COVID-19 Records

Transcript segment

Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), p.92 · baric_ti:utt:00823

Page text: p.92 · original PDF

Date
2026-04-10 09:00 (day precision)
Type
transcript segment · interview
recipient
Christina Salazar, Harry Kazenoff, David T. Lambeth III, William Henderson, Clark Ervin, Jake Greenberg
speaker
Ralph S. Baric
The part one was they wanted to know what the threat potential was in certain wild areas of the world, so you did surveillance.

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

  1. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    Yeah. So from my perspective, let's talk about the grant for a minute. Let's make sure we put it in perspective. So DARPA was interested in addressing a problem about the warfighter. And I think there's, what, about 250,000 troops and their families across the globe. Many of those soldiers go into wild areas of the world where they come in contact with pathogens. So they can then infect members of their group, they can take the virus back to the base, and they can bring it back to the United States. So this is a real threat, potential threat to the public of the United States, because of where they go. So DARPA came up with a proposal that they wanted to know, down to the nucleotide level, what regulates a virus jumping between species and then develop countermeasures for it. Now, if you want to know, down to the nucleotide level, what drives a cross-species jumping event, you are talking gain-of-function experiments. DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com
  2. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    So is that what DARPA was -- I mean --
  3. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    Yes.
  4. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    -- they explicitly --
  5. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric
    The part one was they wanted to know what the threat potential was in certain wild areas of the world, so you did surveillance.
  6. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    So are you talking about what the DARPA PREEMPT program --
  7. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    Yes.
  8. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    -- that they specifically said "we want you to do gain-of-function research."
  9. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    They said they want you to know, down to the nucleotide level what drives cross-species jumping events.

Full conversation →