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This overstates the effect of Bernstein. Even after the case, encryption software did not become entirely free from export controls.

EFF — which represented Bernstein — says that, despite the legal victory, "open source software with encryption remains subject to U.S. export control laws and regulations." EFF further explains that published encryption source code must still satisfy notification requirements to BIS and NSA before it falls out of EAR coverage.

The current Export Administration Regulations likewise still contain a specific rule for the export of encryption source and object code software. Section 734.17 says encryption software controlled under ECCN 5D002 is subject to export-control rules, and that publicly available encryption source code becomes outside the EAR only when it meets the additional requirements in § 742.15(b).

So the accurate takeaway is narrower: Bernstein helped establish that source code is protected speech and helped loosen the regime, but it did not make the government unable to enforce export controls on code-based encryption technologies.

For Junger v. Daley, the operative regulations were the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) administered by the Commerce Department, not a State Department rule treating the software as a munition.

The Sixth Circuit's opinion says that in 1996 "the President transferred export jurisdiction over nonmilitary encryption items from the State Department to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Export Administration." The same opinion explains that the case challenged the Export Administration Regulations and that encryption software was regulated under Export Control Classification Number 5D002.

So this sentence misdescribes the legal regime at issue in Junger. Earlier ITAR/munitions treatment was part of the broader crypto-wars history, but Junger v. Daley itself concerned Commerce's EAR framework for nonmilitary encryption items.

This sentence conflates two different things:

1. the BWC's lack of an international verification regime, and
2. whether states are legally required to implement the treaty domestically.

The first is true; the second is not. UNODA's summary of the Convention states that Article IV requires each State Party to take any national measures necessary to prohibit and prevent biological weapons within its territory, jurisdiction, or control.

So while the BWC does not have the kind of verification organization the CWC has, it still does require domestic implementation and enforcement measures by states parties. The problem is uneven compliance and weak verification, not the absence of a legal obligation.

This overstates the scope of the 2014 U.S. funding pause.

NIH's 2014 notice says the government paused funding for certain gain-of-function research projects — specifically projects anticipated to confer enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses. The notice also says the pause did not apply to all work on those viruses, and NIH would continue accepting new applications for gain-of-function studies while determining whether they met the pause criteria.

So the federal action in 2014 was not a general pause on all gain-of-function research. It was a targeted pause on a narrower subset of experiments involving specified respiratory viruses.