John R. Bolton was ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and national security adviser under President Donald Trump.
The recent death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old Russian laboratory technician, of pneumonic plague raised worldwide concerns because of her workplace: the Irkutsk Antiplague Institute of Siberia. With the covid pandemic in mind, the public focused on whether another such crisis could be upon the world. Moscow asserts there is no cause for alarm. But Russia’s record for veracity is hardly encouraging.
Despite having only information provided by Russian officials, U.S. Centers for Disease Control Director Erica Schwartz said last week that the “threat to the United States is extremely low.” President Donald Trump downplayed the possibility that the episode might be linked to biowarfare research, saying, “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so.”
Taking a more cautious approach to Moscow’s assurances would be advisable, especially in light of important lessons from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its possible connection to Chinese bioweapons research. Even purely epidemiological research can provide findings highly relevant to sophisticated bioweapons capabilities. Notably, the Trump administration’s 2026 intelligence-community threat assessment states expressly that “Russia’s scientists continue developing new CBW” — chemical-biological-warfare — “capabilities,” and that “China probably possesses CBW capabilities that threaten U.S., allied, and partner forces as well as civilian populations.”
Worries about another pandemic are warranted, but so, too, are worries about Russian and Chinese threats to U.S. national security. Even if initial apprehensions prove unfounded, the Irkutsk incident should be treated as a red flag, not a false alarm. There is a long history that should not be ignored.
Kanatjan Alibekov, from 1988 until his 1992 defection from Russia, was a top official at Biopreparat, whose “primary function was to develop and produce weapons made from the most dangerous viruses, toxins and bacteria known to man.” His 1999 memoir, “Biohazard” (under his Americanized name, Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman), remains basic reading for understanding Russian biowarfare research.
Journalist Judith Miller and her co-authors advanced the story in 2001 with “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.” They demonstrate, for example, how much Washington learned after the Soviet Union’s collapse, such as at “the premier Soviet germ factory” at Stepnogorsk, in newly independent Kazakhstan, with its facilities and scientists fully available to the West.
Moscow expended considerable time and effort to recover from losing so many resources and talents, but recover it did, as the U.S. intelligence community confirms. Of course, not every Russian biology lab engages in weapons-related activity. Nonetheless, governments with illicit weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, nuclear and chemical as well as biological, routinely conduct in plain sight activities that can have a legitimate civilian application as well as a military one. As more-sophisticated research becomes increasingly sensitive, and “dual use” explanations less plausible if not impossible, more precautions are taken. Actual weaponization work is as fully concealed as possible.
Interestingly, the Irkutsk antiplague facility’s website says it also studies brucellosis, anthrax and tularemia, all of which have been researched over decades for potential biowarfare use. The institute also acknowledges its work in biodefense research, particularly against bioterrorism. This “defensive” activity may be entirely legitimate under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, to which both Russia and China subscribe, just as the United States and many others do.
The problem is that, scientifically, purely defensive research is hard to distinguish from offensive research, and defensive research can readily advance more threatening work elsewhere. For countries that take treaty obligations seriously, this is not an issue. Rogue states, however, sign arms-control agreements and then violate them at will, using “defensive research” as a dodge. Indeed, one reason President George W. Bush’s administration rejected a draft verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention is that biological programs are inherently unverifiable. As the saying, sometimes apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill, goes, the only countries that comply with arms-control agreements are countries you don’t need arms-control agreements with.
Today’s fear of the expanding weapons spectrum, from drone technology to artificial intelligence’s perhaps existential threat, should not distract us from the hard reality of already-existing threats. Moscow’s gray-zone warfare in Europe — exemplified in August by a failed attack on Germany’s Leipzig airport by an explosives-laden drone, blamed on Russia by German officials — should be another red flag. It has long been known that properly prepared, aerosolized biowarfare agents can be spread by innocent-appearing crop-duster airplanes, or, now, by drones.
Merely demanding more “transparency” from Russia, as the World Health Organization is doing, is far from sufficient. We simply do not have, and probably will not have, enough information to draw firm conclusions. We do know enough that the Irkutsk incident should not be left unexamined, even if the current White House is extraordinarily considerate of Vladimir Putin’s wishes.
Instead, the relevant congressional committees should conduct systematic reviews of both the global bioweapons threat to America and the adequacy of U.S. defenses. That review should include the national-security implications of U.S. taxpayer funds being granted to foreign research institutions, to avoid subsidizing America’s enemies. Time is short.
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