Image Credit: Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Pentagon sent millions of dollars of taxpayer funding to numerous Chinese research labs and then lost track of how it was being used, according to a government report.
“Due to limitations in the DoD’s tracking systems, the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown,” the DoD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) wrote in its 26-page report released Tuesday.
The audit conducted in compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) looked into where the funds were sent, including whether money was sent to the Chinese Communist Party, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and other CCP-controlled research labs.
DoD OIG investigators also looked into whether the funds could be used to spark a new pandemic through gain of function research or other methods that “could have reasonably resulted in the enhancement of any coronavirus, influenza, Nipah, Ebola, or other pathogen of pandemic potential or chimeric versions of such a virus or pathogen in the People’s Republic of China or any other foreign country.”
But the report states that due to a lack of proper oversight, much of the funding could not be unaccounted for how it was used.
The full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown. The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to enable us to completely and accurately determine if the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to the enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential. For example, when the DoD awards funds to an entity, the entity often provides some of those funds to other organizations for subawards or contracted services. DoD officials stated that during the initial grant application process, they have visibility over who the subaward recipients are intended to be. However, we found that DoD organizations lacked visibility of subaward information over the life of contracts and grants.
“We found significant limitations with the adequacy of data, similar to the observations the GAO found in its reports. Specifically, 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 report concludes.
“In addition, DoD organizations did not have visibility of subaward information throughout the life of contracts and grants. In addition, except for the CDMRP electronic grants system, DoD organizations could not effectively search award systems to identify all contracts, subcontracts, grants, and subgrants that may have been related to pathogen research performed by China and other foreign countries. As a result, DoD organizations could not produce a complete population of pathogen research grants and subawards necessary for us to conclude on the use of DoD funds provided for pathogen research.”
Notably, the page about pathogen research projects involving Chinese entities between 2014-2023 is redacted.
This comes a month after the Department of Health and Human Services debarred the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance from receiving taxpayer-funded government grants over its role in facilitating gain-of-function research in China.
Now you have the U.S. Department of Defense not only admitting it helped fund risky pathogen research in Chinese biolabs, but that it even lost track of just how much money it sent and for what purposes!
