How Did China Fool Us So Badly?

I often assume that our government has the intelligence capacity to know a lot about our adversaries that they never put into the public eye. I considered that a safe assumption. But, this Covid thing, makes me think that our government has no more clue about what is really going on in China than I do.

Fauci gave an interview on Jan. 26, in which he basically said that people in the United States shouldn't worry about Covid-19.

Redfield (head of the CDC), had ineffective tests for Covid-19 when asked to begin testing in this country.

Birx said, this week, that our response to Covid-19 was initially uncertain because China gave inaccurate "data".

I'm going to take all of these people at their word (dangerous, I know). Which means, we had no idea as to what was really going on in China when Covid was running rampant in that country.

If that's true, does that mean that the U.S. doesn't have a single human intelligence asset on the ground in China to give us the real scoop on what is happening there? We don't have a mole … anywhere … in the Chinese government that could have told us, "hey, don't believe the party b.s., this virus is gonna kill you when it escapes China"?

We don't have communication intercepts, or satellite imagery that can clue us in? Are publicly accessible satellite images that any clown with a functioning browser can find the best we've got to look at?

Are we really relying on YouTube videos that are haphazardly posted by Chinese dissidents as our only means of intelligence gathering against our strongest enemy?

Early on in the Obama administration, a number of our intelligence assets were rounded up in China and disposed of by the Chinese government. It set back our intelligence gathering capabilities in that country by decades. No clear answer was ever given as to how China became aware of those assets, but only two possibilities were vetted in the media … either we had a mole that tipped the Chinese off, or they were compromised when China gained unfettered access to Hillary's emails.

If the Covid crisis is a real world result of our complete lack of intelligence gathering capabilities in China then that's a problem much tougher to fix than this virus.

However, the alternative position, that we do have assets in China and that we knew the truth about what was going on and that someone made the decision to withhold that information from Fauci, Redfield and/or Birx (or Trump?) is terrifying.