The U.S. Department of Justice is charging University of Michigan research fellow Yunqing Jian and her “boyfriend” Zunyong Liu, both citizens of the People’s Republic of China, with conspiracy, smuggling, false statements and visa fraud, but it’s not strictly a criminal complaint.

The Chinese nationals smuggled in Fusarium graminearum, a toxic fungus that causes “head blight” disease on wheat, barley, and rice but there’s more to it. The fungus releases toxins that can cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in livestock and humans. For FBI Director Kash Patel, the biological pathogen is a “sobering reminder that the Chinese Communist Party continues to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate our institutions and target our food supply, an act that could cripple our economy and endanger American lives.”

The CCP has pulled off such an operation before, working through a side door with great success. Recall the case of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, as charted by Israeli medical scientist Dr. Dany Shoham.

Born in 1964 in Tianjin, Qiu earned an MD from China’s Hebei Medical University in 1985, added an immunology degree in 1990, and in 1996 came to Canada for graduate studies. How this was arranged is unclear but it needed the approval of China’s Communist Party. In Canada, Qiu became affiliated with the Institute of Cell Biology and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, but soon shifted to the study of pathogens.