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Preface I drafted this manuscript during a time of national crisis as a particularly virulent and novel disease was sweeping the world. I had no intent to write a book that would attempt to explain public health policy, because there were plenty of smart and experienced public health experts already engaged in the discussion of how to deal with a pandemic outbreak. What concerned me more was how the U.S. national security community engaged the topic—not merely offering their views on how public health ought to be a national security concern but also how this pandemic dem- onstrated vulnerabilities in the U.S. public infrastructure and military to deliberate biological threats. This suggested to me that the national secu- rity community had a very limited, technically focused view on a very complicated and broad policy issue, and that this view, if not challenged, would lead U.S. policy making in a very bad direction. This book is intended to educate the national security and public health communities on the need for clear policy direction toward improving national biopre- paredness. In addition, U.S. legislators in Congress need to understand that the military’s biodefense program should not be addressing natural disease outbreaks. There seems to be some confusion on that point that needs to be cleared up. I have been a part of the U.S. chemical and biological defense commu- nity since 1985, and over the course of my career, I had the opportunity to engage in what we called “counterproliferation policy” and, later, combat- ing or countering weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The Department of Defense, in particular, has had a very technically focused perspective on counterproliferation and counter-WMD operations, sometimes to the