Why is the U.S. intelligence peddling COVID-19 conspiracies?

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The US House of Representatives is holding a series of controversial hearings to push discredited U.S. intelligence on a so-called COVID-19 lab leak from China. This is the same conspiracy that has been met with tacit resistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), scores of U.S. scientists, as well as through direct condemnation from China. At present, it fits a pattern to willingly politicizing the pandemic further to the disadvantage of universal security. “All witnesses agreed that the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab is not a conspiracy theory,” read a statement from the U.S. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, referring to high-level testimonies this week. Relying on hearsay, personal opinions, and disputed intelligence to fabricate virus origins is as counterproductive and undemocratic as it gets.   

Recall the warning from World Health Organization (WHO)’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier this month: he indicated resistance to the politicization of COVID-19 origins-tracing and called on Washington to share evidence for its “lab leak” allegations against China. 

There is a universal stake in ensuring information transparency on a shared security challenge, given the dismal credibility record of American “intelligence” for years. Toxic conspiracies of a China lab leak, reinforced by an internally divided U.S. intelligence community, have failed to gain traction in the wider scientific community. They also fit a multiyear pattern of disinformation that sought to tie the virus and its origins to China, making the work of developing world partners even harder. 

And yet, the U.S. mission in Geneva has tried to block-out WHO’s request for credible data, and by the White House’s own admission, there is no consensus within the U.S. intelligence community on the so-called lab leak theory. All this is a striking reminder that the same community remains committed to putting debunked health security conspiracies above actual evidence, despite official pledges to ground each action in science.

The routing of all scientific evidence through the WHO is a credible practice since the beginning of the pandemic, followed by almost all nations. This is precisely why observers of Washington’s politicized ‘intelligence’ campaigning against China shouldn’t expect any movement on the lab leak allegations because there is nothing to show for it. In its attempts to smear China and its transparent COVID-19 information-sharing with the world, the U.S. intelligence community willingly downplayed wide-ranging disputes among its own agencies on virus origins. That is the reality.

So let's focus attention where it actually belongs: the U.S. is yet to answer for over 200 overseas bio-labs across some two dozen countries, including sites that have witnessed large-scale infectious disease outbreaks. Attempts to sidestep such concerns and focus attention on fictitious China lab leak conspiracies have done a great disservice to global pandemic preparedness, willingly undercut WHO’s scientific work and the net safety it hopes to provide.

For some within the U.S. intelligence community, there is a political premium attached to peddling the lab leak conspiracy again. But past attempts to market U.S. intelligence assessments as scientific conclusions have faced a reckoning from the WHO. This explains why the U.S. is setting up barriers to data-sharing with the UN agency in Geneva and refusing immediate access. All these maneuvers are a clear contrast to China’s scientific cooperation with the WHO. For instance, Beijing’s belief in global science-based origins-tracing was key to WHO’s early conclusion that “a laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely.” 

A rich history of in-person exposure, prompt data-sharing, and highly transparent China-WHO research collaborations in key sites drives U.S. intelligence rhetoric to the ground. Tellingly, the same confidence cannot be associated with the United States on origin-tracing, given how one of its top bio-military entities already acquired advanced capabilities to synthesize SARS-related coronaviruses as early as 2003. Discredited lab leak metanarratives won’t hold in WHO’s court of evidence.

Without doubt, the weaponization of origin-tracing through so-called “intelligence” deserves to be called-out in full. The absence of thick distinctions between politics and science drilled more holes in Washington’s shambolic COVID-19 response, but the world should be spared those costs to better prepare against any future outbreak. WHO’s insistence that the U.S. should share information to back its lab leak allegations is thus critical to prevent politically motivated intelligence from masquerading as scientific proof. The mother of all ironies is that the U.S. Department of Energy itself has “low confidence” in its own lab leak allegations, and the WHO has a track-record of resisting U.S. pressure and threats to single out a nation of choice.

For these reasons, any lab leak conspiracy sold as U.S. ‘intelligence’ needs to be dismissed head-on. It plays into the politicization of virus origins-tracing, and defeats the purpose of a united front on a shared public health imperative. In the words of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, politicization of the search to identify virus origins was making the scientific work harder and the world less safe as a result. U.S. intelligence is at the center of it all.