> how the US government had supposedly manufactured AIDS in a lab somewhere

This was Soviet (now Russian) disinformation. The tactic is to make people (especially Americans) distrust the American government. Like claiming that the crack epidemic was caused by CIA inventing/smuggling the drugs in. Sure, Oliver North & Reagan's Iran-Contra affair did this to fund Ronnie's illegal and private war in Nicaragua. The CIA gets all the money they want from a willing, subservient Congress - they don't need to smuggle drugs. Congress specifically outlawed supplying weapons to the Contras, so the administration had to resort to illegal means, like selling weapons to Iran and smuggling drugs to finance that war.

This is the same sort of disinformation as saying COVID was manufactured in a Chinese labs, somewhere in Wuhan.

Yeah, I used to read this stuff when I was younger and more gullible.