General Flynn says that “our nation was at war” during the period between November 4, 2020 (after the election) and January 6, 2021 (when the electoral votes were certified). He was referring to the deep state using “lawfare” as a way of stealing the election.
If others (such as POTUS) also felt that war was being waged, wouldn’t that be justification for putting some type of ‘continuation of government’ plan in place? Devolution?
We know that Trump felt Covid was an act of war, I would suspect he has similar feelings toward lawfare as well…
Genetic warfare
Theoretically, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology could be used in the future to design novel types of biological warfare agents.
- Would demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective;
- Would confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents;
- Would enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a nonpathogen virulent;
- Would increase the transmissibility of a pathogen;
- Would alter the host range of a pathogen;
- Would enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection tools;
- Would enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin.
Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology, however, are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as “the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years.” While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. However, due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.
Biological warfare by target
It has been argued that rational state actors would never use biological weapons offensively. The argument is that biological weapons cannot be controlled: the weapon could backfire and harm the army on the offensive, perhaps having even worse effects than on the target. An agent like smallpox or other airborne viruses would almost certainly spread worldwide and ultimately infect the user’s home country. However, this argument does not necessarily apply to bacteria. For example, anthrax can easily be controlled and even created in a garden shed; the FBI suspects it can be done for as little as $2,500 using readily available laboratory equipment. Also, using microbial methods, bacteria can be suitably modified to be effective in only a narrow environmental range, the range of the target that distinctly differs from the army on the offensive. Thus only the target might be affected adversely. The weapon may be further used to bog down an advancing army making them more vulnerable to counterattack by the defending force. Note that these concerns generally do not apply to biologically-derived toxins – while classified as biological weapons, the organism that produces them is not used on the battlefield, so they present concerns similar to chemical weapons.
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