The public is dangerously oblivious to the hazards of “biological” terrorism and the nation lacks mechanisms to cope with future attacks, says Richard Danzig, former Navy secretary and senior national security advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.
“Of all the Jihadi WMD threats, biological terrorism has the highest risk,” Danzig tells a Washington, D.C. conference.
Pathogens have become relatively easy to turn into mass-casualty weapons, he says. “As modern biology progresses, we see high-school students doing what Nobel prize winners did 30 years ago … We are, in my opinion, substantially at risk.”
Americans should be better educated about these threats, says Danzig. “We suffer from ‘Pearl Harbor syndrome,’” he adds. “There’s a deeply rooted belief in the American psychology that if something terrible were to surprise us, we would respond as we did after Pearl Harbor and 9/11 — we would suffer the blow, deal with the trauma … and be able to overcome it.”