China’s military continued work on biological and toxin research with potential military applications in 2024 and is using artificial intelligence as part of the effort, according to the State Department’s annual arms compliance report.
The report also warns that Russia, North Korea and Iran are conducting research that raises concerns about their adherence to the Biological Weapons Convention, a 1972 arms treaty that bans developing and stockpiling deadly bioweapons.
On China, the report repeated concerns from last year regarding Beijing’s failure to disclose details about offensive biological arms that include weaponized ricin and botulinum toxins, as well as military agents for spreading anthrax, cholera, plague and tularemia.
The report made no mention of the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic that is now widely believed to have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an institution linked to Chinese military research.
A new White House website bearing the headline “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19” recently reported that the virus “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.”
The State Department compliance report revealed new details first outlined in last year’s report that concluded that China’s People’s Liberation Army is engaged in military research on marine toxins.
China’s annual submissions under the BWC also failed to identify two military biological warfare laboratories in Beijing and Lingbao, the report said.
The submissions, called confidence-building measures or CBMs, do not include information on marine toxin research conducted at Chinese institutions that “identify, test, and characterize diverse families of potent toxins,” the report said.
For the first time, the annual compliance report said China is using artificial intelligence for suspected bioweapons research.
China also “probably is capable of using publicly available artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools to advance efforts related to [biological weapons] applications,” the report said.
But, according to the report, Beijing’s military is incapable of building advanced gear for biological research and is reliant on Western scientific equipment.
Research conducted by PLA medical institutions includes toxin and biotechnology research and development with potential weapons applications, the report said. The work “raises concern regarding its compliance with Article I of the BWC.”
That article requires signatories — China signed the convention in 1984 — to comply with a complete ban on the development or production of microbial or other biological agents and toxins.
The compliance report further confirms charges made last year that China’s military is working on deadly marine toxins that could be used in warfare.
“China’s research organizations have been conducting and directing military research related to marine toxins,” the report said, noting that China’s regular reports to international treaty monitoring organizations do not include information about marine toxin work.
The marine toxin research includes identifying, testing and characterizing “diverse families of potent toxins.”
Marine toxins are regarded by experts as among the world’s most potent, naturally occurring poisons. The toxins attack the central nervous system and are lethal in very small amounts.
U.S. intelligence first disclosed China’s marine toxin work in the 2024 compliance report.
Intelligence agencies suspect the Chinese are using civilian research designed to prevent marine toxin poisoning from seafood and shellfish as a cover for biological weapons development.
The State Department also said China’s declared offensive biological arms program that existed from the early 1950s to at least the late 1980s was never verified as dismantled as required by the convention.
In a section on efforts to pursue the potential violations, the report said the U.S. government is continuing to monitor and report on Beijing’s biological activities related to compliance with the BWC.
The report said that during a November conference hosted by Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international monitoring group, then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Bonnie Jenkins highlighted concerns about China’s work on pharmaceutical-based agents and toxins.
Ms. Jenkins stated in prepared remarks that “we also note compliance concerns about the People’s Republic of China’s research of pharmaceutical-based agents and toxins with potential dual-use applications.”
The annual compliance report was the last produced under the Biden administration.
The Commerce Department in 2021 imposed sanctions on the PLA Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 10 related institutes that are the main Chinese military organizations in charge of biological defense work.
Those sanctions, however, were put in place related to what the federal government said was PLA “brain-control weaponry.”
Russia also is violating the BWC through its offensive biological warfare program, “continued and evolved” from the weapons built under the Soviet Union, the report said.
“Russia is extensively modernizing Soviet-era biological warfare infrastructure that could support its present-day offensive program,” the report said.
The buildup includes a multi-million dollar renovation of the Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Scientific Research Institute in Sergiyev Posad, a city north of Moscow.
North Korea also is violating the BWC with its “dedicated, national-level offensive” biological weapons program, including genetically engineered agents, the report said.
Pyongyang “also has the capability to genetically engineer biological products with technologies such as CRISPR, as reported by its State Academy of Sciences and other sources,” the report said.
The germ weapons can be fired from sprayers and poison pen injection devices, the report said.
Iranian military research activities have also raised concerns about whether Tehran is developing biological weapons.
“The United States continues to assess that Iran has not abandoned its intention to conduct research and development of biological agents and toxins for offensive purposes,” the report said.
A report by the BioThreats Initiative based on open-source information obtained in China concludes that the PLA is engaged in secret biological weapons work as part of an asymmetric warfare strategy.
“Bioweapons are part of the CCP’s standard order of battle; not an unconventional set of capabilities only to be used under extreme circumstances,” that report states.
“The Science of Military Strategy,” an authoritative PLA textbook, includes a section identifying biology as a domain for military struggle. The book mentions the potential for new types of biological warfare to include “specific ethnic genetic attacks” designed to affect targeted ethnic groups.
In 2020, then-Trump administration officials disclosed to The Washington Times that China’s military was working covertly on population-specific germ weapons capable of attacking ethnic minorities.
A 2023 report by the Pentagon called the Biodefense Posture Review warned about China’s biological warfare research, including the threat posed by marine toxins.
Chinese publications “have called biology a new domain of war,” the Pentagon report said.
