Actually, not just bioweapons labs, but there has also been a spate of Chinese students and “researchers” who have been caught smuggling in biological materials that can easily be used to damage American agriculture.
Back in 2023, I wrote about a biological laboratory that was discovered in Fresno in an abandoned building, complete with genetically engineered test animals, viral samples, and everything you would need to cook up some nasty bioweapons. It got a bit of media attention, but as with all such things it quickly vanished into the rear-view mirror.
No doubt the press lost interest due to the lack of “new” news to cover, and that was likely the case because the federal government isn’t eager to get people panicked about things they cannot do anything about. Let the feds do their work more quietly.
Yeah, well, these stories about Chinese people doing scary things with biological materials keep popping up.
I keep reading about Chinese people smuggling in dangerous fungi, bacteria, and viruses, and you do have to wonder whether this is just a hobby for Chinese students or whether something more systematic is happening.
Perhaps secret bioweapons labs are a common thing about which I knew nothing, but if so, one has to wonder why everybody involved seems to be from China.
Perhaps the Chinese learned their lesson from the COVID lab leak and decided that it was much safer to do their bioweapons research right here in the United States. After all, if there is a lab leak, the pandemic will begin exactly where they wanted it to anyway, and the United States is (theoretically) better positioned to deal with it, at least now that Anthony Fauci isn’t heading up efforts.
I wish I had something brilliant to say about what the federal government should do beyond being vigilant and tracking down these threats, but beyond a crackdown of foreign students from China, which Trump has, for some reason, rejected, it’s hard to say what it would be.
This exactly the sort of gray-zone warfare that is hardest to control. It is damaging, but below the threshold for a military response unless you can definitively pin the blame for the damage, and likely not even then.
How do you deter this sort of thing? Clearly, we haven’t yet, just as we haven’t kept the Chinese out of our most secure telecommunications infrastructure.
Any ideas? It’s not like we are going to drop a nuke on Beijing. We didn’t even punish China for COVID, except a halfhearted ban on providing money to the Wuhan Institute of Biology.
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Feds Seize 1000 Samples From Illegal CCP Biolab in Las Vegas Owned by Defendant in Reedley Case
Early Saturday morning the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department SWAT team, assisted by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, executed a search warrant at a home in northeast Las Vegas owned by Jia Bei Zhu, the CCP-linked Chinese citizen who ran an illegal biolab in Reedley, California. After finding multiple refrigerators and freezers containing vials, bottles, and jugs of unknown liquid substances, and laboratory equipment in the garage of the home, FBI scientists and a specialized investigation team collected over 1,000 samples from the garage; that evidence has been transported to the National Bio-forensic Analysis Center in Maryland for examination.
As you might recall, Zhu was arrested in 2023 and remains in federal custody after a judge determined him to be an extreme flight risk. He was indicted on charges of of wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to federal agents, and for distributing adulterated and misbranded COVID-19 test kits in violation of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and is set to go to trial on March 10, 2026. His business partner and girlfriend, Zhaoyan Wang, also a Chinese citizen, was charged with wire fraud and distribution of adulterated and misbranded medical devices. Wang is believed to be in China.
On Sunday morning, federal agents again searched the location of the Reedley biolab, but no information was given during Monday afternoon’s press conference about the results of that search warrant.
Authorities said that three individuals were residing in the Las Vegas home at the time the search warrant was executed, and that all three had individually rented rooms from the property manager, Ori Solomon. Solomon was arrested on charges of improperly disposing of and discharging hazardous waste. Since Zhu has been jailed since 2023, and Wang is… in the wind somewhere, it will be interesting to find out who hired Solomon and when, and where/to whom he sent the rent proceeds. When I visited the scene Monday morning a local ABC reporter was going door-to-door to talk to neighbors; perhaps they will have more information on timelines. One neighbor told 8 News Now that the home was “under surveillance” before the raid.
That the FBI sent a specialized evidence collection team to the scene is of extreme importance, because while the material at the lab in Reedley was labeled as containing various pathogens like Ebola, COVID, HIV, and more, the CDC refused to test the contents of various vials and containers to definitively determine whether the labels were correct or not. That means that Zhu and Wang cannot be charged with any type of bioterrorism crime given the current evidence. Investigators in Las Vegas say that the refrigerators and freezer were all plugged in and operational at the time of the raid, and the evidence samples have been kept in temperature-controlled containers since, and a chain of custody has been established. So, now that Joe Biden’s FBI is no longer in charge, we might see upgraded charges against these two.
Nellis Air Force Base
Zhu’s home, located at 979 Sugar Springs Road in northeast Las Vegas, is less than three miles from the runways of Nellis Air Force base, home to the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center. Whether he and Wang intended to target personnel there or simply moved a bunch of equipment to that home when things started getting too hot in California is a matter of speculation at this point, but that’s not the only national security danger. From their perch overlooking the base they certainly could have used the home to keep an eye on what was happening at the base and as a signals intelligence gathering station.
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