China is building a new military command centre near Beijing that is 10 times the size of the Pentagon, US intelligence officials have said.

The Central Intelligence Agency previously said that two explanations were plausible, a lab leak or a natural source for the virus. Yet under new agency director John Ratcliffe, the CIA has changed its view, which is now in line with that of the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory.

On Saturday, new CIA Director john Ratcliffe made public the CIA’s reassessment that shifts from an inconclusive position to now believing the lab-leak was most likely despite a low level of confidence.

It was unclear the extent to which the agency has collected new intelligence on COVID-19's origins and whether that new evidence was used to formulate the latest assessment.

The news comes after the CIA announced over the weekend that COVID-19 most likely originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2020.

The Show Me State vows to seize $25 billion in Chinese assets if Beijing doesn't pay damages related to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The command centre will also have shelters for China's military leadership against the US bunker busters and the possibility of nuclear war

Warren P. Strobel is a reporter at The Washington Post covering U.S. intelligence. He has written about U.S. security policies under seven presidents, and reported from Europe, the Middle East and West Africa.

"The government cannot be a welfare program for everybody doing low quality, low credibility, irreproducible, low value of information research," says epidemiologist who supports reform of NIH "study sections.

China said Monday it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 came from a laboratory, after the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it believed the virus had more likely come from a lab rather than natural transmission.