The Chinese government?
Authoritarianism is more worrying if it's in the country I'm standing on.
My main fear with biological warfare is non-state actors. As it becomes possible to do more with less, the chances of fundamentalists and other malicious parties using biological agents for terrorism or worse go up.
IIRC one of the main reasons MAD was a threat to the Russians was because they're populated centres are mostly in one area of the country.
Its all saber rattling regardless I guess, as china develops they'll be more so concentrated in cities like everyone else.
Who made the statement?
And hence that strategy works to prevent that attack, not defeat it...
Have a bunch of relatively large (much larger that the US's) warheads strike American cities exclusively. Forget about military targets.
This deterrent is ineffective against the United States. The medium-range missiles cannot even hit Seattle, much less Miami. The entire Chinese ICBM force consists of 20 missiles with non-MIRVed 5-megaton thermonuclear warheads.
Thus, in terms of nuclear weaponry, the United States outguns China by about 2000-to-20. This is why their plans assume defeat in a nuclear exchange -- because it is a virtual certainty.
You are correct on the number. But the part about the Soviet Union, Im not so sure...
> History
Mao Zedong decided to begin a Chinese nuclear-weapons program during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-1955 over the Quemoy and Matsu Islands. While he did not expect to be able to match the large American nuclear arsenal, Mao believed that even a few bombs would increase China's diplomatic credibility. Construction of uranium enrichment plants in Baotou and Lanzhou began in 1958, and a plutonium facility in Jiuquan and the Lop Nur nuclear test site by 1960. The Soviet Union provided assistance in the early Chinese program by sending advisers to help in the facilities devoted to fissile material production, and promised to provide a prototype bomb.[12] In July 1960, however, during the Sino-Soviet split, all Soviet assistance with the Chinese nuclear program was abruptly terminated and all Soviet technicians were withdrawn from the program.[13]
By 1964, when the first Chinese atomic bomb was tested, China was barely on speaking terms with the Soviet Union. By 1969, China and the Soviet Union were on the brink of war. The Soviets tripled their forces in the Far East during the 1960s, deploying fully one-quarter of the Soviet military along the Chinese border. (They did this without drawing down their forces in Europe, which placed quite a strain on the Soviet economy.)
After Nixon visited China in 1972, Henry Kissinger even gave security briefings to Chinese generals, supplying them with satellite imagery and the location of Soviet forces.
I just thinking the other day, once home-made drones become capable enough of carrying loads of up to 5kg then what would stop such a potential malicious "non-state actor" of using such a drone fully-loaded with chemical nasty stuff to bypass all the obsolete ground-security system at a big open-air event (say, the Super-Bowl or any other sports event attended by 70,000+ people) and cause harm to most of all those present?