Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., says the illegal bio lab discovered inside a Las Vegas home is the kind of story you expect from a thriller novel, not your evening news. Speaking to Newsmax on Thursday, Kiley called the facts surrounding the case “really alarming” and warned it raises serious questions about how many similar operations could be hiding in plain sight across the country.
On American Agenda, Kiley said the lab, allegedly linked to a Chinese national, points to a far more dangerous situation than authorities have publicly admitted.
“When you look at the facts behind this thing, it is really alarming,” Kiley said. “It reads like a Tom Clancy novel.”
He compared the Las Vegas discovery to an earlier case in Reedley, California, where an illicit bio lab tied to Chinese nationals was uncovered several years ago. That case, he said, should have been a wake-up call.
According to Kiley, the explanations given for the Reedley lab never added up and looked more like a cover story than a real business operation.
“Whatever the sort of pretext for the existence of these labs was, it was clearly just a pretext,” he said.
In that California case, operators claimed they were selling COVID-19 test kits, but Kiley said they were simply importing counterfeit kits from China and reselling them. Which naturally leads to an obvious question.
“So, why do they need to have these vials with all these dangerous pathogens, with HIV, with Ebola, with tuberculosis, and so forth?” Kiley asked.
Those discoveries pushed him to raise alarms in Congress, warning that federal authorities don’t even know how many similar labs may be operating in the U.S.
“We don’t know how many other such labs are out there,” he said.
Kiley noted that a later report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party reached the same conclusion, finding that the true scope of the problem remains unknown. He said the Las Vegas lab appears to be connected to the same network of people tied to the Reedley operation, again with links to the Chinese government.
Kiley also highlighted legislation he introduced to close those gaps, criticizing Congress for failing to act after the California lab was discovered.
“Why hasn’t this bill been passed in the last couple of years after we learned about this lab?” he asked.
The bipartisan bill, written with Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., would create new requirements for pathogen distributors and strengthen oversight to help authorities detect and shut down illegal labs before they become a public safety disaster.
Kiley questioned how many more discoveries it will take before lawmakers take the issue seriously.
“How many more do we have to discover until we take serious systemic action to identify and shut down any other such labs that might exist?” he asked.
For Americans watching this unfold, the message is simple: this isn’t science fiction, and it isn’t harmless. Taking real action now means protecting public health, national security, and the safety of communities across the country—exactly the kind of responsibility strong leadership is supposed to deliver.
