Subject: Re: 2 more Chinese bioterror arrests
What’s hilarious is that you’re all convinced now that their smuggling is for some altruistic purpose!

No, we're not. They clearly broke the rules, and we agree they probably knew what they were doing. It's illegal to impo...I mean, smuggle animals without following the rules.

But the animal in question is harmless, and already well-established in the wild in the United States. While they certainly did something wrong, it also certainly was neither bioterrorism or smuggling in a bioweapon.

And btw it was wordplay from the start…just as I said upthread.

It's not mere wordplay. People's feeds get filled with stuff like this - things that start with an actual event or fact, but then get layered with misconceptions or outright falsehoods. Because the kernel of the story is true, then people believe that the extra layers are true. And the accumulation of all those extra layers of false information ends up giving people some very wrong ideas about what's actually going on in the world.

So it's important to realize that while these folks were definitely breaking the rules that prohibit bringing in live animals (certain exceptions not relevant here), they were not engaging in bioterrorism or bringing in a bioweapon. Illegal, very likely criminal - but not terrorism, not part of an effort to attack the U.S. or cause widespread harm.