By Elizabeth Wang
WASHINGTON – In a time of advanced technology, Ebola and climate change, national security has taken a new role these days. Even more so now, the threats to national security encompass a greater range of non-military threats – elements that are mostly out of our control.
Recently, Google’s Mapathon project, the company’s contest open to anybody to help further its mapping spread in a chosen country, has been under fire for creating a national security threat for communities in India. Some contest entrants may have mapped military base locations without permission.
According to an article published on Quartz India:
“The National Map Policy gives SoI (Survey of India) monopoly over the distribution of maps in the country. Its Open Series Maps, which include information such as roads, railways, forest areas, rivers and administrative boundaries, can only be ‘brought out exclusively by SoI.’ Companies require permission from the federal home ministry, and the SoI for carrying out mapping activities.”
The India’s Central Bureau of Investigation is reviewing the questionable crime against Google’s sponsored open-map project.
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Back in April, when the Ebola virus first broke out in West Africa, doctors and experts maintained that the virus was being controlled and strong quarantine efforts were being applied.
“No, we don’t need to be worried here,” Northwestern University Center for Global Health assistant professor Chad Achenbach said in April. “It seems to have slowed down.”
But since then, it’s becoming a greater epidemic than previously anticipated, with a rising death toll in West Africa of 826, according to the World Health Organization. The first two Ebola patients were recently treated in the U.S. But because it is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids, if health-care workers follow proper procedure, it isn’t expected to spread – at least in the United States.
But what was once considered a contained disease, could become a larger threat to the U.S. Ebola is one of the few diseases categorized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a bioterrorism threat.
“Once contained, the disease dies quickly…If you put in the appropriate safety precautions, you extinguish the epidemic,” said Robert Murphy, a Northwestern University professor of medicine and biomedicine engineering. “A lot of health-care workers have gotten it because they haven’t followed safety precautions.”
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The growing burden of climate change has also weighed in as a threat to national security. The umbrella of effects climate change can incur draws fear for long-term effects of our nation and for our international relations.
Though climate change can be linked to the spread of diseases such as Malaria, Dengue Fever and Lyme disease, the correlation to the spread of Ebola is less obvious, but not something to rule out.
According to a 2002 study by the journal of Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, wetter environmental conditions could lead to greater spread of Ebola. Predictions of increased precipitation could spread the virus more. According to a Washington Post article about the connection between climate change and its impact on Ebola virus, “Presumably, those areas which see precipitation variability increases – with abrupt shifts from extremely dry to extremely wet periods – would be most vulnerable to Ebola outbreaks.”
“Climate change…has a lot of these indirect affects that become harder and harder to tease out the chain of event,” said Ian Kraucunas.
Kraucunas, deputy director at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, joined a panel of experts on July 29 to talk about the growing impact of climate change on national security. He said climate change has been showing us longer droughts and more extreme weathers, which, ultimately, could lead to food and water scarcity around the world.
“It is a threat multiplier that can exacerbate those issues that are already coming to a head in different parts of the world,” he said. “And add to those stresses and it can create new ones and new stressors for the national security community.”
“Our nation must have environmental security to have national security,” said Lizzie Kovach, Water to Thrive outreach manager, in an email. “Acts of terror have evolved, too, and we need water for repairing communities. Without water or lacking water, this is not possible.”
But senior White House analyst Alice Hall, who was also at the July 29 panel discussion, said the key is to mitigate and contain the issues before trying to adapt. It’s about preventing the long-term effects before they put the nation in distress. She said it needs to be a collective effort worldwide to address these issues of climate change.
“The United States is helping all countries accomplish all things that need to be accomplished to ensure that we are safe and secure and can survive the effects of climate change,” Hall said.
