They would NOT be creating mosquito-delivered viruses. Through public research. Now their enemies have access to the same technology too. What's the fucking point? To kickstart a biological weapons race?
IMHO the US needs to put a cap on the emerging bioweapons race right now. Academics can be part of it, please deny developing dual-use technologies like this, which is obviously single-use. The world is going to become a horrifying place to live in if this trend continuous the way it's set.
The United States (and allies) have already used rain seeding, river damns, and a number of other techniques for damaging adversary nation's economic and agricultural abilities. It's even a relatively common practice in geopolitics (India uses the Indus river as a carrot/stick against Pakistan).
I'm pretty sure that that is common knowledge and openly discussed among people who care about such stuff.
Would you provide more information in the form of a reliable source?
"After World War II, the U.S. military bombed dams in North Korea and North Vietnam to destroy the communist governments’ electricity and irrigation infrastructure. This was, until the Iran-Iraq War, the final occurrence of such soggy tactics. In 1977 the Geneva Conventions specifically outlawed the targeting of water infrastructure in wartime." [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye [2] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/dam-warfare-3da6ee24518a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Vietnam%27s_dikes
I personally don't think that DARPA actually wants famine-causing bioweapons. The US has a large nuclear arsenal should it ever want to inflict mass destruction on the world, and its incentives align against making mass destruction cheaper or more accessible. But I can also understand why countries the US is hostile to may be less assured than I am. I can also understand the point of critics who worry that if this sort of research becomes normal and openly published, results may be later weaponized by some group, maybe a group that's not even a nation state.
If you're interested in issues like this, I can recommend the book "A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare" by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. Caveats: I found some technical errors in areas where I have knowledge (chemistry). It goes beyond documented history into speculation in places. But it's what first introduced me to the complicated issues around trust and Janus-like defensive-offensive R&D in this area; those have remained useful insights.