Dwight Eisenhower’s final public address as president is best-remembered for his warning about the rise of the military-industrial complex. But contained within his speech was another stark prophecy, one which has largely been forgotten yet remains just as significant. The “domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, allocations, and the power of money” is a grave threat, he cautioned. “Public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
And so the biological-industry complex was also born, swept into being as the US started to reckon with the inevitability of biological warfare and bioterrorism — an inevitability that arrived just one week after 9/11, when envelopes of inhalation anthrax were mailed around the country. But, as with the military-industrial complex, the emergence of America’s biodefense infrastructure was about much more than defending against potential threats. It was about anticipating them, understanding them, spying on them, and creating them. In many ways, the sense of urgency echoed the Manhattan Project, which showed just how quickly a “scientific-technological elite” could coalesce around a military project of strategic value. Consequently, American biodefence today spans the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, the FBI, the State Department, and the Intelligence Community (not to mention state-level agencies).
Curiously, however, it also appears to have spread into American foreign aid. In April, Samantha Power, the former human rights activist and Obama hand now serving as administrator of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Rand Paul asked: “Did USAID fund coronavirus research in Wuhan?” In response, Power was evasive, referring repeatedly to USAID funding of the Wuhan lab having taken place “before my time”. But Power’s testimony raises a much bigger question: Why was USAID funding risky research in a Chinese lab that the US Department of Energy and the FBI now assess to be the source of Covid at all?
Since the heady days of the pandemic, when top scientists resorted to burner phones and clandestine meetings, journalists have uncovered thousands of pages of redacted emails, deleted virus sequences, and concealed events related to the outbreak of Covid. Among the key revelations of this years-long investigation was the enormous sums of US government funding spent on risky virus research around the world, but with a particular emphasis on China. The vast majority of this money was funnelled through a New York-based NGO called EcoHealth Alliance, led by British zoologist Peter Daszak. And by far the largest portion of US money channelled through EcoHealth — no less than $65 million — came from USAID. Not even the pandemic could put a stop to investment. As recently as late 2021, well after EcoHealth Alliance had been rebuked by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for improper practices regarding its funding of the Wuhan lab, USAID gave EcoHealth Alliance a further $4.67 million.
This was merely the latest in a long series of funding rounds. EcoHealth received its first installment from USAID in 2009. The money would come from a then-novel USAID programme called Predict, whose mission was to hunt out viruses that jump from animals to humans and could potentially cause a pandemic. Predict was the brainchild of Dennis Carroll, an infectious diseases expert who had run USAID’s Pandemic Influenza and Other Emerging Threats (PIOET) Unit.
Carroll had permanently joined USAID in 2005 — a critical year for the agency, but also for the country. Two years prior, an outbreak of avian flu, or H5N1, had decimated poultry stocks and infected around 1,000 people around the world. The outbreak heightened a sense of terror of biological agents that had gripped the Bush Administration since the anthrax attack. In response, the Bush administration increased non-military biodefence funding from a paltry $60 million 2001 to a staggering $2 billion in 2003 — in addition to $6 billion dedicated solely to the development and stockpiling of vaccines. Just as importantly, with the 2004 presidential directive called Biodefense for the 21st Century, based on the assumption that “a bioweapons attack could devastate America”, Bush would lay the foundations for America’s first biodefence infrastructure.
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SubscribeIf you’ve never watched “I am Legend” I would encourage you to watch the opening scene. A scientist is interviewed on TV explaining that she’s repurposed the measles vaccine to fight cancer. The scene ends with the exchange “so you’ve cured cancer?” “Yes. Yes I have.” The next five minutes are scenes of New York City completely devoid of people. It is very well done. It is also probably quite prescient. I think the world will end in a Petri dish. These arrogant fools are going to kill us all.
And at the expense of the taxpayer.
And at the expense of the taxpayer.
If you’ve never watched “I am Legend” I would encourage you to watch the opening scene. A scientist is interviewed on TV explaining that she’s repurposed the measles vaccine to fight cancer. The scene ends with the exchange “so you’ve cured cancer?” “Yes. Yes I have.” The next five minutes are scenes of New York City completely devoid of people. It is very well done. It is also probably quite prescient. I think the world will end in a Petri dish. These arrogant fools are going to kill us all.
Yeah but, but… climate change…
Yeah but, but… climate change…
“Curiously, however, it also appears to have spread into American foreign aid. In April, Samantha Power, the former human rights activist and Obama hand now serving as administrator of United States Agency for International Development (USAID)..”
I think you need to begin from the fact that USAID was a front organisation created for the CIA to use abroad.
It’s not US-AID it’s US-CIA.
That historical detail matters, and explains everything that follows after it. USAID was founded in the early 60s because the CIA’s ‘overseas activities’ [*cough* …coups and regime change ops…*cough*] were getting out of hand and generating serious pushback. So USAID was formed, as a cover organisation that allowed CIA agents to travel abroad and continue their “work” under the cover of a legitimate and explainable “humanitarian” story frame.
This lie was as much for the benefit of American propaganda/narrative control, as it was for the international community. But this was a crucial genesis point for intelligence activity cloaking itself in benign agendas like “aid” and “human rights” and “health”. This ‘cover agency’ was established end of 1961. It spun up quickly. JFK was killed in 1963. He had found out about the Operation Northwoods plan and flipped out over it. And he was furious that the CIA had brazenly lied to him about the Bay of Pigs affair, and fired Dulles as CIA Director, vowing to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces. Needless to say, the CIA responded.
After that, they carried on their activities as usual, using USAID for much of the overseas work. I think this is crucial context.
“Curiously, however, it also appears to have spread into American foreign aid. In April, Samantha Power, the former human rights activist and Obama hand now serving as administrator of United States Agency for International Development (USAID)..”
I think you need to begin from the fact that USAID was a front organisation created for the CIA to use abroad.
It’s not US-AID it’s US-CIA.
That historical detail matters, and explains everything that follows after it. USAID was founded in the early 60s because the CIA’s ‘overseas activities’ [*cough* …coups and regime change ops…*cough*] were getting out of hand and generating serious pushback. So USAID was formed, as a cover organisation that allowed CIA agents to travel abroad and continue their “work” under the cover of a legitimate and explainable “humanitarian” story frame.
This lie was as much for the benefit of American propaganda/narrative control, as it was for the international community. But this was a crucial genesis point for intelligence activity cloaking itself in benign agendas like “aid” and “human rights” and “health”. This ‘cover agency’ was established end of 1961. It spun up quickly. JFK was killed in 1963. He had found out about the Operation Northwoods plan and flipped out over it. And he was furious that the CIA had brazenly lied to him about the Bay of Pigs affair, and fired Dulles as CIA Director, vowing to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces. Needless to say, the CIA responded.
After that, they carried on their activities as usual, using USAID for much of the overseas work. I think this is crucial context.
Chilling. Jaw dropping. I pray justice is done and those responsible for this catastrophe are all shamed snd punished..before the next one.
“Not a chance in hell!”
Everyone from Anthony Fauci to Samantha Power to Anthony Blinken is able to calmly sit in front of a powerful senator and explain that documents regarding the research done at Wuhan, subsidised by USAID, NIH and the State Department, will not, after all, be forthcoming.
These a-holes won’t even provide the documents that show their involvement. If Congress can’t get the info, how do you think anyone else will be able to pin them down?
Anyone who thinks the Deep State is imaginary is a fool. It ain’t an organization with an org chart, it is a state of mind that the government can do whatever it wants to do, including spreading disinformation (aka propaganda) that interferes with US (and other) elections.
“Not a chance in hell!”
Everyone from Anthony Fauci to Samantha Power to Anthony Blinken is able to calmly sit in front of a powerful senator and explain that documents regarding the research done at Wuhan, subsidised by USAID, NIH and the State Department, will not, after all, be forthcoming.
These a-holes won’t even provide the documents that show their involvement. If Congress can’t get the info, how do you think anyone else will be able to pin them down?
Anyone who thinks the Deep State is imaginary is a fool. It ain’t an organization with an org chart, it is a state of mind that the government can do whatever it wants to do, including spreading disinformation (aka propaganda) that interferes with US (and other) elections.
Chilling. Jaw dropping. I pray justice is done and those responsible for this catastrophe are all shamed snd punished..before the next one.
So it’s all going according to plan, then.
So it’s all going according to plan, then.
Great analysis, but why no mention of the World Health Organisation’s global virus “surveillance” mechanisms that are now putting all of this on a global footing, with a network labs across the world, all funded by a combination of national governments (ie the taxes we all pay), big pharma, and megalomaniac gazzillionaries?
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: their “game changing” pandemic treaty and amendments to the IHR would empower their communist-sponsored leader to employ the “precautionary principle” in declaring a public health emergency of international concern in response to the next, “inevitable” Disease X, that would require national authorities to take “whole of government, whole of society” actions just in case it breaks out. It’s essentially a global protection racket.
There desperately needs to be more public debate on this. Please, UnHerd, can we have a series of deep dive articles into the WHO (and the UN more broadly). People need to understand that the corrupted, politicised, communist-led supranational authority that the WHO is morphing into today bears less resemblance to the sleepy advisory body of fusty, earnest doctors that it once was than the EU of today bears to the European Steel and Coal Community of the 1950s or the EEC of the 1970s. This is a bigger deal than Brexit.
https://www.thepressawards.com/finalists/china-the-who-and-the-power-grab-that-fuelled-a-pandemic-r0029
I like the cut of your jib, sir. Do you perchance have a blog I can subscribe to>
https://www.thepressawards.com/finalists/china-the-who-and-the-power-grab-that-fuelled-a-pandemic-r0029
I like the cut of your jib, sir. Do you perchance have a blog I can subscribe to>
Great analysis, but why no mention of the World Health Organisation’s global virus “surveillance” mechanisms that are now putting all of this on a global footing, with a network labs across the world, all funded by a combination of national governments (ie the taxes we all pay), big pharma, and megalomaniac gazzillionaries?
I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: their “game changing” pandemic treaty and amendments to the IHR would empower their communist-sponsored leader to employ the “precautionary principle” in declaring a public health emergency of international concern in response to the next, “inevitable” Disease X, that would require national authorities to take “whole of government, whole of society” actions just in case it breaks out. It’s essentially a global protection racket.
There desperately needs to be more public debate on this. Please, UnHerd, can we have a series of deep dive articles into the WHO (and the UN more broadly). People need to understand that the corrupted, politicised, communist-led supranational authority that the WHO is morphing into today bears less resemblance to the sleepy advisory body of fusty, earnest doctors that it once was than the EU of today bears to the European Steel and Coal Community of the 1950s or the EEC of the 1970s. This is a bigger deal than Brexit.
So millions of people died, economic chaos reigned around the world, US debt spiked 30% in 3 years to a record 31 trillion, drug companies made billions of dollars and no one will be held accountable. Of course officials will deny they had any involvement.
It was afterall, “transmitted from bats and Wuhan research is just a coincidence”.
So millions of people died, economic chaos reigned around the world, US debt spiked 30% in 3 years to a record 31 trillion, drug companies made billions of dollars and no one will be held accountable. Of course officials will deny they had any involvement.
It was afterall, “transmitted from bats and Wuhan research is just a coincidence”.