Maybe it’s optimistic, but in my model of the world, there are islands of competence within the intelligence community which do things like this.
For me, that fits my model of what the US intelligence agencies used to do during the cold war times, and we have unclassified documents about proactive, unethical experimentation they did—like Operation Sea Spray and MK Ultra. I don’t know if the 2020 US intelligence community is up to the same task. I get the impression that capability and competence have fallen there, although it’s hard to know since so much is classified. But judging by the fact that we have had several elections disrupted by pretty predictable cyberattacks without visible countermeasures, my estimation of their competence has fallen.
On the other hand, here’s an article about a UK laboratory infecting people with a non-covid coronavirus to help with vaccine research.
For me, that fits my model of what the US intelligence agencies used to do during the cold war times, and we have unclassified documents about proactive, unethical experimentation they did—like Operation Sea Spray and MK Ultra. I don’t know if the 2020 US intelligence community is up to the same task. I get the impression that capability and competence have fallen there, although it’s hard to know since so much is classified. But judging by the fact that we have had several elections disrupted by pretty predictable cyberattacks without visible countermeasures, my estimation of their competence has fallen.
On the other hand, here’s an article about a UK laboratory infecting people with a non-covid coronavirus to help with vaccine research.