EA - "A Creepy Feeling": Nixon's Decision to Disavow Biological Weapons by ThomasW

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "A Creepy Feeling": Nixon's Decision to Disavow Biological Weapons, published by ThomasW on September 30, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I wrote this paper for a class in December 2021. I had been meaning to put it up on the forum for a while, but only just now got around to it. I found this research useful for my own understanding of the kinds of events that can contribute to dramatic policy changes. At the end I mention the obvious relevance to autonomous weapons regulation, but I think that lessons learned apply to all kinds of regulation of dangerous technologies. In September of 1950, a ship sailed by the Golden Gate Bridge. It carried a stockpile of Serratia marcescens bacteria, which it released in a huge plume over the city of San Francisco. Those onboard hoped to expose as many people as possible to the bacteria. Their mission was a success, and most of the city’s residents were exposed. The ship was not operated by a hostile foreign government or terrorist operatives, but by the United States Navy. Though Serratia marcescens is a “simulant” bacterium not known to cause harm, the test showed the potential for attacks with more deadly forms of bacteria. Despite the “benign” nature of the bacterium, Stanford University doctors reported several bizarre cases of urinary tract infections at the time, leading eventually to one death. The test was far from the only biological weapons test conducted in secrecy by the U.S. government from World War II until as late as 1968. On November 25th, 1969, President Richard Nixon gave a speech to the American public following a briefing to Congress. He announced the United States would renounce the use of biological weapons, destroy its stockpiles, and research only what was necessary to defend against possible attacks from enemies. He also voiced support for a United Kingdom initiative to ban biological weapons internationally, which would eventually become the Biological Weapons Convention. How did the United States go from biological weapons testing on its own population to leading the world in opposition to biological weapons? Historians have offered many possible explanations. One common argument is that public pressure forced Nixon’s hand. In a 2002 paper, Jonathan B. Tucker, a CBW expert and then a researcher at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, specifically emphasizes television reports in early 1969 and their contribution to increased awareness of the weapons. Brian Balmer and Alex Spelling of University College London conducted a 2016 analysis of contemporaneous newspaper articles about biological weapons, finding that they routinely portrayed biological weapons as dangerous even if they presented mixed messages about their effectiveness. Robert W. McElroy, a prelate of the Catholic church, included a discussion of CBW in a 1992 book, stressing in particular the idea that the public viewed such weapons as morally repugnant. I will argue that public pressure was a significant factor behind Nixon’s decision, but that it was not sufficient to convince Nixon that renouncing biological weapons would be safe. A second argument is that international pressure created an environment where the American position was untenable. James Revill, a research fellow at the University of Sussex, wrote in a 2018 article that international arms control was a major factor, while also suggesting that the renunciation may have been an attempt to deflect attention from the Vietnam War as well as a response to the advocacy of international organizations. McElroy also discussed international opposition, again from a moral perspective, and Tucker acknowledged it as well. I will argue that while international developments were important in shaping Nixon’s decision, they were not his primary motivation. A third argument was ...