From the article:
Files obtained by The Intercept as part of an FOI request to drill down the possible root of COVID and whether the US had any role in it showed that in 2014, the National Health Institute (NIH) approved a five-year, yearly grant of $666,000 a year for five years ($3.3million) for EcoHealth Alliance, a US research organization, into bat coronavirus.
EcoHealth Alliance, in its proposal to the NIH, acknowledged the risks involved were 'the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs' among staff, who could then carry it out of the lab.
The NIH gave them the money anyway - something Dr Anthony Fauci was previously forced to admit when testifying before Congress in May this year. EcoHealth Alliance then gave $599,000 of the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
At the time and repeatedly since, Fauci has denied that the research constituted what's known as 'gain-of-function' research.
Gain-of-function research is the scientific term given to research that deliberately changes an organism to make give it new functions in order to test a theory.
When applies to studying human viruses, it can mean making the virus more transmissible and or even deadly in order to test what can and can't survive it.