3 ms·

It's starting to feel like it would be news if it didn't happen

• usrusr 6y ago
  Right. Once a state has established a secretive organization to do nefarious things that org will keep doing, until it is disbanded and surprisingly often even after. They'll keep doing without too much thought about whether it makes sense on a political level, because those decisions are explicitly not their responsibility. In a closely related field it's not the army's job to decide whom to attack, it their job to be ready. The same applies to secretive orgs, they are just more difficult to control. Without decisive political effort to stop them when collaboration is preferred, intelligence people will keep gathering intelligence, propaganda people will keep invening lies, thought police will keep cracking down on communications (see the silencing of Dr Li Wenliang that was quickly rolled back once the topic escalated to people with decisionmaking in their job description) and offensive hackers will keep poking at servers. That's just how it is. It's not good at all, it's terrible, but it doesn't suddenly get worse than usual when it hits Covid-19 research. Surely the NSA wouldn't erase intercepted communications upon realizing that is about Covid-19, right?
• boomboomsubban 6y ago
  I imagine the FBI uncovered this by noticing US data in foreign states research centers.