Documents obtained by the US State Department suggest researchers in China discussed the possibility of weaponizing coronaviruses early as 2015.
In an article titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, military scientists describe SARS coronaviruses as presenting a “new era of genetic weapons.”
They make the prediction that World War III will be fought with bioweapons.
SARS viruses could be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before,” they theorized, thus causing widespread “terror” and the full collapse of the “enemy’s medical system.” In addition, bioweapons “can be concealed [in deployment] and it is hard finding evidence against them.”
The authors include top commanders from the People’s Liberation Army. They also question whether the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak was the result of a bioweapon that terrorist forces unleashed on China.
“I think this is significant because it clearly shows that China was thinking about military application for different strains of the coronavirus and thinking about how it could be deployed,” says Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “It begins to firm up the possibility that what we have here is the accidental release of a pathogen for military use.”
Robert Potter, a cybersecurity specialist who analyzes Chinese government documents for authenticity, says the research article is almost certainly genuine. “It’s not fake, but it’s up to someone else to interpret how serious it is.”
The discovery raises serious questions about China’s transparency on the origins of coronavirus and makes the lab-leak theory more plausible.
Last month, former CDC Director Robert Redfield explained why he thinks COVID-19 was manufactured in a lab (read more here).
“I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human – and, at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” said Redfield. “It takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. I just don’t think this makes biological sense.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China is miles from the first documented case of the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus. It is a BSL-4 lab that specializes in coronavirus research. BSL-4 is the highest designation of biosafety precautions and the Wuhan lab is China’s only BSL-4 facility. Beijing denies all allegations, but has refused to open the lab’s records for independent study.
Sources:
Chinese scientists discussed weaponizing coronavirus in 2015: Media report
The Chinese book at the bottom of SARS bioweapons claims that emerged amid coronavirus pandemic
Chinese Military Scientists Discussed Man-Made Coronavirus Attack Years Before COVID-19 Pandemic