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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Agree with @sarker. It seems that even if major powers develop bioweapons, the nuclear truce has held. Why are bioweapons different than nuclear weapons?

Sure you can have deniability, but if Covid-19 were an actual bioattack, it would be a laughably bad attempt. All it does is kill old people who are burden on the system - when China because of the One Child Policy will be hit the hardest by the demographic collapse. If anything Covid is great for China, as it kills older less productive people, and lets the young refill the ranks.

Maybe the nuclear forces aren't quite ready

What does this mean? Is China going to launch a plague, then launch nukes? I'd argue bioweapons only make sense as a deceptive attack, crippling the West before they can strike back with nukes or other superweapons.

Maybe the Chinese vaccine industry is suffering delays - they have to prepare a vaccine for the new weapon along with their COVID vaccine work. That might explain China's weakness on that front - diversion of effort.

This is a far more important argument than you give it credit for. The advantage right now for the US especially is a specialization in research of 'hard sciences,' with biology/medicine being a lucrative and prestigious field. Virology maybe not, but I'd be surprised if Western defense agencies didn't have a much better understanding of viruses than standard academia.

What does this mean? Is China going to launch a plague, then launch nukes? I'd argue bioweapons only make sense as a deceptive attack, crippling the West before they can strike back with nukes or other superweapons.

China doesn't quite have second-strike capability against the US at the moment. They can cause some damage certainly, but a lot of their arsenal could be taken out with a pre-emptive strike. This has implications on the credibility of threats and deterrence. China obviously would want a secure arsenal before taking any risky moves like invading Taiwan. Hence they are building missile siloes and a new class of missile submarines for 2024-25.

I'd be surprised if Western defense agencies didn't have a much better understanding of viruses than standard academia.

I would. Biology and medicine is a huge field, and the vast majority of the research is conducted either in the open (at universities etc., and published in public journals) or by private companies. The US military has some research capacity (Fort Detrick etc.), but it is tiny compared to "standard academia".

Sure you can have deniability, but if Covid-19 were an actual bioattack, it would be a laughably bad attempt. All it does is kill old people who are burden on the system - when China because of the One Child Policy will be hit the hardest by the demographic collapse. If anything Covid is great for China, as it kills older less productive people, and lets the young refill the ranks.

Honestly the biggest frustration of COVID is that it provided a convenient out for the biggest Demographic issue of most affluent states right now and yet every major economy dug the hole even colossally deeper instead of taking the short-term hit to fix their issues.

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