On March 6, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the Pentagon of financing a "military-biological program" in Ukraine, falsely claiming the U.S. is funding biological research facilities or "biolabs." The U.S. and Ukraine vehemently denied the claims, which are meritless. Regardless, China has amplified the Russian narrative, and U.S. right-wing media, including Fox News, has also repeated the biolab conspiracy theory. What started as a false claim soon became coordinated propaganda.
Ukraine is not the only country to have been targeted by a biolab conspiracy theory. The same conspiracy theory about the U.S. funding biological research facilities has appeared in countries such as Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Taiwan. The Kremlin's disinformation campaign, which has also formed part of COVID-19 misinformation, has been long-running and well documented. In addition, China has been notorious for amplifying Russian disinformation. According to a U.S. report, there was a three-fold increase in Chinese diplomats retweeting Russian sources on Twitter in 2022.
We decided to trace the narrative's origin and analyze why the idea of "biolabs" has been so effective in the conspiracy world.
During World War I, Germany used biological weapons and attempted to spread the bubonic plague in St. Petersburg, Russia. In World War II, Japanese forces experimented on more than 3,000 people and used bioweapons in China.
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