Follow us on social

49680600552_b3ebf9cdfe_o-scaled

The Trump administration’s dangerous politicization of COVID-19 intelligence

The pressure being exerted on the intelligence agencies about the Wuhan lab is reminiscent of pressures that earlier administrations exerted to hunt for material in support of their favored hypotheses, including hypotheses used to sell wars.

Analysis | Washington Politics

Donald Trump’s disdain for the U.S. intelligence community has been much in evidence ever since his first full day in office, when he used the solemn setting of the CIA’s memorial to fallen officers to attack the press and brag about the size of his inauguration crowd. Reminders of that disdain have included his public siding with the president of Russia against the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies regarding Russian election interference. A more recent reminder is press reporting that frequent warnings about COVID-19 that appeared in Trump’s daily intelligence briefings throughout January and February didn’t sink in because Trump simply doesn’t bother to pay much attention to those briefings.

The purge of intelligence professionals and installation of Trump loyalists who are otherwise unqualified for the senior positions they have been given at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are part of the same pattern. Clearly Trump does not look to U.S. intelligence to perform its proper function of providing objective facts and analysis about overseas events. He instead sees it as just one more element of government to be pressed into supporting his own assertions.

It thus is unsurprising that now, as Trump is endeavoring to deflect attention from his own performance during the COVID-19 pandemic and to direct blame elsewhere — including at China — he is trying to make intelligence part of that effort. The New York Times reports that senior administration officials “have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak”.

The origins of the pandemic, including possible involvement of that Chinese lab, are legitimate targets for reporting and analysis by U.S. intelligence, and the reported push may seem at first glance to be legitimate as well. But there is a big difference between calling for a concerted effort to find the most accurate possible answer to a question, such as “how did the outbreak begin?” and calling for material to support one possible answer to the question, e.g. “give us everything you can that would suggest the Wuhan lab was the origin.” As with any other situation that starts with a conclusion and tries to find support for it, the latter approach involves bias.

Intelligence agencies will never have the resources to investigate endlessly every possible answer to all of the important questions that come their way. In an unpoliticized environment, they will focus their collection and analytical capabilities in the directions that, based on logic and whatever early information they have, are the most promising avenues for getting at the truth. They will refine and revise their priorities as some investigative avenues bear fruit and others turn out to be dead ends.

When senior members of the incumbent administration exert pressure regarding a specific topic, that immediately moves to the top of the agencies’ priority list. So concentrated work surely is taking place now to dig up any scrap that might suggest the Wuhan lab was the source of the virus. Almost certainly some such scraps will be found — not necessarily because they get closer to the truth than alternative possibilities about the origin of the pandemic, but simply because that’s where the most concentrated digging took place.

The intelligence agencies may, amid continued uncertainties, remain agnostic about the question of the pandemic’s origin. An intelligence community statement indicates that they are agnostic now, unlike Trump’s contrary assertion that he has a “high degree of confidence” the virus came from the Wuhan lab. But meanwhile, the agencies will have delivered the scraps to the White House, which can freely and selectively use them publicly to support the favored hypothesis while ignoring any information that might point in a different direction.

The administration already has displayed, in other aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a proclivity for running with fragmentary, scrap-like information when pushing a favored hypothesis. This was true of the supposed curative effects of hydroxychloroquine, until Trump and his co-promoters at Fox News quietly dropped their promotion when too much information came to light showing that this was a medical dead end.

The pressure being exerted on the intelligence agencies about the Wuhan lab is reminiscent of pressures that earlier administrations exerted to hunt for material in support of their favored hypotheses, including hypotheses used to sell wars. One such episode was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, in which the Johnson administration promoted the idea of a second, open-ocean attack by North Vietnam on U.S. warships—an attack which almost certainly never occurred — as a basis for mustering public support for what became the Vietnam War. The push, not for the truth, but for material to support the administration’s hypothesis was made explicit in a directive sent out to military units in the area: “An urgent requirement exists for proof and evidence of second attack by DRV [North Vietnamese] naval units…Material must be of type which will convince United Nations Organization that the attack did in fact occur.”

Also similar was the push to sell the offensive war in Iraq by the George W. Bush administration, which pressed the intelligence agencies again and again for anything they could find that might suggest an alliance between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda. The administration used the resulting scraps to spin a tale of such an alliance — contrary both to the truth and to the intelligence agencies’ own conclusions.

The current pressure over COVID-19 and the Wuhan lab has multiple costs. It is likely to impede public understanding about what is and is not known about the origins of the pandemic. It is an additional needless complication in U.S. relations with China, especially if the hypothesis about the lab’s role turns out to be wrong. It also undermines the important role the intelligence agencies play in national security — in the short term by distorting the allocation of intelligence resources, and in the longer term by ensnaring the agencies in a politicized blame-deflecting effort.


President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, delivers remarks at a coronavirus (COVID-19) press briefing Friday, March 20, 2020, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Analysis | Washington Politics
Lockheed Martin NASA
Top photo credit: Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colo. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

The Pentagon spent $4 trillion over 5 years. Contractors got 54% of it.

Military Industrial Complex

Advocates of ever-higher Pentagon spending frequently argue that we must throw more money at the department to “support the troops.” But recent budget proposals and a new research paper issued by the Quincy Institute and the Costs of War Project at Brown University suggest otherwise.

The paper, which I co-authored with Stephen Semler, found that 54% of the Pentagon’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors. The top five alone — Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion) – received $771 billion in Pentagon contracts over that five year period.

keep readingShow less
China Malaysia
Top photo credit: Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan of Malaysia compete in the Women's Doubles Round Robin match against Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida of Japan on day five of the BWF Sudirman Cup Finals 2025 at Fenghuang Gymnasium on May 1, 2025 in Xiamen, Fujian Province of China. (Photo by Zheng Hongliang/VCG )

How China is 'eating our lunch' with soft power

Asia-Pacific

In June 2025, while U.S. and Philippine forces conducted joint military drills in the Sulu Sea and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, another story deserving of attention played out less visibly.

A Chinese-financed rail project broke ground in Malaysia with diplomatic fanfare and local celebration. As Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim noted, the ceremony “marks an important milestone” in bilateral cooperation. The contrast was sharp: Washington sent ships and speeches; Beijing sent people and money.

keep readingShow less
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin
Top photo credit: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin appear on screen. (shutterstock/miss.cabul)

Westerners foolishly rush to defend Azerbaijan against Russia

Europe

The escalating tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan — marked by tit-for-tat arrests, accusations of ethnic violence, and economic sparring — have tempted some Western observers to view the conflict as an opportunity to further isolate Moscow.

However, this is not a simple narrative of Azerbaijan resisting Russian dominance. It is a complex struggle over energy routes, regional influence, and the future of the South Caucasus, where Western alignment with Baku risks undermining critical priorities, including potential U.S.-Russia engagement on Ukraine and arms control.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.