Biological weapons present an increasingly significant national security threat to the United States. We must look no further than the social disruption, economic devastation, and millions of deaths caused by the 2019 outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China to understand just how serious this is… and Covid-19 is nothing compared to the microbes and pathogens Russia and China are actively exploring.

Biological weapons deliver toxins and microorganisms (i.e., viruses and bacteria) to intentionally inflict disease, and they typically consist of two parts – a weaponized agent and a delivery mechanism (think missiles, bombs, hand grenades, spray-tanks). The threat extends to humans, animals and agriculture. ​

The Annual Threat Assessment from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, released on February 5, 2024, warned that “current biological agents and rapidly advancing biotechnology underscore the diverse and dynamic nature of deliberate biological threats. Rapid advances in dual-use technology, including bioinformatics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and genomic editing, could enable development of novel biological threats.” The report goes on to say that “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea probably maintain the capability to produce and use pathogens and toxins, and China and Russia have proven adept at manipulating the information space to reduce trust and confidence in countermeasures and U.S. biotechnology and research.”

The Washington Post reports that recent satellite images reveal Russia has reopened Sergiev Posad-6, a center used for viral biological weapons research during the Cold War. Back then, the facility conducted experiments using viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic fevers. Russia is now expanding the compound, building labs that appear consistent with top-secret, high-containment biological facilities designed to handle hazardous pathogens (Russia has publicly confirmed they will use the labs to study deadly microbes to prevent future pandemics and for national security purposes).

Meanwhile, China has hyped the benefits of offensive biological warfare for decades. Colonel Guo Ji-wei of the People’s Liberation Army once wrote that “the increased pace of development of modern biotechnology tells us that the day on which we will begin to make full military use of its advantages is not too far off.” He continued, “In the near future, when military biotechnology is highly developed, modern biotechnology will have a revolutionary influence on the organization of military power with its more direct effects on the main entity of war – human beings. Modern biotechnology offers an enormous potential military advantage” And he wrote that in 2005!

More recently, the 2017 edition of Science of Military Strategy, a textbook published by the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, expanded the use of biological warfare to include “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”