The mailing of anthrax introduced Americans to a new enemy more frightening than garden-variety terrorism. While terrorists could destroy key buildings and airliners, the biosecurity narrative warns that pathogens could enter any American home and invisibly slay its occupants. Germs, therefore, easily outgunned al-Qaeda as a reliable wellspring of terror. This was the lesson Kadlec had been broadcasting for five years. The delivery of anthrax through the mail brought home his jeremiads. By 2020, biosecurity would altogether eclipse Islamic terrorism as the spear tip of US military and foreign
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