Promote the antidote: Reducing the risk from toxins
Toxins pose a persistent and evolving threat to national security
While toxins occur naturally, contaminating food and feed with sometimes deadly consequences, malevolent actors have weaponized toxins for assassination and mass-casualty terror. Nation-states, terrorists, and lone actors continue to produce and weaponize these agents. The February 2026 confirmation by European governments that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was assassinated using epibatidine (a lethal neurotoxin derived from a South American poison dart frog) underscores the twenty-first century reality of state-sponsored toxin warfare. Yet, national and international defenses remain fractionated. Efforts to address toxin threats span the agriculture, defense, law enforcement, and public health sectors, which often operate in silos.
The policymaking community is not fully aware of the expansion of the threat from toxins, instead focusing on contagious biological threats arising from viruses and bacteria. Significant and systemic governmental policy gaps persist despite a clear history of accidental contamination, criminal use, and the continued development of toxins in foreign offensive biological weapons programs. The United States cannot afford to ignore these vulnerabilities. It must identify and bridge these policy gaps immediately, as any biological event involving toxins will have profound implications for national and global security.
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about the authors
The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at Atlantic Council is a privately funded entity established in 2014 to provide a comprehensive assessment of the state of US biodefense efforts and to issue recommendations that foster change. Since 2015, the Commission has advocated for the uptake of its recommendations at the highest levels of the US government, through additional meetings, reports, and other activities. This is the only such body of bipartisan, former high-level policymakers to do so.
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The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense at the Atlantic Council provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of US biodefense and recommends changes to policy and law that strengthen national biodefense while optimizing biodefense resources.
The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.
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