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FTR #1111: This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR #1112: This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This description encompasses material for two programs. Following up on FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we highlight a San Francisco Chronicle article about the alleged suicide of Iris Chang, a suggestive, important detail was noticed by a sharp-eyed listener/reader. A detail about the physical circumstances surrounding Iris’s “suicide” suggests–strongly–that she did not pull the trigger herself. Her body was discovered by a Santa Clara County Water District Employee. Someone who had fired a .45 caliber black powder weapon into her mouth would be unlikely to have her hands crossed in her lap and with the revolver on her left leg. This sounds like it may well an arranged crime scene. “. . . . He noticed condensation on the windows, peered inside and saw Iris in the driver’s seat with her hands crossed in her lap. The revolver lay on her left leg. . . .”
Transitioning to discussion about biological warfare, we discuss Unit 731–a Japanese chemical and biological warfare unit that committed egregious atrocities in China during World War II. We note: ” . . . . the U.S. Government secretly absorbed Unit 731, moving most of its scientists, personnel, and documents to U.S. military research centers like Fort Dietrick in the Maryland countryside. All information about its activities, including biological warfare atrocities, and horrific experiments on fully conscious victims, was withheld by Washington from the American and Japanese public, and from the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. All Unit 731’s records held by the U.S. Government are still top secret. . . .”
In connection with the coronavirus, we note that U.S. scientists had synthesized a virus of that type in a laboratory by 2008–an virus that infected mice, as well as human tissues. The synthetic coronavirus was described, in part, as follows: ” . . . . Here, we report the design, synthesis, and recovery of the largest synthetic replicating life form, a 29.7‑kb bat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (Bat-SCoV), a likely progenitor to the SARS-CoV epidemic. Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice. . . .”
Altogether curious in the context of the stridently alarmist coverage of the coronavirus outbreak is the fact that Thai doctors have apparently successfully treated the virus with a drug cocktail involving some common anti-virals. “. . . . A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said Sunday. The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich said during the ministry’s daily press briefing. ‘The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,’ Kriengsak said. . . . The doctors combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings. . . .”
Reported by both Agence France Presse and Reuters–two major wire services–this (apparently successful) therapeutic regime has gone unreported in U.S. media, so far.
The lifting of a moratorium on the testing of viruses such as the SARS and MERS coronaviruses was lifted at the end of December of 2017, a little more than two years before the outbreak occurred. A number of key points of inquiry in a post by Dr. Joseph Mercola should be scrutinized:
- As mentioned the moratorium on the testing of this virus was lifted a little less than two years after the outbreak. ” . . . . For starters, a 2014 NPR article32 was rather prophetic. It discusses the October 2014 U.S. moratorium on experiments on coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, as well as influenza virus, that might make the viruses more pathogenic and/or easy to spread among humans. The ban came on the heels of ‘high-profile lab mishaps’ at the CDC and ‘extremely controversial flu experiments’ in which the bird flu virus was engineered to become more lethal and contagious between ferrets. The goal was to see if it could mutate and become more lethal and contagious between humans, causing future pandemics. . . . ”
- Note that as the ban was lifted, it was known that a virus of the type now infecting China had been developed in a U.S. lab. This appears to be the same virus mentioned in the 2008 post mentioned above. That link had been temporarily broken, as mentioned in FTR #1112. It has since been restored. ” . . . . The federal moratorium on lethal virus experiments in the U.S. was lifted at the end of December 2017,38 even though researchers announced in 2015 they had created a lab-created hybrid coronavirus similar to that of SARS that was capable of infecting both human airway cells and mice. . . .”
- China had opened a level 4 laboratory to study the world’s most dangerous pathogens in January of 2018 (one month after the U.S. resumed testing of lethal viruses.) ” . . . . In January 2018, China’s first maximum security virology laboratory (biosecurity level 4) designed for the study of the world’s most dangerous pathogens opened its doors — in Wuhan.41,42 . . . .”
- A couple of months before the outbreak in China, there was a (frankly suspicious) exercise in New York that was not only a harbinger of what was about to happen but may have been used to journalistically frame coverage of the Wuhan virus. The significance of this, in our opinion, is the “psychological warfare” component–the utter hysteria gripping the world (and driving down markets) may be driven, in part, by the suggestion placed in people’s minds by this exercise. Given that roughly nine hundred Chinese have succumbed to the coronavirus and almost ten times that number have died from the flu in the U.S. (a country with a population roughly one fifth the size of China’s) it would make more sense for people to be beside themselves over the flu and/or the prospects of traveling to, or receiving travelers from, the U.S. that is not the case. We also note, in this context, that the demographic of people succumbing to the coronavirus is similar to the demographic of most flu fatalities: older people with other infections and/or chronically ill patients. In other words, people with weakened immune systems. ” . . . . Equally curious is the fact that Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a novel coronavirus pandemic preparedness exercise October 18, 2019, in New York called ‘Event 201.‘46 The simulation predicted a global death toll of 65 million people within a span of 18 months.47 As reported by Forbes December 12, 2019:48 ‘The experts ran through a carefully designed, detailed simulation of a new (fictional) viral illness called CAPS or coronavirus acute pulmonary syndrome. This was modeled after previous epidemics like SARS and MERS.’ Sounds exactly like NCIP, doesn’t it? Yet the new coronavirus responsible for NCIP had not yet been identified at the time of the simulation, and the first case wasn’t reported until two months later. . . . ”
- As noted above, press coverage of the Chinese outbreak suggests that media outlets may well have been briefed about “Event 201.” ” . . . . Forbes also refers to the fictional pandemic as “Disease X” — the same designation used by The Telegraph in its January 24, 2020, video report, “Could This Coronavirus be Disease X?“49 which suggests that media outlets were briefed and there was coordination ahead of time with regard to use of certain keywords and catchphrases in news reports and opinion articles. . . .”
- Also of significance is the fact that Johns Hopkins–the co-sponsor of “Event 201,” is at the epicenter of national security related biomedical research. FOIA requests on such information are shielded: ” . . . . Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is the biggest recipient of research grants from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense and has received millions of dollars in research grants from the Gates Foundation.50 In 2016, Johns Hopkins spent more than $2 billion on research projects, leading all U.S. universities in research spending for the 38th year in a row.51 If research funded by federal agencies, such as the DOD or HHS is classified as being performed ‘in the interest of national security,’ it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.52 Research conducted under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is completely shielded from FOIA requests by the public.53 Additionally, agencies may deny FOIA requests and withhold information if government officials conclude that shielding it from public view ‘protects trade secrets and commercial or financial information which could harm the competitive posture or business interests of a company.’ . . .”
Next, we note that Steve Bannon–at the epicenter of the anti-China movement–is professionally aligned with an exiled Chinese billionaire and a wealthy Texas hedge fund manager positioned to make a great deal of money from a downturn in China’s markets.
Bannon is also very close to the accomplished investor billionaire Robert Mercer, of Cambridge Analytica fame. In our next program, we will discuss Mercer’s Reinaissance Technologies hedge fund and its investment position with regard to a pharmaceutical giant that may profit from the coronavirus outbreak.
Key points of discussion:
- G News is disseminating disinformation about the coronavirus: ” . . . . On Jan. 25, G News published a false story saying the Chinese government was preparing to admit that the coronavirus originated in one of its labs. It did not, but the article still racked up over 19,000 tweets and 18,000 Facebook engagements, according to social tracking website BuzzSumo. . . . ”
- 4chan and 2chan have been amplifying the disinformation about the coronavirus, echoing the falsehood that the Chinese government spread the virus. ” . . . . The website also published a questionable document that fed a conspiracy that the Chinese military spread the disease deliberately. That document, which seems to have come from G News originally, has been popular on anonymous message boards like 4chan and 2chan. . . .”
- G News and its funder–Guo Wengui–are professionally associated with Steve Bannon. ” . . . . G News is part of Guo Media, a project funded by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok and Miles Guo. . . . In August 2018, Guo’s organization signed what Axios reported to be a $1 million contract with Steve Bannon, former White House strategist and former chair of the hyperpartisan news site Breitbart. The contract required Bannon to make introductions to ‘media personalities’ and advise on ‘industry standards,’ according to Axios. Guo and Bannon frequently appear together in videos on G News that attack the Chinese government. . . .”
- Associated with Steve Bannon and G News is Dallas-based hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, who is positioned to make a great deal of money over a downturn in the Chinese economy. ” . . . . Another person connected to G News, hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, also spread a false coronavirus claim in a tweet. His hedge fund reportedly had investments that will increase in value if the Chinese economy fails . . . . Bass has remained a China critic, frequently echoing Bannon.”
- Bass, too, is tweeting disinformation about the virus: ” . . . . ‘A husband and wife Chinese spy team were recently removed from a Level 4 Infectious Disease facility in Canada for sending pathogens to the Wuhan facility. The husband specialized in coronavirus research,’ Bass tweeted, linking to a CBC News article that did not support his claim. . . .”
- Bass has no intention of removing his tweet, and is chairman of a foundation that advertises on G News. ” . . . . When asked about his tweet, Bass said he had no plan to remove it. ‘I am extremely concerned about the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus by the Chinese government,’ he said. Bass is the chair of the Rule of Law Foundation, a nonprofit that runs banner ads at the top and bottom of the G News website soliciting donations. . . .”
- Bass denies any link between the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Fund, founded by Guo and Bannon, a claim of which we are skeptical. ” . . . . He also claimed that the Rule of Law Foundation was separate from the $100 million fund started by Guo and Bannon called the Rule of Law Fund. . . .”
Supplementing the previous article about Bannon, J. Kyle Bass and Guo Wengui, we note that Bass is close to, and may well be a co-investor with, Tommy Hicks Jr., a key member of Team Trump. Hicks, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and national security officials are, in turn, working to deny Chinese electronics firm Huawei access to developing 5G networks, further hamstringing the Chinese economy.
Paul Krugman, among others, has noted that Wilbur Ross was openly celebrating the coronavirus as a boon to the United States.
We highlight key aspects of this discussion:
- Tommy Hicks is at the epicenter of Trump administration maneuvering that, ultimately, will hurt China economically (and will benefit the investments of J. Kyle Bass.) ” . . . . Over the past two years, the Trump administration has been grappling with how to handle the transition to the next generation of mobile broadband technology. With spending expected to run into hundreds of billions of dollars, the administration views it as an ultra-high-stakes competition between U.S. and Chinese companies, with enormous implications both for technology and for national security. Top officials from a raft of departments have been meeting to hash out the best approach. But there’s been one person at some of the discussions who has a different background: He’s Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy. . . .”
- Hicks is not a government official but has access to high-level governmental process, including (apparently) CIA activities. ” . . . . Tommy Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a government official; he’s a wealthy private investor. And he has been a part of discussions related to China and technology with top officials from the Treasury Department, National Security Council, Commerce Department and others, according to emails and documents obtained by ProPublica. In one email, Hicks refers to a meeting at ‘Langley,’ an apparent reference to the CIA’s headquarters. . . .”
- Hicks has used his position to arrange for J. Kyle Bass to network with government agencies and officials. Bear in mind that Bass is positioned to benefit from a downturn in China’s economy. ” . . . . Hicks used his connections to arrange for a hedge fund manager friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 million in investments that will pay off if China’s economy tanks — to present his views on the Chinese economy to high-level government officials at an interagency meeting at the Treasury Department, according to the documents. . . .”
- Hicks is no co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. ” . . . . Hicks leveraged his Dallas financial network to become a top Trump campaign fundraiser in 2016 and a vice chairman of the inaugural finance committee; in January, he was named co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. . . . ”
- In addition to his relationship with Donald Trump, Jr., Hicks is networked with Jared Kushner. ” . . . . Even before becoming the second highest-ranking GOP official, Hicks was a frequent White House guest. He liked to have lunch in the White House mess with his half sister, who worked for a time in the communications operation. . . . Hicks would then stroll the halls, according to a former senior administration official, dropping in to offices for impromptu chats with various officials, including Jared Kushner. Those sorts of connections have given Hicks a convening power, the ability to call together multiple officials. . . . ”
- Again, Hicks networking can influence policymaking that could damage China economically and assist Bass. ” . . . . ‘He basically opened the door for having a conversation with people who I didn’t know but needed to know,’ said Robert Spalding, a former senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Trump administration. The efforts, detailed in hundreds of pages of government emails and other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Hicks had access to the highest levels of government to influence policymaking in ways that could lead to painful economic outcomes for the Chinese — and a potentially lucrative result for Hicks’ hedge fund friend, Bass. . . .”
- Hicks and Bass have invested together since 2011. ” . . . . Bass presented his views on China’s banking system in the office of Heath Tarbert, an assistant secretary at Treasury in charge of international markets and investment policy and a powerful intergovernmental committee that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security concerns. Among the officials at the meeting with Tarbert were Bill Hinman, the director of the division of corporation finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Ray Washburne, a wealthy Dallas restaurant owner and family friend of Hicks’ who was nominated by Trump to head the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Hicks and Bass, both Dallas residents and longtime denizens of the financial community there, have invested together since at least 2011, according to securities filings and court records. . . .”
- Hicks did not deny that he participated in Bass’s funds, but was evasive.” . . . . But it’s not clear if Hicks or his family have an investment in Bass’ China-related funds. Reached twice on his cellphone, Hicks declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In the second call, in June, Hicks didn’t dispute that he and his family have invested in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their business relationship, he cut the conversation short. . . . ”
- Bass has a history of betting against trends that will turn downward, having made his fortune on the 2008 crash. ” . . . . Bass, who made his name and fortune by betting against subprime mortgages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or certain macro trends will turn downward, declined to comment. . . .”
- Official review did not examine possible business relationships between Hicks and Bass. H” . . . . An administration official briefed on the Bass meeting at the Treasury downplayed it as ‘strictly a listening session.’ . . . . He acknowledged that the review didn’t include an examination of any financial relationship between Hicks and Bass. . . .”
- Bass is positioned to maintain “massive asymmetry” to down turns in Hong Kong and China, in other words, he will benefit if they go down. ” . . . . Bass has become a vocal advocate for an aggressive U.S. policy toward China. On Twitter and on cable business channels he’s denounced everything from the country’s Communist Party government to its business practices. Securities filings show Bass raised $143 million from about 81 investors in two funds — investments that would benefit if China’s currency were devalued or the country faced credit or banking crises. In April, in a letter to his investors, Bass wrote that his company, Hayman Capital Management, was positioned for coming problems in Hong Kong and was set up to ‘maintain a massive asymmetry to a negative outcome in Hong Kong and/or China.’ . . . ”
- Hicks has networked with Wilbur Ross, who has openly celebrated the coronavirus outbreak. Ross is deeply involved with the 5G maneuvering.” . . . . Hicks’ work on the 5G initiative was extensive. . . . . he was part of an informal group led by then NSC official Spalding, that advocated for a strategy in which the federal government would plan out a national policy for 5G. . . . That same month Hicks attended a 5G meeting that he’d arranged with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Commerce plays a key role in the future of 5G since a division within the agency manages government spectrum and another maintains a list of companies the government believes are, or will become, national security threats. Companies that end up on that list can be effectively shut out from global deal-making. The meeting with Ross focused heavily on the threat of China, said Ira Greenstein, who served as a White House aide and was part of Spalding’s 5G crew. . . .”
- Hicks is networking with elements in Taiwan with regard to the 5G developments. ” . . . . It isn’t clear what influence, if any, Hicks had in those decisions. But his profile is only rising. In April, he led a Republican delegation to Taiwan alongside a U.S. government delegation. Hicks met with the country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who has lately been positioning her country’s corporations as safer providers of 5G equipment than those in China. Tsai thanked the U.S. for selling arms to Taiwan. She asked Hicks to convey her regards to the Trumps. . . .”
The broadcast concludes with a reading of headlines and, in some cases, text excerpts of articles about the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, as well as xenophobic over-reaction on the part of many governments.
1. In a San Francisco Chronicle article about the alleged suicide of Iris Chang, a suggestive, important detail was noticed by a sharp-eyed listener/reader.
A detail about the physical circumstances surrounding Iris’s “suicide” suggests–strongly–that she did not pull the trigger herself. Her body was discovered by a Santa Clara County Water District Employee.
Someone who had fired a .45 caliber black powder weapon into her mouth would be unlikely to have her hands crossed in her lap and with the revolver on her left leg. This sounds like it may well an arranged crime scene.
. . . . He noticed condensation on the windows, peered inside and saw Iris in the driver’s seat with her hands crossed in her lap. The revolver lay on her left leg. . . .
2. Pivoting to the subject of biological warfare and China, we highlight the activities of Japanese Unit 731:
. . . . Manchuria also became the main proving ground for Japan’s biological warfare program, called simply Unit 731. Headquartered at Ping Fan, outside Harbin, it was headed by Colonel Ishii Shiro, a 1920 graduate of Kyoto University, who persuaded the high command to let him develop chemical and biological weapons, and test them on Chinese in Manchuria. Pu Yi said he learned that his subjects were being enslaved by the Japanese to build these installations, then were poisoned to keep the locations secret. Later, during the Pacific War, other labs wee set up in Peking, Canton, and Singapore, experimenting on Allied POWs and civilian prisoners. Emperor Hirohito was briefed about it in detail during at least one recorded meeting with Colonel Ishii. The emperor’s brothers toured Ping Fan to observe experiments. Prince Mikasa, Hirohito’s youngest brother, revealed after the war that he had seen films in which “large numbers of Chinese prisoners of war . . . . were made to march on the Manchurian plain for poison gas experiments on live subjects.” Others, he said, were “tied to posts in a wide field [and] gassed and shot. It was a horrible scene that could only be termed a massacre.” . . .
3. Of possible significance, aside from the fact that atrocity and chemical and biological warfare was deemed appropriate by elements of the national security establishment is the fact that tissue from this long-ago unit would still be able to yield important information about Chinese DNA and immunological peculiarities.
. . . . General Marquat was also in charge of closing down and punishing Japan’s biological and chemical warfare service, Unit 731. Instead, the U.S. Government secretly absorbed Unit 731, moving most of its scientists, personnel, and documents to U.S. military research centers like Fort Dietrick in the Maryland countryside. All information about its activities, including biological warfare atrocities, and horrific experiments on fully conscious victims, was withheld by Washington from the American and Japanese public, and from the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. All Unit 731’s records held by the U.S. Government are still top secret. . . .
4. We have done a number of programs about the destabilization of China.
(FTR #‘s 1089, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095, and 1103.)
We have also done many shows over the years about elements of the intelligence community and military testing and using biological weapons on civilian populations, inside and outside of the U.S.
Use the search function on this website (be sure to use quotation marks when looking for a word or words) and look for: AIDS, Lyme Disease, Ed Haslam, Hanta Virus, to name just a few.
We are suspicious of the latest outbreak of an apparently bat-borne corona virus in China, which is destabilizing capital markets, China (to an extent at least) and stoking the anti-China feeding frenzy of CIA-linked media outlets like The New York Times.
It should be noted that Chinese scientists have been studying this type of virus and anticipated the possibility that the next outbreak of a bat virus to human outbreak might well occur in China.
The timing of this outbreak, coinciding with the Chinese New Year, is significant, in our opinion.
In that context, it should not be overlooked that a bat-borne coronavirus like the one apparently causing the Chinese outbreak was synthesized in U.S. labs more than ten years ago and reported in publications of the National Institutes of Health. NB: After posting this link and excerpt, we tried the link five days later and it could not be accessed. Two days later, the link worked just fine. This may have been computer weirdness.
As illustrated in–among other programs–FTR #686–elements of the National Institutes of Health have a history of collaboration with the national security establishment.
This is NOT to say, necessarily, that there MUST be a connection between this synthesis and the outbreak in China. NOR are we casting aspersions on the researchers involved.
Even IF, for the sake of argument, there is a link, malefactors in or associated with the intelligence community might well have availed themselves of this, or related organisms.
Nonetheless, given past history, this is a possibility that warrants careful examination and consideration.
Note that: ” . . . . Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice. . . .”
. . . . Here, we report the design, synthesis, and recovery of the largest synthetic replicating life form, a 29.7‑kb bat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (Bat-SCoV), a likely progenitor to the SARS-CoV epidemic. Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice. . . .
5a. In the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion proceed with trepidation through The Dark Forest chanting “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!” In a recent post, we covered our suspicions that the coronavirus outbreak in China was part of the destabilization process underway against that country.
We also wondered if there might be a relatively mundane therapeutic regimen that could be used to successfully treat the virus.
With innumerable comparisons between the latest outbreak and the 2003 SARS outbreak, caused by a similar virus, we note that it turned out that the SARS virus was readily treatable with a therapeutic regimen similar to that used to treat the flu and common cold.
Amidst all of the catastrophic, world-wide headlines, it turns out that there IS just such a therapeutic regimen!
We find it curious that American media outlets have remained silent on such a promising therapeutic regimen. Reuters reported it, as did Agence France Presse. These are major wire services. Why not American media outlets?
A sharp-eyed listener noted the following: ” . . . . A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said Sunday. The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich said during the ministry’s daily press briefing. ‘The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,’ Kriengsak said. . . .
“The doctors combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings. . . . Thailand so far has detected 19 confirmed cases of the virus believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is under lockdown. . . .
” . . . .That is the second-highest number of cases outside of China, with Japan recording 20. So far, eight patients in Thailand have recovered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hospital. In a video released Sunday, Thai health minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited a patient from Wuhan who had recovered from the coronavirus, chatting with her amicably in Mandarin as she thanked him and the medical staff. . . .”
A Chinese woman infected with the new coronavirus showed a dramatic improvement after she was treated with a cocktail of anti-virals used to treat flu and HIV, Thailand’s health ministry said Sunday.
The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination, doctor Kriengsak Attipornwanich said during the ministry’s daily press briefing.
“The lab result of positive on the coronavirus turned negative in 48 hours,” Kriengsak said.
“From being exhausted before, she could sit up in bed 12 hours later.”
The doctors combined the anti-flu drug oseltamivir with lopinavir and ritonavir, anti-virals used to treat HIV, Kriengsak said, adding the ministry was awaiting research results to prove the findings.
The news comes as the new virus claimed its first life outside China – a 44-year-old Chinese man who died in the Philippines – while the death toll in China has soared above 300.
Thailand so far has detected 19 confirmed cases of the virus believed to have originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which is under lockdown.
That is the second-highest number of cases outside of China, with Japan recording 20.
So far, eight patients in Thailand have recovered and returned home, while 11 remain in the hospital.
In a video released Sunday, Thai health minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited a patient from Wuhan who had recovered from the coronavirus, chatting with her amicably in Mandarin as she thanked him and the medical staff.
Thai authorities are trying to balance the screening of inbound Chinese visitors with the economic needs of its tourist sector, which is heavily reliant on arrivals from the mainland.
Messages of support saying “Our hearts to Wuhan” in English, Chinese and Thai were plastered on a Bangkok mall popular with tourists.
The bulk of confirmed cases have been Chinese visitors to Thailand, but on Thursday the kingdom recorded its first human-to-human transmission when a Thai taxi driver was diagnosed with the disease.
The taxi driver had not traveled to China but may have had contact with tourists.
Thailand’s government is also battling public criticism that it has been slow to evacuate scores of its citizens from Hubei province, at the center of the outbreak.
Anutin said the evacuation would happen Tuesday, and the returnees would be quarantined for 14 days.
5b. The lifting of a moratorium on the testing of viruses such as the SARS and MERS coronaviruses was lifted at the end of December of 2017, a little more than two years before the outbreak occurred. A number of key points of inquiry in this post by Dr. Joseph Mercola should be scrutinized:
NB: The use of this article does not constitute an endorsement of the bulk of Dr. Mercola’s posts and articles–D.E.
- As mentioned the moratorium on the testing of this virus was lifted a little less than two years after the outbreak. ” . . . . For starters, a 2014 NPR article32 was rather prophetic. It discusses the October 2014 U.S. moratorium on experiments on coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, as well as influenza virus, that might make the viruses more pathogenic and/or easy to spread among humans. The ban came on the heels of ‘high-profile lab mishaps’ at the CDC and ‘extremely controversial flu experiments’ in which the bird flu virus was engineered to become more lethal and contagious between ferrets. The goal was to see if it could mutate and become more lethal and contagious between humans, causing future pandemics. . . . ”
- Note that as the ban was lifted, it was known that a virus of the type now infecting China had been developed in a U.S. lab. This appears to be the same virus mentioned in the 2008 post mentioned above. That link had been temporarily broken, as mentioned in FTR #1112. It has since been restored. ” . . . . The federal moratorium on lethal virus experiments in the U.S. was lifted at the end of December 2017,38 even though researchers announced in 2015 they had created a lab-created hybrid coronavirus similar to that of SARS that was capable of infecting both human airway cells and mice. . . .”
- China had opened a level 4 laboratory to study the world’s most dangerous pathogens in January of 2018 (one month after the U.S. resumed testing of lethal viruses.) ” . . . . In January 2018, China’s first maximum security virology laboratory (biosecurity level 4) designed for the study of the world’s most dangerous pathogens opened its doors — in Wuhan.41,42 . . . .”
- A couple of months before the outbreak in China, there was a (frankly suspicious) exercise in New York that was not only a harbinger of what was about to happen but may have been used to journalistically frame coverage of the Wuhan virus. The significance of this, in our opinion, is the “psychological warfare” component–the utter hysteria gripping the world (and driving down markets) may be driven, in part, by the suggestion placed in people’s minds by this exercise. Given that roughly nine hundred Chinese have succumbed to the coronavirus and almost ten times that number have died from the flu in the U.S. (a country with a population roughly one fifth the size of China’s) it would make more sense for people to be beside themselves over the flu and/or the prospects of traveling to, or receiving travelers from, the U.S. that is not the case. We also note, in this context, that the demographic of people succumbing to the coronavirus is similar to the demographic of most flu fatalities: older people with other infections and/or chronically ill patients. In other words, people with weakened immune systems. ” . . . . Equally curious is the fact that Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a novel coronavirus pandemic preparedness exercise October 18, 2019, in New York called ‘Event 201.‘46 The simulation predicted a global death toll of 65 million people within a span of 18 months.47 As reported by Forbes December 12, 2019:48 ‘The experts ran through a carefully designed, detailed simulation of a new (fictional) viral illness called CAPS or coronavirus acute pulmonary syndrome. This was modeled after previous epidemics like SARS and MERS.’ Sounds exactly like NCIP, doesn’t it? Yet the new coronavirus responsible for NCIP had not yet been identified at the time of the simulation, and the first case wasn’t reported until two months later. . . . ”
- As noted above, press coverage of the Chinese outbreak suggests that media outlets may well have been briefed about “Event 201.” ” . . . . Forbes also refers to the fictional pandemic as “Disease X” — the same designation used by The Telegraph in its January 24, 2020, video report, “Could This Coronavirus be Disease X?“49 which suggests that media outlets were briefed and there was coordination ahead of time with regard to use of certain keywords and catchphrases in news reports and opinion articles. . . .”
- Also of significance is the fact that Johns Hopkins–the co-sponsor of “Event 201,” is at the epicenter of national security related biomedical research. FOIA requests on such information are shielded: ” . . . . Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is the biggest recipient of research grants from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense and has received millions of dollars in research grants from the Gates Foundation.50 In 2016, Johns Hopkins spent more than $2 billion on research projects, leading all U.S. universities in research spending for the 38th year in a row.51 If research funded by federal agencies, such as the DOD or HHS is classified as being performed ‘in the interest of national security,’ it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.52 Research conducted under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is completely shielded from FOIA requests by the public.53 Additionally, agencies may deny FOIA requests and withhold information if government officials conclude that shielding it from public view ‘protects trade secrets and commercial or financial information which could harm the competitive posture or business interests of a company.’ . . .”
“Novel Coronavirus–The Latest Pandemic Scare” by Dr. Joseph Mercola; Mercola; 2/4/2020.
. . . . Moratorium on SARS/MERS Experiments Lifted in 2017
As mentioned, a number of reports raise questions about the source of the 2019-nCoV [The Chinese coronavirus–D.E.]. For starters, a 2014 NPR article32 was rather prophetic. It discusses the October 2014 U.S. moratorium on experiments on coronaviruses like SARS and MERS, as well as influenza virus, that might make the viruses more pathogenic and/or easy to spread among humans.
The ban came on the heels of “high-profile lab mishaps” at the CDC and “extremely controversial flu experiments” in which the bird flu virus was engineered to become more lethal and contagious between ferrets. The goal was to see if it could mutate and become more lethal and contagious between humans, causing future pandemics.
However, for the past decade there have been red flags raised in the scientific community about biosecurity breaches in high containment biological labs in the U.S. and globally.33 There were legitimate fears that a lab-created superflu pathogen might escape the confines of biosecurity labs where researchers are conducting experiments. It’s a reasonable fear, certainly, considering that there have been many safety breaches at biolabs in the U.S. and other countries.34,35,36,37
The federal moratorium on lethal virus experiments in the U.S. was lifted at the end of December 2017,38 even though researchers announced in 2015 they had created a lab-created hybrid coronavirus similar to that of SARS that was capable of infecting both human airway cells and mice.
The NIH had allowed the controversial research to proceed because it had begun before the moratorium was put in place — a decision criticized by Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at Pasteur Institute in Paris, who pointed out that “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.“39
Others, such as Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefence expert at Rutgers University, agreed, saying “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk.“40
Wuhan is Home to Lab Studying World’s Latest PathogensIn January 2018, China’s first maximum security virology laboratory (biosecurity level 4) designed for the study of the world’s most dangerous pathogens opened its doors — in Wuhan.41,42 Is it pure coincidence that Wuhan City is now the epicenter of this novel coronavirus infection?
The year before, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety consultant, expressed concern about viral threats potentially escaping the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory,43 which happens to be located just 20 miles from the Wuhan market identified as ground zero for the current NCIP outbreak.44 As reported by the Daily Mail:45
“The Wuhan lab is also equipped for animal research,” and “Regulations for animal research — especially that conducted on primates — are much looser in China than in the U.S. and other Western countries … But that was also cause for concern for Trevan.
Studying the behavior of a virus like 209-nCoV and developing treatments or vaccines for it requires infecting these research monkeys, an important step before human testing.
Monkeys are unpredictable though, warned [Rutgers University microbiologist Dr. Richard] Ebright. ‘They can run, they can scratch they can bite,’ he said, and the viruses they carry would go where their feet, nails and teeth do.’ ”
Coronavirus Outbreak Simulation Took Place in October 2019
Equally curious is the fact that Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored a novel coronavirus pandemic preparedness exercise October 18, 2019, in New York called “Event 201.“46 The simulation predicted a global death toll of 65 million people within a span of 18 months.47 As reported by Forbes December 12, 2019:48
“The experts ran through a carefully designed, detailed simulation of a new (fictional) viral illness called CAPS or coronavirus acute pulmonary syndrome. This was modeled after previous epidemics like SARS and MERS.”
Sounds exactly like NCIP, doesn’t it? Yet the new coronavirus responsible for NCIP had not yet been identified at the time of the simulation, and the first case wasn’t reported until two months later.
Forbes also refers to the fictional pandemic as “Disease X” — the same designation used by The Telegraph in its January 24, 2020, video report, “Could This Coronavirus be Disease X?“49 which suggests that media outlets were briefed and there was coordination ahead of time with regard to use of certain keywords and catchphrases in news reports and opinion articles.
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is the biggest recipient of research grants from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense and has received millions of dollars in research grants from the Gates Foundation.50 In 2016, Johns Hopkins spent more than $2 billion on research projects, leading all U.S. universities in research spending for the 38th year in a row.51
If research funded by federal agencies, such as the DOD or HHS is classified as being performed “in the interest of national security,” it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.52
Research conducted under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is completely shielded from FOIA requests by the public.53 Additionally, agencies may deny FOIA requests and withhold information if government officials conclude that shielding it from public view “protects trade secrets and commercial or financial information which could harm the competitive posture or business interests of a company.“54
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that its mission is “to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.“55 Clearly, it will be difficult to obtain information about government-funded biomedical research on microbes like coronavirus conducted at major universities or by pharmaceutical corporations in biohazard labs.
How likely is it, then, that the coronavirus outbreak making people so sick today “suddenly” emerged simply because people ate bats and snakes in a Wuhan market? It looks more like a biosecurity accident but, until more is known, inevitably there will be more questions than answers about whether this latest global public health emergency is a more ambitious tactical “sand table exercise,” echoing unanswered questions about the 2009 swine flu pandemic fiasco.
This time, there could be a lot more bodies left on the field, although some statisticians conducting benefit cost analyses may consider 65 million casualties in a global human population of 7.8 billion people56 to be relatively small when advancing medical research conducted in the name of “the greater good.”
6. Next, the program undertakes an examination of circumstances that suggest the possibility of investor activity by people linked to Steve Bannon, who is at the epicenter of the anti-China effort. Bannon has been the beneficiary of the enormous wealth of the brilliant, eccentric investor Robert Mercer. Mercer has used AI-directed investment projection to afford a 70% return for his hedge fund. We wonder if he might have had foreknowledge of the coronavirus outbreak?
IF that was the case, this would have enabled him to have made a great deal of money on the torpedoing of the Chinese economy.
NB: The information from Dr. Mercola’s post should be factored in to the information about investing and the possibility of short-selling and/or other types of maneuvering to profit from this crisis. Equity markets are very responsive to suggestion, accurate or falacious. We note that the hysteria alluded to in the post by Dr. Mercola may well contribute to the steep decline in markets. China, of course, has shut down much of its infrastructure to combat the virus. That is contributing, obviously. To what extent they, too, are responding to hysteria is an open question.
We also wonder if they know something we don’t. Media have featured pictures of Chinese personnel in protective clothing fumigating public facilities. We wonder if they are protecting against rodents or other animals spreading the virus. Note the reference in the post by Dr. Mercola:
. . . . In the 1970s, Mercer programmed machine-learning artificial intelligences to process vast sets of data and so predict what was supposed to be the central mystery of capitalism, the movement of markets. And, well, they did–and still do. The hedge fund for which Mercer worked, Renaissance Technologies, has earned an average of 70 percent each year, making Mercer one of the richest men on the planet. . . .
7a. In addition to the Mercer/Bannon/investment consideration, we note that Steve Bannon–at the epicenter of the anti-China movement–is professionally aligned with an exiled Chinese billionaire and a wealthy Texas hedge fund manager positioned to make a great deal of money from a downturn in China’s markets.
- G News is disseminating disinformation about the coronavirus: ” . . . . On Jan. 25, G News published a false story saying the Chinese government was preparing to admit that the coronavirus originated in one of its labs. It did not, but the article still racked up over 19,000 tweets and 18,000 Facebook engagements, according to social tracking website BuzzSumo. . . . ”
- 4chan and 2chan have been amplifying the disinformation about the coronavirus, echoing the falsehood that the Chinese government spread the virus. ” . . . . The website also published a questionable document that fed a conspiracy that the Chinese military spread the disease deliberately. That document, which seems to have come from G News originally, has been popular on anonymous message boards like 4chan and 2chan. . . .”
- G News and its funder–Guo Wengui–are professionally associated with Steve Bannon. ” . . . . G News is part of Guo Media, a project funded by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok and Miles Guo. . . . In August 2018, Guo’s organization signed what Axios reported to be a $1 million contract with Steve Bannon, former White House strategist and former chair of the hyperpartisan news site Breitbart. The contract required Bannon to make introductions to ‘media personalities’ and advise on ‘industry standards,’ according to Axios. Guo and Bannon frequently appear together in videos on G News that attack the Chinese government. . . .”
- Associated with Steve Bannon and G News is Dallas-based hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, who is positioned to make a great deal of money over a downturn in the Chinese economy. ” . . . . Another person connected to G News, hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, also spread a false coronavirus claim in a tweet. His hedge fund reportedly had investments that will increase in value if the Chinese economy fails . . . . Bass has remained a China critic, frequently echoing Bannon.”
- Bass, too, is tweeting disinformation about the virus: ” . . . . ‘A husband and wife Chinese spy team were recently removed from a Level 4 Infectious Disease facility in Canada for sending pathogens to the Wuhan facility. The husband specialized in coronavirus research,’ Bass tweeted, linking to a CBC News article that did not support his claim. . . .”
- Bass has no intention of removing his tweet, and is chairman of a foundation that advertises on G News. ” . . . . When asked about his tweet, Bass said he had no plan to remove it. ‘I am extremely concerned about the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus by the Chinese government,’ he said. Bass is the chair of the Rule of Law Foundation, a nonprofit that runs banner ads at the top and bottom of the G News website soliciting donations. . . .”
- Bass denies any link between the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Fund, founded by Guo and Bannon, a claim of which we are skeptical. ” . . . . He also claimed that the Rule of Law Foundation was separate from the $100 million fund started by Guo and Bannon called the Rule of Law Fund. . . .”
A website that published two false coronavirus claims, which painted China in a negative light, previously had a contract with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and was created by an exiled Chinese billionaire and critic of the ruling Communist Party.
On Jan. 25, G News published a false story saying the Chinese government was preparing to admit that the coronavirus originated in one of its labs. It did not, but the article still racked up over 19,000 tweets and 18,000 Facebook engagements, according to social tracking website BuzzSumo. The story was debunked by Facebook fact-checking partner PolitiFact.
The website also published a questionable document that fed a conspiracy that the Chinese military spread the disease deliberately. That document, which seems to have come from G News originally, has been popular on anonymous message boards like 4chan and 2chan.
G News is part of Guo Media, a project funded by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok and Miles Guo. He fled China in 2014 and has been accused of bribery, money laundering, and fraud by the mainland government. He has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated, and has become a vocal critic of Beijing.
In August 2018, Guo’s organization signed what Axios reported to be a $1 million contract with Steve Bannon, former White House strategist and former chair of the hyperpartisan news site Breitbart. The contract required Bannon to make introductions to “media personalities” and advise on “industry standards,” according to Axios. Guo and Bannon frequently appear together in videos on G News that attack the Chinese government.
…
Another person connected to G News, hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, also spread a false coronavirus claim in a tweet. His hedge fund reportedly had investments that will increase in value if the Chinese economy fails, but he told BuzzFeed News he no longer holds “any Chinese equity positions whatsoever.” Bass has remained a China critic, frequently echoing Bannon.
“A husband and wife Chinese spy team were recently removed from a Level 4 Infectious Disease facility in Canada for sending pathogens to the Wuhan facility. The husband specialized in coronavirus research,” Bass tweeted, linking to a CBC News article that did not support his claim.
His tweet garnered almost 13,000 retweets and caused Canadian officials to issue a clarification denying that coronavirus was stolen from the Winnipeg lab. “This is misinformation and there is no factual basis for claims being made on social media,” Eric Morrissette, the chief of media relations for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, told CBC News.
When asked about his tweet, Bass said he had no plan to remove it.
“I am extremely concerned about the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus by the Chinese government,” he said.
Bass is the chair of the Rule of Law Foundation, a nonprofit that runs banner ads at the top and bottom of the G News website soliciting donations. He said he had no affiliation with the site.
“I have nothing to do with G News or its content,” he said. “Guo Wengui has no leadership position, operating control, or legal position with the Rule of Law Foundation.”
Bass added that he hadn’t “read any G News story. Period.” He also claimed that the Rule of Law Foundation was separate from the $100 million fund started by Guo and Bannon called the Rule of Law Fund.
Aside from Guo’s site sharing false information during the coronavirus outbreak, he has been a source of controversy since arriving in the US. According to Politico, he is involved in a legal dispute stemming from his alleged hiring of a private investigation firm to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals.
After being exiled from China, he has faced accusations of both financial and sexual misconduct, including a rape allegation from a former assistant. Guo has maintained his innocence, saying that allegations were politically motivated.
———-
7b. Supplementing the previous article about Bannon, J. Kyle Bass and Guo Wengui, we note that Bass is close to, and may well be a co-investor with, Tommy Hicks Jr., a key member of Team Trump. Hicks, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and national security officials are, in turn, working to deny Chinese electronics firm Huawei access to developing 5G networks, further hamstringing the Chinese economy.
Paul Krugman, among others, has noted that Wilbur Ross was openly celebrating the coronavirus as a boon to the United States.
We highlight key aspects of this discussion:
- Tommy Hicks is at the epicenter of Trump administration maneuvering that, ultimately, will hurt China economically (and will benefit the investments of J. Kyle Bass.) Hic Over the past two years, the Trump administration has been grappling with how to handle the transition to the next generation of mobile broadband technology. With spending expected to run into hundreds of billions of dollars, the administration views it as an ultra-high-stakes competition between U.S. and Chinese companies, with enormous implications both for technology and for national security. Top officials from a raft of departments have been meeting to hash out the best approach. But there’s been one person at some of the discussions who has a different background: He’s Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy. . . .”
- Hicks is not a government official but has access to high-level governmental process, including (apparently) CIA activities. ” . . . . Tommy Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a government official; he’s a wealthy private investor. And he has been a part of discussions related to China and technology with top officials from the Treasury Department, National Security Council, Commerce Department and others, according to emails and documents obtained by ProPublica. In one email, Hicks refers to a meeting at ‘Langley,’ an apparent reference to the CIA’s headquarters. . . .”
- Hicks has used his position to arrange for J. Kyle Bass to network with government agencies and officials. Bear in mind that Bass is positioned to benefit from a downturn in China’s economy. ” . . . . Hicks used his connections to arrange for a hedge fund manager friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 million in investments that will pay off if China’s economy tanks — to present his views on the Chinese economy to high-level government officials at an interagency meeting at the Treasury Department, according to the documents. . . .”
- Hicks is no co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. ” . . . . Hicks leveraged his Dallas financial network to become a top Trump campaign fundraiser in 2016 and a vice chairman of the inaugural finance committee; in January, he was named co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. . . . ”
- In addition to his relationship with Donald Trump, Jr., Hicks is networked with Jared Kushner. ” . . . . Even before becoming the second highest-ranking GOP official, Hicks was a frequent White House guest. He liked to have lunch in the White House mess with his half sister, who worked for a time in the communications operation. . . . Hicks would then stroll the halls, according to a former senior administration official, dropping in to offices for impromptu chats with various officials, including Jared Kushner. Those sorts of connections have given Hicks a convening power, the ability to call together multiple officials. . . . ”
- Again, Hicks networking can influence policymaking that could damage China economically and assist Bass. ” . . . . ‘He basically opened the door for having a conversation with people who I didn’t know but needed to know,’ said Robert Spalding, a former senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Trump administration. The efforts, detailed in hundreds of pages of government emails and other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Hicks had access to the highest levels of government to influence policymaking in ways that could lead to painful economic outcomes for the Chinese — and a potentially lucrative result for Hicks’ hedge fund friend, Bass. . . .”
- Hicks and Bass have invested together since 2011. ” . . . . Bass presented his views on China’s banking system in the office of Heath Tarbert, an assistant secretary at Treasury in charge of international markets and investment policy and a powerful intergovernmental committee that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security concerns. Among the officials at the meeting with Tarbert were Bill Hinman, the director of the division of corporation finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Ray Washburne, a wealthy Dallas restaurant owner and family friend of Hicks’ who was nominated by Trump to head the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Hicks and Bass, both Dallas residents and longtime denizens of the financial community there, have invested together since at least 2011, according to securities filings and court records. . . .”
- Hicks did not deny that he participated in Bass’s funds, but was evasive.” . . . . But it’s not clear if Hicks or his family have an investment in Bass’ China-related funds. Reached twice on his cellphone, Hicks declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In the second call, in June, Hicks didn’t dispute that he and his family have invested in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their business relationship, he cut the conversation short. . . . ”
- Bass has a history of betting against trends that will turn downward, having made his fortune on the 2008 crash. ” . . . . Bass, who made his name and fortune by betting against subprime mortgages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or certain macro trends will turn downward, declined to comment. . . .”
- Official review did not examine possible business relationships between Hicks and Bass. H” . . . . An administration official briefed on the Bass meeting at the Treasury downplayed it as ‘strictly a listening session.’ . . . . He acknowledged that the review didn’t include an examination of any financial relationship between Hicks and Bass. . . .”
- Bass is positioned to maintain “massive asymmetry” to down turns in Hong Kong and China, in other words, he will benefit if they go down. ” . . . . Bass has become a vocal advocate for an aggressive U.S. policy toward China. On Twitter and on cable business channels he’s denounced everything from the country’s Communist Party government to its business practices. Securities filings show Bass raised $143 million from about 81 investors in two funds — investments that would benefit if China’s currency were devalued or the country faced credit or banking crises. In April, in a letter to his investors, Bass wrote that his company, Hayman Capital Management, was positioned for coming problems in Hong Kong and was set up to ‘maintain a massive asymmetry to a negative outcome in Hong Kong and/or China.’ . . . ”
- Hicks has networked with Wilbur Ross, who has openly celebrated the coronavirus outbreak. Ross is deeply involved with the 5G maneuvering.” . . . . Hicks’ work on the 5G initiative was extensive. . . . . he was part of an informal group led by then NSC official Spalding, that advocated for a strategy in which the federal government would plan out a national policy for 5G. . . . That same month Hicks attended a 5G meeting that he’d arranged with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Commerce plays a key role in the future of 5G since a division within the agency manages government spectrum and another maintains a list of companies the government believes are, or will become, national security threats. Companies that end up on that list can be effectively shut out from global deal-making. The meeting with Ross focused heavily on the threat of China, said Ira Greenstein, who served as a White House aide and was part of Spalding’s 5G crew. . . .”
- Hicks is networking with elements in Taiwan with regard to the 5G developments. ” . . . . It isn’t clear what influence, if any, Hicks had in those decisions. But his profile is only rising. In April, he led a Republican delegation to Taiwan alongside a U.S. government delegation. Hicks met with the country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who has lately been positioning her country’s corporations as safer providers of 5G equipment than those in China. Tsai thanked the U.S. for selling arms to Taiwan. She asked Hicks to convey her regards to the Trumps. . . .”
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has been grappling with how to handle the transition to the next generation of mobile broadband technology. With spending expected to run into hundreds of billions of dollars, the administration views it as an ultra-high-stakes competition between U.S. and Chinese companies, with enormous implications both for technology and for national security. Top officials from a raft of departments have been meeting to hash out the best approach.
But there’s been one person at some of the discussions who has a different background: He’s Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy. Over the past two decades, the two have trained their sights on duck, pheasant and white-tailed deer on multiple continents. (An email from another Trump Jr. pal characterized one of their joint duck-hunting trips to Mexico years ago as “muy aggresivo.”)
Tommy Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a government official; he’s a wealthy private investor. And he has been a part of discussions related to China and technology with top officials from the Treasury Department, National Security Council, Commerce Department and others, according to emails and documents obtained by ProPublica. In one email, Hicks refers to a meeting at “Langley,” an apparent reference to the CIA’s headquarters.
Hicks’ financial interests, if any, in the matters he has discussed aren’t clear. The interests are much more apparent when it comes to at least one of his associates. Hicks used his connections to arrange for a hedge fund manager friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 million in investments that will pay off if China’s economy tanks — to present his views on the Chinese economy to high-level government officials at an interagency meeting at the Treasury Department, according to the documents.
Hicks is hardly the first private-sector power broker to emerge in a presidential administration, but he may represent a new subspecies: The Friend of the President’s Kid.
In fact, Hicks’ influence and career overwhelmingly hinge on two people: Trump Jr., his friend of about two decades, and, first and foremost, Hicks’ father. In a roughly 20-year career, Hicks has spent 17 of them working for investment funds and sports teams owned by his wealthy financier dad, Thomas Hicks Sr., and the other three working for a client of his father.
The generally privileged life of the younger Hicks has been speckled with occasional instances of misbehavior, one of them serious. At age 18, he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault, reduced from an original charge of felony aggravated assault, after he and two others were arrested in the beating of a fellow high school student at a party. (The victim was also kicked in the face during the assault, according to people familiar with the case. He told police that one of the three assailants — he didn’t say which — asked him, “What is your name, faggot?”) The criminal conviction did not prevent Hicks from being admitted to the University of Texas, where his father was an alumnus, a member of the Board of Regents and soon thereafter the first chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, which manages the school’s endowment and other assets.
As an adult, friends say, Hicks’ carousing ways and occasional belligerent outbursts led some in his circle to bestow a heavily ironic nickname: “Senator Hicks.” His tenure as a director of the soccer team his father owned in Liverpool, England, a decade ago ended right after an email he sent to a heckling fan — “Blow me fuc kface. Go to Hell. I’m sick of you.” — surfaced publicly.
Friends say Hicks has matured, particularly since he married and had three daughters. He has risen quickly in recent years. Hicks leveraged his Dallas financial network to become a top Trump campaign fundraiser in 2016 and a vice chairman of the inaugural finance committee; in January, he was named co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. His friends say he is motivated by patriotism.
Hicks also played a behind-the-scenes role, according to two people familiar with the matter and an account by a Turkish journalist, in the freeing last year of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who was detained for two years by the Turkish government on what the U.S. government viewed as phony charges of spying and helping terrorists.
Even before becoming the second highest-ranking GOP official, Hicks was a frequent White House guest. He liked to have lunch in the White House mess with his half sister, who worked for a time in the communications operation. (The family is not related to Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director.) Hicks would then stroll the halls, according to a former senior administration official, dropping in to offices for impromptu chats with various officials, including Jared Kushner.
Those sorts of connections have given Hicks a convening power, the ability to call together multiple officials. “He basically opened the door for having a conversation with people who I didn’t know but needed to know,” said Robert Spalding, a former senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council during the Trump administration.
The efforts, detailed in hundreds of pages of government emails and other documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Hicks had access to the highest levels of government to influence policymaking in ways that could lead to painful economic outcomes for the Chinese — and a potentially lucrative result for Hicks’ hedge fund friend, Bass.
“When somebody comes in like this, a hedge fund manager who has an interest in the viability of China’s economy, you’re giving them an opportunity to influence policy,” said Virginia Canter, a former ethics lawyer at the Treasury Department who now serves as chief ethics counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. (CREW has sued Donald Trump for accepting emoluments from foreign governments.) “The question is why?”
Hicks’ unusual role as a nongovernment employee who opened doors on behalf of both industry and others, Canter said, put him in a gray zone of ethics and lobbying regulations. “He’s acting in a lobbyist role when he may fall outside the lobbyist disclosure rules, and it’s not clear how he benefits financially,” she said. “So the question is: What’s he getting out of it? What are his friends getting out of it? And is the government processing it in a way that ensures the public benefits?”
Bass presented his views on China’s banking system in the office of Heath Tarbert, an assistant secretary at Treasury in charge of international markets and investment policy and a powerful intergovernmental committee that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security concerns. Among the officials at the meeting with Tarbert were Bill Hinman, the director of the division of corporation finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Ray Washburne, a wealthy Dallas restaurant owner and family friend of Hicks’ who was nominated by Trump to head the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Hicks and Bass, both Dallas residents and longtime denizens of the financial community there, have invested together since at least 2011, according to securities filings and court records. They’ve owned shares of a publicly traded communications-technology manufacturer. And they were among the biggest creditors to the bankrupt law enforcement contracting company run by Chris Kyle, the ex-Navy SEAL portrayed by Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper.” The managing director of a new investment fund started by Hicks had previously advised Bass on the successful stock-shorting of a Texas real estate lender, according to corporate filings and court papers from a lawsuit in state court in Dallas.
But it’s not clear if Hicks or his family have an investment in Bass’ China-related funds. Reached twice on his cellphone, Hicks declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In the second call, in June, Hicks didn’t dispute that he and his family have invested in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their business relationship, he cut the conversation short. “I’ve got to run. Let me see if I can get back to you,” Hicks said before hanging up. He didn’t call back.
Weeks later, after ProPublica followed up with questions to the RNC, a spokesman responded by emailing a “statement attributed to Tommy Hicks.” It read: “As a businessman, I passionately supported causes I believed in and, if appropriate, would sometimes meet with government officials to promote them. There is nothing wrong with that. I have taken every precaution during my time as Co-Chair of the RNC to ensure there is no conflict of interest between my job here and any personal businesses.” (The spokesperson also emailed a statement on behalf of the RNC: “Tommy has done an outstanding job working on behalf of President Trump and his agenda.”)
Bass, who made his name and fortune by betting against subprime mortgages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or certain macro trends will turn downward, declined to comment. “I’m not interested in talking with you about my friends or any meetings I have or haven’t had privately with anyone,” he wrote in an email. In a subsequent message, Bass wrote that any suggestion “that we had corrupt intentions in meeting with Treasury officials… is categorically false and defamatory and could negatively affect our business.”
An administration official briefed on the Bass meeting at the Treasury downplayed it as “strictly a listening session.” He said Bass did not ask the attendees to take any actions, nor did the attendees divulge anything about U.S.-China policy. Government ethics officers vetted the federal employees for any conflicts and found none, the official said. He acknowledged that the review didn’t include an examination of any financial relationship between Hicks and Bass.
Spalding said the conversation centered primarily on Bass’ analysis of publicly available records on the Chinese financial system. “I think the thing that I’ve discovered over the past years is that the information in the private sector is better than anything we have in government,” Spalding said of Bass’ presentation. “You have to reach out to where the expertise is. In our country, that’s where the talent is.”
…
Bass has become a vocal advocate for an aggressive U.S. policy toward China. On Twitter and on cable business channels he’s denounced everything from the country’s Communist Party government to its business practices. Securities filings show Bass raised $143 million from about 81 investors in two funds — investments that would benefit if China’s currency were devalued or the country faced credit or banking crises. In April, in a letter to his investors, Bass wrote that his company, Hayman Capital Management, was positioned for coming problems in Hong Kong and was set up to “maintain a massive asymmetry to a negative outcome in Hong Kong and/or China.”
Hicks’ work on the 5G initiative was extensive.
Over just a few months in late 2017 and 2018, records show, he was part of an informal group led by then NSC official Spalding, that advocated for a strategy in which the federal government would plan out a national policy for 5G. One memo described their goal as the “equivalent of the Eisenhower National Highway System — a single, inherently protected, information transportation superhighway.”
The group conducted multiple meetings and briefings. For example, Hicks, Spalding and others traveled to Samsung Electronics’ Dallas-area offices for one meeting in January 2018.
That same month Hicks attended a 5G meeting that he’d arranged with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Commerce plays a key role in the future of 5G since a division within the agency manages government spectrum and another maintains a list of companies the government believes are, or will become, national security threats. Companies that end up on that list can be effectively shut out from global deal-making. The meeting with Ross focused heavily on the threat of China, said Ira Greenstein, who served as a White House aide and was part of Spalding’s 5G crew.
Hicks was one of a dozen nongovernment employees, including executives from Wells Fargo, Nokia, Ericsson and Google, that Spalding sent reading materials to ahead of a 5G discussion in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Copied on the email were top Commerce Department officials, a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor and a senior adviser for cybersecurity and IT modernization at the White House Office of Science and Technology. On the agenda? “Mid Band vs High Band” spectrum, “security,” “supply chain,” “financing” and other critical issues.
Hicks wasn’t just a passive observer. On Jan. 2, 2018, the managing director of OPIC, which provides financial backing to American companies expanding into foreign markets, emailed Spalding and others to say that the CEO of a satellite company called OneWeb had a plan to provide worldwide 5G coverage by 2027. Hicks fired back a note from his iPhone. “2027 is too late,” he wrote. “Let’s discuss as a smaller group tomorrow.”
Spalding was forced out of the West Wing in early 2018 after a draft 20-page briefing memo he authored proposing a government-organized national 5G network was leaked, then panned as an attempt to nationalize the wireless broadband industry. Trump has not pursued such an initiative, ultimately deferring to wireless carriers to bid on publicly maintained spectrum and develop their own networks as has traditionally been the case.
Still, the administration has made significant efforts to counter Chinese influence in 5G and related technologies, which are said to be critical for industries such as driverless cars, artificial intelligence, machine learning and much more. In May the Commerce Department barred Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei from doing business in the U.S. for national security reasons. And the top Department of Defense official in charge of acquisitions also recently announced the creation of a government-approved private marketplace to pair American private equity firms with U.S. technology companies producing products with national security applications to keep Chinese money out of 5G.
It isn’t clear what influence, if any, Hicks had in those decisions. But his profile is only rising. In April, he led a Republican delegation to Taiwan alongside a U.S. government delegation. Hicks met with the country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who has lately been positioning her country’s corporations as safer providers of 5G equipment than those in China. Tsai thanked the U.S. for selling arms to Taiwan. She asked Hicks to convey her regards to the Trumps.
8. The program concludes with the reading of headlines (and some text) from New York Times stories about the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak.
. . . . The coronavirus outbreak seems defined by two opposing foces: the astoninishing efficiency with the travel industry connects the world and a political moment dominated by xenphobic rhetoric and the buildingof walls. . . .
. . . . The United States State Department nevertheless is denying entry to foreigners who have recently been to China, and is screening Americans who arrive home from China as well as asking them to self quarantine for 14 days. It has told Americans not to visit the country at all. British Airways, Lufthansa and all three major American carriers have halted all flights to China, while the cruise line Royal Caribbean is denying boarding to any person who has traveled to, from or through China or Hong Kong in the past 15 days. . . .
. . . . But what has motivated the response from governments? It doesn’t appear to be evidence. . . .
. . . . Coronavirus is different from other tourism disruptions in a significant way: The potential loss of tourism revenue will hurt not only China but also other countries. In the decade and a half since the SARS crisis, the number of Chinese travelers has soared, with China surpassing other nations in its volume of outbound travelers starting in 2012. In 2017, the Chinese made more than 143 million trips abroad; my colleagues at Skift Research predict that in 2029, that figure will be more than 286 million. Luxury retailers all over the world rely on Chinese travelers, and destinations develop sophisticated marketing strategies to cater to them. . . .
. . . . With the rhetoric surrounding coronavirus, however, however, it appears the astonishing growth of the Chinese travel market in the last 15 years did little to rid the industry of the impulse to treat Chinese travelers as “others” in the face of doubt and uncertainty. . . .
“Declaring Health Emergency, U.S. Restricts Travel from China” by Michael Corkery and Annie Karni; The New York Times; 2/1/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
. . . . The travel restrictions and the airline’s announcements showed how rapidly concerns about the virus have escalated into a contest of the global economy, for which there is no precedent. Three weeks after the first virus-related death was reported, China has found itself cut off from its largest trading partner, the United States, and many other nations. . . .
“Governments Expand Restrictions on Travel to China as Cases Spike” by Paul Mozur; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A6 [Western Edition.]
. . . . With China’s Lunar New Year holiday nearing its end, companies ordered workers to stay home and avoid travel. The economic impact of such measures pointed to a deeper political crisis, with many people accusing the Chinese authorities online of failing to act quickly to contain the virus, even as the government continues to struggle to contain its spread. . . .
. . . . Businesses that operate in China have issued warnings of their own. . . .
. . . . Investors in Asia were gripped on tuesdaywith fear about the health of the global economy for a second day, with a widespread sell-off continuing coninuing in the markets. Investos dumped stocks in companies thought to be most vulnerable to the effects of the virus.
“The corona virus is the No. 1 threat to financial markets currently as global investors are becoming jittery on the uncertainty.” said Nigel Green, founder of an investment company, the DeVere group . . .
“Trade Networks Face New Menace in a Coronavirus” China in Cross Hairs; by Peter S. Goodman; The New York Times; 2/3/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
“China Reels From Virus, and Markets Are on Edge” by Alexandra Stevenson; The New York Times; 1/24/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Outbreak Rattles Markets, Spurring Downturn Fears” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
On same page, relevant to psychological warfare and online activity: “On Chinese Social Media, Anger over Virus” by Raymond Zhong; The New York Times; 1/28/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“OPEC Scrambles to React as Virus Imperils Demand” by Stanley Reed; The New York Times; 2/4/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Virus Threatens an Oil Industry That’s Already Ailing” by Clifford Krauss With a Decline in China’s Demand sending Crude Prices Lowe, Cutbacks by American Companies May Be Coming; For Now, Drivers are benefiting; The New York Times; 2/5/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Africa, With Growing Ties to China, Is Especially Vulnerable” by Simon Marks and Latif Dahir; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. A10 [Western Edition.]
“U.S. Plans Trade Talks With Kenya to Counter China’s Influence in Africa” by Ana Swanson; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B4 [Western Edition.]
“China’s Command of 5G Is A ‘Danger,’ Barr Says” by Katie Benner; The New York Times; 2/7/2020; p. B7 [Western Edition.]
“Virus Fuels Anti-Chinese Sentiment Overseas” by Motoko Rich; The New York Times; 1/31/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
. . . . In Japan, the hashtag #ChineseDon’tComeToJapan has been trending on twitter. In Singapore, tens of thousands of residents have signed a petition calling for the government to ban Chinese from entering the country.
In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, businesses have posted signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not welcome. In France, a front-page headline in a regional newspaper warned of a “Yellow Alert.” And in a suburb of Toronto, parents demanded that a school district keep children of a family that had recently returned from China out of classes for 17 days. . . .
. . . . At a time when China’s rise as a global economic and military power has unsettled its neighbors in Asia as well as its rivals in the West, the coronavirus is feeding into latent bigotry against the people of mainland China . . .
“Virus Puts a Fractured Hong Kong on Edge” by Austin Ramzy; The New York Times; 1/29/2020; p. A1 [Western Edition.]
The two Hong Kong protesters were dressed head to toe in black, their faces coverd in masks. They smashed their Molotov cocktails into the lobby of a public housing estate, and flames and smoke began spewing out. . . .
“Virus Putting E.U. At Risk of Recession” by Jack Ewing; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B1 [Western Edition.]
“Commodities Tumble as Epidemic Snarls Supply Chains” by Matt Phillips; The New York Times; 2/12/2020; p. B3 [Western Edition.]
Uncle Sam and The Swastika
Here’s a couple more examples of J. Kyle Bass openly hoping and pushing for chaos in China. Economic chaos but also viral chaos:
First, here’s a Bloomberg article from a month ago about Bass’s frequent predictions that Hong Kong will suffer a “full-fledged banking crisis” in 2020, comparing Hong Kong to Iceland before the financial crisis. The article characterizes him as warning investors about Hong Kong every chance he gets. It’s worth noting that he’s been making these predictions for months, including a prediction back in June of 2019, when the protests were first breaking out, that Hong Kong “sits atop one of the largest financial time bombs in history.” So this prediction of financial turmoil for Hong Kong last month is just one in a long string of predictions of this nature Bass has been making.
As the following article notes, while Hong Kong’s economy is indeed suffering from months of anti-government mass protests, there’s still little sign of a looming financial crisis. Yes, it’s possible there could be a full-blown banking crisis in Hong Kong if the economy there continues to weaken and real estate prices drop significantly. Renewed protest violence and its impact on the economy could also be a factor. But Bass’s comparisons of Hong Kong’s banking system to pre-crisis Iceland doesn’t appear to be shared by the broader investor community, which raises the obvious question of whether or not he’s somehow ahead of the pack in terms of seeing what’s coming or if he’s trying to actively move markets. And given that he appears to be issuing these Hong Kong warnings every chance he gets it sounds like he’s primarily interested in moving markets:
“Kyle Bass is convinced Hong Kong is headed for a financial crisis, and he’s warning investors every chance he gets. Few seem to be listening. The Dallas-based hedge fund manager, who made a fortune betting against subprime mortgages more than a decade ago, issued his latest dire Hong Kong forecast on Wednesday, saying in a Bloomberg TV interview that the city would suffer a “full-fledged banking crisis” in 2020. Citing a “collapse” in the local economy and high levels of financial leverage, he compared Hong Kong to Iceland and Ireland before those nations’ banking systems imploded during the global financial crisis.”
Hong Kong’s financial system is looking like pre-crisis Iceland. That’s quite a bold statement by Bass and something he apparently is telling people every chance he gets. And yet it doesn’t appear to actually be true based on financial market metrics:
So it sounds like some sort of additional shock to Hong Kong is going to be required for Bass’s predictions pan out this year. Of course, there is indeed an additional shock in the form of the coronavirus epidemic that’s only been accelerating over the last month. And as we’ve seen, that’s another topic Bass appears to be very interested in promoting, in particular through his partnership with Steve Bannon and exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui in promoting coronavirus disinformation intended to generate popular anger against the Chinese government. And it’s in that context that we have this article from a few days about Bass calling for the US to pull its coronavirus aid to China and just letting it ravage the country. The comments were made in response to a tweet by the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a publication run by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, complaining about “belated” US aid. Bass responded with a tweet of his own that, “We should take our supplies and go back home. Let the chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the GT and the rest of the communist party”:
““We should take our supplies and go back home. Let the chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the GT and the rest of the communist party,” the founder and chief investment officer of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management wrote.”
Bass sure seems to have a strange relationship with the coronavirus. He’s both spreading disinformation about the Chinese government being behind the release of the virus and openly pining for the the virus to ravage the Chinese government. And when asked by the editor of the Global Times to apologize over the tweet, he doubles down and declares that he’ll “never apologize to a self-righteous, attempted manipulator of public opinion.” It was kind of an ironic response for an investor who appears to be waging an aggressive disinformation campaign for personal profit:
But we still can’t rule out that Bass’s predictions of economic disaster for China and Hong Kong will pan out this year. After all, while the coronavirus has understandably subdued the actual Hong Kong protests somewhat over fears of contagion, it sounds like the public anger against the Hong Kong government is only growing as a result of the virus’s impact on daily life and the government’s response. So it’s possible we’ll see the coronavirus eventually subside, only to be followed by an even bigger round of Hong Kong protests. Which is one of the scenarios Bass is betting on happening this year and doing what they can to make happen. It’s not the only scenario he would be happy with. A scenario that involves the coronavirus not getting under control and ravaging China and Hong Kong instead is clearly a scenario he’s betting on too.
Look who is joining in on Steve Bannon’s and Guo Wengui’s disinformation campaign about the Wuhan coronavirus originating in a Chinese government biowarfare lab: Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one of the biggest foreign policy hawks in the Senate. Cotton is now going around openly suggesting that, yes, the coronavirus really may have originated in a Chinese biowarfare lab. He admits there’s no evidence for this, but asserts that the Chinese government’s history of deception means we should suspect it may have come from a military biowarfare lab because the Chinese government isn’t handing over evidence point towards a different origin for the virus. As Cotton puts it, “We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.” So we need to ask what the evidence says, but China won’t provide evidence so we should suspect that lack of evidence from the Chinese government is because it’s covering up evidence that the virus came from a biowarfare lab. That’s literally his reasoning.
As we’ll see in the second article below, Cotton has been at this for at least a couple weeks. Earlier this month he called the coronavirus “worse than Chernobyl” and suggested it came from a Chinese “superlaboratory”. A super lab. That sounds super scary. The “superlab” he’s referring to is the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is indeed a Biosafety Level 4 lab that does indeed study dangerous pathogens. That’s part of what’s fueling this narrative: there really is an advanced government lab that studies pathogens in Wuhan.
As the following article notes, there’s a growing number of right-wing voices jumping on board the Bannon/Guo coronavirus narrative. Articles Fox News and the Daily Mail (both owned by the Murdoch family) and the Washington Times (owned by the Unification Church). Oh, and it turns out Steve Bannon has created an entirely new podcast dedicated to the coronavirus. It’s the “War Room: Pandemic” podcast, a spinoff from his “War Room: Impeachment” podcast.
So it’s looking like Steve Bannon’s pet project is becoming one of those official right-wing conspiracy theories that the whole right-wing media complex is going to be pumping out regardless of the lack of evidence. After all, the lack of evidence is the what should make us suspicious, according to Senator Cotton:
“A plethora of misinformation has led World Health Organization workers to call it an “infodemic.””
An “infodemic”. That’s how the World Health Organization is characterizing the misinformation around the Wuhan virus. And of course Steve Bannon and the right-wing media was leading the way on that “infodemic”. It was on Fox News on Sunday that Senator Cotton gave a big boost the Bannon’s misinformation when he suggested that the lack of evidence that the disease originated at the Wuhan market should make us suspect it actually originated at a Chinese biowarfare lab:
And Fox News isn’t the only Murdoch-owned outlet being used to promote this meme. The Daily Mail has already run stories promoting this idea, as well as the Unification Church-owned Washington Times:
And then there’s Steve Bannon’s whole new podcast dedicated to the coronavirus: “War Room: Pandemic”. That’s how dedicated Bannon is to this project. He’s got a whole podcast about it:
And note how, following Cotton’s comments on Fox News, Guo Wengui goes onto his G News platform to brag about how he predicted a year ago that the Chinese government was going to create a pandemic “before it dies”. So Guo has been promoting this meme before the pandemic even started. On the one hand, predictions of that nature are pretty standard for the Info Wars-style media environment Guo occupies. But on the other hand, if we were to learn that this virus really was intentionally released at this point it seems like the staunch opponent of the Chinese government who has been actively stoking and trying to profit off of this pandemic should probably be one of the prime suspects, especially if he’s been predicting this before it happened:
Now here’s a Business Insider article from a couple of weeks ago about Senator Cotton claiming the Wuhan virus is “worse than Chernobyl” and may have come from a Chinese “superlaboratory”. Yep, a super lab. He’s refering to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is a Biosafety Level 4 lab that investigates “the most dangerous pathogens.” The evidence Cotton cites of his conviction that the virus definitely didn’t come from the Wuhan market is that 14 of the 40 original cases of the Wuhan virus had no contact with the market, including patient zero, according to Cotton. Cotton was referring to an article published in The Lancet that stated that the first known case of someone with the virus didn’t have direct contact with the Wuhan market. So based on that data points — patient zero not having contact with the Wuhan market juxtaposed to the Chinese government conclusion that it arose from the market — Cotton was already strongly hinting that came from the Wuhan “superlab”:
“At a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing with US military leaders on Thursday, Cotton described the coronavirus as the “biggest and most important story in the world” and “worse than Chernobyl.””
Worse than Chernobyl and the most important story in the world. That’s how Senator Cotton was describing the situation. And he based much of that description on an article in The Lancet that stated that the very first case in early December 2019 had no direct contact with the Wuhan Market
It’s important to keep in mind that the first found case is not the same thing as the first person to contract the virus. We have no idea who the real “patient zero” is in terms of the first person to contact the virus. It’s entirely possible this first patient contracted the virus from another person who did pick it up from the market.
At the same time, it’s true that the virus could have emerged from that Wuhan lab. But once we enter the realm of speculating about intentional releases of the virus there’s no reason to assume it came from that particular lab. After all, if a group of people wanted to destabilize China with a novel virus, it could be released anywhere and selecting a city with a “superlab” would be a logical place to do it. Note that here’s what The Lancet article actually said about those first patients:
No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases. So yes, there’s a mystery as to how the first patient contracted the virus. But it doesn’t appear that the first known patient had a clear link to the other early patients. In other words, the first known patient probably wasn’t the first person to actually contract the disease. Someone else was spreading it around. Did that mysterious person catch it from the Wuhan Market? We have no idea. We just know that a cluster of the earliest patients were found to have direct contact with that market and market where wildlife is sold is a logical origin for a virus to jump to humans.
It all raises the question of what is actually conclusively known about the origins and nature of the Wuhan coronavirus. And that brings us to the following LA Times article describes what it know about the virus’s lethality. At this point, based on the number of known cases, the virus appears to have a death rate of around 2%, which is far less than the apocalyptic death rates seen for SARS or MERS, but still far more than the death rate of the normal flu that’s less than 0.1%. So a 2% percent death rate is a very big deal. But as the article notes, while much is not known about this virus, one thing we can say with very high confidence is that the death rate is actually much lower than 2%. Why? Because we can be confident that all of the non-lethal cases aren’t being recorded. If someone catches the Wuhan flu and doesn’t report or doesn’t even realize they have it, perhaps because they’re asymptomatic, those cases aren’t going to get factored into the death rate calculations. If someone dies from, on the other hand, they are highly likely to be included in the counted cases. So there’s an asymmetry with our ability to count the number of cases in that more severe cases are far more likely to be counted than the less severe cases. So while one of the charges Senator Cotton makes against the Chinese government is that it’s been hiding or underestimating the number of cases is probably a valid charge, it’s the kind of charge that only makes it more like this virus is much less deadly than alarmists like Cotton would prefer us to believe:
“At this point, the new coronavirus seems to have more in common with the regular flu than with exotic diseases like Ebola or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), both of which had fatality rates around 40%. Among a group of 17,000 people with confirmed coronavirus infections, 3% were classified as critical, 15% had severe infections and 82% were mild, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s acting head of emerging diseases. Of the 2% who died, many were elderly with underlying health issues that made them more vulnerable.”
Much close to the regular flu than Ebola or MERS. That’s what we can confidently assess so far. Still, a 2% death rate is a lot higher than the flu. But that’s just the initial estimate. An estimate based on case numbers that systematically miss the least severe cases. As one expert puts it, the one thing we can pretty much say with certainty is that the 2% “case fatality rate” is too high:
The 2009 H1NA flu that initially looked like it had a 10% death rate ended up plunging below 0.1% when all of the data was taken into account. It’s an example of the kind of vast uncertainty we’re forced to deal with in the early stages of an outbreak;
And note how the official Chinese government tally of infections appeared to be significantly underestimating the number of cases. It’s a problem, but it’s the kind of problem that is likely to make the virus seem more deadly than it actually is:
The is one type of hidden or missing data that would push the death rate in the opposite direction: hidden deaths. But, again, that’s just much harder to hide than a non-severe case:
So, yes, the thing we can say with certainty at this point is that the death rate is below 2%. Is it less than 0.1% like a normal flu? We’ll have to wait and see.
And we can’t ignore the potential for mutations that make the virus more deadly. But for now, it’s looking a lot more like another strain of the flu than some sort of apocalypse virus. But we wouldn’t want such facts to get in the way of a good “infodemic”.
@Pterrafractyl–
Perhaps the best indicator that the coronavirus event is part of a “bio-psy-op” is the coverage itself.
Just looking at the coverage in the NYT (Western Edition) today is remarkable.
Page after page after page of coverage of the coronavirus, it’s economic effects, etc.
Second front page story in two days about the cruise ship in Japan.
Last count–roughly 70,000 infected, roughly ‘1,800 deaths.
This is in a country five times the size of the U.S.
In the U.S., the flu epidemic of 2017–2018–the worst in 40 years–infected 45 million and killed 80,000, according to the CDC.
And yet, we didn’t hear Chicken Little warning that “the sky is falling”!
Note a passage in the NYT article you included in your comment (and which failed to mention that J. Kyle Bass is an associate of Steve Bannon, Guo Wengui and a probable investment partner of Tommy Hicks and that Bass–and probably Hicks–have money invested in betting against the Chinese economy.)
Hicks is tied to the Commerce Department and other government agencies who are going all out on the Huawei squeeze.
That passage ” . . . .Although much remains unknown about the coronavirus, experts generally dismiss the idea that it was created by human hands. Scientists who have studied the coronavirus say it resembles SARS and other viruses that come from bats. While contagious, so far it appears to largely threaten the lives of older people with chronic health issues, making it a less-than-effective bioweapon. . . .”
Doesn’t sound too deadly to me.
Note, also that just such a virus WAS synthesized in a U.S. lab, as reported in 2008: ” . . . . Here, we report the design, synthesis, and recovery of the largest synthetic replicating life form, a 29.7‑kb bat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (Bat-SCoV), a likely progenitor to the SARS-CoV epidemic. Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice. . . .”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23500739_Synthetic_recombinant_bat_SARS-like_coronavirus_is_infectious_in_cultured_cells_and_in_mice
Note, also, that no major U.S. news outlet reported on the drug cocktail that apparently was quite successful against the virus when used in Thailand.
WHY NOT?!! If this virus is so damn awful, why not report this?
Reuters did as did Agence France Presse–major wire services.
Note that the exhalted “New York Times” DID manage to report that remdesivir–which just happens to be made by Gilead, one of Robert Mercer’s hedge fund’s biggest holdings–has enjoyed some success and that the Chinese have applied to a patent.
Sherlock Holmes noted the significance of “the dog that didn’t bark.”
Too bad Americans can’t figure out that this is “elementary, my dear Watson!”
Do take note of the other aspects of what has been reported in the shows done to date.
The years-long moratorium on the testing of these viruses was ended at the end of 2017.
In October of 2019, there just happened to be a major exercise in New York City about “Virus X”–which may well be driving the sensationalist, weaponized coverage of this virus.
All of this is taking place in the context of an obvious destabilization effort against China.
Keep up the great work!
Best,
Dave
Here’s a set of articles about the economic impact already hitting China’s economy from the coronavirus. Keep in mind that betting on a crashing Chinese economy is one of the core financial bets made by J. Kyle Bass, so the worse things get for China’s economy the more money we should expect Bass and his co-investors to make:
First, here’s an article about how a growing number of Chinese companies aren’t able to afford to pay their workers. In many cases it’s workers who aren’t coming into work because of the coronavirus. Many companies are also cutting salaries in response to the economic slowdown. It’s unclear how many companies are cutting or eliminating worker pay at this point but a survey of the Chinese recruitment website Zhaopin found that a third of respondees said they were aware it was a possibility that they wouldn’t get paid or might not get paid their full salaries. Small business are thought to be especially vulnerable to the economic shock and most likely not to pay their employees. It’s a reminder that that while the coronavirus’s impact on China is going to have economic impact around the world due to China’s key role in global supply chains, it’s the Chinese domestic economy that’s probably going to be hit the hardest. As Chang Shu, Chief Asia Economist for Bloomberg Intelligence, warned, “The coronavirus may hit Chinese consumption harder than SARS 17 years ago, and SARS walloped consumption”:
“To slow the spread of the virus that’s claimed more than 2,000 lives, Chinese authorities and big employers have encouraged people to stay home. Shopping malls and restaurants are empty, amusement parks and theaters are closed, non-essential travel is all but forbidden.”
Empty malls, closed parks, and non-essential travel forbidden. That’s quite an economic shock. Worse than SARS, a virus that was far deadlier.
And it’s the smaller companies that are the most vulnerable, prompting officials to call on state-run banks to make cheap loans targeting small businesses:
Now here’s an article about how new bank loans in China hit a record high in January, presumably reflecting the growing need for cash just to keep the businesses operating and employees (maybe) paid. The PBOC, China’s central bank, also cut its benchmark lending rate today as part of a push to ease the financing costs for business. As the article notes, it’s the small and rural banks that the most at risk in this environment and a stress test last year by the PBOC found that 13 percent of banks were considered “high risk”. So the number of “high risk” Chinese banks is going to be higher than 13 percent by now, with a lot more distressed small and rural banks:
“A sharp drop in corporate sales and cash flow caused by the outbreak is likely to put more stress on China’s’s financial system, particularly small, rural banks. A stress test by the PBOC last year said more than 13% of lenders were considered “high risk”.”
13 percent of Chinese banks were “high risk”. That’s what the PBOC found in November of 2019, so this 13 percent estimate is based on data that precedes the coronavirus outbreak. It was a timely stress test given the enormous stresses the country’s financial system is now facing.
Now here’s a Financial Times article about a warning from Standard & Poors that China’s banking system could face a surge in non-performing loans (NPLs) this year in response to the virus. S&P estimates that the volume of NPLs could grow as much as 7.7 trillion Rmb ($1.1 trillion), from a current level of just under 2.5 trillion Rmd. The range of S&P estimates was a “upside” surge of only 3.4 trillion Rmb, a “baseline” surge of 5.4 trillion Rmb, and the worst-case “downside” surge of 7.7 trillion Rmb. Similarly, S&P expects a best-case scenario of GDP growth of 5.5 percent (which is very low compared to recent years and below the 6.1 percent for 2019), a baseline scenario of 5 percent GDP growth (which would be the lowest in three decades) and a worst-case scenario of 4.4 percent GDP growth for 2020. So, at best, S&P expects a somewhat slowing economy and the number of NPLs in China’s banking system to more than double and at worst they expect a dramatically slowing economy and the NPLs to quadruple:
“In a worst-case scenario in which the outbreak does not peak until April, S&P forecasts China’s economy, the second biggest in the world, will expand 4.4 per cent in 2020. That would mark a dramatic slowdown from the 6.1 per cent growth in 2019 and be the weakest pace since 1990, according to World Bank data.”
A dramatic slowdown for China’s economy. That’s S&P’s worst case scenario. But the best case scenario is still a slowdown. And even the baseline scenario would be the slowest growth for China in three decades. And under any of their scenarios, the non-performing loans would surge:
And note the expectation by S&P that Chinese regulators are going to relax rules for what counts as bad loans:
Now here’s an article from May of 2019 that describes how Chinese regulators were encouraging more lending to small and mid-sized businesses but also tighten the standards for what constitutes a bad loan. As the article noted, the NPLs at that point were already at a 16 year high. Keep in mind that 2003, when that high was last experienced, was the same year SARS hit China. So China’s banking system was already showing signs of stress in May of 2019, long before the coronavirus outbreak. Although note that it appears that NPLs were at a 16-year-high in absolute terms, not as a percent of total loans in China’s financial system which has grown substantially since 2003. The industry-wide (NPL) ratio actually declined slightly to 1.8% at the end of the first quarter of 2019. So there were signs of stress but it wasn’t yet at SARS-crisis levels as of May of 2019, although small and mid-sized businesses were already struggling. And steps were being taken to strengthen the lending standards overall, which are probably going to the steps that get reversed by regulators as NPLs surge and China attempts to ward off a full blown banking crisis:
“The bad-loan data comes at a time Chinese authorities have been pushing banks to sharply hike their lending to small and mid-sized businesses, to help combat a slowdown in economic growth.”
Rising non-performing loans at the same time Chinese authorities were trying to encourage a sharp increase in the lending to small and mid-sized businesses. So there was presumably a spike in loans to small and mid-sized Chinese business in the months leading up to the economic shock from this virus that’s hitting small and mid-sized businesses particularly hard. It’s pretty ominous.
At the same time, regulators did strengthen lending standards and required lenders to classify more bad loans as officially non-performing. Officials were assuring markets that the new rules would not trigger a spike in NPLs:
And at the time, the rule changes may not have caused a spike. But it seems like a sure bet that there’s going to be more loans that get classified as NPLs today with China’s economy at a standstill as a result of these new rules which is why the speculation by S&P and others that the definitions for a bad loan will be weakened seems like a reasonable prediction. A whole lot of those loans made to small and mid-sized businesses over the last year are probably going bad right about now or about to go bad. After all, if companies can’t pay their employees, they probably can’t pay their debts either.
So as the coronavirus grinds China’s economy to a halt, it’s going to be quite a test of the Chinese government’s ability to manage an economic shock that threatens to become a financial system shock. There are clearly huge dangers ahead for Chinese banks and businesses but the scope of those dangers remains unclear. It might be just kind of bad or might be really, really, really bad. And that massive economic danger for China looms whether or not the coronavirus itself ends up being exceptionally nasty or no worse than the typical flu.
Here’s a chilling set of updates on the nature of the coronavirus, which is now being officially named SARS-CoV‑2, and how it spreads: a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that SARS-CoV‑2 is unlike all previously discovered coronaviruses in terms of how it spreads. Unlike SARS, which only infected deep in the lower respiratory tract, the new SARS-CoV‑2 virus infects both the lower and upper respiratory tracts giving it the ability to spread via airborne transmissions. That makes it spread much more like the flu or common cold than like any other known coronavirus.
In addition, the researchers found that levels of the virus increased soon after symptoms first appeared, with higher amounts in the nose than in the throats, which is also more consistent with influenza than SARS. Of the 18 patients they examined, one had moderate levels in their nose and throat but no symptoms, so people who are asymptomatic can still potentially spread the virus. It’s this combination of airborne transmissions and asymptomatic patients who are still shedding the virus that makes this a particularly infectious disease.
This sudden anomalous new ability to infect the upper respiratory tract, of course, brings up the chilling experiments where researchers modified the H5N1 bird flu virus until it was capable of airborne transmissions between ferrets. That’s the same research that was banned by the NIH following the uproar but has subsequently been reallowed in early 2019. That original 2012 study specifically found that it was mutations that gave the virus the ability to infect the upper respiratory tracts of the ferrets that made it an airborne virus. We have yet to year if the SAR-CoV‑2 virus had the same or similar mutations to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus experiment but it seems likely.
So the infectiousness of the SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus is unprecedented based on this new study. As one immunologist put it, “This virus is clearly much more capable of spreading between humans than any other novel coronavirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”:
“Unlike Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which causes infections deep in the lower respiratory tract that can result in pneumonia, COVID-19 appears to inhabit both the upper and lower respiratory tracts. That would make it not only capable of causing severe pneumonia, but of spreading easily like flu or the common cold.”
That’s pretty scary. At the same time, it more or less sounds like human influenza viruses which also infect both the upper and lower respiratory tracts in humans. Note the reason the H5N1 strain that was modified in 2012 in those ferret experiments couldn’t already infect human upper respiratory tracts is that it was an avian virus that had just jumped to humans and hadn’t yet evolved the ability infect upper respiratory tracts in humans. Human influenza viruses can normally infect both the upper and lower respiratory tracts. The truly scary part of this new finding on the SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus is the unprecedented nature of it in a coronavirus and the fact that it’s now emerging not long after researchers learned how to drive the evolution of viruses to give them the ability to infect human upper respiratory tracts.
It’s a scary finding, but as the following article describes, we shouldn’t assume airborne transmissions are the only way the virus is spreading or even necessarily the primary means of transmission. At this point we don’t know. For example, the virus has also been found in human feces, much like the norovirus, making food-borne transmission an option. And as researchers found with the SARS virus, the SARS virus was discovered to have spread from aerosolized droplets of contaminated feces, which is an example of how viruses that haven’t yet developed the ability to spread through the air like the flu (or like this new coronavirus) can still be spread through the air if the droplets or feces that the virus is contained in somehow becomes airborne. And for all we know at this point it might be aerosolized droplets that are causing most of the infections. As one research put it, “both of these statements can coexist: Asymptomatic shedders could spread the virus, but it probably is not the main driver of this epidemic”:
“It’s also possible that transmission early in the illness or from asymptomatic people won’t end up being important contributors to the outbreak, said Marion Koopmans, who studies emerging infectious diseases and heads the department of virology at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In most parts of the world where travelers with Covid-19 turned up, she added, the spread of the disease has been contained by only testing people with symptoms. But, she added, “both of these statements can coexist: Asymptomatic shedders could spread the virus, but it probably is not the main driver of this epidemic.””
The SARS-CoV‑2 virus might be airborne, but it’s not exclusively airborne. That’s all part of what makes this a complicated problem to diagnose. Especially when researchers are finding that it’s possible to spread SARS-CoV‑2 in feces:
And if feces are indeed the primary route through which the disease spreads, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen from eating contaminated food or some other means of ingesting the fecal matter. Because as we learned from SARS, droplets of feces can be aerosolized from things like faulty toilets:
But as the experts keep reminding us, we still don’t know if that’s how it’s being spread. All we know is it’s spreading at a higher rate than SARS and MERS and even the seasonal flu.
Still, the fact that SARS-CoV‑2 is spreading faster than other coronaviruses and has the unique ability to manifest in the upper respiratory tract for even asymptomatic individuals logically makes that route of transmission a likely factor in this outbreak. And that unique ability for a coronavirus is making it getting harder and harder to ignore the possibility that this virus was created in a lab.
Given the right-wing media campaign to push the idea that the virus was developed at a biological research facility in Wuhan and somehow escaped from there, it’s worth noting that Steve Bannon had a biowarfare expert on Episdoe 14 of his “Pandemic: War Room” podcast on February 10th who appeared to strongly dismiss the idea that the Wuhan bioresearch facility was a biowarfare research lab where new viruses are generate. Guess who that biowarfare expert was: Stephen Hatfill. Yep. That Stephen Hatfill. It turns out Hatfill has been a regular on Bannon’s Pandemic podcasts. But to be fair, he was far and away the voice of sanity and caution on Bannon’s podcast, at least during that episode. You can hear the Hatfill segment starting around ~25 minutes into the podcast. So according to Hatfill, we really shouldn’t view that Wuhan research facility as the kind of place where new viruses are being developed. He also emphasized that these kinds of buildings aren’t the type of place where a virus is going to be accidentally released because there are just too many backup systems (this is at ~29 minutes into the podcast). So that’s an interesting take from Hatfill.
At the same time, we can’t forget one of scariest findings of that initial research that made H5N1 airborne in ferrets by causing the virus to infect the upper respiratory tract: It was super easy to do. They just needed to take the virus from an infected ferret, manually pass it on to another ferret, and repeat these process. After about 10 ferrets, the virus had mutated to the point where it was infecting the upper respiratory tracts and could go airborne. That was it. The people carrying this out would obviously be at risk if they didn’t take precautions but no super biowarfare research lab was necessary to actually drive the mutations.
So there’s quite a bit left to be learned about the origin and nature of this virus. But there’s one thing we can be sure of: If someone does indeed want to develop a killer super coronavirus that really could kill off a huge percent of the populace they have a great head start with SARS-CoV‑2 and its unique airborne abilities.
@Pterrafractyl–
An interesting note: the mutated bird flu virus that was adapted to infect ferrets and manifested airborne transmission between animals was successfully treated with oseltamivir, as noted in the linked article.
That is one of the anti-virals that was included in the drug cocktail that Thai doctors used to treat the coronavirus.
There has been no reportage on the Thai treatment by any major American media that I can see.
Best,
Dave
The panic is intended. This is largely kayfabe. You’re correct about the psy-ops vs China and it also is — as you note — being used as a domestic psy-op as well.
One thing worth noting that I haven’t yet seen in your coverage (though I may have missed something recently) is the demographics of the current fatalities, which are largely confined to the elderly.
Source; https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
oops. I see you did mention that briefly. it might be worth more of a spotlight in regard to the presumptive “salutary” effect that a lot of dead people at once would have on the entitlement rolls.....
@ Crown & Thorn, Nevah Mind et al–
This is definitely a “bio-psy-op” that will fulfill many pieces of many agendas.
Note the deliberate panicking. You didn’t hear this “Chicken Little journalism” (“The Sky Is Falling”) when the U.S. had its worst flue season in 40 years in 2017–2018. 45 million infected; 80,000 dead and that in a country roughly one fifth the size of China.
I have, indeed, noted in the programs that the elderly, smokers and people with compromised immune systems are the most severely afflicted.
Social Security is NOT in a crisis, if one were to grant the people running this country any degree of sanity.
However the U.S. is going full-on Nazi,and getting rid of the “Useless Bread Gobblers” will be music to the ears of the Power Elite, who have never accepted FDR’s New Deal, nor JFK’s Medicare (passed under LBJ.)
Note how accepting people are of quarantines and other mass limitations of human association and assembly.
Note, also, how cell phone tracking is “helping” find out who might be exposed in South Korea, and elsewhere.
It will be interesting to see if that happens here.
PLEASE do keep up with the current shows–7 recorded to date on the Covid-19 outbreak.
The last two are available as temporary audio files only.
This has been in the making for quite some time, I suspect.
I emphatically recommend that you devote some time to getting the word out on a relatively mundane therapeutic regimen developed by doctors in Thailand.
https://spitfirelist.com/news/lions-and-tigers-and-bears-and-bat-coronaviruses-oh-my/
There has been no coverage of this in U.S. by major media. Instead we are hearing about Gilead’s Ebola drug remdesivir (spelling?) which didn’t work well on Ebola.
Robert Mercer is heavily invested in Gilead.
See what research all of you can do on equities market players–individual and institutional–that have been “shorting” relevant stocks and/or investing in Gilead or other Big Pharma entities that stand to profit enormously from this.
Best,
Dave
It was always clear that hedge fund investor Bill Ackman wasn’t the only investor who made a massive fortune from the extreme coronavirus-induced market volatility over the past month. The question was more a matter of who managed to make these incredible returns as the markets collapsed and whether or not there was reason to suspect they have have had insider knowledge/influence. So here’s an article that describes some of the other investors who made a fortune from the market collapse. One of those big winners includes Universa Investments fund, which is advised by The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb and made a return of 3,612% in March alone. Yep, the fund run by the guy who literally built his career on the idea that highly disruptive ‘Black Swan’ events should be expected and factored into your investment models made a fortune when a real Black Swan event actually happened. It would be a surprise if Universa didn’t make a ton of money.
Also note that it doesn’t sound like Universa fund actually grew by 36-fold in March. As we’ll see in the third article below, Universa spent around $100 million on the put options that ended up making the fund at least $3 billion in March. The fund has around $4.3 billion under management. So the $100 million that made over $3 billion was over 2% of the fund. Which is around what Universa has invested on any given day. Just 2–3%. So in March, that 2–3% of Universa’s $4.3 billion in capital was invested in around $100 million in put options that returned 3,612% that month alone.
Now, it’s important to keep in mind that a “tail-risk” fund like Universa is designed to keep making these kinds of bets and losing them over and over for years until the proverbial ‘Black Swan’ event comes around and the fund recoups its losses on those extreme ‘outside the money’ bets. Universa’s investment strategy is predicated on the assumption that big financial shock events happen with some degree of predictability which makes regular hedges against extreme events a good investment even if they routinely lose. Because when these bets win, they win very big. That’s what just happened with Universa’s remarkable returns because that’s what was supposed to happen.
At least that’s what was supposed to happen in the case of Universa. It was entirely expected. But there’s still the open question of how many funds out made big unexpected bets against extreme market volatility in the period before the market collapse. That pre-March period when the Trump administration dithered on the viral response as the same it received reports on the severity of the virus and warnings that it could be an unusually severe public health emergency. That’s a question that will never be fully answered. But as Universa and Bill Ackman both made clear, people were indeed making vast fortunes off of that historic financial tumult. It wasn’t just Universa and Ackman. Lots of people must have made huge returns in March. Were they people who might have been in a position to know there was a global economic shutdown just around the corner?
Also recall how Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital made a nearly 100-fold return on its $27 million market volatility bet but those returns just balanced out the massive losses elsewhere in the fund. Ackman didn’t make a huge fortune so much as avoided losing a huge fortune. In the case of Universa’s 36-fold return in March, that was the net actual return of the fund’s investments that month. Although just on a little over 2% of the fund’s capital (around $100 million). As we’ll see, Universa only invests 2–3% of its capital at any point in time, probably because it needs to keep making these losing bets on low-risk/high payout events. Still, a 36-fold growth of 2% of capital is a pretty good return for a single month. At the same time, March was the ‘Black Swan’ month the fund was set up to maximally profit from. So March was kind of an inevitability for Universa and a basic part of its business model. Doomsday or bust. But what about all the other investors who don’t routinely bet on ‘Black Swan’ event and just happened to make those bets early this year and end up with huge net positive returns? How many of those investors made massive fortunes last month and what kind of access to insider government information might they have had? It’s a fun new multi-trillion dollar question that once again involves the already super-rich getting more super-richer:
“It also came to light that a US hedge fund made a 4,144% return betting on a stock market collapse in the year to the end of March. The Miami-based Universa Investments fund, which is advised by The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb, made a return of 3,612% in March alone. “I think we’ve shown Universa’s method of risk mitigation to be the most effective,” Mark Spitznagel, the fund’s president and chief investment officer, said in an investor letter seen by Bloomberg.”
A 4,144% return for 2020 and a 3,612% return for March alone. That’s how Black Swan funds perform during a Black Swan event. But anti-doomsday bets aren’t the only kinds of investments made by Universa. The fund using its risk hedging as a hedge for aggressive risk taking. So it’s more like an alternative to asset diversification for balancing an investment portfolio. Instead of buying a diverse set of assets that will perform differently smooth things out, Universa takes out doomsday protection in a variety of forms and then uses that protection to make aggressive bets in those insured areas. A fund predicated on the fundamental bet that the ‘tails’ on tail-risk event probability distributions aren’t as long as the rest of the market thinks leading to relatively cheap doomsday insurance that can allow for aggressive long bets now with huge payouts when a doomsday arrives:
“Tail-risk hedging isn’t an investment strategy in itself. Instead, Universa tells clients to think of it as catastrophe insurance that allows them to pursue returns more aggressively, without the need for more traditional approaches to risk mitigation such as diversifying assets and holding Treasuries, gold or hedge funds.”
Buy doomsday insurance and make big counter-bets. That’s how the Universa describes itself to clients. We can’t predict when the Black Swan events will happen. We just know they’ll happen and that’s why betting on them at all times is required:
And based on the following Forbes piece about Universa’s Chief Investment Officer Mark Spitznagel, it was $100 million in put options that yielded over $3 billion in returns that month. That was where the giant returns came from. $100 million in doomsday bets which corresponds to a little over 2% of the funds $4.3 billion in capital. As the article notes, the fund typically has a little as 2 to 3% of its capital wagered at any point in time. So it sounds like almost all of the 2–3% daily capital Universa was betting with in March was betting on those doomsday bets:
“Spitznagel’s $4.3 billion (assets) firm Universa Investments and his team of about a dozen PhD’s, mathematicians and trading experts earn their money by making trades that nearly always lose small sums–but very rarely generate astronomical payouts. Universa buys short-term options contracts that protect against a spike in volatility, or a plunge in markets, which are highly “convex” and “out-of-the money.” In plain English that means it would take a sudden, major crash for the trades to pay off. Every trading day, investors around the world make a little easy money by selling Spitznagel options.”
A $4.3 billion doomsday fund. But it only gambles with a tiny fraction of that money at any point. As little as 2–3%, which corresponds to the ~$100 million in doomsday options that were suddenly worth $3 billion in March:
But as the article notes, even with the enormous returns of 2020, Universa’s annualized returns going back to 2008 are still only at 76%, which has only been marginally better than the S&P over that same period. It’s a reminder that this strategy of always betting on doomsday events looks really good in the middle of a doomsday scenario but isn’t going to perform that well during a Black Swan dry spell. And if lots of other investors decide to jump into this form of investing it’s possible the profitability of the strategy will just get arbitraged away:
So while Universa is trying to establish that you can make a winning investment strategy by also making small bets on doomsday scenarios, timing still matters if you want to make a super massive fortune. If Universa had 95% of its capital invested in doomsday puts instead of 3% they would have a lot more money right now.
And that, again, returns us to the question of who made the biggest of these hyper-profitable bets last months. Who got the luckiest? Was it luck or ‘luck’? It’s the kind of question that would be interesting under a ‘normal’ doomsday circumstance. But we’re living in a world run by the far right. Almost every major leader around the globe is some sort of far right nut job running a government of pirates. Leaders who specialize in creating and exploiting political doom now run the place. Profiting from a crisis isn’t exactly seen as unseemly by today’s elites. And that’s why these questions about who made the biggest overnight fortunes are such grimly relevant questions. It’s important to know if the major financial investors in doomsday scenarios happen to have ties to the major investors in political doom. That’s the kind of investment strategy the public needs to be very careful to guard against, especially with the far right in charge of everything globally, and unfortunately we can’t just buy a bunch of put options to defend against it. Some sort of anti-far right put options would be pretty nice right now. And always.
Well, someone made a ton of money. That’s one of the things we can conclusively determine following the historic collapse in the price of a barrel of oil on Monday down from $18/barrel to nearly negative $40/barrel. Yes, for a brief moment people were literally being paid $40 to take a barrel of oil and this wasn’t due to some technical glitch. People really were paying other people to their their oil.
So after all the stories about traders making extreme profits from deeply ‘out of the money’ hedges on the financial markets — like Nassim Taleb’s Universa ‘Black Swan’ fund — we have to ask the question: did anyone make an utterly obscene profit from this history price swing in oil? Who were they lucky individuals and what are the odds that that made their profitable bets without insider information? Did anyone have futures contracts that bet oil was going to drop below zero? If so, what where the returns on those contracts?
Interestingly, as we’re going to see when we look at how this extreme price swing took place at all, part of what makes this extreme price event so unusually is the event that created the extreme volatility was fully foreseeable. That would be the special day April 20 represented for the crude oil markets: the day the holders of oil futures contracts must take physical delivery of delivery of their oil. It was the collapse in available oil storage space that made it suddenly impossible for large numbers of holders of oil futures contracts to receive the oil they were contractually obliged to receive. That’s what led to the sudden price collapse. People needed space to receive their oil that was no longer for rent and that led to a situation where people were literally paying other people with remaining $40/barrel to take their oil:
“Traders with long-term leases were probably able to score huge profits. WTI contracts for delivery in June are still trading above $20 a barrel, even though they have fallen from near $60 at the start of the year. Get paid $30-$40 a barrel to take the oil, then sell it forward in the futures market for $20 a barrel.”
A sudden one day price collapse of nearly $60/barrel. On a day that started off with the price near $20/barrel. That’s quite a day for the markets, especially for traders with long-term storage leases. That appears to be one of the key methods for profiting for this wild price swing: owning long-term oil storage leases near Cushing, Oklahoma.
And this current extreme situation isn’t going away any time soon. The US is still producing more oil than its refineries need. In other words, we could easily see more price swings because the underlying market imbalance didn’t resolve itself. The extreme storage shortage continues:
So that describes what happened on Monday. But, again, part of what made this even so interesting is that it’s not like this was a sudden surprise. There has been talk about this exact type of market-dislocation event taking place for well over a month now ever since the lockdowns of economies began in March. For example, here’s an article from just a few days ago an energy hedge fund’s projection for the price of oil. The way the fund saw it, we could see $100/barrel again eventually, but first prices need to fall even further to force the closure of producers and a consolidation in the industry. That’s how Westbeck Capital Management sees the oil sector when investing for its Energy Opportunity Fund. And the event Westbeck Capital saw as leading to that further collapse in the price of oil was the lack of oil storage capacity, particularly in Cushing, Oklahoma. In particular, the fund was speculating about Cushing’s storage capacity filling up by mid-May. So an energy fund that is predicting a return to $100/barrel, but only after a further collapse from $20/barrel, was making a prediction of that further collapse based on the looming storage supply shortage in Cushing, Oklahoma. And they made this projection of a possible storage supply collapse taking place in mid-May days before Monday’s route due to that exact same storage supply issue. So if any investors out there had an even better estimate of the Cushing storage supply shortages and predicted Monday’s supply collapse they probably made a lot money:
“The fund, which gained 40% last year shorting U.S. shale companies, has turned its attention to oil tanks filling up at various points around the world, particularly at the biggest U.S. hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. With too much oil and not enough places to put it, Cushing may reach storage limits by mid-May, a market dislocation that could portend the next leg of a price rout.”
It was quite an accurate prediction in terms of predicting that a market dislocation event would take place soon if storage supplies run out. But it was a few weeks off in terms of the timing. Westbeck’s CEO was foreseeing WTI trading around $16 to $17 for the next four to five weeks while storage fills up. That was their estimate as of this interview published on Friday. Then, on Monday, we have this market dislocation event due to Cushing’s storage supply collapsing. So the nature of this event wasn’t a surprise but the timing may have been:
Ok, now, to get a sense of how long the markets have been watching this looming storage supply issue build up, here’s a Reuters article from March 17 about how the plunging price of oil was leading to a storage supply crunch. The article also gives us a hint of how much money could have been made by people who happen to be holding available storage contracts when the market melted down yesterday: As of the time of the article (March 17), the cost of storing a barrel of oil in Cushing had roughly doubled over the previous month...to 50 cents a barrel. So back in February is was ~25 cents a barrel to store that oil in Cushing. And yesterday people who had available storage capacity were paid $40 a barrel to just take the oil:
“Storage rates at Cushing doubled over the past month, and were seen as high as about 50 cents per barrel per month by Friday, two traders familiar with the matter said. Storage for about 540,000 barrels at Plains All American’s Cushing tanks for sublease was offered at 50 cents per barrel (cpb) for a term of one year, one source said.”
A double of storage costs from February to March in Cushing, OK. That was how this market disclocation event was building up a month ago. A double to 50 cents per barrel of storage. Anyone fortunate enough to have that storage still available as of Monday could have been paid $40 to fill up that space that cost 50 cents to rent last month. And then they can sell the oil for whatever at some future point.
And note that Cushing was around half capacity as of March 17. So it’s basically filled up over the last month. That suggests that other smaller storage facilities in the area were probably also around half capacity a month ago. And if any of those facilities decided for whatever reason to not fill up like Cushing was over the last month, they could have been paid $40/barrel to fill that capacity up on Monday:
Did any smaller storage facilities just happen to have an unusually large amount of storage capacity on Monday? If so, is there a good explanation for why there were holding out?
More generally, there’s the question of whether or not the Cushing supply crunch that took place Monday was a surprise to the market or as expected. As we saw from the first piece, as of April 10 the Cushing storage facility was at about 72 percent full. But the probably was that the remaining storage supply may not be available. Someone was presumably already leasing the remaining supply (someone who made a lot of money on Monday). In the second piece, we saw that Westbeck hedge fund was projecting that WTI would run at about $16–17/barrel for the next month before Cushing’s supply runs out in mid-May. And yet this event due to the supply crunch at Cushing took place on Monday.
So is the sudden Cushing supply crunch that rocked the markets on Monday in keeping with market projections of the storage supply situation at Cushing or was there a surprise? That’s one of the key questions when it comes to whether or not someone was essentially engaging in insider trading.
And yet, it’s hard to imagine people weren’t engaging in insider trading. All they would need is inside information on Cushing’s storage supply markets. How many random parties around the world must have had access to that kind of information? For example, here’s a set of tweets from J. Kyle Bass — known for making a fortune on short positions — from April 2 where he openly talks aobut how he’s hearing that Cushing won’t take any more crude. He also projects that Cushing’s tanks would top out in 22 days. So he was project an April 24 storage topping date. He was just openly tweeting about this. So how many people were watching and waiting for exactly this kind of event:
Bass is clearly demonstrating his access to all sorts of insider industry knowledge about these looming storage capacity issues in these tweets. How much did Bass an other investors with similar knowledge make on Monday?
So that’s all part of what makes Monday’s historic market dislocation event so historic: It was an unprecedented unthinkable market rout that at least part of the market seemed to see coming for well over a month. That’s a lot of time to prepare for an unprecedented unthinkable event with unprecedented unthinkable potential profits.
Bing Liu: COVID-19 Researcher Dies in Pennsylvania Murder-Suicide
https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/bing-liu/
Dr. Bing Liu was a University of Pittsburgh researcher in Pennsylvania and molecular biologist who was researching the COVID-19 virus and was described as being on the verge of “making very significant findings” relating to it.
His area of expertise was “computational modeling and analysis of biological systems dynamics,” the University said, adding: complex cellular interactions, Bayesian network models and methods, and statistical model checking and sensitivity analyses.
Liu received both his Bachelor of Science and Ph.D. in computer science at the National University of Singapore “under the supervisions of Drs. P.S. Thiagarajan and David Hsu, and did his postdoctoral studies in the lab of Professor Dr. Edmund Clarke at Carnegie Mellon University,” the School of Medicine states.
Was he murdered because he proved the COVID-19 virus can be man made in a lab and that he had to be liquidated by Elements of the far right and at the same time use his murder to further support and collaborate Trump’s fabrication that China is totally responsible for this pandemic and the Communist government murder him in order to cover it up and to help turn up the blame China BS? We shall see how this turns up and where it goes?
Is Steve Bannon being investigated by the FBI? Sort of, but not quite. Instead, it sounds like the FBI is investigating Bannon’s key partner in his anti-China crusade, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. Specifically, they’re investigating Guo’s media investments in the US which obviously is an investigation involving Steve Bannon since, as we’ve seen, one of the state reasons for Guo hiring Bannon in the first place was to have Bannon introduce Guo to “media personalities” and advise on media “industry standards”. FBI agents have reportedly asked associates of both Guo and Bannon about the funding of a media company linked to Guo that hired Bannon as a consultant in 2018. US Attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn are involved in the probe.
According to documents, Guo previously used a third party contractor based in Hong Kong called ACA Capital to pay $1million to a contractor, Virginia-based research firm Strategic Vision, in January 2018. The company is headed by CEO French Wallop, the widow of the late Wyoming GOP Sen. Malcolm Wallop. FBI agents have been asking associates of Guo and Bannon whether they knew of ACA or its owner at the time, William Je.
Here’s where things get extra weird: Strategic Vision hired Guo in 2018. But Guo has a contract dispute with Strategic Vision and now the company is accusing Guo of actually being a double agent working as a “dissident-hunter” for the Chinese government. The company made this allegation after it claims Guo instructed it to investigate people tied to top figures in the Chinese Communist Party. Strategic Vision apparently claimed at the time that it had considerable experience in the private investigations field, citing probes of the personal lives of Republican politicians, a Middle Eastern prince, and a Russian official in the opposition party. Strategic Vision tried to subpoena Bannon to testify about his relationship with Guo in that case.
The lawsuit involves another company, Eastern Profit, that hired Strategic Vision to carry out these investigations after holding meetings in Guo’s Manhattan apartment. Eastern Profit fired Strategic Vision in February 2018 after the company’s investigation into these individuals was mostly publicly available. Eastern Profit sued for return of its $1 million deposit for the research work, accusing Strategic Vision of breaching their contract and Strategic Vision has counter-sued. It’s in that counter-suit that Strategic Vision is making assertions that Guo is actually a “dissident-hunter” working for the Chinese government and seeking sensitive information on Chinese nationals who were actually assisting the U.S. government’s counterintelligence efforts. Strategic Vision also claims in the lawsuit that Guo gave the company a thumb drive loaded with malware.
Now, given Steve Bannon’s activities it’s hard to imagine he would intentionally team up with a Chinese double agent. And that’s part of what makes the double-agent allegations so interesting: Guo wanted investigations into the same people the Chinese government would probably like to see investigated. Why? And given that Guo paid Bannon $1 million for vague “media industry” advice reasons, we have to ask, was Bannon involved in these private investigations? Is Bannon trying to find compromising information on the Chinese dissident leadership or was he perhaps already in possession of this information? Might that have been the nature of what sparked Guo’s interest in Bannon in the first place? It would make sense that he would have an interest in that area given keen interesting in fomenting regime change in China, but without learning the identifies of these targets it’s hard to say what exactly what going on there.
Also keep in mind that when Bannon was a member of Trump National Security Council he would have potentially had access to all sorts of US intelligence files on all sorts of people of interest. Was Bannon commercializing on that top secret access? Might that be at least part of what Guo was paying Bannon for and perhaps part of what the FBI is investigating?
Oh, and it turns out this whole fiasco is overlapping with the FBI’s ongoing investigation into possible Chinese espionage activity at Mar-a-Lago. What’s the overlap? Well, it turns out Guo is a member of Mar-a-Lago. And as we’ll see, that membership ended up playing a critical role in allowing Guo to remain in the US and avoid extradition to China over the money-laundering charges he faces there. How did his Mar-a-Lago membership end up preventing that extradition? Well, President Trump was reportedly prepared to acquiesce to China’s demands that Guo be extradited until aides dissuaded him by informing him that Guo was a Mar-a-Lago member. At that point Trump blocked the extradition. You have to wonder who these aides were. It sounds like this all took place in May of 2017, when Bannon was still at the White House.
So was Bannon one of those aides who dissuaded Trump from extraditing Guo? As we’ll see in the second article below, Bannon admits to meeting Guo while he was still working in the White House so that seems very plausible he was one of those aides. But whether or not Bannon was involved in that decision, there’s one clear lesson from this whole episode: if you’re a spy or rogue operator in the US, be sure to become a member of Mar-a-Lago and also look into hiring Steve Bannon if at all possible:
“The purpose of the FBI’s interest in Guo remains unclear, WSJ reported, noting that some of the people interviewed said the US Attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn were involved in the probe.”
We don’t yet know what exactly the probe is about, we just know the FBI and US Attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn are involved. And we also know they’re interested in Bannon’s contract with Guo. A $1 million contract that appears to have been paid via a third-party firm ACA:
But that FBI/US Attorney investigation is only one of the legal matters surrounding Bannon’s relationship with Guo. There’s also the breach of contract lawsuit by Strategic Vision against Guo. A breach of a contract to investigate 15 Chinese nationals of interest to the Chinese government. And it’s those orders by Guo, on behalf of Eastern Profits, to investigate those individuals that prompted Strategic Vision to charge Guo with being a Chinese government spy:
And then there’s the fact the FBI blocked the extradition of Guo to China in 2017 and then tried to recruit him as an informant:
But, of course, as we’ll see in the following Miami Herald article from July of 2019, there was more to the story of FBI blocking of the extradition of Guo in 2017. Because it sounds like there was an actual fight between the FBI and the State Department over whether or not to extradite Guo and Trump was ready to do so. It was only after aides informed Trump that Guo was a Mar-a-Lago member that he blocked the extradition:
“Guo, who made his money in real estate, has long promoted himself as a dissident being hunted by the Chinese government for his opposition to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. He is currently seeking political asylum in the United States, where he reportedly avoided deportation by the Trump administration after the president learned Guo was a member of Mar-a-Lago.”
Membership has its privileges. Especially if can get Steve Bannon to vouch for you too. And it’s that membership at Mar-a-Lago, combined with the allegations that Guo is a Chinese double-agent, that overlaps this case with the ongoing counterintelligence investigations over Chinese spying at Mar-a-Lago, although it remains unclear if the investigation into Chinese spying at Mar-a-Lago and Guo are actually overlapping. It might just be two independent Chinese-spying-at-Mar-a-Lago investigations which sadly seems entirely plausible these days:
But if the allegations by Strategic Vision about Guo being a Chinese government double-agent “dissident-hunter” are true that would certainly suggest the two investigations are overlapping, especially since Strategic claimed Guo was seeking sensitive information on Chinese nationals who were assisting the US counterintelligence efforts:
So is it possible Steve Bannon got played by a Chinese double-agent billionaire spy? It would be quite a twist. Especially since Guo and Bannon launched the Rule of Law Foundation, which they said would collect evidence in cases of Chinese government assassinations. Then again, these are precisely the kinds of activities we might expect a double-agent to be involved with, especially if the creation of this foundation basically gives cover for private investigations into Chinese nationals of interest:
But when we’re talking about an operation designed to carry out private investigations into Chinese nationals of interest to the Chinese government, there’s no reason to assume the Chinese government would be the only party interested in setting up a front that provides cover these kinds of investigations. Don’t forget that Chinese nationals who might be dissidents are the type of people governments and groups interested in regime change in China are going to be most interested in because these are the people most likely to lead a post-revolution (or post-coup) government. Steve Bannon’s fascist friends would obviously be quite interested in that kind of info along with any other group or government that has an interest in shaping China’s opposition.
And that’s all part of what makes this such an intriguing story: we know enough details about the nature of these investigations to see that there’s more than meets the eye here but it’s unclear what exactly we’re looking at.
It also raises a question that would be interesting as a hypothetical but is disturbing as our reality: so when Trump decided not to extradite Guo in 2017 after learning he’s a Mar-a-Lago member, does that qualify as an Emolument Clause violation? There’s also the follow-up disturbing question of whether or not that question even matters anymore.
Are we in store for a China-centric ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ October Surprise in the lead up to the the US’s November 2020 election? If the warnings from Republican congressman Ted Yoho are to be taken seriously then, yes, we should be on guard for exactly that scenario. Yoho didn’t warn about a ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident. Instead, Yoho is predicting that China is going to somehow instigate a violent clash with the US Navy at some point in the next three to six months. So he’s basically predicting that China is going carry out an ‘October Surprise’ on behalf of a Trump right before the US election.
Adding to concerns that some sort of planned incident is in the works is the fact that Yoho isn’t predicting that China is going to openly attack US Navy vessels. He’s suggest that China is going to somehow arrange from a ship collision ‘accident’ as a means of somehow exerting greater control over the shipping lanes in that region. So what Yoho is telling us is that if there happens to be a ship collision incident between the US and China — something that can be instigated by either side — it’s going to be interpreted by the Trump administration and GOP as a Chinese attack on the US:
““I would predict there will be a clash within the next three to six months,” Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee for Asia, told the Washington Examiner.”
Will Rep. Yoho’s prediction come to fruition of some sort of ‘clash’ between the US and China right before the election? If China wants to help President Trump get reelected perhaps. But it’s the fact that a ship collision ‘accident’ can be arranged by either side of these collisions that makes Yoho’s prediction so ominous. But Yoho isn’t just predicting a collision incident. He’s also speculating that China would be willing to sink a US carrier just to “test the waters”. It’s a warning that if the Republicans do indeed try to make a conflict with China a major part of Trump’s reelection campaign it’s going to involve hyping the Chinese government as an irrationally bloodthirsty mortal threat:
It’s also worth keeping in mind that the US Navy’s assessments of the 2017 ship collision involving the USS Fitzgerald and ACX Cystal off the coast of Japan in 2017 included an assessment of the kills among Naval officers and found major widespread skill deficiencies regarding Naval ‘rules of the road’ in high-traffic areas. In other words, if there’s a pre-election naval collision between the US and China it’s very possible it will be a genuine accident and not an ‘accident’, which is the kind of situation that unfortunately might lend plausible deniability to an arranged ‘accident’ making it all the more tempting. All in all, let’s how US naval navigation teams are on high alert for the rest of the year because as Rep. Yoho’s comments reveal, the best shot at saving President Trump’s and the GOP’s sinking 2020 political prospects might be to the sinking of a US ship.
@Pterrafractyl–
Worth remembering is the fact that China hasn’t been in a war in more than forty years, the last one being a border war with Vietnam in 1979.
Their last direct involvement in a major war was the Korean war.
The U.S. spends four times as much on defense as China, with smaller territory and much smaller population.
The U.S. has done little else BUT wage war for the last forty years.
Keep up the good work!
Dave Emory