by Steven Richards and John Solomon at Just the News
The pair indicted this week worked with a University of Michigan laboratory helmed and the FBI is calling the federal funding a possible bioterrorism security risk.
Two Chinese scientists charged in a shocking plot to smuggle a toxic pathogen into the United States worked at an American laboratory led by more senior Chinese scientists funded by the U.S. government, according to federal spending records and the researchers’ own disclosures.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, were charged Tuesday with smuggling a fungus called Fusarium graminearum into the United States in 2024. The fungus is classified in the scientific literature as a “potential agroterrorism weapon” because it affects wheat, barley, maize, and rice by causing “head blight,” according to the Justice Department.
The incident is again raising concerns about the tendrils of Chinese Communist Party influence inside U.S. research institutions and broader society, just five years after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed federal funding to a lab in Wuhan, China where the virus is believed to have escaped and where dangerous gain of function research was being conducted.
The Justice Department noted Yunqing Jian’s electronics contained evidence describing “her membership in and loyalty” to the Chinese Communist Party. The Trump administration, especially the FBI, have doubled down on efforts to root out Chinese Communist Party influence, especially in higher education, by revoking visas for Chinese students at American schools.