Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has accused the US Agency for International Development (USAID) of funding biowarfare research, including projects that may have contributed to the emergence of COVID-19. He called the agency a “criminal organization.”
Musk’s statement was in response to a post by a user named KanekoaTheGreat, which claimed that USAID had given $53 million to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization that has worked on coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
USAID has funded global health initiatives, including the PREDICT program, which aimed to identify viruses with pandemic potential and ran from 2009 to 2020 in partnership with the EcoHealth Alliance. The agency has also launched a new program, Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, with a $125 million budget, although it was terminated in 2023.
Russia has expressed concerns about biological research labs supported by the Pentagon and other US agencies around the world, particularly in Ukraine and other countries near its borders and claims that these facilities are involved in the research of biowarfare.