Again, these are scientists. You really don't think one of them could move to a post at Stanford or wherever and spill the tea? No one has an old copy of an incriminating memo they can forward to a friend in Taipei? And regardless, the PRC does not in fact have a great record in the opsec department even within its military and espionage arms. How many "Chinese spies" get arrested every year?

Part of any conspiracy theory is positing a great totalitarian enemy who is able to keep all these important truths from The People. The PRC is economically large and somewhat questionably ambitious. It's absolutely not the kind of super state people want to imagine.

If the military was indeed involved, then it seems highly plausible that they would have been able to keep communications under control and that they would be able to repress a few dozen workers. Threats against them and their families would probably work pretty well.

> You really don't think one of them could move to a post at Stanford or wherever and spill the tea?

When? There's a pretty short window where a WIV scientist might have known the subject they were studying had escaped the lab before the PRC did. Certainly by January 2020 the PRC could've clamped down on those scientists.

Spies caught outside the country don't tell me much about internal operations.

ETA: I think my thinking here is pretty colored by Tank Man, whose name is unknown. The CCP claims they don't know anything about him. Even if that's true, presumably he had friends, family, and fellow protestors who have decided it would be a very bad idea to even give his name.

> You really don't think one of them could move to a post at Stanford or wherever and spill the tea? No one has an old copy of an incriminating memo they can forward to a friend in Taipei

Not after the top PLA vaccine researcher, Zhou Yusen died, allegedly "falling off the roof of the WIV" in May 2020. That sends a loud message.