Western governments have long shown a “disinterest” in the true origins of Covid, says Holman Jenkins in The Wall Street Journal. The CIA recently concluded that the “lab leak” theory – that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – was the likeliest scenario, but said it was a “low confidence” finding. When it emerged this month that German intelligence came to the same conclusion as far back as 2020, this time with “high confidence”, it prompted some “frantic” arse-covering by German politicians. The reason is simple: the West doesn’t want to upset Xi Jinping.

This is partly because of the potential blowback. When Australia merely asked for China’s cooperation in investigating Covid’s origins in 2020, Beijing launched a “Trump-style” trade war aimed at Australia’s key exports. But it’s also realpolitik. For the West to formally accept the lab leak theory would effectively be to accuse Xi of being responsible for the entire pandemic – and of lying to conceal it, potentially to make sure that “the rest of the world was infected too”. That’s pretty strong stuff for the leader of a superpower, who is set to remain in office for the next decade at least. And with a Taiwan showdown “in the offing”, both sides are acutely aware that Covid recriminations “could complicate an already complicated situation”. It’s a reminder of an important truth: intelligence agencies exist not only to “ferret out” the secrets of their enemies, but also to “protect certain secrets” on behalf of those same enemies.

🤫🇷🇺 This obviously isn’t the first time the West has kept schtum in the name of diplomacy. When scientists concluded in 1978 that the previous year’s flu pandemic had originated in a lab leak in China or Russia, they “chose not to advertise their findings”. In 1999, Western governments deliberately ignored evidence that a string of deadly apartment bombings which helped elevate a former KGB man to the Russian presidency was an inside job, because they figured this KGB man was someone they could do business with. His name? Vladimir Putin.

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