U.S. government employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) communicated about official government business using WeChat – the Chinese Communist-run social media and instant messaging app. The revelation from emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic raises concerns that Chinese intelligence may have had access to sensitive U.S. government communications.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chairs the select subcommittee, has given the NIH until September 21st to hand over a tranche of documents and emails from NIH contractors and employees – including Anthony Fauci – so that it can be determine to what extent the government health agency was compromised by the use of WeChat.
Emails made public by the select subcommittee appears to show a senior NIH official instruct another agency employee to use WeChat to communicate with a Chinese scientist during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether Fauci used WeChat himself or knew of its use by agency employees is of particular concern to Wenstrup, who called the matter a “national security threat.”
WeChat is owned by the CCP tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. In 2020 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency determined Tencent was backed financially by the Chinese government’s Ministry of State Security. Former President Donald Trump issued executive orders banning WeChat and the Chinese social media app TikTok in the United States, however a preliminary injunction issued by the U.S.District Court for the Northern District of California prevented the bans from taking effect. After assuming office, President Joe Biden abandoned Trump’s efforts to ban the Chinese apps.
