The Internet and the World Wide Web have revolutionized how business is conducted throughout the world.³ Illicit businesses, such as bioweapons-related procurement networks, are not exempt from changes brought about by the Internet.

The business-world conceptual framework of disruptive innovations helps explain both the tremendous developments that have taken place, and why our current arms control efforts have been slow at catching up. The term “disruptive technologies” was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and Joseph Bower in an article aimed at business executives, published in 1995.⁴ Fourteen years later, Christensen published The Innovator's Dilemma, in which he proposed that there...

There has been a growing online trade in illegal products, from counterfeit drugs, to illicit Botox, to automatic weapons.¹¹ Buyer-vendor networks that specialize in the trade of illicit products pose new challenges for law enforcement agencies that attempt to shut them down.

Internet-enabled purchases pose an even more difficult challenge to nonproliferation-related export control regimes, such as those deployed by AG participating states. Owing to the dual-use nature of numerous proliferation-sensitive commodities, where products have civilian as well as military applications, the Internet-enabled buyer-vendor networks typically are legal. The equipment needed by biotechnology industry in particular is almost entirely dual-use....

Numerous industries that possess B2B websites have extensive biotechnology equipment catalogs. Annex 6 contains a list of the B2B websites we investigated for this project, as well as their host countries and B2B types. Owners of B2B websites are a highly heterogeneous population, but can be divided into two categories: those that employ e-catalogs and those who offer e-marketplaces.

i. E-catalogs: An e-catalog displays a specific company’s offerings, replacing printed catalogs. The most straightforward sites in this category are those maintained by equipment manufacturers themselves. However, there is also an enormous market for companies that trade in used and surplus...

The items searched for on these B2B websites were taken from the AG Biological List. The developers of the AG Biological List recognized that the development and manufacture of a type classified biological weapon is a long process that requires equipment to produce, stabilize, and disseminate a BW agent.²⁴ AG guidelines seek to keep as many parts of the necessary supply chain, from pathogen inoculums to delivery systems, as possible out of the hands of proliferators.²⁵

AG participant states are committed to “Catch-All” measures, whereby national legislation makes clear to exporters within their jurisdictions that if they are aware, or...

Dual-use equipment from AG control categories 2-9 can be found listed on B2B websites, albeit in varying quantities. We found that when we limited our preliminary search to AG-grade items explicitly advertised for shipment internationally, this finding did not change. The search results are summarized in Table 1.

It should be noted that, apart from fermenters, Class III biosafety cabinets, and freeze-dryers, company-advertised parameters were insufficient to determine whether an item was AG-grade or not. Additional cross-referencing was required to make such a judgment. As such, establishing whether equipment is AG-grade and thus meets control requirements is a nontrivial task,...

Out of all of the domestic and international vendors of dual-use items of concern investigated by this project, only one vendor explicitly noted that its wares would only be “sold to pharmaceutical or chemical manufacturers” once proper authorization had been obtained.¹¹² This vendor is based in the U.S. and therefore is not included in the list of vendors in part 4.

Despite searches on all of the B2B sites listed in Annex 4, the majority of items documented in this report were listed on just one major B2B website, which was Alibaba.com. The Alibaba website does list the Chinese regulations...

The market search findings raise the possibility that a BW-related procurement network could be successfully operated today. Such a hypothetical network would take advantage of the existence of the lively trade in AG-grade equipment detected above, both for ease of procurement and concealment. In this section, we describe Iraq’s pre-Internet era procurement network for BW-related items and then describe how a current proliferator could harness the Internet to establish an efficient illicit procurement network.

When Iraq began procuring BW-relevant equipment abroad in the mid-1970s, there were few export controls related to biologicals in place.¹¹⁵ A similar situation existed in the...

The rise in e-commerce is significantly speeding up the rate at which innovative biotechnology products become globally available. With regards to assessing the need for interdiction of new technologies that are likely to have applications in BW programs, we fear the AG Biological List is failing to keep up with recent advances in biotechnology and bioindustry. To demonstrate this problem, we showcase six emerging technologies that are available on the Internet and, we believe, have potential biological and chemical warfare applications. They are: algae photobioreactors; freeze-dryer gas sterilization upgrade kits; hand-held aerosol generators; DNA kits; synthetic biology kits; and 3D...

Current BW interdiction efforts devote significant resources to maintaining effective export controls for equipment particularly suitable for use in the production or dissemination of biological agents. Efforts to secure such equipment are coordinated through the AG forum. We believe that the Internet, in particular the advent of e-commerce, is having a major disruptive effect on BW-relevant export controls. This effect, in turn, negatively impacts current biological arms control measures.

The project reported in the paper sought to test this inference. We say “test,” because due to inherent project limitations we could not hope to accomplish more than a scoping study...

This section explains four study design choices and restrictions, and the resultant study limitations.

i. Inability to test offers

We were not in a position to conduct “sting” purchases of items, nor could we initiate transactions by posing as legitimate buyers. While we report what types of AG-grade equipment was found offered online, we cannot provide evidence that some companies would actually sell these items without conducting due diligence.

ii. A focus on vendors from outside the AG participating states

With few exceptions, we do not document AG-grade equipment sold out of the U.S. or the E.U., or sold through...

Urgently pursue strengthened national export control laws on BW-related items

As demonstrated by our findings expressed in this report, there are now numerous vendors of AG-grade equipment in non-AG participating states, where export control regulations can be expected to be comparatively lax. This adds urgency to efforts to help other nations strengthen export control laws regarding BW-related items. These laws are the first step in interdicting illicit exports of AG-grade equipment. They provide the necessary rules, regulations, and guidelines that national companies must obey, and ensure that directors of companies that transgress them are dealt appropriate punishment.

There is an...