Morning comrades!
We break this monotonous Monday morning to bring you some spicy international news.
Over the weekend reports began to emerge from that there has been a plague outbreak in Siberia, Russia.
Things looked a bit more serious when the slurry of online reports from various sources was followed by the news that the White House had been briefed on the incident.
I had a ping of deja vu as I started to sift through the online news and influencer posts on this case that brought me back to the Wuhan days. I remember the photos and videos of the Chinese healthcare and government workers in full PPE. I remember the wet market theory and the pangolin.
Chiefly I remember what the vibe was.
I have told many of you before the story of how I watched Covid slowly descend on the US from my office in Midtown Manhattan. I actually ended up leaving work early to work remote 2 days before a full blown shutdown of the city (much to the chagrin of coworkers who were puzzled at my behavior).
Just followed my gut when I saw cases making landfall in New York State and beat the panic buying by about 48 hours…..
I didn’t leave my apartment for weeks.
Is this Covid 2.0?
Is it a simple accident being blown out of proportion?
Truth is we don’t know yet, but today I am going to give you a an overview of what we do know so far and what is possible given Russia and the Soviet Union’s long history of dabbling in biological weapons and various tertiary programs.
If this IS something leaked from a Soviet era facility, people should understand what that might imply about the characteristics of this virus or bug.
What We Know
So far here is what we do know.
A 28-year-old lab technician Darya Shipilova died this weekend after reportedly breaking a test tube with live Yersinia pestis in it at the Irkutsk Anti Plague Institute on September 25th. She was rushed to a hospital but her lungs were shot and she passed while on a ventilator.
Yersinia pestis is the bacterium that causes plague, including its bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic forms. It typically circulates among rodents and their fleas, but when it infects your lungs, it can spread between people through respiratory droplets and become rapidly fatal without prompt antibiotic treatment (assuming it hasn’t been designed or altered to resist antibiotics).
We can get a rough idea of the incubation period/timeline of whatever she was infected with by throwing all the dates together (keep in mind this is rough).
Rough timeline:
Sept. 25 — alleged test-tube incident
Sept. 29 — Shipilova hospitalized with severe pneumonia
Oct. 2 — died
Oct. 4 — today
Now for the facility, which sounds like something out of Goldeneye.
Here’s what I was able to pull on this particular facility, which goes by the official name of the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute (the website looks like a 5 year old with microsoft paint made it).
Founded June 5, 1934, it serves Siberia and the Russian Far East and reportedly is focused on “Plague control though Its responsibilities later expanded to cholera, anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis and infections transmitted by arthropods.” Its published research includes surveillance of natural plague reservoirs.
So the TLDR version? We have a Soviet era facility heavily focused on plague research. This will come back into the conversation in a bit but understand that for the majority of it’s life this facility likely dove into weapons research.
Initial reports indicate that about 200 people are being monitored at the moment for exposure (latest reports ay there are about 100 that work at this facility).
In classic Russian style, we can’t be too sure of anything. OSINT Technical on X pointed out that “Multiple sources, including a local media outlet and town authorities, deleted posts yesterday referring to the incident” and as of 9:40pm ET last night there isn’t a ton of additional information coming out. Rospotrebnadzor ( the national public health agency for the Russian Federation) has said the deceased worker had “pneumonia of unknown etiology”.
Sounds like horseshit to me or the beginning to a new Tom Clancy novel.
The Russians could be lying about any or all of the details of this incident: how many were exposed, what escaped the lab, how far it has traveled, etc.
One particularly concerning feature of the region in which this is said to have occurred is that there is an airport, Irkutsk International Airport (IKT), nearby that has roughly 11,100 arriving and departing passengers per day on average according to 2025 reports. The airport also offers flights to Beijing……
That’s enough to potentially spread whatever this is rapidly.
The Russian response (and news blackout) might tell us how serious this really is. Right now there are unverified reports that say that FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation)/formerly the KGB were dispatched to handle this incident and that containment was swift. That’s not really something you would do if this was a minor incident or something that would blow over in a week or two.
Later in the evening yesterday we saw initial headlines that the White House was monitoring the situation in Russia.
Newsnation reported that an official from the State Department told them:
“We are aware of reports of a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. We are monitoring the situation closely with the CDC and our other interagency partners”
The big questions here should be:
Is this pneumonic plague?
Is this a weaponized or altered variant?
Is this something else entirely
A Quick History on Russian Biological Weapon Programs
We don’t know exactly what is going on right now, but one of the reasons for my concern is if you look to Russia’s history in the biological warfare space.
Influencers, Covid larper experts, and others on X seem to be certain that they have all the answers when it comes to this recent outbreak.
What most don’t seem to grasp is that the Soviet Union’s biological weapons program was a massive industrial enterprise and it’s influence and byproducts most certainly remain in modern day Russia.
A 2000 GAO report (Government Accountability Office) estimated that there were about 50 institutes and 60,000 personnel at the peak. Their with work spanned anthrax, plague, smallpox and various other dangerous pathogens.
During the Cold War Moscow continued their programs despite obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention. In terms of structure, it was fairly straightforward to outsiders.
Much of the operation sat behind Biopreparat which was a network presented as civilian biotechnology research and production. Of course it was far from that.
Anthrax, plague and smallpox were central to the Soviet offensive threat. Weapons were developed to target large populations, individual persons, and agriculture. Other research work involved tularemia, glanders and Venezuelan equine encephalitis. Soviet researchers also investigated hemorrhagic fever viruses, including Ebola and Marburg. Marburg was particularly scary.
In 1988, an unlucky researcher named Nikolai Ustinov accidentally infected himself with Marburg.
The Soviets noticed that the virus mutated upon infecting him creating a deadlier strain they named Variant U. They extracted it from his organs and proceeded to work on figuring out how to enable it in warhead delivery (and they succeeded).
And beyond that the Soviet Union had other instances of outbreaks. In 1979 their was an instance of anthrax spores breaching a Soviet military facility near Sverdlovsk which ended up killing over 60.
Now no summary of Soviet Bio Weapon Research or Capability would be complete without me referencing former Biopreparat deputy director Ken Alibek. Born Kanatjan Alibekov, he spent nearly two decades developing biological weapons for the Soviets before defecting to the United States in 1992 (the year I was born!).
Eventually Alibek became the godfather of Soviet Bio Research and oversaw 32,000 employees across 40 facilities.
In his 1999 book, Biohazard, which I highly recommend you guys check out (up there with Unconventional Warfare on China), Alibek described an insane ecosystem of Soviet Bio endeavors intentionally designed and structured to deceive Western inspectors.
In his own congressional testimony he reported Soviet stockpiles containing hundreds of tons of anthrax formulation and dozens of tons of smallpox and plague. Scary shit.
What makes Alibek’s account particularly disturbing is the intent he described.
Soviet planners, he testified, favored agents without effective prevention or treatment and sought ways to undermine existing medical defenses. Antibiotics would be rendered useless to some of these weaponized superbugs and the objective went beyond making an enemy sick, they were designed to kill at scale.
The key here is to focus on is what might have remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the years GAO documented substantial remaining infrastructure, scientific expertise and dangerous pathogen collections after the Soviet collapse.
Here is what everyone should understand.
The enduring and large risk here is that Russia retained important parts of the scientific and institutional foundation that made the Soviet program possible.
Destroying old weapons would reduce the threat partially but it obviously would not erase the expertise the Russians need to build new ones. In the modern age they could likely expedite any efforts and create newer deadlier strains.
So who the fuck knows what might be ripping through Siberia, greater Russia or even Asia by now.
Time will tell.
One things for sure though, it appears psy op season is back in full swing.
Now What?
I suspect we will know by Wednesday if this is the real deal or not. There’s quite a bit to pay attention to across the world right now on top of the plague storyline. Since USAID was cut there have been ZERO left wing political victories in Latin America and last night in Brazil Flávio Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil's presidential election.
More US military assets are being moved to the Middle East as I type this and on top of that we’ve watched France burn under immigrant fueled riots for over a week now.
Curiously enough, the US Marine Corp X account happened to post a coincidental image of a soldier with a gas mask on with the captain “Mask On” with a biohazard emoji last night.
Symbolism? Something bigger coming in Russia or the Middle East?
Who knows but you can feel the disturbance in the force brother. Midterms creeping up, war continuing to play out in Ukraine and Middle East. It’s been a bit too quiet for too long. Covid round 2 with a Russian superbug wouldn’t be that shocking would it?
Strange to say the least.
Here’s the bottom line.
Do I have ANY doubts whatsoever that this so called “citizen institute” in Irkutsk was enhancing and testing bio weapons as opposed to just researching plague prevention?
Absolutely fucking not lol. Come on guys.
You’d have to be a child to believe that or be that gullible. Russia is infamous for skirting inspectors and Western officials. Almost nobody knows what the Russians revamped after the fall of the Soviet Union.
For markets, the first big shock could arrive before the medical picture is fully clear. Maybe this week we see quarantine announcements, travel restrictions, contradictory official statements and uncertainty over treatment options which would drive more panic globally.
Which is why I think we have some reason to be concerned here.
What would make me materially more concerned? Confirmed secondary cases, especially among medical staff or household contacts. Cases outside the original contact group would be bad as well, particularly in other countries.
We don’t need to panic yet, but this is absolutely a situation worth monitoring into the week, especially since Ukraine continues to drag on in a stalemate, US midterms are fast approaching, and there’s been a flare of unrest/potential foiled terror plots across the globe including inside the UK.
The U.S. has chosen to remove all its strategic bombers from RAF Fairford (where the terror plot failed last week) no doubt because of the complete lack of security inside the UK. The judge released all the suspects and just last night drone footage and videos emerged from the UK of law enforcement escorting more small boat migrants into the country in the dead of night. Law enforcement are even taking over towns to ensure that the importation is done peacefully.
The world is becoming more unstable at the seams.
Stay frosty kings and keep that head on a swivel!
Fuckery is afoot and something is going to pop off soon.
I can feel it deep in my plums! Ready to take to the farmer’s market!
That’s it for today folks.
I will see you Wednesday or Thursday as we pivot back to markets for the week. Might be a week where we need to put out 3 posts given everything going down.
Crypto is looking solid as of this morning and I will be interested to see how equities fare this week. Who knows with any luck maybe we get a 2020 dip we can all buy while we rip GTA 6 in quarantine.
Andy