No, because at the same time they'd simultaneously make it look accidental; with a dictatorial, authoritarian country like China they could keep the evidence that it was premedicated from coming to light _and_ they could count on their politically fractured victims reacting in such a way as to further their goals.
I notice that the matter of HCQ getting effectively shut down in the US due to the fraudulent Surgisphere paper and it _didn't raise any alarms at HN where someone asked WHY someone went through the trouble of planting a fake paper IN THE LANCET_.
It's been brought up here but noone notices the implications.
When did Hacker News become so damn intellectually incurious about these sorts of things?