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The impact of a potential military conflict with China over Taiwan could leave more Americans dying of disease than soldiers on the battlefield, President Joe Biden’s former drug czar said Tuesday.
That’s because the USt is heavily reliant on just a few countries, including China, for the raw materials used to produce important drugs to treat disease, Dr. Rahul Gupta said at Semafor’s The Future of Health Forum. That supply chain would likely be disrupted in the event of a conflict involving China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
“If that conflict — which is the No. 1 threat to the United States — would happen, there’s a likelihood that there will be more people devoid of medications on the streets and getting [complications] and dying than potentially soldiers on the battlefield,” argued Gupta, the head of GATC Health who previously led the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the Biden administration.
“It will be like having car factories without car parts, so all of our manufacturing is put to no use if you don’t have the raw materials,” Gupta said. “It is very important to think about, from a national security standpoint, a strategy that nearshores even to the American continent the ability to have the raw materials available because today we have such a high burden of disease from heart disease to diabetes to others.”
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Gupta, whose previous role in government involved addressing the scourge of opioids and other illegal drugs in the US, also criticized the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in Latin America as insufficient to address the larger problem of the illegal drug trade.
“There’s about 2,500 tons of cocaine that comes to the United States every year. That’s not because it’s not wanted; there’s a demand signal there. Now, the challenge is that striking the boats is like a splash in the water, it’s not the undercurrent,” said Gupta.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to strike our way out of this enormous epidemic,” he said, suggesting the need to move from more symbolic tactics “to a strategy and the American people need to understand and know what that strategy looks like.”