On Wednesday’s The Situation Room, a CNN report on the biolab raid in Las Vegas left out a key piece of information: the connection of the lab to a Chinese national suspected to have connections to the Chinese government.
Co-anchor Pamela Brown introduced the topic with no mention of the Select Committee Report or China:
Well new this morning, federal authorities are investigating a suspected illegal biolab found inside a Las Vegas home. According to Las Vegas police, the home is owned by a man who was arrested in 2023, in connection to another biolab investigation in California. During that previous investigation, authorities discovered materials possibly associated with several infectious diseases, including hepatitis, COVID, HIV, and malaria.
The raid in Vegas resulted in over 1,000 samples being sent for FBI testing at Quantico.
The suspected Vegas biolab is owned by the same Chinese national, Jia Bei Zhu, who was arrested for operation of an "unauthorized biolab” in California in 2023. The California biolab was the subject of a report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, where some vials were found to be labeled as diseases such as “Ebola.”
While other outlets, such as ABC News and local Vegas news, reported on the Chinese and CCP connections, CNN also did not mention the relation on an online report. The only faint visual mention came from graphics up for 20 seconds of the story.
After playing clips from the Las Vegas Sheriff and FBI Director Kash Patel, Brown moved to interview retired FBI Agent Daniel Brunner. Once again, there was no mention of CCP connections, while there were allusions to individuals possibly wanting to do harm to certain people:
If this person who's running this lab wanted to do harm to a certain, you know, group, a certain people, a certain government, it's unknown the amount of damage that they could have done. We saw with COVID. We saw that the spread could happen quickly.
Of course, Brown made sure to note that the owner of the Vegas home said there was no biolab there, as if he would admit it.
And I do want to note that the owner of the Las Vegas house says he is not involved in any kind of a biolab being conducted there.
The CNN omission of the Chinese connection is surprising, given the stories done on the 2023 California biolab and the clear connection to the owner of the Vegas property.
Maybe there should be more of a mainstream focus on the seeming Chinese biothreat, especially after last year’s case of University of Michigan students smuggling a potential bioweapon into the country. If the threat isn't being taken seriously by some news outlets, they might just be ignoring one of the biggest current threats to the US.
The transcript is below. Click to expand:
CNN’s The Situation Room
February 4, 2026
10:31:29 AM EasternPAMELA BROWN: Well new this morning, federal authorities are investigating a suspected illegal biolab found inside a Las Vegas home. According to Las Vegas police, the home is owned by a man who was arrested in 2023, in connection to another biolab investigation in California. During that previous investigation, authorities discovered materials possibly associated with several infectious diseases, including hepatitis, COVID, HIV, and malaria.
[Cuts to video]
SHERIFF KEVIN MCMAHILL (Las Vegas Police): The nature of that earlier investigation raised significant concern for what we might encounter in this new case. [Transition] While it is unknown whether similar materials were present here at the Las Vegas residence, the possibility required us to proceed with extreme caution.
[Cuts back to live]
BROWN: Officials in Las Vegas say they found refrigerators containing vials with unknown liquids. FBI Director Kash Patel says the agency is currently testing those materials.
[Cuts to video]
KASH PATEL (FBI Director): What we have to do is take these thousand samples and ship them across the country, which we did overnight, and have our lab analyze them. And once we have those results, then we can produce further charges.
[Cuts back to live]
BROWN: All right, joining us now to discuss is retired FBI special agent Daniel Brunner. He is now the president of Brunner Sierra Group LLC. Hi Daniel, so walk us through the significance of this.
DANIEL BRUNNER: Well, it's extremely significant. And it's a great discovery that the Las Vegas Police Department - Las Vegas Law Enforcement and coordinating with the Las Vegas division because there's so many different possibilities that could end up, you know, harming the community, harming Nevada or harming the west coast. If something were to get out that wasn't controlled, wasn’t being analyzed, it wasn't being - something irregulated labs like this are a danger to the community, and I'm glad that they are able to look at this. Because you have to look back and all the way back to the anthrax attacks, those were conducted by an individual, you know, attacking certain people. If this person who's running this lab wanted to do harm to a certain, you know, group, a certain people, a certain government, it's unknown the amount of damage that they could have done. We saw with COVID. We saw that the spread could happen quickly. So, this is a great discovery. And I'm grateful that the law enforcement in Nevada are taking care of this.
BROWN: You certainly don't want anyone going rogue with stuff like this, right? And I do want to note that the owner of the Las Vegas house says he is not involved in any kind of a biolab being conducted there. But authorities say there's no threat to the public, that everything was contained to the garbage. How did they determine that? Can they be so sure without the test results from the liquids found there?
BRUNNER: Well, I think that one of the things is when your hazmat teams walk in, they walk in gradually. They're testing the air, they're testing the waters. I'm sure surrounding the house to see if there was leakage, to see if there was any seepage or surrounding areas. And I'm sure that all of that is being conducted very meticulously. Everything is being documented. Everything is being meticulously collected. Fortunately, this isn't a spill or something worse. So I think the fact that they're saying that there isn't a threat to the community is because they're conducting the logical tests, moving in towards the house, and then they're able to collect it. And if they don't see any refrigerators leaking, if they don't see anything along those lines where the detectors most likely would have caught them in advance of their, you know, entry into the house. Obviously, these samples will be collected and determined at Quantico to see if there are additional charges to the individuals that were renting or leasing this home from the homeowner. And then to see what is or should not have been held in a private residence or controlled laboratory.
BROWN: So what are the challenges involved with an investigation like this? What do they pose when agents are potentially dealing with these unknown substances?
BRUNNER: That right there is the key word Pam, “Unknown substances.” you don't know what kind, especially the unknown liquids. They don't know how volatile, so they have to treat it as incredibly dangerous, incredibly volatile situation. They don't know what it is. If this is an extreme contaminant, you know, along the lines of, you know, Ebola or things like that, which would be incredibly dangerous to the community and incredibly deadly if released accidentally. They have to treat every single vial, even if it's labeled something that they know that is, you know, Cholera or COVID, they have to treat it. That is the most dangerous liquid that they've ever encountered, so they have to treat it correctly. So and then when they're able to correctly administer it and test it at Quantico, then the Quantico laboratory can definitively say, this is what it is. Until then, everything has to be treated as incredibly dangerous.
BROWN: Alright, Daniel Brunner, thanks so much.
