COVID-19 fallout: Diseases can be ideal weapons

The world has a centuries-long and sad history of deliberate use of diseases in conflict that reaches back to at least 14th century B.C. when the Hittites sent poisoned animals to their enemies

- Christine Parthemore and Andy Weber

WASHINGTON

The devastation COVID-19 has wrought on the US population is staggering. Yet the risks it poses to our national security are also chilling: Diseases are, in many terrible ways, ideal weapons.

Many high-level national security leaders have contracted the virus, including the president. In October most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other high-level military leaders were in quarantine after coming in contact with the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, who tested positive for the disease. A number of White House aides have been infected.

COVID-19 has struck more than 90,000 Department of Defense personnel and their dependents.

The world has a centuries-long and sad history of deliberate use of diseases in conflict that reaches back to at least 14th century B.C. when the Hitites sent poisoned animals to their enemies. From the first century onward many militaries tried to spread diseases during conflict using corpses and infected materials like blankets.

The Cold War saw new and frightening feats in the development of biological weapons including by the United States. One major Soviet site could produce 300 metric tons of anthrax agent for use in conflict — more than enough to kill everyone on the planet if deployed effectively.

In the late 20th century, the tide turned, for a time. The Biological Weapons Convention extended international law against bio-weapons beginning in the 1970s. Countries cooperated to dismantle Cold War bio-weapons programmes, including the US collaborating with independent Kazakhstan beginning in the 1990s to eliminate the Soviet anthrax weapons facility.