Agree, and at the same time by utilizing these warrant and short positions the "friendlies" are also suppressing the share price this year, keeping the shares level and pretty much out of the hands of "unfriendlies" for now.
Seems totally unsurprising to me. nwbo "friendlies" are involved to make money. If they have profits on warrant positions, it is just good business to lock some of that in via shorting. Don't think that makes them any less of a "friendly".
Speculative shorting of nwbo has always seemed unlikely to me. What does seem likely is that most of the remaining short interest is similar hedging.
Of course that would invalidate much of the nefarious forces argument, so I don't expect wide acceptance even though the premise is logical.