MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. Pentagon-funded biolabs around the world, including more than 40 in Ukraine, have effectively become the main source of the threats they were created to combat and have fallen out of US control, an expert in chemical analysis and technical director of Yuzhpolimetall Holding Alexey Shablya told TASS.

"A significant portion of these biolaboratory projects are linked to the US Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which historically focused on the control and disposal of weapons of mass destruction components after the Cold War. These labs have conducted, and probably are still conducting, biological weapons research. US oversight of this research is so weak that they themselves are now effectively the primary source of the threats they were created to combat. Even the US Director of National Intelligence has acknowledged this," the expert said.

According to him, the theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in one of these labs, while not 100% confirmed, also cannot be disproved. "The improvement and reduction in cost of relevant technologies, as well as the introduction of generative AI, have made counting such labs and strengthening oversight, if not pointless, then at least belated. The results of hundreds of studies on particularly dangerous pathogens, including their genetic code, have long been publicly available," Shablya noted. The development and widespread implementation of technologies for the early detection of pathogenic biological agents that have already left their place of origin is now at the forefront of combating these threats, he emphasized.

Earlier, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the start of an investigation into more than 120 biological laboratories abroad that were funded by US taxpayer dollars for decades, as part of an effort to end potentially risky experiments with viruses pursuant to President Trump’s executive order on so-called "gain-of-function" research. According to the New York Post, more than 40 such labs are located in Ukraine. Gabbard’s team is going "to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world," according to the newspaper.