‘Although the institutions of our culture are so amazingly good that they have been able to manage stability in the face of rapid change for hundreds of years, the knowledge of what it takes to keep civilization stable in the face of rapidly increasing knowledge is not very widespread. In fact, severe misconceptions about several aspects of it are common among political leaders, educated people, and society at large. We’re like people on a huge, well-designed submarine, which has all sorts of lifesaving devices built in, who don’t know they’re in a submarine. They think they’re in a motorboat, and they’re going to open all the hatches because they want to have a nicer view.’ David Deutsch, the physicist who extended Alan Turing’s 1936 paper on classical computation to quantum computation.
Experiments on viruses that could cause a global pandemic killing many millions were halted but were
recently cleared to resume and will be conducted in these ‘top security’ labs.
The new Bulletin of Atomic Scientists carries research showing how the supposedly most secure bio-labs have serious security problems and clearly present an unacceptable risk of causing a disastrous pandemic:
‘
Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections will leave work carrying the pathogen with them. If the agent involved were a potential pandemic pathogen,
such a community release could lead to a worldwide pandemic with many fatalities. Of greatest concern is a release of a lab-created, mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, such as the airborne-transmissible H5N1 viruses created in the laboratories of Ron
Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro
Kawaoka In Madison Wisconsin.
‘Such releases are fairly likely over time, as there are at least 14 labs (mostly in Asia) now carrying out this research. Whatever release probability the world is gambling with, it is clearly far too high a risk to human lives. Mammal-transmissible bird flu research poses a real danger of a worldwide pandemic that could kill human beings on a vast scale.
‘Human error is the main cause of potential exposures of lab workers to pathogens. Statistical data from two sources show that human error was the cause of, according to my research, 67 percent and 79.3 percent of incidents leading to potential exposures in BSL3 labs…
‘A key observation is that human error in the lab is mostly independent of pathogen type and biosafety level. Analyzing the likelihood of release from laboratories researching less virulent or transmissible pathogens therefore can serve as a reasonable surrogate for how potential pandemic pathogens are handled. (We are forced to deal with surrogate data because, thank goodness, there are little data on the release of potentially pandemic agents.) Put another way, surrogate data allows us to determine with confidence the probability of release of a potentially pandemic pathogen into the community.
In a 2015 publication, Fouchier describes the careful design of his BSL3+ laboratory in Rotterdam and its standard operating procedures, which he contends should increase biosafety and reduce human error. Most of Fouchier’s discussion, however, addresses mechanical systems in the laboratory.
‘But the high percentage of human error reported here calls into question claims that state-of-the-art design of BSL3, BSL3+ (augmented BSL3), and BSL4 labs will prevent the release of dangerous pathogens. How much lab-worker training might reduce human error and undetected or unreported laboratory acquired infections remains an open question. Given the many ways by which human error can occur, it is doubtful that Fouchier’s human-error-prevention measures can eliminate release of airborne-transmissible avian flu into the community through undetected or unreported lab infections…
‘In its 2016 study for the NIH, “Risk and Benefit Analysis of Gain of Function Research,”
Gryphon Scientific looked to the transportation, chemical, and nuclear sectors to define types of human error and their probabilities. As Gryphon summarized in its findings,
the three types of human error are skill-based (errors involving motor skills involving little thought),
rule-based (errors in following instructions or set procedures accidentally or purposely), and
knowledge-based (errors stemming from a lack of knowledge or a wrong judgment call based on lack of experience). Gryphon claimed that “no comprehensive Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) study has yet been completed for a biological laboratory… . This lack of data required finding suitable proxies for accidents in other fields.”
‘But mandatory incident reporting to FSAP and NIH actually does provide sufficient data to quantify human error in BSL3 biocontainment labs…
‘Among other things, the GAO report called attention to a well-publicized incident in which a Defense Department laboratory “inadvertently sent live Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to almost 200 laboratories worldwide over the course of 12 years. The laboratory believed that the samples had been inactivated.” The report describes yet another well-publicized incident in China in which “two researchers conducting virus research were exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus samples that were incompletely inactivated. The researchers subsequently transmitted SARS to others, leading to several infections and one death in 2004.”
‘The GAO identified three recent releases of Ebola and Marburg viruses from BSL4 to lower containment labs due to incomplete inactivation.
‘A fourth release in 2014 from the CDC labs occurred when “Scientists inadvertently switched samples designated for live Ebola virus studies with samples intended for studies with inactivated material. As a result, the samples with viable Ebola virus, instead of the samples with inactivated Ebola virus, were transferred out of a BSL-4 laboratory to a laboratory with a lower safety level for additional analysis. While no one contracted Ebola virus in this instance, the consequences could have been dire for the personnel involved as there are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for this virus.”…
‘
In an analysis circulated at the
2017 meeting for the Biological Weapons Convention, a conservative estimate shows that the probability is
about 20 percent for a release of a mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza virus into the community from at least one of 10 labs over a 10-year period of developing and researching this type of pathogen… Analysis of the FOIA NIH data gives a much higher release probability — that is, a factor five to 10 times higher…
‘The avian flu virus H5N1 kills 60 percent of people who become infected from direct contact with infected birds. The mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza created in the Fouchier and Kawaoka labs should be able to infect humans through the air, and the viruses could be deadly.
‘A release into the community of such a pathogen could seed a pandemic with a probability of perhaps 15 percent. This estimate is from an average of two very different approaches…
‘Combining release probability with the not insignificant probability that an airborne-transmissible influenza virus could seed a pandemic, we have an alarming situation…
‘Those who support mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza experiments either believe the probability of community release is infinitesimal or the benefits in preventing a pandemic are great enough to justify the risk. For this research, it would take extraordinary benefits and significant risk reduction via extraordinary biosafety measures to correct such a massive overbalance of highly uncertain benefits to too-likely risks.
‘
Whatever probability number we are gambling with, it is clearly far too high a risk to human lives. There are experimental approaches that do not involve live mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly pathogenic avian influenza which identify mutations involved in mammalian airborne transmission. These “
safer experimental approaches are both more scientifically informative and more straightforward to translate into improved public health…”
Asian bird flu virus research to develop live strains transmissible via aerosols among mammals (and perhaps some other potentially pandemic disease research as well), should for the present be restricted to special BSL4 laboratoriesor augmented BSL3 facilities where lab workers are not allowed to leave the facility until it is certain that they have not become infected.’
As the piece above stresses and lessons from nuclear safety also show, getting the physical security right is only one hard problem. Most security failings happen because of human actions that are not envisaged when designing systems. This is why Red Teams are so vital but they cannot solve the problem of broken political institutions. Remember: Red Teams told the federal government all about the failures of airline security at the airports used by the 9/11 attackers before 9/11.
Those who wrote the reports were DEMOTED and the Red Team was CLOSED: those with power did not want to hear.
The problems considered above are ‘accidents’ — what if these systems were subject to serious penetration testing by the likes of Chris Vickery? (Also consider that there is a large network of Soviet scientists that participated in the covert Soviet bio-weapons program that the West was almost completely ignorant about until post-1991. Many of these people have scattered to places unknown with who knows what.)
Pop Quiz…
A. How many MPs understand security protocols in UK facilities rated ‘most secure’?
B. Does the minister responsible? Have they ever had a meeting with experts about this? Is the responsible minister even aware of this very recent research above? Are they aware that these experiments are about to restart? When was the last time a very high level Red Team test of supposedly ‘top secret/secure’ UK facilities was conducted using teams with expertise in breaking into secure facilities by any means necessary, legal or illegal (i.e a genuine ‘free play’ exercise, not a scripted game where the Red Team is prohibited from being too ‘extreme’)? Has this happened at all in the last 10 years? How bad were the results? Were any ministers told? Have any asked? Does any minister even know who is responsible for such things? Are officials of the calibre of those who routinely preside over procurement disasters in charge (back in SW1) of the technical people working on such issues (after all, some play senior roles in Brexit negotiations)?
C. How much coverage of the above finding has appeared in newspapers like the FT?
My answers would be: A. ~0. B. Near total general failure. C. ~0.
A hypothesis that should be tested: With a) <£1million to play with, b) the ability to recruit a team from among special forces/intel services/specialist criminals/whoever, and c) no rules (so for example they could deploy honey traps on the head of security), a Red Team would break into the most secure UK bio-research facilities and acquire material that could be released publicly in order to cause deaths on the scale of millions. A serious test will also reveal that there is no serious attempt to incentivise the stars of Whitehall to work on such important issues or involve extremely able people from outside Whitehall.
As I wrote last week, it was clear years ago that a smart teen could take out any world leaders using a drone in Downing Street — they can’t even install decent CCTV and audio — but we should be much more worried about bio-facilities.
Dominic Mckenzie Cummings (born 25 November 1971)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings
is a British political strategist who was appointed a
Chief Adviser to
Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July 2019.
[2][3] As Johnson's chief adviser, political commentators note that Cummings has an unprecedented level of influence upon the Prime Minister himself and
Her Majesty’s Government.
From 2007 to 2014, he was a
special adviser to
Michael Gove, including the time that Gove served as
Secretary of State for Education, before leaving when Gove was demoted to the
Chief Whip’s Office by
David Cameron. At the
Department for Education, Cummings was suspected of leading a briefing campaign against the
Home Office led by then-
Home Secretary Theresa May and clashed with
David Cameron, then prime minister. From 2015 to 2016, Cummings was
director of the successful
Vote Leave campaign, an organisation opposed to continued British membership of the
European Union, that took an active part in the
2016 referendum campaign for
Brexit.
In May 2020, politicans and the media called for Cummings to resign after he travelled to visit his parents' farm in
Durham during the
COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, supported Cummings saying he had acted "responsibly, legally and with integrity".
Early life
Cummings was born in
Durham on 25 November 1971. His father, Robert, had a varied career, primarily as an oil rig project manager for
Laing,
[4] the construction firm. His mother, Morag, a university graduate, was a teacher and behavioural specialist.
[5] Sir John Laws, a former
Lord Justice of Appeal, was his uncle.
[5]
After attending state primary school, he was privately educated at
Durham School[6] and
Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied under
Norman Stone,
[7] graduating in 1994 with a First in Ancient and Modern History.
[8] One of his professors has described him to the
New Statesman as "fizzing with ideas, unconvinced by any received set of views about anything". He was "something like a
Robespierre – someone determined to bring down things that don’t work."
[5] Also in his youth, he worked at Klute, a nightclub owned by his uncle in Durham.
[9]
After university, Cummings moved to Yeltsin's post-Soviet
Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects at the encouragement of Stone. He worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting
Samara in southern Russia to
Vienna in Austria which was "spectacularly unsuccessful".
[10] He subsequently returned to the UK.
Political career
1999–2015
From 1999 to 2002, Cummings was campaign director at
Business for Sterling, the campaign against the UK joining the
Euro.
[1][8] He then became Director of Strategy for
Conservative Party leader
Iain Duncan Smith for eight months in 2002, aiming to modernise the Conservative Party (of which he was not a member); however he soon left in frustration at the introduction of what he saw as half-measures, labelling Duncan Smith "incompetent".
[11][12] With James Frayne, he founded the New Frontiers Foundation think-tank as its director; it launched in December 2003 and closed in March 2005.
[13] Cummings was described as a "key figure" in the successful campaign against a
North-East Regional Assembly in 2004,
[14] after which he moved to his father's farm in
County Durham.
[8]
Cummings worked for Conservative politician
Michael Gove from 2007 to January 2014, first in opposition and then, after
Andy Coulson’s departure as a
special adviser (spad) in the
Department for Education (DfE). He was Gove's chief of staff,
[11] an appointment blocked by
Andy Coulson until his own resignation.
[15][16] In this capacity, Cummings wrote an essay titled "Some thoughts on education and political priorities",
[17] about transforming Britain into a "meritocratic technopolis";
[11] the essay was described by
Guardian journalist
Patrick Wintour as "either mad, bad or brilliant – and probably a bit of all three".
[16][18]
At the DfE, Cummings became known for his blunt style and "not suffering fools gladly";
[8][11] he railed against the "blob", the informal alliance of senior civil servants and teachers who, in Cummings's opinion, sought to frustrate his attempts at reform.
[14] Cummings was also outspoken regarding other senior politicians, describing
Nick Clegg's proposals on
free school meals as "Dreamed up on the back of a cigarette packet",
[19] and
David Davis as "thick as mince" and "lazy as a toad".
[14] Patrick Wintour described the Cummings–Gove working relationship: "Gove, polite to a fault, would often feign ignorance of his adviser’s methods, but knew full well the dark arts that Cummings deployed to get his master’s way".
[19] In 2014,
Prime Minister David Cameron described Cummings as a "career psychopath",
[20] although the two had never met.
[19]
In 2012, a senior female civil servant received a payout of £25,000 in a bullying case she took against Cummings and a senior member of Michael Gove's team, when Cummings was a special adviser at the Department for Education.
[21][22]
During his time as an official working for Gove, Cummings received a warning from the
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for use of private Gmail accounts to deal with government business, saying it should be 'actively discouraged'.
[23] The ICO uncovered an email from Cummings in which he said: 'i will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account or from conservatives.com – i will only answer things that come from Gmail accounts from people who I know who they are' [sic].
[24]
In 2014, Cummings left his job as a special adviser and noted that he might endeavour to open a
free school.
[15] He had previously worked for the
New Schools Network charity that advises free schools, as a volunteer from June 2009 and then as a paid freelancer from July to December 2010.
[15][25]
Campaign to leave the European Union (2015–2019)
Cummings became campaign director of
Vote Leave upon the creation of the organisation in October 2015.
[18] He is credited with having created the Vote Leave slogan, "Take back control", and with being the leading strategist of the campaign.
[26][27] His campaign strategy was summarised as: "Do talk about immigration";
[28][29] "Do talk about business"; "Don’t make the referendum final"; "Do keep mentioning the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the over-reach of the
European Union's Court of Justice". Board member of Vote Leave
Bernard Jenkin tried to remove Cummings and merge Vote Leave with the other campaign,
Leave.EU.
[30] Cummings and Vote Leave CEO
Matthew Elliott left the board in February 2016 following reported infighting.
[31] The
June 2016 referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote to leave the European Union. Cummings was praised alongside Elliott as being one of the masterminds of the campaign.
[32] He was named as one of "
Debrett's 500 2016" people of influence.
[33]
He advised
Babylon Health on its communications strategy and senior recruitment up to September 2018. The Labour Party opposition spokesman
Jon Ashworth said the links between Cummings, the health secretary and Babylon were "increasingly murky and highly irresponsible".
[34]
In March 2019, the
Commons Select Committee of Privileges recommended the House issue an admonishment for
contempt of Parliament after Cummings failed to appear before the
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquiry into claims of false news during the referendum campaign.
[35] The resolution admonishing him was passed by resolution of the House of Commons on 2 April 2019.
[36]
In July 2017, the lawyer and political commentator,
David Allen Green, asked Cummings via Twitter, "Is there anything which could now happen (or not happen) which would make you now wish Leave had not won the referendum result?" Cummings replied, "Lots! I said before REF was dumb idea, other things should have been tried 1st."
[37]
Senior Adviser to Boris Johnson (Since 2019)
On 24 July 2019, Cummings was appointed as a Senior Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
[38]
On his appointment,
The Guardian reported that at a conference in 2017 Cummings had argued that: "People think, and by the way I think most people are right: 'The Tory party is run by people who basically don't care about people like me
'"; and that "Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don't care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that".
[39]
The Daily Telegraph reported on Cummings's past rivalry with
Nigel Farage from the
2016 referendum campaign, and quoted Farage as saying that: "He has never liked me. He can't stand the
ERG. I can't see him coming to any accommodation with anyone. He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit".
[40]
Cummings was accused by
Layla Moran of hypocrisy when, not long after his appointment, it was reported that a farm that he co-owns had received €250,000 (£235,000) in
EU farming subsidies. Cummings had previously described such subsidies as "absurd", complaining that some of them were handed out to "very rich landowners to do stupid things".
[41]
In November 2019, a
whistleblower raised questions about Cummings' interactions during his years in Russia;
The Sunday Times reported that Whitehall was keeping certain government business from Cummings.
[42]
As is customary procedure, Cummings temporarily resigned his role when
Parliament dissolved for the
2019 general election, along with most special advisers, but was briefly reinstated to assist the government following
widespread flooding.
[43]
According to
Politico, Cummings played a role in the Conservative Party's victory in the election,
[44] despite having passed the party's running of the election campaign to
Isaac Levido. After the election, Cummings called for people interested in working in government to contact him through a private
Gmail address. In a blog post, he said he wanted to recruit data scientists, software developers and economists to help improve the performance of government, making his own role "within a year largely redundant".
[45] The recruitment drive was reported to have resulted in several appointments on short-term contracts, including
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, Professor
Vernon Gibson and, briefly,
Andrew Sabisky.
[46] Sabisky resigned in February 2020 following complaints about his previously expressed
