Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
U.S. 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, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The Epoch Times in an email on May 12.
That includes biolabs in Ukraine that “may be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war” and other laboratories that have researched highly contagious pathogens, potentially including research that enhanced the pathogens’ virulence or transmissibility, with little visibility or oversight, according to the office.
The Department of Defense in a 2022 document said the United States had invested approximately $200 million since 2005 to support work at 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.
Gabbard issued new guidance to officials that directs them 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, officials said.
The information has raised ethical, financial, and security concerns, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard said in a statement.
“Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals ... and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of these U.S.-funded and supported biolabs and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”
She said that the Trump administration is “working closely with partners across the government to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ’research' is being conducted, to end dangerous Gain-of-Function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world.”
The first COVID-19 cases were detected in 2019 near a biolaboratory in Wuhan, China, that received funding from the United States.
Gabbard’s 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 functions of a virus, unless proper oversight is in place.
Trump said in the order that “dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens” and that the government had previously approved funding for research “in China and other countries where there is limited United States oversight or reasonable expectation of biosafety enforcement.” COVID-19, he said, “revealed the risk of such practices.”