Has World War 3 started? Did China really release COVID?
Did China commit an act of war? There’s a lot of information coming out, not yet confirmed, which points to a discussion of developing bioweapons by the Chinese military. If that’s the case, it’s a sign of unbelievable idiocy.
The news coming out of a leaked Chinese document dated 2015 isn’t at all impressive. According to this document, the discussion was of a possible World War 3 scenario in which bioweapons are used freely. SARS viruses, of which COVID is one, were described as new genetic weapons. The paper points out these viruses could be “…artificially manipulated and unleashed in a way never seen before.”
If this document is genuine, and it has been verified as such, it’s a hideous reflection on the state of China’s mindset. Why would a country which is so newly prosperous and, politics aside, doing good business, have any interest in this sort of weapon?
One of the supposed stated reasons is “economic warfare”. This truly off-the-scale bit of idiocy could only rebound against China, and severely. Is this real logic? Doesn’t look like it.
Bioweapons basics
Bioweapons, particularly viruses, are by definition very high risk, and that includes risks to those using them. During the Cold War, America and Russia had large stocks of bioweapons. The general agreement was that the weapons couldn’t be controlled, and the stocks were supposedly destroyed. Another consideration was the likelihood of escalation of bioweapons into a mutual destruction scenario. Viruses in particular were singled out as unstable and uncontrollable.
The point here is that this risk couldn’t possibly have escaped even the most mediocre military intelligence. China may be diplomatically obnoxious, but nobody’s ever called modern China “brain-dead stupid”. Yet.
That rather basic description may be an understatement, if China is really inviting retaliation. Even a big rich country couldn’t handle multiple bio attacks easily, if at all.
Payback?
This overlooks another issue – Retaliation. China would be incredibly vulnerable to introduced viruses. The large Chinese population is a gigantic, unmissable target. A super-hot pneumonic virus would be devastating, far beyond COVID. Even a milder form would cause chaos. A “persistent agent”, meaning a disease which can exist for long times in the environment, would be worse.
China has also created an incalculable problem for itself – So-called “Gray warfare”. This is undeclared war, and it includes cyberattacks, etc. China has a lot of skin in this game, and a lot to lose.
If these presumed allegations of a deliberate release of a bioweapon are sufficiently credible, China is asking for all-out responses from around the world. Proof may not be required. A risk is a risk, and responses to risks tend to be before the fact, rather than after it. If someone believes this allegation, China has committed an act of war against the world, and the world won’t like it.
The damage to China’s relations with the rest of the world, (including those who don’t like the current 3,296,686 deaths and counting), would be permanent. The Chinese government would be held responsible. That government could have no global credibility at all.
If proven, China would also have dropped a bioweapon on every other state on Earth. That’s an actual act of war. It may not be such a great idea, either. China’s huge trade and infrastructure are also very vulnerable. China’s digital economy could be turned into confetti. There are plenty of people who know how to do it. There are a lot of biology and chemical options, too. It’s simply suicidal for China to engage in this pointless exercise.
Gray warfare on this scale would turn the world into “China’s Vietnam”. Just about every nation can wage gray warfare in some form, and China’s aggressive diplomacy hasn’t helped improve their image.
But…? Maybe a but or two.
The problem here is simple. Is China really dumb enough to do this? Did it? How good is the proof? Statements of weapons options don’t prove that they were actually developed.
(There is circumstantial evidence. Wuhan labs are supposedly sources of COVID, but that was also where the outbreak first happened. Evidence of viruses in an epidemic zone doesn’t prove weaponization or anything else. There’s nothing stunningly unusual about a lab studying SARS viruses. A lot of labs do. Allegations aren’t facts until proven, either.)
The outbreak itself has quite a few issues as a direct attack. A targeted attack could be camouflaged. Sporadic outbreaks leading to a bigger outbreak, for example, worldwide.
There’s a problem, though – The virus was found in Spain in sewage samples from early 2019. The outbreak in Wuhan was in December 2019. That means it was already circulating around the world back then, and no outbreaks at all occurred. So what happened? Was the early 2019 sample a different strain? You can see how messy this is to analyse.
Bioweapons are a longstanding threat. There’s nothing too unusual about military assessments of the threat, either. This statement could also be read as “SARS viruses could be artificially weaponized, and therefore a threat.” That would be a pretty standard assessment, actually, and it’d be right, in tune with current virology assessments.
More to the point –
- A study is quite definitively not the same thing as “We should make viruses as weapons.”
- Were orders given to release the virus?
- By whom, on what authority?
As you can see, there are a few obvious smoking guns missing. Nobody would expect to see a formal statement of these three points. There could, however, be collateral information. This would be something like evidence of purchase and shipment of viral culture technologies, specific SARS or COVID data related to weaponization, etc.
That would be proof, and proof positive. It would also mean World War 3 has started. Whoopee.
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