[1] News agencies call upon him as an arms control expert, most recently to comment upon the possibility that the COVID-19 virus had escaped from one of the two virology laboratories in Wuhan, China.
[2] In a June 2020 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists he examined the evidence for an accidental escape of the virus from a laboratory.
He concluded that such an escape is "a plausible, if unproven, possibility", as is the alternative explanation of a natural evolution in the field, and that the true source of the virus is currently unknown.
A review in the journal Microbe described the book as "a significant source document for microbiologists, policy makers, historians, and students interested in this important subject".
[4] Tim Trevan writing in Nature called the book "an authoritative take on the Soviet Union's vast, covert and costly bioweapons programme" and "a major contribution to the field".