Why is the Director of National Intelligence Bolstering Russian Disinformation about Biolabs in Ukraine?
What Tulsi Gabbard’s Declassification Schemes Mean for Upcoming U.S. Elections
EARLY IN the COVID-19 pandemic, I started getting questions from reporters who wanted to know why Russia was claiming biological weapons were being developed at US-funded laboratories in Ukraine.1 It was simple, I told them; Russia couldn’t resist an opportunity to cast doubt on the origins of the coronavirus, especially when it could potentially undermine Western support for Kyiv or make the United States look bad.
Those false and misleading claims, which were peddled as early as 2009, surged after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and again in 2024. And last week, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard amplified them again, declassifying documents that she said included “never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.”
As RFERL reported:
“The unusual move...came just days before [Gabbard’s] departure as DNI, which oversees an intergovernmental office set up to coordinate information sharing among the sprawling US intelligence community. It wasn’t immediately clear why Gabbard was releasing the information. Nor was it clear that it contained anything new or revelatory.”
In a statement that looks like a high schooler wrote it, Gabbard uses classic disinformation tropes, claiming she has blown the lid on a coverup and has been wrongly accused of furthering adversarial narratives:
“The information surrounding the existence, history, locations and funding of these US funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people falsely, claiming that they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise to be foreign assets and traitors to America.”2
What the documents actually show is quite different: a mostly-redacted briefing on Russian disinformation regarding a US-funded biolab in Ukraine, and a list of US-funded labs, partners, and funding levels in the country that was far from secret to begin with.
Here are the facts: the United States has openly funded biolabs around the world for decades. The government never denied it. The program, called the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, was never secret—Congress approved it. These labs aren’t developing biological weapons, they exist “to prevent, detect, and prepare for outbreaks caused by biothreat pathogens.” And yes, as the DNI points out, labs in Ukraine “may be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war” Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine,3 but that’s because most scientific and defense research is vulnerable to an entirely unscrupulous army undertaking a war of aggression designed to inflict as much suffering as possible, with no regard for downstream effects (see Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and its long pattern of threatening nuclear safety and security during the war)!
If Tulsi is worried about this lab, the best thing for her to do would be to work to end Russia’s war. You know, the one President Trump said he’d end on Day One of his second term.
Waving around “receipts” like these documents is in and of itself a time-tested disinformation tactic. Purveyors of bullshit know that most people don’t read past wild headlines, and when they do, they aren’t able to make heads or tails of the underlying source material. (See: the fever dream of falsehoods that is so-called Twitter Files.) They think, “if it’s got a U.S. Government seal on it, it must be trustworthy,” even when the source material says the opposite of what is being asserted.
It’s extraordinarily disturbing that the DNI would engage in this sort of conspiracy baiting and frustrating that Ukraine continues to be a favorite topic for both Russian disinformers and those closer to home. Beyond the continued implications of Tulsi’s lies for Kyiv, I’m most worried about what these actions might mean for the upcoming midterm elections. We’ve seen this administration declassify documents for political gain before: Tulsi declassified documents that she claimed proved the Russia investigation was a “hoax,” along with others she hoped would help the President in his efforts to get his first impeachment “expunged.”
Imagine, for a second, it’s October. What might happen if the next DNI declassifies intelligence assessments about an adversary’s attempted incursions into voting systems? Maybe that adversary is China or Iran, Trump’s favorite bogeymen, which his supporters are primed to hate. Even if the declassified documents only describe ongoing, thwarted interference attempts, or assess with low confidence that an incursion is possible or likely, the administration could wave this intel around to inspire distrust in our democratic infrastructure, or more chillingly, attempt to make changes to the electoral process on the basis of what it says are “urgent threats.”
If confirmed as the new DNI, Jay Clayton—who has been a yes man for Trump and raised questions about the sanctity of elections processes—could continue in Gabbard’s footsteps. There’s not much for ordinary citizens to do about this problem right now, other than be vigilant and seek news and analysis from a range of sources.
One thing is certain: In a world where the nation’s top intelligence official is declassifying documents to win at shitposting, Americans should feel confident in rejecting the lies the Trump Administration tells us—and worried about what that means for our nation’s safety and security. 🧭
If you’re new here and wondering why: I researched Russian disinformation in Ukraine and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications when I was a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow in Kyiv, reported on disinformation during Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election on a Pulitzer Center grant, and wrote How to Lose the Information War, a book about dealing with Russian disinformation, in 2020.
(Did anyone at ODNI who knows how to use a comma proofread this?!)
Apparently Tulsi still needs to read “Try this One Weird Trick to Avoid Being Called a Russian Asset All the Time.”
I have to admit I had forgotten about Tulsi’s attachment to this particular conspiracy theory.
Stop wars you want Russian revolution