Has World War Three Just Started?

 Imagine if you were an enemy of the West ....

The Russian Bear Is An Old Nemesis Of The West .....

... and you wanted to attack it in a manner that didn't risk direct military confrontation.

How would you go about it?

A nuclear bomb set off by a sponsored terrorist group would work for a while, but there would be no effort spared to track down the attackers and their sponsors, and eventually there may well be evidence pointing back to you. The Twin Towers attack for instance, set off a worldwide hunt by the US and other Western security services, and some sort of punishment was dished out .... the impacts of which are still being felt two or more decades later .... So that would be a very risky strategy.

Direct confrontation, even for a nuclear power, would likely be lost, or lead to mutually assured destruction .... so not really what is wanted. Similarly, too many overt I.T. attacks, raiding via the Internet, interfering in elections, stealing data etc etc, always runs the risk of economic retaliations such as China's Huwaii Telecom company have felt.

No, it has to be something, that even if tracked back to you, can be plausibly denied as just an unfortunate event of nature, or an accident, but definitely not a deliberate attack.

Old and New Enemies Can Be One And The Same ......

So how about this: You get a Western country to design and build a germ and virus research plant, which you then quietly kick them out of. You then run the plant under the radar, ostensibly performing some standard research in to the roots of a bat virus .... so who would pay attention?

Then, oops there is an 'accidental release' of a virus from your state of the art institute, which you can plausibly deny as nothing other than an accident (if anyone can ever pin the release down to the institute), and if not, claim comes from the interaction of humans and wet meat (wild live animals) in the local markets ... you use the Internet to propagate denials of any responsibility.

Now the trick of this is that:

• One: The released virus shouldn't really be too fatal, just attacking say, the very elderly and or the infirm. The casualty rates should only result in between 5 to 10 per cent more than the normal death rates in any one country (but not your own) before they develop their own vaccine. Any higher and you risk having no export markets.
  
• Two: The first casualties should be in your own country, but then strangely quickly tail off at home, while spreading like wildfire overseas.
• Three: Hardly impact your own economy, whilst trashing the Western ones, who under democratic pressures, can't just ignore the relatively small number of deaths, and have to lock-down their economies. Thus incurring huge public debts, during 12 to 18 months of false panic (but not totally crippling them). 
• Four: If possible, grow your own economy by selling the West a lot of the equipment needed to fight the virus .... thus taking you ever closer to overtaking the USA as top dog nation ... which after all is the aim of the game.  
• Five: Allow you to expand your influence in vulnerable third world nations, by offering a free/cheap anti-virus vaccine, that somehow you just happened to quickly develop in your Western built virus institute, far faster than anyone could have expected.   

Now if any of this sounds even remotely familiar, then maybe you might start to think that the first shots of the next Cold War, and possibly even World War III, have just been fired.