The India-US impasse over tariffs has, besides Russian oil imports by New Delhi, another major causative factor - India's insistence on safeguarding the interests of its farmers. While tariff percentages are dominating discussions and media coverage, there is another insidious threat that Indian strategic planners need to consider - agro-terrorism.
Two Chinese researchers were arrested in the US in June by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for smuggling in a particular strain of fungus. This story, which appeared in the inner pages of newspapers, deserves greater attention as it points to a novel warfare threat that New Delhi must prepare for.
From Trojan Horse To 'Insect Allies'
In conflict, innovation sometimes becomes the difference between victory and defeat. The Trojan Horse enabled the Greeks in 1184 BC to breach the ramparts of Troy and capture it. In World War II, the development of radar in Britain gave it an unprecedented advantage for prioritising scarce RAF (Royal Air Force) fighter aircraft to intercept incoming Luftwaffe strikes. And just in the past year, the Israeli innovation of booby-trapped pagers wreaked havoc amongst the Hezbollah, while Ukraine's audacious placement and launch of UAVs thousands of kilometres away within Russia caused heavy air force losses. Historically, threats from innovations have been sector-agnostic; poisoning of water wells, using bodies of plague victims, and distributing blankets of small pox patients amongst the enemy's prisoners, et al - the methods have been innovatingly cruel. It is, thus, imperative to study and pre-empt such surprises in areas of non-traditional security, since warfare has evolved into a hybrid model where no sector of daily life is safe from being targeted.
Food security is one such vital area. It has been thought of earlier too (scorched earth policy used in war), but ongoing research to affect a nation's food supply is at a different level; studies in altering DNA of bio-organisms are underway in America, which, if misused, can terrorise a populace on an unprecedented scale. In 2016, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of America started a USD 27 mn four-year programme called Insect Allies, in which it asked for “proposals that enable expression of crop traits within a single growing season … by delivering a modified virus to target plants by a mobile insect vector; ….(the) target crop must be an important annual, perennial, or subsistence plant.” The project was called out for its disturbing implications by scientists worldwide and through articles in the Science magazine; it was also flagged in September 2019 at the UN Biological Weapons Convention held at Geneva, which this writer attended as a security expert.
China May Already Be Experimenting
Four years have passed since the planned culmination of the Insect Allies programme, but there is no information about its further trajectory. If it has been successful, the US can develop genetically modified viruses, which will be carried by insects to work on fully mature crops of agricultural importance in a nation's diet. The viruses, the programme claimed, would modify the genes of targeted crops and protect them from damage from manmade or natural vagaries like drought, salinity, flooding etc. However, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) went on to add that it would also address “a wide range of threats (that) may jeopardize food security, including intentional attack by an adversary.” A malicious tweak of the virus and its dispersal in an adversary nation would make it a destroyer of food crops. This is threatening for any country, and it is no surprise that the Chinese (and others, too) may already be experimenting with it.
The two Chinese researchers, Yunqing Jian and Zunyong Liu, arrested in the US, were charged with smuggling in a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which is a potential agroterrorism weapon. They would have done further studies on this fungus that, as per the US Department of Justice, causes “head blight”, a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice; it is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide. Fusarium graminearum's toxins cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.
What Is The 'Correct' Response?
The development of such non-traditional threats raises new questions deserving serious analysis; the fact that it is difficult to trace their origin (like the novel Coronavirus) adds to their lethality. Would such an attack be considered adequate to justify a kinetic response, or would only a tit-for-tat retort be acceptable? What about a response by cyber, electro-magnetic or economic means? These questions are being debated worldwide, and India, actually, has taken the non-traditional route of holding the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance after a kinetic event - the Pahalgam terrorist massacre. If terrorism can become a tool to affect a nation's societal harmony (as the Pahalgam attempt was), then nothing stops adversaries from using bio-weapons, like Insect Allies, for agro-terrorism.
‘Capability takes time to build; intentions can change overnight' is an oft-quoted axiom in security studies. If American and Chinese ongoing research in genetic engineering of food crops through insect dispersion is anything to go by, then India's security agencies have an additional danger of agro-terrorism on their already cluttered threat radar; this is not fear-mongering but a reality that needs clinical evaluation.
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
