The novel coronavirus pandemic has been a truly unprecedented Black Swan event with a major and devastating impact on global health and economy. 209 countries have been hit so far and some 1,431,973 people infected till 7 April 2020, of whom some 82,096 have died. It has resulted in a complete shutdown of all the major cities in the world.
The unprecedented bloodbath in the stock markets in USA, UK and Canada saw the markets tumble by 25-26% and by 14% in India. By sharp contrast, the stock market in China (after an initial freefall) was at 0.3 % gain. As per the UN Trade and Development Agency (UNCTAD) the global economy has taken a hit of some $1 trillion and could engender a recession, perhaps, greater in magnitude than the one we encountered in 2008. In fact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said the global impact of the coronavirus will approximate that of the Recession of 2008 and possibly surpass it. Other economists point out that the 2008 implosion was due to dysfunction in US housing lending and these toxic bonds largely affected US banks and their associates elsewhere. The coronavirus pandemic, however, is truly a global shock and whole nations are in lockdown including Europe and America. Its economic impact, therefore, is likely to be much more severe. The world has been shaken by this Black Swan event. How come no one saw it coming? How has it come about so suddenly? What caused it?
The chart below gives the country wise populations effected and Numbers who died till 7 April 2020.
Coronavirus Global Cases, 7 April 2020
Country Cases Deaths
USA 400,489 12,857
Spain 141,942 14,045
Italy 135,586 17,127
France 109,069 10,328
Germany 107,663 2,016
China 81,802 3,333
Iran 62,589 3,872
UK 55,242 6,159
Turkey 34,109 725
Switzerland 22,253 821
India 5,351 160
Causative Scenarios
This is an analyses of four likely causative scenarios, which could have triggered this pandemic.
- Scenario 1 – Natural Occurrence. It was a naturally occurring disease. It was a novel coronavirus that made the jump from bats to humans in the wet markets of Wuhan and, thereafter, spontaneously spread from this ground zero to the whole world.
- Scenario 2 – Accidental Release. It was a genetically engineered virus that escaped from a Chinese biological research facility (Institute of Virology) at Wuhan and the infection spread from there to the whole world. The release of the pathogen was purely accidental. However, China very deliberately held back information on this outbreak and let it become a pandemic.
- Scenario 3 – Deliberate Release. Recent Chinese and American studies have both identified some 89 bat-based coronaviruses in south China. Perhaps, some of these were deliberately released by China in Wuhan after it had developed their vaccines. Armed with the first movers advantage, it rapidly arrested the spread of this epidemic in China even as it ensured that it rapidly spread to USA and Europe. The aim was to torpedo the Western economies even as its own resuscitated economy stood to make major gains at the expense of other industrial powers. This non-contact warfare strategy was succinctly summed up by Wion TV thus – China put the world in ICU and then sold it ventilators!
- Scenario 4 – Retaliation Attack. This scenario stems from accusations made by Chinese officials (Zhao Lijian of the Chinese foreign ministry) that the US military deliberately released the coronavirus In Wuhan. Should that have been the case, the Chinese seem to have responded with a coronavirus strain that deliberately targets Caucasians (or is more lethal than the strain let loose in Wuhan). As the casualties show, it has been rather lethal against Italy, America and some other European countries (depending upon the demographics of age profile of the population). This then becomes the scenario of an economic war between USA and China, which escalates into a biological warfare exchange of attacks with Wuhan as the Pearl Harbour of a new Third World War, so to speak. This has commenced with non-contact strikes engendered by biological viruses.
From the Known to the Unknown
To analyze the four scenarios in terms of probability and plausibility, the methodology we employed was to take an inventory of the biological warfare and research facilities available in China and USA, their current research areas and then the national/military doctrines for the employment of biological warfare weapons for the deliberate attack scenarios. We will proceed from the known to the unknown. To examine the first two scenarios of natural outbreak or accidental release, we examined the views expressed by virological or micro-biological experts in the light of current research and then looked at how this pandemic has spread on ground.
Examination of Scenario One – Natural Occurrence
Somehow, the consensus so far in the scientific community is that it is a naturally evolved or mutated coronavirus and shows no signs of having been genetically engineered in a laboratory. Majority of the virologists felt that the protein sequence of the coronavirus has evolved naturally and was not constructed in a laboratory as part of genetic engineering. Hence, they seem to rule out the accidental release thesis on this ground alone. There are, however, some caveats here.
A recent study done in 2018 in South China on bats had resulted in the discovery of 89 new novel bat coronavirus strains that used the same receptors as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus. Authors of the study did the genome sequencing of two of these strains and noted that the current MERS vaccine would not be effective against them. This study was jointly funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and USAID and US National Institute of Health. So, it is not essential that the bat coronaviruses, if employed for a deliberate attack, had perforce to be genetically modified ones. Over a 100 natural strains of bat-borne coronavirus are available and could have been employed. That opens up a whole range of possible scenarios.
Four Types of Corona Virus Strains
Dr N Nageshwara Reddy, Chairman Asian institute of Gastroentolgy points out that the coronavirus is an RNA-based virus. It originated in the mid-December or earlier in Wuhan and then travelled to USA, Italy and Europe and then after a lag of 2-3weeks it came to India. Thus, the world had some 3-4 weeks to study this virus. Small mutations occurred that enabled this virus to transfer from bats to humans. Genome sequencing of this virus has since been done in four countries – USA, Italy, China and India. The genotyping of these strains are different. He points out that the genome sequencing results in India and Italy are different. It was discovered that in India, there was a single genome mutation that occurred in the spike protein of the genome. It is this spike protein area that attaches the to the host cell in humans. This made the attachment to the host cell rather weak. On the other hand, in the Italian coronavirus, three mutations had occurred making the attachment to the host cell much stronger. This made the Italian virus far deadlier than its Indian variant. The Indian sample was taken from Indian students who had been evacuated from Wuhan. This could lead to the following set of speculations:
- For purposes of any biological/ viral attack a lab made, genetically modified bug was not the only option. There were 89 novel bat coronavirus strains that had been identified in China itself and any of these natural occurring viruses could be used for the purposes of biological attack. Only one person or a set of persons had to be infected with a given strain to mount the attack.
- Genome sequencing of these bat coronaviruses highlights the fact that different strains with differing levels of mutation had been encountered in different countries. The ones encountered in Europe, especially Italy, were far more deadly strains than those encountered in Wuhan, where the Indian students were stranded. These points may please be noted for we will return to them later in this analysis.
Deliberate Attack Scenario
To analyse this aspect we will take an inventory of biological warfare capabilities, research facilities and extant doctrines on the use of biological warfare in America and China. Due to the relatively more open nature of society in USA, far greater levels of Information are available there. Since these organisations are largely replicated in China we will commence our discussion with US facilities and doctrines. It is noteworthy that during the Cold War both the USA and USSR had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological warfare weapons. Work on these was halted in 1969 and the Toxic & Biological Weapons Convention was finally ratified in 1975.
United States of America
In 2017-2018, the Pentagon was greatly concerned that bats could be used against the USA as biological weapons for novel coronaviruses. There were reports that the Russians and Chinese were trying to develop such capabilities. Hence, this research was deemed defensive and reactive even though it did have an offensive component. Thus, sometime in 2017, the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTRP) began funding research involving bats and other deadly pathogens including caronaviruses like MERS, SARS and Ebola, etc. There was a programme to preempt emerging pathogenic threats (PREEMPT program) announced in April 2018 that focused on animal reservoirs of disease – especially bats and camels. In fact, DARPA spent $10 million on one programme in 2018 to unravel complex causes of bat-borne viruses that had recently made the jump to humans. Another project studied several new strains of corona viruses carried by bats both within China and in countries bordering China. There are three key US laboratories engaged in this biological warfare-based research programmes. These are:
- US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMIRD). This facility is located at Fort Detrick Maryland and was studying deadly pathogens including coronaviruses, Ebola and others. On 20 July 2019, the American Centre For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ordered it to halt all research after it found that it lacked facilities to decontaminate waste water. However, CDC allowed it to partially resume research in November 2019. This US facility has a decade old and close partnership with the infamous University of Wuhan’s Institute of Virology.
- Kazhakastan-based Research Institute for Bio-Safety Problems. The Khazakastan National Centre for Biotechnology had received millions of dollars from the US government. This is an Ideal location for research on bat-based coronaviruses for it borders both Russia and China. A US government-funded study here discovered yet more new strains of novel bat coronaviruses. This study was published in 2019 under the title “Discovery and Characteristics of Novel Bat Coronavirus Lineages from Khazakistan.” This study focused on bat-fauna of Central Asia with links to China and East Europe. It found great similarities in bats of China, France, Spain and South Africa suggesting co-circulation of coronaviruses with overlapping geographical distribution. Bats from Khazakastan migrate to China. This institute is the official depository of highly dangerous animal and bird infections with a collection of 278 pathogens and strains of 46 infectious diseases.
- Lugan Centre Georgia. This is said to be a covert US biological weapons laboratory. Sketchy details are available but it is ideally suited to target Russia and do research based on animal and bird species native to that region. Such research labs in far away countries also minimize risks to own populations in cases of accidental release of pathogens.
US Doctrinal Aspects
- 2018 US Bio-Defense Strategy Document. This is an authoritative text and talks of minimizing the risk of bio-threats as a vital national interest of the US. These threats could be due to naturally occurring diseases, accidents involving dangerous pathogens and, finally, deliberate attacks using bio-agents.
- Race/ Ethnicity Specific Bio-agents. The US think tank – Project for a New American Century – had openly advocated the use of race/ ethnicity specific, genetically modified bio-weapons as politically useful tools. Much research has been done in USA and Israel in developing super viruses that will target a certain type of genetic profile. This is a class of bio-weapons that exploit the MHC class of receptor molecules in the immune system that differs among races. It has to do with changing parts of that super virus that bind on the cellular receptors of targeted races. Thus, we could have bio-weapons that attack only Arabs and do not harm the Jews.
- Russia’s Maj Gen Kirilov, Head of Russian Military Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection unit, accused the US military of harvesting DNA from Russians as part of a covert bio-weapons programme for specific ethnicities. China has also accused the US military of harvesting DNA from Chinese citizens surreptitiously. Whether these are serious allegations or just pro-forma accusations for propaganda advantage, remains to be seen.
Chinese Biological Warfare Capabilities and Doctrines
Chinese society is the most opaque and secretive. Hence, little information is available in the open domain and often recourse has to be made to Western media sources. A recent Washington Times report claimed that Wuhan has two laboratories linked to China’s biological warfare programme. It cited reports of Israeli bio-warfare specialist Dany Shoham for this. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, under its Director Maj Gen Shi Zhingli, is China’s main laboratory for bio-warfare. Gen Shing Li is also the head of Institute of Bioengineering Academy of Military Sciences at Beijing. Maj Gen Chen Wei is the Chinese military’s top epidomologist and virologist. Reportedly, it is he who led the efforts for the creation of Covid-19 and then the fight against it. These individuals have been cited by name by US lawyer Larry Klayman who has filed a $20 trillion lawsuit against the Chinese government for Covid-19. He asserts that the US intelligence agencies have adequate proof of coronavirus as a Chinese bio-weapons programme.
Some reports have cited a 3 February 2020 speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Politburo Standing Committee. It cited him as saying how, on 7 January, he personally had issued orders to prevent and control the coronavirus. “Laboratory safety was a national security issue”. This speech has been cited as evidence by proponents of the coronavirus lab leak scenario. The Chinese, however, insist that it was a natural occurrence and cited Patient Zero – a Chinese woman who was selling shrimps in the Wuhan wet market. Earlier a man had been cited.
Chinese Doctrinal Approach
In 1999, two Chinese senior Colonels Quiao Liang and Wang Xiangsi had written a path-breaking book called “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master plan to Destroy America.” It was largely a theoretical manual on non contact warfare and using all means – military and non-military to bring an adversary to his knees – preferably without fighting.
More recently, in 2010, we had a book “War for Power” by Guo Jiwei of the Chinese Army University, which outlined a concept of war with biological characteristics.
Coming to the present, the 2017 edition of the PLA’s “Science of Military Strategy” has added a new chapter – “Biology as a Domain of Military Struggle.” It could not be more explicit. The PLA has been scripting bio-warfare in their strategic discourse for more than two decades now. The cross integration of Biotechnology, Genetic Engineering and Information Technology has aided the evolution of this line of thinking in non-contact warfare – the new buzzword in Chinese strategic thinking.
Non-Contact Warfare. Non-contact warfare seeks to employ all elements of national power to leverage their influence across multiple domains through kinetic and non-kinetic means with a view to intimidate, paralyse or denude the enemy’s politico military response capabilities and enable winning without fighting or fight with minimal physical contact of our forces. The goal of non-contact warfare is to collapse the enemy systems into confusion and disorder. Biological warfare can actualize the Sun Tzu dictum – the acme of excellence is to subdue the enemy without fighting. It is an important element of non-contact warfare.
(See also “The Speculations Against China”
