It is an absolutely braindead thing for a nuclear power to do - bio/chem weapon R&D. The reason why the US abandoned that course so long ago had nothing to do with morality - somebody in the DoD simply realized that they were furthering the state of the art in dirt cheap WMDs. If you already have nukes, you want to keep the cost of doomsday devices as high as possible - limiting the number of potential rivals.
> The reason why the US abandoned that course so long ago had nothing to do with morality - somebody in the DoD simply realized that they were furthering the state of the art in dirt cheap WMDs
Is there a reliable reference that the US is no longer researching biochemical weapons?
Wikipedia claims: "Both the U.S. bio-weapons ban and the Biological Weapons Convention restricted any work in the area of biological warfare to defensive in nature. In reality, this gives BWC member-states wide latitude to conduct biological weapons research because the BWC contains no provisions for monitoring or enforcement.[74][75] The treaty, essentially, is a gentlemen's agreement amongst members backed by the long-prevailing thought that biological warfare should not be used in battle.[74]"
The very public shuttering of facilities, the absence of military doctrine, etc. Yes, there could be secret congressional funding for a secret research lab serving a secret component of the military that secretly maintains readiness to do something that is strategically counterproductive and categorically denied. Do I really need to go on with how silly that line of thought is?
I really don’t understand how anyone can have such a profound level of trust in organisations that have proved themselves utterly unworthy of that trust. Have the lessons of Snowden really been forgotten this quickly??
Well that is a major mischaracterization of my views on the US government. It is funny that you mention Snowden, because many of us were called paranoid conspiracy nuts for using the exact same logic I just demonstrated to warn about dragnet surveillance programs. Watch: the USG has the disposition to spy on its citizens and the capability to do so without fear of consequences, therefor it is almost certainly happening. You can see that argument commonly popping up all over the 90s cypherpunks mailing list.
Now, try to apply that same reasoning to your allegation without looking silly. Yes, the USG has secretly run certain aspects of a public biowarfare program - and when it came to light they paid. Boom, they couldn't keep it secret and they couldn't escape the consequences (lots of very damaging legal cases and hearings). Finally, do they have an incentive? No - as I said, it makes no sense for them to reduce the cost of yet another world ending weapon. Now you could point to Russia getting caught with massive stockpiles of Anthrax after they claimed to end the program... but their nuclear program's credibility isn't comparable - they've always demonstrated clear signs of insecurity about it. That isn't the case for the USG.
