“It’s unclear whether those biological research facilities have defensive nonweapons like that anthrax that Ivins used to kill Americans or what exactly they do in their research facilities.”
“The Chinese recently called for more public transparency for military biological research in the US. Siding with the Chinese in their call for more public transparency for military biological research is socially awkward, so even people like Zvi who generally pro-biosafety and pre-independent thinking called the Chinese position a “nonsensical demand”.”
The US also has been publicly filing BWC confidence building measure reports for quite a while, and so China, which doesn’t make any of their CBM reports pubic, asking for more transparency, is a bit ridiculous.
Even when China currently doesn’t fill reports, a public position of “hey, we think there should be a treaty that does include reports and an UN agency to verify that no undisclosed research is happening” is possible in response to the Chinese.
It’s what Biden should say in response on the public stage.
OK, that’s a possible response to the Chinese, but it doesn’t change their position of demanding more transparency to be more coherent, given their lack of transparency around COVID and other issues compared to the transparency of the US and Ukraine. So I think Zvi was correct calling it nonsensical.
And to go back to the first point, if you had done the research, it’s very clear that Ukraine does have the “defensive nonweapon” pathogens in labs in Lviv, and similar pathogens in other BSL-3 labs, and they have said so publicly.
No, it isn’t. They have been filing BWC confidence building measure reports for quite a while, and making all of them public. https://bwc-ecbm.unog.ch/ukraine/bwccbm2021ukraine
The US also has been publicly filing BWC confidence building measure reports for quite a while, and so China, which doesn’t make any of their CBM reports pubic, asking for more transparency, is a bit ridiculous.
Even when China currently doesn’t fill reports, a public position of “hey, we think there should be a treaty that does include reports and an UN agency to verify that no undisclosed research is happening” is possible in response to the Chinese.
It’s what Biden should say in response on the public stage.
OK, that’s a possible response to the Chinese, but it doesn’t change their position of demanding more transparency to be more coherent, given their lack of transparency around COVID and other issues compared to the transparency of the US and Ukraine. So I think Zvi was correct calling it nonsensical.
And to go back to the first point, if you had done the research, it’s very clear that Ukraine does have the “defensive nonweapon” pathogens in labs in Lviv, and similar pathogens in other BSL-3 labs, and they have said so publicly.