A young researcher in Siberia has died under mysterious circumstances, raising questions about a potential lab leak. Russia won’t say how it happened. Marshall Billingslea, former Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, says Moscow has scrubbed news reports, had officials walk back talk of an outbreak, and kept the World Health Organization in the dark. He joins School of War to fill in what the Kremlin won’t, taking us inside Russia’s expanding bioweapons program and the institute at the heart of the mystery, which defectors say ran a covert effort to weaponize the disease and make it resistant to antibiotics. He also explains how Moscow thinks about using these weapons, how China is building a program of its own, and why the most frightening of them pose a risk even nuclear weapons don’t.
2:32 — Mystery at a Russian Plague Lab
5:29 — Russia’s Bioweapons Program
7:14 — Weaponizing Plague
10:39 — How Russia Would Use Bioweapons
13:01 — Smallpox and Ebola
15:07 — Controlling the Spread
16:40 — “Your Vaccines Wouldn’t Have Worked”
18:20 — A Soviet Bioweapons Defector
20:30 — Why Bioweapons Bans Are Hard to Verify
24:58 — Irkutsk and Wuhan
29:48 — Another Pandemic?
32:45 — China and North Korea
This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com.
This episode of School of War is also brought to you by Stratolaunch, a leading pure-play hypersonics company. Stratolaunch helps the U.S. and its allies move new hypersonic technologies from concept to capability, faster and cheaper. Learn more about how Stratolaunch is accelerating the future of hypersonics at Stratolaunch.com.
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