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Queen's Contagion Cultures Lecture - Bio-terrorism as common agency: Power projection and cooperation - Ugurhan Berkok

When:
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Where:
Description:

Bio-terrorism: Power projection and cooperation

Ugurhan Berkok
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Queen's University; Department of Economics, Royal Military College (RMC)

Dual-use microbiological technologies are beneficial for medicine, agriculture, and climate, but represent a biosecurity risk. An outsider, a terrorist outfit for example, or a disgruntled/radicalized insider, like the one in the 2001 Amerithrax incident, might weaponize dual-use research products such as harmful viruses or toxin-releasing bacteria. We concentrate on the outside biosecurity threat posed by a terrorist outfit, not a state actor, and we formulate a strategic game to model the essential interactions between the terrorist outfit and two countries, both of which have partially-overlapping stocks of microbial knowledge that they use to project power as well as provide deterrence through a demonstrable ability to mitigate bio-terror effects. Although such information-sharing potentially reduces the potency of a bio-terror attack, and thereby dissipates intent, it does reduce each principal’s power projection capability by releasing proprietary knowledge to the other principal.  

FREE EVENT but registration is required.

Contact:
Chris Cornish
sps.comms@queensu.ca
Cost:
FREE
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