One of the things that surprises me is that there is not major blowback with regard to biological labs. If a bank collapses due to poor management, there is what some would call a hysterical call for improved regulation. Five people were shot in New Zealand and it becomes critical to have tougher gun regulation. Whether you agree with these calls for regulation or not, it seems odd that there isn’t a massive world wide effort to insure millions of people are not killed due to stupidity.
Hysteria is driven by the media and there was no media hysteria about biological research. In fact it was the exact opposite with the media proclaiming it was a conspiracy theory and trying to silence any discussion. This was a hat tip to the virus being lab created and that it is likely that the US was involved in some way. This isn’t proof of anything, but it should raise “spidey senses”. There should be huge concerns about biological labs regardless of whether this specific virus was lab generated and it should have been and should be a major topic. No less than nuclear arms.
US funding of research in China may be used to aid in intelligence gathering that some may think is legitimate. Otherwise someone needs to explain why the US would be funding this research in any country? Do we fund nuclear research in China, Iran, North Korea, etc? When something has the potential to be as devastating, it doesn’t matter to me that there could be very positive outcomes of the research. Fund the research in the US and provide the good results to the rest of the world. I am sure collaboration enhances research results, but an explanation of why this enhancement more than offsets the danger is needed. No hand waving allowed.
We accept hand waving and BS. For Fauci and the rest, the question is did you provide funding to China and is there any gain in function or any other dangerous research being done or likely to be being done in China? They are not magical dollars that are sorted out and spent separately. If I give money to terrorist and say it is only to be used for food, do I get a pass on funding terrorism?
If EcoHealth is a government cut out or it knowingly aided intelligence or military operators, it needs to provide that information so that these agencies are held accountable. I wouldn’t clear a company funding research that thought the research wasn’t dangerous if they should reasonable know that this could assist dangerous research. Reasonably know should be a pretty high standard. With 20/20 hindsight, it is easy to think something should have been reasonably known so maybe I am over simplifying. However, does anyone think it is reasonable to fund AI research in China and not reasonably know there could be devastating consequences?
Funding research or providing technology that is obviously dangerous in foreign lands should be a major concern for private companies. These companies know with certainty that they cannot protect the technology. It will be stolen. Given the technology will be stolen, it doesn’t take much of a brain to answer the next question. When stolen, can it lead to devastating consequences?
I doubt that any company seriously considers this. Fifteen to twenty years ago I was in a meeting with executives. The topic was investing in China. Why would we do this given we know they will steel the technology and we have no recourse? The answer was not a debate on whether the technology could be protected. The answer was if we don’t invest in China, we cannot sell in China and China is a big market. This was not technology with life or death consequences. Only consequences for the corporation 10 to 20 years down the line.
Something needs to change. On the one hand, we have lawsuits that bankrupt companies hurting hundreds of thousands of innocent people that are not based on facts and are just a money grabs decided by people that have no competency to understand the information they are provided. On the other hand, we have highly overpaid executives and government officials that do massive harm and face no consequences. In the case of the government officials they use the incompetent Sergeant Schultz defense of I don’t recall. Maybe make incompetence not an excuse to avoid criminal punishment. It would help solve the incompetency crisis. You might not be so hell bent on being in charge when you realize your incompetence might land you in the poor house or the hoosegow.
