This honestly is highly concerning - if that can be done for species, the next step could be to target ethnicity. I feel like this is one of those Oppenheimeresque moments in human history.
The problem of course is that in deploying it, you’ll inevitably kill a bunch of your own - no population is so consistent you won’t kill a bunch of senior leaders who had parents 3 generations ago who were transracial or whatever and lied about it - and it will inevitably turn everyone in the world against you.
Even states like NK or Iran need friends, and those friends would have enough casualties from anything like this there is no scenario I can imagine anyone would intentionally release something like that.
Doesn’t mean a mad scientist type would cook it up accidentally in the garage, but there are always real world constraints stopping wide spread (physics sometimes, often effectiveness limits or the like).
Near as I can tell, every industrialized power has gone through the phase.
The comment about nukes is weird, since I believe the US is the only power to ever nuke someone in anger - and near as I can tell, plausibly used it as little as possible and in self defense (though we could talk ourselves blue in the face on that point).
Nothing would have stopped the US from carpet nuking Japan for instance at the time, except some minor logistical hiccups.
My comment about Iran and NK is specifically because they’re consistently isolated by (and start fights/ideologically align themselves opposite) the bulk of countries.
They’ve been, and continue to encourage being ‘others’. I pointed out, they still have no incentive to wipe any groups out/start targeted plagues, wouldn’t start something like this, so why would anyone else?