Covert Biochemical Weapons Operations Conducted by the Chinese Communist Party Against the United States Via Mexican Cartels

Key Findings

1.     China faces multiple conventional military shortfalls relative to American/Allied Forces without any near-term remedies. In response to this reality, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have invested heavily in a range of asymmetric weapons and covert action programs in the next frontier battlespace.

2.     The CCP shows no signs of modifying or reversing its strategic intent to target, degrade and eventually dissolve the United States, conquer Taiwan, dominate the Indo-Pacific and re-engineer a new ‘international system’ based on Beijing’s dominance and absolute control. The United States is the primary obstacle that prevents these adverse developments from occurring, a strategic reality which infuriates the CCP.

3.     The CCP and its PLA are also keenly aware that Beijing lacks conventional military options to achieve any of these strategic goals under traditional battlefield conditions with standard kinetic weapons platforms. As such, they have assessed that their only option to achieve their strategic aims is through ‘no rules’ unconventional warfare against the key ‘control points’ of the American system at home, specifically its food supply. When faced with new strategic challenges, the CCP has reached back into its own military history and has adapted an ancient asymmetric warfare doctrine, Shāshǒujiǎn (杀手锏).

4.     Shāshǒujiǎn roughly translates into English as ‘Assassin’s Mace’. It is an ancient Chinese strategic concept that is focused on identifying key unmitigated vulnerabilities in the overall combat power and comprehensive national strength of an enemy state with superior capabilities, which in this case is the United States. These conventional vulnerabilities are then precision targeted with zero early warning with the strategic intent to shock and rapidly paralyze an enemy’s ability to process events and respond effectively.

5.     Years of our research has clearly demonstrated that the modern application of the CCP’s Shāshǒujiǎn-focused weapons development and strategy can be directly observed in the unconventional domain area, including capabilities that would qualify as Weapons of Mass Destruction programs. CCP and PLA research and planning is focused on the most efficacious Shāshǒujiǎn weapons, targets, and order of operations to cause the severe disruption and collapse of American society, thereby paralyzing key segments of the country and hindering political decision making and military responses.

6.     American leaders and national security agencies face an exponentially increasing number of geographically distributed, networked, and highly adaptive Mexico-based threat groups that are actively engaged in covert biochemical weapons operations against the United States with CCP strategic sponsorship and enablement. These groups operate seamlessly across national borders and generate often-fragmented, disparate data trails behind them in faint signal form. The essential inputs and enablers of precursor chemicals, pharmaceutical-grade pill grade manufacturing facilities and international money laundering capabilities for these cartels are provided by the CCP.

7.     Firing ballistic missiles results in immediate attribution and a full-spectrum range of consequences, as can be readily observed in the cases of Russia and Iran. However, there are now new methods for achieving military-style effects in a less dramatic manner that makes specific attribution a more difficult endeavor. This requires hostile states, such as China under the CCP, to harness the networked structures of non-state groups for mutual benefit.

8.     Synthetic narcotics are a fundamentally different type of illicit industry compared to previous generations of ‘naturally-grown’ narcotics, such as cocaine. Synthetic narcotics, namely fentanyl-laced heroin, are produced in pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing facilities under standardized industrial processes with associated supply chains and distribution channels.

9.     However, in spite of the ‘professionalization’ of this illicit industry, synthetic narcotics are not likely to be commercially viable even over the medium term. For example, fentanyl-laced heroin does not generate a stable population of consumers given the high fatality rates of users. Users of many other naturally grown narcotics will purchase product for multiple years (or even a lifetime in some cases) thereby generating a stable and commercially viable illicit market.

10.  In the case of fentanyl-laced heroin (for example), the product itself is highly likely to either kill or severely debilitate the user over a short timeframe. It is therefore unclear as to whether there is a purely commercial motive for the manufacturing and trafficking of these synthetic narcotics and whether there are hidden subsidies from CCP sources to maintain the market.

11.  Meanwhile, this degradation of public order and human misery is not witnessed on nearly the same scale in other major Western nations like Germany, France or Italy. Why is this? Every other major natural narcotic (such as cocaine) is as readily available in Berlin or Paris as it is in Washington DC or Vancouver. What is fundamentally different about the synthetic narcotics market that results in this anomalous distribution pattern? CCP state sponsorship, organization, subsidization and strategic control.

12.  The greatest operational risk in synthetic narcotics trafficking is not the actual production and distribution of the ‘product’ itself, it is actually managing the illicit revenue generated by these activities. High-velocity synthetic narcotics in pill form generate massive amounts of cash that has to be deposited into internationally-connected financial institutions and ‘converted into electrons’ as fast as possible.

13.  The physical cash dependency of CCP-backed Mexican synthetic narcotics trafficking syndicates represents a consistent vulnerability with no near-term remedies. Electronic payment systems, credit cards and other cash alternatives all have mature detection capabilities and face legal liability for facilitating illicit transactions. Even the use of the dark web presents risks given its anonymity and the associated risks of theft with no recourse.

14.  This surfaced dynamic lends itself to data model generation to determine exactly how the mechanics of these cash management operations work and what critical inputs are required to enable them to operate consistently and at the scale required. It is through the development of the data model that USG investigators will gain insights as to where exactly to strategically ‘turn the screws’ to achieve operational degradation effect and/or stimulate massive evidence generation by forcing an illicit network to behave erratically.

15.  The CCP has fundamentally designed, implemented and exerts strategic-level control of a threat network structure that originates in Mexico and spans across the United States. Presently this network is being utilized to move synthetic narcotics and launder illicit capital. However, it is critical to realize that this is a multi-modal network which can be quickly repurposed, either in whole or in part, to move and deploy other types of unconventional weapons that directly threaten the American food supply.

16.  Given the nature of the key physical routes that synthetic narcotics move across combined with the high concentration of illegal Mexican/Latin American-origin labor which are trafficked by the Mexican cartels to work in the American agricultural sector, there is an acute and accelerating set of direct risks posed to America’s food security and overall public health. The CCP is the proven ‘world leader’ in the development of engineered zoonotic pathogens that can be deployed in clandestine settings.

17.  The most high-probability surfaced origins of these engineered and weaponized zoonotic pathogens is the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute (HVRI), based in Harbin, China and officially falls under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). CAAS is under the official control of the CCP’s State Council, one of the most powerful bodies in China alongside the CCP Central Committee and the Central Military Commission.

18.  The State Council often serves as the ‘tip of the spear’ for some of the CCP’s most aggressive behavior outside of China’s borders, such as the attempted annexation of islands in the South China Sea. The State Council is also responsible for managing the CCP’s leading bioweapons labs, such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

19.  CCP-sponsored synthetic narcotics trafficking networks are more complex, decentralized and are deliberately compartmentalized. This makes them more difficult to fully enumerate, investigate, and collapse given their amorphous structure. Deliberate asset duplication and organizational redundancies that are commercially inefficient but enhance the robustness of a network are capabilities that only a state can afford.

20.  Given this, multi-domain network graphs are the most effective method to surface, map, and assess the entire international network of a CCP-sponsored synthetic narcotics trafficking organization. This exercise has the dual benefit of surfacing emergent risks to the American food supply and generating countermeasures.

21.  Network graphs also enable the identification and isolation of key inputs and/or enabling infrastructure (i.e., key technical personnel, off-shore bank accounts, pharmaceutical equipment) that are off-shore in origin but would have a catastrophic impact on the on-shore network if they were cut off. Armed with a full strategic intelligence picture across all geographies, assets, and personnel, multi-domain network graphs provide operators and investigators with pure precision strike options against CCP-sponsored synthetic narcotics trafficking syndicates and their threat networks inside the United States that are specifically vectored against our food and agriculture sector.

22.  These hostile CCP-backed Mexican cartels are presently engaged in biochemical warfare against a highly clustered group of Western countries with the risks to the United States being the highest. The effects have been devastating but are fragile and reversible once the massive information asymmetries regarding network structure are rebalanced. The successful collapse of these syndicates in the United States will dramatically reduce the national security threats to our food and agricultural sector. The inverse is also true.