China uses AI to boost bioweapons research - Report

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.

"China probably is unable to make complex scientific equipment without Western innovation. It probably is capable of using publicly available artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools to advance efforts related to BW applications."

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.

'In 2024, Chinese military medical institutions conducted toxin and biotechnology research and development with potential BW applications, which raises concern regarding its compliance with Article I of the BWC. This article requires States Parties “never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, or otherwise acquire or retain …[m]icrobial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes.”'

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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.

"Historical information suggests that China's production of Biological warfare (BW) occurred at two plants, in Beijing and Lingbao, prior to the signing of the BWC in 1972. Although China has had BWCs every year since 1989, it has never identified these facilities or otherwise revealed that it has pursued an offensive BW program. However, China allegedly weaponized ricin, botulinum toxins and causative agents of anthrax, cholera, plague and tularemia as part of its historic biological warfare program."

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.”

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.

Covid-19 as a biological weapon?

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.”

In March 2024, a 329-page report was released by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, current U.S. secretary of state, concluding that “a major biosecurity incident” in China likely caused the coronavirus pandemic.

The Rubio report is based largely on previously unreported Chinese-language sources and provides significant circumstantial evidence to support the lab leak theory. The result of months of investigation by the senator's staff, the report examines the history of Chinese Communist Party bioweapons research going back decades, as well as the party's behavior before and after the outbreak.

The study suggests that in 2018 Beijing began exerting "intense political pressure" on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other biological research facilities to "produce technological breakthroughs" with military applications.

Also according to the report, part of that effort involved pushing scientists away from using key equipment from foreign competitors, even as those scientists began to warn of significant security concerns.

However, in the recent Ebola study, the Chinese researchers emphasized that their goal was to replicate Ebola symptoms in a controlled laboratory environment. They wanted to understand and facilitate prevention strategies.

Notably, the scientists and researchers used a different virus, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), to transport Ebola glycoprotein as the deadly Ebola requires exceptionally secure Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facilities. The mentioned protein is critical for the virus's ability to enter and infect host cells.

Read also: Chilling report published on the origins of COVID-19: "Beijing concealed the truth"

As quoted by Science Direct, the researchers said, "Overall, this surrogate model represents a safe, effective, and economical tool for rapid preclinical evaluation of medical countermeasures against EBOV (Ebola virus) under BSL-2 conditions, which would accelerate technological advances and breakthroughs in confronting Ebola virus disease." 

In addition to the one that caused the pandemic disaster from Covid, there have been two other researches conducted in Chinese laboratories (linked to PLA?) that have caused great concern in the outside world: the one on Ebola and the one on pangolin coronavirus, published by a Chinese research group on Jan. 19.

The Canadian case

In November 2024, Canada discovered that the Beijing government and the PLA had managed to penetrate a top-security laboratory-the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg with biosecurity level 4-which handles the world's most dangerous viruses and pathogens.

“Not only were sensitive information and materials transferred to regime-run laboratories in Beijing, but government scientists were also secretly collaborating with top PRC military officials in the fields of biotechnology, biological weapons and bioterrorism.”