Russia’s heavy losses in Ukraine and the Wagner uprising have increased the chances of escalation of the war in Europe into a global deflagration, if President Vladimir Putin feels pressured to do so, but the next World War III may not involve conventional warfare such as guns, bombs, and tanks.

Instead, according to physicist Richard A. Mueller, professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, we could witness the use of biological and computer viruses. 

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, the author of the “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines” and “Now: The Physics of Time”, and a former member of the Jason Security Advisory group for the US Defense Department, says that the likes of Russia or China may be tempted to weaponize viruses that would covertly cripple the adversary’s economy within a very short timeframe. 

President Putin has threatened many times to use nuclear weapons against Russia's enemy, ordered numerous cyber attacks in the EU and the US and the poisoning of his opponents. 

Biological warfare

Mueller believes that a deadly virus could be optimized to reduce the chance of mutation and released in the target country, possibly near a biological facility to create the illusion of a domestic program leak. The aggressor nation would first immunize its own population through a campaign under, perhaps, the guise of flu vaccination, but also incorporate an immune suppression gene in the virus to facilitate its spread by asymptomatic carriers.

Mueller believes that not the military, but hospitals will be the most prominent targets, in order to reinforce the illusion that it is a major peacetime issue rather than a war.