
Public asked to report receipt of any unsolicited packages of seeds - gscott
http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov//press-releases-200724-seeds.shtml
======
wyxuan
It's called brushing and basically a Chinese seller sends something cheap
(like seeds, or trinkets) and then creates a review from "someone in the US".

The shipping portion is necessary because they need the tracking info for the
sale to be counted.

edit:oops, accidentally mixed up churning with brushing. churning is something
else

~~~
coronadisaster
But seeds cast a whole other dimension onto this problem... It is not a
problem if they send you a cheap plastic bracelet but seeds can have unforseen
consequences

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not really. Apparently folks can order these seeds already? So its happening,
notice or no notice. It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in
gardens of every conceivable corner of the earth.

Starting in the 1700's with botanists traveling the world to collect and
disseminate them. Which gave us modern corn, wheat, flowering plants, grasses,
succulents and nearly everything we grow, harvest and appreciate today. May be
a little late to start being concerned about this.

~~~
codeulike
_It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in gardens of every
conceivable corner of the earth._

Not inevitable at all. Try arriving in Australia with a piece of fruit in your
hand luggage, or try arriving in New Zealand with mud on your walking boots,
and see what happens.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_Australia)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_New_Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_New_Zealand)

~~~
Amezarak
I ordered some seeds off Amazon from what I _thought_ was a local seller for a
regional plant.

The seeds arrived months later, well after planting season, from Kazakhstan.
The customs declaration called them plastic beads, but they were definitely
seeds. I destroyed them, because I couldn't know for sure they really were
what they said they were - seems unlikely a niche regional American plant
would be available in Kazakhstan.

Would Australia really be able to stop these cases where they lie on the
customs form?

------
nine_k
If I wanted to clandestinely introduce invasive species, I would of course not
send seeds from whatever suspicious country to random people. A package marked
as e.g. folk art piece would be used, containing seeds, maybe covered with
fertilizer, as a filler of an actual e.g. animal figure, or something. The
package would arrive to a package consolidation service and packaged, along
with some other goods, with a US originating address.

That package would be taken by an agent who would rip it and throw it away
onto some strip of farming land along a busy road, while driving there at
night, reasonably far away from home. The agent would not understand that this
action is the "payload" of the mission, and would never associate the incident
with the seeds' country of origin.

If I can come up with this trivial plan in 5 mins, a secret service would,
too.

So no, this certainly is not a clandestine operation by a serious nefarious
actor, it's a silly e-commerce shtick by a small-time seed seller.

~~~
gorgoiler
FSB tactics, on the other hand, involve doing almost everything they can to
signal that they were the perpetrators while at the same time denying
responsibility.

It’s a weird way to flex, братан, but the diplomatic and psychological impact
of the attack is far more effective than the attack itself.

Example: _Russian poisoning suspects say they were only visiting cathedral_

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/russian-
tele...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/russian-television-
channel-rt-says-it-is-to-air-interview-with-skripal-salisbury-attack-suspects)

~~~
FearNotDaniel
> братан

I'm always curious about new slang or jargon but can't place this sense of
'Bratan' in the context of espionage/geopolitics. Flexing brotherhood? Flexing
manliness?

~~~
gorgoiler
It’s the the “bro” in _”weird flex, bro”_ , which is US English slang meaning
“that’s an impressive display of strength which I also find to be bizarrely
convoluted”.

~~~
derefr
“Flex” in that slang term isn’t precisely a “display of strength” but rather
“a display of one-upmanship[1]” in any form. A _weird_ flex is specifically
one-upmanship in a form where nobody else was really competing over it in the
first place. It’s “weird” because you’re trying so hard to out-compete others
in a category where nobody else is trying to compete at all, and where,
therefore, a category where it’s very easy to “win.”

Most Guinness World Records are weird flexes: not hard-fought limits of
discovered human ability, but rather something one person decided to prove
they could do that nobody else has really even cared to challenge them about
since.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
upmanship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-upmanship)

------
meter
I live in California, and received a suspicious bag of seeds in the mail after
ordering something from Amazon. Happened about one month ago. The seeds were
sent in their own small package, with Chinese characters on it.

I had heard about these types of shipping scams, but had never experienced it
personally until this. I was so intrigued that I immediately planted the seeds
for fun (I think they’re cucumbers).

I now realize that I was extremely ignorant. I wasn’t aware of the danger of
invasive species.

Maybe I’m paranoid, but I decided to rip up the plants and throw them away.

~~~
minerjoe
> danger of invasive species

For a good counter to all the "invasive biology" craze see:

[https://www.amazon.com/Invasion-Biology-Pseudoscience-
David-...](https://www.amazon.com/Invasion-Biology-Pseudoscience-David-
Theodoropoulos/dp/0970850417)

He raises many good points. Much damage to the eocology has been done in
removing "invasive" species.

Now, diseses, those can really devestate. I'd love to still have our (US)
chestnut forests.

~~~
_Microft
I research about sources (both publications and authors) to see what credence
I should lend them. The little I could find out about this book was a review
at [0] that concludes with "I would not recommend this book to those beginning
a study of Invasion Biology. It is a polemic presumably aimed at the
practitioners of what the author holds is a pseudoscience, and perhaps also at
policy‐makers."

Make of that what you will.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242384/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242384/)

------
burlesona
Wow, weird.

Also I can’t imagine getting a box of seeds in the mail (unsolicited) and
thinking to myself, “I should plant these and see what comes up!”

Edit, found more about this here:
[https://www.wusa9.com/mobile/article/news/local/virginia/vir...](https://www.wusa9.com/mobile/article/news/local/virginia/virginia-
department-of-agriculture-warns-residents-of-seeds-from-
china/65-2e195255-f7e9-46bf-8bea-f711415af3c3)

Along with a story of a Chinese National attempting to transport birds into
Virginia which are known to be transmitters of Avian flu.

~~~
notatoad
>Also I can’t imagine getting a box of seeds in the mail (unsolicited) and
thinking to myself, “I should plant these and see what comes up!”

different strokes for different folks i guess, but that is _absolutely_
something i would do. or would have done if they'd arrived in may, planting in
august is kinda pointless where i live.

~~~
1996
Same. I can't believe the FUD that's going on. What's the worst that can
happen with a seed?? It will not open a portal to another dimension! A plant
will just grow out of it.

You keep it inside and take a picture and you will know if you will get nice
flowers, or vegetables, or...nothing. Just leaves.

As a kid I loved to plant seeds in plastic cups and see what grew out of it,
and trying additives to see if they could help the plant grow. Once I grew a
little tomato, and ate it. I didn't drop dead from tomato consumption.

It's innocent and safe. The government should have no business regulating what
people do with seeds.

~~~
Hnrobert42
The worst that could happen is something like
(kudzu)[[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)].
See the Invasive Species section.

Your passion for experimentation and cultivation is awesome. I get that you
don’t want the government telling you what you can and can’t do. So, instead,
what if you look at it as a fellow citizen asking you to please not plant
random seeds from China in the ground outside, unattended.

~~~
1996
Hence the 'keeping it inside' part. I would not plan outside a vine or
something that may interfere with my other plants, until I know what it is.

Still, I fail to see the harm of growing the seed inside to identify the
plant. People here have reported receiving cucumbers and strawberries. No one
has reported receiving vines or anything else.

I am very surprised by the level of fear and paranoia regarding everything and
especially China: we are looking at horse gift in the mouth, then saying it is
a bioterrorism plot. Unbelievable!! When I was a kid, that would have been the
best mail-order present ever!

Also, regarding kudzu and the like, I fail to see the harm. The environment
changes. We may not like that, but that's how life is. Instead of trying to
undo changes, maybe we should adapt to them.

Kudzu seems good for livestock, rich in protein and isoflavones. Trying to
burn it seems to be due to a distinct lack of imagination and profit motive.
It's a free input!!! Find new ways to chop it down to feed it to livestock.
Make it into a food supplement.

Anything looks better than just destruction and nostalgia for the time it
wasn't here. It's here now. Adapt!

------
aritmo
I know this one. They make such phantom sales to increase their standing on
the platform (ebay, Aliexpress). The platforms do not know it, they put people
to make those fake sales so randoms in US and Europe.

In most cases they send hairpins and such stuff, but in this case it happened
to be seeds.

If the government response is so heavy handed on this stupid issue (sellers
trying to trick the platform), imagine how silly other investigations could
be.

~~~
fanatic2pope
Considering that receiving "unsolicited" seeds from just about anywhere else
has exactly the same risk and is entirely legal, this seems to me to be little
more than anti-China fearmongering. I've been asking my local state reps to
stop the sale of Callery Pear trees (which are invasive and damaging) but they
have ignored me for years because the nursereys make a lot of money from them
and lobby to keep them legal. Perhaps if I started pointing out that the trees
are Chinese/Vietnamese in origin I might get somewhere now.

------
Twirrim
Washington State Department of Agriculture is also warning people about it:
[https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/?__cft__[0]=AZVWz_jA-...](https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/?__cft__\[0\]=AZVWz_jA-
UdNpf-
LzsvTtBmT8nBvluS2Oadn4btVgMpqoxdvGraFekj77yEsakXYaCPxascMjb1qDvQQoQqIeTiQCon95Wr4w9bJTIECyyPQSRgc9lKN-
Aj2InL6HMXKPsYLMDrZmeYZ4dL5vho52lwVeINuEH8hNVRwXstsAxsKYydsrKcc-W7XqF_ahKpOmXg&__tn__=-UC%2CP-
y-R)

Friends in the UK are reporting it happening there, and are being advised to
either burn or boil seeds for several minutes.

Anyone know what this is about, what the actual purpose is?

~~~
reustle
Here's a link to the actual post
[https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/photos/a.101510256200...](https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/photos/a.10151025620032906/10158364331247906/)

~~~
Twirrim
Argh. Thanks. Didn't notice how bad a link I'd managed to get there.

------
duxup
I guess you don't have to be there if you mail them out, but man if you were
for some reason wanting to spread an invasive species.... you could just plant
the seeds yourself....

You would also be able to target what you might want to happen and where.

Random individuals would seem sort of silly to target unless it spread
dramatically or was something else.

Just doesn't make a lot of sense as a sort of intentional invasive species
thing.

~~~
jerezzprime
The receiver will just throw the seeds in the garbage, and depending on the
hardiness of the seeds, that is as good as planting them in the garbage dump.

~~~
sasaf5
When I visited my local garbage dump with school I was impressed with the
number of pumpkin plants growing out of the piles of garbage. I wonder why
pumpkins grow so well there.

~~~
emmelaich
Pumpkins grow well anywhere!

------
noisy_boy
My 8 year old asked "what if they find out about instructions to burn and mix
something that produced dangerous gas upon burning?".

I hope she doesn't join a radical militant outfit when she grows up.

~~~
noir_lord
Sounds like she is already too smart for most government anyway.

------
h2odragon
The pictures from the VA story look like morning glories; the WA pictures from
facebook look like citrus or a melon. I'd think any sort of "bio attack" would
use a consistent medium.

Seeds are a bitch, too. It's usually hard to hide anything in them, isn't it?
That's one of the reasons plants make them, they're less vulnerable to
infections etc.

"Invasive!" is a boogey man, here. So many things are invasive, especially
now. Ask, instead, "could i buy this seed somewhere else grow it legally?" I
expect the answer might well be "yes".

[VA] [https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/24/got-seeds-you-didnt-ask-
for...](https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/24/got-seeds-you-didnt-ask-for-dont-
plant-them-report-them/)

[WA]
[https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/photos/a.101510256200...](https://www.facebook.com/WAStateDeptAg/photos/a.10151025620032906/10158364331247906/)

------
rootsudo
There are tons of random reports of this too on Reddit and 4Chan, it's
interesting to read and see the screenshots. You have random people saying the
Government is lying and they'll plant it anyway to people saying it's typical
Chinese Amazon scams to harvest reviews.

~~~
sukilot
> harvest

Indeed.

This seems the obvious Occam razor Earring seller orders/sends fake earring
packages and posts fake reviews.

With the trade war and espionage stuff heating up the cold war with China, one
wonders if the Chinese Communist Party crack down on this to try to defend
China's reputation and conserve their political capital for more substantial
attacks on US, or encourage it to antagonize US into war?

What happens if US Customs cracks down on Chinese import fraud and drives up
the cost of importing product? I always thought that cracking down on illegal-
in-US behaviors like pollution and worker mistreatment would be a more morally
defensible and socio-economically beneficial trade battle than arbitrary and
capricious tariffs.

~~~
chrischen
More like Amazon should crack down on this to defend its reputation. Amazon is
one of the primary beneficiaries of fake reviews on its own platform.

------
zxcvbn4038
Didn’t the last guy who planted seeds from China end up with a golden harp and
marrying a princess?

“The government of Virginia wishes to clarify there is no such thing as magic
beans...”

~~~
akira2501
> “The government of Virginia wishes to clarify there is no such thing as
> magic beans...”

I wish they'd went with a Glomar Response[0]. "The government of Virginia can
neither confirm nor deny the existence of magic beans."

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response)

------
cosmodisk
Some years ago I decided to buy monkey orchid seeds( it's worth Googling how
it looks). Went on Ebay and a few clicks later I made a purchase from some
Chinese seller.The seeds arrived eventually and I sent them to my mum. The
next time I visited my parents,my mum walked me to the 'orchid', which was a
tall grass like plant that every abandoned field has millions of. It turns out
you can't buy monkey orchid seeds,as it's almost impossible to grow the plant
outside it's natural environment. By the time you could see the results of
what's grown, the seller has already spent the money. I lost like $2 in total
but I can bet someone's having a nice life in China from this seed business:)

------
gorgoiler
This feels extremely creepy. Part of it is the idea that there’s not an
enormous amount of authentication with the mail. Any actor could send be
sending these — there’s no reason to believe it’s the PLA.

My favorite form of this tactic was from _The Three Body Problem_ , where
alien invaders make use of remote sabotage to pit nations against one another,
in an attempt to weaken human society.

If you ever want to invade Mars, first go to amazon.mars and order a bunch of
seeds from one country/mons to be delivered to another. You’ll start a
diplomatic incident — a war, hopefully — and crush the ecological system at
the same time, leaving you a nice weak planet to invade and terraform at your
leisure.

~~~
Ma8ee
> My favorite form of this tactic was from The Three Body Problem, where alien
> invaders make use of remote sabotage to pit nations against one another, in
> an attempt to weaken human society.

It’s neither original or unusual. Two recent examples are Putin pitting
Americans against each other to weaken the US, or supporting Brexit to weaken
the EU.

------
dccoolgai
I have an alternate theory here, based on a Planet Money episode a while back:
CCP does a lot of espionage on seed companies / Monsanto / etc where they use
human carriers to smuggle... Obviously can't do that now with Covid. So what
do you do if you need 1 really important package if seeds to get through? Send
a million other ones at the same time.

------
cthalupa
I've seen two people on facebook talking about receiving these seeds
unsolicited. Mail was addressed specifically to them, at their address.

Weird.

~~~
Bellyache5
Well the Chinese Communist Party has the personal information of at least 44%
of all Americans thanks to their hack of Equifax so it probably wasn't too
hard for them to do a mail merge.

[https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/804501991/chinese-hackers-
cha...](https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/804501991/chinese-hackers-charged-in-
alleged-cyber-theft-of-145-million-americans-data)

~~~
evan_
they might also be able to get their hands on a copy of the white pages

------
737min
[https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-
pur...](https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-pursuing-
biotech/159167/)

Some possibly biased but interesting references on Chinese government efforts
in this area.

------
axaxs
I had this too, but from Ukraine. I didn't get the seeds, just a letter from
customs that they had destroyed some seeds that I'd never ordered. Really
peculiar.

------
ben509
It sounds very alarmist, but on a close reading, it makes two observations:

1\. We have no idea what kind of seeds they are, and they could be invasive.

2\. The packages originate from China.

The juxtapoisition of the fact that they could be invasive and that the
packages originate from China make it sound like a Chinese plot.

They never actually connect those dots, though.

~~~
elliekelly
I find it kind of hard to believe the United States government hasn’t
identified the seeds. I bet I could get a reasonably close ID with a photo of
the seeds and Google. Surely there’s at least one government lab and several
dozen government scientists capable of figuring it out.

~~~
evan_
There might not be. The USDA is a ghost town. Trump’s Ag Secretary abruptly
(and possibly illegally) moved all of the research to Kansas City and a huge
number of scientists didn’t make the move.

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759053717/critics-of-
relocati...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759053717/critics-of-relocating-
usda-research-agencies-point-to-brain-drain)

------
q_andrew
This is delightfully mysterious. Is this a biological disruption attack? An
unlucky shipping glitch? The real answer is probably more boring but I'd like
to believe it's something nefarious!

~~~
hnick
If it is an attack and we stop it, I suppose the next step is embedding seeds
directly into biodegradable cardboard packaging. No one will think twice about
tossing that without cooking to neutralise it.

------
runnr_az
Is this how Attack of the Killer Tomatoes began?

~~~
acheron
I was thinking Little Shop of Horrors.

------
r0m4n0
Reminded me of the agroterrorist theory of the CA medfly

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_California_medfly_attac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_California_medfly_attack)

------
YarickR2
All we need now is the day of the triffids .

------
mountainboot
I got a letter from my representative "thanks for allowing me to represent
you...". Along with the letter came a package of seeds.

------
skunkworker
This is also happening in Utah.

[https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/utah-department-
of-...](https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/utah-department-of-
agriculture-investigates-mysterious-seeds-sent-from-china-to-tooele)

------
donatj
We got an unsolicited package of seeds in the mail from China like 2 weeks
ago! It was super weird. We’d assumed they shipped it to the wrong address or
something.

I’m not sure what my wife did with them but we certainly didn’t plant them.

------
vikramkr
That is super weird. I imagine it wont be long till the seeds are identified,
but whatever the story is behind these, its bound to be at least mildly
interesting.

------
wolco
I've heard about this on plant and gardening groups on facebook only
yesterday. Glad to see it reach the top. I can't figure out why..

------
afrojack123
What kind of seeds are they?

~~~
josephcsible
We don't know for sure, and that's part of what makes this so concerning.

~~~
afrojack123
4chan is saying its morning glory or hawaiian rosewood. morning glory is
aggressive weed. hawaiian rosewood is aggressive vine. perennial wine

------
qserasera
Sounds like a seedy operation

------
monadic2
Who orders seeds via amazon? It doesn’t strike me as likely to lead to
success.

------
kalium-xyz
I wonder if this is an attack by a single or a small group of individuals
against countries they dislike. This sounds like something you'd do if you
wanted to make a dent that way as a regular person.

~~~
evan_
It isn’t really even clear that it is an attack...

~~~
kalium-xyz
I never stated this to be an attack.

~~~
abootstrapper
> "I wonder if this is an attack"

~~~
catalogia
That's not a contradiction.

