Biowarfare and the Brave New World

Unfortunately, this is not Fearporn, and the threat is real

Earlier today (Tuesday 26 July) I was asked by Eric Bolling’s Newsmax producer to comment on two recent articles published by Brietbart and the Daily Mail:

Democrat House Intelligence Committee Member Warns: DNA Testing Can Be Used as Bioweapon to Target Americans

'You can take someone's DNA and design a weapon that can kill them': House intelligence committee member warns people not to share health data with sites like 23andMe because it can be used to program new bio-weapons to target them

The question that I was asked to address was whether these comments from Jason Crow during the recent Aspen Security Forum last Friday represent a true biological threat. During the meeting, US Rep Jason Crow of Colorado warned Americans to not be so cavalier about sharing their DNA with private companies due to the coming of the new type of weapon.  The question posed was whether this scenario represents a real threat, or is it just more Fearporn. Representative Crow is a member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, so in general, he should be well informed. The short answer is that, unfortunately, in my opinion this is a real threat.

In today’s substack, Jill and I have compiled and summarized some resources for your review and consideration. Please keep in mind that our intent is not to scare you, but to help inform so that you can make your own threat assessments and decisions, and act accordingly (including in both the political and the personal spheres).

Let’s begin with a quick overview of Team USA- I am choosing to not provide editorial comment, but rather provide you with key links and information, and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives (CBRNE) Command

“MISSION: The 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives (CBRNE) Command exercises mission command over assigned U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) CBRN and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) forces; on order, provides CBRN and EOD forces to Army and Joint, Inter-organizational, Multinational (JIM) headquarters; on order deploys Joint Task Force headquarters in support of COCOM requirements.

VISION: Provide highly trained CBRNE forces that are 'Ready Now' to enable the Army to conduct Unified Land Operations and the Joint Forces to execute Unified Action.”

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Moving on to an official summary of the threat scenario from West Point-

Engineered Pathogens and Unnatural Biological Weapons: The Future Threat of Synthetic Biology

“Abstract: Recent developments in biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology have made it possible to engineer living organisms. Although these developments offer effective and efficient means with which to cure disease, increase food production, and improve quality of life for many people, they can also be used by state and non-state actors to develop engineered biological weapons. The virtuous circle of bioinformatics, engineering principles, and fundamental biological science also serves as a vicious cycle by lowering the skill-level necessary to produce weapons. The threat of bioengineered agents is all the more clear as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the enormous impact that a single biological agent, even a naturally occurring one, can have on society. It is likely that terrorist organizations are monitoring these developments closely and that the probability of a biological attack with an engineered agent is steadily increasing.”

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The question arises, is this threat novel and only associated with our adversaries?

“U.S. Admits Bio-Weapons Tests” CBS News. Oct 8, 2002

“The United States secretly tested chemical and biological weapons on American soil during the 1960s, newly declassified Pentagon reports show.

The tests included releasing deadly nerve agents in Alaska and spraying bacteria over Hawaii, according to the documents obtained Tuesday.

The United States also tested nerve agents in Canada and Britain in conjunction with those two countries, and biological and chemical weapons in at least two other states, Maryland and Florida.The summaries of more than two dozen tests show that biological and chemical tests were much more widespread than the military has acknowledged previously.

The Pentagon released records earlier this year showing that chemical and biological agents had been sprayed on ships at sea. The military reimbursed ranchers and agreed to stop open-air nerve agent testing at its main chemical weapons center in the Utah desert after about 6,400 sheep died when nerve gas drifted away from the test range.

But the Pentagon never before has provided details of the Alaskan, Hawaiian, Canadian and British tests. The Defense Department planned to formally release summaries of 28 biological and chemical weapons tests at a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing Wednesday.

The documents did not say whether any civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the Pentagon says, although the gas masks and suits used at the time were far less sophisticated than those in use today.

The head of the House Veterans Affairs panel called for further investigation of the tests.

"Our focus must be on quickly identifying those veterans who were involved, assessing whether they suffered any negative health consequences and, if warranted, providing them with adequate health care and compensation for their service," said Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican.

The tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense.

The United States scrapped its biological weapons program in the late 1960s and agreed in a 1997 treaty to destroy all of its chemical weapons.

Some of those involved in the tests say they now suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate them.

Earlier this year, the Defense Department acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins.

The Defense Department has identified nearly 3,000 soldiers involved in tests disclosed earlier, but the VA has sent letters to fewer than half of them. VA and Pentagon officials acknowledged at a July hearing that finding the soldiers has been difficult.

The tests described in the latest Pentagon documents include:

• Devil Hole I, designed to test how sarin gas would disperse after being released in artillery shells and rockets in aspen and spruce forests. The tests occurred in the summer of 1965 at the Gerstle River test site near Fort Greeley, Alaska. Sarin is a powerful nerve gas that causes a choking, thrashing death. The Bush administration says it is part of Iraq's chemical arsenal.

• Devil Hole II, which tested how the nerve agent VX behaved when dispersed with artillery shells. The test at the Gerstle River site in Alaska also included mannequins in military uniforms and military trucks. VX is one of the deadliest nerve agents known and is persistent in the environment because it is a sticky liquid that evaporates slowly. Iraq has acknowledged making tons of VX.

• Big Tom, a 1965 test that included spraying bacteria over the Hawaiian island of Oahu to simulate a biological attack on an island compound, and to develop tactics for such an attack. The test used Bacillus globigii, a bacterium believed at the time to be harmless. Researchers later discovered the bacterium, a relative of the one that causes anthrax, could cause infections in people with weakened immune systems.

• Rapid Tan I, II, and III, a series of tests in 1967 and 1968 in England and Canada. The tests used sarin and VX, as well as the nerve agents tabun and soman, at the British chemical weapons facility in Porton Down, England. Tests at the Suffield Defence Research Establishment in Ralston, Canada, included tabun and soman, the records show.

Tabun and soman are chemically related to sarin and produce similar effects.”

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Book Release Press Conference: The CCP is at War with America (Center for Security Policy, June 2022)
-Regarding the specific concerns raised by US Rep Jason Crow:

The Center for Security Policy has just released a new “Team B” product – an exercise in competitive analysis that strongly challenges the Director of National Intelligence’s September 2021 conclusion that the provenance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus cannot be determined. The Team, co-chaired by former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.) and comprised of intelligence professionals, other national security practitioners and subject matter experts, concluded that:

• There is no evidence that the virus emerged naturally;

• There is, by contrast, significant circumstantial evidence that it came from a PRC biological weapons laboratory; and

• The virus was deliberately unleashed on the world by the Chinese Communist Party when it allowed millions of travelers from Wuhan to fly internationally, even as it was locking down movement within China

The authors, identified collectively as Team B III (in the tradition of the official group that produced the first Team B exercise in competitive analysis in 1976 and a second one sponsored by the Center for Security Policy in 2010 entitled, Sharia: The Threat to America), call their report:

About the book: The CCP is at War with America.

Acclaimed China expert Gordon G. Chang wrote the Foreword.

You can find more information, as well as a link (if you wish to purchase a copy) here. I strongly recommend that you consider reading this report.

Below is a relevant excerpt from pages 102-104 (Chapter 14), but the entire report is full of highly relevant information.

Chapter 14. China Is Focused on Acquiring a Global Dominance in Biotechnology

“In 2016, China released its “13th Five-Year Plan,” which featured a special emphasis for the close integration of its military with advanced civilian applied science and biotechnology. In pursuit of the PLA’s goals, this national strategy incorporated all Chinese universities, pharmaceutical companies, and “civilian” biotechnology research centers.(121) Currently, assessments of the state of China’s advanced biological warfare program remain somewhat conjectural. As research progresses to a more active stage in China and becomes more sensitive, it disappears from open-source view. With time, however, hidden research sometimes leaks out via small waves of open-source general commentary articles that highlight certain aspects of scientific enquiry or applications. That said, for the last decade, the PLA’s interest in biotechnology and biological warfare has been reflected openly in strategic writings which emphasize that new advances in biology have modified the nature of war.

Beginning in 2010, topical military articles on biological warfare began to appear in the open Chinese literature.(122) One outspoken author has been Ji-Wei Guo, a professor with China’s Third Military Medical University, who for the last 20 years has consistently emphasized the potential of linking military applications of biotechnology into a larger theory of command.(123,124) Guo is the author of a 2010 book entitled The war of life-making right reconstruction of military strategy. Part of a series, the book openly promotes the close association of biotechnology with military medicine. In it, Guo states that biotechnology can provide nonlethal, reversible, and what he calls “merciful ways” of warfare that will play an important role in defense. His belief is that by applying military biotechnology for “aggressive purposes on a large scale, future wars will make biological warfare a real power for attack.”

The author states his belief that continuing biological warfare research will provide the ability to cause “new categories of injury in a more accurate and effective fashion.”(125) Guo also theorizes that biotechnologies based on genomics and proteomics will permit precision human injury and wounding down to different levels of specific gene, protein, cell, tissue, and organs. In a thinly veiled threat of invasion and conquest, he terms advanced biological warfare as being more “civilized” than conventional munitions in terms of postwar reconstruction and “hatred control.” Guo summarizes his book by stating that biotechnology aggressiveness gives rise to a relatively merciful conquest as compared to other weapons and that military goals can be achieved without the need for massive killing, which represents a certain degree of war civilization. This is exceedingly brash commentary considering that China is among the many nations that have a treaty obligation to prohibit the acquisition, stockpiling, and use of offensive biological weapons.

Unfortunately, China’s Guo is not alone in his beliefs.(126) In 2015, Lu Beibei He Fuchu, then-president of China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, argued that biotechnology  will soon become  the new “strategic commanding heights” of national defense, from biomaterials to “brain control” weapons.(127) In 2017, Zhang Shibo, a retired general and former president of the Chinese National Defense University, wrote a book titled The New Highland of War. In it he categorized biology as among the seven “new domains of warfare” and emphasized that modern biotechnology development is showing strong signs of an offensive capability, including the possibility that “specific ethnic genetic attacks” might be employed.(128)

Also in 2017, the PLA’s National Defense University published a textbook called The Science of Military Strategy. The book features a section concerning biotechnology as a domain of military struggle and also describes the future potential of biological warfare to conduct “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”(129) This is frightening rhetoric from a nation of 1.4 billion people with an aggressive Communist leadership that seems dedicated to achieving global dominance. In addition to an increasing rhetoric for the desire to achieve biotechnology superiority and the development of new, more targetable biological weapons that can be considered “merciful” on the battlefield, China has clearly maintained an active, ongoing program of dual-use research. This appears to include a concentration on new emerging infectious disease agents as well as a multi-decade technological program exploring liquid and dry small-particle aerosol generation and stability as well as attenuated explosive cluster submunitions for biological agent delivery.(130)

Footnotes and references

121 the full text of the “thirteenth five-year plan” special plan for the integration of militarycivilian development of science and technology_love thought (aisixiang.com)

122 Kania, E.B and VornDick, W. Weaponizing Biotech: How China’s Military Is Preparing for a ‘New Domain of Warfare’ August 14, 2019. HTTPS://WWW.DEFENSEONE.COM/ IDEAS/2019/08/CHINAS-MILITARY-PURSUING-BIOTECH/159167/

123 Ji-Wei Guo, The Command of Biotechnology and Merciful Conquest in Military Opposition MILITARY MEDICINE, 171, 11:1150, 2006 : https://academic.oup.com/milmed/ article/171/11/1150/4577887 Downloaded 15 April 2022.

124 Guo JW: Analysis on the prospect of the application of biotechnology in future military affairs. World Milit Rev 2005; 1: 63–5. milmed.171.11.1150

125 Guo JW: Command of biotechnology: the Summit of Future Evolution of Warfare, Ed 1, pp 217–8. Beijing, China, People’s Liberation Army Press, 2006.

126 Guo, J.W., “War of life-making right reconstruction of military strategy in the new era,” publisher: xinhua publishing house publication date: January 2010 “war of life-making power, military strategy reconstruction in the new era guo jiwei, [genuine book]” [introduction_bookreview_online reading] - dangdang - easy to move book franchise store

127 biotechnology will become a new strategic commanding height for the future military revolution - china military network (archive.org)

128 (amazon.cn) “new heights of war” [abstract book review trial reading] book (amazon.cn)

129 Kania, E.B and VornDick, W. Weaponizing Biotech: How China’s Military Is Preparing for a ‘New Domain of Warfare’ August 14, 2019. HTTPS://WWW.DEFENSEONE.COM/ IDEAS/2019/08/CHINAS-MILITARY-PURSUING-BIOTECH/159167/

130 Shoham, D., China’s Biological Warfare Program: An Integrative Study with Special Reference to Biological Weapons Capabilities, Journal of Defense Studies, (2015): Vol. 9, No. 2 April-June 2015, pp. 131-156 Reference 20. http://idsa.in/jds/9_2_2015_ ChinasBiologicalWarfareProgramme.html “

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Speaking for myself, my assessment is that the statements by US Rep Jason Crow cited in the Brietbart and Daily Mail articles factcheck as “True”. Welcome to my world. Now you know what the mRNA vaccine technology was really developed for. Unfortunately, overeager NIH bureaucrat-administrators, acting together with other HHS “leaders”, have messed that up by rushing development and failing to act responsibly. Now the potential for enabling a rapid response capability using that technical approach has been deeply compromised.

What is your threat assessment?