What ‘Low Confidence’ in the Lab Leak Theory Actually Means

In a recent classified intelligence report submitted to some members of Congress and to the White House, the Department of Energy said it has “low confidence” in the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic started as an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory. Meanwhile, multiple other agencies continue to believe natural transmission between animals and humans was the cause, and two agencies remained undecided.

That’s not the news you may have seen in a string of headlines and would-be viral videos. Instead, you may have seen that the Department of Energy thinks a lab leak is the “most likely” explanation for the pandemic—something that everyone from mainstream pundits to fringe conspiracy theorists is offering as solid evidence that the lab leak theory is correct and that the press and government colluded to suppress the truth. The lab leak theory may turn out to be true, but we’re nowhere near being able to say that right now.

While the conclusions seem opposed, both can be true, because each expresses a different and necessary sort of analysis—the likelihood of an explanation or event on one side, and the strength of the underlying intelligence on the other. These shouldn’t be conflated, but also can’t be viewed as distinct from one another, either. 

One crucial issue at the heart of people jumping on this news with increased fervor is that a media report is not the same as an intelligence report. A media report is—usually, hopefully—written by a journalist who has obtained information, verified it, and is presenting it as fact. That is how people consume, and interpret, the news every day. Government intelligence, meanwhile, deals with a spectrum of probability. An intelligence report does not simply say something happened or is true; it provides an assessment of likelihood and the strength of supporting information. Counterintuitively, a claim can be simultaneously the most likely explanation in the eyes of an agency and be supported by very little or poor-quality evidence.

So, what does low confidence in the context of an intelligence report even mean?

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) uses the terms “low,” “moderate,” and “high” confidence to describe the amount and quality of the information behind any one of its claims. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the body that brings the 18 IC agencies together and coordinates them, “A low confidence level generally indicates that the information used in the analysis is scant, questionable, fragmented, or that solid analytical conclusions cannot be inferred from the information, or that the IC has significant concerns or problems with the information sources.” That definition can be found in the ODNI’s 2011 guide on the IC and how to properly understand what an intelligence report means.

ODNI’s definition was not included in the coverage of the Wall Street Journal, which first broke news of the Department of Energy’s intelligence assessment. Nor was an explanation of what low confidence actually means, which would have been especially important when the vast majority of the article’s readers were presumably not intelligence professionals trained in how to interpret the very particular ways an intelligence report is written.

In other words, the Department of Energy came to its assessment of the lab leak theory with information that is incomplete and questionable, and from which solid conclusions can not be drawn. This is compared to “high confidence,” where agencies are able to make a “solid judgment,” according to the ODNI document.

We don’t know what the Department of Energy’s underlying intelligence is, only that its reassessment came in the wake of “new intelligence,” as well as more study of “academic literature” and speaking to outside experts, according to the Wall Street Journal report. 

Something key to intelligence is that each agency can interpret information differently. Each might have access to the same information, but draw different conclusions from it based on their own expertise, or, perhaps, gaps in knowledge. That’s where something like a moderate confidence level comes in: The ODNI says this applies when the underlying information can be interpreted in various ways, or when IC members have differing viewpoints on how significant a piece of information is or what it means. 

Arguably the most interesting part of the intelligence report is that the FBI holds “moderate confidence” in the lab leak theory. As the Wall Street Journal said in its report, the FBI has declined to elaborate on what underlying intelligence it may have to support this moderate confidence level.

The Department of Energy maintains scientific expertise, something which the Wall Street Journal notes and which, presumably, can contribute to its intelligence assessment. 

None of this reflects a flaw in the system. It’s important for intelligence reports of this sort to include minority and dissenting views and to offer transparency as to how they’re arrived at, because their purpose in the end is to inform policymakers, who need to be aware of different viewpoints and of how solid the evidentiary basis for them is. Ultimately, the main takeaway from the classified report is that we don’t have enough solid underlying information yet to know how the COVID-19 pandemic started. Four agencies continue to assess with “low confidence” that natural transmission from animals to humans was the reason.

Again, the lab leak theory may turn out to be the truth. But with intelligence, and especially intelligence as spotty as what this report seems to be using, we can’t treat the Department of Energy’s assessment as truth either.