The United States, China, and the Secret Politics of Biological Threats

The contradiction

From the moment scientists had finally figured out that diseases were transmitted by bacteriae and viruses the race for biological warfare was on. Compared to conventional weaponry or nuclear warheads the germs were cheap as dirt and the delivery methods dead silent.

An attacker didn’t need grand armies, battlefield valor and leading industrial capacity; just batches of smallpox or anthrax. For the leading empires the calculation changed significantly. Before you could rank your competitors according to troop strength, production and available resources like iron ore and oil. But now even weaker and smaller state actors as well as non-state actors could cause tens of millions of deaths through germs. Even a tiny group could do this under total and permanent secrecy. The argument was there for the bigger powers to collaborate and ensure their future.

Still the USSR produced enough pathogens to kill the entire world population multiple times over. Still the idea persisted that you could sneak-attack an enemy and make it look like a naturally occuring disease.

This is why the relationship between the United States and China in this field is so sketchy and became a global topic during COVID. The first major outbreak happened near the Wuhan meat market and the Wuhan lab. People worked near caves full of bats. Fur farms were major risk factors. American money was directed towards the Wuhan lab which was knows for major safety concerns. Anthony Fauci and others internally discussed a potential lab leak while publicly stating for months that a leak can be practically ruled out. People were censored on social media. The intelligence community investigated this as an open question. The WHO initially whitewashed China because of political concerns. China claimed they had found a close ancestor of SARS-Cov-2 years earlier but didn’t keep samples. It was always possible however that an enemy of China had caused the pandemic and framed the Wuhan lab and/or the meat market. We learned that the US company Thermo Fisher had sold mountains of equipment to China and in return the US received data about the specific genetics of Chinese people.

The United States and China are strategic rivals. They compete for military advantage, economic primacy, technological leadership, control over supply chains, diplomatic influence and intelligence access. Each government assumes that the other is gathering information, recruiting sources, penetrating institutions and examining national vulnerabilities. Biotechnology is part of this competition because biotechnology has become inseparable from medicine, agriculture, industry, intelligence and military planning.

At the same time, the two powers inhabit the same biological environment. A contagious pathogen does not respect the border between strategic blocs. A laboratory accident in one country can become an emergency in the other. A poorly contained outbreak in a third country can disrupt Chinese factories, American hospitals and the transport systems connecting them. A new disease can destabilize governments, close ports, interrupt the production of pharmaceuticals and create political pressures that neither superpower can confidently control.

The United States and China therefore confront one another in a field in which offensive and defensive capabilities overlap, intelligence competition is unavoidable, and complete separation is impossible. They may suspect one another while sharing data. They may restrict scientific cooperation while maintaining selected research channels. They may accuse one another of concealing dangerous work while quietly recognizing that a collapse in the other country could create consequences far worse than ordinary geopolitical competition.

This is not friendship. It is not mutual trust. It is a form of guarded coexistence.

The central strategic fact is that Washington and Beijing benefit more from biological stability than from unrestricted biological warfare. That does not mean that either government ignores offensive possibilities. It does not mean that biological sabotage, covert experimentation, military research or strategic deception can be ruled out. It means that both sides have powerful reasons to avoid a biological conflict that cannot be geographically limited, reliably attributed, calibrated or terminated.

The same fact explains why cooperation persists. Scientific exchange is not the opposite of intelligence competition. It is one of the environments in which intelligence competition occurs. Research partnerships generate publications, samples, laboratory access, professional relationships, genomic databases and knowledge of another country’s technical capabilities. Every cooperative project can produce genuine public-health benefits while also giving each side a better view of the other.

The result is a relationship organized around several simultaneous calculations.

The United States wants access to outbreaks, samples, scientific findings and early warnings from China. It also wants to prevent China from obtaining sensitive American technologies and genomic information. China wants access to American knowledge, instruments, pharmaceutical markets and scientific prestige. It also wants to protect its population data, secure its laboratories and reduce dependence on American-controlled technologies. Each side wants the other to contain epidemics quickly. Each side also fears that biological research performed in the name of prevention could generate knowledge useful for military purposes.

The public encounters only fragments of this system. Citizens see scientific papers, diplomatic accusations, congressional hearings, intelligence assessments, pandemic regulations and sensational headlines. They do not see the full threat estimates, laboratory inventories, classified collection programs, military simulations, vulnerability studies, secret diplomatic communications or contingency plans. Biological defense is one of the most secretive fields of national security because public disclosure can reveal both capabilities and weaknesses. As a result, the public debate is conducted with incomplete evidence, ideological assumptions and competing propaganda campaigns.

The relationship between the United States and China regarding biological threats is therefore not a puzzle that can be solved by choosing cooperation or rivalry. It is a permanent combination of cooperation, rivalry, espionage, deterrence and mutual dependence.

Biology is inherently dual-use

The difficulty begins with the nature of the science itself.

A nuclear weapon requires specialized fissile material, conspicuous infrastructure and engineering that is difficult to explain as ordinary civilian activity. Biological capabilities are different. A laboratory studying dangerous viruses may be developing vaccines, diagnostic tests or medical countermeasures. The same laboratory may be characterizing which mutations make a pathogen more transmissible, more resistant to treatment or better adapted to human cells. That knowledge may be necessary to anticipate natural evolution. It may also be useful to someone attempting to produce a weapon.

A fermenter can manufacture vaccines, enzymes, food products or biological agents. Genomic databases can support cancer research, ancestry services, precision medicine, epidemiology or intelligence analysis. Aerosol research can improve inhaled medicines and help scientists understand disease transmission. It can also provide knowledge about dispersal. Work on crop diseases can protect agriculture or identify ways to attack it. Research on immune responses can produce treatments while revealing differences in population vulnerability.

The Biological Weapons Convention prohibits the development and possession of biological agents for hostile purposes, but the practical distinction depends heavily on intention. The material, equipment and technical knowledge involved in legitimate research may be indistinguishable from those involved in prohibited activity. A United Nations presentation on verification noted that the convention does not contain an international compliance-verification mechanism and recalled the longstanding problem that agents required for hostile purposes may be indistinguishable from those needed for peaceful medicine.

This is the foundation of the American-Chinese dilemma.

The United States cannot look at a Chinese virology institute, vaccine factory, military medical university or genomic company and determine its ultimate purpose merely from the equipment inside. China faces the same problem when examining American facilities connected to public health, defense, pharmaceutical research or overseas disease-surveillance programs. Even extensive inspections might show what a laboratory possesses without revealing every project, every database, every prior experiment or every contingency contemplated by the state.

Biological defense also encourages research that resembles offensive preparation. To defend against an engineered pathogen, scientists may need to imagine how an adversary would modify it. To design sensors, they may need samples. To test protective equipment, they may need realistic aerosols. To produce vaccines quickly, they need manufacturing platforms capable of handling dangerous agents. To determine whether a pathogen has been manipulated, they need forensic expertise in genetic engineering. To estimate the consequences of an attack, militaries must model dissemination, incubation, casualties, infrastructure failure and public behavior.

A state can therefore argue that every suspicious activity is defensive. Its opponent can argue that the defensive explanation is merely camouflage.

The source manuscript COVID and the Future of Biological Warfare treats this ambiguity as the organizing problem of the field. It emphasizes that virological research, vaccine development, biological intelligence and military preparation cannot be neatly separated, and that laboratory accidents have occurred even at advanced facilities. It also argues that weapons need not be designed solely to maximize fatalities. An agent that temporarily incapacitates large numbers of people, disrupts hospitals or damages an economy could have strategic value even when most victims recover.
This broader understanding is essential. Popular culture imagines the biological weapon as an apocalyptic virus that kills almost everyone. Military planners have more options. A pathogen could be selected to incapacitate troops, overwhelm a health system, disrupt mobilization, create panic, contaminate agriculture or force a government to close transportation hubs. An attack might be combined with cyber sabotage, disinformation or conventional military pressure. It might be designed to resemble a natural outbreak. It might target animals or crops rather than people.

The lower the level of violence, however, the greater the problem of interpretation. A spectacular attack producing unmistakable mass casualties would create an overwhelming demand for retaliation. A limited outbreak with ambiguous origins might produce confusion rather than unity. Yet ambiguity creates its own danger. If a state cannot determine whether an epidemic is natural, accidental or deliberate, it may prepare for the worst and respond on the basis of incomplete intelligence.

The dual-use nature of biology therefore produces a peculiar arms competition. The competitors do not merely count weapons. They monitor laboratories, universities, databases, companies, publications, patents, personnel movements and supply chains. They study who has access to which samples, which institutions maintain military relationships, which scientists have undisclosed affiliations and which research projects could produce unexpected strategic applications.

In this environment, the scientific ecosystem becomes part of the intelligence battlefield.

Historical memory and biological suspicion

American-Chinese biological mistrust did not begin with COVID-19. It rests on different historical memories, each reinforced by secrecy.

Chinese political culture retains the memory of Japanese biological warfare, particularly Unit 731 and related operations during the occupation of China. These events are not an abstract episode in a distant military history. They form part of the state’s narrative about foreign invasion, racial contempt and China’s former weakness. The Chinese government has cited large numbers of military and civilian victims of Japanese germ warfare. The subsequent American decision to obtain information from Japanese researchers rather than fully expose and prosecute every aspect of the program contributed to the belief that Western powers treat biological warfare as a usable instrument when strategic interests are involved.

The Korean War added another layer. China and North Korea accused the United States of employing biological weapons. American officials denied the allegations and argued that confessions from captured personnel were produced through coercion. The documentary history remains entangled with propaganda, classified records, intelligence operations and disputes among historians. The strategic importance of the controversy lies not only in what happened, but in how the accusation became embedded in national memory.

For Beijing, the allegations support a wider narrative: the United States possesses advanced biological capabilities, has historically examined offensive options, operates military-connected laboratories and uses international scientific programs to gain access near rival states. For Washington, the episode demonstrates the willingness of communist governments to manufacture biological accusations as psychological warfare.

Both interpretations shape present behavior.

The United States has its own history of biological weapons research, covert experimentation and planning. Declassified material has revealed Cold War proposals involving anti-crop and anti-animal agents, urban vulnerability studies, open-air testing and contingency planning. The American offensive biological weapons program was formally renounced under President Richard Nixon, but the subsequent growth of biodefense preserved much of the relevant scientific expertise and infrastructure.

The American system also absorbed knowledge from foreign programs. During and after the Second World War, intelligence value could take precedence over transparency and prosecution. This established a pattern that still affects public trust: a government can condemn an adversary’s program while attempting to acquire its personnel, records and methods.

China’s own biological capabilities developed within a communist military and scientific system influenced by Soviet assistance. Civilian research institutes, military medical institutions, vaccine producers and industrial facilities expanded together. The separation between civilian and military sectors was never as clear as Western observers sometimes assumed. Chinese strategic writings have discussed biology as a field with implications for future warfare, including the possibility that biotechnology could produce highly specific effects. The source manuscript summarizes studies alleging that numerous civilian and military facilities could contribute to Chinese biological capabilities, while also noting that the true extent and intent of such work cannot be established from public material alone.
The crucial analytical distinction is between capability and decision.

A state may possess laboratories, trained personnel, databases and manufacturing systems relevant to biological warfare without having decided to launch an offensive program or employ a weapon. A military may study possibilities it never intends to use except under extreme conditions. Intelligence agencies nevertheless cannot wait for unambiguous proof of political intent. They must assess what the opponent could do, how quickly it could mobilize and what warning indicators might appear before an attack.

This produces chronic suspicion. Every expansion of Chinese biotechnology can be interpreted in Washington as an expansion of military potential. Every American disease-surveillance program near China can be interpreted in Beijing as biological reconnaissance. Every request for samples may be seen as either responsible science or strategic collection. Every refusal to share samples may be seen as either legitimate security or evidence of concealment.

Historical memory makes reassurance difficult. American officials can state that their programs are defensive, but Chinese strategists know that offensive knowledge can be preserved inside defensive structures. Chinese officials can state that China complies with the Biological Weapons Convention, but American analysts know that the convention is weakly verified and that civilian institutions can conceal military work.

China publicly presents itself as a supporter of the convention, a proponent of stronger global biosecurity governance and an advocate of a legally binding verification protocol. Its government points to the national Biosecurity Law, which entered into force in 2021, and to Chinese participation in international workshops on biosafety and Biological Weapons Convention implementation.

The United States publicly states that it continues to monitor Chinese biological activities in relation to China’s treaty obligations. Recent American intelligence assessments use deliberately qualified language, describing Chinese capabilities as probable or likely rather than presenting the public with conclusive evidence of a specific operational program.

Neither public position settles the issue. The gap between them is occupied by classified intelligence.

Cooperation is not trust

Scientific cooperation between rivals is often treated as evidence that the rivalry cannot be serious. This is a mistake.

Great powers have repeatedly exchanged knowledge, conducted trade and maintained diplomatic channels while preparing for conflict. Cooperation can be valuable precisely because mistrust exists. It can create visibility, establish communication, improve warning time and reduce the risk that ordinary activity will be interpreted as preparation for war.

The United States and China have strong reasons to cooperate on infectious diseases. China contains enormous cities, dense transport networks, major livestock industries and ecological zones in which humans, domestic animals and wildlife interact. It is a crucial location for surveillance of influenza, coronaviruses and other emerging diseases. The United States possesses leading universities, pharmaceutical firms, biomedical technologies and public-health institutions. Neither side can produce a complete picture of global biological risk using only information collected within its own territory.

Cooperation gives American researchers access to Chinese samples, patients, ecological surveys and outbreak information. Chinese researchers gain access to training, equipment, international publications, scientific networks and advanced methods. Joint work can improve diagnostics, vaccines and surveillance. It can also establish personal relationships that remain useful during political crises.

These benefits are real. They do not cancel security concerns.

The bilateral science relationship has survived periods of intense tension because both governments see value in preserving a controlled channel. In December 2024, the United States and China amended and extended their longstanding Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement for five years. The revised arrangement narrowed the scope of cooperation and added safeguards reflecting concerns about intellectual property, data security and national security. Its survival amid growing rivalry illustrates the basic pattern: cooperation continues, but it is increasingly fenced, monitored and politicized.

The same pattern appears in biological research. The United States wants enough cooperation to receive warnings and conduct useful science, but not enough openness to allow uncontrolled transfers of sensitive capability. China wants the benefits of international research while preventing foreign institutions from freely extracting Chinese biological resources and population data.

This balance is unstable because the research relationship is asymmetrical in different areas. American institutions may possess superior instruments, methods or pharmaceutical platforms. Chinese institutions may possess larger datasets, faster recruitment of research participants, extensive manufacturing capacity or access to particular ecosystems. Each side worries that the other will take the most valuable component of the relationship while withholding comparable access.

Genomics demonstrates the contradiction in its purest form.

Large genomic datasets can generate medical discoveries, support precision medicine and improve understanding of disease. They can also reveal population patterns, family relationships, health vulnerabilities and the identities of individuals. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2025 that American intelligence and law-enforcement agencies had identified economic, privacy, intelligence and military risks from foreign access to Americans’ genomic information, with China described as possessing both the motivation and capability to collect it. The same report recorded the opposing concern of American health agencies: excessive restrictions on foreign access can slow scientific and medical discovery and give other countries an opportunity to take the lead.

This is not a policy failure that can be solved by discovering the correct ideological position. It is a real trade-off.

Sharing data accelerates science. It also expands exposure.

Restricting data protects against exploitation. It also reduces the diversity and scale of research.

International partnerships increase visibility into foreign institutions. They also create pathways for technology transfer.

Training foreign scientists spreads safety standards. It also improves the technical capability of a strategic competitor.

The source manuscript emphasizes earlier cases in which American researchers collected biological samples in China while American institutions and foundations helped develop Chinese research and vaccine capacity. Its interpretation is deliberately suspicious: capabilities created for public health can also support military programs.
The defensible conclusion is not that every project was secretly intended to build a weapon. Public evidence does not support such a sweeping claim. The important conclusion is that capability is fungible. Equipment, trained personnel, quality-control systems, genomic databases, animal models, vaccine factories and high-containment laboratories do not remain confined to the moral purpose stated in the original grant proposal.

States understand this. That is why scientific cooperation is accompanied by security reviews, visa investigations, export controls, disclosure requirements and counterintelligence monitoring. The governments are not choosing between cooperation and espionage. They are cooperating through an environment saturated with espionage concerns.

The research network as an intelligence battlefield

Modern biological intelligence is not limited to stealing the formula for a secret weapon.

The most valuable collection may concern the structure of the opponent’s system: which laboratories receive emergency funding, which military units cooperate with civilian universities, which companies can rapidly scale production, which regions contain unusual outbreaks, which officials control access to samples and which institutions become active during a crisis.

Publications reveal research priorities. Procurement records reveal equipment. Job advertisements reveal the construction of new teams. Professional conferences reveal relationships among institutions. Patents reveal commercial goals. Satellite imagery can reveal expansion at high-containment sites. Cyber operations can extract databases and laboratory records. Human sources can explain the purpose behind apparently ordinary activity.

Research collaboration makes many of these collection tasks easier.

A visiting scientist learns the competence of a laboratory. A joint project reveals which samples exist. A funding relationship exposes internal administrative structures. A scientific dispute reveals weaknesses in quality control. A conference conversation may identify an ambitious researcher, an angry employee or someone seeking employment abroad.

None of this requires every scientist to be a spy. Intelligence services benefit from ordinary professional behavior. Most useful information is not consciously delivered as espionage. It emerges from access.

The United States has long used universities, companies, foundations and international programs as environments for learning about foreign states. China does the same. Chinese intelligence collection does not have to consist entirely of officers issuing secret instructions. State-linked recruitment programs, commercial acquisitions, research partnerships, cyber theft and legal demands placed on Chinese companies can all contribute to the national information base.

The GAO’s genomic-data report describes both lawful and unlawful routes through which China can acquire American health information. These include investments, partnerships, company acquisitions, cybercrime and theft. It also notes that Chinese national-security laws may compel companies operating in China to share collected information with the government. At the same time, American research institutions depend on international data exchange, making complete exclusion costly.

From Beijing’s perspective, the American system presents parallel risks.

American research institutions maintain relationships with intelligence agencies, defense departments and pharmaceutical corporations. U.S. funding can influence the research agenda of foreign institutions. American companies control important platforms, cloud services, instruments and databases. The United States can combine commercial, immigration, communications and financial information. Chinese scientists working abroad may fear that professional dependence gives Washington leverage over them.

The research system therefore becomes a field of counterintelligence.

American agencies ask whether a Chinese researcher has hidden military affiliations, transferred unpublished data or maintained undisclosed funding relationships. Chinese authorities ask whether a domestic scientist has provided sensitive samples, institutional information or population data to foreigners. Both sides tighten rules. Both sides then complain that the other is politicizing science.

The cycle feeds itself.

A security scandal produces new restrictions. Restrictions make legitimate cooperation more difficult. Reduced cooperation decreases transparency. Lower transparency increases intelligence uncertainty. Greater uncertainty produces more aggressive collection. Espionage discoveries then justify further restrictions.

The danger is that each side begins interpreting the entire scientific relationship as hostile.

That would be an overcorrection. Most research collaboration is not equivalent to an intelligence operation, and the majority of scientists are pursuing professional goals rather than state missions. Yet it would be equally naive to pretend that intelligence services ignore a field with direct implications for military health, economic power and population vulnerability.

The proper analytical unit is not the individual scientist but the network.

A network can contain sincere researchers, commercial actors, government officials, military customers, intelligence collectors and political intermediaries. Different participants may understand only part of the whole. A civilian laboratory may perform legitimate work whose results are later incorporated into military assessments. A company may collect data for profit that the state subsequently demands. A university may receive funding without knowing the intelligence significance of a particular dataset. A scientist may publish a method that is later adopted by a defense program.

Compartmentation makes this possible. It also makes public investigation extraordinarily difficult. The absence of proof that an individual scientist had hostile intent does not demonstrate that the wider state system gained no strategic value. Conversely, the existence of military interest does not prove that the underlying research was fraudulent or offensive.

This is why the public debate repeatedly collapses into two unsatisfactory camps.

One camp assumes that science is an autonomous, peaceful realm corrupted only when politicians interfere. It underestimates intelligence collection, state direction and dual-use capability.

The other assumes that every international research project is a covert weapons transfer. It mistakes potential strategic value for proof of a criminal plan.

A professional assessment must hold both possibilities in view. It must examine access, capability, intent, control, oversight and alternative explanations. It must also admit when the available evidence is insufficient.

COVID-19 as a strategic wound

COVID-19 transformed biological security from a specialized concern into a central issue of great-power politics.

The pandemic demonstrated that a pathogen with a relatively limited fatality rate could disrupt economies, overwhelm hospitals, interrupt education, weaken military readiness, transform legal systems and produce years of political conflict. It revealed the vulnerability of global supply chains, the importance of protective equipment, the fragility of public trust and the speed with which disinformation can spread.

It also intensified every preexisting suspicion between the United States and China.

Chinese authorities were accused of suppressing early information, limiting access to records and obstructing independent investigation. American officials and political factions offered competing theories concerning natural spillover, laboratory accident, risky research and deliberate action. Chinese media and officials amplified claims that the virus might have originated from an American military program. The scientific debate became inseparable from diplomatic and intelligence conflict.

The source manuscript presents multiple scenarios and argues that competent investigators should not prematurely exclude natural emergence, laboratory accident, deliberate release, third-party action or combinations of deception and error. Its strongest methodological point is that investigators must distinguish possibility from proof. The absence of an obvious genetic signature does not by itself establish natural origin, but the existence of a nearby laboratory does not establish laboratory origin.

The pandemic-origin controversy became a strategic wound because the evidence required to settle it was held by institutions that had reasons to protect themselves.

If the outbreak was natural, Chinese authorities still had reasons to conceal early administrative failures. If it resulted from a laboratory accident, institutions and officials faced overwhelming reputational and political consequences. If foreign-funded research contributed indirectly, American agencies and scientific organizations also had incentives to limit responsibility. Intelligence services possessed classified collection that they could not fully reveal without compromising sources and methods.

Under these conditions, the public could not distinguish uncertainty from concealment.

Every redaction appeared incriminating. Every change in an official assessment looked political. Every scientific conflict was interpreted as evidence of corruption. Advocates on all sides selected fragments supporting their preferred conclusion.

The consequences extended beyond the historical question of origin. COVID-19 altered the future of research governance.

In May 2025, the American administration issued an executive order directing an end to federal funding for dangerous gain-of-function research by foreign entities in countries of concern, specifically including China, and called for a revised oversight policy. The order argued that such research could cause widespread mortality, economic disruption and national-security damage, while also acknowledging the need to preserve readiness, countermeasures and American leadership in biotechnology.

The structure of the order again reveals the central contradiction. The United States wants less dangerous research in poorly supervised foreign settings. It still wants enough advanced research to anticipate threats and produce defenses. Ending all work involving dangerous pathogens would leave the country blind. Continuing without strict controls could create the disaster the research is meant to prevent.

China faces the same problem. It cannot stop studying emerging diseases. Its population, agriculture and economy require extensive surveillance. Yet every advanced project attracts foreign suspicion, and excessive secrecy makes reassurance impossible.

COVID-19 therefore did not resolve the American-Chinese biological rivalry. It made the rivalry more intense while demonstrating that scientific disengagement also carries risks.

The next dangerous outbreak may emerge in China, the United States or neither. It may be natural, accidental or deliberate. In the first days, governments will not know. They will need information from one another while suspecting that the information is incomplete.

That is the relationship in miniature.

Why biological stability benefits both superpowers

The United States and China can imagine biological weapons. They can study them, defend against them and accuse one another of preparing them. Yet both have strong reasons to avoid large-scale biological warfare.

The first reason is uncontrollability.

A contagious agent can cross borders, mutate and return to the attacker. Even if the initiating state vaccinates key personnel, protection may be incomplete. A pathogen may affect allies, neutral states and trade partners. It may establish animal reservoirs that make eradication impossible. Weather, population movement and individual behavior can disrupt the most careful operational plan.

The second reason is attribution risk.

A state might initially hope that an attack could be disguised as a natural outbreak. Modern genomic analysis, intelligence collection, communications interception and human sources make permanent concealment uncertain. Attribution may take time, but a superpower contemplating biological action must assume that evidence could eventually emerge. Retaliation might not be biological. It could include cyberattack, economic blockade, conventional strikes, covert action or nuclear escalation.

The third reason is economic interdependence.

The United States and China remain connected through trade, finance, pharmaceutical production, shipping, agriculture and technology supply chains. Even deliberate economic decoupling cannot instantly remove these links. A major epidemic in China can close factories supplying American markets. A major epidemic in the United States can destroy demand, interrupt investment and destabilize the international financial system on which Chinese exports depend.

The fourth reason is domestic legitimacy.

Both governments promise security. The Chinese Communist Party bases part of its legitimacy on order, competence and national revival. The American system depends on the expectation that institutions can protect citizens while preserving constitutional government. A biological crisis can expose incompetence, intensify factional conflict and create opposition to the ruling order.

An attacker cannot confidently assume that domestic citizens will accept its explanation. Even a successful covert operation could become politically catastrophic if responsibility were revealed. Officials, scientists or intelligence personnel might leak information. Rival factions could exploit the scandal. Families of victims would demand accountability.

The fifth reason is the vulnerability of elites.

Nuclear deterrence historically relied in part on the ability of leaders to protect themselves in bunkers and command systems. Biological defense is less certain. Leaders depend on doctors, security personnel, communications staff, food, water and transportation. An agent may spread before anyone understands the danger. Protective measures may fail. A highly contagious disease can penetrate privileged environments.

The sixth reason is that each superpower has more to lose than a weaker revisionist actor.

China and the United States possess enormous populations, complex economies and global interests. They benefit from a functioning international system even while competing over its rules. A poor isolated regime, extremist organization or collapsing state may accept levels of chaos that the superpowers cannot.

This asymmetry shapes deterrence. The danger may not come primarily from a deliberate American attack on China or a deliberate Chinese attack on the United States. It may come from a weaker actor attempting to provoke them, weaken them or trigger conflict between them.

A third party could release an agent and plant evidence pointing toward one superpower. It could spread forged documents, manipulate online debate and exploit existing suspicions. It would not need to convince every expert. It would need only to delay cooperation, intensify accusations and make rational communication politically costly.

The superpowers’ common interest in stability therefore extends beyond preventing bilateral biological war. They need mechanisms to avoid being manipulated by others.

This does not produce trust. It produces a shared need for crisis management.

Washington and Beijing both benefit from rapid notification of unusual outbreaks, professional communication among laboratories, preservation of samples, transparent epidemiological timelines and secure channels for exchanging technical questions. They benefit from rules against attacks on hospitals, vaccine factories and disease-surveillance systems. They benefit from international capacity to investigate suspicious outbreaks in smaller states before accusations escalate.

The problem is that each confidence-building measure creates new intelligence exposure. Sharing samples can reveal capabilities. Opening laboratories can expose proprietary or military information. Allowing investigators access can create opportunities for espionage.

Stability must therefore be negotiated rather than assumed.

Biological competition below the threshold of war

The fact that the United States and China benefit from avoiding catastrophic biological warfare does not eliminate biological competition.

States often prefer instruments that remain below the threshold of open war. In the biological field, these instruments can include data acquisition, covert sample collection, sabotage of research, theft of pharmaceutical intellectual property, manipulation of supply chains, interference with agricultural systems and disinformation about outbreaks or vaccines.

The term “biological threat” should not be restricted to a missile carrying a pathogen.

A rival could compromise laboratory software, alter data or destroy samples. It could penetrate a pharmaceutical company and steal the design of a countermeasure. It could manipulate public opinion to reduce vaccine uptake during a genuine emergency. It could spread false claims that a safe product is contaminated, damaging the opponent’s response. It could interfere with cold-storage systems, hospital networks or diagnostic laboratories through cyber operations.

A biological crisis creates opportunities for combined attacks. The source manuscript describes the logic of a “double tap”: a disease outbreak accompanied by cyberattack, infrastructure sabotage or a second pathogen. The purpose would be to overwhelm response systems that were designed to handle one emergency at a time.
Such operations are strategically attractive because modern societies are tightly coupled. Hospitals depend on electricity, telecommunications, water, digital records and logistics. Quarantine depends on food delivery, policing and public compliance. If several systems fail simultaneously, even a manageable disease can become a national-security crisis.

Neither the United States nor China can ignore this possibility. Both must examine how an opponent might exploit an outbreak even without causing it.

A naturally emerging epidemic could become the cover for espionage, sabotage or coercion. A state could use emergency restrictions to gather information, pressure companies or alter trade rules. It could hoard medical supplies, dominate vaccine distribution or condition assistance on political concessions. It could accuse a rival of causing the outbreak to mobilize domestic nationalism.

This is biological competition without biological warfare in the narrow legal sense.

Supply chains provide another arena. China has become important to the production of pharmaceutical ingredients, medical equipment and laboratory materials. The United States retains leading positions in drug development, specialized technology, research finance and parts of the advanced biomedical ecosystem. Each side fears dependence on the other.

A country that controls manufacturing capacity can prioritize its own population during a crisis. A country controlling key patents, instruments or software can restrict access. Export controls imposed for national security can look like economic warfare. Commercial concentration can become a strategic vulnerability.

The United States has increasingly sought to strengthen domestic biomanufacturing and reduce dependence on Chinese capacity. A 2026 GAO report described Defense Department concerns that insufficient American scale-up infrastructure pushes innovators toward foreign production, potentially transferring technology and reducing control over supply chains. It characterized Chinese biotechnology and biomanufacturing investment as a possible strategic defense disadvantage for the United States.

China has parallel reasons to reduce dependence on American technology. Restrictions on advanced equipment or data access can be interpreted in Beijing as attempts to prevent Chinese development rather than neutral security measures.

The competition therefore extends from laboratories into factories, cloud systems, shipping routes and investment policy.

This lower-level conflict may be more persistent than a classical arms race. It does not produce a stable count of weapons. It produces a shifting contest over resilience, data, manufacturing and access.

The danger from weaker states

The American-Chinese biological relationship cannot be understood by looking only at the two superpowers.

Both countries must defend themselves against Russia, North Korea, Iran, other regional powers, unstable states and non-state actors. Some of these actors possess fewer conventional military resources and may therefore see biological capabilities as an asymmetric equalizer.

A smaller state cannot match American carrier groups, long-range aviation, satellites and global bases. It cannot match China’s industrial scale, population and missile inventory. Biological agents offer the theoretical possibility of imposing disproportionate damage at lower cost.

The technical barriers remain significant. Producing a laboratory sample is not the same as producing a reliable weapon.