In a move that has sent shockwaves through both the scientific community and geopolitical fault lines, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to halt all federal funding for gain-of-function virus research—both at home and abroad. The reason? He says it’s too dangerous, too secretive, and far too close to becoming the spark for the next global catastrophe.
Gain-of-function research, the kind that alters viruses to make them more infectious or deadly, was thrust into the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, Trump is cutting it off at the source, accusing the science of playing God without a safety net—and, more chillingly, suggesting that the U.S. government has been complicit.
The new order freezes taxpayer funding for any projects involving these experiments in “countries of concern” like China and Iran, citing the risk of “biological threats.” Domestic programs won’t escape scrutiny either—Trump has ordered a 120-day suspension while the entire policy around dual-use research gets a hard reset.
Unsurprisingly, Trump is pointing fingers—straight at Joe Biden’s administration—for allowing “dangerous” virus manipulation research to flourish not just on American soil, but in foreign labs with little U.S. oversight. He claims these programs could one day unleash untold suffering: “widespread mortality, a crippled health system, shattered livelihoods, and threats to national security.”
The most disturbing part? Trump may not be wrong.
From Wuhan to Kyiv, American-funded labs have become hotbeds for suspicion. Moscow has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. has been quietly planting biolabs near Russia’s borders, in Ukraine and elsewhere, where research tiptoes uncomfortably close to bioweapons development. Washington has dismissed the accusations, saying it’s all about disease prevention. But the fog of war—and science—makes the truth hard to trace.
According to Trump’s order, unfinished pathogen experiments in Ukraine have already been moved to other parts of the post-Soviet world, Southeast Asia, and even Africa—new frontiers in a dark biological chess game that few civilians know is being played.
What’s clear is that the gloves are off. Trump has drawn a red line through the heart of virus research and dared the scientific establishment to cross it. Whether this is a triumph for public safety or the start of a deeper bio-political cold war is anyone’s guess.
Either way, Pandora’s box is open. And the monsters are no longer just theoretical.
