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Notes -
The CIA has impressive capabilities, but intelligence on the ground in China is extremely limited after the very damaging leak in 2013 when China disappeared pretty much all their assets. (Foreign Policy article)
Since then, the West has had very little human intelligence in China. It’s a big contrast to Russia where the US and especially UK have cultivated senior sources very successfully, or to Iran, where the same is true. While the CIA can certainly identify information about who worked for the WIV in 2019 (this information was public anyway, researchers at the WIV were part of a global community of researchers doing GoF work including at similar labs in the US, Europe etc), it’s less likely that they have the ability to answer most of these questions. If the leak of Covid was some kind of secret bioweapons project only somewhat related to the public facing work done by the WIV, the CIA might well not know about it. I think most private analysts are of the opinion that Western intelligence knows very little about the inner workings of the CCP or PLA.
It’s also unclear that the CIA ever invested many resources into identifying the origins of Covid. There wouldn’t be any valuable intelligence data to leverage, and the decision to confront China geopolitically was made before and has very little to do with the pandemic. More honestly, the US can or can not accuse China of being behind it, and China can deny it, with or without any evidence. That someone in Langley knows “the truth” doesn’t make much difference. It’s not going to help the US compete with China and, as I said above, US labs are doing the same kind of research.
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