Ken Alibek, formerly Kanatzhan Alibekov, was deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet Union’s clandestine biological weapons program. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alibek came to the United States and provided further information about the program’s scale and scientific ambitions. His senior position within Biopreparat makes his account particularly important to Jacobsen’s reconstruction of the Soviet program. In Biological War, Jacobsen uses Alibek’s testimony to establish part of the historical foundation for the scenario’s central threat: a genetically engineered super-pathogen.

Alibek is one of Jacobsen’s principal sources on the Soviet Union’s illegal weapons development, which occurred in direct violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He describes Biopreparat as the Cold War’s “darkest conspiracy,” a sprawling network of facilities disguised as civilian research centers tasked with creating and stockpiling biological weapons. Alibek also recounts the development of genetically engineered weapons and describes the successful Obolensk experiment as evidence that “a new class of weapons” (8) had been found. As an attendee at the 1989 Obolensk meeting where Sergei Popov presented the results of this experiment, Alibek provides Jacobsen with an eyewitness account of the program’s progress in genetically engineering biological agents. His memoir, Biohazard, and his testimony provide important historical material for the book’s two-stage killer plague, grounding the fictional scenario in accounts of the Soviet Union’s state-sponsored biological-weapons research.

Sergei Popov was a research scientist in the Soviet biological weapons program who specialized in DNA synthesis. By 1989, he had worked within the Soviet biological-warfare effort for more than a decade, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he came to the United States and provided further information about the program. Jacobsen presents Popov as one of the scientists directly involved in developing genetically engineered biological weapons. His work demonstrates how the Soviets adapted recombinant DNA techniques developed in the West for weapons research. Jacobsen reports that Popov was selected for scientific espionage and sent to the University of Cambridge to master techniques associated with Paul Berg’s recombinant DNA work.

Popov’s testimony adds a critical psychological dimension to the Soviet strategy. He explained that the weapon was intended both to kill and to undermine Americans’ confidence in their institutions. The engineered “double agent” was designed so that treatment for the apparent bacterial infection would not stop the second disease process, which Popov described as “absolutely untreatable.” Its failure to respond as expected to treatment was intended to cause “catastrophic distrust of the government and the military” (20) among American citizens. This insight is central to Jacobsen’s scenario, which depicts the failure of expected medical treatment as a source of wider distrust and social instability. Popov’s later reflections add an ethical dimension to his role in the book: He expressed regret about his participation and acknowledged that he had believed such weapons would never actually be used. His reflections allow Jacobsen to raise a broader problem of scientific responsibility: Researchers may help create destructive capabilities whose future use they cannot control.

Paul Berg is a Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist whose original 1971 experiment at Stanford University successfully created the first recombinant DNA molecule. By splicing together DNA from two different viruses, he helped establish the technology that would develop into modern genetic engineering. Jacobsen introduces Berg at the beginning of her historical overview to establish the central theme of dual-use technology: scientific breakthroughs can be used to heal or to harm. His story also introduces the question of how scientists respond when the possible risks of a new technology become apparent.

After virologist Robert Pollack raised concerns about the potential dangers of his experiment, Berg reconsidered the research and later joined other scientists in calling for a temporary moratorium on recombinant DNA research. The debate over these risks culminated in the 1975 Asilomar Conference, where scientists gathered to establish safety guidelines for the new technology. Jacobsen highlights this moment of scientific restraint alongside the Soviet Biopreparat program’s subsequent use of recombinant DNA techniques for biological-weapons research. Berg and his colleagues at Asilomar, Jacobsen notes, “didn’t discuss biological warfare” (16), while fellow participant David Baltimore later explained that they assumed the Biological Weapons Convention would prevent such misuse. His story serves as the book’s starting point for the ethical paradox that defines modern biotechnology, where the ability to manipulate genetic material can produce significant scientific benefits while also creating knowledge that can be adapted for destructive purposes.

Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist who spent 11 years working on biological-warfare countermeasures at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), serves as one of Jacobsen’s key contemporary expert sources. With years of experience working with plague and biological-warfare countermeasures, he provides scientific context for the biological threats and defensive limitations examined in the book. Jacobsen draws on his expertise throughout the book to explain plague biology and the challenges involved in preparing countermeasures against engineered pathogens.

Heine’s role is to translate the technical aspects of plague and biological warfare into accessible terms. He recalls learning that Soviet researchers had experimented with inserting a gene associated with euphoria into plague bacteria, calling the research “some horrifying stuff” (3). Jacobsen explains that the modification was intended to encourage infected individuals to socialize and thereby spread the disease. His expertise grounds the scenario’s depiction of pneumonic plague, its symptoms, and its lethality. Furthermore, Heine’s observation that “You can’t defend against every imaginable thing” (4) reinforces Jacobsen’s central argument about the limits of preparing defenses against the range of biological agents that could potentially be engineered. His contribution helps Jacobsen connect the scientific possibilities discussed in the book with the practical constraints faced by contemporary biodefense.