By D. Uchenna, Constitution Journal
In 2014 the federal government made a necessary and prudent decision to pause a specific class of scientific experimentation known as gain of function research. The risks were clear. This research involves manipulating viruses to become more transmissible or more deadly, with the stated purpose of anticipating future pandemics. But the obvious danger is that it may create the very pandemics it claims to prevent.
The Obama administration imposed a moratorium after a series of lab safety failures and growing concern from experts across disciplines. There was a brief moment of sanity where policymakers recognized the moral weight of creating artificial threats under the label of public health preparedness. There was also a rare acknowledgment that technological capability must never outrun ethical accountability.
That decision was reversed in 2017 during the Trump administration. Despite public perception that Trump stood against the global elite, his team quietly lifted the pause on gain of function research. This was done without public debate and under a review framework designed to give the appearance of oversight while allowing research to continue unimpeded. At the same time, his administration launched Project Warp Speed, a government and pharmaceutical industry collaboration that fast-tracked vaccine development and centralized biomedical power.
Now in 2025 we are seeing the full consequences of those choices. Trump has returned to power surrounded by global technocrats, many of whom are not only advising his administration but also financing it. These are not conspiracy theories. They are verifiable facts. The same financiers and institutional players that have driven international agendas at the World Economic Forum and global health summits are now deeply embedded in Trump’s policymaking circle. The language of sovereignty is being used to advance programs that entrench centralized control over health, biology, and even consent itself.
At the heart of it is a five hundred billion dollar biomedical program that expands the government’s authority to manage, monitor, and modify public health responses across state lines. If this were introduced under Biden, millions would protest. But under Trump, many remain silent. Some even cheer. That silence reveals the depth of the problem. The issue is not about personalities. It is about principle.
Gain of function research is not merely a scientific method. It is a worldview. It assumes that society is best managed by a select class of credentialed experts and government-approved institutions. It presumes the public should not interfere with decisions made by elite consensus. This is the antithesis of liberty. It is the foundation of a technocratic state.
True constitutional government is built on the premise of consent. Informed, voluntary, and individual. That principle is incompatible with programs that treat people as variables in a risk management model. It is incompatible with emergency powers that never expire and data collection that never stops.
The right has made a critical mistake in giving its trust to systems it would have opposed under different leadership. If the tools of surveillance, coercion, and forced compliance are dangerous in the hands of one administration, they are dangerous in every administration. Power does not become safe simply because it wears a familiar face.
If Americans do not challenge this trajectory now, it will not matter who wins the next election. The infrastructure of control will already be in place. It will answer to no party. It will serve no constitution. It will serve only itself. Mechanisms of forced compliance are being implemented more aggressively than we have ever witnessed in modern times and it is ironically being cheered on by dullards commonly observed cosplaying as “Patriots”.
