This article describes a new effort to engage in analytic outreach between academic scholars and intelligence analysts on the issue of emerging biotechnology threats to US national security. The context of this outreach was a September 2012 meeting in London to explore possibilities for enhanced analytic outreach in relation to emerging biotechnology threats, supported by the UK Genomics Policy and Research Forum. This meeting consisted of a mix of current and former intelligence practitioners and policy officials, and social science and scientific experts, from both the UK and the US. As will be described below, this unique pairing of experts and subjects revealed new insights into how to improve intelligence assessments on biotechnology and bioweapons threats. It also revealed continuing challenges in reforming assessments within existing intelligence work routines.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation [grant number 1229919] and by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [grant number RES-145-28-0005].
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Kathleen M. Vogel
Kathleen Vogel is an associate professor at Cornell, with a joint appointment in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Vogel holds a PhD in biological chemistry from Princeton University. Prior to joining the Cornell faculty, Vogel was appointed as a William C. Foster Fellow in the US Department of State's Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction in the Bureau of Nonproliferation. Vogel has also spent time as a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies. Her research focuses on studying the social and technical dimensions of bioweapons threats and the production of knowledge in intelligence assessments on WMD issues.Christine Knight
Christine Knight is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Science, Technology & Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. At the time of the workshop discussed in this paper, she was a Senior Policy Research Fellow in the ESRC Genomics Policy & Research Forum at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in 2008 she worked in government and parliamentary research in South Australia. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and received support for her graduate studies from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). She has a longstanding interest in interdisciplinarity and engagement with audiences outside the humanities and social sciences, including policymakers, scientists, and the general public.
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