When people ask why I believe Tulsi Gabbard’s disclosures confirmed what was already widely suspected—that the United States has supported military biological research abroad, and that Anthony Fauci was involved in research connected to modified coronaviruses in Wuhan—I find myself asking a more interesting question: Why now?
The timing matters. The Lugar Center in Georgia, along with laboratories and research facilities in Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere that have operated with U.S. support or under Pentagon-related programs, did not suddenly disappear when Washington’s political winds shifted. The laboratories are still there. The programs have not simply evaporated.
Perhaps the more important point is that Fauci may be only one piece of a much larger story. The United States has openly funded biological research in numerous countries, including cooperation involving Chinese institutions. Whatever one thinks of the stated purposes, the genie of gain-of-function research is no longer waiting patiently in the bottle. The question now is what we intend to do about it.
What exactly was moved to the Lugar Center?
I have recently stated in various media outlets that researchers’ equipment and pathogens, EDPs, and themselves were transferred to the Lugar Center from facilities in Ukraine, on the grounds that its BSL-3 laboratory infrastructure permitted such research.
So what exactly are we talking about?
Which pathogens were involved? What equipment was transferred? What work was the second institute conducting, and what is it conducting today?
Those are not trivial questions. For Georgia, and for the wider Caucasus, understanding precisely what research has been conducted—and under whose authority—is a matter of legitimate public interest.
Among the pathogens appearing in documents associated with the material released by Gabbard are serious biological agents and diseases, including anthrax, Ebola, and African swine fever, alongside a much broader collection involving human, animal, and plant pathogens. Some of these organisms have obvious agricultural and public health implications; others have obvious dual-use implications.
And that distinction matters.
The history of biological research contains enough unpleasant precedents to make blind faith a poor substitute for transparency. South Africa’s former Project Coast, for example, demonstrated that biological and chemical research could be directed toward highly disturbing objectives, including investigations into means of targeting particular populations.
That history does not prove that contemporary programs have the same purpose. But it does establish something more modest—and more important: the potential for abuse is not theoretical.
I have argued elsewhere, based on sources familiar with these programs, that some research has contemplated population-level effects, particularly among vulnerable populations such as people suffering from malnutrition, those with limited access to medical care, and the elderly. Such claims require independent verification, not merely repetition. But they deserve investigation rather than automatic dismissal.
It reminds me of a rerun of the Nazi T-4 program, the first wave of state organized murder of Georgian civilians, to cleanse society of useless eaters, the handcapped.
Follow the paperwork
The documents I have reviewed over the years describe continuing research and testing involving a broad range of pathogens. The official justification is generally familiar: civilian health, surveillance, disease prevention, diagnostics, and other ostensibly benign purposes.
That is precisely why the details matter.
One particularly revealing example is the GG-21 Final Project Report, a seroprevalence study involving Georgian military personnel and subsequently connected to similar work in Ukraine.
Seroprevalence sounds technical—and deliberately so. In plain English, the researchers were looking for antibodies in blood samples to determine whether people had previously been exposed to particular infectious agents. It does not, by itself, mean that the subjects had active infections.
The study examined a remarkably broad collection of pathogens and zoonotic agents, including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, tick-borne encephalitis, West Nile virus, hantavirus, brucellosis, leptospirosis, tularemia, anthrax, rickettsial infections, Q fever, Bartonella, Borrelia, Ehrlichia, and Salmonella typhi.
The report explained that many of these infections produce nonspecific symptoms, making diagnosis difficult without reliable laboratory testing. It also noted that comparable population-level seroprevalence information had not previously been collected in Georgia.
That is a perfectly legitimate public health objective. However, when done under the guise of secretary, denials and recriminations, one needs to look closer. It is also precisely the sort of research that can have dual-use implications, particularly when conducted within military institutions or alongside military-funded programs.
That does not automatically make the research offensive biological warfare. It does, however, make transparency rather more important than political assurances.
And if the documents released by Gabbard represent only a fraction of the underlying material, then the obvious next question is not whether everyone should panic.
GMO food and the same chain?
A third issue is now entering the discussion. Georgian authorities have moved toward permitting greater production of genetically modified agricultural products, while sanitary, epidemiological, and biological-safety systems across the former Soviet space have come under increasing pressure.
Are these developments connected?
I would argue that they can be viewed as part of the same broader struggle over sovereignty, food security, and control of strategic infrastructure.
The strongest version of the argument is not that every GMO crop is a covert biological weapon. That would be both difficult to substantiate and intellectually lazy. The more serious concern is economic and political.
Modern agriculture increasingly places small countries in relationships of dependence upon multinational seed, chemical, and pharmaceutical corporations. Once farmers become dependent on proprietary seed varieties, intellectual-property regimes can turn what was once an ordinary agricultural practice—saving and reusing seed—into a legal and economic battleground.
There is ample history, particularly in North America, of disputes involving genetically modified crops, patent rights, and farmers whose fields became contaminated through cross-pollination.
That does not mean every GMO is inherently dangerous, nor does it establish that corporations are deliberately trying to make populations sick. Those claims require evidence.
But there is another old political maxim worth remembering:
Control the food supply, and you acquire considerable leverage over the country that depends upon it.
That principle is hardly confined to Georgia. For a country with a strong reputation for traditional agriculture and relatively natural food production, there is a reasonable argument for proceeding cautiously. Georgia does not need to surrender its agricultural independence merely because multinational agribusiness has discovered another promising market.
The larger issue, therefore, is not whether every laboratory is sinister or every genetically modified crop is poisonous.
It is whether Georgia—and other small countries caught between competing geopolitical powers — retains the ability to know what is being researched, who is funding it, who owns the resulting technology, who controls the food supply, and ultimately who answers to the public.
Those are questions that deserve evidence rather than slogans. And if asking them makes people uncomfortable, perhaps that is a useful place to begin.
Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet Union
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