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Close it.
LLS
Pardon me for being a tad suspicious, but they might have a point. Bio defense and offense research are identical, and there are amazingly tight controls on research in the US, under bio war treaty obligations, not to mention common sense.
There was a very intense scandal some years ago, when some fool at the Pentagon tried to sneak through an appropriation for an “aerosol lab”, a biological weapons research facility, hidden in a massive spending bill, which was only caught by a congressional aide flipping through the enormous document in the early morning hours, out of sheer boredom.
He didn’t know what an “aerosol lab” was, so he called a friend at the Pentagon to ask. Shortly thereafter, it hit the fan in a massive and unpleasant way.
So since it basically can’t be done in the US, by treaty, and to avoid a potential major disaster, I would not be surprised if someone had decided to “outsource” it to where it wouldn’t be noticed.
Biological offense is the same as biological defense, and very close to ordinary medical research. Any nation with a modern hospital has the capability to create bio weapons. This is why everybody is so antsy about it.
And yet, the major powers still try now and again to mess around with it, sometimes with bad result.