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US-China relations
China

US lawmakers press intelligence chiefs on origins of coronavirus, threat from TikTok

  • Ex-CDC chief urges push to show what data intelligence community has, ‘where they got it, who their informants were and what their conclusions were’
  • On TikTok, FBI director asserts data collection through popular video app is available to Chinese officials amid support for nationwide ban

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US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines appears before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats on Wednesday. Photo: EPA-EFE
Robert Delaney,Orange Wangin WashingtonandMark Magnierin New York

Republican lawmakers on Wednesday stepped up pressure on the US intelligence community to declare a Chinese lab leak as Covid-19’s most likely origin, in a day of congressional hearings about national security threats posed by China.

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The coronavirus’ origins emerged as one of the most contentious issues in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that otherwise displayed relative unity between Republicans and Democrats. Other topics included the perceived dangers of TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, and the need to subject US outbound investment to national security reviews.
Citing a recently changed assessment on the matter by the US Department of Energy, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said she was “disturbed” by the intelligence community’s placement of the lab leak and natural exposure theories as equally plausible explanations. She has said previously that a Wuhan lab leak was the “most likely cause”.

“It is disturbing to me that … you say all agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible explanations for the origin of Covid – natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” Collins told Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence. “That’s one of those statements that’s technically true, but misleading.”

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Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters

Nature or lab leak? Why tracing the origin of Covid-19 matters
Collins also cited the police’s silencing of Dr Li Wenliang, one of the first people to alert the public about the coronavirus outbreak, and his subsequent death from Covid-19 as reasons not to trust the Chinese government’s explanation of events.
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Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, pushed Haines to explain why the intelligence leaders could not make a definitive assessment about Covid-19’s origins, despite “a lot of circumstantial evidence” pointing to the FBI’s conclusion that a lab leak was more likely than natural exposure.

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