And yet one of the strangest parts of the mystery-seeds-from-China panic is that there was never much doubt about why these seeds were sent. The consensus, right from the start, among many government officials, journalists, and comment-section know-it-alls, was that the seeds were probably part of a mundane, illicit e-commerce strategy commonly known as a brushing scam. Although brushing is a fairly banal form of e-commerce chicanery, it’s also weirdly complicated, counterintuitive, and tricky to explain. Let me try. In one common, modern-day form, it operates something like this: Chinese companies compete for the highest placements in search listings on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and AliExpress. Although the algorithms behind these rankings are secret, they are presumed to be affected by volume of sales and positive customer feedback. Some companies try to manipulate the rankings by inventing fake transactions. They, or most likely subcontractors, set up accounts using people’s real names and addresses. The companies then pretend to send something of value to those addresses and post fake glowing reviews under the recipients’ names. All well and good, in its own crooked way, except that some platforms verify such transactions by requiring tracking data showing that a package has indeed traveled from the company to the customer’s address. That’s where the seeds come in. For the scam to work, a real package needs to be sent. But instead of the more valuable item the company is pretending to have sold, something cheap is substituted—hair ties, say, or plastic trinkets.