Those who grew up during the 50s and 60s remember not only fire drills but atomic bomb drills. During a nuclear attack drill, students were ordered to hide under their desks (as if that offered any real protection from a thermo-nuclear explosion).
While we dawdled, the Russians built nuclear warheads and powerful rockets that could deliver them anywhere they chose. They proved just how far ahead they were by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. Our rockets were still exploding on the launch pad. The Pentagon recognized the peril and redoubled our efforts to catch up.
Today, we still live under the shadow of the mushroom cloud. But we now have countermeasures. We also have the ability to obliterate any adversary that might attack us. It’s called mutually assured destruction. In a tortured way, the world seems safer because of it.
The threats confronting us today come from not only very complex smart weapons like drones and hypersonic cruise missiles but something as simple as a single-cell organism. Our brass inside the Pentagon is spending large amounts of money to counter the complex threats. But on the growing dangers of biological warfare, they are the ones now hiding under their desks. Perhaps believing that if they ignore the threat, it won’t be real.
Consider a few things we now know.
When the Communist Chinese flew their spy balloons over the continental United States, our Commander in Chief pretended it was no big deal. These balloons were sophisticated enough that they could hover over some of our most sensitive military installations. They were testing our reaction. We failed the test.
The second piece of this sobering puzzle concerns the Chinese military’s interest in and oversight of gain-of-function viral research. Published reports are now confirming what thinking Americans knew all along. The COVID pandemic, causing millions of deaths and many trillions in economic damage, all began at the Wuhan Labs. It wasn’t some peasant eating an undercooked bat from the wet market. The contagion escaped from the Lab, where they were doing gain-of-function research. Patient number one had a name and a position at the Wuhan Laboratory.
Anthony Fauci did a marvelous job of obfuscating, but facts are indeed stubborn things. The Obama Administration forbade him from doing risky gain-of-function research in the United States. So, apparently, he went offshore and financed the work in China.
Virologists around the world have known for a long time that it is possible to take a virus that is currently harmless to humans and turn it into one which is ten to fifty times more lethal than COVID. So instead of the 1 million American deaths that we saw in this pandemic, they’re talking 50 million or more. We can assume our adversaries know this as well. They also know that we are currently defenseless against such an attack.
Unleashing such a lethal virus as a weapon would likely kill proportionately as many of their own people as ours. So it becomes another example of mutually assured destruction. Unless…they’ve secretly developed treatments to protect their citizens…and we haven’t.
War is diplomacy advanced by other means. Weapons are tools to help achieve political ends. The most effective weapon is the one that never has to be used. The mere existence of a superior weapon causes an adversary to submit or adjust their diplomatic position.
Imagine an adversary (be it a state or terrorist group) that had developed a very lethal biological weapon and an effective treatment for their own people. Now imagine that they were able to smuggle it into the United States, perhaps through our porous Southern Border. Or maybe in a balloon. They then issue a demand; unless we acquiesce, the pathogen will be released.
Now consider other stubborn facts. Former Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haitian once suggested that one of their goals should be to depopulate much of the United States (using biological weapons) so that they could colonize and exploit our vast natural resources. Most troubling, our Pentagon shows little interest in developing a plan to counter this growing threat.
Fortunately, there is a growing group of scientists who understand the danger. The most notable and vocal is former CDC Director and respected virologist Dr. Robert Redfield. He supports the use of artificial intelligence platforms to identify viral threats rapidly and then quickly produce treatments to defeat them. We have the brain power to develop effective countermeasures.
What we don’t have is time to waste.
The author has provided strategic advice to Dr. Redfield and Linear Therapies.