The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed critical weaknesses in the human domain of warfare at just the moment technology has emerged that gives bad actors new power to exploit those weaknesses. Developments in synthetic biology will create next-generation bioweapons, “human-domain fires” that will fundamentally change the strategic environment and create a threat naval planners must consider now, before it is encountered at sea.
A Human-Domain Plague
In a March 2020 press release praising the effectiveness of its preventative medicine, the Navy proudly declared: “No cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed aboard any U.S. 7th Fleet Navy vessel.”1 One week later, cases were spreading so rapidly, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) effectively became a “mission-kill.”
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3. U.S. Special Operations Command, Operating in the Human Domain, (Fayetteville, NC: U.S. Department of Defense, August 2015), 3.
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21. Ben Hubbard, “Syria Used Chemical Weapons 3 Times in One Week, Watchdog Says,” The New York Times, 8 April 2020; Mark Urban, “Skripal Poisoning: Third Russian Suspect ‘Commanded Attack,’” BBC, 28 June 2019.
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