Trump Admin Investigating US Taxpayer-Funded Biolabs in Over 30 Countries

The Trump administration is probing more than 120 biological laboratories funded by U.S. taxpayers in 30-plus countries in a bid to end potentially dangerous experiments within gain-of-function research, federal officials confirmed Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard ordered the investigation following a months-long review of U.S. holdings and files on the Washington-funded biolabs operating overseas, including to uncover specific locations as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order in May 2025 to ban all federal funding for gain-of-function research in China or other nations without proper oversight.

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have,” Gabbard told Newsweek in a statement Wednesday. “Yet despite these obvious dangers, politicians, so-called health professionals, like Dr. Fauci, 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.”

Gabbard said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (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.

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,” according to ODNI, potentially including gain-of-function research that involves the modification of organisms to enhance their biological functions.

The unchecked research at the labs could have occurred as a result of neglect by the Biden and Obama administrations, Trump officials said.

“The prior administration bankrolled dangerous gain-of-function research and foreign biolabs with American tax dollars, then deliberately hid it from the American people,” Secretary of War (Defense Secretary) Pete Hegseth said in a statement to Newsweek. “The declassification of this discovery shows how little oversight this work had. Under President Trump's leadership, DNI Tulsi Gabbard and the entire Cabinet are righting these historic wrongs and delivering justice for our warfighters and the ones they protect. The era of lies and betrayal is over.”

Trump, who is on a state visit to China this week and will have meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, signed an executive order in May 2025 to end federal funding for gain-of-function research conducted by foreign entities, including China.

“Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens,” the order reads. “If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, an impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security. The Biden Administration allowed dangerous gain-of-function research within the United States with insufficient levels of oversight.”

The Office of the Inspector General previously was unable to determine how many possible enhanced potential pandemic pathogens were being researched in China or other nations, according to the New York Post. More than $1.4 billion had been spent on the experiments outside the United States between 2014 and 2023, it reported.

U.S.-funded experiments on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China were also found by the National Institutes of Health to be in violation of grant terms by making the viruses 10,000 times more infectious, although officials deny the research caused the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the outlet.

Dr. Jeff Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said he believes Gabbard’s new review is well-timed and reasonable.

“If taxpayer money is going to subsidize research in other laboratories around the world, the federal government has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that the research is approved and doesn’t harm us,” Singer told Newsweek.

Researchers can debate which gain-of-function research is truly potentially dangerous, but the basic principle learned during the COVID pandemic is that even well intentions can go awry, Singer said.

“When you create something, it can get loose and then you created a monster,” he said. “Which is sort of what happened with COVID. I see nothing inappropriate about this at all. Sounds to me like it’s due diligence.”

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 told Newsweek in an email Wednesday. “Gabbard first made these allegations in March 2022, shortly after the illegal and unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. A comparison of Gabbard’s statements in March 2022, and more recently, show clear parallels with Kremlin and Chinese Communist Party talking points.”

Koblentz said Gabbard hasn’t repeated the provocative allegation by Moscow that Ukraine was developing biological weapons in U.S.-funded labs but 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,” Koblentz said.

Russia still poses a “significant chemical and biological weapons threat,” as evidenced by the 2024 poisoning of Putin critic Alexei Nalvany, who died while serving a prison sentence, Koblentz said.

“The United States would be much safer if the ODNI focused U.S. intelligence capabilities on that threat instead of this snipe hunt for evidence to validate Russian disinformation,” he added.

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This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM.