a bioweapons cold war warming up

  In the year 2015 alone during the Barack Obama administration the Stars and Stripes government financed with $824 million the studies on biological weapons to 28 BLS level 2, 3 or 4 laboratories operating nationwide, without considering unknown funding for the other 25 labs around the world.  https://www.gospanews.net/en/2020/05/08/wuhangate-7-bio-weapons-un-dossier-pentagon-fauci-28-us-labs-secrets/

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“Dr. Xiangguo  Qiu is an exceptional  researcher.  Her  works  have  been  referred with  more than4,000 citations. The teams she worked with have developed skills in vaccines development for the Lassa fever virus, the Ebola virus and the Marburg virus.  To do so they used one of the known vectors of bat coronaviruses as animal model, the ferret (Wong et al., 2018), the vector of the previous SARS-CoV-1.

  "Together with  other  teams  of  Chinese researchers she  has  carried  out  works on the  production  of Ebola virus mimetic HIV clones (Ao et al., 2019). She has published results related to the structural proteins ofthese viruses and their genetic modifications in relation to the phenomena of virus entry and  replication in itshost cells. These teams have demonstrated skills in using artificial intelligence software tools (Capuzzi et al.,2018).  Under  the  leadership  of  Frank Plummer  and  the  guidance (or  participation)  of  Xiangguo Qiu,  other teams of Chinese researchers  have built biomimetic  HIV  viruses  (Tang et al., 2012) expressing  modified proteases (Luo et al., 2012) or modified surface proteins.  Isn’t it the case for the ones of 2019n-CoV (Coutard et al.,  2020)?  What more was needed to build a candidate HIV vaccine?”  -Prof. Pierre Bricage

https://www.gospanews.net/en/2020/05/30/wuhan-gates-11-hiv-inside-sars-2-as-in-a-bio-weapon-scientists-dead-and-spies-ring-in-canada-china-and-us/ 

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https://uwidata.com/10489-coronavirus-and-global-us-bio-laboratories-around-the-world/   5-6-20

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1-26-20   James Giordano, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University and a senior fellow in Biowarfare at the US Special Operations Command, argues that China's growing investment in life science, looser ethics around gene editing and other advanced technology and integration between government and academia, it is the specter that can lead to the use of such pathogens as a bio-weapon.  That could be an offensive virus type   https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=nl&sp=nmt4&u=https://www.martinvrijland.nl/nieuws-analyses/canada-chinese-dr-xiangguo-qiu-en-biologische-oorlogsvoering-om-wereld-afhankelijk-van-china-voor-oplossing-te-maken/&usg=ALkJrhh4o2RdEU2ubrQhzZr9NIXdhfJFMw

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8-2-2019   both China and Russia are developing scientific techniques and technologies that “we haven’t seen before or… that we don’t have a lot of information on.”  As detailed in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, China in particular has increased its economic and resource investments, and deepened political interest in research and innovation to assert growing leverage and power, if not hegemony, in international scientific, biomedical and technological markets. 

  One of these emerging domains is the growing viability of utilizing synthetic biology to develop novel biological weapons. In 2018, Chinese scientist Dr. He Jiankui used CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing to create human twins with a genetically-induced resistance to HIV.  This generated significant ethical and legal controversy, and ultimately led to the World Health Organization determination and assertion that genetic modifications of human germlines are “irresponsible.”

  However, China has demonstrated that by working at the frontiers of current sciences (i.e. – in some cases, by asserting differing cultural values and ethical norms that guide and govern biomedical research and its uses) they can create, engineer and foster biological advancements that are as yet unattainable by — and therefore ahead of — other countries.

  Avant Garde — and often controversial — synthetic biology synergizes China’s research and of weaponizable biologicals and toxins. Gene editing and other synthetic biology technologies (e.g., artificial proteins) can be employed to increase the potency of a toxin, thereby requiring less to incur a desired effect. This science could be used to genetically modify a low-toxicity bioagent to become more potent and lethal, or could allow the creation of new, unique —and heretofore unknown —agent.  Indeed, as James Madsen, lead clinical consultant and clinical laboratory director at the chemical casualty care division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense, stated in the article: China is the world leader in toxin-based biothreats, and such efforts would only establish that position ever more solidly. 

  However, the use synthetic biology and gene editing to fortify bioweapons’ development and production is not limited to organic toxins. Prion diseases — or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) — are fatal neurodegenerative disorders that are caused by the misfolding and aggregation of normal prion proteins to then form the disease-causing isoform. Our ongoing research is focused upon prion research, tools, and the ways that increased knowledge and capabilities of genomics and proteomics can enthuse and advance current and near-term future methods and viability of prion synthesis, modification   and pathogenicity. 

  These applications of emerging trends and tools may allow bioweapon programs to produce prion-based agents for kinetic engagements. However, we believe that it is more likely that these agents will be used in non-kinetic engagements to incur multi-domain and multi-scalar disruptive effects that can lead to destructive consequences. Such non-kinetic efforts evoke the types and levels of latent manifestations that are most significant, and therefore of greatest value to strategic competition. 

  The new methods and tools of synthetic biology can enable the R&D of agents that are not currently listed by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. This makes this R&D — and the agents produced — difficult to surveille, regulate and govern. In light of this, we have called for the update, revision or new approaches to regnant biochemical weapons’ conventions/treaties and regulatory/governance processes that better reflect and respond to the rapidly changing capabilities fostered by novel techniques and technologies.  -James Giordano and Joseph DeFranco  https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/8/2/viewpoint-the-tools-and-threats-of-synthetic-bioweapon-development