> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
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One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as saying:
> “Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Mr. Cotton said.
So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
---
One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as saying:
> “Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Mr. Cotton said.
So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.