> Many of the ads, which are mostly clips of CGTN newscasts, sprinkle in pro-Russia, anti-NATO talking points and downplay Russia's actions in launching an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.
The existence of biolabs is completely genuine. You can read more (from a .gov site) here [1]. They seem to have removed the fact-sheets from the site, but you can still access them on archive.org, like here [2]. The fact sheets don't have anything especially seedy on them but do confirm that the labs were funded by the US Department of Defense, and do work with pathogens.
Point being you don't need the quotes. There are definitely DoD built biolabs, and a surprisingly large amount of them.
> They seem to point to medical research to fight against diseases, rather than “biomilitary activities”.
They are dual use research. Just like research for nuclear energy is the same as research for nuclear weapons. Research for rockets is the same for icbms. It's why we are so keen on preventing iran from developing their nuclear energy program. It's why we are worried about north korea's "space" program. The same thing with cybersecurity. By learning to prevent cyberattacks, you are also learning how to carry out cyberattacks. And vice versa. You can't research against diseases/viruses/etc without procuring, creating and developing them.
Researching viruses in general is not a dual-use activity. Most viruses spread everywhere when they get out. Pathogens like anthrax can't spread from human to human, making them plausible weapons and proportionally decreasing the urgency of researching them. (The labs may have been researching anthrax but the odds are fair that none of their research involved anything that could be a weapon.)
Anthrax is a disease caused by a bacterium, not a virus.
Production of Bacillus anthracis spores for weapons use in the Soviet Union was in progress when an accident resulted in a release of spores that killed at least 66 people:
No, no bioweapon is a virus. You have toxin based or bacteria based bioweapons, but not any virus bioweapon yet. It's a bad idea, and an extremely difficult and costly operation to engineer a virus.
No, the point is that viral research is inherently dual-use regardless of intent: "You can't research against diseases/viruses/etc without procuring, creating and developing them."
I'm not even sure that's true. Knowing anything about viruses means you're better placed to try and use them as a weapon versus someone who does no research on them.
You can try and find specific counter examples, but I think the idea that most virus research, and scientific research in general, could likely be repurposed for bad or good, is probably pretty accurate in general.
Policing "bad" science while allowing "good" science is probably an impossible task.
>Just like research for nuclear energy is the same as research for nuclear weapons.
This is not entirely accurate. It's possible to run nuclear reactors without the capability for nuclear weapons - which, up until the collapse of Iran's deal with Western powers, was exactly what they were (meant to be) doing. You have to deliberately enrich uranium well past the point where it's useful for reactors before you start getting into weapon-making territory.
Nobody would characterise a nuclear energy plant in a Western country as a "nuclear weapons research facility", not least because the uranium involved is nowhere near weapons-grade.
> Nobody would characterise a nuclear energy plant in a Western country as a "nuclear weapons research facility"
By nobody you mean everybody, especially everybody outside of the west? It's funny how blinded we are by our false sense of moral superiority.
> not least because the uranium involved is nowhere near weapons-grade.
Last I checked, doesn't take that much technical effort or time going from "civilian" to militar/weapons grade. There are an entire class of nations classified as nuclear latent powers - about 20 or so nations who could piggy back off their "civilian" nuclear industry to nuclears weapons in weeks/months. Surprisingly, the list is made up primarily of western nations ( which nobody would characterize as having nuclear weapons research facilities ) and japan/south korea/etc.
Nuclear is a bad example because of enrichement differences.
Any BSL4 lab can have multiple uses depending on the mission of the employees. They can easily be used as bioweapon labs, I haven't seen any good pushback on this idea.
I agree that you can run nuclear reactors without the capability for nuclear weapons. However, investment in nuclear reactors and in nuclear research reduces the cost of nuclear weapons, so they are indeed dual-use.
Of course, no one characterizes nuclear energy plants in Western countries as nuclear weapons research facilities, but it's perfectly reasonable to say they are dual-use. This isn't limited to nuclear energy, the term is also applicable to various things such as civilian aviation, image recognition technology, advanced metallurgy, camera technology etc...
So I don't think you really disagree with who you're replying to. Yes, the facilities aren't exactly what you need, but they're a big step towards that, and generally research in the domain has a fair degree of applicability.
> Just like research for nuclear energy is the same as research for nuclear weapons.
This is absurdly untrue.
This is an error to the level of claiming that programming language research is the same as video game manual writing, and then trying to justify it as "but they both involve computers"
> The U.S. Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks (deliberate, accidental, or natural) of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases. The program accomplishes its bio-threat reduction mission through development of a bio-risk management culture; international research partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures. The Biological Threat Reduction Program’s priorities in Ukraine are to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats
Threat Reduction Program? Wow, that sounds familiar.
"Of the $41.91 million, $37.61 million was awarded to EcoHealth Alliance by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which describes its mission as “to protect the United States and its allies by enabling the DoD and international partners to detect, deter, and defeat WMD and threat networks.”"
The National Security Council's Pandemic Response Team, which would have integrated and coordinated warnings from such offices in the early days of the Coronavirus spread, was eviscerated in 2018. They tried to raise the alarm anyway, but were ignored: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-fired-pandemic...
Given the phrase “deliberate, accidental, or natural”, basically anywhere.
The two hypotheses about the origins of COVID are natural (wet market) and accidental (lab leak). Back when “The War On Terror” was the political Zeitgeist-meme, there was at least one anthrax attack (deliberate), and I remember suggestions that terrorists might also try to trigger foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks or algal blooms (it may not surprise you to learn that the latter was suggested by someone looking for government funding for their existing research into algal blooms).
Everywhere else? The environment, geopolitical opponents.
Bioweapons defense is pretty fuzzy, as until recently you generally had to study a strain for a long amount of time to develop and test an effective vaccine. Which means you have to have a representative strain. Which means you either need to get one... or create your best guess.
All while the environment and/or your adversary are doing god knows what out of your sight.
Miracles like a vaccine-in-a-year don't just happen. They build on decades of research and preparedness.
Research on infectious disease & co. is a big part of military research because servicemen operate all across the world, including areas where they are exposed to diseases that are uncommon in the US, or that have been eradicated. That is, of course, on top of all the diseases that fall under "chemical warfare" and for which you have to be able to treat your people (both military and civilian), and afflictions associated with crowded areas in general (besieged cities and the like).
I obviously don't know what the labs mentioned by the parent poster were doing but the fact that the US DoD (or any country's department of defense) does medical research should be about as surprising as the fact that they do research on explosives.
The DoD funds a lot of medical research to improve combat readiness. When I was an academic researcher, we were working on a project that was partially DoD funded to develop a diagnostic device which was meant for personalizing medication for patients undergoing cardiac procedures, but the military was interested in using it for developing personalized versions of QuikClot for soldiers who experienced battlefield trauma.
I also worked for a company which had several novel therapeutics for agents commonly used in bioweapons in their pipeline and the DoD was funding parts of that as well.
It's also worth noting that science funding in the US government is decentralized. Each branch of the military as well as a half dozen "civilian" departments each have their own separate programs for funding basic science research. If I recall correctly, when I was an undergraduate research assistant working for a cognitive psychologist studying how humans solve the traveling salesman problem, that research was funded by the US Navy.
So the DOD funding research could mean it thought the research could mean it had potential as a weapon, or a defense against weapons, or was just a random thing being funded to promote basic science research.
You can't really draw a line from "This was funded by this department, so it had this intent" in US science funding.
To defend against biological weapons. The DoD is responsible for defending the US against all kinds of attacks -- conventional, nuclear, chemical, and biological -- even if it doesn't use all of those weapon types itself.
> even if it doesn't use all of those weapon types itself.
US has changed to a limited interpretation of what a biological weapon is, and considers non-deadly biological agents to not be bioweapons when it comes to treaties banning them.
That makes sense. The only bioweapon we were routinely trained on is tear gas, so if they're building stuff on level with tear gas I wouldn't be surprised. The other type of bioweapon that your second link mentioned is microbes that eat through structural material. This looks like it's purposed for breaching, which makes sense given how dangerous breaching is today.
The US DoD funds a lot of peaceful science at labs around the world. This is often misinterpreted by laymen as "weapons labs" when they are just normal civilian labs. Not all research funded by the military is directly applicable to weapons. A lot of times its applicable to defense against said weapons. Which also has application in the civilian medical field.
As evidenced by covid 19, pandemics are a matter of national security. I like to think that the DoD is interested in developing novel ways to fight novel pathogens, rather than use them as weapons. That said, I am under no illusion that the DoD or any government institution should be simply taken at their word either.
The other comments already answer this question. But I'd like to add just how massive the DoD is. It's not like how one might imagine a typical military, where the government is basically funding an entity to pay soldiers' salaries, pay for their equipment, and basic necessities and not much else. The DoD on a macro level doesn't really skimp on anything, from research on how climate change will affect its mission to dealing with overwhelming quantities of rust.
Plus historically, there are plenty of wars where disease was more deadly than enemy combatants.
mRNA vaccine technology was funded out of a DARPA program (from memory, ADEPTS?) to rapidly develop and deploy vaccines to novel pathogens. Circa 2015 or earlier?
At the time, pandemic influenza was the best guess, but the point of the platform and the program was to rapidly address any pathogen.
Crucial question: does the DoD fund equivalent labs in other countries too, or is Ukraine an outlier?
If such activity is just business as usual for the DoD in every country, then it certainly weakens the case for anything nefarious happening specifically in relation to Ukraine.
It's not really a crucial question - the use or not in other countries doesn't change how stupid an idea it is. But, to answer you, it's mostly in former eastern block countries. It seems to be mostly funding (and technical assistance) for the Ukrainians to build their internal version of the CDC, although it seems to also act as monies to secure any leftover Soviet bioweapons.
Military veterans here would know that NBC (the DoD’s umbrella acronym for Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) threats and defensive postures against them are constantly ingrained into the individual soldier’s training regimen. It starts from boot camp. Every recruit becomes familiar with the lovely pepper spray gas chamber encounter. NBC is taken very seriously in the training doctrine. It probably stems from the horrible use of chlorine gas during WW1. Russia has a few NBC favorites that they’ve used—sarin gas, novichok, litvinenko tea to name a few.
>Nuclear, Biological, Chemical threats and defensive postures
The Department of Defense is a misleading name since it spent a large % of its historical budget on offense and invasion. The use of the words 'defensive and defense' are always misleading in the US context and should not be taken literally in my opinion. US history makes this clear.
So why would they mention a "biolab" in Ukraine unless to imply that it somehow poses a threat to Russia? Or did they also mention that there are post offices in Ukraine?
This exact same website that is posted by OP (Axios) reported:
Ukraine warns Chernobyl nuclear plant is without power [1]
Now, most experts say there is nothing to worry about. Why did they report this unless to imply that it somehow poses a threat to the world? Or did they also mention that there are post offices in Ukraine without power?
This "implication" of what the fake news propaganda articles are trying to say, is that there is some WMD superweapon being developered by Ukraine to genetically target Russians. Like that disease in the new James Bond movie.
That is the part that is clearly the fake propaganda. The US and Ukraine are not working together to design a disease meant to genetically target Russians, like from the movie James Bond.
Ignoring the James Bond qualifier makes this scenario completely plausable. It is not clear that the US would not weaponize bioagents as one of the leading bioweapon manufacturers in human history.
> Ignoring the James Bond qualifier makes this scenario completely plausable
No its not. It is not plausible at all. Just think about this for a second.
People in eastern europe are genetically similar to russians. Why would they make a super weapon, to kill off people with slavic DNA, when such a super weapon would target much of its own population as well?
The conspiracy doesn't make any sense even if you assume supervillian levels of evilness.
I don't keep track of every place that is spreading each specific conspiracy theory. But the point of this example, is to just give a one-off example describing this conspiracy in general.
You included a conspiracy theory that no one in this thread brought up for what purpose?
I can only see it as an attempt to deflect, undermine, distract from the core points of this exchange, which makes it a bad faith approach on your part, in my opinion.
The thread is about conspiracies being peddled by the russian government, state media, and other bad actors. And yes there absolutely are conspiracies, related to this idea of bio-superweapons that are being peddled by bad actors.
Instead, it is other people attempting to deflect from the very real issue of conspiracies being peddled by these bad actors.
So yes, the original point about all of this, is about fake propaganda being spread. And yes that is an issue, as demonstrated by the example that I gave.
You and others just have to admit that yes fake propaganda, being spread by bad actors, is a real issue, which is the core point.
The idea that these bad actors are speading a bunch of mis-info, and half truths, to justify an invasion should be pretty obvious, IMO.
>And here’s CGTN’s article on “biolabs” in Ukraine, citing Russia media outlets and official
There are biolabs in the Ukraine, as confirmed by Nuland in the Senate hearings. Whether they have bio-weapons or medical research, who knows, but you can perhaps understand that the Russians might be concerned?
What's really amazing about this story that only days ago it was painted as a Q-anon theory. Turns out it was real. We are neck deep in propaganda from all directions, but most people think it's only coming from the Russian side.
There's a reason "dual purpose" exists as a term. Most American grade schools have "hacking devices", should we define that to be any computer.
And at this point, the Russians have demostrated a clear willingness to lie about anything in pursuit of their geopolitical agenda (see: months of explicit denial of preparing for a Ukrainian invasion, by all levels of their government, in official statements).
Russia is concerned that the US stepped in to make sure the post soviet labs didn't fall into the hands of terrorist or that ukraine continued weapons research?
Yes, but during that same hearing when Victoria Nuland was asked about biological weapons facilities, she explicitly confirmed to Sen. Rubio that she is 100% confident that _if there is to be a biological weapon or incident inside the Ukraine, it will definitely be the Russians who are behind it_.
That's GlobalTimes. I know they are both state media, but we are talking CGTN here.
> citing Russia media outlets and officials
I bet I can find them quoting US or Ukrainian media outlets and officials too. Should media not report what countries fighting a war claim? It's not like Western media consistently gets it right (e.g. deaths on snake island) by reporting only the pro-Ukrainian side.
> They peddle Russia’s claim that US has bioweapons
Why link to Newsweek instead of the actual CGTN post? I am less interested what Western media claims CGTN says than proof of what they actually say.
> It's not like Western media consistently gets it right (e.g. deaths on snake island) by reporting only the pro-Ukrainian side.
You're acting like an anti-Ukrainian position exists, to be discussed.
What position other than pro-victim would you like to see reported on, please?
It seems like you're very new here, and the only thing you've discussed is the Russia situation, or trying to make it look like it's reasonable to listen to state media to learn what's happening, by contrasting state propaganda to a disgraced magazine that was sold for a dollar to the daily beast ten years ago, then to religious extremists
Russia has invaded another country without provocation, and is shelling civilians, children's schools, hospitals, and grocery lines.
What pro-Russian spin would you like to see, specifically, please, new anonymous account? Thanks.
----
An aside: I am of the opinion that if websites like Facebook and Twitter don't get their fake account problem under control, laws will be coming to do it for them, and if those laws are written by politicians, it's going to go really badly for UGC websites
If you read the Newsweek article carefully, the bioweapon claim is from Igor Konashenkov.
CGTN only calls it “military biological program”. So technically not the same, but of course CGTN wants to give the same impression to keep spreading misinformation.
How so? If it leaked from a lab, it is almost certainly from the Wuhan lab. The Wuhan lab was a joint French-Chinese operation. Before COVID-19, EcoHealth (an organization with ties to the Wuhan lab) applied for a grant from DARPA to perform gain-of-function-esque research on COVID[1]. DARPA denied the application.
Other scientists contacted by The Intercept noted that there is published evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was already engaged in some of the genetic engineering work described in the proposal and that viruses designed in North Carolina could easily be used in China. “The mail is filled with little envelopes with plasmid dried on to filter paper that scientists routinely send each other,” said Jack Nunberg, director of the Montana Biotechnology Center at the University of Montana.
Even if we could blame American incompetence for the 1m death Americans, they can't be blamed for the pandemic as a whole. That does not make sense. The virus started spreading from China to dozens of countries before it even became a pandemic in the US.
Some analyst will someday pull together a fault tree weighted by deaths and economic harm, and America’s share will (based on current trends) certainly weigh heavier than most.
Way to skirt around the fact that nothing points to it having come from America or being due to it. Even if incompetence allowed it to spread it was already global when it reached the US.
Some analyst will someday pull together a fault tree weighted by deaths and economic harm, and America’s share will (based on current trends) certainly weigh heavier than most.
No laughable as in anyone who reads your comments sees that you’re outright lying. You quoted a paragraph about wuhan lab leaks as proof America was somehow responsible for covid. This stuff works on Facebook or Reddit where no one actually reads linked sources or quotes, it doesn’t work here.
Edit: "The US has an interest in biolabs in Ukraine" - I feel like this is a pretty useless nit to pick.
(Sorry for the twitter source. It's a video of Marco Rubio, a US senator, talking to Victoria Nuland)
The US is basically warning that Russia plans to release stuff from these labs and blame the Ukrainians for it. Kindof the same thing they were supposedly doing with Chernobyl. If that's Russian propaganda, then the propaganda has gotten to pretty senior levels of the state department.
edit: look I'm definitely not some Chinese misinfo spreader. I think that weaponization of social media, weaponization of the news, and weaponization of human emotion is basically the next version of nuclear weapons. That is: a new type of weapon that will (and is) completely change(ing) the war landscape. I think that sort of weapon is in use now, and the use will only increase. You've already seen Russia ban facebook for their citizens, China has their great firewall, and strict control over their citizens social media. It's here.
But I think the people who are trying to reach for these claims about bioweapons labs, or "bio labs" or perhaps no labs at all, are the ones spreading misinformation. That ambiguity and division that you are creating by spreading these lies is the problem. This desire to attack people's ability to interpret simple statements, and read the plain meaning of those simple statements is an attack on people's ability to resist this propaganda.
Is the US concerned that the materials in these labs could fall into the hands of the Russians? Also yes.
These are facts. Acknowledging these facts does not make you a Q anon conspiracy theorist, a Trump supporter, or anything else. These things are just nakedly true.
Now once you've acknowledged these things as simply true, you can get to the question of "is this a problem?" - To be clear, in my opinion: no these things are not necessarily a problem. Yes the US runs bio weapons labs in Ukraine. We do it for reasons that people have indicated in some of their comments. These are defensive in nature.
There's a question about if human beings generally should be studying this, but that is independent to the question about the US running biolabs (studying weapons...so...bioweapons labs) in Ukraine. You HAVE to acknowledge these truths. It should be obvious that having a good ability to separate truth from fiction is the way to defend against the type of propaganda that I outlined above. Twisting yourselves into knots to not accidentally acknowledge some information which is blatantly true, is how the propaganda is allowed to spread. It is an attack on your sense making ability. Please stop doing this.
The U.S. also has biolabs in China, or funds them, or has enough involvement that it's equivalent to what they're doing in Ukraine so maybe Russia should invade China next using their own biolab justification.
She says that she's concerned that Russia soldiers will take control of the materials in these labs and release it into Ukraine as a false flag, and that the US is working with them to secure these places.
It seems like we're getting into some really weird definitions of weapons if that doesn't count as a "weapon".
Biological material, especially if it is disease related, can be easily misused. This sounds like the effort the USA had 20+ years ago in helping Ukraine in securing and eliminating their nuclear arsenal. Not because the USA was interested in more nuclear weapons, but because they didn’t want terrorist getting ahold of them.
You are linking some links that don't imply what you imply. Yes, there are biolabs, and yes, some of them are Army-affiliated because COVID happened in the army, and yes, UA Army works with DoD. But there is no connection whatsoever there with the "US-made bioweapons" or even "bioweapons" in general so basically you are just promoting conspiracy.
I did not make any statements about existence of bioweapons.
You said “There is nothing in the video saying the biolabs belong to the US, stop spreading conspiracy misinformation.”
I pointed out that there is in fact US DoD funded research in Ukrainian bio labs.
I have no idea if they are making bioweapons. I can’t prove that they are, you can’t prove that they aren’t. But I do know that Victoria Nuland stated in that twitter video that whatever they got in those labs can be used as bioweapons, so on that point I think it’s an argument of semantics.
Funded by the DoD under antiproliferation because these were former soviet bioweapons labs. Why do people keep leaving this out? Seems pretty important to me
Simply because I did not know why the DoD was funding them. So thank you for that.
Also any time the DoD (or any gov entity anywhere in the world) claims “we are doing this only for the seemingly good purpose A” there is generally a much bigger purpose B, C, and D that they don’t mention.
That post you linked is itself spreading misinformation. Notice how it retreats to the argumentative "motte" of bio labs - which are not a secret - while contextually purporting to support the claim that the US is developing bio weapons in Ukraine, which itself is misinformational support for the propaganda line used domestically in Russia, that the bioweapons the US is allegedly developing in Ukraine will be used to attack Russia.
I understand the urge to apply neutrality here but the fact is that the priors simply do not support a good faith interpretation of what we know is coming from the Russian state propaganda apparatus.
The Chinese ad didn't mention bioweapons, Newsweek did. Trying to discredit a real fact (the US has biolabs in ukraine) by attacking a strawman (they didn't have bioweapons there! It'sall fake news!) is what's Newsweek is trying to do. There is a motte and Bailey here but it's not coming from the russians in this case, as opposed to what you are saying.
They weren't in Ukraine. They were in the People's Republic of Donetsk or the People's Republic of Luhansk. They voted overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine in 2014 after the nationalists overthrew the government took over in Kiev.
Unless the vote was with neutral ( international) observers, which it wasn't, a vote under foreign military occupation is bullshit of the highest order.
So what exactly did they say?