Despite COVID-19 causing over a million deaths, we still do not know how the pandemic began. Thanks to the systematic destruction of evidence by the Chinese Communist Party, we may never know for sure.

What we do know is that the People’s Liberation Army has made “achieving biological dominance” a high priority and that part of that dominance includes the ability to create pathogens that are “more toxic, more contagious, and more resistant.” We also know the Wuhan lab from which COVID-19 might have escaped “has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military,” the U.S. State Department says.

We also know that Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance funneled federal taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab for research on coronaviruses. We know that our own Defense Department funneled money to pathogen research organizations in China. What we do not know is how much money the Pentagon gave to our adversary, China, for research on deadly pathogens, or who it went to. This is simply unacceptable.

As part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) secured an amendment directing the DoD Office of Inspector General to identify and report to Congress all funds sent to Chinese research organizations. Last week the inspector general released findings, identifying seven grants to Chinese organizations for “research related to potential enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential.”

More troubling even than the findings was the inspector general’s admission that “due to limitations in the DoD’s systems used to track grants,” the “full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories” for pathogen research “is unknown.”

Unknown! The Pentagon, charged with ensuring our national security, can’t even say how much of our money it has given to our most dangerous adversary for research that could end all human life. The incompetence is astonishing, or would be if it were not so predictable.

“There is zero reason for taxpayers to be funding risky Chinese research that could be used against Americans,” Ernst said in response to the inspector general report. She is proposing legislation that would require every penny sent to Chinese organizations to be accounted for and publicly posted. This might not go far enough. The case for a flat-out ban is strong.

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The Pentagon should research pathogens to protect us against bioweapons created by our enemies. But that is all the more reason we should not conduct such research with adversaries, especially China, which has a stated goal of developing bioweapons to use against us. It also has a record of accidentally letting deadly viruses escape its laboratories. It has been confirmed that the deadly 2002 SARS outbreak (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) also came from a Chinese lab. 

We may never have the evidence necessary to prove that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab. But we do have enough to show that taxpayers should not be funding the activities of that lab.