There’s are suggestions over the past few months that the Chinese engineered the COVID19 pathogen, and its spread was not an accident. The United States, especially its president, Donald Trump, has publicly endorsed the idea that these things don’t just pop out from a small city in China and suddenly spread to all the major cities all over the globe, and then leaving out Beijing entirely, which is sitting next to Wuhan.
The British, share a bit of a similar understanding, saying that the coronavirus was indeed made by man and did not just escape from a lab accident. This, coming from the former chief of MI6 – Sir Richard Dearlove, who spearheaded the agency from the 90s up to 2004. MI6 is the UK’s leading secret intelligence agency, and based on recent developments from British scientists, they definitely agree that the inception of the virus itself was an accident.
A few days ago, the GCHQ, or commonly referred to as the Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom, disclosed that there are “hostile parties” trying to hack-in and steal sensitive British information, more specifically, their scientists’ coronavirus research. This comes after British scientists claimed to have identified sections of the Sars-Cov-2 strain that was found to have some intended or modified insertions on its surface, mainly targeting human cells and binding with them.
Given the theory and claims of other nations, particularly US President Donald Trump, its pretty clear that the closest perpetrators are the Chinese, but that’s yet to be identified.
The GCHQ is the government’s primary security and intelligence agency responsible for signals intelligence and armed forces of the United Kingdom. More importantly, they provide defense against terrorism, cybercrime, and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
According to the agency’s heads, these “hostile parties” started crawling for rudimentary weaknesses, targeting users from within the agency’s network that is not too keen on internet security, those that are quite gullible and easily baited with unauthorized links, those who do not have security backups, those with only basic and generic password on their accounts and machines, etc. This intrusion will eventually lead these parties on a much more extensive network within the center of research data, rendering the information vulnerable and prone to theft.
Although several government officials previously said that there’d been no substantial evidence of any kind that would suggest that the virus had started in a laboratory somewhere in China, this recent development would make people think otherwise. And more importantly, the fact that these “hostile parties” are clearly targeting sensitive information, there is no other priority but to protect the research, the scientists involved, and other classified data.
For the UK in general, China will remain a competitor when it comes to intelligence and economic influence.
The race to acquire and develop a vaccine against coronavirus has officially begun, and the British are obviously getting close. And not only that, it is possible that they are inching closer to finding out the actual components, even the creation of the virus itself. That is why everyone else is scared that the people or perhaps the government response will soon be identified.
