

This incident was at a place

called Dugway Proving Ground
in Utah.

You had similar incidents
going on in the Soviet Union.

There was this thing called
the "White Sea incident,"

where basically the Volga River
got poisoned, and it was called

the White Sea as a nickname
because of all the dead fish

floating belly up in it.

The Soviet stuff had
a reputation of being

really dangerous.

These tragic incidents
and growing public condemnation

triggered a surprising turn
of events in the United States.

I have decided that the United
States of America will renounce

the use of any form
of deadly biological weapons

that either kill
or incapacitate.

Richard Nixon renounced
the use of biological weapons

for the United States.

Nixon renounced
the use of biological weapons.

The entire United States
offensive program

on biological warfare
came to a close,

Devoting efforts toward

saving life rather
than destroying life.

At this point in the story,
you get a really unusual hero,

Richard Nixon, of all people.

When he comes into office
in 1969, he actually energizes

this, this whole chemical,
biological arms control thing,

and gets the US
out of biological weapons.

And basically,
the chemical weapons stuff

was pretty much frozen in time.

And so it came to be that
the majority of chemical

and biological weapons shifted
from military development

into the security
and intelligence services,

the spy agencies,

for subterfuge,
for assassination,

for subversion.

Iraq has been accused
of massacring up to 4,000

Kurdish men, women, and children
with chemical weapons.

They would have been unaware

that the lethal gases
would penetrate.

That military concern
about the possible existence

of a new Soviet chemical weapon.

There were countless
heartbreaking sites which told

stories of how parents had
desperately tried to shelter

their young
from the invisible vapors.

One example of this goes back
to the assassination

of Bulgarian dissident
Georgi Markov in 1978.

On the 7th of September,
1978, Markov was heading

to work at the Bulgarian section
of the BBC.

While waiting for the bus,
Markov felt an acute pain

on his right thigh.

As he looked behind,
he saw a man who apologized

with a thick foreign accent
while picking up an umbrella

from the floor.

And then he crossed the road
and entered a taxi

that drove away.

While going to the restroom
at the BBC office,

Markov noticed a red pimple

had formed in the place
that he got stabbed

by the umbrella.

He would actually recall
this incident later

to his colleague, Theo Lirkov.

Later in the evening,
Georgi Markov developed

a high fever.

Concerned, he would go
to St James' Hospital,

where he ended up
being hospitalized.

His pulse was too rapid,

considering the low
blood pressure.

The wound on his thigh was
severely inflamed.

A lab test revealed a soaring
white blood cell count.

The following morning,
he started to vomit

and had difficulty speaking.

On the third day
in the hospital,

Markov was sweating and dizzy,

quite likely hallucinating,

probably due to a toxic
shock-like syndrome resulting

in a vascular collapse.

His white blood cell count
nearly tripled.

Later, his organs began to fail.

He stopped passing urine
and started to vomit blood.

His internal organs were
actually collapsing inside him.

It sounds like the plot
of a political thriller

from the Cold War era.

Bulgarian dissident
assassinated in London.

The murder of a Bulgarian
dissident, Georgi Markov.

Was the victim of the so-called
"poisoned umbrella murder."

Georgi Markov,
a leading Bulgarian dissident

who worked for the BBC's World
Service, died days after being

jabbed in the leg
by an umbrella.

It was the first major
assassination in the Cold War.

Detectives from Scotland Yard
have flown to Bulgaria

several times
to question witnesses.

The Bulgarians say
they'll bend their rules

and continue the investigation.
But who might have done it?

According to the autopsy
reports, Georgi Markov had

developed an edema
in his lungs, a fatty change

of the liver,
a hemorrhagic necrosis

of the small intestines,
and suffered hemorrhages

of the pancreas,
lymph node, and testicles.

And coroners would finally find
the cause of this.

They only really figured it out
at the autopsy

because they found a very small
pellet in his thigh.

And upon examination,
that small pellet contained

traces of a chemical called
ricin, which is a naturally

occurring toxin that is found
in castor beans.

Georgi Markov was assassinated
using

the Bulgarian umbrella,
as it is known, has a hidden

mechanism where a pallet
containing ricin is hidden.

This is being then injected
into the victim.

The Bulgarian umbrella was also
allegedly used in the failed

assassination attempt against
the Bulgarian dissident

journalist Vladimir Kostov
in the same year

on the Paris metro.

Kostov...

uh, survived,

and he survived because
the blood had clotted around

the small pellet, and I think
that kept a lot of the ricin

in the pellet.
So he only got sick.

He didn't actually die from it.

No one who saw Markov or Kostov
being hit by an umbrella

realized what had
exactly happened.

Back then, there were
no surveillance cameras.

It was much harder
to pinpoint the moment

the dose was delivered.

This gives a pretty good
window of opportunity

for the killer to flee.

Both assassination attempts are
believed to have been conducted

by the Bulgarian secret service
with assistance from the KGB.

Yet, till this day, no one
could identify who did it.

Ricin is not hard to make.

A good high school kid with
high school chemistry lab-type

equipment can make it
from castor beans.

And this puts it really
on the easy end of poisons,

but also because a very,
very small amount of it

is very deadly.

It wasn't a shot from a sniper.
It wasn't designed to terrify.

It wasn't designed to sow fear
in the public's imagination.

But then that would change
after the end of the Cold War,

when assassination was used
by the Russian state to sow fear

and to guarantee
the certainty of reprisal.

A former Russian agent dies
in London after lethal

radiation poisoning.

Died last night and this
morning the police moved in...

The health protection
agency confirmed today

that traces of radioactivity
were found.

Tissue damage characteristic
of radiation.

The question is,
"Where does it come from?"

There are very few labs
in the world that can do it.

We actually have evidence
that Russia has been creating

and stockpiling Novichok.

It was somebody's attempt
to send a spectacular message

to others.
Radioactivity fuels fear.

When the Cold War ended,

the use of these weapons
did not.

Only their purpose changed.

The goal wasn't just to kill
one dissident, but to send

a warning to all dissidents
through fear and intimidation.

In 1993, Vladimir Kaplun,

the director
of a packing company

was killed
by radioactive material,

probably cobalt 60
or cesium 137,

which was placed
in his chair.

A month after
his hospitalization,

the cause of his death,
radiation poisoning,

was found at the post mortem.

In 2004, Roman Tsepov,
a politically influential

Russian who provided security
to Vladimir Putin,

amongst others, fell sick
on the 11th of September 2004,

after a trip to Moscow.

He died 13 days later.

A post mortem investigation
found poisoning

by an unspecified
radioactive material.

A year before,
Yuri Shchekochikhin,

a Russian political journalist
known for writing on organized

crime and government
corruption, he was due to fly

to the US to meet with FBI
investigators, but he suddenly

fell ill and died.

His medical records were
never released.

And then in 2006,
Alexander Litvinenko,

a former Russian agent who fled
his native country to live

in London six years previously,
was suddenly hospitalized

and died soon after.

While on his deathbed,
he claimed his death was

the result of an assassination
ordered by Russian government

officials, the same punishment
he had publicly accused Putin

of metering out on others.

Litvinenko showed all signs
of radioactive poisoning.

But the thing the thing is,
there are three different

types of radiation--

alpha particles, beta radiation,
and gamma radiation.

And Geiger counters are much
better at detecting

beta and gamma radiation,
while alpha radiation

rarely shows up.

It seems that Litvinenko was
poisoned with a substance

emitting alpha radiation.

It's believed that he'd
ingested polonium 210

from a cup of tea.

Samples of the agents taken
from Litvinenko were sent

to the UK Atomic Weapons
Establishment at Aldermaston

in Berkshire.

The scientists detected
a substance whose alpha

particles matched an isotope
known as polonium 210.

Polonium 210 only comes

from this one
commercial facility,

and it's a very
short-lived substance.

The pathway to this goes
straight to Putin and the FSB.

So it's...
it's a clear fingerprint.

It's not trying to be secretive.

It's point is to scare anybody
else that might defect

from Putin's inner circle.

By this point,
Putin and the FSB made it clear

that dissidents were fair game.

This would become clear
to Sergei Skripal

some 12 years later.

The report of a male
and a female, gravely unwell.

...found unconscious
in a bench, being treated

for suspected exposure
to an unknown substance.

Novichoks are
particularly identifiable.

A new and deadly poison.

Their condition does
remain critical.

Detectives are focusing
on who was responsible.

Highly likely that
the Russian state was involved.

If you become a traitor,
you won't end good,

as Putin said.

Sergei Skripal is a former
Russian military intelligence

officer who was arrested
by the Russian FSB for acting

as a double agent for the UK's
intelligence agencies.

After a spy swap, he settled
in the UK in 2010.

But on the 4th of March 2018,
he and his daughter Yulia

were poisoned
with a Novichok nerve agent.

It showed that the Soviet Union
could reach its foes

anywhere at anytime.

The fact you could do this
in a very public place,

and your assailants could get
away without being caught,

is a very powerful
and useful attribute.

A nation state may not
even have to have

a working biological agent.

The fear of that, in itself,
is a weapon of terror.

But what happens when those
biological or chemical weapons

fall in the hands
of a bad actor,

whether it's a rogue state,

a rogue individual,
or a rogue organization?

The idea that using cheap
and readily available materials

to produce a biological
or chemical weapon has a unique

appeal for ground level
terrorist organizations.

The indirect evidence is simply
the fact that Iraq, of course,

was manufacturing
bacteriological weapons.

Arguing that it's time now
to take on not just

Osama bin Laden's network
and Afghanistan,

but also Saddam Hussein
and Iraq, suspected of being

the source and supplier
for chemical weapons.

I don't think that we can
really afford not to be

concerned about the prospects
that chemical or even

biological weapons might not
find their way into terrorist

attacks in the future.

The terrorist's job
is to strike terror.

Even a small amount of
biological or chemical agents

in their hands will get
the job done.

Body count is almost
beside the point.

One of the things that attracts
terror groups is that you could

smuggle a fairly small amount
of a biological agent

and create great devastation.

And even if the numbers
of people killed

aren't that great,

the fact that it was
used as a terror weapon

could cause mass panic.

The utility of biological
weapons is partly because

what they deliver is not death,
but fear, terror.

These are the main aspects,
the main objectives

of any ground level
terrorist organization.

The Japanese government has
called it

the indiscriminate
murder of innocent people.

At the height of the morning
rush hour,

more than 3,000
subway passengers were affected.

This was Shoko Asahara's
terrible handiwork,

unsuspecting commuters poisoned
by deadly sarin nerve gas.

Nausea, bleeding, headaches,

and a dimming of vision.

Probably the most notorious
chemical terrorist attack

worldwide was in 1995,

when members
of the Aum Shinrikyo sect

in Japan used
a sarin nerve agent to kill 12

and injure more than a thousand
on a Tokyo subway.

But even before that,
in Matsumoto, the Aum cult used

a converted refrigerator truck
to dispense sarin

and killed some people.

And it's not an incident a lot
of people talk about

because it wasn't really
figured out at the time.

But if you look at their overall

effort and infrastructure,
they had the chemical warfare

research effort
of a small country.

Al Qaeda have attempted
to acquire chemical weapons.

This was a car bomb.

The Americans have promised
a dossier of evidence

against Iraq.

Al Qaeda,
they were aggressively seeking

to acquire biological
or chemical weapons.

In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda
had multiple small centers

where they were trying
to perfect

chemical and biological weapons.

One of the tasks when we first
went into Afghanistan was

to try to find these centers
and go to them so we could

ascertain how developed
Al Qaeda's programs

for chemical and biological
weapons was.

Al Qaeda initiated chlorine
attacks in Iraq in 2007.

At the beginning, these attacks
were quite inefficient,

but from 2006 onwards,
there were a series of attacks,

several of which caused
injuries and even fatalities.

Most of those were done
by blowing up vehicles

with tanks of chlorine.

In the end, the fatalities were
mainly caused by the explosions

rather than the toxic
fumes themselves.

But still, these types
of attacks also caused fear

and panic in the country.

The thing is,
you don't necessarily need

a big organization or terrorist
group for biochemical attacks.

Sometimes, a lone wolf,
a single terrorist,

is all that is needed.

We are confident that Dr. Ivins

was the only person
responsible for these attacks.

Samples that we took
from Senator Daschle's office,

it is indeed anthrax.

We cultured it,
and what we found out about it,
it's sensitive...

I understand he was aiming
for the people in Congress,

but he affected a whole lot
of other people.

Prepared to indict him
on capital murder charges

and the deaths of five people
poisoned by the anthrax.

Here's the messed up thing.
I knew Bruce Ivins.

I didn't know him really well.
I met him several times.

I might be of a minority
opinion here.

I don't think he actually
wanted to see anybody dead.

'Cause, at the end of the day,
anthrax is a treatable thing.

I think he wanted the attention.

He wanted to be the guy to come
in and save the day

'cause he was working
on new treatments for anthrax

and new anthrax vaccines.

He had this sort of twisted
psychology going on,

and clearly a deep inner life
that the rest of us

didn't understand at the time.

Serious counterterrorism
professionals

talk about "lone wolves."

He was a lone wolf,
but also there's a concept

of the "insider threat,"

because he was
the great anthrax expert.

The good news is we don't
actually see a lot of chemical

and biological terrorism.

And there's a lot of good
reasons for that, actually.

One of those is that
the technology,

for the most part, you know,
plateaued a long time ago.

The main reason why chemical
weapons plateaued is because

there was a realization
of their terrible effects

that seemed disproportionate,

and also made a lot of people
ask for their ban,

and they were eventually banned.

Advances in medicine
and science have also helped

to counteract the effects
of chemical weapons,

thereby rendering them
less effective.

But also, the cost benefit
ratio doesn't quite work.

They are too costly

for the military benefit
they produce.

Have a look at the Aum cult.

They had a lot of technical
expertise, they had a lot

of scientists
and engineers who joined.

And they spent an awful lot
of money.

They built this chemical
weapons research program

that was roughly
equivalent in size

to what Tito-era
Yugoslavia had.

But combined, you add up all
the people that they killed

with the chemical weapons,
it's something under 30.

So they're spending more than
a million dollars per fatality.

That's not really a sustainable
burn rate for even

a well-funded non-state actor.

It's perverse to think
about the economics

of killing people,
but it is a factor.

To some, biological weapons
might be a better bargain than

chemical weapons, though there
are other costs to consider.

Biological weapons can be quite
effective, and they are

considerably cheaper to produce
than chemical weapons.

Some studies suggest that it
can be 600 times cheaper

to produce a biological agent
rather than a chemical weapon.

But biological agents are quite
fragile and are often easily

destroyed by heat, which means
that finding a good way

to distribute it is
relatively difficult.

And it's hard to make
a rational argument

economically that chemical
and biological weapons

are somehow...

a better use of money than,
you know, bombs and guns.

You can buy a lot of AK47s
for what it's going to take you

to make a teaspoon of sarin.

In most cases,
traditional ballistic weapons

deliver the biggest bang
for the buck, while chemical

or biological agents are better
as psychological weapons.

At least for now.

And only if everybody
plays by the rules.

If you're a commander,
considering the offensive use

of chemical weapons,

there's a lot of things
to consider.

One is the fact that they're
non directional, meaning

that they're just as effective
against your own troops

as they are against the enemy.

Let's say we plan to use them

to clear a forward position
in advance.

The first thing I'm gonna
have to do is put

all of my forces
in protective gear.

That's gonna
restrict our movement.

Then we're gonna have
to move through

the contaminated area.

Once we clear that, we have
to go through decontamination.

We have to stop our advance
for long periods of time.

On the modern battlefield,
speed and maneuverability

are keys to success.

The use of chemical weapons
detracts from that,

and it's not
an attractive choice

in today's modern warfare.

The treaties, the Hague
Convention, the Lieber Code,

the Geneva Conventions,
and its protocols haven't

stopped examples of war crimes
in recent histories.

There are rules and there are
norms, but whether a nation

state decides to follow those
rules and norms is up to them.

For example, you're not allowed
to speed on the highway,

but people are going 20, 30,
40 miles beyond the speed limit

all day long.
It's just a matter

of getting caught and what
are the consequences,

but if it's a fight
for survival,

it's either me or you,

do those rules and norms
and ethics go out the window,

and it really does just come
down to a fight for survival?

There are some countries that
still consider the use

of chemical weapons.

These are generally countries
that do don't have a high

regard for the survivability
and welfare

of their own militaries.

So they don't care
if they waste them all

in their use
of a chemical weapon.

Last Saturday, up to 75 people,

including young children,
were killed.

The international community has
failed desperately over this.

These children have been killed
yesterday in Istanbul.

The Syrian regime,
under the leadership

of President Bashar al-Assad,
are responsible

for this attack.

What is the world
doing about it?

The world's most heinous
weapons must never again be

used against the world's most
vulnerable people.

A perfect example of this
is the Syria conflict.

President Assad is basically
in a fight for his life

in a massive civil war
where their forces

are trying to oust him.

He believed that he was just
and needed to use chemicals

in the battlefield.

Regardless of treaties
or worldwide opinion,

biochemical weapons are here
to stay, and may even be

at the heart of a biochemical
arms race powered by AI.

We saw an AI that within six
hours created 40,000 new

chemical molecules,
each of which were more toxic

than those we had known so far.

That means that you
no longer need a PhD

in chemistry to create
a chemical weapon,

but more or less anyone
can do it with the help of AI.

There are still laboratories
around the world that store

the plague virus, for example.

So we know that research
is still being done.

Of course, primarily to find
antidotes, and to find ways

to counter these attacks
with such systems.

But it also means that further
development is possible.

Pathogens are messy
and difficult to control.

Now imagine if one could be
tailor-made to target

an ethnic group
or even an individual.

Provided you had an accurate
copy of the person's DNA

fingerprint, you could release
a weapon from thousands

of miles away, not just
over the horizon.

You could not worry
about spreading infection,

but you'd know that only one
person would be impacted.

You no longer
have the complications

and difficulties of targeting
surveillance and understanding

the battle space.

This could be the gold standard
of assassination.

The unintended consequences,
however, of this kind of action

would be incredible.

Think about not just
the applications of such

a force, but the irresponsible
actors using unaligned science

that get the sequence slightly
out of place.

It's about the spread of
a virus throughout a population

that potentially has
the ability to mutate.

The misunderstanding
of developers of these

capabilities adds huge danger
across populations.

When you're talking
about biological attacks

against critical infrastructure,

particularly food resources,
water, um...

or other parts of society,

what does that impact
do on the civilian population?

And what are the second,
third order effects of that?

And what are the long term
effects of that as well?

There's really no controlling
on who that attacks

or who that impairs
or who it harms or kills.

The impact of a biological
weapon on the food supply

could be catastrophic.

Imagine developing a biological
agent that would destroy

an essential crop
like rice or wheat.

Rice from India accounts
for 40% of the global supply,

or the wheat crops
in Northern America

supply a quarter
of the world's exports.

If these crops were to be
targeted by a biological

weapon, the impact
could be devastating.

So we really are
at the precipice

of a very slippery slope.

Once a biological weapon has
been invented and created

and put out there, what's
to stop a rogue element within

that nation, a rogue actor,
or a terrorist organization

getting their hands
on that weapon?

And what is it
that'll unleash

in terms of kind
of the horrors of the impact

on the civilian population
that's not in the fight?

The other thing that bothers me
is actually we live

in a very technological society.

We use a lot of chemicals
in commerce and industry.

Can you do chemical warfare
by proxy by bombing

somebody's chemical plant
or sabotaging it?

And actually, you can.

So...

It's not traditional chemical
warfare, but it's...

very much a possibility,
particularly when we start

seeing, you know,
this Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Both sides have got large
chemical factories,

and you know, use a lot
of chemicals in agriculture.

So, if you set fire to a large
factory complex,

it's making, actually quite
nasty chemicals

for legitimate use...

that's a problem.

What we know about what
the global superpowers

are thinking about
the next great global war

is that it won't be a use
of nuclear weapons,

electromagnetic pulses...

It won't be the use of chemical
and biological weapons

as their chosen ways
of fighting the next war.

But they do have strategies.

They do have an understanding
of potentially what they will

use as their next weapons
in the conflicts to come.

And what will the consequences
of this future be?

Whatever weapons they choose
must have

certainty, accuracy,
lethality, and deliverability.