From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   Russia’s Unfounded Claims of Secret U.S. Bioweapons Linger On and On   
   By Steven Lee Myers, Sept. 4, 2022, NY Times   
      
   Of the many falsehoods that the Kremlin has spread since the war in Ukraine   
   began over six months ago, some of the most outlandish and yet enduring have   
   been those accusing the U.S. of operating clandestine biological research   
   programs to wreak havoc    
   around the globe.   
      
   The U.S. and others have dismissed the accusations as preposterous, and Russia   
   has offered no proof. Yet the claims continue to circulate. Backed at times by   
   China’s diplomats and state media, they have ebbed and flowed in   
   international news reports,    
   fueling conspiracy theories that linger online.   
      
   In Geneva this week, Russia has commanded an international forum to air its   
   unsupported assertions again. The Biological Weapons Convention, the   
   international treaty that since 1975 has barred the development and use of   
   weapons made of biological toxins    
   or pathogens, gives member nations the authority to request a formal hearing   
   of violations, and Russia has invoked the first one in a quarter-century.   
      
   “This is the military biological Pandora’s box, which the U.S. has opened   
   and filled more than once,” Irina A. Yarovaya, the deputy chair of   
   Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, said last month. She is   
   leading a parliamentary    
   committee that was formed to “investigate” American support for biological   
   research labs in Ukraine and elsewhere.   
      
   Virtually no Western officials or experts expect Russia to produce, during the   
   weeklong gathering, facts that corroborate the accusations. If the past is any   
   guide, that will not stop Russia from making them. Experts say Russia is   
   likely to use the mere    
   existence of the investigative session, much of which will take place behind   
   closed doors, to give its claims a patina of legitimacy.   
      
   Russia’s propaganda campaign has sought to justify the invasion ordered by   
   Putin, who in April cited a “network of Western bioweapons labs” as one of   
   the threats that forced Russia to act. More broadly, though, the flurry of   
   accusations has sought    
   to discredit the U.S. and its allies — Ukraine’s most powerful supporters   
   and, increasingly, the source of arms being used to fight Russian forces.   
      
   Even when unsupported by fact, the accusations have played into pre-existing   
   attitudes toward American dominance in foreign affairs. The consequence has   
   been to sow division and doubt — not necessarily to build support for   
   Russia’s invasion, but to    
   deflect some of the blame to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty   
   Organization.   
      
   The notoriety of Russia’s accusations about secret weapons production could   
   also erode confidence in genuine biological research, much as the debate over   
   the origins of Covid-19 has.   
      
   “The message is constantly about these labs, and that will erode confidence   
   in that infrastructure and the work that’s being performed,” said Filippa   
   Lentzos, an expert on biological threats and security at King’s College   
   London. “And it will    
   significantly undermine global biosafety and biosecurity efforts, so it does   
   have consequences.”   
      
   Russia added the outbreak of monkeypox to its list of American transgressions   
   in April. Gen. Igor A. Kirillov, the head of the Russian Army’s   
   radiological, chemical and biological defense force, insinuated that the   
   United States had started the latest    
   outbreak because it supported four research laboratories in Nigeria where the   
   epidemic began to spread.   
      
   In the months after the general’s comments, there were nearly 4,000 articles   
   in Russian media, many of them shared on Twitter, Facebook and other social   
   media platforms, according to research conducted by Zignal Labs for The New   
   York Times.   
      
   For evidence of a conspiracy, some of the Russian reports pointed to a   
   simulation in 2021 at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of   
   defense officials and experts from around the world. The simulation, intended   
   to test how well countries    
   would contain a new pandemic, posited a hypothetical monkeypox outbreak that   
   began in a fictional country called Brinia and caused 270 million deaths.   
      
   The Russian reports circulated so widely that the advocacy group that designed   
   the exercise, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, put out a statement in May trying   
   to tamp down any misconception.   
      
   “We have no reason to believe that the current outbreak involves an   
   engineered pathogen, as we have not seen any compelling evidence that would   
   support such a hypothesis,” the organization, based in Washington, wrote.   
   “We also do not believe that    
   the current outbreak has the potential to spread as rapidly as the fictional,   
   engineered pathogen in our scenario or to cause such a high case fatality   
   rate.”   
      
   Russia’s accusations have appeared in news reports in many countries,   
   especially in Africa and the Middle East, regions that have become diplomatic   
   battlegrounds between the United States, Russia and China.   
      
   The state media in China routinely amplifies Russian claims about the war with   
   Ukraine and about secret biological weapons research, as part of its own   
   information battle with the U.S. that began with the debate over the spread of   
   Covid-19.   
      
   China’s heavily censored internet, which aggressively stifles unwelcome   
   political opinions, has also freely circulated conspiracy theories about a   
   possible American role in the spread of monkeypox, as Bloomberg reported.   
      
   Russia’s efforts to push the claims about biological weapons come from an   
   old Russia propaganda playbook, adapted to the age of social media.   
      
   Researchers at the RAND Corporation called the Russian strategy a “fire hose   
   of falsehood,” inundating the public with huge numbers of claims that are   
   designed to deflect attention and cause confusion and distrust as much as to   
   provide an alternative    
   point of view.   
      
   The strategy has roots reaching back to the Cold War.   
      
   In 1983, the K.G.B. planted an anonymous letter in an Indian newspaper   
   alleging that the United States manufactured the virus that causes AIDS in an   
   experiment at Fort Detrick, Md., according to documents at the Woodrow Wilson   
   International Center for    
   Scholars’ Digital Archive.   
      
      
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