Scientists work in a laboratory at the Vaccine Research Center at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which could lose research projects to the Department of Defense.Credit: NIAIDUpdate: After this story was published, the US Department of Defense responded to Nature’s request for comment with a statement confirming that the department has signed a research agreement with the National Institutes of Health. The agreement will allow “for strategic collaboration on a project-by-project basis”, the statement said, adding that any assertion that the agreement was made in secret “is false”.The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking to redirect research projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the country’s premier infectious-diseases research centre — the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — to military biodefence programmes at the US Department of Defense (DoD), according to two NIH employees.The employees told Nature that the NIH and the DoD, also called the Department of War, have signed a preliminary agreement on the arrangement, and that the NIH is now identifying projects it will transfer to the DoD. According to a third NIH employee, who is a senior official at the agency, the agreement is set to be finalized by the end of September, when the fiscal year ends and some funds expire. (The employees spoke on condition of anonymity, because they are not authorized to speak to the press.)An NIH spokesperson said: “This partnership will only take place on a project-by-project basis, and all research will be within the scope of NIH’s mission. There is no blanket transfer of funds.”Exclusive: NIH ousts infectious-disease leaders as COVID scientists face US chargesThe senior NIH source said the new arrangement would untangle civilian public-health initiatives and defence priorities. “We’re trying to get research that’s more Department of War related back to Department of War,” the official said. “When the public hears that NIAID funds biodefence, they think we’re developing bioweapons, and we’re trying to get out of that business.”Federal law does allow agreements between US agencies to share funding in some circumstances, says Samuel Bagenstos, who until December 2024 was the top lawyer for the NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. But “what’s not appropriate or legal is saying, ‘Look, DoD needs money, NIH has money, we’re going to take money and send it to the DoD,’” he says. If the administration is using NIH resources to cover shortfalls in the military budget, “that would be illegal, because that would be using funding not to serve the purposes of NIH, but to serve the purposes of DoD”.The agreement — which lasts for ten years — would establish a pathway to move funding out of the NIAID to support defence initiatives. The full agreement has not yet been finalized, the sources say.Biosecurity researchers warn that shifting biomedical research to the military threatens the transparency and potential for widespread clinical benefits that define NIH-funded work. “The Department of Defense is just not set up to deliver the scientific innovations we have come to expect and rely on from NIH,” says Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.Bureaucratic churnThe agreement comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump has ousted eight of ten of the NIAID’s top officials and reoriented the NIAID away from research into preparing for pandemics, instead endorsing a focus on basic immunology and chronic diseases such as diabetes. Nature reported in February that NIAID staff had been instructed to scrub the terms “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute’s website.The NIAID’s biodefence portfolio includes research aimed at developing vaccines and treatments for pathogens that could be weaponized, such as Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), Variola major (smallpox) and Yersinia pestis (plague). Another focus is developing treatments for injuries and conditions caused by exposure to radiation or nerve agents.Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, says that although biodefence requires military and civilian coordination, moving work away from the NIAID risks fragmenting national preparedness for emergencies, such as pandemics.NIH director Jay Bhattacharya defended the arrangement between the two agencies. “Far from siphoning money away from research, this partnership between @NIH and @DeptofWar focuses on research projects that will drive discoveries to improve the health of American citizens and members of the military,” Bhattacharya wrote in a post on the social-media platform X.Operation Prevailing EdgeThe reallocation was initiated by the NIH leadership, but Robert Kadlec, assistant secretary for nuclear deterrence, chemical and biological defence, policy and programmes at the DoD, has been pushing to finalize the deal under a broader biodefence initiative dubbed Operation Prevailing Edge, according to two of the three NIH employees.