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FTR #1187 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In this program, we present more discussion of the background and context to Pentagon and USAID funding for research into bat-borne coronaviruses through EcoHealth Alliance, in and around China.
Exemplifying the offensive military posture in which the funding of coronavirus research has occurred is a quote from an otherwise bellicose Reuters story about U.S. withdrawal from the intermediate-range missile treaty so that America can build up forces to counter China. ” . . . . In a series last year, Reuters reported that while the U.S. was distracted by almost two decades of war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA had built a missile force designed to attack the aircraft carriers, other surface warships and network of bases that form the backbone of American power in Asia. Over that period, Chinese shipyards built the world’s biggest navy, which is now capable of dominating the country’s coastal waters and keeping U.S. forces at bay. . . .”
Imagine, for a moment China building up its long-range missile forces in the Western Pacific to neutralize the U.S. Navy’s ability to dominate America’s coastal waters and keep an enemy at bay.
This is a defensive gambit by China–America would respond with justifiable outrage if China (or any other nation) would challenge America’s ability to dominate its coastal waters and keep an enemy at bay.
The Pentagon funding for these projects must be seen against the background of three overlapping areas of consideration:
- The fact that any virus can be synthesized or modified from scratch. As detailed in a very important article from The Guardian: “ . . . Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. . . In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, ‘enhances and expands’ opportunities to create bioweapons. . . . Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesised. ‘The technology to do this is available now,’ said [Michael] “It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”
- Also fundamental to an understanding of the Covid “op” is the devastating nature of bat-borne viruses when introduced into the human body. “ . . . . As Boston University microbiologist Thomas Kepler explained to the Washington Post in 2018, the bat’s unique approach to viral infection explains why viruses that transfer from bats to humans are so severe. . . . ‘A virus that has co-evolved with the bat’s antiviral system is completely out of its element in the human,’ Kepler said. ‘That’s why it is so deadly — the human immune system is overwhelmed by the inflammatory response.’ The bat immune system responds very differently from ours to viral infection. Instead of attacking and killing an infected cell, which leads to a cascade of inflammatory responses, the bat immune system can starve the virus by turning down cellular metabolism. The bat origin of SARS-CoV‑2 may explain the cytokine storms that are hastening some COVID-19 deaths. . . .”
- Analysis presented in the liberal New York Magazine by Nicholson Baker takes stock of the implications of contemporary biotechnology and what we have termed (in past broadcasts) “The Magic Virus Theory.” “. . . . SARS‑2 seems almost perfectly calibrated to grab and ransack our breathing cells and choke the life out of them. . . . Perhaps viral nature hit a bull’s‑eye of airborne infectivity, with almost no mutational drift, no period of accommodation and adjustment, or perhaps some lab worker somewhere, inspired by Baric’s work with human airway tissue, took a spike protein that was specially groomed to colonize and thrive deep in the ciliated, mucosal tunnels of our inner core and cloned it onto some existing viral bat backbone. It could have happened in Wuhan, but — because anyone can now ‘print out’ a fully infectious clone of any sequenced disease — it could also have happened at Fort Detrick, or in Texas, or in Italy, or in Rotterdam, or in Wisconsin, or in some other citadel of coronaviral inquiry.. . .”
The venerable, brilliant political researcher Peter Dale Scott has noted that “The cover-up obviates the conspiracy.” Of great significance in this context is the apparent “scrubbing” of information on USAID’s funding of key research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology: “ . . . . Shi’s most infamous EcoHealth Alliance-funded paper is, ‘A SARS-Like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence.’ In this controversial gain-of-function research collaboration with U.S. scientist Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Shi and Baric used genetic engineering and synthetic biology to weaponize a bat coronavirus, maximizing its potential human infectivity.
Shi’s funding for this study came through a USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats-PREDICT grant to EcoHealth Alliance—but the record for this grant appears to have been scrubbed from the U.S. government’s database.
EcoHealth Alliance was a PREDICT partner during the 2009–2014 funding cycle, but there is no record of a USAID grant to EcoHealth Alliance for this time period among the $100.9 million in grants it has received from the U.S. government since 2003.
Shi’s contribution to the work she did with Baric was the ‘RsSHC014-CoV Sequence That Was Isolated from Chinese Horseshoe Bats.’ . . . .”
Of particular significance in this context is the series of programs recorded in the fall of 2019, notably FTR#’s 1089, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095.
Other shows recorded shortly before, or in the aftermath of, the beginning of the pandemic flesh out the panoply of operations against China, including 1103, 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179, 1180. 1103, 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179, 1180.
Taken together and in the context of the full-court press against China discussed in the above-enumerated programs, the Pentagon/USAID funding of EcoHealth Alliance, the important advisory role of former Fort Detrick commander David Franz in EcoHealth Alliance and the research into bat-borne coronaviruses being conducted at the WIV and elsewhere in and around China, the four considerations just enumerated point ominously to the Covid-19 pandemic as an “op.”
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Joe Biden’s charge to intelligence services to determine the origins of the coronavirus; Biden’s decision to authorize the intelligence services to determine the origin of the virus derived momentum from Anthony Fauci’s expression of doubts about the origin of the virus; Fauci’s NIH was involved with the EcoHealth Alliance’s funding of the WIV research; The sickness of several WIV employees in the fall of 2019; Attribution by a Dutch researcher of that illness to seasonal flu; Review of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ key role in Event 201 (October of 2019) that foreshadowed the event; Haines’ virulent anti-China proclivities; Overview of the military build-up and war-mongering in which the Pentagon is involved; Review and further development of the weaponized media coverage of China; Review of the fact that many personnel at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained by the U.S.; the fact that it was well known that gain-of-function research was being done at WIV.
1a. We begin by discussing Joe Biden’s charge to intelligence services to determine the origins of the coronavirus.
. . . .The intelligence community has been unable to reach a “definitive conclusion” on the origins of the virus and is conflicted on whether it came from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident, Biden said in a statement . . .
. . . . He said he asked national security adviser Jake Sullivan in March to prepare a report for him on what was known about the origins of the virus. Biden said the findings, which he received earlier this month, concluded that while two elements of the intelligence community “lean” toward the explanation that the virus came from animal contact, another leans toward the laboratory explanation.
Biden said each assessment has “low or moderate confidence” and that “the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.” He said he has asked for further investigation.
Andy Slavitt, a senior White House adviser for Covid-19 response, said Tuesday that it is a “critical priority” for the U.S. to uncover the truth.
“It is our position that we need to get to the bottom of this, and we need a completely transparent process from China; we need the WHO to assist in that matter,” he said. “We don’t feel like we have that now.” . . .
1b. Avril Haines has a strong, anti-China bias.
The United States should take an “aggressive stance” toward the threat posed by the aggressive and assertive China that it faces today, Avril Haines, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for the top U.S. intelligence job, said on Tuesday. . . .
1c. More about Haines’ anti-China orientation. In FTR#‘s 1185 and 1186.
U.S. spy agency leaders said on Wednesday that China is an “unparalleled” priority, citing Beijing’s regional aggression and cyber capabilities as they testified at a public congressional “Worldwide Threats” hearing for the first time in more than two years.
“Given that China is an unparalleled priority for the intelligence community, I will start with highlighting certain aspects of the threat from Beijing,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
She described China as increasingly “a near-peer competitor challenging the United States in multiple arenas.”
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said his agency opens a new investigation linked to China every 10 hours. . . .
1d. Biden’s decision to authorize the intelligence services to determine the origin of the virus derived momentum from Anthony Fauci’s expression of doubts about the origin of the vbirus.
Fauci’s NIH was involved with the EcoHealth Alliance’s funding of the WIV research.
Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sought hospital care in November 2019, months before China disclosed the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.
The newspaper said the report – which provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits – may add weight to calls for a broader probe of whether the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from the laboratory.
The report came on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
A National Security Council spokeswoman had no comment on the Journal’s report but said the Biden administration continued to have ‘serious questions about the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its origins within the Peoples Republic of China.’
She said the U.S. government was working with the WHO and other member states to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins ‘that is free from interference or politicization.’
‘We’re not going to make pronouncements that prejudge an ongoing WHO study into the source of SARS-CoV‑2, but we’ve been clear that sound and technically credible theories should be thoroughly evaluated by international experts,’ she said.
The Journal said current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed a range of views about the strength of the report’s supporting evidence, with one unnamed person saying it needed ‘further investigation and additional corroboration.’
Photo Caption: China’s foreign ministry noted that a WHO-led team had concluded a lab leak was extremely unlikely after a visit in February to the virology institute. Pictured, an aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province
The United States, Norway, Canada, Britain and other countries in March expressed concerns about the WHO-led COVID-19 origins study, and called for further investigation and full access to all pertinent human, animal and other data about the early stages of the outbreak.
Washington is keen to ensure greater cooperation and transparency by China, according to a source familiar with the effort.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
On Sunday, China’s foreign ministry noted that a WHO-led team had concluded a lab leak was extremely unlikely after a visit in February to the virology institute. ‘The U.S. continues to hype the lab leak theory,’ the ministry said in response to a request for comment by the Journal. ‘Is it actually concerned about tracing the source or trying to divert attention?’
The Trump administration had said it suspected the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab, which Beijing denies.
A State Department fact sheet released near the end of the Trump administration had said ‘the U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.’ It did not say how many researchers.
China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team probing the origins of the pandemic, according to one of the team´s investigators, Reuters reported in February, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began.
Photo Caption: The World Health Organization’s decision-making body is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 at a meeting later this week
Earlier on Sunday, Dr Anthony Fauci revealed he is ‘not convinced’ that COVID-19 developed naturally and called for an open investigation into its origins as China faces mounting pressure to provide transparency on the issue.
Fauci, the nation’s leading expert in infectious diseases, explained his uncertainty during a PolitiFact event on May 11 entitled: United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking.
‘There’s a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still, so I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?’ PolitiFact managing editor Katie Sanders asked Fauci.
‘No actually,’ he replied. ‘I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.’
Fauci continued: ‘Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out.
‘So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.’
Fauci’s appearance at the event came hours after he was grilled on the same topic during a tense Senate hearing.
‘Will you in front of this group categorically say that the COVID-19 virus could not have occurred by serial passage in a laboratory?’ Sen Rand Paul (R – Kentucky) had asked Fauci.
The NIH director replied: ‘I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China.’
Fauci also unequivocally refuted Paul’s suggestion that the NIH had funneled money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – the Chinese lab accused of playing a role in the COVID-19 outbreak.
During his segment at the PolitiFact event Fauci slammed Paul for ‘conflating… in a way that’s almost irresponsible’ Chinese scientists with collaborative research into Sars-Cov‑1, which emerged in China in the early 2000s.
Fauci’s appearance at the event received little media attention at the time but was pulled back into the spotlight over the weekend after the White House renewed its call for an independent and ‘transparent’ investigation into the origins of the COVID.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday called for exploring the ‘root causes’ of the pandemic after Republicans issued an interim report saying there was ‘significant circumstantial evidence’ that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
‘I would caution you against disproving a negative there which is never the responsible approach in our view when it comes to getting to the bottom of the root causes of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States,’ she said in response to a question about the report.
Photo Caption: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called for a transparent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus
White House calls for transparent investigation into origins of COVID
‘Our view continues to be that there needs to be an independent, transparent investigation,’ she said.
She said the investigation required the ‘cooperation and data provided from the Chinese government’ – which has denied administration requests to fully share it.
‘We don’t have enough info at this point to make an assessment,’ she continued.
In 2014, NIH approved a grant to EcoHealth Alliance designated for research into ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.’ The project involved collaborating with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans.
In total, $3,378,896 in NIH funding was directed from the government to the project.
Over the course of the two grants approved by the NIH for EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute received about $600,000 from the NIH, according to Robert Kessler, a spokesperson for EcoHealth Alliance.The funding was a fee for the collection and analysis of viral samples, the group said. It was directed toward SARS research.
In the grant approved in 2014, about $133,000 was sent to the institute in the first four years and about $66,000 in the past year. In the second grant approved in 2019, about $76,000 was budgeted for the Wuhan Institute, though no money was sent before the grant’s termination.
The grant was terminated in April 2020.
Asked when Biden would call Chinese President Xi Jinping, Psaki responded that ‘We have made that call publicly many times’ and ‘conveyed that privately. And we have certainly communicated that they were not transparent from the beginning.’
The Republicans on the panel made their claim after infectious Fauci clashed with Sen Paul over his claims about a Chinese lab leak – and statements about a conspiracy theory that US backing was involved.
Many top scientists, while not ruling out the possibility of a human-caused event, point to the likelihood of the virus mutating and jumping form animals to humans, as has happened with numerous previous coronaviruses.
The report says U.S. agencies and academic institutions ‘may have funded or collaborated in’ gain of function research – after Fauci specifically denied government backing.
‘Based on publicly available information, the possibility that the outbreak originated from an accidental exposure at the WIV has not been disproven,’ it says.
It cites competing theories – including the virus originating from a Chinese wet market, jumping over from human contact with a bat or other species, or even through handling of imported frozen food – but then says it focuses on just one.
‘While Committee Republicans acknowledge there are differing theories on the origins of COVID-19, this review focuses on the WIV as a possible origin source,’ it says, referencing the Wuhan lab.
The report was released publicly Wednesday after first being obtained by Fox News.
The report, though cites ‘significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns that the COVID-19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ without providing any direct evidence that it did.
It says China has a ‘history of research lab leaks resulting in infections’ and says the lab conducts ‘dangerous research,’ which risks the ‘accidental outbreak of a pandemic.’
The report follows repeated attacks by President Donald Trump on China after the virus outbreak. He frequently called covid-19 the ‘China virus’ in the run-up to the election and called it the ‘kung flu.’
It cites public reporting that Chinese researchers were sickened in the fall of 2019 with ‘COVID-10-like symptoms.’
‘By contrast, little circumstantial evidence has emerged to support the PRC’s claim that COVID-19 was a natural occurrence, having jumped from some other species to human’ according to the report, although it is not just the Chinese Communist Party making the claim.
Photo Caption: Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (L) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China’s Hubei province on February 23, 2017. Two Chinese labs are located close by a wet market in Wuhan that scientists believe allowed covid-19 to proliferate
CDC Director says it is ‘possible’ COVID escaped from Wuhan Lab
Earlier this month, Paul and Fauci got in a tense exchange during a Senate hearing, where Paul accused the US of potentially funding ‘gain-of-function’ research bats that could have gone awry.
‘This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH. … Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?’
‘Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology,’ shot back Fauci.‘Could you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not. Will you in front of this group categorically say that the COVID-19 could not have occurred through serial passage in a laboratory,’ Paul asked Fauci.
‘I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China,’ Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded.
‘However I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAD categorically has not funded gain of function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute.’
Fauci also told him: ‘I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from. But again, we have not funded gain of function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.’
A report by the World Health Organization with the collaboration from China called a ‘zoonotic transmission’ from animals to humans ‘likely to very likely’ as the cause, although the administration has faulted the report as incomplete.
CNN offers the explanation as to how Dr. Fauci’s position changed from May 2020 where he stated to National Geographic “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
The CNN article concludes “The origins of the virus remain not fully known. Tracing that is, at root, a medical and public health question — not a political one.”
Here is the article:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/politics/fauci-donald-trump-coronavirus/index.html
Why is Anthony Fauci hedging on the origins of the coronavirus?
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large Updated 12:29 PM ET, Mon May 24, 2021(CNN) — Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted earlier this month that he is no longer convinced that the Covid-19 pandemic originated naturally.
“I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” Fauci told PolitiFact’s managing editor Katie Sanders.
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he continued.
Which is, quite clearly, a change from Fauci’s previous view that the disease very likely came about after animal to human transmission. Here’s Fauci in an interview with National Geographic last May:
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
Fauci’s dismissal of the idea that the virus originated in a lab in China’s Wuhan province followed vague assertions by then-President Donald Trump that he had a “high degree of confidence” that the virus had come from a lab. Pressed for details on that assertion, which ran counter to US intelligence on the virus’ origins, Trump offered only this: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
Given that history, conservatives leaped on Fauci’s recent hedging as proof positive that Trump was, in fact, right all along. (Worth noting: Fauci made his comments at a fact-checking symposium on May 11, but they were largely ignored at the time. Conservative publications began writing about the remarks over the weekend.)
“Fauci must answer for his role in Wuhan’s COVID lab,” tweeted former New York Rep. Nan Hayworth ®.
Fauci has become a lightning rod for conservative criticism of how the scientific community has handled the ongoing pandemic. Trump sought to villainize Fauci for his allegedly too-cautious approach to a return to normal from the virus, and the likes of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have taken up the cause; last month she tweeted a video of herself working out that included this text: “This is my Covid protection #MakeAmericaHealthyAgain It’s time to #FireFauci”
So, how much “there” is actually there? Well, on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal wrote this:
“Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory…
“…The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.”It’s worth noting here that, according to CNN reporting, US intelligence officials are not certain what the researchers were actually sick with. And Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told Congress last month that “the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially.”
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, denied the WSJ report and said that the US is “hyping up the lab leak theory.”
What’s clear is that Fauci is significantly more open to the idea of the lab theory than he was a year ago. While he did leave himself some wiggle room in his statements about the origins last year (he said he was “very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,”) there was no doubt about where Fauci stood on the question.
The issue, then, is not whether Fauci has moved his position on the possible origins of the virus but rather why he is doing so. Fauci defenders will insist that he is simply evolving his view based on information that has come out over the last year. Fauci opponents will insist he knew all along that the lab theory was a possibility and downplayed it solely to make Trump look bad.
In the midst of that debate, it’s important to remember that Trump never provided any evidence for his vague claims about the origins of the virus. “Something happened,” was as far as he would go.
It’s also critical to remember that there would be a major distinction — even within the lab theory — between the virus accidentally getting out and it being purposely released as a sort of weapon. Trump and his allies have long flicked at the latter explanation but without any further explanation or proof.
As CNN wrote on Monday:
“The current intelligence reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated naturally, from animal-human contact, the sources said. But that does not preclude the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats.”Here’s the point: The origins of the virus remain not fully known. Tracing that is, at root, a medical and public health question — not a political one.
3. Speculation about the origins of the virus also gained momentum from the information that several staff members of the WIV got sick in the fall of 2019.
As a Dutch researcher notes: ” . . . . Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on that team told NBC News in March that some WIV staff did fall sick in the autumn of 2019, but she attributed that to regular, seasonal sickness. ‘There were occasional illnesses because that’s normal. There was nothing that stood out,” she said. “Maybe one or two. It’s certainly not a big, big thing.’
It isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner. Covid-19 and the flu, while very different illnesses, share some of the same symptoms, such as fever, aches and a cough. Still, it could be significant if members of the same team working with coronaviruses went to hospital with similar symptoms shortly before the pandemic was first identified. . . .”
Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization’s decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into Covid-19’s origins.
Current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment. One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.
Another person described the intelligence as stronger. “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” he said, referring to the researchers.
November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists believe SARS-CoV‑2, the virus behind the pandemic, first began circulating around the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where Beijing says that the first confirmed case was a man who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.
The Wuhan Institute hasn’t shared raw data, safety logs and lab records on its extensive work with coronaviruses in bats, which many consider the most likely source of the virus.
…
The Biden administration declined to comment on the intelligence but said that all technically credible theories on the origin of the pandemic should be investigated by the WHO and international experts.
“We continue to have serious questions about the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, including its origins within the People’s Republic of China,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
“We’re not going to make pronouncements that prejudge an ongoing WHO study into the source of SARS-CoV‑2,” the spokeswoman said. “As a matter of policy we never comment on intelligence issues.”
Beijing has also asserted that the virus could have originated outside China, including at a lab at the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland, and called for the WHO to investigate early Covid outbreaks in other countries.
Most scientists say they have seen nothing to corroborate the idea that the virus came from a U.S. military lab, and the White House has said there are no credible reasons to investigate it.
China’s National Health Commission and the WIV didn’t respond to requests for comment. Shi Zhengli, the top bat coronavirus expert at WIV, has said the virus didn’t leak from her laboratories. She told the WHO-led team that traveled to Wuhan earlier this year to investigate the origins of the virus that all staff had tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies and there had been no turnover of staff on the coronavirus team.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on that team told NBC News in March that some WIV staff did fall sick in the autumn of 2019, but she attributed that to regular, seasonal sickness.
“There were occasional illnesses because that’s normal. There was nothing that stood out,” she said. “Maybe one or two. It’s certainly not a big, big thing.”
It isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner. Covid-19 and the flu, while very different illnesses, share some of the same symptoms, such as fever, aches and a cough. Still, it could be significant if members of the same team working with coronaviruses went to hospital with similar symptoms shortly before the pandemic was first identified.
David Asher, a former U.S. official who led a State Department task force on the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute seminar in March that he doubted that the lab researchers became sick because of the ordinary flu.
“I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers’ illness may represent “the first known cluster” of Covid-19 cases.
Long characterized by skeptics as a conspiracy theory, the hypothesis that the pandemic could have begun with a lab accident has attracted more interest from scientists who have complained about the lack of transparency by Chinese authorities or conclusive proof for the alternate hypothesis: that the virus was contracted by humans from a bat or other infected animal outside a lab.
Many proponents of the lab hypothesis say that a virus that was carried by an infected bat might have been brought to the lab so that researchers could work on potential vaccines—only to escape.
While the lab hypothesis is being taken more seriously, including by Biden administration officials, the debate is still colored by political tensions, including over how much evidence is needed to sustain the hypothesis.
The State Department fact sheet issued during the Trump administration, which drew on classified intelligence, said that the “U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and seasonal illnesses.”
The Jan. 15 fact sheet added that this fact “raises questions about the credibility” of Dr. Shi and criticized Beijing for its “deceit and disinformation” while acknowledging that the U.S. government hasn’t determined exactly how the pandemic began.
The Biden administration hasn’t disputed any of the assertions in the fact sheet, which current and former officials say was vetted by U.S. intelligence agencies. The fact sheet also covered research activities at the WIV, its alleged cooperation on some projects with the Chinese military and accidents at other Chinese labs.
But one Biden administration official said that by highlighting data that pointed to the lab leak hypothesis, Trump administration officials had sought “to put spin on the ball.” Several U.S. officials described the intelligence as “circumstantial,” worthy of further exploration but not conclusive on its own.
Asked about the Jan. 15 statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “A fact sheet issued by the previous administration on January 15 did not draw any conclusions regarding the origins of the coronavirus. Rather, it focused on the lack of transparency surrounding the origins.”
Though the first known case was Dec. 8, several analyses of the virus’s rate of mutation concluded that it likely began spreading several weeks earlier.
The WHO-led team that visited Wuhan concluded in a joint report with Chinese experts in March that the virus most likely spread from bats to humans via another animal, and that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”
However, team members said they didn’t view raw data or original lab, safety and other records. On the same day the report came out, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the team hadn’t adequately examined the lab leak hypothesis, and called for a fuller probe of the idea.
The U.S., European Union and several other governments have also called for a more transparent investigation of Covid-19’s origins, without explicitly demanding a lab probe. They have called in particular for better access to data and samples from potential early Covid-19 cases.
Members of the WHO-led team said Chinese counterparts had identified 92 potential Covid-19 cases among some 76,000 people who fell sick between October and early December 2019, but turned down requests to share raw data on the larger group. That data would help the WHO-led team understand why China sought to only test those 92 people for antibodies.
Team members also said they asked for access to a Wuhan blood bank to test samples from before December 2019 for antibodies. Chinese authorities declined at first, citing privacy concerns, then agreed, but have yet to provide that access, team members say.
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4. Note that many of the personnel at the WIV were trained in the U.S. affording a possible vehicle for covert operation at the Institute.
The Trump administration has pulled funding for a group of scientists studying coronaviruses in bats and the risk of their spillover into humans — the very kind of infection that started the COVID-19 pandemic — according to EcoHealth Alliance, the New York-based nonprofit organization conducting the research.
The cancellation of the grant after more than a decade of work in this field seems to be tied to EcoHealth Alliance’s partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the biomedical lab at the heart of conspiracy theories that the Chinese government created or unleashed the virus or the unproven thesis that the outbreak started with an accident because of faulty safety standards in the lab.
Either way, the group expressed regret at the decision by the National Institutes of Health to terminate funding, saying its work has helped in “designing vaccines and drugs to protect us from COVID-19 and other coronavirus threats” and pointing out the Wuhan Institute’s participation had been approved by the NIH for years, including just last year under President Donald Trump. . . .
. . . . EcoHealth Alliance has worked with that lab for over a decade, according to a source familiar with the grant, as has the U.S. Agency for International Development’s PREDICT project, which for over 10 years has also studied viruses in animals and prepared local partners around the world to detect that kind of “spillover.”
But in a letter last Friday, the National Institutes of Health informed the EcoHealth Alliance it was terminating the grant and denying it access to the remaining $369,819 in its account for Fiscal Year 2020. . . .
. . . . EcoHealth Alliance has received NIH funding for this work since 2008, amounting to $5.96 million over 12 years, according to NIHdata. That work has helped “develop predictive models of global ‘hot spots’ for the future emergence of bat viruses” and used its “large repository of bat biological samples to conduct targeted surveillance in these ‘hot spots’ for known and undiscovered bat pathogens,” according to the group. . . .
. . . . Since Fiscal Year 2014, that work has been awarded to EcoHealth Alliance’s “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project in particular, which is explicitly focused on China and done in partnership with the Wuhan Institute and others.
“This project aims to understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV [coronavirus] emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China),” the group’s NIH-approved research abstract said. . . .
. . . . But while U.S. intelligence agencies look for clues of a potential lab accident, epidemiological experts say it’s highly unlikely the first transmission happened that way. Virus samples in labs are almost never still infectious, after being frozen in nitrogen during the collection process and then inactivated in the lab to preserve their genetic sequence.
“It’s an unlikely probability because the laboratory is a controlled setting and people wear personal protective equipment. I’ve seen hearsay that they maybe didn’t have enough or they weren’t skilled enough, but there are barriers, huge barriers between people and viruses in the laboratory setting,” said Dr. Christine Johnson, principal investigator with USAID’s PREDICT project, which will end this September after 10 years and two six-month extensions as USAID launches a new project that applies the data PREDICT collected. . . .
. . . . In the face of that, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has now started to call into the question of China’s biomedical labs, demanding that they provide international inspectors access to them, although it’s unclear if the administration has formally requested that of the Chinese government. Many of the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been trained by the U.S. government’s PREDICT project. . . .
. . . . A 2017 report by EcoHealth Alliance’s project, whose authors include Wuhan Institute scientists, was published in the research journal Virologica Sinica and warned that “some bat SARSr-CoVs [severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronaviruses] are able to directly infect humans without intermediate host.”
5. The information about the military and USAID funding of research into bat-borne coronaviruses in China must be seen against the U.S. military build-up against China, with attendant war-mongering.
Countering the spin in this article, we note what the Chinese missile and naval build-up was designed to do: ” . . . . In a series last year, Reuters reported that while the U.S. was distracted by almost two decades of war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA had built a missile force designed to attack the aircraft carriers, other surface warships and network of bases that form the backbone of American power in Asia. Over that period, Chinese shipyards built the world’s biggest navy, which is now capable of dominating the country’s coastal waters and keeping U.S. forces at bay. . . .”
Imagine, for a moment China building up its long-range missile forces in the Western Pacific to neutralize the U.S. Navy’s ability to dominate America’s coastal waters and keep an enemy at bay.
This is a defensive gambit by China–America would respond with justifiable outrage if China (or any other nation) would challenge America’s ability to dominate its coastal waters and keep an enemy at bay.
As Washington and Beijing trade barbs over the coronavirus pandemic, a longer-term struggle between the two Pacific powers is at a turning point, as the United States rolls out new weapons and strategy in a bid to close a wide missile gap with China.
The United States has largely stood by in recent decades as China dramatically expanded its military firepower. Now, having shed the constraints of a Cold War-era arms control treaty, the Trump administration is planning to deploy long-range, ground-launched cruise missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Pentagon intends to arm its Marines with versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile now carried on U.S. warships, according to the White House budget requests for 2021 and Congressional testimony in March of senior U.S. military commanders. It is also accelerating deliveries of its first new long-range anti-ship missiles in decades.
In a statement to Reuters about the latest U.S. moves, Beijing urged Washington to “be cautious in word and deed,” to “stop moving chess pieces around” the region, and to “stop flexing its military muscles around China.”
The U.S. moves are aimed at countering China’s overwhelming advantage in land-based cruise and ballistic missiles. The Pentagon also intends to dial back China’s lead in what strategists refer to as the “range war.” The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China’s military, has built up a huge force of missiles that mostly outrange those of the U.S. and its regional allies, according to senior U.S. commanders and strategic advisers to the Pentagon, who have been warning that China holds a clear advantage in these weapons.
And, in a radical shift in tactics, the Marines will join forces with the U.S. Navy in attacking an enemy’s warships. Small and mobile units of U.S. Marines armed with anti-ship missiles will become ship killers.
In a conflict, these units will be dispersed at key points in the Western Pacific and along the so-called first island chain, commanders said. The first island chain is the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.
Top U.S. military commanders explained the new tactics to Congress in March in a series of budget hearings. The commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General David Berger, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 5 that small units of Marines armed with precision missiles could assist the U.S. Navy to gain control of the seas, particularly in the Western Pacific. “The Tomahawk missile is one of the tools that is going to allow us to do that,” he said.
The Tomahawk — which first gained fame when launched in massed strikes during the 1991 Gulf War — has been carried on U.S. warships and used to attack land targets in recent decades. The Marines would test fire the cruise missile through 2022 with the aim of making it operational the following year, top Pentagon commanders testified.
At first, a relatively small number of land-based cruise missiles will not change the balance of power. But such a shift would send a strong political signal that Washington is preparing to compete with China’s massive arsenal, according to senior U.S. and other Western strategists. Longer term, bigger numbers of these weapons combined with similar Japanese and Taiwanese missiles would pose a serious threat to Chinese forces, they say. The biggest immediate threat to the PLA comes from new, long-range anti-ship missiles now entering service with U.S. Navy and Air Force strike aircraft.
“The Americans are coming back strongly,” said Ross Babbage, a former senior Australian government defense official and now a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a security research group. “By 2024 or 2025 there is a serious risk for the PLA that their military developments will be obsolete.”
A Chinese military spokesman, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, warned last October that Beijing would “not stand by” if Washington deployed land-based, long-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.
China’s foreign ministry accused the United States of sticking “to its cold war mentality” and “constantly increasing military deployment” in the region.
“Recently, the United States has gotten worse, stepping up its pursuit of a so-called ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ that seeks to deploy new weapons, including ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, in the Asia-Pacific region,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters. “China firmly opposes that.”
Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn said he would not comment on statements by the Chinese government or the PLA.
U.S. MILITARY UNSHACKLED
While the coronavirus pandemic rages, Beijing has increased its military pressure on Taiwan and exercises in the South China Sea. In a show of strength, on April 11 the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning led a flotilla of five other warships into the Western Pacific through the Miyako Strait to the northeast of Taiwan, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. On April 12, the Chinese warships exercised in waters east and south of Taiwan, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy was forced to tie up the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt at Guam while it battles to contain a coronavirus outbreak among the crew of the giant warship. However, the U.S. Navy managed to maintain a powerful presence off the Chinese coast. The guided-missile destroyer USS Barry passed through the Taiwan Strait twice in April. And the amphibious assault ship USS America last month exercised in the East China Sea and South China Sea, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said.
In a series last year, Reuters reported that while the U.S. was distracted by almost two decades of war in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA had built a missile force designed to attack the aircraft carriers, other surface warships and network of bases that form the backbone of American power in Asia. Over that period, Chinese shipyards built the world’s biggest navy, which is now capable of dominating the country’s coastal waters and keeping U.S. forces at bay.
The series also revealed that in most categories, China’s missiles now rival or outperform counterparts in the armories of the U.S. alliance.
To read the series, click here
China derived an advantage because it was not party to a Cold War-era treaty — the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) — that banned the United States and Russia from possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers. Unrestrained by the INF pact, China has deployed about 2,000 of these weapons, according to U.S. and other Western estimates.
While building up its missile forces on land, the PLA also fitted powerful, long-range anti-ship missiles to its warships and strike aircraft.
This accumulated firepower has shifted the regional balance of power in China’s favor. The United States, long the dominant military power in Asia, can no longer be confident of victory in a military clash in waters off the Chinese coast, according to senior retired U.S. military officers.
But the decision by President Donald Trump last year to exit the INF treaty has given American military planners new leeway. Almost immediately after withdrawing from the pact on August 2, the administration signaled it would respond to China’s missile force. The next day, U.S. Secretary for Defense Mark Esper said he would like to see ground-based missiles deployed in Asia within months, but he acknowledged it would take longer.
Later that month, the Pentagon tested a ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missile. In December, it tested a ground-launched ballistic missile. The INF treaty banned such ground-launched weapons, and thus both tests would have been forbidden.
A senior Marines commander, Lieutenant General Eric Smith, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 11 that the Pentagon leadership had instructed the Marines to field a ground-launched cruise missile “very quickly.”
The budget documents show that the Marines have requested $125 million to buy 48 Tomahawk missiles from next year. The Tomahawk has a range of 1,600km, according to its manufacturer, Raytheon Company.
Smith said the cruise missile may not ultimately prove to be the most suitable weapon for the Marines. “It may be a little too heavy for us,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, but experience gained from the tests could be transferred to the army.
Smith also said the Marines had successfully tested a new shorter-range anti-ship weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, from a ground launcher and would conduct another test in June. He said if that test was successful, the Marines intended to order 36 of these missiles in 2022. The U.S. Army is also testing a new long-range, land-based missile that can target warships. This missile would have been prohibited under the INF treaty.
The Marine Corps said in a statement it was evaluating the Naval Strike Missile to target ships and the Tomahawk for attacking targets on land. Eventually, the Marines aimed to field a system “that could engage long-range moving targets either on land or sea,” the statement said.
The Defense Department also has research underway on new, long-range strike weapons, with a budget request of $3.2 billion for hypersonic technology, mostly for missiles.
China’s foreign ministry drew a distinction between the PLA’s arsenal of missiles and the planned U.S. deployment. It said China’s missiles were “located in its territory, especially short and medium-range missiles, which cannot reach the mainland of the United States. This is fundamentally different from the U.S., which is vigorously pushing forward deployment.”
BOTTLING UP CHINA’S NAVY
Military strategists James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara suggested almost a decade ago that the first island chain was a natural barrier that could be exploited by the American military to counter the Chinese naval build-up. Ground-based anti-ship missiles could command key passages through the island chain into the Western Pacific as part of a strategy to keep the rapidly expanding Chinese navy bottled up, they suggested.
In embracing this strategy, Washington is attempting to turn Chinese tactics back on the PLA. Senior U.S. commanders have warned that China’s land-based cruise and ballistic missiles would make it difficult for U.S. and allied navies to operate near China’s coastal waters.
But deploying ground-based U.S. and allied missiles in the island chain would pose a similar threat to Chinese warships — to vessels operating in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea, or ships attempting to break out into the Western Pacific. Japan and Taiwan have already deployed ground-based anti-ship missiles for this purpose.
“We need to be able to plug up the straits,” said Holmes, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. “We can, in effect, ask them if they want Taiwan or the Senkakus badly enough to see their economy and armed forces cut off from the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. In all likelihood the answer will be no.”
Holmes was referring to the uninhabited group of isles in the East China Sea — known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China — that are claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing.
The United States faces challenges in plugging the first island chain. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to distance himself from the United States and forge closer ties with China is a potential obstacle to American plans. U.S. forces could face barriers to operating from strategically important islands in the Philippines archipelago after Duterte in February scrapped a key security agreement with Washington.
And if U.S. forces do deploy in the first island chain with anti-ship missiles, some U.S. strategists believe this won’t be decisive, as the Marines would be vulnerable to strikes from the Chinese military.
The United States has other counterweights. The firepower of long-range U.S. Air Force bombers could pose a bigger threat to Chinese forces than the Marines, the strategists said. Particularly effective, they said, could be the stealthy B‑21 bomber, which is due to enter service in the middle of this decade, armed with long-range missiles.
The Pentagon is already moving to boost the firepower of its existing strike aircraft in Asia. U.S. Navy Super Hornet jets and Air Force B‑1 bombers are now being armed with early deliveries of Lockheed Martin’s new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, according to the budget request documents. The new missile is being deployed in response to an “urgent operational need” for the U.S. Pacific Command, the documents explain.
The new missile carries a 450 kilogram warhead and is capable of “semi-autonomous” targeting, giving it some ability to steer itself, according to the budget request. Details of the stealthy cruise missile’s range are classified. But U.S. and other Western military officials estimate it can strike targets at distances greater than 800 kilometers.
The budget documents show the Pentagon is seeking $224 million to order another 53 of these missiles in 2021. The U.S. Navy and Air Force expect to have more than 400 of them in service by 2025, according to orders projected in the documents.
This new anti-ship missile is derived from an existing Lockheed long-range, land attack weapon, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. The Pentagon is asking for $577 million next year to order another 400 of these land-attack missiles.
“The U.S. and allied focus on long-range land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles was the quickest way to rebuild long-range conventional firepower in the Western Pacific region,” said Robert Haddick, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and now a visiting senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies based in Arlington, Virginia.
For the U.S. Navy in Asia, Super Hornet jets operating from aircraft carriers and armed with the new anti-ship missile would deliver a major boost in firepower while allowing the expensive warships to operate further away from potential threats, U.S. and other Western military officials say.
Current and retired U.S. Navy officers have been urging the Pentagon to equip American warships with longer-range anti-ship missiles that would allow them to compete with the latest, heavily armed Chinese cruisers, destroyers and frigates. Lockheed has said it successfully test-fired one of the new Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles from the type of launcher used on U.S. and allied warships.
Haddick, one of the first to draw attention to China’s firepower advantage in his 2014 book, “Fire on the Water,” said the threat from Chinese missiles had galvanized the Pentagon with new strategic thinking and budgets now directed at preparing for high-technology conflict with powerful nations like China.
Haddick said the new missiles were critical to the defensive plans of America and its allies in the Western Pacific. The gap won’t close immediately, but firepower would gradually improve, Haddick said. “This is especially true during the next half-decade and more, as successor hypersonic and other classified munition designs complete their long periods of development, testing, production, and deployment,” he said.
6. The program concludes with an example of the war-mongering rhetoric that has become acceptable in US national security circles. An article co-written by a former Marine Corps Colonel espouses the use of “privateers”–armed pirates on China’s large merchant fleet.
Having achieved the rank of colonel in the Marine Corps, Cancian is obviously no fool. It is unthinkable that he does not know either the lyrics of, nor the meaning of the lyrics of, the Marine Corps Hymn. “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli . . .” The latter is a reference to one of the first Marine Corps actions against the Barbary Pirates of North Africa in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
The actions espoused by Cancian and Schwartz would be seen as an act of war.
Just imagine the reaction in this country if a retired Chinese colonel wrote in a Chinese military journal, espousing the use of armed pirates against U.S. merchant shipping!
Naval strategists are struggling to find ways to counter a rising Chinese Navy. The easiest and most comfortable course is to ask for more ships and aircraft, but with a defense budget that may have reached its peak, that may not be a viable strategy. Privateering, authorized by letters of marque, could offer a low-cost tool to enhance deterrence in peacetime and gain advantage in wartime. It would attack an asymmetric vulnerability of China, which has a much larger merchant fleet than the United States. Indeed, an attack on Chinese global trade would undermine China’s entire economy and threaten the regime’s stability. Finally, despite pervasive myths to the contrary, U.S. privateering is not prohibited by U.S. or international law. . . .
It was basically a given that the US saber-rattling directed at China will increase in both pitch and volume the closer we get to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Especially in the context of a Western propaganda campaign to not just pin the outbreak of the SARS-CoV‑2 pandemic on the Wuhan Institute of Virology but suggest the virus was specifically developed as a biological weapon. We even had Republican Senator Tom Cotton asserting back in April of 2020 that the Chinese government deliberately allowed the virus to spread around the world. The howls are only going to grow. It’s the kind of global context that turns the 2022 Olympics into the perfect foil for whatever narrative people want to develop. A kind of “The CCP is planning [insert diabolical plot here]” choose-you-own-adventure template.
And yet, despite that context that ensures the hyperalarmism around the 2022 Olympics will be cranked up to 11 until those games are over, we have the following story that unhinged even by the debased standards of our times: Tom Cotton is now asserting that China is going to use the 2022 Olympics to steal the genetic information from the world’s top athletes to create super-soldiers. Backing up Cotton in perma-China-hawk Gordan Chang, who backs up Cotton’s warnings about the Olympics being used as a giant DNA harvesting exercise. Chang warns that China may not only be interested in creating super-soldiers but could also use that genetic information to design biological weapons that targeting everyone people with a Chinese genetic background.
It’s the kind of propaganda that’s so stupid on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to begin. Yes, China could indeed be attempting to develop ethno-specific biological warfare agents. There isn’t evidence of this, but logically speaking it wouldn’t be shocking if true. What would be shocking, beyond shocking in fact, is the notion that DNA from Olympic athletes would somehow be needed for China to accomplish this. It’s not like China is going to have difficulty obtaining non-Chinese DNA and there’s nothing special about
Olympian DNA when it comes to designing viruses.
Now, yes, it’s possible the Chinese government would have an interest in obtaining a catalog of the world’s Olympic athletes. In fact, it’s indisputable that the Chinese government has an interest in understanding the relationship between genetics and athletics. The government announced in 2018 that all athletes competing to represent China in the 2022 Olympics would have to submit their DNA for whole genome sequencing as part of a new Chinese government project. The interest is clearly there. An interest probably shared with every other government on the planet. Uzbekistan jhas already started gene-hunting for its future star athletes. Such a catalog of top athlete genomes could allow for some potentially very interesting studies. And yet, if we had to think of a country on the planet that is best equipped to conduct large scale studies exploring the impact of different genetic variants on athletic/military performance, it’s hard to think of a country better positioned to do that than the most populace country on the planet. Yes, China may not have quite ethnic diversity of a place like the US, but it’s still huge country with significant genetic diversity. If China wants to hunt for particular genetic traits it’s not there’s going to be a problem with statistical sample sizes.
Similarly, sure, China may have an interest in developing ethno-specific biological weapons. An interest also probably shared with every other major government on the planet. And yet, again, it is entirely unclear what on earth Olympic athlete DNA would have to do with that? Are the Chinese going to design biological weapons to target Olympic athletes? Are they somehow unable to obtain non-Chinese DNA without the arrival of these Olympic teams? What’s the logic here? And that’s just it. There is no logic here because this is propaganda. Logic isn’t just beside the point. It gets in the way. It’s why we should expect these anti-Chinese hysterics to only get more and more hysterical the closer over the next year.
But it’s also important to keep in mind one of the other core attributes of contemporary Western far right propaganda: projection. Seemingly pathological projection to the point where it’s like a tick. It is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of right-wing disinformation: wrapped in the pack of lies is a warning of intent. Consistently.
And that’s why we have to ask: what exactly is Tom Cotton thinking about in terms of the future of US biological warfare capabilities and super-soldier programs? We’ve been learning about the Pentagon’s own super-soldier programs for years. There’s presumably always going to exist a super-soldier program as long as the Pentagon exists. And we can be pretty confident a Senator like Tom Cotton is going to be deeply involved in the congressional oversight of those programs to the extent that any oversight exists. What is Tom Cotton projecting here?
But it’s not just wingnuts Cotton and Chang. As the following article notes, Cotton’s warnings about Chinese interest in US genetic data showed up in a February 2021 National Counterintelligence and Security Center fact sheet titled “CHINA’S COLLECTION OF GENOMIC AND OTHER HEATHCARE DATA FROM AMERICA: RISKS TO PRIVACY AND U.S. ECONOMIC AND NATIONAL SECURITY.”, which was cited in the letter Cotton sent to President Biden this week warning about China’s genetic scheme. In other words, these concerns about Chinese Olympic genetic ambitions are metastasizing across the US intelligence community as the 2022 Olympics approach:
“In the letter, Cotton warns Biden that Beijing plans on using the 2022 Winter Olympics as a giant funnel for precious American DNA, harvesting the nation’s fittest and finest for their genomic information as part of a plan to achieve military dominance.”
First: collect the Olympic DNA. Next: [do mystery stuff with DNA]. Finally: military dominance. That’s the diabolical Chinese plan laid out in a letter to President Biden this week from Senator Tom Cotton. And in that letter we find a citation to a December 2020 WSJ column by Trump-era Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe’s assessment also made its way into a February 2021 National Counterintelligence and Security Center fact sheet. A fact sheet that couldn’t give actual examples of how China was planning on using the DNA information of the American public its allegedly harvesting. It’s one of the ironic features of hyperalarmism: it tends to be extremely vague hyperalarmism:
And then there’s Gordon Chang, who is warning not just that China will use American DNA information to enhance its own biotech sector but also that China is going to use this information to develop ethno-specific biological weapons:
Similarly, we have warnings from Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, that China might use that genetic information to learn how to attack people from a wide range of genetic profiles. Apparently China just wouldn’t have access to non-Chinese DNA profiles without these secret Olympic harvesting schemes:
So what have we learned here? Well, we definitely have NOT learned about any looming threat from a Chinese DNA harvesting program because these warning can’t actually cite a logical coherent threat. But we have learned that a large segment of the professional China-alarmism industry knows next to nothing about genetics and what is and isn’t feasible with this technology. Yes, there are abundant reasons to be concerned about the development of ethno-specific biological weapons or genetic supersoldier technologies, regardless of which military is developing these technologies. But the idea that these programs would be reliant on the harvesting of Olympic athlete DNA is the kind of absurdist alarmism that ignores reality. For starters, if the Chinese government REALLY wants to collect the DNA on some star non-Chinese athletes, they could just buy one of the existing consumer DNA-testing companies and suddenly own the rights to all that DNA. Are there any start athletes in those databases?
Or maybe they could secretly obtain that DNA from hair samples, etc, from any competition around the globe where these star athletes are competing. It’s not like Chinese spies can only collect a hair sample while in China.
Oh, and it’s worth noting that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has been openly considering forcing all Olympic athletes to submit DNA samples for the purpose of identifying doping. So genetic screening of ALL Olympic athletes is probably coming one of these years. Don’t forget that mRNA technology will have plenty of potential doping applications. Vaccines are just the start.
It’s also worth recalling the 2017 push by the GOP in congress to allow US employers to coerce their employees into submitting to genetic testing schemes that effectively give the employer knowledge about their employees’ genetic liabilities. Obtaining genetic information on Americans would be pretty easy for Chinese employers at that point. Or just hack an employer and grab the info.
Finally, regarding the warnings about China using US DNA to design targeted bioweapons that don’t impact people of Chinese ancestry, this is probably a good time for Americans to reminds themselves that one of the many bonuses of having a highly ethnically diverse nation is that it confers an inherent degree of protection against biological attacks of this nature. After all, it’s not like there aren’t Chinese-Americans serving in the US military. In other words, the more genetically diverse the US military is, the greater the protection against gene-based biological attacks. Someone might want to let Senator Cotton know about this, although it probably won’t do much to soothe his anxieties.
This next June 20, 2021 Guardian Article by Robert Reich explains how China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. However, the response will be counterproductive if it is used to finance the military and increase conflict with fight China instead of funding research to make America have technological superiority, a better infrastructure or superior education for our citizens.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/the-uss-greatest-danger-isnt-china-its-much-closer-to-home?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The US’s greatest danger isn’t China. It’s much closer to home
The rivalry with China is palpable but history teaches us lessons about how it’s easier to blame others than blame ourselves
The Guardian Sun 20 Jun 2021 02.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 20 Jun 2021 05.44 EDT
Robert Reich
China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. That’s fine if it leads to more public investment in basic research, education, and infrastructure – as did the Sputnik shock of the late 1950s. But it poses dangers as well.
More than 60 years ago, the sudden and palpable fear that the Soviet Union was lurching ahead of us shook America out of a postwar complacency and caused the nation to do what it should have been doing for many years. Even though we did it under the pretext of national defense – we called it the National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Highway Act and relied on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration for basic research leading to semiconductors, satellite technology, and the Internet – the result was to boost US productivity and American wages for a generation.
When the Soviet Union began to implode, America found its next foil in Japan. Japanese-made cars were taking market share away from the Big Three automakers. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi bought a substantial interest in the Rockefeller Center, Sony purchased Columbia Pictures, and Nintendo considered buying the Seattle Mariners. By the late 1980s and start of the 1990s, countless congressional hearings were held on the Japanese “challenge” to American competitiveness and the Japanese “threat” to American jobs.
A tide of books demonized Japan – Pat Choate’s Agents of Influence alleged Tokyo’s alleged payoffs to influential Americans were designed to achieve “effective political domination over the United States”. Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places argued that because of our failure to respond adequately to the Japanese challenge “the power of the United States and the quality of American life is diminishing rapidly in every respect”. William S Dietrich’s In the Shadow of the Rising Sun claimed Japan “threatens our way of life and ultimately our freedoms as much as past dangers from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union”.
Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway’s Unequal Equities argued that Japan rigged its capital markets to undermine American corporations. Daniel Burstein’s Yen! Japan’s New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America asserted that Japan’s growing power put the United States at risk of falling prey to a “hostile Japanese ... world order”.
And on it went: The Japanese Power Game,The Coming War with Japan, Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms are Colonizing Vital US Industries, The Silent War, Trade Wars.
But there was no vicious plot. We failed to notice that Japan had invested heavily in its own education and infrastructure – which enabled it to make high-quality products that American consumers wanted to buy. We didn’t see that our own financial system resembled a casino and demanded immediate profits. We overlooked that our educational system left almost 80% of our young people unable to comprehend a news magazine and many others unprepared for work. And our infrastructure of unsafe bridges and potholed roads were draining our productivity.
In the present case of China, the geopolitical rivalry is palpable. Yet at the same time, American corporations and investors are quietly making bundles by running low-wage factories there and selling technology to their Chinese “partners”. And American banks and venture capitalists are busily underwriting deals in China.
I don’t mean to downplay the challenge China represents to the United States. But throughout America’s postwar history it has been easier to blame others than to blame ourselves.
The greatest danger we face today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must be careful not to demonize China so much that we encourage a new paranoia that further distorts our priorities, encourages nativism and xenophobia, and leads to larger military outlays rather than public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic research on which America’s future prosperity and security critically depend.
The central question for America – an ever more diverse America, whose economy and culture are rapidly fusing with the economies and cultures of the rest of the globe – is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and our mutual responsibility without creating another enemy.
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Here we go again: We’re getting reports of new secret war games conducted by the US in the Pacific. Secret US-Japan war games started in the last year of the Trump administration. It sounds like the focus of the exercises were on a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It reportedly involved joint exercises but also table-top war gaming, which is particularly unsettling since table-top war gaming is the kind of exercise where we would expect scenarios like the exchange of nuclear weapons to be played out.
It also sounds like Japan is increasingly viewing the defense of Taiwan is an existential issue for Japan. As a result, there are growing calls for not just bilateral US-Japanese military exercises but a trilateral US-Japan-Taiwan coordinated regional defense strategy. In other words, we should probably expect reports of secret US-Japan-Taiwan war games and military exercises sooner rather than later.
And we can’t ignore that this is all happening in the context of the US’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which is now allowing for the station of nuclear-tipped medium-range missiles directly in China’s neighborhood. And that means any future US war games in the region are potentially going to involving war gaming the use of those nuclear armed medium-range missiles. The kind of missiles that kind be launches and hit their targets in minutes. Making the growing conflict in the Pacific the perfect situation for destabilization:
“US and Japanese military officials began serious planning for a possible conflict in the final year of the Trump administration, according to six people who requested anonymity. The activity includes top-secret tabletop war games and joint exercises in the South China and East China seas.”
The US-Japan war gaming has already begun, having been secretly started during the last year of the Trump administration. And that includes top-secret tabletop war games, which sure sounds like the type of war games where the use of nuclear weapons is on the table. And with Japan increasingly viewing Taiwan’s defense as a Japanese national security issue and the US viewing Japan as a forward operating base for the potential defense of Taiwan, it’s reasonable to suspect that if the US and Japan are wargaming the use of nuclear weapons it would be be in the context of a joint US-Japanese defense of Taiwan:
And that’s why we shouldn’t be surprised to eventually see a trilateral US-Japanese-Taiwanese wargames in the region sooner or later. This is the direction these relationships are heading: Taiwan is being turned into the focus of the growing ‘Great Powers’ rivalry in the Pacific. Which is going to translate into a lot more Taiwan-centric military exercises. Potentially involving the intermediate range missiles that the INF treaty Trump tore up previously banned:
Finally, note the references to “fungible” exercises. In other words, dual-use exercises like an amphibious landing in a ‘disaster relief scenario’. We should probably expect a lot more exercises of that nature:
So if joint military exercises — and fungible ‘non-military’ exercises — are set to be carried out with increasing frequency right on China’s borders as part of a clear China-containment strategy, the risk of a conflict in the Pacific is obviously growing. So it’s probably a good time to ask whether or not we’re heading into a new kind of MADness-driven mutually assured destruction super power doomsday nuclear standoffs that defined the Cold War.
But as the following BBC article from a few years ago reminds us, when we’re talking about deepening military build ups in anticipation of a giant conflict, we can’t just be concerned about the plans for future conflicts. We also have to be watching out for unplanned conflicts. Even accidental conflicts. Because when you’re talking about conflicts between nuclear powers, all it takes is a single accident to effectively end the world. That was the core lesson learned by NATO forces following the 1983 annual Able Archer NATO military simulations. Simulations that almost triggered a Soviet first strike in response to what looked like NATO preparations for a first strike. Yes, NATO almost got itself nuked by running a military simulation so realistic the Soviets thought it was a cover for an actual first strike and starting preparing for their own. US air bases even practiced arming planes with dummy warheads.
Perhaps even more disturbing is what the NATO forces did during the simulation. In an apparent attempt to signal that NATO was serious about escalating the fake conflict, NATO forces launched a single medium range nuclear missile at Kiev. The theory was that this ‘nuclear signaling’ would help cooler heads prevail. Obviously that didn’t work and by the end of the simulation civilization was destroyed.
Oh, and here’s the kicker: NATO forces didn’t even realize they have spooked the Soviet leadership into preparing a first strike. This was only discovered later. It’s the kind of story that’s piled so high with top-level stupidity it’s amazing civilization hasn’t destroyed itself yet.
So as the US-Japan-Taiwan military alliance continues to grow and evolve, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that the military exercises involved with this alliance are going to grow and evolve too. And may end up looking like preparations for a first strike:
“Later that day, the Nato commanders left their building and went home, congratulating themselves on another successful – albeit sobering – exercise. What Western governments only discovered later is that Able Archer 83 came perilously close to instigating a real nuclear war.”
NATO commanders knew by the end of the exercise that they blew up the simulated world. But it was only later that they realized they almost blew up the actual world. Oops. So the crew who thought nuking Kiev would deescalate the situation didn’t realize running a war game like this was incredibly dangerous. Imagine that:
It’s also worth keeping in mind how much of the Soviets’ rationale for their response to the Able Archer exercise was predicated on the idea that the West really was planning on a first strike. In other words, they clearly believed Ronald Reagan was willing to ‘push the red button’. So NATO had created a scenario where establishing the credible threat — by having an apparent mad man as the US president — dramatically increased the danger of experiencing a preemptive first strike. It’s the kind of lesson that’s going to be crucial to keep in mind the next time the US has someone like Donald Trump as president, where the unhinged and belligerent nature of his persona was often sold as a stabilizing force because it demonstrated to the world that the US wasn’t scare to use military muscle. It’s exactly the kind of mad man mentality that could trigger a preemptive first strike as the Able Archer 83 exercise made clear. If the Soviets didn’t believe they were dealing with a mad man it would have been a lot easier for them to interpret the signaling coming from the exercise as something less than an existential threat:
And this was all taking place as both sides were in the middle of deploying medium-range nuclear weapons. Sound familiar?
This article from 2018 was basically a warning against Trump’s withdrawal from the INF. Warnings that went unheeded and now we have medium-range missiles — which may or may not be nuclear tipped — emerging as one of the key technologies that’s going to be relied on in the event of such a conflict.
Also keep in mind that a conflict in the Pacific is likely going to be much more missile-focused than a NATO-Soviet conflict on the plains of Europe simply due to the increased importance of naval and aerial battles. You’re not going to have giant tank battles with that kind of conflict. Missiles are inherently more important for this kind of fight and that means more drills involving those missiles. Presumably drills involving the showering of China’s strategic infrastructure with medium-range missiles. Medium-range missiles that, again, may or may not be nuclear-tipped. There’s a lot less ambiguity about what’s on the end of an ICBM stationed in North Dakota than a cruise missile hosted in Japan. And as the story of Able Archer 83 should make clear, that’s the kind of ambiguity that could end civilization if misinterpreted. A psychological line that continually needs to be walked every time one of these kinds of exercises plays out. It’s all the latest grim reminder that the logic of mutually assured nuclear MADness only works if the rival leadership appear to the other side to be kind of insane, but not too insane. Which is pretty insane.