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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

#521

Post by tw04 »

jdietrich wrote: post #320

If we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people…

Well, assuming you’re part of the “we” that resides in the US, I think we’ve made it pretty clear we’re aren’t taking any of it seriously. Pulling out of the WHO is akin to burying our heads in the sand.

Sure, technically it “isn’t our problem” when some new disease breaks out in another country. But when (not if) it is eventually our problem, it’ll be a very big problem.

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

#522

Post by Animats »

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…

Right. "Low confidence". Read [1] People who deal with intel data need to work with possibly wrong info. Most spy novels don't get this. Real military planning works more like: "Intel says the enemy is at A or B, most likely at A. How much resources should we devote to A vs B, or hold in reserve until we find out by encountering the enemy? What's our plan if we guess wrong?" Planning has to assume that intel might be wrong.

Go watch "A Bridge Too Far" (WWII). Read the story of the Son Tay raid (Vietnam). The many overestimates of Soviet capability during the Cold War. The underestimates of North Korean missile capability. Sometimes uncertain intel really works, as with the attack on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan.

Retrospective intel questions may never be answered. It's known that the US atomic bomb program had another Russian spy who is mentioned by code name in VENONA transcripts, but that spy was never identified. There are still arguments over whether the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor in 1889 was an accident or a hostile act. It's still not clear why Turret 2 of the USS Iowa blew up in 1989. Huge amounts of effort were expended on all three of those questions, all of which were important at the time, and yet they remain unsettled.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-...

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

#523

Post by mlyle »

theptip wrote: post #387
jtc331 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.

I think the parent is arguing that lab leak is plausible, even if it wasn’t certainly the cause. GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible. Most folks had no idea about the sort of GoF being done, and the attitude of many researchers (highly dismissive of risks) should worry us a lot. We should also be more worried about zoonotic transmission too, and press harder to ban wet markets. I don't thi…

There's a couple of probability distributions we don't know. And whether this leaked in Wuhan or not doesn't affect them.

1. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of GoF research lab leaks? It's not zero-- it likely has enormous long tail risk. But:

2. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of not knowing as much about how gain of function happens in the wild? Because nature is doing some of these GOF experiments on its own, without much effort at containment.

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

#524

Post by throwaway290 »

oneshtein wrote: post #518
throwaway290 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not about nature. It's about biological weapons. If Russians will create a new biological weapon (they do), then we must have a cure before they will use it in their fight with NATO. And the best solution is to research this... in China?

Yep, another continent from the home is the best place for such kind of research.

If you want to research a cure from engineered virus from one hostile country, paying another hostile country to do virus engineering research for you is surely great logic.

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

#525

Post by mlyle »

Retric wrote: post #509
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained. Strongly, strongly disagree. When even a teeny risk of escape means that millions of people could die, I think a much better argument is to simply make certain types of research completely off limits. I'm certainly not the only person who thinks this. Zeynep Tufekci, who in…

Looking at risks alone always biases you to avoid doing anything. The benefits of research here are also human lives. So doing nothing has a real cost and the benefits extend indefinitely into the future. Suppose you’re deciding between a 1% chance of a lab leak costing 10 million lives and a 20% chance you save 50 million lives over the next 100 years. That’s heavily weighted towards doing something, while still car…

I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid.

That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated.

I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).

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

#526

Post by Dalewyn »

ioulaum wrote: post #354
Dalewyn wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My priors include all the agencies (the Intelligence Community , arguably the deep state) having ulterior political and personal motives. Does noone remember the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax that the CIA cooked up for GWB? I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.

I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too. The intelligence networks there were weak, and if people were talking about it, they may have assumed wrongly that there was something there. Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.

>Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.

Just to be clear: The people in charge are the CIA, not GWB. GWB was simply the right useful idiot at the right time in the right place.

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

#527

Post by Stevvo »

cyberax wrote: post #360
CMay wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest natural relative origin of SARS-CoV-2 was in Yunnan ~700 miles away from the market. The Wuhan lab collected samples from that area and the lab is only ~10 miles away from the market. Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there. Why that market in Hubei and not first at a market closer to Yunnan? It might be more profitable…

> The closest The closest _known_. The second closest was found in Laos, also 700 miles from Wuhan (BANAL-52). Except it's in the other direction. So we know that close cousins of CoV-2 are pretty wide-spread. > Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there The thing is, does it really matter? We can say with a high degree of confidence…

Laos is not in the "other direction" to Yunnan; Laos borders Yunnan.

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

#529

Post by Retric »

mlyle wrote: post #525
Retric wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at risks alone always biases you to avoid doing anything. The benefits of research here are also human lives. So doing nothing has a real cost and the benefits extend indefinitely into the future. Suppose you’re deciding between a 1% chance of a lab leak costing 10 million lives and a 20% chance you save 50 million lives over the next 100 years. That’s heavily weighted towards doing something, while still car…

I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid. That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated. I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).

Ultimately, we don’t know the actual benefits and I just picked numbers from thin air to illiterate a point. But yea linear extrapolation of such estimates hundreds of years into the future is nonsense.
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