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The U.S. has funded over 120 biolabs in 30-plus countries, according to declassified documents released by outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
“Many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function research, with very little visibility or oversight,” Gabbard’s office said in a statement.
About a third of the biolabs are located in Ukraine and are “vulnerable to longstanding threats of Russian attack, seizure, or damage,” Gabbard stated.
Some experts told The Defender the documents didn’t reveal anything new. “This material has been public knowledge since at least 2005,” said former pharmaceutical research and development executive Sasha Latypova.
Gain-of-function research, which increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses, has been linked to the development of COVID-19.
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty described the document release as an “unusual move” coming just days before Gabbard’s June 19 departure.
According to the New York Post, Gabbard released the documents in response to President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order pausing federal funding of gain-of-function research until a new federal policy is in place.
“President Trump understands the serious threat dangerous Gain-of-Function research poses to the American people,” Gabbard’s news release stated.
Gabbard targeted Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom she said “lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs.”
Fox News reported that Fauci “long studied gain-of-function” but has “repeatedly denied the government funded that type of research.”
The document release drew the ire of virologists linked to Fauci and gain-of-function research, including Peter Daszak, Ph.D., former president of the Bill Gates-funded EcoHealth Alliance.
Stephanie Weidle, executive director of Feds for Freedom, said the release “represents the first time a U.S. official has formally acknowledged the existence of the labs and the threat posed by the scientific work being conducted.”
“These revelations are chilling in that there is no oversight for this type of research,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
Later this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is slated to conduct a transcribed interview with Fauci in the U.S. Senate. The date of the interview is not yet publicly known, and it is unknown whether Fauci will face questions about U.S. involvement in — and funding of — global biolabs.
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD’s senior research scientist, said Fauci has a lot to answer for about his involvement with foreign biolabs — and predicted that Fauci will deny knowledge of such labs.
“Given that Fauci’s autopen pardon does not protect against future perjury, America should brace for a lot of much-needed questions in the Senate, answered with the statement, ‘I do not recall,’” Jablonowski said.
Gabbard said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will work to identify the labs and to “end dangerous Gain-of-Function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and people around the world.”
An ODNI spokesperson referred The Defender to Gabbard’s statement.
Ukraine labs ‘just the tip of the iceberg’
The four-page, partially redacted document released by Gabbard largely focused on Ukraine. According to the document, there are over 40 biolabs in that country, several of which were constructed with millions in U.S. government funding.
The labs are home to pathogens including anthrax, tuberculosis, SARS, Marburg, Ebola, Lassa and the plague. The document also cited examples of specific research projects at the Ukrainian labs, including research involving bird flu and swine fever.
“The scale of this operation is staggering,” said attorney Greg Glaser. “The most striking revelation is the audacity with which these programs were orchestrated under the guise of worldwide security. They effectively bypassed the oversight of the American people while … enriching a network of contractors and bureaucrats.”
One of the labs — the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which specializes in veterinary medicine, virology and toxicology — may house “at least some dangerous pathogens,” he said
The lab received funding under the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) in the early 2010s. As of 2019, the facility had “at least some biosafety and biosecurity deficiencies — most notably in rooms handling contagious Brucella bacteria,” the document states.
Despite the likely presence of these pathogens, the lab “almost certainly remains vulnerable to long-standing Russian information operations, seizure or damage.”
Aside from DOD funding and support, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and international bodies, including the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, supported the research.
They were joined by several U.S. academic institutions, including the University of Florida, the University of New Mexico, the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a critic of gain-of-function research, other countries housing BTRP labs include the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Weidle said the facilities Gabbard identified “are part of a much larger network of labs built and funded under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program,” with the help of the DOD and the U.S. Department of State, which also trained the scientists and equipped the labs.
“This is a worldwide program, and the Ukraine labs are just the tip of the iceberg,” Weidle said. For Glaser, the “common thread is the pursuit of access to dangerous pathogen reservoirs in countries with less stringent regulatory environments.”
The Gateway Pundit reported that former President Barack Obama, during his tenure as a U.S. senator, helped secure funding for the Ukrainian biolabs.
In 2022, the same outlet reported on evidence that the U.S. military funded coronavirus research at Ukrainian biolabs. Evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicated that he helped secure funding for U.S. contractors specializing in pathogen research in Ukraine.
While the documents Gabbard released focused on Ukrainian labs, no other countries from the approximately 30 that allegedly house such biolabs were named.
However, according to RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, the U.S. government has long been involved in “efforts to safeguard Cold War-era research programs” under the CTR program. This includes facilities in Tbilisi, Georgia, “and other places around the former Soviet Union.”
According to the document, none of the Ukrainian laboratories are Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) labs — a designation reserved for labs conducting the riskiest research and which accordingly have the most stringent safety measures. But according to Jablonowski, risky research is also often conducted at BSL-2 and BSL-3 labs.
“Some may take comfort in most of the biolabs in Ukraine being BSL-2, and therefore inappropriate for the most horrifying pathogens. SARS-CoV-2 was inappropriately studied under BSL-2 containment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, when BSL-3 is minimally required. There is no guarantee that extremely dangerous pathogens are studied under appropriate biosecurity containment,” Jablonowski said.
‘No intention or plan’ to defund the labs
At least four leaks and accidents have occurred at U.S. biolabs since 2010. Weidle called for a “full review of research being conducted in CTR labs.”
According to Newsweek, the documents contain “significant gaps” and lack “direct evidence that the facilities are engaged in offensive biological weapons development.”
Other experts suggested that, despite the publicity Gabbard’s document release garnered, the files contain little, if any, new information.
The documents contained “no new information and failed even to capture most previously publicly available information on the subject,” Ebright said. “Even worse, Gabbard muddied matters by conflating non-dangerous routine research with dangerous gain-of-function research.”
Latypova said the DOD has owned the Ukrainian biolabs for over 20 years, having “purchased them for $15 million from the Soviet Union bankruptcy sale in 2005.”
“These biolabs … have been funded by every U.S. administration since 2005,” Latypova said. “Gabbard’s online rhetoric is nothing but political jockeying ahead of the 2028 election cycle. She expressed no intention or plan of defunding” these labs.
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Gain-of-function research proponent decries ‘disinformation campaign’
Daszak, who has published multiple papers on gain-of-function research, attached Gabbard shortly after she released the documents, accusing her of spreading “misinformation.”
In a statement shared by Fox News, Daszak said, “The funding of these labs was publicly reported and is part of a long-term commitment to deweaponizing biological research following the collapse of the Soviet Union. That’s why Russia put out a disinformation campaign about them, which Gabbard is now fueling.”
In a post on X, Daszak also attacked proponents of the lab-leak theory, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 was produced in — and leaked from — a laboratory.
Daszak claimed EcoHealth Alliance was “not involved” with the laboratories in question, “but Russian disinfo and MAGA lab leakers continue to push the conspiracy, placing a target on us & colleagues. They’re literally helping Russia promote disinformation to undermine our geopolitical goals!”
Daszak had financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which proponents of the lab leak theory suggest is the source of a SARS-CoV-2 leak. He played a key role in promoting the zoonotic — or natural origin — theory of COVID-19’s emergence.
In 2017, the EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal called for altering bat viruses by inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site — a modification that would make it easier for those viruses to infect human lungs.
Though the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency rejected the DEFUSE proposal, Fauci reportedly approved it, according to documents Paul released last week.
University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., and Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., helped write the proposal.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding for the EcoHealth Alliance for failing to monitor the safety of its coronavirus experiments.
In April, Baric lost his National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, and his institution, the University of North Carolina, placed him on leave.
Earlier this month, NIH virologist Vincent Munster, Ph.D., also listed as a partner in the DEFUSE proposal, and fellow NIH researcher Claude Kwe Yinda, Ph.D., were charged with conspiring to smuggle biological materials, including deactivated monkeypox virus samples, into the U.S. from Africa.
In April, a grand jury indicted former Fauci aide Dr. David Morens on charges related to conspiracy to hide federal records on COVID-19’s origins. Last year, Daszak became president of Nature.Health.Global — which now employs Morens.
In another X post, Daszak suggested that Gabbard’s release of the biolabs documents and the legal troubles faced by figures such as Morens and Munster are politically motivated — “a pretext for bringing down the performative mallet on all of us.”
Important read. The “crimes” of Drs. Morens, Kwe, Munster are a pretext for bringing down the performative mallet on all of us.
“If the government can lock any of us up for any pretextual reason, they can do it to all of us. America is no longer a democracy. It is a… https://t.co/XzUupryxlG
— Peter Daszak (@PeterDaszak) June 13, 2026
‘Entirely appropriate’ to investigate Fauci’s role in gain-of-function research
But other scientists and experts pushed back at Daszak’s claims, with Hooker calling Daszak’s statements “surprisingly duplicitous, given his own troubles.” Jablonowski noted that Daszak “has published with Munster and Morens,” including a paper describing COVID-19’s alleged zoonotic origins.
Daszak’s involvement, “particularly given his past ties to the very research under investigation, makes him a highly compromised witness,” Glaser said.
Last year, Paul proposed legislation — the Risky Research Review Act — which would establish a federal board to review funding for high-risk life sciences research. Weidle said “the time is now” for the passage of this legislation.
Others, however, called for more transparency into government documents on COVID-19’s origins.
“Gabbard has promised to declassify and release information about COVID origins. One hopes Gabbard’s information release on COVID origins will be more informative than Gabbard’s uninformative information release on U.S.-funded biocontainment labs overseas,” Ebright said.
Glaser suggested Fauci should answer to Congress about U.S. biolab involvement.
“It is entirely appropriate to investigate the roles of Fauci and other officials who have flatly denied or misrepresented the existence and nature of these programs. The attempt to move the goalposts — from ‘these labs don’t exist’ to ‘this is just standard deweaponization’ — will not hold up under the scrutiny of a serious Senate inquiry.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Smoking Gun? Documents Suggest Fauci Knew COVID Was Created in Wuhan Lab, and mRNA Vaccines Wouldn’t Work
- ‘Let That Sink In’: Feds Charge Two NIH Researchers With Smuggling Mpox Into U.S.
- ‘Profound Abuse of Trust’: Former Fauci Aide Indicted for Conspiracy to Hide Government Records on COVID Origins
- Trump Pauses Federally Funded Gain-of-Function Research in U.S., But for Only 120 Days
- New White House Website Declares COVID Escaped From Wuhan Lab
- ‘For Safety of Citizens Worldwide’: HHS Suspends Government Funding for EcoHealth Alliance
