No risk of bioweapons

[Al, “On Biological War”, Military Review, May-June, 2022, , pp. 28-36, accessed 8-20-2022, -BB]

China’s position as one of the leaders of the global bioeconomy increases its potential for realized or latent advanced biological warfare capabilities. Beijing appears committed to becoming a leader in biotechnology, which holds the promise of myriad public health applications. Yet, many biotechnology applications are dual-use, capable of delivering both public health benefits and advances in biological warfare capabilities. As one top U.S. expert noted, China “is pursuing a very aggressive strategy to become the world leader in biotechnology.”16 Sustained public and private investment in synthetic biology technologies needed for DNA sequencing and synthesis as well as gene editing have enabled China to develop a wide array of dual-use biotechnologies in the field of synthetic biology. Many experts anticipate that synthetic biology advances will enable the development of “new and novel biomaterials” to include advanced bioweapons.17 As a 2020 Brookings Institution study noted, “The determination of China’s one-party state to become a leading player in biotechnology is reflected by the rapid growth in investment in the sector. Some estimates claim that collectively, China’s central, local, and provincial governments have invested over $100 billion in life sciences research and development.”18 China’s sustained and sizeable government investment in domestic biotechnology has created an industrial base capable of developing and manufacturing a range of extant and novel biological warfare agents.

And while the possibility of developing novel biological warfare agents is present, it is more probable that China wants to use its biotechnology lead to produce superior commercial pharmaceuticals and to enhance its military forces. There is always speculation that advances in the life sciences will drive an evolution in biological weapons, making them more lethal, more environmentally hardy, more targeted toward specific populations, or more able to confound contemporary detection systems. This belief used to be rooted in the 1970s rise of biotechnology, and then it was 1990s genetics driving the concerns. Today, it is the promise (and dangers) of synthetic biology. And while it is true that one could always improve characteristics of certain biological weapons, there are significant drawbacks as to such an approach.19 Assuming that an adversary might develop altered biological weapons to be more operationally relevant, this would still be a violation of treaty (if it were China or Russia) and international norms. Modifying a biological organism to enhance its resistance to antibiotics might in turn reduce other desired characteristics, such as its lethality or dissemination qualities. Any use of a genetically modified organism would run the risk of direct attribution to a particular source.

Western military forces lack the capability to detect the deliberate use of biological weapons until after exposure. In addition, U.S. forces lack vaccines for a number of traditional biological warfare agents, let alone engineered diseases.20 Any nation with an advanced industrial capability can easily develop biological agents that can damage or destroy crops or livestock, in addition to targeting humans. There is no need for an overly sophisticated engineered biological warfare agent à la the latest James Bond movie, No Time to Die. And even if military forces had tactical biological detectors that could identify all biological warfare agents in a timely enough fashion to put on protective masks, traditional biological weapons would still be an effective strategic weapon against a civilian populace, its livestock, or cropland. There is no possibility that the United States and its Western allies can make biological weapons obsolete.21 At the same time, we do not need to overexaggerate the threat of biological weapons as some Hollywood scripts portray them.