The director of US National Intelligence (DNI) has released evidence that her office says shows "longstanding" United States government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries where research on biological pathogens, some dangerous, is conducted.
"These biolabs include labs in Ukraine, which may be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war," the DNI's office said in a statement on June 12.
"For example, the Intelligence Community previously warned that a US-funded biolab in Ukraine likely housed dangerous pathogens and remained vulnerable to longstanding threats of Russian attack, seizure, or damage," it added.
The unusual move by Tulsi Gabbard came just days before her departure as DNI, which oversees an intergovernmental office set up to coordinate information sharing among the sprawling US intelligence community. It wasn't immediately clear why Gabbard was releasing the information. Nor was it clear that it contained anything new or revelatory.
For years, under something called the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the US government has funded efforts to safeguard Cold War-era research programs -- mainly rooted in Soviet programs that developed biological and chemical warfare technologies.
Some of the holdover Soviet facilities were located in Kyiv, in Tbilisi, and other places around the former Soviet Union.
President Donald Trump's administration has been reviewing US holdings and files on biolabs funded by Washington after banning all federal funding for such gain-of-function research -- which involves the modification of organisms to enhance their biological functions -- in countries such as China, where it feels there is not proper oversight.
Branches of the US government such as the Defense Department have long funded overseas laboratories that do research on diseases.
As Russia's ties with the West have soured, Moscow has increasingly accused the US of funding "biolabs" aimed at developing potential biological weapons. Washington itself is a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1975.
Those accusations have fueled stubborn conspiracy theories over the years, something the US government has sought to debunk repeatedly.
In 2023, one year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US State Department accused Moscow of "increasing the volume and intensity of its disinformation about biological weapons in an unsuccessful attempt to deflect attention from its invasion of Ukraine, to diminish international support for Ukraine, and to justify its unjustifiable war."
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has taken more pointed approach to the question of biological pathogens, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic whose origins in China are still a subject of intense debate.
The Trump administration has said many of the Washington-funded biolabs have conducted research using "hazardous and highly contagious pathogens," and that such actions cannot be left "unrestricted."
In May 2025, Trump signed an executive order to end federal funding of gain-of-function research around the world.
