Food security is national security
which dovetailed with Baric's 2019 trip to China
The FBI recently arrested two Chinese postdocs. The headlines claimed “agroterrorism.” They smuggled a dangerous biological pathogen into the US that could cripple the economy, threaten the food supply, and endanger American lives.
Rutgers bacteriologist Richard Ebright said they “smuggled” a fungus already spread in North America. The Chinese postdocs in Michigan had published several papers on this specific fungus. They are guilty of not filling out the importation forms, but the fungus is not on any plant pathogen watch list.
Thus, this incident was more akin to a science fair experiment (safer than virologists vaccinating bats) than international espionage.
The incident occurred in July 2024, a year ago, but no arrest or fuss was made. In February 2025, the FBI seized the Chinese postdoc's phones and found a loyalty pledge to the Chinese Communist Party. But according to the US government’s radio channel in Asia:
Tens of thousands of Chinese students studying overseas on government-backed scholarships are required to sign a document pledging loyalty to the ruling Communist Party and putting up guarantors who could be forced to repay their funding should they break the agreement before arriving at overseas universities.
When asked about funding overseas gain-of-function experiments, RFK Jr. claimed that all funding had stopped. GoF funding is technically not banned in the US, but it is banned in China.
Then his USDA colleague, Brooke Rollins, pivoted to every government’s favorite line: food security is national security! Virologists on both sides of the Pacific Ocean also claimed “food security” to secure government funding of their risky GoF research.
From Substack post #1:
Pork & poultry biosecurity is both US & China national security
China’s meat production once depended on small rural farms, but today, they can cannot meet modern biosecurity standards (bird nets, roofs, boots, etc). Illicit vaccines are thought to have caused accidental pig infections causing rising pork prices. Consumption has also tripled in the past two decades and suffered some serious disease setbacks.
A 2013 coronavirus, 99% similar to a Chinese strain, had evolved around the local pig vaccine and wiped out 10% of US pork production.
A 2016 SARS-like bat virus was blamed for infecting pork farms in China, where food security was national security. What you thought was a drug-sniffing dog at the international airport was looking for illegal pork.
In early 2019, Ralph Baric traveled to a Chinese veterinary research center. A meeting took place between the two largest pork and poultry producers worldwide on “combating infectious diseases and further enhancing cooperation between China and USA.”
Baric was in China in early 2019, discussing animal vaccines to prevent the next SARS-like outbreak. In his presentation to Chinese virologists, Baric asked if they could “predict” and intervene in a virus jumping species. He noted that a “cleavage site” had been identified for avian disease emergence in a new species. He inquired about “deliberate design” to create novel animal vaccines but concluded there may be “unintended consequences.”
Those unintended consequences led to the creation of Covid. Exactly one year later, Baric testified that he noticed the SARS2 furin cleavage site (FCS), and his Defuse colleague, Linfa Wang from Duke, resigned. However, Baric continued to lie by omission.
In February 2020, Baric updated congressional staff on the Covid pandemic he helped create. He failed to mention the FCS or his 2018 DARPA Defuse proposal to insert one.
Baric discussed his favorite subject, Chinese bats and American pigs. Modern sequencing technology traced a US pig coronavirus (PEDV in 2012) back to Chinese bats (SADS).
In June 2017, Peter Daszak and Shi Zhengli visited DARPA and NIAID offices. In October, they attended a biodefense conference with Fauci. Daszak then emailed Fauci to tell him about Chinese bats infecting Chinese pigs, which could infect American pigs.
SADS (pig diarrhea) is a sister virus to SARS and is used as justification for funding projects like DARPA Defuse. SADS was mentioned 50 times in that bid. Why bother vaccinating the Chinese and American pigs? Let’s vaccinate the Chinese bats! Fauci edited an EcoHealth bat vaccine paper on January 8, 2020.
Fauci was obsessed with bats, Baric was obsessed with SADS and SARS, and Daszak was obsessed with money. In 2018, they lost the $14M DARPA Defuse grant for the US military to protect their “warfighter.” In 2019, they split that bid for Fauci and focused on “food security.”
Daszak and Baric brilliantly reissued their rejected 2018 DARPA Defuse bid into Fauci’s 2019 budget, thus creating COVID-19.
Who created Covid: WIV vs UNC?
Steven Quay’s preprint presents a false dilemma:
Hypothesis A: SARS2 was engineered at UNC, then shipped to Wuhan, where the outbreak began
Hypothesis B: The virus was created or evolved at the WIV (Shi's BSL2) and leaked
No room for nuance since Dani Anderson’s BSL4 role is omitted. In 2018, Baric said he would create SARS2 (HKU3-Smix with ~25% spike divergence, FCS, six segments) and Dani would test his novel chimera on live Chinese horseshoe bats in Wuhan BSL4.
Therefore, #1, 2, 3 & 7 are still valid below, but #4 Shi used Vero, which deletes FCS; Baric used HAE, which grows FCS. #5 Baric testified FCS was his idea "full stop." #6 Unlike Shi & RaTG13, Baric has never disclosed his UNC freezer.
Regarding #8 below, Baric patented the SARS2 genome in 2018. For #9, Baric omitted the FCS in US government statements. #10 is false because Covid doesn’t infect humanized mice. #11 is false since WA1 links Baric/Munster bat research. #12 is false because there were no Chinese military or CCP scientists in Wuhan before 2020. #13 supports UNC. For #14, Shi used BAC, not Baric’s cDNA and Type IIS restriction sites. #15-16 are valid, but #17 is false because Shi's Vero cells delete the FCS.
Regarding #19 below, Baric testified that he never shared his cDNA technology with WIV but would share his genomes with Linfa Wang and Dani Anderson of Duke.
The Bayesian model remains worthless.
RFK Jr on lab leak
The health secretary also alleged that the WHO “worked with China to promote the fiction that Covid originated from bats or pangolins, rather than from Chinese government-sponsored research at a biolab in Wuhan.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/20/rfk-jr-pandemic-covid-china-un-00358464
RFK Jr. criticized Fauci and GoF while out of power but ignores Fauci’s role while in power. The old-school Fauci supported the animal model, and funding for grants relied on it.
NIH Monkey Island is still open
A remote South Carolina island that is home to as many as 3,500 research monkeys poses so many “potentially life-threatening situations” that caretakers must bar the public and prosecute trespassers, according to federal contract documents reviewed by The Post and Courier.
History of dog experiments
The beagle has sacrificed much for biomedical research—was it worth it?
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv2848
If Fauci infected beagles in Tunisia…would he experiment on bats in Wuhan?
Cats, marbles and DARPA
Rand Paul’s office had the dirty details of the nasty $10M cat experiment.
DARPA told to take risks in 2016
Over the last several years, some Members of Congress, think tanks, and others have expressed concern that the U.S. military is losing its technical superiority due, in part, to the proliferation of technologies outside the defense sector and the inability of DoD to effectively incorporate and exploit commercial innovations. To address this concern, Congress established an Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in 2016 that “would take risks, press the technology envelope, test and experiment, and have the latitude to fail, as appropriate.”
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R45088.pdf
Jeff Bezos’ grandfather helped create DARPA
This makes DARPA Defuse sound tame
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
US firebombing of Wuhan during WW2
The Japanese controlled Wuhan in 1944, which was near US airbases in China, and Chinese generals were onboard with the bombing.
US bombing of Iran
The stealth B-2 bombers used a “BATT” call sign while refueling over the Atlantic Ocean. This reminded me of the Pentagon’s disastrous bat bomb, which used Mexican free-tailed bats that COVID infects.