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Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by rayiner on Saturday January 25, 2025 @04:58PM (#42825283)
As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.”

The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.

Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by Hikikomori on Saturday January 25, 2025 @08:12PM (#42826753)
Sure they could, they seem to be using chatgpt for executive orders so why not this.
Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by JumpCrisscross on Saturday January 25, 2025 @06:22PM (#42825978)
> they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days

CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.

Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by rayiner on Saturday January 25, 2025 @08:12PM (#42826750)
Could be that too. But that’s not a flattering comparison!
Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by oneshtein on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:16AM (#42828129)
Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception.
Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by JumpCrisscross on Sunday January 26, 2025 @02:59AM (#42828548)
> Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception

Multiple conclusions, not multiple investigations.

Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by mullingitover on Saturday January 25, 2025 @05:54PM (#42825765)
This assumes operatives haven’t been working on this plan long before the regime took office.
Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by ioulaum on Saturday January 25, 2025 @09:27PM (#42827151)
They say that there is no new data. That they are just altering their choice for what assumption is more likely.

Supposedly because they've had more time to think about the conditions of the lab before Covid was released...

But really, nothing has changed except their biases. Nothing has changed on the solid evidence side.

Separately, if there were actual safety issues and stuff was leaking... Then we're incredibly lucky that it was something as tame as Covid, and not one of the more serious kinds of horrors that gain of function research has successfully produced.

Re:CIA Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid's Origins by rayiner on Saturday January 25, 2025 @10:21PM (#42827421)
What change in “biases?” You think a government agency put together a new assessment in four days?