Geoff: The country's top
intelligence officials
testified in the senate today,
assessing Russia's plans in
Ukraine, the threat of tiktok
and the origins of covid, which
as Nick schifrin reports, was
also the subject of its own
hearing in the house.
>> I will call the hearing to
order.
Nick: In the senate intelligence
committee today, the woman and
men who lead the country's
intelligence community, detailed
a world full of threats.
Starting with Russia's war in
Ukraine.
Wagner private military
contractors are besieging the
eastern city of bakhmut,
the longest and deadliest battle
of the war.
Ukraine is trying to inflict
heavy Russian losses.
Those losses are adding up,
director of national
intelligence Avril Haines said
today.
>> It will be increasingly
challenging for them to sustain
even the current level of
offensive operations in the
coming months, and consequently,
they may fully shift to holding
and defending the territories
they now occupy.
Nick: Haines said Putin is
focused on quote more modest
military objectives, but warned
he could fight a long war.
>> Putin most likely calculates
that time works in his favor,
and that prolonging the war,
including with potential pauses
in the fighting, maybe his best
remaining pathway to eventually
securing Russia's strategic
interests in Ukraine, even if it
takes years.
>> Could they use tiktok to
control data on millions of
users?
Nick: The hearing also focused
on technology companies that
answer to the Chinese communist
party, or ccp, especially the
hugely popular video app,
tiktok.
A new bipartisan bill could lead
to a complete ban, and is
supported by the white house.
Today intelligence committee
vice chairman Marco Rubio asked
FBI director Chris Wray, about
the app's potential threat.
>> Could they use it to control
the software on millions of
devices given the opportunity to
do so?
>> Yes.
>> Could they use it to drive
narratives, like to divide
Americans against each other?
>> Yes.
>> This is a tool that is
ultimately within the control of
the Chinese government and it to
me, it screams out with national
security risks.
>> The fact that the
intelligence community still
disagrees on the origins of
covid is concerning.
Nick: Senators also asked about
the origins of covid-19, which
began spreading at the end of
2019, in the central Chinese
city of Wuhan.
>> The FBI has long assessed
going all the way back to the
summer of 2021 that the origin
of the pandemic was likely a lab
incident in Wuhan.
Nick: But the intelligence
community remains divided.
The FBI concluded with moderate
confidence that covid leaked
from a Wuhan lab, an assessment
now shared by the department of
energy with low confidence.
But other agencies have
assessed, also with low
confidence, that covid likely
occurred naturally.
>> China has not fully
cooperated and we think that is
a key critical gap that would
help us to understand what
exactly happened.
>> Where did covid 19 come from?
Nick: It was the subject of
another, more politicized
hearing by the house select
subcommittee on the coronavirus
pandemic.
Republicans and their witnesses
went beyond the intelligence
community conclusions and argued
the Wuhan institute of virology,
with U.S. Funding, artificially
combined viruses in a process
known as gain of function.
And those experiments created
viruses that mirrored covid 19's
unique attributes.
Robert Redfield is a virologist,
and was the director of the
centers for disease control when
covid began.
>> While many believe that gain
of function research is critical
to get ahead of viruses by
developing vaccines, in this
case, I believe it was the exact
opposite.
Unleashing a new virus of the
world without any means of
stopping it, and resulting in
the deaths of millions of
people.
>> Do you believe there was a
cover up?
Nick: Republicans repeatedly
accused Dr Anthony Fauci, the
former head of national
institute of allergy and
infectious diseases, of
promoting the naturally occuring
theory, and silencing the lab
leak theory.
>> I don't think I used the word
coverup.
Okay?
I think there was an attempt to
misguide.
Redirect the debate.
Nick: Last night in the New York
Times Dr Fauci called Republican
allegations false and
misleading, and said he's always
kept an open mind on covid's
origins.
China has largely stonewalled
efforts to investigate
independently.
Jamie metzl is an atlantic
council senior fellow.
>> If you make it primarily
about Dr Fauci, we will be
inappropriately serving the
the Chinese government a
propaganda coup.
Nick: Most leading scientists
still argue covid spread
naturally from humans to
animals.
But regardless of the cause,
finding the origin is still
critical.
Paul Auwaerter was the president
of the infectious diseases
society of America.
>> We can learn valuable lessons
from these investigations to
prevent outbreaks and pandemics
of any origin.
Nick: But it's not clear if the
world will ever know the origin,
of a disease that killed nearly
7 million people, and counting.