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China Must Pay for COVID-19 (Lab Leak Or Not)

Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Image: Creative Commons.

Making China Pay for COVID-19 – “Coronaviruses can be artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before.” This was the conclusion of a 2015 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) document entitled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons. The document was written by a group of top-level PLAAF medical researchers (according to Robert Potter, an Australian cyberwarfare specialist and an expert in determining if leaked Chinese documents are fake, he insists that these documents are genuine). 

Clearly, someone high up in Beijing was thinking about weaponized coronaviruses—five years before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted from China and shattered the world as we knew it.

According to the researchers in that 2015 document, the goal of weaponizing coronaviruses would not be to annihilate a target country’s population. A weaponized coronavirus could not do that. Instead, it would be an attack directed at the country’s medical system and its economy. The purpose of such an attack would be to sow chaos and confusion in a target country’s society. In turn, that chaos would serve as a distraction, and give China the opportunity to enhance itself at the expense of the targeted country (in this case, the United States). 

While the COVID-19 pandemic did not collapse the US medical system, it did damage the economy, disrupted the sociopolitical order here, and changed the destiny of the United States possibly forever. We are still today dealing with the knock-on effects of COVID-19 and the decisions that were made then to combat the supposedly all-natural disease from Wuhan, China. 

What’s more, the weaponized virus had unintended effects on China itself. Although China seems to have weathered that particular storm better than any of us would have thought it could—so much so that today we fear China could invade neighboring Taiwan.

Evidence of Chinese Malintent

In early 2020, I was asked to speak to elements of the United States Air Force (USAF) Special Operations Group about Chinese biotechnology investment and development. I have long covered China’s biotech beat and have many contacts in that industry. They thought I could provide some insight into the novel coronavirus that they might have been lacking. 

I shared with them my research and my belief that COVID-19 came from a lab. The audience looked uncomfortable. Shortly thereafter, I received a complaint from a colonel at the base where I spoke for “misinformation.” 

Interestingly, a year later I was speaking to elements at another military facility in California and was approached by a Major in the USAF who was aware of my writings and thoughts on this matter and he confirmed that many—if not most—people in the intelligence community were convinced that COVID-19 came from a lab. 

In fact, that year was the same year that the otherwise skeptical Biden Administration apparently dropped its skepticism on the “lab leak theory” and ordered the intelligence community to reopen its investigation of the origins of COVID-19. 

In typical bureaucratese, the intelligence community did not directly claim that they believed the disease emanated from a lab, however, the intelligence community did indicate they no longer believed the disease was entirely natural. Similarly, the United States Department of Energy recently assessed that the novel coronavirus did, in fact, come from a lab. 

Further, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ran its own investigation of the lab leak theory. The US Army Major Joseph Murphy, who conducted the investigation of the origins of COVID-19 for DARPA, concluded that the disease came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). He even pinpointed the exact part of the building, based on his knowledge of the research conducted there and satellite images, where the disease was likely created and may have leeched out from. 

As I document in my forthcoming book, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), due out May 16, multiple US government and private groups in the United States (and Canada) participated in the gain-of-function (GOF) tests that many believe led to the creation—and release—of COVID-19 from the WIV. 

So, it might be difficult to determine with absolute, metaphysical certitude that the disease came from a Chinese lab. It is not hard, however, to draw conclusions from these various data points that, yes, the disease was created in a lab and released either accidentally or, if that 2015 PLAAF document is more than just a proof-of-concept, purposely.

With these facts in hand, what is to be done? 

Hitting China Where It Hurts

Technically, it was an act of war. Since we cannot be certain (and Beijing will never admit it) that the disease came from a lab (it did, as I have shown above) or that the Chinese released it purposely, we must act only on the facts we can prove. 

What we know is that Beijing engaged in a systematic coverup early in the outbreak. Whereas alerting the world as soon as the outbreak occurred would have allowed for a more effective global response, China’s government pretended like nothing was wrong. 

In fact, China’s regime encouraged air travel to and from China to occur as normal—even as Beijing was ordering strict internal lockdowns and placing Wuhan under “wartime controls.” Had anyone in Beijing officially acknowledged the disease long before they did, the world might have slowed or even contained the spread. 

By not declaring an emergency and warning the world, China was ensuring that the entire world would suffer; that the global economy would lose trillions, that millions of people would die or be permanently maimed, and that the entire global order would be upended. At the very least, this is grounds for major legal action. The United States government—every government in the world, actually—should sue China for damages

It might not get anywhere and, as the families of the 9/11 victims who sued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for their purported involvement in the 9/11 attacks showed, the case might not fundamentally change anything. 

But at least it would bring awareness of the existential threat that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses. This was the point of the 9/11 lawsuit: to raise awareness about what the victims’ families believed was Saudi malfeasance and the US government’s unwillingness to address that malfeasance. 

That’s not all, though. 

Making China Pay

In 2019, I advised Senator Rand Paul (R-TN) to champion the concept of defining any technology transfer from a US-based tech firm to China in order for that firm to gain access to China’s massive market as a bribe under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Sadly, this went nowhere because the world was soon distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Now that we’ve moved beyond those horrible days, I hope that the Republicans in Congress take this cause up with vigor. This move won’t stop all tech transfers, but it will slow them down because most US firms won’t want to deal with the constant harassment from the federal government for giving technology to Chinese entities in exchange for those US firms being given access to China’s market. 

This should be applied specifically to the biotechnology sector, which China’s leader President Xi Jinping has identified as a key industry for his “Made in China 2025” initiative. 

In 2019, Xi Jinping declared a “people’s war” on the United States. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that since that declaration, the Chinese have gotten more aggressive with the United States and that this disease erupted from the WIV. 

We may not have proof that the release of the disease was intentional, but we do know that Chinese strategists envisioned one day being able to use this technology as a weapon directed against America’s civil society and economy. Until we can prove malicious intent on the part of China’s leadership, American leaders do understand that China covered everything up for as long as possible—ensuring that the entire world would be afflicted with COVID-19. The least we can do is make them pay (literally).

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Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who serves as a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive.com. Weichert is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as a contributing editor at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower(Republic Book Publishers), The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (March 28), and Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Written By

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who recently became a writer for 19FortyFive.com. Weichert is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as a contributing editor at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (March 28), and Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

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