This is from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. "New testimony from a highly credible whistleblower alleges @CIA rewarded six analysts with significant financial incentives to change their Covid-19 origin conclusion from a lab leak to zoonosis."
House or Senate? Given the House Member Marjorie Taylor Greene is currently advocating secession, I'm not sure we can take this as anything more than culture war chaff.
Greene is one of sixteen members on said Subcommittee [1]. Not a good look. But not disqualifying. (It is qualifying of their findings, given her Republican peers see no issue with her being there.)
Has anyone come down to why we were so against the lab-leak hypothesis? From a messaging perspective, I could see many of the nutters—who rejected vaccines and, in extreme cases, the existence of Covid in our timeline—responding favourably to a potential national security concern.
I can understand why government scientists wouldn't want their name attached if it was discovered that they funded research on the escaped virus. It's less obvious to me why the CIA would care though. Just trying to avoid general blame attributed to the USA?
>Has anyone come down to why we were so against the lab-leak hypothesis?
Because the reality is that there just isn't that much evidence either way, because China was never going to let any real investigation happen, because it would always be a lose lose for them. "Comes from nature" is also sort of the DEFAULT and expected source, because that's what we are familiar with, what we prepare for, what we have experienced in the past, and what we expect to see in the future. The onus for most people in the area of virology was on those who claimed it came from the lab. Add to that, the lab leak theory was always touted with EXTREME certainty despite a lack of evidence (all evidence was circumstantial at best), and most people were skeptical. It also came from very untrustworthy sources for most people, including things like other, definite conspiracy theories. If it DID come from the Wuhan lab, it feels more like "A stopped clock" effect than people actually having any evidence.
I'm still not convinced either way. I saw plenty of virologists claim that the "evidence" being touted as proof of artificial origin could plausibly originate naturally. If it was a jury trial, I could not convict.
> I fail to see how a lab-leak assumption was deemed dangerous.
I did not say it was. Some said it was "dangerous" in that, we had no good evidence either way, so drawing a conclusion wasn't a good idea, and that is especially true if the outcome of that conclusion was to simply take an aggressive stance towards china and ignore everything else, which seemed to be the desired outcome. In the end, it really doesn't matter where COVID came from, because there WILL be future natural pandemics, and our response to COVID is what was the problem.
Nobody who gave the "china did it" theory gave credible or useful information about WHY WE SHOULD CARE, other than bad mouthing Dr. Fauci and saying that we should stop gain of function research, which did start a useful conversation in that sphere of science, but the end result remains the same: We cannot force China to fix the problem of shitty labs with shitty safety practices if they don't care to fix it on their own, because they are a sovereign nation.
It really does. Pandemics are rare, serious ones doubly so. If one of those rare pandemics was artificial then we can create a massive increase in health by just avoiding those.
But more obviously, viruses leak from labs at far higher rates than are acceptable. This would then matter as it'd be yet more evidence that virologists as a group just can't be trusted to treat their work with sufficient seriousness, implying e.g. vastly stricter regulation or outright banning of their work (enforced, this time).
Okay, let's assume China accidentally released COVID from that wuhan lab, and we have ironclad proof.
How do you stop China from producing and leaking COVID 2.0? If China says "How dare you slander our good name and insinuate our scientific endeavors are done in any way that isn't safe", how do you stop them? We can "pressure" them all we want, China has made it clear that they are not afraid to be an antagonist of the US, they intend to be a threat to the US militarily within a decade or so, and we are already sanctioning them on the important stuff.
What other levers can we pull?
COVID started in China, and whether it happened in a wet market or a lab, poor processes are to blame. Unless we are willing to start shooting, we can not force China to tighten up such processes. I think they probably want to on their own, since COVID has not been fun for them, but we can't force China to change sovereign reality any more than they can force us to sell them AI chips.
The only workable solution is to assume there WILL be future pandemics, and be prepared for them, with a stockpile of PPE and teams ready to respond quickly. Obama had both of these setup, but Trump killed them and sold off the PPE before COVID hit the radar.
> How do you stop China from producing and leaking COVID 2.0?
Step one would be stop giving them money as a workaround for domestic bans. Step two would be to stop helping them by building high tech biolabs for them. Presumably they needed western funding and expertise for a reason.
Step three is to recognize that there's nothing China-specific about accidents in virus labs, and to solve the problem domestically as well. Then if it does happen again in China the rest of the world will be in a much stronger position to criticize a violation of global norms, and impose actual consequences.
> with a stockpile of PPE and teams ready to respond quickly.
Ugh please no not this again. PPE was worth nothing during COVID, so that won't help. Go prove it to yourself right now. Pick five random countries you don't know anything about. Pull up their reported COVID case number graphs from OWID or elsewhere. Now try and draw lines on the discontinuities where they added or removed mask mandates (or even lockdowns). Mass PPE deployment had no effect on case growth so you'll find it's impossible. If the Trump admin sold off stockpiles then it's not like the man himself made that call, it'd be because pre-COVID people understood there was no evidence to support it.
Largely because, as others have said, the best case scenario is that the US at least partially funded the lab’s research.
Worst case scenario, it was made in a lab but not a Chinese one. I don’t personally subscribe to this belief due to lack of any direct evidence - but in this case, it’s pretty obvious why the narrative would want to stay very far away from a lab origin story.
Taking the article as truth, 7 of the 7 CIA people were unconvinced it was a lab leak. 6 of the 7 were willing to say "low confidence" and 1 out of 7 wasn't even willing to say that.
They aren't against it per-say; they just aren't for it and that's a difference that has been lost with polarized headlines.
It's a problem across society, not unique to the CIA.
Here's an intriguing theory: we live in what can be called a "managerial regime" [1]. This system of governance relies for its control and credibility not on democratic mandate but rather people's belief in its competence and expertise. Although there may be elections in this system, they have relatively little effect because decisions are actually made outside the realm of elected politicians.
Government agencies are a part of this system, as are universities, large parts of the media, many NGOs and so on. These people are effectively the ruling class and have shared class interests. These shared interests supersede their job descriptions: given a choice between being doing their job and being a "class traitor", or lying and remaining loyal, they almost always pick the latter.
A major element of shared class interest is the perception that highly trained/qualified people are both competent and honest by default. Anything that challenges this perception is a threat to their power and prestige, and thus must be undermined. This is why "fact checking" (a part of the managerial regime) is invariably so disinterested in real dispute resolution, deciding instead that whatever credentialed people at managerial institutions say is automatically true. If that were not the case, then the journalists pretending to check facts would become class traitors by fuelling claims of credentialed incompetence/dishonesty.
The origins of COVID point strongly towards gross credentialed incompetence and dishonesty not only by the scientists actually doing the work, but also the US government for funding it even though it was illegal at the time, and western scientists in general for engaging in a ham-fisted conspiracy to cover up that possibility.
If the CIA (or any other powerful body) were to institutionally disagree with the "expert" virologists, after they very quickly decided on the wet market origin theory, then this would not merely be a disagreement with the wet market theory but with the entire western system of credentialing, competence, knowledge and institutional management. It would directly challenge the widely held belief that scientists are inherently honest, which in turn would undermine the continual devolution of power away from politicians and towards the managerial class. In turn that would make the entire CIA class traitors, which would be intolerable, and thus the narrative must be aligned.
The same happened of course with other institutions like the New York Times, which fired its veteran reporter digging into the possibility of a lab leak and then replaced him with a woman who immediately announced that the lab leak theory was "racist".
21 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] thread[1] https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittee/select-subcommittee...
Well, a former executive with Ecoheath Alliance claims they are a CIA front company that funded the lab work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Wuhan-Uncovered-Biggest/d...
Because the reality is that there just isn't that much evidence either way, because China was never going to let any real investigation happen, because it would always be a lose lose for them. "Comes from nature" is also sort of the DEFAULT and expected source, because that's what we are familiar with, what we prepare for, what we have experienced in the past, and what we expect to see in the future. The onus for most people in the area of virology was on those who claimed it came from the lab. Add to that, the lab leak theory was always touted with EXTREME certainty despite a lack of evidence (all evidence was circumstantial at best), and most people were skeptical. It also came from very untrustworthy sources for most people, including things like other, definite conspiracy theories. If it DID come from the Wuhan lab, it feels more like "A stopped clock" effect than people actually having any evidence.
I'm still not convinced either way. I saw plenty of virologists claim that the "evidence" being touted as proof of artificial origin could plausibly originate naturally. If it was a jury trial, I could not convict.
I’m not either. But people get stuff wrong all the time. I fail to see how a lab-leak assumption was deemed dangerous.
I did not say it was. Some said it was "dangerous" in that, we had no good evidence either way, so drawing a conclusion wasn't a good idea, and that is especially true if the outcome of that conclusion was to simply take an aggressive stance towards china and ignore everything else, which seemed to be the desired outcome. In the end, it really doesn't matter where COVID came from, because there WILL be future natural pandemics, and our response to COVID is what was the problem.
Nobody who gave the "china did it" theory gave credible or useful information about WHY WE SHOULD CARE, other than bad mouthing Dr. Fauci and saying that we should stop gain of function research, which did start a useful conversation in that sphere of science, but the end result remains the same: We cannot force China to fix the problem of shitty labs with shitty safety practices if they don't care to fix it on their own, because they are a sovereign nation.
It really does. Pandemics are rare, serious ones doubly so. If one of those rare pandemics was artificial then we can create a massive increase in health by just avoiding those.
But more obviously, viruses leak from labs at far higher rates than are acceptable. This would then matter as it'd be yet more evidence that virologists as a group just can't be trusted to treat their work with sufficient seriousness, implying e.g. vastly stricter regulation or outright banning of their work (enforced, this time).
How do you stop China from producing and leaking COVID 2.0? If China says "How dare you slander our good name and insinuate our scientific endeavors are done in any way that isn't safe", how do you stop them? We can "pressure" them all we want, China has made it clear that they are not afraid to be an antagonist of the US, they intend to be a threat to the US militarily within a decade or so, and we are already sanctioning them on the important stuff.
What other levers can we pull?
COVID started in China, and whether it happened in a wet market or a lab, poor processes are to blame. Unless we are willing to start shooting, we can not force China to tighten up such processes. I think they probably want to on their own, since COVID has not been fun for them, but we can't force China to change sovereign reality any more than they can force us to sell them AI chips.
The only workable solution is to assume there WILL be future pandemics, and be prepared for them, with a stockpile of PPE and teams ready to respond quickly. Obama had both of these setup, but Trump killed them and sold off the PPE before COVID hit the radar.
Step one would be stop giving them money as a workaround for domestic bans. Step two would be to stop helping them by building high tech biolabs for them. Presumably they needed western funding and expertise for a reason.
Step three is to recognize that there's nothing China-specific about accidents in virus labs, and to solve the problem domestically as well. Then if it does happen again in China the rest of the world will be in a much stronger position to criticize a violation of global norms, and impose actual consequences.
> with a stockpile of PPE and teams ready to respond quickly.
Ugh please no not this again. PPE was worth nothing during COVID, so that won't help. Go prove it to yourself right now. Pick five random countries you don't know anything about. Pull up their reported COVID case number graphs from OWID or elsewhere. Now try and draw lines on the discontinuities where they added or removed mask mandates (or even lockdowns). Mass PPE deployment had no effect on case growth so you'll find it's impossible. If the Trump admin sold off stockpiles then it's not like the man himself made that call, it'd be because pre-COVID people understood there was no evidence to support it.
The lab in Wuhan was founded by the US government. Read the news.
Worst case scenario, it was made in a lab but not a Chinese one. I don’t personally subscribe to this belief due to lack of any direct evidence - but in this case, it’s pretty obvious why the narrative would want to stay very far away from a lab origin story.
They aren't against it per-say; they just aren't for it and that's a difference that has been lost with polarized headlines.
Here's an intriguing theory: we live in what can be called a "managerial regime" [1]. This system of governance relies for its control and credibility not on democratic mandate but rather people's belief in its competence and expertise. Although there may be elections in this system, they have relatively little effect because decisions are actually made outside the realm of elected politicians.
Government agencies are a part of this system, as are universities, large parts of the media, many NGOs and so on. These people are effectively the ruling class and have shared class interests. These shared interests supersede their job descriptions: given a choice between being doing their job and being a "class traitor", or lying and remaining loyal, they almost always pick the latter.
A major element of shared class interest is the perception that highly trained/qualified people are both competent and honest by default. Anything that challenges this perception is a threat to their power and prestige, and thus must be undermined. This is why "fact checking" (a part of the managerial regime) is invariably so disinterested in real dispute resolution, deciding instead that whatever credentialed people at managerial institutions say is automatically true. If that were not the case, then the journalists pretending to check facts would become class traitors by fuelling claims of credentialed incompetence/dishonesty.
The origins of COVID point strongly towards gross credentialed incompetence and dishonesty not only by the scientists actually doing the work, but also the US government for funding it even though it was illegal at the time, and western scientists in general for engaging in a ham-fisted conspiracy to cover up that possibility.
If the CIA (or any other powerful body) were to institutionally disagree with the "expert" virologists, after they very quickly decided on the wet market origin theory, then this would not merely be a disagreement with the wet market theory but with the entire western system of credentialing, competence, knowledge and institutional management. It would directly challenge the widely held belief that scientists are inherently honest, which in turn would undermine the continual devolution of power away from politicians and towards the managerial class. In turn that would make the entire CIA class traitors, which would be intolerable, and thus the narrative must be aligned.
The same happened of course with other institutions like the New York Times, which fired its veteran reporter digging into the possibility of a lab leak and then replaced him with a woman who immediately announced that the lab leak theory was "racist".
[1] https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence
Not at all complicated if you understand the intersection of society and harm reduction.
There's also an article at the NY Post: [1]
[0]: https://oversight.house.gov/release/testimony-from-cia-whist...
[1]: https://nypost.com/2023/09/12/cia-tried-to-pay-off-analysts-...