China is working on modern warfare weapons that include biological and "mind-melting" microwave technology — similar to those that caused Havana Syndrome — in its preparations for "all-out war," experts are warning.
Intelligence evidence shows China's People's Liberation Army is working on new-age weapons to "defeat the enemy's mind, or subjugate the enemy's mind before the actual conflict or disagreement takes place," the Hudson Institute's John Lee, the former Australian national security adviser, told The U.S. Sun in a report published Sunday.
The intelligence is not widely distributed nor precisely known because of China's "secrecy" and lack of "transparency," Lee added.
But the threat is real and should be "taken very seriously indeed," security expert professor Anthony Glees told the paper.
"Microwaves can be used to cause cognitive fog, dizziness, loss of balance, anxiety and nausea as a weapon," Glees warned. "They could be aimed at a single specific target, say Taiwan's military control HQ."
The CCP Biothreats Initiative first warned of the intelligence last year, noting China is at the "forefront" of "advanced technologies" including "AI, brain-computer interfaces and novel biological weapons," according to The Sun.
China, with designs to maintain its influence over Taiwan, is using all forms of technology to its "military strategies," experts told The Sun. '
"There is some evidence that the various Chinese entities do experiment and are developing these sorts of weapons," Lee said.
"They're weapons that essentially degrade the natural capability of the minds or the cognitive processes of particular targets."
International law does limit some types of biological or cognitive weapons, but China has long rejected considering itself beholden to the world order in that regard, according to the report.
"The sorts of ethical constraints that many of the advanced liberal democracies, have placed on themselves, the Chinese don't hold themselves to," Lee said.
"They consistently will refuse to come to any credible binding agreements on ... constraints that we may mutually want to place on each other to prevent any kind of breakout into a terrible, brave new world."
Regulating these new-age weapons is a process that cannot even keep up to the technology, which develops even faster and more secretively than nuclear weapons.
"I would even say that the Soviet Union had more mutually agreed constraints placed on them than China does now in a nuclear arena," Lee warned. "And certainly [in the] biological arena, China doesn't bind itself to any restrictions.
"China continues to see itself as trying to play catch up to particularly the United States in weaponry.
"It doesn't want to put any constraints on itself for development of any kind of weaponry, based on any kind of technology."
These warnings come as China is increasingly emboldened during the Biden administration to engage in provocations and military drills targeting war over Taiwan, according to Lee.
"You often hear this comment that China is showboating," he said. "It's not just that. China is actively improving its readiness and its tactical capability to launch an invasion of Taiwan."
The U.S. has been subject to the "mind-melting weapons" through the Havana syndrome, Glees noted.
"We've known for sure since December 2020 that the 'Havana syndrome' is real, that microwaves can be used to cause 'cognitive fog, dizziness, loss of balance, anxiety and nausea' as a weapon," Glees told The Sun.
"A study the year before identified brain damage amongst those who had experienced microwave attacks.
"To use a computer virus to infect Taiwanese computers to develop a cyber version of 'Havana syndrome' which would affect large sections of a chosen group in dispersed locations, e.g., air force pilots, soldiers manning the batteries, should be relatively easy.
"Equally, infecting Taiwanese computers with sleep programs should be simple."