When Treaties Work: The Biological Weapons Convention
2025 marks 50 years of the Biological Weapons Convention. Back in 1975, the treaty entered into force, and by banning biological weapons worldwide, it became the first global treaty to prohibit a particular weapon of war. The Biological Weapons Convention is widely adopted — 189 States Parties have pledged to never develop, produce, stockpile, or use biological weapons. And thankfully, these weapons have not featured much in modern conflict. But over the last 50 years, profound advances in the life sciences and bio research have emerged which, according to my guest today, pose a distinct challenge to this treaty.
Jaime Yassif is the Vice President for Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit global security organization focused on reducing nuclear, biological, and emerging technology threats. We kick off by discussing the history of this treaty, including why the time was right 50 years ago for it to come together. We spend most of our conversation, though, exploring the ways in which this treaty might be strengthened to adapt to a changing landscape of potential biological weapons risks today.
This episode is produced in partnership with Lex International Fund, a philanthropic initiative dedicated to strengthening international law to solve global challenges. It’s part of our ongoing series highlighting the real-world impact of treaties on state behavior, called “When Treaties Work.”
The episode is freely available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen below.
Transcript edited for clarity
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, Jaime, this year, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the Biological Weapons Convention. I’m interested in having you take me back 50 years and explain to me why it was that diplomats and policymakers decided to make this treaty happen in the first place.
Jaime Yassif:
If you go back to the late ‘60s when it was being negotiated, at the time, the only international legal agreement in place that governed biological weapons was the Geneva Protocol. In practice, it was basically a no first use agreement for chemical and biological weapons. It didn’t actually ban development or possession of biological weapons. And in the process of ratifying it, there were a number of amendments that were made that also opened the possibility that they could be used in retaliation. So that’s why I say it was a no first use agreement. So, the Geneva Protocol was important, but it was not sufficient and didn’t take us as far as we are today.
And, at the time, even though it was illegal to use a biological weapon, it was not illegal to have a bioweapons program. And at the time, both the United States and Russia had developed bio weapons programs that were significant. And so the U.S. shut down its program and dismantled the entire apparatus before it signed and ratified the treaty. But in the run up to that, there were significant programs. The other thing in terms of atmospherics at the time is that the NPT, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, had been completed in 1968. So, there was momentum around these kinds of international conversations.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Oh, that’s interesting to me because, say, unlike chemical weapons, biological weapons weren’t routinely used in combat, in warfare. And that’s why to me, it’s so interesting that this was like the first category of weapons to be entirely banned through a treaty. And your point about the NPT giving momentum to this kind of thinking about international treaties is interesting.
Jaime Yassif:
Even though the weapons hadn’t been used, the fact that there were two really large programs in the United States and Russia meant that these weapons did pose a significant threat, and those states were taking them seriously. They were investing significant resources in them. So it was an important moment in time.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
So, what does the treaty say and oblige of its signatories?
Jaime Yassif:
Yeah, it’s got ten core articles and a few more that sort of govern process and procedure. But the substance of it is governed by ten articles. And the most core provision is Article 1. And it basically, it’s a prohibition of development, production, stockpiling, or otherwise acquiring or retaining bioweapons. So, either the microbes or the biological agents or the delivery vehicles for disseminating them. And so that’s really the core of the BWC. Another piece that’s really important is Article 2. So, if a country has a bioweapons program or capabilities that are relevant to that, they need to destroy or divert to peaceful purposes any resources that are relevant to BW development prior to joining. They also have to, under Article 4, take national measures to implement the provisions of the BWC. And that’s important.
So, like a national government within their own borders has to have the legal authority to enforce the laws to make sure that everyone inside their country is complying. The national implementation is really important. And then Article 6, for example, gives countries the right to request that the UN Security Council investigate allegations of noncompliance. So those are examples of the kinds of articles within the core set of ten.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
So, in the last 50 years since this treaty entered into force, I mean, there hasn’t been the use of biological weapons in war. Like I said, there wasn’t previously, prior to it, major examples of it.
Jaime Yassif:
So, I don’t think everyone would necessarily agree with that.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Oh, explain.
Jaime Yassif:
I mean, it’s really unclear, but there have been times when there were allegations of bioweapons use sort of covertly in the context of conflict and proxy conflict, for example, in Southeast Asia. And there are unresolved open questions about whether that actually happened in practice. And it’s very controversial. But there have been allegations that bioweapons have been used and it has never been resolved. But it’s never been used overtly in conflict in the traditional sense that we understand, like conventional weapons or threatening to use, for example, nuclear weapons overtly.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
You know, over the last 50 years then, what would you say were the ways in which the Biological Weapons Convention shaped or impacted state behavior?
Jaime Yassif:
Well, so, first of all, the fact that the United States, as part of its decision to join the BWC, the fact that it abandoned its program and dismantled everything was really significant. And I think it set a very strong global norm against development and use. There is no nation state anywhere in the world at any point has said, “Yes, we have a bioweapons program and that’s legitimate.” No one does that. There certainly are allegations made by various states parties to the BWC that they believe that some countries are engaged in suspicious activities that make them believe that they might be in violation. The State Department, for example, publishes an annual assessment of who they’re most concerned about. Other countries have pointed the finger at a different set of nations that they’re concerned about.
So, there are suspicions, but in terms of the global norm is quite strong. And every nation around the world denies having biological weapons. And so that’s pretty significant because it’s definitely not true. If you look at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, for example, that is not a ban on an entire class of weapons. And there are states that have nuclear weapons and are not on a trajectory for getting rid of them anytime soon. And in fact, some countries are in fact increasing their number of nuclear weapons.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Why do you think that Norm has been so strong over the years?
Jaime Yassif:
So, my view is just so far, they’re just not considered to be weapons that are useful strategically or tactically for the most part, or at least for the most powerful nations in the world. They decide it’s not in their strategic or tactical interest to have these weapons. They’re not useful militarily. And they’d be better off if that was considered morally repugnant globally. And then they could stick to having conventional weapons and/or nuclear weapons if they have them, and helps maintain the sort of status quo. So, it’s a sort of like raw power kind of argument. And I think that that has a lot of explanatory power. There are other arguments I’ve heard that I think are salient as well, which is just there’s like the X factor. People just think that biological weapons are just disgusting and morally repugnant.
And the idea of doing something to a human body in a way that harms it, the way the biological weapons can, is just unacceptable from a moral perspective. And then that is a huge part of the norm. And it’s probably true that both play a factor, but I think reasonable people can disagree about what’s the decisive factor and why this norm, while not perfect, is mostly still standing.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
So, over the last 50 years, there has been, and it’s an understatement to say this just profound advances in biological sciences.
Jaime Yassif:
Absolutely.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
And really, frankly, the pace of these advances seem to be accelerating almost exponentially just over the last few years. Does this treaty have the ability to keep pace with these technological advances in the biological sciences? And what are some of the tech advances that potentially challenge this treaty?
Jaime Yassif:
It is true that there have been accelerating advances in the life sciences and in technological applications. And I do think it’s really straining governance in general at the national level. And also in the context of the BWC, it’s really hard to keep up. And I think, in particular, I’m hoping that the BWC will demonstrate resilience to it, but I think it’s under a lot of strain right now. And I think the main reason is because it has a what we call a consensus based decision making process, where basically all of the 189 states parties to the BWC need to be in 100% agreement to sort of make any decisions. And so anytime one country wants to say no, the whole thing falls apart. And so, it’s very hard to make progress.
But in terms of the kinds of things that have happened since the BWC entered into force in the 70s, there was establishment of confidence building measures where countries are politically obliged to share annual updates about the research and development activities that are underway within their borders to provide transparency and confidence. There have been a lot of discussions in recent years of trying to create a scientific and technical review mechanism as part of the BWC, precisely to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change and make sure that states parties have the information they need to make the right decisions.
But because of this consensus-based decision making process, even though there’s been strong support for it, they haven’t been able to make it a reality. They just haven’t been able to reach agreement. So that’s been really frustrating for many of us to watch. In terms of the technological changes that we’re seeing, basically, it’s just easier and easier to engineer living systems or synthesize them from scratch. And that includes like microbes, like viruses or bacteria. Those are very common kind of biological weapon that has existed in the past and could exist in the future. And with synthetic biology, which is this modern engineering approach to the life sciences, that’s getting easier and easier, and the scientific community can do more and more sophisticated manipulations of living systems for beneficial purposes.
But that’s deeply dual use and could be exploited. And that’s been going on for a long time. And now that pace of change is accelerating as the life sciences converge with artificial intelligence. And so, it’s just going even faster. So, the challenge is immense. It’s essential for the BWC to continue to be relevant. It has to become more agile and find ways to keep pace with these rapid advances so that it can be an effective tool for reducing biological risks and guarding against development and use of bioweapons.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
In your view today, 50 years after the advent of the BWC, what is the single key biological weapons risk in the world today?
Jaime Yassif:
So, I don’t know that there is one single bioweapons risk, and I think reasonable people could disagree about what the biggest risk is. When we talk about risk, we talk about it in multiple different ways. First of all, who are the actors that we’re most concerned about and when and what are the materials they can use in carrying out an attack? So, we’re concerned both about state and non-state actors because both could pose significant risks in terms of bioweapons development and use. They’re just like it works differently. States, certainly the ones that have the most resources, you can’t really constrain them with resource constraints or export controls. I think that’s really hard because bioscience is so deeply dual use and so broadly embedded in the bioeconomy.
And if you have the means to do so, you can do a lot of stuff domestically. And so, what’s really constraining states is just intent. Like, is it attractive to do this or not? Non-state actors are different. They have a different set of rationales for why they might want to explore, but you can constrain them with material means. In terms of the kinds of biological agents we could be concerned about, I mean, I worry the most about really catastrophic, high consequence events that could be on the scale of Covid or potentially orders of magnitude worse. And I think, as it becomes easier and easier to engineer living systems, those risks grow over time because we are broadening access to really powerful tools for engineering living systems and making it possible for more and more types of groups to do that and then raising the ceiling on possible harms, how severe it could be.
And artificial intelligence is just accelerating that. So, I want to stress that these like technological advances, of course, have tremendous upside potential for human health and vaccine development and bio-surveillance. And that’s really great and we want to support those advances. But at the same time, those capabilities do pose risks. And the risks are growing over time.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Well, what would be, for example, like a catastrophic event? And in what ways might a strengthened BWC help mitigate that risk?
Jaime Yassif:
In particular, I think the BWC has a really important role in shaping the intent of states and making the norm really strong and making the consequences of violation of the norm unacceptable to states parties. I think that that’s the number one role that the BWC should play to just really guard against the risk that states would develop bioweapons. And I think it’s got multiple pieces.
So, I think to make bioweapons unattractive to states, we both need enhanced transparency. So, to avoid the risk of misperceptions between BWC states parties about what their adversaries are up to, what are the capabilities that they have in the life sciences, and what are their intentions regarding those capabilities? Is it all for peaceful purposes, or is some of it being diverted for illicit activities? And so transparency can reduce the risk of misinformation or confusion, which could lead to arms racing dynamics. And also, if there is a country that’s engaged in illicit activities, it could make it a lot harder to hide it if it’s really done well. So, really robust transparency apparatus as part of the BWC could be a massive contribution to that.
There are other ingredients to this, and it’s also the ability to attribute a bioweapons attack if it were to occur and to hold a state accountable if it’s in violation of the BWC. And right now, those capabilities are not nearly as robust as they need to be. So, a stronger BWC would have infrastructure around it that really supported that as well. We’ve done a lot of work recently to think through, specifically the question of transparency. We published a report about it earlier this summer, and we’re really excited to share that in the context of the 50-year anniversary of the convention. And I’m happy to talk a little bit more about the specific recommendations, but we’re really focused on that as a way to strengthen the convention and just to generally reduce risks and make progress.
Even if we can’t get 189 states parties to agree, maybe we can make progress adjacent to the BWC and sort of show proof of principle and hope that’ll be adopted over time when the political climate is more amenable.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, and I do want to get into your conclusions around transparency, but it sounds like the strategy here, from a perspective of wanting to reduce biological weapons risk, is to work within the system as much as possible, but then use other platforms to help build momentum that eventually might shift how all BWC state parties approach these questions, particularly around transparency.
Jaime Yassif:
I think that’s right. Right now, the states parties haven’t been able to reach consensus on pretty much anything for a while. But in the meantime, we can make progress in parallel by developing practical and technical solutions and showing that they work and then in the hopes that the BWC would adopt it later. That’s part of the thinking.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
So, what are some of those key recommendations around transparency that you find so important?
Jaime Yassif:
Let me start by sort of defining what I mean by enhanced transparency in the context of how people frame the conversation within the BWC. So, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, there’s something called confidence building measures. And that process was initiated in the ‘80s where states parties basically fill out a form, they’re expected to fill out a form and submit it to the BWC implementation Support Unit every year. And to just sort of say, “Here’s information about what’s going on within our borders that’s salient to compliance.” Those forms are out of date. No one really analyzes the forms. It’s a necessary sort of transparency measure, but it’s far from sufficient. We need a much more ambitious approach if we really want to be serious about transparency that’s going to meaningfully reduce risk.
So that’s like one end of the spectrum. And people are talking about incremental improvements to the CBMs, which I think is a good thing to do, but I am hoping we can do a lot more than that. On the other end of the spectrum, you have very ambitious conversations about verification. Can we verify compliance through a series of site visits that are analogous to what we see in other treaties in the context of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, for example?
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Yeah. It’s just maybe worth pointing out that the BWC, unlike the Chemical Weapons Convention, they don’t have this like proactive inspection regime.
Jaime Yassif:
Yeah, they don’t have an inspection regime at all. So, that’s an important difference. And there were discussions about establishing a verification protocol that started in the ‘90s, and basically fell apart a little over 20 years ago. And there were political differences between the different political groupings in the context of the BWC. But also verification in the context of the BWC is really, really hard for two reasons. One is that bioscience and biotechnology is deeply dual use. So, it’s really hard to tell if you saw a certain set of experiments or certain set of equipment. In many cases, it’s really hard to tell if that’s a legitimate, beneficial application or if it’s being exploited for misuse. It’s hard to disambiguate that, certainly from afar.
And then the other issue is just it’s so deeply embedded in the economy. So just like deeply dual use and deeply embedded, which is really different from nuclear technology, for example. And so, I think it’s just objectively harder from a technical perspective before you even get into the political challenges. And so, for that reason, we define this term called enhancing transparency, which is basically saying everything on this broad spectrum between CBMs, on the one hand, and verification on the other end, like even if you don’t believe that verification with a capital V is possible, there’s a lot we can do to have a really robust transparency regime that could meaningfully reduce risks and thus explore the whole range of options and see what we can really do.
So that’s the idea to just broaden the conversation. There are a number of recommendations we published. I’ll offer a few. So one is we talked with our colleagues in the community who’ve been thinking about this for really long time and have a lot of expertise. And we all agree that one thing that was really important is just like, let’s have a really clear threat model. Let’s talk about what are the kinds of biological weapons, threats that we’re most concerned about and that we most want to be able to detect through a transparency regime.
Let’s bound the problem. We can’t watch every facility in the world all the time, detect every little thing. But let’s bound the problem in a way that focuses on the greatest threats and at a scale that we can actually feasibly have insight into with like finite resources. And that that threat model, we should try to reach some sort of international agreement about what that looks like, and that that threat model should be evolving over time, not static. Because as we were already discussing science and technology, especially in the life sciences, is moving so quickly that a static threat model would quickly become out of date.
So that was one idea. Another idea is since the bioweapons convention verification protocols fell apart more than two decades ago, we’ve got a lot more modern tools and technologies than we had then, and how can we apply them? And so, one idea is using artificial intelligence approaches to analyze publicly available information, for example, satellite imagery or social media data or financial transactions, publications, that kind of stuff, and see if we can figure out, what is a baseline signal of like normal activity look like.
And can we detect anomalies, find signals in the noise that could point to something that looks suspicious and needs additional investigation to see if it could be a potential sign of a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention? So, that’s something we’re really excited about. So, we’ve been thinking about this for a while. But President Trump recently, in his speech of the U.N. General Assembly, mentioned a very similar idea and talked about the importance of strengthening the BWC and using AI to support transparency and verification. So, that was very interesting to hear him say that.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
My ears perked up when I heard that as well.
Jaime Yassif:
Yeah, I think we would not speak about it in exactly the same language. I think there’s a lot more and it’s early days for developing capabilities to do that. I think it’s highly likely we can do something meaningful, but the capability has yet to be developed. And I think there are more questions than answers at this point about how it works, what it would do, and how much confidence we would have from the information that that kind of tool could provide.
So, I agree with the general idea in the broadest terms, but I think we’re more humble at this point because we’re in the early days of investigating the idea, and we want to have a clear vision of what it could look like in practice before we make confident statements about what it will or will not tell us. In addition to using AI to sort of detect signals in the noise, I think we have to look at how we can explore data collection and analysis during site visits. And the reason I say that is we just don’t even have the basic protocols for how you do that right now. And that’s like those are some really basic tools that we need to have in place if we’re going to have any kind of really robust transparency regime, so in terms of onsite assessments. So, for example, right now, a number of states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention engage in something called Voluntary Peer Review.
Countries invite peers from other nations to come visit their bioscience research facilities to make it more transparent and to build trust. Those site visits don’t include data for sample collection and analysis, and I think it would be really interesting, for example, to try to experiment with that in the context of the peer review process to see if we could test that out. Another place that that would be interesting to try is industry. Can we sort of experiment with some industry site visits and see if we can do some sample collection analysis there? The reason industry is important is because they’re a growing part of the bio-economy, and so much research and development that’s leading edge happens there. And also, because back when the verification protocol discussions fell apart, a significant issue was industry’s discomfort with site visits. So, I think we’re going to have to revisit that if we want to get over that hurdle.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Going forward, are there any upcoming moments in international affairs, any inflection points in which some of these ideas around strengthening controls against biological weapons might be meaningfully pursued?
Jaime Yassif:
I’m not sure that we have an inflection point right now. I mean, I think we’re kind of stuck right now politically, I think, because the geopolitical environment is so fraught and there’s so much tension between basically Russia and the West right now. It’s going to be very difficult, and already has been very difficult, in the context of the BWC to reach consensus agreement on anything significant. And so, it’s going to be really hard to make progress. And so, I that’s part of the reason I think we need to test out solutions and try to make progress and try to show the art of the possible and demonstrate proof of principle in ways that don’t require a 100% consensus decision in the context of the BWC. So, that could involve like the peer review process.
They could take it upon themselves to experiment with sample collection analysis. NGOs and civil society and industry could work together to test out other solutions like the ones I was discussing. And then, hopefully, if there’s an inflection point later, we could pivot. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. I’m hoping that the Global South will have more and more of a voice in this issue because I think that has the potential to be game changing if the Global South stood up and said, “We really want to see progress here.” I think they have a lot of political power at the moment, and they could maybe shift the conversation. But I think they would have to speak with one voice and really prioritize this. And I would love to see that. I think it would be great. I don’t see any signs necessarily that’s happening soon, but it’s on my wish list.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Jaime, thank you so much for your time and, frankly, for your work on this important topic. So, I do appreciate it.
Jaime Yassif:
You’re most welcome.
Mark Leon Goldberg:
Thanks for listening to Global Dispatches. The show is produced by me, Mark Leon Goldberg. It is edited and mixed by Levi Sharpe. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure to follow the show and enable automatic downloads to get new episodes as soon as they’re released. On Spotify, tap the bell icon to get a notification when we publish new episodes. And, of course, please visit globaldispatches.org to get on our free mailing list, get in touch with me, and access our full archive. Thank you!