Lieber Case: Filling In The Blanks

Double agent or compromised? Chemist finds himself in no-man's land

Chemist Charles Lieber is convicted of hiding cash to do nanotechnology research for China. Yet his court case failed to reveal how much authorities knew or what further evidence Leiber may be hiding about the nature of research.

His field of bio-electronics is the new Space Race and, like coronavirus research, is the target of corporate competition, espionage and great power rivalry.

The military looms large, grabbing headlines with solutions from its own labs. Just this week U.S. bio-medical-weapons researchers at Fort Detrick revealed a vaccine to protect against future Covid and coronavirus variants.

State-corporatist media dropped the ball yet again, because it is wedded to the idea that there can only be one cause or explanation for an event, and nothing that doesn’t fit in a soundbite. If they find the story too complex to handle, you can read it here. And if you like what you read, please become a paying subscriber.

“Lieber Case: Crossed Wires and Parallel Lines — Part 1: Nanoscientist's case is quarantined, despite Maxwell-Epstein links” (Dec 17, 2021)

“Maxwell Case: Surveilled And Silenced —Twitter censors trial coverage as FBI connections broached” (Dec 10, 2021)

“Science, Ideology And Supremacism - Some modern technologies have roots in ancient, discredited theories” (Aug 12, 2022)

Credit: Charles Lieber, Harvard Crimson magazine

Dec 24, 2021

Intelligence, blackmail and hidden money flows are just part of the backstory kept out of the Boston trial of Charles Lieber. Like that of Ghislaine Maxwell, 200 miles away in Manhattan, it was notable for what wasn’t revealed.

The man once ranked as the world’s top chemist was found guilty on Dec 21 of lying about his ties to China and concealing payments but the trial leaves a question mark over what U.S. intelligence officials know or what Lieber told them.

He is on record admitting to the FBI that it was “pretty damning” that agents had a copy of his contract to run a laboratory at Wuhan University of Technology.

It gave the Department of Justice (DoJ) little option but to prosecute him, even though Lieber is ill with lymphoma and many academics claimed he was singled out. Was his prosecution tied to other investigations — and may others ensue? With Lieber facing prison and hefty fines, he may decide to cooperate with federal agencies.

This summer a senior Chinese security official was reported to have defected to the U.S. and is said to be in the protection of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Dong Jingwei was China's vice minister of state security. Dong was said to have information on coronavirus research in Wuhan as well as a list of U.S. individuals who pass information to China.

At the time Lieber was arrested so too was a lieutenant of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Yanqing Ye, who it is alleged spied on professors while studying at Boston University. Yanqing cannot be questioned because she is now back in China.

International bugs

Suspicion and double dealing cannot be laid at the door of Charles Lieber alone. The Department of Defense with the NIH was aware of, or directly financed, research in China — including the shipment of pathogens. The bug trade is international.

And not just bugs. Lieber’s case shows the level of competition for implantable sensors, bio-electronics and nanocomputers with the potential to be hooked up to mobile telephony and wireless networks — evidenced by numerous patents (See Lieber Case: Crossed Wires and Parallel Lines — Nanoscientist's case is quarantined, despite Maxwell-Epstein links.)

It is not possible to separate these technologies for they intersect in military research, from vaccines and nanotechnology; robotics to exoskeletons; from digital surveillance from health, to banking, to policing; with implications for the fusion of police and military, active denial systems (electronic crowd control) and bio-warfare; from the blending of corporation and state.

The implications for democracy are grave. The concern is no longer just privacy but bodily integrity, civil rights, economic independence and the very survival of the conscious individual.

Active denial

More controversial is the research around depopulation which must be explained at length, each time, because the media is paid to deny such an agenda by the same foundations, philanthropists and corporations that pursue it. [1]

The National Security Study Memorandum 200, of 1974, compiled for Heinz Kissinger, was one of several studies “of the impact of world population growth on U.S. security and overseas interests.” [2]

This research identified the Roman Catholic church as the main obstacle to population reduction through birth control and abortion. [3]

The media presents population as an issue of poverty and quality of life but it is equally related to “U.S. security and overseas interests.” A quick glance at Africa shows that competition for natural resources goes hand in hand with vaccination and population control; military intervention with United Nations programmes, as intergovernmental organisations and NGOS provide the Band Aid.

Event Covid did not come out of left field. It is intimately connected with national security, not least because it is a truly international endeavour. For example in 2013 a sample of SARS-Coronavirus was sent from Saudi Arabia to the Netherlands, whence Erasmus medical centre in Rotterdam sent the Saudi virus to Winnipeg, Canada's only Level-4 virology lab. At the time Frank Plummer, scientific director at Winnipeg, described the tortuous legal negotiations relating not simply to keeping viruses out of the wrong hands but asserting ownership “because they want to exert their rights if a vaccine or treatment is developed.” [4]

In contrast with China’s H7N9 bird flu virus, and Mexico’s H1N1 swine flu in 2009, which those countries simply gave away, the U.S., Dutch and other authorities were adamant about their property rights on SARS-Coronavirus.

The history of patents related to SARS-Coronavirus and its testing and treatment have been amply demonstrated by the coronavirus patent researcher David Martin going back to the 1990s.

Forward a few years in Winnipeg, and top scientist Xiangguo Qiu was stripped of her security clearance in Jul 2019 and escorted out of the lab. Despite working for Canadian federal authorities she had registered patents overseas for the Ebola and Marburg virus.

In Feb 2020 Frank Plummer died suddenly, aged 67, while visiting Nairobi, Kenya, for the 40th anniversary of the HIV research collaboration.

By coincidence Plummer had turned to bio-electronic brain stimulation to treat his alcoholism. In Dec 2018 a pair of electrodes was inserted into his brain, using an electric current from a battery pack at the collarbone.

intelligence

At the time of his arrest, Charles Lieber was on the verge of using his nanowire probes to drive a high-resolution interface between brain and machine, for mapping, manipulation and control.

Much of Lieber’s research was funded by the Department of Defence, its research arms DARPA, the Director of National Intelligence equivalent IARPA, and the National Institutes of Health. In other words, the government, shadow government, for-profit agencies and patent holders were all involved, or looking over each other’s shoulders.

What captured their interest and dollars were carbon nanotubes, effectively cylinders that can hold a payload — medicine, device or other therapy — to be released under the influence of heat or radiation. There is potential for cancer treatment but also for surveillance or military applications.

Lieber’s particular innovation was chemically-grown nanowires, made from silicon or graphene, that can act as transistors. These bio-electronics could be combined as sensors, monitoring devices and even simple computers, what Lieber called “liquid computing.”

In 2015 DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez envisaged a personal assistant that could read your mind and body signals. Charles Lieber told Insider magazine the problem was that tiny implants in the brain cause scarring. He was working to solve that with a tiny mesh brain implant.

Technology transfer

There is a fine line between technology transfer and corporate espionage, as professor Antony Sutton exposed in books such as Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (1970) and Wall Street And The Rise Of Hitler (1976). It rather depends who does it. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was allowed to merge with I.G. Farben and provide synthetic oil to Germany’s war machine just as Henry Ford had built the truck factories for both Hitler and Stalin. Trucks which later found their way onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail. None was prosecuted for trading with the enemy, even during war.

Such concerns may be why we find military and intelligence on the boards of bodies like the Wellcome Trust, the insights of a former DG of Britain’s MI5, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller. She would share her expertise as to the limits of the law, the implications of technologies for national security, but also the steps to protect these technologies in a time of multipolar rivalry.

But then, Wellcome Trust partners with the Pirbright Institute which in turn works with Wuhan Institute of Virology. Pirbright was very early revealed to hold a patent for coronavirus vaccine in chickens which becomes more pertinent as the symptoms of repeated Covid vaccines appear to repeat the mistakes learned from Marek’s disease in over-boosted roosters.

Another example is 5G network technology. In 2020, Britain and the U.S. banned Huawei not just from their security infrastructure but from much of the mobile network. What they didn’t admit at the time was that Huawei had been allowed to install systems at GCHQ, the UK’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. [5]

One can only conclude that the intelligence services were late to wake up, or that they were compromised, or that they are oh-so clever. Are there consequences for electronic sensors and health devices such as those that Lieber designs? The concern need not be espionage but compatibility, standards and stability: in the currently fashionable word, resilience.

Mass experiment

The flood of corporate wealth, flowing directly from central bank money printing to some of the biggest private investors since the financial bailout of 2008-09, has given fresh impetus to what’s been called surveillance capitalism.