- This is a paper published by members of an anti-China advocacy organization.
- It advocates actions against China in its abstract ("Our work emphasizes the need for an independent investigation into the relevant research laboratories")
- It includes a number of conspiratorial-sounding speculations ("However, this template virus ideally should not be one from Dr. Zengli Shi’s collections, considering that she is widely known to have been engaged in gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses. Therefore, . . . novel bat coronaviruses discovered and owned by military laboratories, would be suitable . . .")
- Some of its citations appear suspect. For example, it cites a previous study for the idea that certain variants were "discovered and owned by military laboratories," but the cited study says nothing like that.
- It criticizes "peer-reviewed" journals for rejecting its theories
- It is in a highly-technical subject area that is difficult for lay people to understand
In short, to me this looks like a piece of advocacy, not science.
That's not to say that it might not also be right. But personally I would trust mainstream scientists publishing in established journals. Those scientists--as the paper itself notes--have so far not adopted this idea.