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CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

nytimes.com

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Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#181

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rayiner wrote: post #67
drewbug01 wrote: post #17

> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete. I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain. --- One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as…

As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.” The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.

> they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days

CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#182

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hulitu wrote: post #121
chimprich wrote: post #33

The CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here. A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2

[flagged]

> The lab was founded by the CIA

What evidence do you have for this claim?

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#183

Post by CMay »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #70
CMay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concern about China is not partisan anymore, pretty much everyone is on board now. Also from the article: "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time."

But we know Trump lies, and that people around him change their story and lie for him, and we know he gets rid of personnel who don't 'kiss the ring'... and this comes at the exact instant that he says he's going to start his import tariffs for Chinese goods and needs media support to convince USA-ians that making all goods coming from China now expensive is a good idea... I mean you're going to need extraordinary ev…

Trump can nominate a CIA director, but cannot appoint a CIA director.

Once a CIA director gets confirmed, they can influence hiring decisions at the CIA, but that takes time.

This was investigated for a long while before Trump was even president. This was started under Biden.

Trump doesn't have that many people left to convince that China is problematic.

The CIA isn't the first to conclude this, but also the FBI and the DoE. Both of their reports came out under the Biden administration.

This doesn't appear to be a new trend or a dramatic shift in conclusion as a result of Trump becoming president.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#184

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mmustapic wrote: post #16

So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?

> the main intelligence agency changes its position radically

When did the CIA come out against lab leak? Everyone's been spitballing low- and moderate-confidence guesses.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#185

Post by cypress66 »

bhickey wrote: post #146
eightysixfour wrote: post #29

I had a pretty long post about this here before, due to the politicization of the issue it is highly unlikely any of us will ever know “the truth” without a surprise smoking gun. There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses. I think you have to accept it is now unlikely we normies will ever know the truth. The post, and its comments, are worth reading still IMO: https://news.ycombinator.co…

> unlikely we normies will ever know the truth Thanks for the dose of epistemic humility. I'm willing to go one step further: It's plausible that no one knows the truth. Keeping secrets is hard. If someone knew they might've died in the early stages of the outbreak.

It would be trivial for the Chinese to determine if covid 19 matches with what they were investigating in the lab, and if the people in the lab were among the first infected.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#186

Post by gigatree »

nxm wrote: post #122
steveBK123 wrote: post #62

It was never an implausible theory so the censorship over it was foolish. Of course the immediate jump to conclusion in the first few months by some who found it politically expedient was no better either. People need to be more comfortable saying I don’t know but we are looking into it.

Back then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.

Hopefully this helps people realize how meaningless it is to be labeled a conspiracy theorist.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#187

Post by twh123751 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162
CMay wrote: post #154

Things that are true: "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time." The Department of Energy concluded with low confidence that it was a lab leak. The FBI concluded with moderate confidence that it was a lab leak. The CIA's new report also concludes that they have low confidence that it was a lab leak. It's important to note that…

> the agency was not bending its views to a new boss Trump has thrown the China hawks under the bus. To the extent anyone is winning accolades by pushing this hypothesis, it's in giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation. That's too marginal to motivate an adverse conclusion at the CIA. (Counterfactual: Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce reports for every possible conclusion, and then pick the one that w…

> ... giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation.

That is a perfectly valid hypothesis. In the EU there are also doubts as to what Trump's actual goals are. People are preparing for the scenario that first Biden and now Trump are driving a wedge between the EU and China, whereupon Trump will suddenly change course and be China's best friend. (The unspoken second thesis is that the same scheme applies to Russia):

https://www.politico.eu/article/fear-and-loathing-in-davos-e...

"There’s another scenario that has the Europeans worried: After getting a reluctant EU onside with his anti-Beijing agenda, the famously fickle Trump could U-turn and end up ganging up on the bloc with his “very, very good friend” Xi Jinping, China’s president."

"There’s precedent for that: In 2020, after years of escalating hostility during Trump’s first term in office, Washington and Beijing struck a mini trade deal aiming to increase U.S. exports to China and to ease their trade war."

"Now, Trump has billionaire China dove Elon Musk in his ear — and he needs Washington to retain good ties with Beijing to keep his electric vehicle company Tesla afloat."

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#189

Post by morkalork »

jfengel wrote: post #119
morkalork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering what is known about that agency's activities under Reagan, I think everyone lost confidence about any claims they made before I was even born.

That's just it. It was a very long time ago. Not many CIA employees are still there. That's not reason to trust it. But "a bad thing happened in the 80s and that's all I need to know" isn't a compelling argument either.

I'm missing the part where there has been institutional reform since then. Otherwise, the mandate and policies that fostered those affairs are still in place, no?

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#190

Post by JumpCrisscross »

twh123751 wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the agency was not bending its views to a new boss Trump has thrown the China hawks under the bus. To the extent anyone is winning accolades by pushing this hypothesis, it's in giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation. That's too marginal to motivate an adverse conclusion at the CIA. (Counterfactual: Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce reports for every possible conclusion, and then pick the one that w…

> ... giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation. That is a perfectly valid hypothesis. In the EU there are also doubts as to what Trump's actual goals are. People are preparing for the scenario that first Biden and now Trump are driving a wedge between the EU and China, whereupon Trump will suddenly change course and be China's best friend. (The unspoken second thesis is that the same scheme applies to Russia): ht…

My point is nobody at the CIA is winning a promotion for helping on a trade negotiation like this. It's unlikely this was politically motivated in substance. (Timing may be.)
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