The CIA has shifted its stance about the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19, NBC News reported on Saturday. The intelligence agency now believes that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab, a shift from its previous stance, in which it did not take a position. “CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said…
In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the CIA and 16 other federal intelligence agencies, released a report on the origins of Covid-19. It said that four IC agencies believe with low confidence that the first infection was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal. It added that one element, identified by the Times as the FBI, believes it was the result of a laboratory incident related to experimentation or animal sampling or handling, with medium confidence. Three agencies at the time said that they were unsure either way.
Last year, one of those agencies on the fence, the Energy Department, said that it now favored a laboratory origin with low confidence.
Could be, or could be getting in line with the new leader’s narrative. Recall, companies started running away from DEI policies last summer. That “low confidence” note could be the tell.
We will never know, even with middling “confidence”.
And going down that route, then they were also expected to conform back in 2021. At the White House meeting where the DNI met with the agencies to compile the report mentioned in the article, one agency was not present – the FBI, who had the dissenting opinion. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
What difference does this make? Or - Why is this important to know?
What seems far more important to me is looking at the response to the pandemic and asking ourselves what was effective, helping to reduce the impacts of this novel disease, and was was ineffective or counter-productive — making things worse.
Second: What is the macroeconomic impact of determining the origin?
This post sure seems to be off topic and potentially political.
Big mistake to apply a political label to any covid origin story.
For example, a mistake to apply a political, derogatory label to one origin story. A further mistake to support a different origin story because of such label. A further mistake to then perpetuate these political labels.
Better to divorce these labels from the origin story and focus on what is actually known about the origin.
Please read above, agencies did as they were told in that they were ordered by the prior sheriff to review their conclusion (not the same as ordered to reach a specific conclusion) and this was completed in prior regime.
As I said above, big mistake to apply and perpetuate political labels to any particular origin.
Let’s focus on what is known about the origin and best evidence and leave the political labels behind.
Let’s also assume the technical people in these agencies are bringing their best efforts and knowledge to bear on a challenging problem.
It means they don’t believe it. Which is not quite the same as the headline.
ETA: The new CIA director is a borderline nutjob and Project 2025 contributor who is extremely paranoid about China. Now, I’d say it is the CIA director’s job to be paranoid, but he’s bringing a clear political agenda to the table.
Read the article I posted, from late 2020. TNG has always been trying to squeeze reparations out of China. Remember the flap over him consistently referring to “the China virus”? Remember the context too: he was telling US companies to get their supply chains out of China in the summer of 2019, before anyone had heard of the plague.
Now, TNG is saying the national security concerns wrt China, can all be swept under the rug, if the right sort of “arty” deal is struck. Being able to hang Covid on a negligence claim against China, is another lever he can pull to get that “arty” deal.
“It went fine. It was a good, friendly conversation,” Trump said of his call with Xi in an interview with Fox News aired on Thursday evening.
“I can do that,” Trump said in the interview when asked if he could make a deal with China over fair trade practices.
Trump said he would rather not use tariffs against China but called tariffs a “tremendous power.”
“But we have one very big power over China, and that’s tariffs, and they don’t want them, and I’d rather not have to use it, but it’s a tremendous power over China,” Trump added.