My Take | How hapless Chinese scientists became ‘agroterrorists’ in the US

Experts say the fungus Fusarium graminearum is more of a pest than ‘a dangerous biological pathogen’, as FBI director Kash Patel has claimed

Its name sounds forbidding – Fusarium graminearum – though most of us would have no idea what it is. But if the bosses at the FBI and the US Department of Justice made a big show of announcing the arrests of Chinese nationals charged with trying to smuggle samples into the United States in a suspected act of agroterrorism, you would be scared too.

One of the three suspects is even a card-carrying Chinese communist. Case closed. Here’s what Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wrote in a long post on social media.

“The FBI arrested a Chinese national within the United States who allegedly smuggled a dangerous biological pathogen into the country,” he wrote. “The individual, Yunqing Jian, is alleged to have smuggled a dangerous fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which is an agroterrorism agent, into the US to research at the University of Michigan, where she works.”

It gets worse: the woman is a communist!