The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

120 Edges
a worst - case scenario turn into alarmism or hype, the stuff of medical
thriller movies?
This is so much more the case when emerging infectious diseases
are paired alongside the war on terrorism. In many ways, the pairing
of emerging infectious disease and bioterrorism is something that is
programmatically supported by the U.S. government. While bioterrorism
has certainly existed for some time, it is hard to dismiss the
heightened anxieties surrounding any news item concerning an infectious
disease. The question up front is always: is it a bioterrorist attack?
The unspoken thought, the really frustrating thought, is that
the most effective bioterrorist attack may be nearly indistinguishable
from a naturally occurring disease. Officials from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services have in the past likened their efforts
to the mili tary agenda in Iraq, and public health policy in the
United States after September 11, 2001, often combines medical and
military research. 22 The disease - as - war metaphor is not new, but it
takes on a new guise in the era of networks. If, as we are told, we are
fighting “a new kind of war” based on networks, and if “war” has historically
been the most common metaphor for talking about disease,
then are we also fighting a new kind of medical terror, a new kind of
biopolitical war?
What would be the medical analogy, then, for counterterrorist
operations and counterinsurgency units? Consider the “good - virus”
model applied to the outbreak of an emerging infectious disease: An
epidemic is identified, and owing to its networked nature, a counternetwork
deploys to confront it. An engineered microbe containing a
vaccine to the epidemic agent is then released (via aerosol drones)
into infected “hot zones,” and the microbial netwar is allowed to run
its course. Paradoxically, the good virus will succeed in administering
the vaccine only if its rate of infection surpasses that of the bad virus.
This nexus of disease, medicine delivery, and military logistics is what
we can expect in future evolutions of warfare.
Medical Surveillance (SimSARS II)
The condensed, almost aphoristic quality of many recent epidemics
continually serves to remind us of the intensive nature of networks.