Donald Trump Is 'Playing Roulette With Our Lives' Over Bio Threats, Former DHS Aide Says

Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor accused President Donald Trump of weakening US protections against bio threats, warning in an opinion article for The i Paper that he was 'playing roulette with our lives'.

Taylor previously served as DHS chief of staff and, by his account, designed and established the Office of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. His warning centres on what he described as the dismantling of that office and the dispersal of specialists trained to detect biological dangers and other threats.

Trump's Bio Threats Office Faces Staffing Allegations

In an X post, Taylor alleged that hundreds of staff from the office had been 'pushed out, fired, or reassigned in Trump 2.0'. His article for The i Paper offered a fuller account of the changes he claimed had weakened the department's ability to protect Americans.

Taylor wrote that Elon Musk's DOGE team had targeted the office before Trump informed Congress that it was no longer required. According to Taylor, the unit was effectively deleted, with weapons of mass destruction experts reassigned elsewhere within DHS or pushed out.

He wrote, 'More than half the staff is now gone.'

That figure is Taylor's assertion. The supplied material does not include a response from Trump, the White House or DHS, or an official staffing record against which to assess his account.

Russian Laboratory Death Informs Trump Warning

Taylor linked his concerns to the death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Russia. He described her death after she allegedly destroyed a test tube containing pneumonic plague bacteria.

The circumstances remained uncertain in Taylor's account. His discussion of the incident was an argument for maintaining specialist protection against a potential future biological emergency, rather than evidence of a biological terrorist attack.

He argued that Trump was 'actively dismantling the structures needed to protect the world from a potential future biological incident'.

IBTimes UK cannot independently verify the reported circumstances of Shipilova's death or Taylor's claims about the dismantling of the DHS office from the supplied material.

Trump Critic Cites Concerns Among DHS Specialists

Taylor described establishing the office as 'one of the biggest reorganisations of the department since it was created after 9/11'. That experience formed the basis of his criticism of the reported staffing changes.

Taylor wrote that he had spoken with people affected by the changes. His account described their concerns about losing an operation responsible for detecting and preventing a potential plague.

'I've talked to these people. They couldn't believe that — or understand why — the White House would want to destroy an office responsible for detecting and stopping the next plague. Situations like the one in Russia are why they existed. But it's too late. Their operation has already been dismantled.'

Taylor also wrote, 'I can't overstate how reckless this is.'

Taylor argued that specialists who had spent years learning to identify a dirty bomb or a bioterror plot had become difficult to locate. According to his account, lawmakers had requested that government auditors establish whether anyone was still performing that work. The supplied account does not identify the lawmakers or provide findings from the auditors they reportedly approached.