Foreign Influence Group Exploitation of NIH Extramural Research Program

The specialized biomedical and healthcare-focused entities that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide more than $40 billion in extramural research grants every year to research universities, institutions, and companies. Although the NIH has an internal research security program responsible for identifying, assessing, and mitigating insider and outsider risks to its intramural and extramural research portfolios, open-source analysis of research publications indicates that China, Russia, and Iran have been targeting NIH-funded programs to gain access to early-stage research projects.

IPTalons has been analyzing open-source data to determine how active Foreign Influence Groups (FIGs) have been in targeting and exploiting NIH-funded extramural research projects at U.S. research universities and institutions. As the information continues to develop, it appears as if the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian FIGs have been successful in compromising researchers funded by NIH extramural grants between 2020 and 2025. The following information highlights the early data from the analytical project.