The covid lab-leak theory is back thanks to geopolitics

On Sunday, 26 February, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the US Department of Energy in a report had concluded, although with “low confidence”, that the covid virus that has killed millions of people across the world “most likely” originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

Two days later, Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was much more forceful. “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” He also accused the Chinese regime of “doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate” the agency’s investigation.

Interestingly, American left-liberal politicians and almost all of US mainstream media vehicles have ridiculed, vilified and actively suppressed the lab-leak theory ever since it was first suggested in the early days of the pandemic. As is now known, under direct instructions from the US government, Facebook and Twitter tweaked their algorithms to muffle posts pushing the theory and de-platformed thousands of users. Leading medical journals like Lancet and Nature refused to publish papers written by scientists who had studied the virus and concluded that it could have been engineered in a laboratory.

The media establishment in the West discredited the hypothesis as a “fringe conspiracy theory,” “irresponsible” and “racist”. This had a cascading effect across the globe since media in the rest of world often takes cues from the Western press and depends on it for a good deal of information and opinion.

But in recent months, there has been a perceptible shift of attitudes. Many commentators have been tying themselves up in knots to convince their audiences that yes, there could be something to the lab-leak theory, but they had not been wrong when they junked it.

Their main contention while rejecting the lab-leak possibility was that “science” ruled it out. Now they claim that they did not have enough facts at the time. This is a lame argument. They had claimed perfect knowledge of the origin of the virus—that it was born in the natural world—and summarily rejected all arguments (like the virus’ unusual protein spikes and mutation patterns) that contradicted them, without even glancing through the research.

Over the last week, some leading commentators have begun to admit the real reason for their thoughts and actions, though they are still trying to justify what they did. Was it their visceral hatred for Donald Trump, who supported the lab-leak theory? To these intellectuals, Trump is Satan incarnate and anything that he said had to be derided. Even discussing the lab-leak notion was seen as abetting not only Trump, but also far-right extremists and Caucasian racists. There was also a presidential election looming where Trump needed to be defeated.

Naomi Oreskes, America’s most distinguished science historian alive, now says that the theory may be plausible, but “some of the people promoting the claim (led by Trump) were irrational”. She then makes an astonishing statement: “We all judge messages by the messenger.” This is a total denial of all that the scientific method stands for. By that logic, we should reject the double helix structure of DNA because one of its discoverers, James Watson, is widely seen as a racist, chauvinist and homophobe. As also the laws of gravity, since Isaac Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and other occult sciences.

The debunking of the lab-leak theory was never about science. It was solely about politics and the ideological and cultural divide that is ripping through American society. Rationality and science were the victims.

But we should also take note of the timing of these revelations. It is now one year since Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Many European economies are in serious trouble and their citizens may be getting tired of the privations caused by a faraway war. A large majority of countries across the world want an end to the conflict as quickly as possible through negotiations. Most importantly for America, the war has pushed Moscow closer to Beijing, and a China-Russia coalition is the biggest long-term threat that the West faces. In fact, the war may be aiding China in its global superpower ambitions, which took a beating during the pandemic. The US seems to have realized this, though a bit belatedly.

On 18 February, US Vice-President Kamala Harris said that Washington was “troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow since the war began”. On 20 February, secretary of state Antony Blinken said that China plans to supply weaponry to Russia and “that could cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship”. A few days later, the lab leak theory was officially resurrected. It is unlikely that FBI chief Wray would have spoken as he did without getting orders to change direction from his bosses. After all, it was the same FBI under the same Wray that got Facebook and Twitter to censor lab-leak posts.

The US government’s acknowledgement after two years of denial of the possible validity of the lab-leak hypothesis could be its latest move in a grand geopolitical game. It may have little to do with any commitment to unearthing the truth about how and where the virus was actually born.