Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.
“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.
You can read that report here.
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DODIG-2024-PathogenChinaResearchSECURED.pdf
The findings show the Pentagon has done little to improve transparency on a critical security issue in the two years since the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, first raised concerns that defense officials could not account for how biological research funds sent to China were being used. You can read that GAO report here.
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The latest inspector general report also adds to momentum in Congress to formally ban the Pentagon from funding “gain-of-function” research in foreign countries, a goal that has increased in priority now that some members of the U.S. intelligence community like the FBI believe the COVID-19 pandemic began with a virus leak inside a Wuhan lab doing research funded by U.S. tax dollars. Gain-of-research refers to the serial passaging of microorganisms to increase their transmissibility and virulence among other things.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa., has been leading the effort to force the Department of Defense to account for money it sends to China and to formally ban spending on research that makes viruses and bacteria more contagious or lethal. She got a provision added to the National Defense Authorization Act last year that required the inspector general review.
“The Department of Defense should defend the nation, not support research with the potential to do us harm,” Ernst said recently. “While bureaucrats are blindly giving away taxpayer funds, China doesn’t even have to steal our research.
Hellbound and Down 