The lab wasn’t conducting bioweapon research. Gain of function research isn’t to create a bioweapon, nominally. It’s to examine the behavior of viruses under manipulation in order to better understand how we can respond to them given an outbreak. It’s not nefarious by nature, though it does seem like its usefulness hasn’t panned out as was thought.
But again, you really should read the article to understand what gain of function research is instead of insinuating I said COVID was a bioweapon.