WSJ Tech News Briefing · Thursday, October 1, 2026
According to Olivia Sharfman, a biotech fellow at the Institute for Progress, the nature of biological warfare inherently gives an advantage to attackers. Attackers have ample time to develop weapons, while defenders face a compressed timeline for creating countermeasures, as exemplified by the lengthy development of COVID-19 vaccines.
“I spoke with Olivia Sharfman, who is a biotech fellow at the Institute for Progress, and her point was that the dynamics of biological warfare favor attackers over defenders, because attackers have as long as they want to develop a weapon.”
“But we don't have years to design a countermeasure.”
“Yeah, that's a great point. Looking back at what happened during COVID, we saw how long that took.”