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Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
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10 Jun, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Etymology can be very revealing.
Going through Nexis, the term "lab leak" appears occasionally in news about past events (Winnipeg 1999, China 2004 and the UK 2007) but it is largely confined to headlines where space is tight.
Scholar articles are more revealing. There are very few uses of "lab leak" or "laboratory leak" in scholarly journals *except* in reference to the current pandemic.
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22L…
By contrast, "laboratory escape" is the term that appears in scholar articles over and over again.
scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…
What I take away from this little exercise is that the word choice ("lab leak" instead of "lab escape") suggests which groups of people propagating this idea -- journalists and pundits much more so than virologists or epidemiologists.

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More from @ArmsControlWonk

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
23 Apr
It wasn't an explosion -- it was a test of a solid rocket motor. A thread. (1/12)
Here is the video that caused all the fuss. There is no explosion, just an intense fire that seems to go out by itself. (2/12)
Compare what you see in that video with images of a test of a large solid propellant rocket motor in the US, especially at the 3:11 mark. (3/12)
Read 13 tweets
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
12 Apr
I basically agree with this back-and-forth about why Israel would want to prevent a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program even though the sabotage campaign cannot reasonably be expected to prevent Iran from ultimately building nuclear weapons if it chooses.
As one colleague admitted pre-JCPOA: He was against a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem because fear of Iran's nuclear weapons program was the most effective issue around which to organize a campaign to isolate the Islamic Republic.
He wanted sanctions because he loathed the regime and wanted it removed. He was frank about his goal and clear-eyed about his strategy: Other countries would not support sanctions for Iran's other malign behaviors, only for the nuclear issue. So, you go with your best argument.
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
15 Mar
Biden is f'ing this up. A thread.
The place to start is by noting that Biden's people have started repeating a Trump-era formulation: "The denuclearization of North Korea." I've seen in the #Quad statement, as well as the bilat with Japan. The Biden-Harris Administration is working to strengthen AmeWe reaffirm our commitment to the complete denuclearization
Here is the problem with this phrase. What Kim said was "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." Same phrase used since Kim Il Sung and what it means is that the US needs to stop threatening North Korea with nuclear weapons, not that he will disarm.
nytimes.com/2018/04/04/opi…
Read 16 tweets
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
2 Mar
Gen. McKenzie's tale about waiting for the Iranians to download a satellite image is bullshit. And David Martin is just lapping it up, asking for seconds. A thread.
Problem 1: The story could not have occurred on the timeline that McKenzie describes. There is a big time gap between when a picture is taken ("collection time") and when the image is available to customers ("delivery time").
The image has to go from the satellite, to a ground station, then to the company, and finally to the customer. In reality, only a very small number of commercial satellite imagery providers like @planet offer images on anything like the timeline implied by McKenzie.
Read 14 tweets
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
4 Feb
This is a fairly tepid "rebuttal" to the @UCSUSA study on hypersonic gliders. What I find most notable is that it largely concedes the technical objections in the paper. Allow me to translate the summary bullet points.
breakingdefense.com/2021/02/pentag…
"Ok, all the gliders we've actually made sucked but, and trust me on this, we are right now imagining gliders that do not suck." UCS. based their model on decade-old flight tests of an expe
"Ok, ok. The gliders we are imagining are slower and less reliable than ICBMs but have you considered the possibility that our glider could bank gently away from an interceptor with a burnout speed in excess of 3 kilometers per second?" UCS graded the model on two key metrics, flight time and det
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis Profile picture
27 Jan
"National Security Directive-1" What the hell? A short thread.
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Listen, there has been a simple pattern for my entire lifetime. When Nixon and Ford issued presidential directives, they we called National Security Decision Memoranda or NSDMs.
When Carter took office, he renamed those documents "Presidential Directives." This kicked off a process in which Republican and Democratic Presidents used different naming conventions for presidential directives. It was childish, sure. But so what?
Read 15 tweets

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