06-17-2024, 11:49 AM
Tiangou wrote:
[quote=Blankity Blank]
[quote=Tiangou]
[quote=Acer]
"continued for some time under the Biden administration."
How long?
From the Reuters story:
"It was terminated in mid-2021... The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found."
Obviously not knowing the intricacies and ramifications of such circumstances, while I would have hoped for better, I can conceive of circumstances — protecting sources, keeping exact methods of operation as ‘black boxed’ from adversaries as possible and of course ever present institutional pushback and inertia — where a three or fourth frame of time might not be an outrageous window for halting such a program.
But allowance for such still requires some element of faith.
It may simply have gotten a new name and no longer been so easily discoverable by reporters.
...And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign — General Dynamics IT — won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.
Certainly possible, though it doesn’t seem like (to my untrained eye) a high enough priority type endeavor to risk the kind of blowback/reputational damage that would go along with anyone finding out it was still active with it so recently having eyes on it. And certainly not with what would be such a clumsily obvious reviving.