Report: U.S. Intel Agencies Examine Genetic Data from Wuhan Lab in Search for Coronavirus Origins

A picture taken in a laboratory of the National Reference Center (CNR) for respiratory vir
THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images

American intelligence agencies have begun reportedly deciphering genetic data from the Wuhan Lab to confirm the origin of the Chinese coronavirus.

Still unclear how intelligence agencies obtained “access to the information,” the “giant catalog of information contains genetic blueprints drawn from virus samples studied at the lab in Wuhan,” CNN reported. “But the machines involved in creating and processing this kind of genetic data from viruses are typically connected to external cloud-based servers — leaving open the possibility they were hacked.”

A “source familiar with the investigation” told CNN the most valued data in the tranche is “genetic sequencing, database entries and contextual information about the provenance of the samples and the time and context in which they were acquired,” or in layman’s terms, intelligence that would be used to confirm the origins of the Chinese virus.

CNN continues to describe the challenges of deciphering the data:

Still, translating this mountain of raw data into usable information — which is only one part of the intelligence community’s 90-day push to uncover the pandemic’s origins — presents a range of challenges, including harnessing enough computing power to process it all. To do that, intelligence agencies are relying on supercomputers at the Department of Energy’s National Labs, a collection of 17 elite government research institutions.

There’s also a manpower issue. Not only do intelligence agencies need government scientists skilled enough to interpret complex genetic sequencing data and who have the proper security clearance, they also need to speak Mandarin, since the information is written in Chinese with a specialized vocabulary.

The genetic data of 22,000 virus samples from the Wuhan lab, which was deleted from the internet by China in 2019, has “long been sought” by the United States. China has, of course, withheld all of the raw data pertaining to early coronavirus cases.

Virologist at the Tulane University School of Medicine Dr. Robert Garry told CNN, “Basically in [a 2020 research paper published in Nature], the WIV talked about all the sequences they had up until a certain point in time — it’s what most scientists virologists believe, that’s pretty much what they had.”

The deleted data harkens back to a Wall Street Journal report in May that reported three researchers working for the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November of 2019.

Meanwhile, as the world waits to hold China responsible for the coronavirus, lawmakers in June became interested in a classified report which reportedly supports the theory the Chinese coronavirus originated from Wuhan’s Lab of Virology.

As Breitbart News reported, the top secret brief was published by researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 2020 and alleges the coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan lab.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believes the Chinese military was involved with research at the Wuhan Lab.

“That’s correct, and it is a high-confidence assessment that that’s the case,” Pompeo replied when asked in March.

The Chinese Communist Party militarization of science is supported by the State Department’s fact sheet released January 2021:

Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practice for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.

Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.

Whatever the linkage between scientists at the Wuhan lab and the Chinese Communist Party, the State Department’s fact sheet states the Chinese Communist Party has “systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation.”

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