NEW YORK, NEW YORK — In early October, Kris Kobach, Kansas’ former Secretary of State, and Daniel Drake, a Wichita-based venture capitalist-turned-CEO, made a sales pitch to Kansas legislators. The duo wheeled in what looked to lawmakers like a “refrigerator” — a shiny metal box Drake called a “revolutionary” device that would “kill COVID” and bring “several hundred jobs back to Wichita.”

“This stuff is very cutting-edge,” Kobach said. The local development of such exciting technology was why, he told lawmakers, he wanted Kansas to get the “first bite at the apple.”

This project was a collaboration between the Kansas Reflector and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The students who led this reporting were part of a fall investigative journalism program, which is part of the Masters of Science degree at the journalism school. Questions about the reporting can be directed […]