Could BIO Suicide Sneak Attacks Be in Our Future?

BOSTON I am a former FDA COO and Harvard faculty member, and a decades-long infectious disease spread risk management expert. (It’s the rate, depth, and breadth of “spread” that most counts.) At the FDA, I co-led its last major internal reform. At Harvard, I taught policy, law, and management, including risk management.

 In my prior jobs, I stayed on top of how best to manage the risks facing our nation and its businesses.

As a patriot, successful family man, and accomplished businessperson, I feel it remains my job to warn the public and our leaders at all levels of significant risks that we—at the national (national security and defense) and enterprise levels are woefully unprepared to risk manage (prevent, mitigate, and control).

There is one risk right now of which I am most worried, both because it is severe and because, despite the deaths of 1.2 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide, we learned nothing from the COVID-19 Pandemic. We are acting as if it never happened. I am most worried right now about bio-suicide sneak attacks and if they will be in the future. I fear they will be. Why?

Because of its surprise (sneak) terrorist attack nature—and overwhelmingly successful result—we neither professionally characterize nor publicly call the October 7. 2023, vicious and brutal attack by Hamas on the Israeli people a “suicide sneak attack.” But that is what it was.

A suicide sneak attack is one likely to have a disastrously damaging effect on oneself physically or mentally. What kind of people do this—and why?

Many of the attackers on that brutal day had to know that because of Israel’s superior intelligence mechanisms (eventually) and national security and national defense firepower (applied at the end of the attack and for months to come), they would likely be killed during or shortly after the October 7 attack. But they carried out the mission anyway. Why?

It is said that most organized terrorists do this because, like the WWII Kamikaze pilots, they responded to their commonly held duty to support their religion and their religious leaders. And because they believe they will receive just returns in the afterlife based on their heroism.

We probably will never know what a single attacker had in mind. But for sure, all the attacking Humas warriors on October 7 were surprised and delighted that only a small number of their nearly 2,000 teammates were killed. Things could have been so much worse.

What lessons should we, Israel, and our other allies draw from this awful experience? Why weren’t more of the warriors deterred? How did Hamas convince some 2,000 men to cross the border into Israel, thinking they most likely would be killed if they did? Few people are willing to make such a sacrifice of themselves and to their families. What was different here?

Was it desperation? Was it a commitment to a cause? Was it in the protection of their families? Was it fear that they would be killed or severely punished physically or humiliated by their leaders if they refused? Were they drugged? Was it that they feared that Israel was planning an attack on them in which they would be killed, so they had nothing to lose? Or was it something else?

Put yourself in their shoes. Why would you ever perform a suicide sneak attack?

The first shocking experience I had with such commitment to the point of almost certain death (complete heroism or insanity) was when the US President asked me to help a team had assembled to immediately and forcefully respond to and minimize the damaging effects on the US and our allies of the largely misunderstood Chornobyl Crisis.

When the Crisis was first discovered, many in our intelligence apparatus thought it might have been a deliberate nuclear explosion attack and quickly spreading mass-destruction level disaster—perhaps the first of many.

The heroism I observed was not among our team. It was among the Russian responders—the nuclear technicians and chemical blast firefighters who gave their lives to control the spread of the fire.

By willfully giving their lives, they prevented the disaster's increased breadth and depth. They saved the lives of thousands, if not millions, in Russia and the rest of the world—notably those residing in the parts of Russia and other countries located downwind of the disaster.

What heroes they indeed were. We brought the world’s top bone marrow surgeon to the scene, but all of them died, as they knew they would. But they ran into the clear and present danger anyway. What kind of people do this? Is there a lesson to be learned from here as well?