I've had some correspondence with the academic from that video, Clive Hamilton. He's the guy who's probably done the most to map out the United Front Work Department. To understand how the CCP's coercion operates around the world, the UFWD is key. Their simple goal is to influence the influencers through a combination of money and flattery - and isolate/punish those who fail to comply.

This model is especially prevalent in academic institutions. As you point out, it explains the extraordinary betrayal of all scientific principles that we've seen from academics around the world when it comes to Covid.

Virtually all Australian unis have fallen under this influence. Two of them have brazenly flaunted their pro-CCP activism. University of Sydney (home of Eddie Holmes) was on record early as saying questioning the origin of Covid was racism, while Uni of Qld actually expelled one its students (Drew Pavlou) for organizing pro-HK/anti-CCP protests.

My analysis suggests that it's more than nefarious CCP operatives duping nice western scientists though. Apart from pure greed, many of these academics are on the same ideological page as the CCP. The key alignment is control of centralized data and a self-surety that they, as elites, know what's best for the common-people.

This surety gives them a self-appointed license to lie about whatever because they've told themselves they're doing it for a higher-purpose - which always, 100% of the time, coincides with what's best for their own financial/power interests.

The consequences of that are incredible. A global network of powerful academics/institutions actively lying to the masses (which they see as some kind of single, soulless entity) in order to entrench their unaccountable power.

For me, this is WW3.