The Critical Compass Podcast - March 15, 2024


Winnipeg Lab Leak - National Security Breach or ＂Not Worth Investigating？＂ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip

Was the 1948 War Justified or Ethnic Cleansing？ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip Should Bad Ideas Be Censored？ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

138.28

Word count

1,066

Sentence count

47

People

Also mentioned:
Keding Cheng Patty Haydew Elaine Dewar Xiang Guochu COVID-19 Gmail James

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In 2019, two scientists were fired from the National Microbiology lab in Winnipeg, Canada for working covertly with the Chinese government. What was the connection between these activities and the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus? And why was this happening in the first place?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 There was a committee formed to discuss the firing of some scientists from a microbiology
00:00:13.340 lab in Winnipeg.
00:00:16.100 This happened kind of during the COVID pandemic, and there has been some, I don't want to say
00:00:26.100 conspiracy around it, because it really isn't a conspiracy at this point, but there has
00:00:30.360 been some very important questions being asked about what exactly those scientists were doing
00:00:37.040 in that lab in Winnipeg in 2019, and what ramifications that might have had in relation to the COVID
00:00:45.620 pandemic.
00:00:46.120 So, I'm going to pull up another article here, and...
00:00:56.100 This is just a couple days ago.
00:01:00.520 So, the article headline from the National Post is, Fired Scientists at Winnipeg Lab Worked
00:01:04.500 Closely and Covertly with Chinese Government, CSIS Report Says.
00:01:08.380 This is from February 28th, so just a few days ago.
00:01:11.580 And yesterday, a committee determined that, even with this report saying, this is the
00:01:18.740 quote from CSIS, the service assesses that Mrs., I don't want to mispronounce her name,
00:01:24.080 I think it's Chu, Mrs. Chu, developed deep cooperative relationships with a variety of People's
00:01:29.700 Republic of China institutions, and has intentionally transferred scientific knowledge and materials
00:01:34.520 to China in order to benefit the PRC government.
00:01:37.600 Reads a letter from January 2021, recommending her security clearance be revoked.
00:01:42.040 So, a committee in the House of Commons determined that, even with that CSIS, very unambiguous CSIS
00:01:51.920 statement, this is not worth investigating.
00:01:56.600 Chu was found to have shipped sensitive materials outside of the National Microbiology Lab without
00:02:01.140 approval, including antibodies to the China National Institute for Food and Drug Control, as well
00:02:06.340 as some others to the United Kingdom and the United States for testing.
00:02:12.320 She also admitted to having sent several emails to research associates through personal email
00:02:16.580 accounts on Gmail or Yahoo instead of her personal corporate account.
00:02:20.560 As for Cheng, this is the second scientist, he not only used his personal email accounts
00:02:24.420 and unauthorized external drives to conduct government business, but also breached security
00:02:28.860 policies regarding students under his supervision by giving them access to the scientific network
00:02:33.160 through a computer in the laboratory.
00:02:35.860 This Chu, the main scientist here, the woman, she kind of, from what I understand, she kind
00:02:42.800 of rose to prominence by having quite a multifaceted approach using monoclonal antibodies to,
00:02:49.960 essentially to cure Ebola in a laboratory setting.
00:02:52.980 So there was initially some worries that there may have been really potentially lethal substances
00:03:00.440 being shipped overseas without proper procedures.
00:03:05.420 Apparently, she was not necessarily known for being, for following the letter of the law when
00:03:13.000 it came to transferring samples.
00:03:14.760 I'm going to share another article here, which even further complicates the matter of, like, why
00:03:23.680 why they would say this is not something worth investigating, because apparently
00:03:27.680 in June of 2021,
00:03:32.840 Patty Haydew said,
00:03:34.200 In this particular case, the information requested has both privacy and national security
00:03:39.200 implications.
00:03:40.260 Compliance with the order without proper safeguards in place would put sensitive information at
00:03:45.100 the risk of public release.
00:03:46.860 So this is something, um, that apparently is so sensitive that they can't, they can't discuss
00:03:55.740 it publicly, but at the same time, it's also not worth investigating.
00:04:01.060 So here's a, here it shows Xu had earlier been responsible for a shipment of Ebola and don't
00:04:09.820 know what this is, Hennepa viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:04:14.780 That's very interesting.
00:04:16.280 But even though they don't know what it is and haven't investigated it, there is no connection
00:04:21.540 between the transfer of viruses cited in this order and the subsequent departure of these
00:04:24.980 employees.
00:04:25.280 They know for sure it's not that.
00:04:25.940 No, and it's, there's definitely no link to COVID-19.
00:04:28.340 They, they definitely know that.
00:04:30.140 So these are, this is, uh, these are the perfect examples of our government officials talking
00:04:36.860 out of both sides of their mouth, but it, it doesn't stop there because actually, uh,
00:04:42.960 in that same year, uh, in 20, uh, 21, just a little bit later, Canadians must know what
00:04:49.780 our lab's role was in COVID's origins.
00:04:52.680 China resists more investigation in its borders, but one strand of the trail leads to Winnipeg,
00:04:57.380 writes author and journalist Elaine Dewar.
00:05:01.440 Now you can't see the full article on this view, but if I go to a reader view, there is
00:05:09.000 a section where, um, let's see if I can find the section.
00:05:17.020 Here we go.
00:05:19.360 This is the Winnipeg lab.
00:05:20.720 The NML is Canada's only high containment lab for the study of human pathogens.
00:05:25.520 Its top level four lab, the sort devoted to the most dangerous microbes, was led by, again,
00:05:30.820 I'm sorry, I think Xiang Guochu, recipient in 2018 of Gover General's Innovation Award for
00:05:37.700 an antibody cocktail against Ebola.
00:05:40.280 Xiang, Xiang Guochu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were marched out of that lab in 2019 by 0.95
00:05:46.580 the RCMP, their security clearances and access to data allegedly withdrawn.
00:05:51.800 Our federal government claimed this was nothing serious, just something to do with administrative
00:05:55.560 matters.
00:05:56.860 Yet it occurred just months after Chu sent 15 strains of Ebola, again, this NIPA and other
00:06:02.760 glycoproteins to the WIV.
00:06:05.260 Those samples helped seed the WIV's own newly opened level four lab.
00:06:09.220 What do we know, James, about Wuhan's Institute of Virology level four lab?
00:06:15.820 We know it was denied as having anything to do with the last four years.
00:06:23.880 Mm-hmm.
00:06:24.620 Mm-hmm.
00:06:24.980 Just like, just like these scientists being, uh, escorted out by the RCMP and having CSIS
00:06:32.120 reports written about them, just like that has nothing to do with this either.
00:06:35.660 And you're a conspiracy theorist if you think otherwise, sir.
00:06:38.080 Well, even just taking it on face value, you listed not only just like the sharing of like
00:06:46.980 a result of something, the physically sending lab samples, like these are very clear examples
00:06:55.880 of a breach of policy, the breach of conduct.
00:06:59.160 And why are they not investigating this other than to cover up any other potential corruption?
00:07:09.060 That would be my conclusion there, that the lack of looking at this further implicates
00:07:15.140 enough of the people around that, that it would create too much collateral damage.
00:07:21.520 Therefore, they don't want to look into it further.
00:07:23.840 You guys, I'm going to talk to 그다음, and see the future on the TOMA and the effect of also probably
00:07:25.020 later.
00:07:29.600 If you see what'in the future, you don't want to go with them now.