The Threat of Biowarfare: Chinese Labs and Weaponized Migration

This episode of International Reporters Roundtable, bio-warfare, weaponized migration, re-emerging diseases, spreading from human to cattle and back again. Chinese bio-labs, accelerating gain-of-function research, a lab found here in the USA. Our guests, Sean Lin, Darlene Sanchez, and Steve Espos, join us to find out if we are facing bio-warfare. Welcome to NTD's International Reporters Roundtable. I'm your host, Kevin Hogan. Today, we're discussing the threat of bio-warfare. The COVID pandemic left many skeptical about its origin. It appears contained. However, there is troubling news from around the country of old diseases re-emerging. Tuberculosis, polio, and leprosy also of great concern is an outbreak of H1N5 bird flu that is affecting the food supply, in particular, cattle. Outbreaks have occurred in Texas, elsewhere, and now it has even spread to humans. The White House is monitoring the situation. In Central America, there is an outbreak of the deadly screwworm parasite. Why are these old diseases cropping up after decades of being contained? Are the pathogens being manipulated? Are they connected to the influx of illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border? Could this be bio-warfare? Why is this happening now? There's also the discovery of a bio-lab in a small town in California containing genetically altered mice infected with COVID-19, with many more disease samples found on the premises. Are there more labs like this around the United States and the world? If so, who is funding them? Does the Chinese regime have a hand in it? And how are government agencies responding? How big is the threat? And in China, did they shut down the lab in Wuhan the CCP virus originated from? Or are they still doing research? If so, how far have they gone? Our guests will enlighten us. Time to meet our panel. First, we have Xiaoxu Shanlin, an assistant professor in biomedical science at Feitian College, New York. He is a frequent analyst and commentator for Epic Media Group, VOA, and RFA. He's also a veteran who served as a U.S. Army microbiologist and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger China. He's been investigating the developments of the coronavirus pandemic. Next, we have Darlene McCormick-Sanchez. She's an investigative reporter for The Epic Times based in Texas. Her focus is the border crisis, election fraud, and the erosion of traditional values. Her work on the Sinful Messiah series was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting in the 1990s. Her trip to the Darien Gap in Panama has unveiled new details about weaponized migration. And our third guest, Steve Espos, an investigative reporter from Romania based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's been working for The Epic Times since 2003. After leaving the tech industry and now hosts The Epic TV show, Bay Area Innovators. His work investigating the origins of the Readley California Biolab with colleague Lear Zhou in the spotlight of our show today. And we're going to start with you, Steve. Please give us a little bit of insight into your work investigating the California Biolab with a brief introduction here. Absolutely. I'll be glad to. We looked into the Biolab. It was something that was discovered in the end of 2022. And there were media reports on it basically stating that all these dangerous pathogens and chemicals were found there. And we looked into it more and realized that the person behind this lab is a Chinese national who has been involved with several companies around the world in defrauding and pretty much damaging companies that he was involved with. So in the beginning, it took us quite a while to figure out exactly who's involved and the degree of involvement. But ultimately, the final results all point out to this Jesse Chu individual who's been connected to these companies. And he seems very connected to the Chinese government as well. Yes, and he even has a $330 million Canadian judgment on him. for stealing intellectual property. Next, let's go to you, Darlene. How has your work on illegal immigration at the border crisis intersected with biowarfare? Yes, thank you for having me, Kevin. Well, I got interested in... I'm here in Texas, and I got interested in, of course, the border crisis. And part of investigating what was really happening here, why we were being overwhelmed with millions of migrants, went down to the Darien Gap and started talking to the people down there, the migrants, looking at the situation in these camps where there were NGOs set up, where the IOM, which is part of the United Nations, was there and facilitating this. And a lot of things started coming out of that. You know, how we saw all these migrants coming in from South America through the Darien Gap into Central America and up into the U.S. And then I started talking to some, you know, veterinarians and other folks telling me that, look, you know, there is a correlation here, there appears to be, at least, because we're getting this resurgence in diseases that we haven't seen in decades, such as, you know, the screwworm infestation of cattle there in Central America. And so I started looking into that. Yeah, and it's very alarming, even with that person in New York getting this recent emergence of polio, who is an unvaccinated person here. Let's go to you, Sean. What have your analyses on the coronavirus pandemic revealed about biowarfare? I think overall, the pandemic definitely changed our lives so fundamentally. And so it's a very new way for us to look at biowarfare right now. And we can understand any dangerous pathogen research in any part of the world can actually have a tremendous threat to the global community, and especially, unfortunately, you know, more than four years now, and we still don't know the true origin of the outbreak of the COVID-19. There are so many indirect evidence indicating that there might be a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but the Chinese government is not collaborating on the investigation, whether from WHO or from other international organizations. And there are many people still believing there may be a natural origin, but I think even though it is a controversial situation, but it definitely let us realize that humans are at a very critical phase, that any dangerous work can generate dangerous pathogens, and it can bring a big disaster globally, and especially if any government have very arterial motif, if they have intentional dual usage program, it can accelerate the threat tremendously. And so we definitely, I think, need to pay very comprehensive attention on the biowarfare at this current stage. Yes, and Sean, while scientists and agencies are trying to nail down the exact origin of that pandemic, we do know one thing for sure. It was the CCP's cover-up that preceded this global pandemic spreading out to all these countries here causing so much havoc. I want to talk to you, Darlene. We spoke about this before in an interview. You went to the Darien Gap firsthand, that treacherous migrant pass there, to investigate this mass illegal immigration that's on its route to the United States. What did you see there in terms of illness and cleanliness among the migrants? Well, there was definitely an issue with these camps were basically brimming with migrants that had come up from South America into Central America. And what people need to understand is sometimes these other countries do not have the same type of vaccination protocols that the United States does. So they're coming in with diseases that most Americans aren't familiar with. Well, some Americans wouldn't be familiar with. Of course, TB is one of the main diseases that is being brought into the United States because a lot of this, what's happened is it is antibiotic-resistant TB. And so even if they got some treatments, perhaps with antibiotics, and it didn't go away, they're still carrying this. And the danger of that, of course, is a lot of these workers go out into farms and cattle ranches and agriculture business here in the United States, and they can pass those diseases on to our livestock. Yeah, and that is certainly very alarming considering that the food supply is very important. Sean, is there any way for you to explain a little bit about how people coming from foreign nations into the United States can bring unknown pathogens and microbes that would be foreign to these Americans that have never been exposed to those things? So I think just to follow what Darlene has said, I think it's really, really a situation that we worry about the spreading of the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. This is one example. In Latin America in the last few years, definitely there are significant increase of the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and many of them, you know, isoniazid, this type of antibiotic resistance. And many of those people actually, whether you have previous infected or not or whether you have previous treated or not, can show this very strong antibiotic resistance. And so when these immigrants, if they cross over the borders, then if they got infected, it's very hard to treat them. And then you bring in these multidrug-resistant strains to Texas or to other states, and it can spread between human and cattle. And so this will be devastating to many of the cattle industry farmers. And so it was this one example. And then also Latin America in the past few years, you also see a tremendous increase in dengue fevers and also chikungunyas as well in some of the, you can say that many of the diseases that haven't been really paid attention, and now people thought were already eradicated, like the polio you mentioned, but there are actually vaccine-associated polio variants emerging. So these situation can all bring into the United States by immigrants. And also many of the immigrants' situations, very devastating, very poor hygiene situation. So when they crowded together, it can spread out very fast. And so at your intro, you mentioned about the bird flu situation, you mentioned about maybe even STD as well. And so many of the female will actually experience sexual harassment during these illegal immigration routes, right? So many people will suffer from STD as well. Yes, absolutely. And when we come back, we're gonna take a short break here, but our panelist is going to explain to us what exactly was found at that Chinese linked bio lab that was found in California and whether or not there could be many more of these in different countries around the world. So stay with us. Welcome back to NTD's International Reporters Roundtable. I'm your host, Kevin Hogan. We're gonna turn now to Steve. And Steve, hopefully you can explain to us how many more labs there could be given that this Chinese bio lab, this Chinese linked bio lab in California was just found thanks to a concerned citizen noticing a code violation with this pipes leading into it. Yeah, Kevin, it's really hard to tell. Like you said, this was found. It was pretty much a coincidence. It was a code violation that the city of Greenleaf fire department noticed and they looked into investigate. And there were these pathogens, these viruses like pneumonia, hepatitis, HIV, SARS, COVID-19. What's most troubling actually is that there was a fridge, a freezer found that was labeled Ebola. And while the others are dangerous, but when it comes to Ebola, it's actually something that's extremely concerning. The way this operation was done, the people running it were concealing their identities, concealing their company's name. They were run by different entities and they would move from city to city. They moved to at least three or four cities we are aware of. And they were planning actually to move just in six months if they were not discovered there they would have moved to the next city. And they also changed their names. Jesse Jew was identified when he was arrested actually just a few hours after our article. He was arrested under a different name. So it's very, very difficult to tell how many more labs there are, what their intention is, and who's running them. Yes, absolutely Stephen. There was even an article published in the Taipei Times that speculated that there may be Chinese linked bio labs inside of Taiwan, especially with the CCP's encroachment in their air defense identification zone and also spy balloons and election interference there. Sean, I want to ask you, given your expertise on the committee and the President of China, what would the CCP do with that information and how could they leverage their national security law to get information and other maybe samples or things like that from a bio lab that would be in the United States? So to follow up what Steve just said, I think here one of the fundamental issues that in the United States we don't have enough oversight program regarding about the bioreagents or even for selective agents. So most of the time, you know, if you're through scientific collaborations, even as a newly started biotech company, you may request these selective agents or scientific researches. So under these kind of scenarios, CDC may release these reagents and also some of the universities may already have the reagent in those researchers' hands. So through collaboration, they can get these reagents. And if the biotech company went bankrupt, how do they dispose these reagents? It's not really tightly regulated. So under this situation, I think CCP agents will take advantage of this situation. So they can popping up new biotech companies, you know, very easily, and then they can buy these different equipments and different research devices. So they can set up a lab, they can run it. And if you don't follow the biosafety protocols, nobody come to oversight it. And the local state, CDC, won't have a regular inspection program, right? You are not a government agent. Nobody regulate how do you operate, how do you run these dangerous pathogens in your lab, whether your lab reached, you know, the criteria for biosafety level two or three or even higher, right? So that's why it's a huge loophole. So under these situations, and the CCP understand scientific collaboration is a great umbrella they can run dual usage program. So in the past 10 years, you know, under Xi Jinping's rulings, they have pushed very hard for dual usage, military-civil fusion program to boost China's biotech industries. And so under these kind of general backgrounds, so there are many biotech companies will get a lot of funding from Chinese governments and the Chinese government military institutes, medical institutes, they will further reach out very aggressively to establish collaborations with international researchers, especially some of the researchers in United States with very ample experience in bio-organism researches. Sean, that is really important information that you're revealing to us here. And of course, that economic leverage can be very powerful. Back to you, Steve, Americans need to know if the government is aware of this, if they're doing enough about the risks that that kind of biolab poses. Tell us about the response of the federal government, the FBI and the CDC and the lab actually receiving funding from the state of California. Yeah, some of these investigations, some of these results have been quite shocking, actually. The FBI did respond to the calls that were made to them, actually the next day, but it took them a month and a half to investigate whether the city of Greenlee can even go back to the building to further investigate. As far as the CDC, it's even more troubling. The CDC basically went to the lab and what they did was write down the labels of the chemicals and pathogens that they saw on the shelves and took pictures. They haven't done any analysis. They haven't taken any samples to actually investigate to see what actually is there. So that's what they did. Going back to Sean's point, it's very concerning that there's actually no entity that regulates this. They're all separate entities that have to look at the chemicals, the pathogens, the documents. So when that happens, a lot of loopholes that, you know, things can fall through the cracks and people get lost. Very alarming what they're doing there. And I will point out that this illegal bio lab, what they were doing in there is they were genetically engineering these mice to mimic the human immune system and then they were more designed to catch and carry COVID-19. So very serious. I want to broaden this discussion here now and turn to you, Darlene, and go to Central America. What is going on with this screw worm breakout? Yes, Kevin. Well, what's happening is they, in Central America, they are trying to control a screw worm outbreak right now. You know, there's some in Costa Rica, some in Panama. And about 30 years ago, there was a huge outbreak in the United States and elsewhere and scientists came up with a way of combating that by basically releasing sterilized flies, which ended up, you know, controlling the population of screw worms. But we're seeing a resurgence of that now after like some three decades. And they're trying right now. They've been releasing flies, but it's been very difficult. It's been stubborn to knock that out, which of course has raised concerns here in the United States because there are people here that remember, you know, the screw worm outbreak in Texas, and there was one in 2016 in Florida. They were able to get a handle on that one fairly quickly. But, you know, the problem with this is it's just so devastating, and it will affect our food supply. You know, all these diseases coming in, if they're zoonotic, meaning they can transfer between human and animal, it poses a huge risk because what, you know, people in Texas have told me, you know, cattle ranchers and vets, is that our food supply is at risk because it has been weakened over, you know, the years because it's more expensive now to farm and to raise livestock, and a lot of ranchers are going out of business, so that's cutting down on their food supply already. It's weakened it. So if we get in a, you know, a huge problem such as screw worms or some other disease that ends up, you know, harming our food supply, it could be really devastating for the United States. Absolutely. Very important that you're revealing this here. I want to pose this question to you, Sean, and we can break this out into our full panel. The DNA collection that the CCP is conducting, in terms of this unrestricted warfare concept that they're constantly using, this seems like a clear link between government entities and the intention to release bioweapons. What can you tell us here? So it's very clear. Under the CCP's current military strategy, it's actually vitally important to position themselves at a high ground for biowarfare strategies. So under this kind of situation, they definitely want to aggressively collecting the DNA or biological sample information from Chinese population as well overseas. They've been building tremendous sequencing powers, also bioinformatic capacities. So like, for example, BGI, you know, Beijing Genomic Institute is one of the largest sequencing capacities in the whole world. You know, even more than 10 years ago, when the United States Research Institute only buying one or two sequencing devices, they're buying hundreds of those. So they are quickly boosting up this sequencing and then boosting up their bioanalytical capacity. So then they offer bioinformatic analysis to the U.S. hospitals or other research institutes, because some of the hospitals, you can buy the device, but you may not be able to analyze the sequencing results, right? So Chinese companies, maybe military backing up companies, they will offer to the United States, say, oh, hospitals, I can help you analyze your sequencing results. So in this way, they're obtaining the sequencing information from the samples in the U.S. hospitals, so they're getting the genetic information for American populations. You know, when I was active duty in the military service, I can receive advertising email from Chinese companies offering this kind of bioinformatic analysis, right? So it's kind of scary. How do they get my email? So they are very aggressively collecting this information, and then they can understand, for example, any genetic profiles that will be unique to different ethnic populations. And so then they can, you know, design drugs particularly targeting any particular ethnic group. That's why also in China, many people are concerned about they have such large-scale collecting of biosamples in Uyghur population, right, in Xinjiang area. Millions and millions of samples are collected. So they can easily understand what will be a genetic weakness for this population. So that's why I think it's very dangerous when CCP aggressively collecting genetic information across the whole world. And so they are building a huge capacity to analyze genetic information, chromosome information, genetic modification information, epigenetic information. All these can enhance their biotechnology. And Sean, that is just such an important thing to bring to light for Americans and others around the world. When we come back, we're going to expand on this point and look about how the Chinese regime is exploiting U.S. open systems for their own advantage with our full panel. So stay with us. Welcome back to NTD's International Reporters Roundtable. I'm Kevin Hogan. We're here with our guests Sean Lin, Darlene Sanchez, and Steve Ispas discussing biowarfare. Turning to you, Steve, you said there's no indication that the lab in California had a biowarfare purpose. They're more so about the theft of intellectual property. But given the for-profit motive of the lab and the connection of the company ownership to the CCP, how possible is it that it could be directed towards that purpose? Yeah, that's a very good question. That's almost like someone having a basement full of dynamite. And they just keep it in there and they say, well, you know, we don't have any intention with that. You know, we just like to collect dynamite in our basement. They can use it at any time for a variety of purposes in a variety of ways. There's no indication that they were going to, but at the same time, given the track record of these individuals and the way they have operated, they defrauded these companies. They have used the rudest means to bankrupt and take over other Canadian companies and U.S. companies. They had no moral standard in any way. Given that information, it's obviously a possibility that they can use this for even theft. Yes, and you can imagine that there probably aren't that many U.S.-linked biolabs in China. So China is clearly pulling its strings in order to take advantage of the open system that we have here in the United States. So we want to direct this back to Darlene here. You were down in the Panama, in the Darien Gap, and you were uncovering how the Chinese regime and the Iranian regime were working together with the United Nations to foster this illegal migration to the United States instead of using the U.N. funds, which a lot of them come from basically American taxpayers, to help them with humanitarian aid. So can you describe that process, how the Chinese regime is breaking laws but behind the scenes in order to manipulate this open arms that the United States have to welcome people who are legitimately seeking asylum and also for migrants that can help bolster the American economy? Yes, well, I think what's happening is the United States has traditionally given money, of course, to the U.N. for various purposes, including humanitarian aid. But what's happened now is this has been basically skewed to where all this money is now going to help, quote, you know, migrants, humanitarian aid, as they travel, you know, to different countries in Central America and South America, of course, heading to the United States. So since the Biden administration, there's been more money poured into the U.N. And there, of course, whenever we were down there looking, there were maps put out in these migrant camps, giant maps showing all kinds of data, like where the temperature actually, bus stops, places they could get help, you know, medical aid. All this was laid out for them, and we saw them gathered around the maps and, you know, tracing the map route, I guess, that they intended to take to the United States, and it showed it all the way up through Central America. And Darlene, yeah, well, just to follow up here, how might this weaponized migration be a form of bio-warfare, this illegal migration here? And, you know, we know that China and Russia are involved in here in subverting the system, and Venezuela is also involved. So what can you tell us? Yes, okay, so what's happening is, I think that this is unconventional type of warfare. They want to collapse the border of the United States by overwhelming it with so many migrants. Which we have seen, right? There's more than 9 million at this point since early 2021, or excuse me, the fall of 2021. And so they're, you know, overwhelming the system. Part of that, though, the destabilization is, you know, to them it's just gravy, right? Biological warfare, you know, spreading disease into the food system and throughout the population of the United States. That's just the cherry on top, right? I mean, that's what they're looking at. Their main cause here, or their main purpose here, is to destabilize the United States by overwhelming it. And we know this because there have been groups that have investigated where these giant caravans are coming from, and they found money streaming from Venezuela to actually these NGOs to help facilitate these caravans. And we've also seen information, you know, from China and Russia, you know, egging this on. And there was actually a map put out by Russia showing the United States broken up into different countries that were then overtaken by China, Russia, and even Mexico. That is just so alarming that you're revealing all this to us here. This question of unrestricted and unconventional warfare, Dr. Chun-Lin, can you explain to us a little bit what is happening behind the scenes here? Because we all thought that the Wuhan lab in China has been closed down, and there's no more research going there, but are they still at it? Oh, actually, I think that's a wrong perception that the Wuhan Institute of Virology got closed down. It has never been closed down. Even under the, you know, WHO's joint investigation, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never been closed down. And they are still very aggressively pursuing their gain-of-function study. Actually, last year, the Shi Zhengli's group, the Bat Women's Research Group, actually had a publication on more gain-of-function studies on bat coronavirus. And so, actually, they had a new mutant called SMA-1901 that is a mutant generated on the bat coronavirus. And it has shown it can lead to 85% lethality in aged mice. And they intentionally omit the data regarding what they tested was a result from transgenic mice with maybe human ACE2 receptor. So it's a very clear gain-of-function study. Meanwhile, in China, other dual research, other military-civil fusion research programs are also accelerating very fast. In Beijing, there's one university called Beijing University of Chemical Technology. Under the military-civil fusion program, they got a lot of funding from the government. So they built up a center called Beijing Innovation Center for Soft Matter. And they built up a lab to do dangerous pathogen studies. So this lab is run by a private investigator, Song Lihua. And she got the pangolin coronavirus samples from Shi Zhengli's group. And she do further mutations and also generate a very dangerous pathogen from this pangolin coronavirus. So what she obtained is actually 100% lethality in transgenic mice, in one particular transgenic mice. So basically, they are selectively obtaining a mutant that has better affinity for human ACE2 receptor, so that's have higher affinity for human spillover. That is really just so alarming. And it's that 100% pathogenic effective gain-of-function research. And this is, can you explain exactly what that means about how fast this virus can spread? So basically, in that particular transgenic mice model, it has high copies of the human ACE2 receptor. So within eight days, all the transgenic mice die once they infected by this new pangolin coronavirus. So it's very fast killing. And also, very typical pneumonic infection pattern. And some of the infection actually was very obvious in brain as well. So it's very fast killing. So these dangerous pathogens, actually, we think they are purposefully selecting mutants that have higher affinity for human ACE2 receptor. On the surface, they can now call it a very wonderful surrogate animal model. It's actually ridiculous. The initial draft, initial manuscript, when they submit, they actually, in the title, they talk about 100% lethality. And then it triggered international concerns. So they changed the title, take out the words, about 100% lethality. And so I think definitely, I even suspect the researchers don't even know what kind of outcome they can do through this kind of black box kind of fungal study. Because they simply passage the virus in vitro multiple times and then put into the transgenic mice. They don't know what might come out of it. 100% lethality that you said. That is just so concerning. And it's tough information to learn. But it's important information to know what they have at their disposal here. Steve, we just got a few seconds here. How did the lab get its hands on all of these materials? And how far does this company's tentacles reach? Well, it's a very good question. We don't know how they got these materials. How far the tentacles go, we draw research. We notice there's at least 20 companies that are involved in this. Universal Meditech, the main owner of the lab, has been involved in 132 lawsuits in 10 countries, including Canada, US, Mexico, Hong Kong, and others. The tentacles probably reach really, really far. And one thing I want to add is that we're dealing with the system. The US is based on an honor system. So you can open a business. You can have an operation here. We trust that you're doing the right thing. But we're dealing with people who come from a system that do not operate in that mode. So it's very difficult to regulate and very difficult to take care of this Well, we're going to take a quick break here. Great update from you, Steve. And when we come back, we're going to assess how much the US government is actually doing to remedy these problems, especially considering that this is an election year, a very crucial time in the American ecosystem. Thank you so much for staying with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to International Reporters Roundtable. I'm your host, Kevin Hogan. We're returning to conclude our panel on biowarfare with our guests Sean Lin, Darlene Sanchez, and Steve Esposito. Let's turn to you, Steve, to start and talk about this biolab in California that's linked to the Chinese Communist Party. There's a lot of concerns of negligence of the American government surrounding this. Is this bureaucracy? Is it infiltration or something more nefarious? Very good question. There's signs that there could be infiltration in some ways when we see the hesitancy of different agencies to investigate this. When we see the work that they've done, which seems very superficial with the CDC, that was the biggest outcry from the city of Ridley when the CDC did very, very little to investigate or to analyze the situation. Kevin Kiley, a congressman from Northern California, is about to write a letter to the CDC and ask for more information and look into this further, why they did so little. So definitely this is alarming and it's concerning, but we don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely something that's holding them back from doing a full investigation. Yeah, and I want to turn to you, Sean. How is it possible for the U.S. government to allow these things to occur, such as this biolab in California, or how you mentioned that there are now returning to doing their research in this lab in Wuhan, China. How do they let that happen on their watch? I think the United States, of course, is lagging far behind the very aggressiveness that CCP has been doing these bioware development in the last 10 to 20 years. And at the beginning, through scientific collaborations, the U.S. was very naive in its aspect to establish all kinds of collaborations with Chinese, for example, virology researchers. And so Chinese gradually built out their own capacities. Now actually Chinese have the top virologists and also infrastructure to do all kinds of dangerous studies. So now they don't have to rely on United States researchers now. And also the government putting so much money into boosting the biotech industry. So I think right now it's not actually exactly what U.S. can contain in the aspect. And so U.S. government can do more, you know, maybe sanction lease on some of the Chinese companies, biotech companies. They still are doing dangerous kind of studies and they can put international pressure on Chinese military medical research institutes or high institute of virology, or this kind of research institute doing dangerous dual-use studies. But overall, I think we are facing huge threats globally on three levels. One is the human-generated disaster, like this kind of gain of studies, maybe government behind it, right? So this is human creating dangerous pathogen. And then the second level is the government covering up for natural outbreaks. So, you know, there are many outbreaks still happening in different part of the world, especially in China, even now. There are still COVID infection ongoing, but the government just didn't report it. They didn't want to do nucleic acid test. They didn't want to report. They didn't want to collect data. So international society will be blinded because of the cover-up. And then the third level, I think it's the globally, you know, we see so many different pathogen outbreak. Even for the last two winters, we see so many respiratory pathogens, has huge spikes. So I think the overall environmental conditions is devastating. And you see all kinds of pathogens, whether it's the newly emerging one or previous eradicated one, all popping up again. So I think overall human society facing huge dangers now. Yes, and Sean, and to your comment, I will point back to an op-ed in The Hill by contributor Andy Weber back in 2022, in which he said the U.S. defense establishment is, quote, less than fully prepared to deal with weapons of mass destruction that may include bio-agents here. I want to turn to you, Darlene. You were down in the, doing a lot of research, a lot of reporting at the border there, and amid these concerns that viruses may be carried over with these migrants who are coming. Of course, we saw the Title 42 had to be enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and so forth. What is the Border Patrol doing about this aspect of migration and how are they responding to your inquiries? Well, there really hasn't been much of a response from them, actually. We've tried several times. But in speaking with former Border Patrol agents, you know, what we're told is that it is just incredibly minimal that, you know, these folks will come over, these illegal migrants. You know, there may be a nurse there to just peruse generally down the line, ask them to raise up their shirts to see if there's anything visible on their skin. And that's pretty much it from what we've been told. Of course, that process is much more stringent if you're trying to enter the United States legally. And it's, again, this goes back to the weaponized migration of overwhelming the system so the normal checks and balances no longer apply. And there have been concerns about allocating funds for a border wall, but some analysts have told me that the border wall will prevent people from crossing over in these remote areas and channel them to the proper ports of entry where they can be vetted and have the proper medical assessments done there. Here, Steve, I want to toss this one to you. What agency does our audience have in combating these hazards that are on the horizon? Well, CDC should be the leading agency who's dealing with this, and it doesn't seem like they're doing a good job. FBI obviously has their law enforcement power to act and to operate in this space. FDA is actually the agency that arrested the culprit in this case. They were the ones who were able to put an end to at least this part of the operation. So I don't think the issue is that the agencies are not there. I just think that they're not doing enough of what they should be doing or be strict enough in operating and taking care of the business. And back to you, Darlene, here. We have a number of gotaways, the ones that are known and then also unknown gotaways. How is law enforcement able to track any of this and get an estimate of actually what is entering the country? Well, I think that's a good question. It's very difficult. Texas, of course, has poured billions of dollars into Operation Lone Star, doing their best to try to block illegal entry into Texas. And that actually seems to be a deterrent right now. It's hard to say how long that will last. But trying to get a handle on the ones that got away, I think is incredibly difficult. They'll show up sometimes in other states where they've broken the law, perhaps. And then they have a detainer with ICE on them, filed so ICE can then remove them. But I think it is a tremendous problem. We don't know who's coming into this country. They have not been vetted. And there is a lot of concern that, especially like, for example, a lot of the Chinese illegal migrants coming over right now, how much of this is actually approved by the CCP? And experts say that the CCP has to know all these people are coming over here. So the question is, are some of these people part of a sleeper cell even? That's been mentioned to me. And last here, Sean, what can you tell us about the timing of all this? There's concerns that Americans may have to get a shot before they can vote or other situations that stem from all these viruses reemerging and then these other pathogens that are being worked on. So what can you tell us here, Sean? I think overall, definitely, it's different methods to saturate the systems to drag U.S. attention away from the real danger is, you know, so in terms of bio-warfare. And so right now, if the United States is overwhelmed with all kinds of disaster, border crisis, they cannot put efforts on international efforts to contain the bio-warfare aggressiveness from the CCP. And I think in certain ways, actually, I don't know how much confidence I can put on the U.S. government agency. You know, for example, under building a stronger pandemic prevention globally, NIH, CDC, USAID are putting a lot of money to different countries to enhance pandemic surveillance capacity. It's a nice, you know, maybe motivation. But in this way, you're building up capacity in other countries who don't have enough regulation for these dangerous pathogens. How can you control that building in Southeast Asia, even in Pakistan, even in China? Can you regulate their safety operations? There's no way. So basically, in a certain sense, U.S. funding these kind of capacity in other countries with poor infrastructure, then you create a lot of loopholes. Yeah, I don't think it's easy to contain the situation. So now, I think we can take advantage of the situation, creating different chaotic situations in different countries. Then the U.S. doesn't have enough resources. You know, just like so many wars outbreak right now, the U.S. doesn't have enough patients, you know, CCPs. That really is such important information to be aware of. And that concludes our discussion today. Thank you to our guests, Sean Lynn, Darlene Sanchez, and Steve Esposito. Finally, to all you brave journalists out there honoring our journalist golden rule, seek the truth and report it. And thank you for joining us on NTD's International Reporters Roundtable. I'm Kevin Hogan. Until next time.