Revelation lends credence to Russia’s longstanding claims regarding US-backed bio research abroad
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard testifies before a US House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. REUTERS
United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has claimed that the US has funded more than 120 biological laboratories across over 30 countries, adding that details of the programme were deliberately concealed from the American public.
In a statement released by her office on Friday, Gabbard said her office had uncovered “longstanding” US government support for a global network of biolabs engaged in research on biological pathogens, including some classified as hazardous and highly contagious.
“The information surrounding the existence, history, locations and funding of these US-funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people,” she said, accusing officials of dismissing critics as “foreign assets and traitors”.
According to her office, some of these laboratories are located in Ukraine, where they face potential risks due to the ongoing war with Russia. The agency added that US intelligence had previously warned that at least one such facility in Ukraine housed dangerous pathogens and could be vulnerable to attack or seizure.
Gabbard further alleged that several of the laboratories have conducted gain-of-function research — a controversial field involving the modification of organisms to enhance their transmissibility or virulence — with limited oversight.
Her remarks come after President Donald Trump, in May 2025, signed an executive order aimed at ending federal funding for gain-of-function research globally, citing potential risks to public health and national security.
However, while Gabbard described a network spanning more than 30 countries, the declassified material released alongside her statement identified only four laboratories in Ukraine. The locations and operational status of the remaining facilities were not specified.
The US government has historically funded overseas biological research under programmes such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative, which was designed to secure and dismantle remnants of Soviet-era chemical and biological weapons infrastructure.
US officials have long maintained that such programmes are focused on public health, disease surveillance, and preventing the proliferation of biological weapons. Washington is also a signatory to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibits the development and stockpiling of such weapons.
Gabbard said her office has issued new directives to intensify intelligence collection on these facilities, including ongoing clinical trials, citing “significant ethical, financial, and security concerns”.
Gabbard’s revelation echoes longstanding claims by Russia and China regarding US-backed biological research abroad. In a joint statement released on Oct 10, 2021, the two nations’ foreign ministers expressed grave worry about US military biological activities.
They stated that US military biological activities pose a severe threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and China and are detrimental to the security of relevant regions.
The two sides urged the US to behave in an open, transparent, and responsible manner by informing properly on its military biological activities conducted overseas and on its national territory, according to the statement.
The two nations reaffirmed their conviction that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) is critical for international peace and security, and their determination to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the convention.
Read More: Gabbard resigns as Trump’s top US intelligence official
US military biological activities have always drawn huge attention from the international community. The US, as a country with the most advanced biological technologies and the most powerful military, has continued the development plan of biological weapons of the Japanese Unit 731 and has continued biological weapon development even after joining the BWC. That is why the Fort Detrick base is called the “centre of the US government’s darkest experiments”.
The US military has also stationed over 200 biological laboratories outside the US national territory, causing widespread outrage. A lawsuit filed by a South Korean civic group against the US Forces Korea over US military biological activities served as the best example.
In August 2021, the Chinese government formally requested the World Health Organisation (WHO) to launch an investigation into the Fort Detrick base, and listed multiple doubtful points about the base in a document. All of these doubtful points came from publicly available documents, media reports and academic papers, and the concealed facts would be only more astounding.
In 2001, after seven years of arduous negotiations and when the international society was about to reach a consensus on a legally binding protocol to the convention that included a verification regime, the US unilaterally withdrew from this process, claiming that biological activities were not verifiable technically. By doing so, the US only triggered more doubts and concerns in the international community.
What was more ironic was that the US avoided verification on the one hand while taking COVID-19 origin tracing as a political tool against China on the other. WHO experts had concluded that a lab leakage in Wuhan was extremely unlikely, but the US still arbitrarily hyped the so-called “lab leak theory”.
In 2023, the US State Department accused Russia of amplifying false narratives about biological weapons in an effort to justify its invasion of Ukraine and undermine international support for Kyiv.