As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.”
The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.
> they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days
CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.
They say that there is no new data. That they are just altering their choice for what assumption is more likely.
Supposedly because they've had more time to think about the conditions of the lab before Covid was released...
But really, nothing has changed except their biases. Nothing has changed on the solid evidence side.
Separately, if there were actual safety issues and stuff was leaking... Then we're incredibly lucky that it was something as tame as Covid, and not one of the more serious kinds of horrors that gain of function research has successfully produced.
The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.