The Associated Press found that governments around the world used mass surveillance technologies and data during the COVID-19 pandemic for purposes unrelated to the pandemic, including stifling dissent and harassing marginalized communities.
According to Fang, Twitter "quietly aided the Pentagon’s covert online PsyOp campaign" and directly assisted the US military in its efforts to shape public opinion in the Middle East and beyond. He wrote that Twitter "gave approval & special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops."
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine may be linked to higher instances of adverse effects in people over 65, including blood clots and heart attacks, according to a study by the FDA, but the agency still maintains that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks of contracting COVID-19.
The US is adding more than 30 Chinese companies to a trade blacklist that would prevent them from purchasing certain American components as part of the ongoing US-China technology conflict.
Despite high vaccination rates in China, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that the country will see an "explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023," with peak cases and approximately 322,000 deaths expected around April 1, when around one-third of the population is projected to have been infected.
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday released an "unclassified" summary of their report on the origins of COVID-19, accusing the U.S. Intelligence Community of withholding important information and calling for an investigation into U.S. funding of Chinese researchers.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed Twitter “has been functioning as the arm of government intel agencies” by acting as an "intelligence gathering apparatus.”
