The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.
The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.
The Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence”, according to people who have read the classified report.
The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with “moderate confidence” and still holds to this view.
U.S. officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. They added that while the Energy Department and the FBI each say an unintended lab leak is most likely, they arrived at those conclusions for different reasons.
Michael R. Gordon & Warren P. Strobel
This article sparked another round of fierce Twitter arguments over the possible origins of COVID, with many quick to point fingers at journalists and scientists for suppressing discussion of this issue. I remain astounded at the American fixation with talking things to death and inability to handle uncertainty, which is the real issue here. In truth, there is no new evidence to discuss; the intelligence agencies involved declined to share any details about how they arrived at these assessments – not to mention their ‘low confidence’ in these conclusions, which further invalidates the statements.
This whole debate is a classic case of how conspiracy theories begin and grow out of control. People play with the meaning of words: a lab leak is certainly plausible, as lab leaks have happened before, but leaping from plausible to likely is not supported by any hard evidence so far – in fact there’s an obvious counter-example currently in progress, as people from all over the world get infected with new strains of avian flu following animal exposure (but I’m sure someone will invent some conspiracy around this as well if this develops into a larger epidemic).
People treat absence of evidence (and the reluctance of scientists and journalists to discuss the matter in such absence) as if some nefarious actors know all the precise details and are deliberately hiding it from the public (the Chinese government may know more than the rest of the world, but good luck forcing them to admit to anything). And people cling to the idea that until we know everything these is to know about the origins of the virus we can’t properly implement measures against a similar event in the future.
Lawmakers have sought to find out more about why the FBI assesses a lab leak was likely. In an Aug. 1 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, requested that the FBI share the records of its investigation and asked if the bureau had briefed Mr. Biden on its findings.
In a Nov. 18 letter, FBI Assistant Director Jill Tyson said the agency couldn’t share those details because of Justice Department policy on preserving
the integrity of ongoing investigations. She referred the senator to Ms. Haines’s office for information on what briefings were arranged for the president.
The problem is that the lab leak debate has always been less about uncovering the truth and more about shifting blame elsewhere for the abysmal pandemic management in the US. Despite what many seem to think, we don’t need to know a virus’ origins to improve lab containment protocols and public health measures. The current trickle of releases from US government agencies amounts to nothing more than an insinuation that ‘China is behind this’ and serves to fuel the surge of anti-Chinese hysteria in the US.
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