and the Biological Weapons Convention (1975) were negotiated and ratified at the height of the Cold War, proving that cooperation is possible despite mutual distrust and hostility.
If the view given in this blog post is correct, I wouldn’t use the BWC as a positive example:
One historical example about the importance of verification comes from the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. It contained no verification measures at all: the USA and USSR just pledged not to develop biological weapons (and the Soviets denied having a program at all, a flat-out lie). The United States had already unilaterally destroyed its offensive weapons prior to signing the treaty, though the Soviets long expressed doubt that all possible facilities had been removed. The US lack of interest in verification was partially because it suspected that the Soviets would object to any measures to monitor their work within their territory, but also because US intelligence agencies didn’t really fear a Soviet biological attack.
Privately, President Nixon referred to the BWC as a “jackass treaty… that doesn’t mean anything.” And as he put it to an aide: “If somebody uses germs on us, we’ll nuke ’em.”1
But immediately after signing the treaty, the Soviet Union launched a massive expansion of their secret biological weapon work. Over the years, they applied the newest genetic-engineering techniques to the effort of making whole new varieties of pathogens. Years later, after all of this had come to light and the Cold War had ended, researchers asked the former Soviet biologists why the USSR had violated the treaty. Some had indicated that they had gotten indications from intelligence officers that the US was probably doing the same thing, since if they weren’t, what was the point of a treaty without verification?
(Wikipedia doesn’t directly confirm all of the post’s claims, but does discuss the BWC’s shortcomings with regard to verification and e.g. the Soviet Union’s non-compliance)
Yeah, we were aware of this historical difficulty, and this is why we mention “enforcement” and “verification” in the text.
This is discussed in the Faq quickly, but I think that an IAEA for AI, which would be able to inspect the different companies, would help tremendously already. And there are many other verification mechanisms possible e.g. here:
Great work! Very much in favor.
If the view given in this blog post is correct, I wouldn’t use the BWC as a positive example:
(Wikipedia doesn’t directly confirm all of the post’s claims, but does discuss the BWC’s shortcomings with regard to verification and e.g. the Soviet Union’s non-compliance)
Thanks!
Yeah, we were aware of this historical difficulty, and this is why we mention “enforcement” and “verification” in the text.
This is discussed in the Faq quickly, but I think that an IAEA for AI, which would be able to inspect the different companies, would help tremendously already. And there are many other verification mechanisms possible e.g. here:
https://www.un.org/scientific-advisory-board/sites/default/files/2025-06/verification_of_frontier_ai.pdf
I will see if we can add a caveat on this in the Faq.