The US Intelligence Community’s Assessment on Covid-19 Origins [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The US Intelligence Community’s Assessment on Covid-19 Origins [pdf]

dni.gov

> China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19. Beijing, however, continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States. These actions reflect, in part, China’s government’s own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead

Crazy how, just a few months ago this would have resulted in a ban on several social media platforms.

Nothing changed in the meantime, other than the presidential administration...

This!

It's a travesty that this occurred. Speech was severely censored on real, serious topics, to drive a narrative to hurt a presidential candidate and this was deemed acceptable by great amounts of people. If this had happened the other way around, it would have been a scandal as big as Watergate.

It's truly sad that happened. But it highlights how untrustworthy the "4th estate" is. They are vested interests and should not be trusted any longer and should have their stake revoked. No one should take them seriously for anything.

> to drive a narrative to hurt a presidential candidate

He did that on his own by being completely ineffective against COVID-19 and making the situation much worse. There is a reason his supporters tend to be antivax and propose hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin over the vaccines.

If trump had focused less on the racism and more on effective measures to combat the virus journalists would not have dumped on him.

Clearly the difference is that people stating this a few months ago we’re just making accusations without any real data. This is a government assessment of experts who have attempted to get the data and can then make a reasonable conclusion based on China’s behavior.

If you had posted the US Intelligence Community’s Assessment on social media, I doubt you’d have the problem of getting banned.

Cite a source for that claim.

That does not match my experience.

From a quick Google search:

> “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps,” spokeswoman Dani Lever said. “We’re continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/27/faceboo...

Literally nothing in the quote posted by the OP, or the report in question claims "that COVID-19 is man made". In fact, it's doing the exact opposite. It's saying that it is impossible to know for certain how the initial human infection occurred without further information, but that most agencies agreed that the virus was not genetically engineered or developed as a weapon. Details matter.

I searched and saw that too. However banning the article isn't the same as banning users who post the article, so I was curious if there was a source for that.

While saying that they might know where the virus came from seems to be allowed, saying for example “I think China created the virus via gain of function research” would still get you banned from Facebook today according to these rules: https://m.facebook.com/help/230764881494641

Where? Can you cite any source for this?

What more disturbs me is that, if this is a factual representation that we really don't know, that means that we have no meaningful HUMINT intelligence capabilities in Nazi China and are relying on SIGINT alone.

There’s suspected to have been a leak of US operatives in China at times past resulting in the death of agents there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...

Nazi China?

Probably a reference to the death camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

By this point in time, China's leaders have a very good idea, with high certainty, of where the virus originated.

My guess is that where ever it originated they feel that it would be an embarrassment to them to say so they push the Wuhan market theory as the cause but they give no facts to back it up.

Given that there's a very low likely hood that it was a deliberate bio weapon then I would have to say that the virus most likely escaped from the Wuhan lab. It's an embarrassment but bottomline it was a mistake. I doubt we'll have a true answer anytime soon but maybe in a couple of decades someone will decide to divulge the truth. Let's hope.

So they just don’t know. It’s better to say that rather than say that there is no way the Taliban could take over Afganistán in a few days.

> Even as the president was telling the public that Kabul was unlikely to fall, intelligence assessments painted a grimmer picture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-b...

Maybe I misread, but where did the Taliban feature?

I think it was intended as a satirical comment.

This looks like a poker "check" to queue up a broader international investigation.

it seems a lot of unknowns. is there a clear next step?

Given what we have learned over the past 18 months I thought that, more likely than not, COVID was the result of gain-of-function research that escaped from a Chinese lab. Given this report from the US intelligence community and their track record of accuracy, however, I have to rethink that position.

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