Most Americans picture a biolab as something tucked inside a major university or federal research campus – white coats, sealed chambers, institutional oversight. That image is reassuring. The reality emerging from Washington this week is considerably less so. Federal officials have confirmed that U.S. taxpayer dollars have quietly funded biological research at more than 120 laboratories spread across more than 30 countries, many of which received little meaningful scrutiny. For years, this network operated largely out of public view. That is now changing.
The investigation now underway represents one of the most sweeping reviews of American-funded overseas biological research ever attempted. Its scope is broad, its findings so far are unsettling, and the questions it raises cut across politics, national security, and public health. Where exactly is this research happening? Who approved it? And what has been done in those labs with American money?
These are not fringe questions. They are the same ones that federal officials are now formally trying to answer.
What the Investigation Actually Covers
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other intelligence officials are investigating U.S. funding to overseas laboratories handling biological research. Initial searches of intelligence files showed that the U.S. government has provided money to more than 120 biolaboratories in more than 30 countries, according to a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
The investigation was prompted by a May 5, 2025, executive order from President Donald Trump that forbade federal funding from supporting risky research, or experiments aimed at increasing the capabilities of a virus, unless proper oversight is in place. The full text of that order is publicly available on the White House website, and its language is direct: “Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security.”
Gain-of-function (GOF) research, for those unfamiliar with the term, refers to scientific experiments that deliberately alter a virus or pathogen to make it more transmissible, more virulent, or better at infecting new hosts. The term refers to scientific studies that intentionally enhance viruses or pathogens to better understand how they might evolve. While some researchers defend the work as vital for pandemic preparedness, others warn it could increase the risk of catastrophic lab accidents. A 2022 Congressional Research Service overview found that the U.S. policy debate around GOF research has revolved around this exact tension for more than a decade.
Gabbard issued new guidance directing officials to step up the collection of information on laboratories and related facilities outside the United States, which is already yielding new details on clinical trials being performed at the facilities. The information has raised ethical, financial, and security concerns, according to ODNI.
The Ukraine Problem
Of all the countries where U.S.-funded biolabs operate, Ukraine is receiving the most urgent attention. More than 40 of the biolabs under review are located in Ukraine, and could “be at risk of compromise” due to Russia’s war, ODNI officials noted.
A Department of Defense document from 2022 stated that the United States had invested approximately $200 million since 2005 to support work at 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites. This research was part of the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, aimed at studying pathogens to prevent future outbreaks and enhancing biosecurity. The program originally emerged in the post-Cold War era as a way to secure biological and chemical materials left over from Soviet-era weapons programs.
The concern now is straightforward: laboratories actively processing dangerous pathogens in an active war zone are vulnerable. Intelligence officials have flagged the danger that laboratories operating in an active conflict zone could be compromised, disrupted, or exploited, raising the prospect of weaponized pathogens or uncontrolled leaks in a region already destabilized by conflict.
The Ukraine labs have also become a political flashpoint. During congressional testimony in March 2022, then-Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland acknowledged that Ukraine possessed biological research facilities and said the United States was concerned Russian forces might gain access to them. That testimony became a focal point in debates over whether U.S.-supported laboratories existed in the country and what role they served. The Biden administration had denied the existence of U.S.-owned or U.S.-operated “chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine,” dismissing the claims as Chinese and Russian propaganda in a March 9, 2022, statement, the month after Russian forces invaded.
The Money Trail and Accountability Gap
Federal spending on overseas pathogen research is substantial, and the paper trail has been difficult to follow. The Defense Department’s watchdog had previously been unable to determine how many possible enhanced potential pandemic pathogens were being researched in China or other nations, despite more than $1.4 billion being spent on such experiments outside the U.S. between 2014 and 2023.
That accountability gap was not a secret inside Congress. A Pentagon inspector general investigation was launched to “determine the extent to which the Department of Defense awarded federal funds directly or indirectly through grants, contracts, sub-grants, subcontracts, or any other type of agreement or collaboration, during the 10-year period from 2014 through 2023, to Chinese research labs or to fund research or experiments in China or other foreign countries designed to enhance pathogens of pandemic potential.”
Critics have argued that lax oversight of research funding, which often flows through U.S. agencies to grantees and subawardees, prevents Americans from knowing whether potentially dangerous experiments are being conducted. Funding rarely goes directly from a federal agency to a foreign lab. Instead, it travels through layers of intermediaries, making oversight difficult and accountability even harder.
One prominent example is EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit that acted as a pass-through for federal money reaching the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. One defense contractor, EcoHealth Alliance, plotted to conceal its plans to divert tax dollars from the Department of Defense to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses. Despite rejecting that particular proposal, the Pentagon paid over $47 million to EcoHealth since 2008, more than any other federal agency.
What Officials Are Saying
The Trump administration has framed the investigation in blunt terms. According to Newsweek, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that “the prior administration bankrolled dangerous gain-of-function research and foreign biolabs with American tax dollars, then deliberately hid it from the American people.” He added that “the declassification of this discovery shows how little oversight this work had” and that under Trump’s leadership, Gabbard and the Cabinet are “righting these historic wrongs.”
Gabbard has been equally direct. She said the ODNI will work “closely with partners across the government to identify where these labs are,” as well as what pathogens they contain and details of ongoing research at the facilities, including some that could threaten the “health and wellbeing” of people worldwide.
Not everyone in the scientific and policy community shares that framing. Gregory D. Koblentz, an associate professor and director of the biodefense graduate program at George Mason University, insisted that the ODNI investigation is predicated on unfounded Russian and Chinese allegations that the labs have conducted dangerous research. “This Russian and Chinese propaganda is part of a broader disinformation campaign that alleges that U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine were developing biological weapons, in violation of a 1972 treaty that bans these weapons,” Koblentz said.
Koblentz said Gabbard has “irresponsibly exaggerated” some of the risks involved while endorsing Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns. “The attempt to politicize this issue by blaming the Obama and Biden administrations for funding this supposedly dangerous research and then allegedly covering it up ignores the active role that the first Trump Administration played in supporting public health research in Ukraine,” he said.
The disagreement between Koblentz and administration officials reflects a genuine and unresolved debate in the scientific community. Many scientists refute the theory that dangerous gain-of-function research was responsible for COVID-19, arguing that the evidence points to natural origins. That said, many scientists also agree that better oversight is needed because of the possible risks.
The Science Behind the Concern
The concern about gain-of-function research is not purely political. GOF research is poorly defined and hard to characterize. Broadly speaking, it can encompass any research that involves altering an organism such that it acquires a function it didn’t have before. That broad definition is part of what makes oversight so difficult – the line between legitimate vaccine preparedness work and research that poses real biosafety risks is not always clear.
A 2025 article published on Health Affairs noted that the Trump administration’s executive order could sweep in even lower-risk infectious disease research, potentially affecting work on avian influenza and coronaviruses. Instead of making the U.S. safer, the order could make it more vulnerable in the ongoing fight against infectious diseases, the analysis warned.
Supporters of greater oversight respond that the concern cuts both ways. Richard Ebright, a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, has stated plainly: “If one of these pathogens is released accidentally or if they are released deliberately, they can cause pandemics.” Defenders of gain-of-function research agree that experiments on pathogens pose risks. Laboratory accidents and breaches of containment do occur. The question is not whether risks exist, but how to manage them.
Biosafety lapses in 2014, including the discovery of viable smallpox samples in an unlocked NIH storeroom, produced public outcry and led President Barack Obama to impose a moratorium on certain gain-of-function experiments. History shows these concerns are not hypothetical.
According NPR, following the executive order, the National Institutes of Health instructed all awardees to halt any research on potentially dangerous gain-of-function pathogens until new guidance is established. Researchers who oppose that move warn that “if we ban it, the next time another COVID virus comes through we won’t have the data to quickly find new treatments, screening and even preventative measures.”
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What This Means for You
This story is more than a Washington policy dispute. At its core, it is a direct question about accountability: how the U.S. government has used public money to fund science in places where oversight was minimal, in some cases in active war zones, and how that science involves some of the most dangerous pathogens on earth.
Initial searches revealed that the United States has funded more than 120 biolabs in more than 30 countries, including Ukraine, which could be threatened because of its ongoing war with Russia. Clinical trials being conducted at the facilities raise “significant ethical, financial and security concerns,” ODNI officials said. Many of the Washington-funded biolabs have conducted research using “hazardous and highly contagious pathogens,” potentially including gain-of-function research that involves the modification of organisms to enhance their biological functions.
Whether you believe the current administration’s framing or the critics who say the investigation is built on disinformation, one thing is hard to argue: the public did not have a full picture of this research, and the money trail was difficult to follow even for federal watchdogs. The investigation now underway, whatever its political motivations, is asking questions that are genuinely in the public interest. What experiments are being conducted overseas with American dollars? Are they safe? Who is watching? The answers, when they come, will matter far beyond Washington. If nothing else, this moment is an opportunity for the U.S. government to build the kind of transparent, rigorous oversight framework that scientists on both sides of this debate say has been missing for years.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.
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