Center for a New American Security

Tonight is the third and final presidential debate, and it will focus exclusively on foreign policy. Viewers can expect to see significant attention given to Afghanistan, China, Iran and Libya. CNAS published a “National Security Guide to the 2012 Presidential Election” earlier this month that lays out some of the key decision points on a range of issues, such as the defense budget, cyber security and Afghanistan.

One issue that has received very little attention in the debates so far is climate change, which is disappointing when one considers that some of the most important decisions regarding U.S. policy on climate change will need to be made in the next administration in order to avoid potential climate tipping points that scientists say could “lead to increasingly rapid and irreversible destruction of the global environment.” Indeed, the International Energy Agency has already warned that – even with the recent global recession – global carbon emissions continue to rise, pushing the world closer to irreversible damage to the environment. The IEA added last year that unless serious efforts are taken in the next five years to curb global greenhouse gas emissions the world may be unable to avoid “dangerous climate change” and its attendant consequences, including more frequent and severe drought like the kind witnessed today in the American midwest.  

But policymakers don’t need to wait five years or more to see how climate change may take its toll on U.S. security and foreign policy interests. One need only look to the Arctic – which recorded record low sea ice this summer – to see where climate change is already complicating U.S. foreign policy. The opening of the Arctic is placing increased pressure on U.S. policymakers to assess U.S. interests in the region and to navigate potential international challenges that could manifest from increased activity in the High North.

One of the knocks against advanced algae biofuels is that they are not cost competitive with conventional petroleum – which is true.  But science may eventually offer a way around this particular challenge.

Writing recently in Yale Environment 360, Marc Gunther lays out the potential for science to revolutionize the biofuels business. “By far the biggest opportunity to reduce the costs of algal fuels lies within the algae,” Gunther writes. “Just as crop scientists have bred corn and wheat to improve yields, with spectacular results, the algae companies are using conventional breeding and genetic modification to develop strains of algae to grow faster, yield more oil, and repel pests.”

The biggest opportunity may come from synthetic genomics, a relatively nascent field that enables scientists to build living organisms with special characteristics from scratch. By closely studying strains of algae, scientists can map entire genetic sequences and identify the genes tied to specific physical properties like growth and oil yield. Using the building blocks of the genome – DNA nucleotides – scientists can then build from scratch the most efficient algae strain for producing oils that can be refined into gasoline and jet fuel, lowering the costs for producers.

In an interview with Scientific American in November 2011, J. Craig Venter, the man behind mapping the human genome, described the effort this way:

Everybody is looking for a naturally occurring algae that is going to be a miracle cell to save the world and, after a century of looking, people still haven't found it. We hope we're different. The [genetic] tools give us a new approach: being able to rewrite the genetic code and get cells to do what we want them to do.  

By using synthetic genomics to create novel strains of algae, engineers can focus not just on making the algae more efficient oil producers, but also making them resistant to viruses that destroy whole ponds of algae and can drive up production costs. “The same genetic engineering and genome engineering we have, we can make cells that are resistant to viruses,” Venter told Scientific American. “Getting algae that are really robust and can withstand true industrial conditions on a commercial basis. You can't afford to shut down a plant for contamination. Most algae growers have to do that at a fairly frequent pace.”

In a speech last night aboard the USS Intrepid in New York, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned a meeting of Business Executives for National Security about the cyber challenges the United States faces.

“A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11,” Panetta said. “Such a destructive cyber terrorist attack could paralyze the nation.”

Panetta recalled a recent attack against the Saudi Arabian state oil company ARAMCO caused by a computer virus known as “Shamoon” that he described as “probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.” In that attack, Secretary Panetta said, the virus self-executed itself and “replaced crucial system files with an image of a burning U.S. flag. It also put additional ‘garbage’ data that overwrote all the real data on the machine. The more than 30,000 computers it infected were rendered useless, and had to be replaced.”

The challenges create a “profound new sense of vulnerability,” Panetta noted. “An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” he said. “They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”

To learn more about America’s cyber challenges, check out CNAS’s Election 2012 National Security Guide to the Presidential Election.