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And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.

by ffssffss 4y ago

djkivi 4y ago
Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then.
- seizethecheese 4y ago
  I don’t know… I think when they all agree it’s also likely that they are wrong. (It indicates some possibility of motivated reasoning.)
- matwood 4y ago
  > Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then. Then you know they are lying.
alchemist1e9 4y ago
Probably they still aren’t sharing all the information they have with each other. I had thought that was supposed to be much improved post 9-11.
- kashunstva 4y ago
  Or there aren't objective standards for what "low, medium, and high confidence" actually mean, thereby allowing one agency to look at the evidence and say it's of low confidence and another to look at the same data and say it's moderate confidence.
  - Bjartr 4y ago
    Interestingly, the CIA has published a paper on exactly this subject: Words of Estimative Probability (PDF) https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-8-no-4/words-of-estimative-probability/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/ar...
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      Moderate and Low are Words of Analytic Confidence [1]. This has more to do with the quality of the sourcing than a numeric probability number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence
- ineedasername 4y ago
  Or they are coming to different conclusions given the same ambiguous/incomplete information. It could simply be disagreement, or just lack of a standard metric here to compare notes easily.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    It probably just means the correct aggregate conclusion is “we don’t know, go ask China”.
- tzs 4y ago
  I read that they did massively increase sharing after 9/11, but there was a reassessment after the Manning leaks. Manning had access to way more information than someone at their level needed for their job, and they concluded this came about from going a bit too far on the post 9/11 sharing and so they dialed it back a bit.
- jasonladuke0311 4y ago
  They improved the ability to share info (fusion centers and whatnot), but the desire to do so remains under the auspices of humans.
Silverback_VII 4y ago
I'm sure that the undecidedness is not about the origin but about the geopolitical impact such an official statement would have.
atoav 4y ago
I have not been inside the CIA, but that could just mean they haven't done any research on that or that their research is ongoing. An institution will not have assessments on everything at any point in time. Two different institutions might have didferent assessments for a billion reasons, e.g. they could have done the research at different points in time, the underlying evisence could differ, the interviewed experts could have said different things and so on. Two different instutions reaching different conclusions is not as surprising as it seems.
colechristensen 4y ago
What the CIA says publicly and what is happening internally are often very different things. The FBI has less of a global political agenda.
Consultant32452 4y ago
Organizations like the CIA don't make factual statements, they make strategic statements. Any connection with reality is purely coincidental. If the CIA came out tomorrow and said they were 100% confident it was a lab leak from China we would have no way of knowing if that's based on facts or political propaganda. Maybe, in 40-50 years we'll get an answer. Until then, it's too politically and strategically useful to keep it up in the air. At least one goal is for people to be arguing about it.
actually_a_dog 4y ago
This is exactly why I can't give this article, or any of those multiple intelligence agency assessments any real credence. I don't have access to any of the data that went into those assessments. What I do have access to doesn't point very strongly at a lab leak origin, despite its plausibility.
- autoexec 4y ago
  It's perfectly reasonable for the government to support one theory based on non-conclusive evidence that they have and reasonable for the public to support another based on the non-conclusive evidence available to them. It makes it a lot more likely that public support for the non-lab leak theories will change once we get the chance to see the government's new evidence though.
Arn_Thor 4y ago
And for the record, the National Intelligence Council and four other unidentified agencies say with "low confidence" that the virus came about through natural transmission.

And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.

djkivi 4y ago

Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then.

seizethecheese 4y ago
I don’t know… I think when they all agree it’s also likely that they are wrong. (It indicates some possibility of motivated reasoning.)
matwood 4y ago
> Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then. Then you know they are lying.

alchemist1e9 4y ago

Probably they still aren’t sharing all the information they have with each other. I had thought that was supposed to be much improved post 9-11.

kashunstva 4y ago
Or there aren't objective standards for what "low, medium, and high confidence" actually mean, thereby allowing one agency to look at the evidence and say it's of low confidence and another to look at the same data and say it's moderate confidence.
- Bjartr 4y ago
  Interestingly, the CIA has published a paper on exactly this subject: Words of Estimative Probability (PDF) https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-8-no-4/words-of-estimative-probability/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/ar...
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    Moderate and Low are Words of Analytic Confidence [1]. This has more to do with the quality of the sourcing than a numeric probability number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence
ineedasername 4y ago
Or they are coming to different conclusions given the same ambiguous/incomplete information. It could simply be disagreement, or just lack of a standard metric here to compare notes easily.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  It probably just means the correct aggregate conclusion is “we don’t know, go ask China”.
tzs 4y ago
I read that they did massively increase sharing after 9/11, but there was a reassessment after the Manning leaks. Manning had access to way more information than someone at their level needed for their job, and they concluded this came about from going a bit too far on the post 9/11 sharing and so they dialed it back a bit.
jasonladuke0311 4y ago
They improved the ability to share info (fusion centers and whatnot), but the desire to do so remains under the auspices of humans.

Silverback_VII 4y ago

I'm sure that the undecidedness is not about the origin but about the geopolitical impact such an official statement would have.

atoav 4y ago

I have not been inside the CIA, but that could just mean they haven't done any research on that or that their research is ongoing. An institution will not have assessments on everything at any point in time. Two different institutions might have didferent assessments for a billion reasons, e.g. they could have done the research at different points in time, the underlying evisence could differ, the interviewed experts could have said different things and so on. Two different instutions reaching different conclusions is not as surprising as it seems.

colechristensen 4y ago

What the CIA says publicly and what is happening internally are often very different things. The FBI has less of a global political agenda.

Consultant32452 4y ago

Organizations like the CIA don't make factual statements, they make strategic statements. Any connection with reality is purely coincidental. If the CIA came out tomorrow and said they were 100% confident it was a lab leak from China we would have no way of knowing if that's based on facts or political propaganda. Maybe, in 40-50 years we'll get an answer. Until then, it's too politically and strategically useful to keep it up in the air. At least one goal is for people to be arguing about it.

actually_a_dog 4y ago

This is exactly why I can't give this article, or any of those multiple intelligence agency assessments any real credence. I don't have access to any of the data that went into those assessments. What I do have access to doesn't point very strongly at a lab leak origin, despite its plausibility.

autoexec 4y ago
It's perfectly reasonable for the government to support one theory based on non-conclusive evidence that they have and reasonable for the public to support another based on the non-conclusive evidence available to them. It makes it a lot more likely that public support for the non-lab leak theories will change once we get the chance to see the government's new evidence though.

Arn_Thor 4y ago

And for the record, the National Intelligence Council and four other unidentified agencies say with "low confidence" that the virus came about through natural transmission.