The PRC Bioweapons Threat

How the PRC Doctrine and Civil-Military Fusion Create Anthrax Bioweapons Risk & How Policymakers Must Pivot to Fix America’s Anthrax Vulnerabilities

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The threat of anthrax to the United States from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to grow, with the PRC regularly advancing offensive anthrax biological weapons programs. These offensive programs are complemented by PRC defensive medical countermeasure initiatives, designed to protect their own warfighter participating in an anthrax-laden environment. Under the direction of PRC Major General Chen Wei, a prominent military biological weapons scientist and confident of Xi Jinping, PRC anthrax programs have seen recent multi-billion-dollar capacity expansions augmented by new research, patents, and technology innovations.

PRC anthrax biological weapon systems are systemically built around evading and exploiting vulnerabilities in the American biodefense model – such as America’s planned elimination of last-line-of-defense antitoxin therapies, overreliance on military vaccinations, improper modeling around clandestine anthrax threats, and the lack of forward-deployed anthrax therapeutics.

Anthrax threats have the potential to preclude a broader assault on Taiwan, as a means of destabilizing and collapsing American military readiness before an attack ever begins.

There are several actions the U.S. Government must take today to ensure the lifesaving protection of Americans from these threats, including:

  • Reversing the planned elimination of anthrax antitoxin countermeasures from the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile

  • Fully funding the U.S. Government’s biodefense enterprise and supporting the American biodefense industrial base through long-term sustainability agreements

  • Expanding and reinvigorating PHEMCE to respond to biological threats

  • Restoring deterrence and bolstering defense by forward-deploying medical countermeasures to U.S. military and diplomatic installations

  • Modernizing anthrax preparedness modeling to reflect clandestine, no-warning attacks.

  • Expanding global deterrence, bolstering preparedness, and augmenting the American industrial base by encouraging allies to procure domestically-produced medical countermeasures