China grows domestic bio weapons tech industry

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

China is advancing its domestic, dual-use biological research capabilities with applications for the People’s Liberation Army germ warfare programs, according to an open-source intelligence report.

Recent virology studies “demonstrate that China is now able to operate its own dual-use virology research agenda on-shore and without international inputs or considerations,” according to a new report by the Chinese Communist Party Biothreats Initiative, a think tank.

“China now has robust domestic capabilities that potentially provide Beijing with a range of asymmetric options against perceived adversaries,” the report said.

The development of biological weapons by China has been overshadowed by many intelligence and strategic analysts who have instead focused on Beijing’s large conventional military buildup. China, however, remains overmatched militarily by the U.S. and its allies, and thus its biological arms development provides a major asymmetric advantage, the report said.

China is continuing high-risk pathogen research on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and the work is a major strategic worry, the report said. Studies published in China show Beijing is continuing work banned in the West on the virus that killed millions during the global pandemic.

So far, none of China’s recent SARS-CoV-2 research has been linked to a current vaccine, therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic, the report said, raising questions about the potential for using the virus for military purposes.

“The fact that this work continues, including in Wuhan itself, likely demonstrates that there is a broader strategic logic underpinning this continued high-risk pathogen research,” the report said.

China’s nanotechnology research is also linked to military capabilities that include weaponizing nanomedicine, tiny robots and autonomous weapons, the report said. These arms can include “nano-bioinformatics for biological warfare, nano-cyber biological weapons, covert assassination and targeted biological warfare,” the report said.

The capabilities “have the potential to fundamentally and irreversibly transform the nature of the next generation of dual-use research in China,” the report said. “The deliberate national prioritization of dual-use pathogen research and nanotechnology provides insight into where Beijing assesses its own unique strengths to lie and, possibly, where Beijing has assessed its adversaries to have weaknesses in their own systems.”

Previously, China required intensive and targeted international cooperation to obtain the technology and specialized knowledge needed for its virology and nanotechnology programs. Recent evidence suggests that is no longer the case, the report said.

On Jan. 4, the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, part of the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, conducted a high-risk experiment with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that caused COVID-19. Researchers conducting the experiment stated that a new coronavirus isolate taken from a pangolin caused 100% mortality in humanized mice.

“The researchers then tried to take the ‘lethal’ tone out of their report with a new Jan. 24, 2024, version that attempted to justify their study as an approach for vaccine or drug development studies,” the report said.

The university stated in a 2021 overseas talent recruitment announcement that its work includes “treating industrial-academic fusion and military-civil fusion as key development opportunities.”

Last August, a team of scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Technology, the location U.S. intelligence says is one potential source of the COVID outbreak, stated in a journal article that their work created a new coronavirus with very high lethality in aged mice. The virus also had the potential to infect human beings.

Another Chinese institute, the Hefei Institute of Physical Science, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently developed a “smart” DNA molecular nanorobot model for targeted drug delivery that has potential biological weapons uses.

“The ability of nanorobots to transport biological agents directly to target cells with such precision could also have dual-use applications, especially when considering the established linkages between [the Hefei Institute] and China’s People’s Liberation Army,” the report said.

Pentagon studies high-tech strategic warfare

As part of the strategy to leverage advanced technology, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board is working to developing new strategic weapons and capabilities that will provide asymmetric advantages for continued U.S. military “operational dominance.”

The strategy is outlined in an executive summary made public in November by the board that provides a few clues to the mostly secret effort.

Board Chairman Eric Evans said in the summary that a task force on strategic options was converted into a new permanent DSB subcommittee devoted to new weapons and operational capabilities. The subcommittee will look at effective systems to strengthen the military’s ability to deter local conflicts involving allies and partners and to win those wars at the lowest cost if deterrence fails.

“The task force considered advanced undersea assets and operational concepts, new uses of space assets, development of new countermeasures for electronic warfare, employment of cyber weapons, and as well as other areas that involved the adversary’s use of countermeasures to undermine U.S. dominance in the air, space, sea and cyber domains,” Mr. Evans said.

A memorandum on strategic options dated Oct. 5 from Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, noted dramatic shifts in geopolitics and technology by U.S. adversaries, highlighting problems and vulnerabilities for U.S. military forces.

The new subcommittee is charged with developing ways to counter strategic threats using novel uses of space systems, cyber warfare tools, electronic warfare weapons and better logistics and supply systems, the memo stated.

One new area of focus is “the rapid collection and use of strategic counterintelligence,” Ms. Shyu said.

Strategic counterintelligence is the targeting of foreign intelligence services in China and Russia that play major roles in covertly achieving military objectives. One way of neutralizing those services is using strategic deception or developing clandestine recruitment inside the services — a strategy long advocated by some U.S. counterintelligence officials but largely opposed by intelligence agency bureaucrats who view counterintelligence as complicating their spy operations and networks.

Other areas of focus for the new DSB subcommittee include the Pentagon’s vaguely defined “region- and circumstance-specific integrated deterrence.” Advanced underwater warfare and anti-submarine warfare using drones and other high technology is also being studied.

Last, the board is also studying “escalation thresholds” and norms of behavior of enemies, along with deterring “coercive and malign activities” in what the military calls “gray zone warfare” — conflict below the level of actual fighting.

U.S. military commanders have said China is engaged in coercion in the South China Sea against the Philippines, in its military activities around Taiwan, and against Japan near the Senkaku Islands.

NORAD: Drifting balloon was not Chinese

A high-altitude balloon incursion last week was most likely a nonthreatening “hobby balloon” and not another Chinese surveillance aircraft, the military’s North American Aerospace Defense Command has concluded. NORAD monitors spotted the small balloon on Friday at a height of between 43,000 and 45,000 feet.

Two fighter jets were deployed to intercept the balloon over Utah, but the jets did not shoot it down, determining the balloon was “not maneuverable and did not present a threat to national security,” the command said in a statement Friday.

A day later, the balloon was identified by ground radar as a “likely hobby balloon” that floated out of U.S. airspace Saturday night or Sunday morning. John R. Cornelio, NORAD deputy director of public affairs and also a spokesman for the Northern Command, told Inside the Ring the balloon was not Chinese in origin.
Asked who manufactured the balloon, Mr. Cornelio said NORAD did not make that determination as part of its threat assessment.

“The likely hobby balloon had characteristics consistent with that purpose,” he said, adding that the balloon “did not present as a threat to national security and FAA determined the balloon posed no hazard to flight safety.”

“NORAD determined there was no indication that the balloon was maneuvering, or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor,” he said.

A year ago, a Chinese surveillance balloon caused an international furor when it flew over large parts of the continental United States — at first undetected — until it was spotted and eventually shot down off the U.S. Atlantic coast in February.

• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.