You can always count on the legacy media to get things laughably wrong. But in this case, one arm of the legacy media committed an act of malpractice that is, frankly, appalling.

In this case, it's NBC News, whining that a brave and dedicated Russian scientist was detained by Homeland Security when all she wanted to do was cure cancer. The NBC headline reads:

New images could change cancer diagnostics but ICE detained the Harvard scientist who analyzes them.

Way to miss the point, NBC. Homeland Security took to X to reply, and it presents a vastly different picture: one of someone who was deliberately trying to smuggle biological materials into the United States.

The individual was lawfully detained after lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.

A subsequent K9 inspection uncovered undeclared petri dishes, containers of unknown substances, and loose vials of embryonic frog cells, all without proper permits.… https://t.co/T0bFUZUs01

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 22, 2025

The X post continues:

Messages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.

She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.

She not only broke the law, but she also broke it by smuggling biological materials into the country. She planned to smuggle these materials into the United States; she made notes about it, and every step was deliberate.

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This isn't just a routine smuggling case. Yes, smuggling - bringing anything into the United States without declaring it - is against the law, and any such act warrants action by ICE and Homeland Security. But Kseniia Petrova wasn't smuggling Rolex watches, fake designer handbags, or even fentanyl. She was smuggling biological materials. Regardless of what her purpose was in doing this, the implications are horrifying. 

Biological materials are unlike any other commodity a person could smuggle. Viruses like Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, with a little genetic tweaking, could wreak havoc on a population. We're talking about an utter collapse of a nation's social structure. We're talking about the horrible death of a significant portion of a nation's people. And if someone were to try to smuggle biological materials into the country to carry out such a scheme, it would look an awful lot like this.

The American military trains constantly on weapons of mass destruction; they call it NBC training, for "Nuclear, Biological, Chemical." Nukes scare people and rightly so; but as a biologist, it's the bugs part of the triad that scares the socks off of me. Biological weapons are unlike any other weapon. Bugs spread, and can be made to spread through casual contact or even aerosol, the worst possible scenario. They mutate to evade attempts at vaccines, and they reproduce. Unlike nukes and gas, they are self-perpetuating.

I don't care what this Russian scientist's intent was in trying to smuggle biological materials into the United States. She did so, she did it deliberately, she did it with forethought. She broke the law, and the smuggling of biological materials is serious enough that this person should be permanently barred from ever receiving a visa to enter the United States. 

And NBC News should be ashamed of itself for such lazy, misleading reporting of a very serious issue.

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