A very thin gruel, indeed
On 23 September, President Donald Trump addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA). In an unexpected move, he called on the world’s nations to halt the development of biological weapons (BW). Referring to the COVID pandemic five years earlier and reckless laboratory experiments, he announced a US-led international effort to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), and proposed an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven verification system. After more than two decades of opposition, his speech seemed to indicate that Washington might embrace verification machinery for the BTWC. However, the less than two minutes he devoted to the topic contained little substance …