What Happened Inside Russia’s Plague Lab?

Aaron MacLean (0:00)

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If you're concerned about these reports coming out of Russia about this dead lab worker who was laboring away at a laboratory devoted to plague research in which apparently has some sort of connection to Russian bioweapons research, depending on who you talk to, well, join the club at School of War. We're concerned about it too. We all lived through 2020 together. And I personally have a very vivid memory of those months early in the pandemic. So today we're going to go deep on this issue with Marshall Billingslea, who has a long career in the US government working on these issues. He's actually worked with defectors from Russia from their bioweapons program. We're going to talk about what we know, what might happen next, and what the United States can, if anything, do. Let's get into it.

Marshall Billingslea (1:29)

It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of place.

SPEAKER_3 (1:51)

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender.

Aaron MacLean (2:03)

Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean, thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today Marshall Billingslea. He's a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute at various points in the past. He's been the acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. He's been the special presidential envoy for arms control, a long career in government before that at the Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all in very senior and consequential roles. Marshall, thank you so much for coming on School of War.

Marshall Billingslea (2:31)

It's great to be with you, Aaron.

Aaron MacLean (2:33)

Marshall, the reason we're talking today, I mean, there's all kinds of things we could get your take on, where you would have thoughtful things to say about various challenges that the United States faces out there in the world. But there seems to be some kind of medical crisis in Siberia, close to the Mongolian border. There has been some, I'll characterize it as speculation, you'll characterize it however you want, that there's some sort of relationship, potential relationship between the crisis and Russian bioweapons research.

All of us have seen this movie before and pretty recently, in the context of China in 2019 and 2020 I have some things to say about that example. I had a close place to observe all of that from. But Marshall, I want to ask you, because you have really interesting and relevant experience from earlier in your career working with the Russians on some of these issues that I want to get into. Where do we stand and what is the case that what's happening in Russia may have some very concerning implications?

Marshall Billingslea (3:37)

Well, what's happening in Russia does have concerning implications because Russia has an ongoing and expanding and modernizing offensive biological warfare program. Let's set that aside. I don't think we're on the verge of a pandemic the way we had with the Wuhan virus.

But the Russians are not being transparent about explaining to us what happened. In fact, they're behaving in a quintessential Russian manner by trying to cover everything up. They've expunged and taken down media reporting. They've caused both federal and local officials to roll back references that they were making to plague outbreak.

They have been completely non-transparent with the World Health Organization. Not that the WHO is the end all be all. They certainly failed us with the coronavirus. But the WHO director last night made diplomatically clear that the Russians have not been forthcoming about what's happened. President Trump has spoken on this several times now as a Secretary Rubio, but it appears that we are in a wait and see mode to be provided firm details by the Russians on what transpired.

Aaron MacLean (4:55)

Okay. So you assert that there's something fishy going on here with a degree of confidence. We'll come back around to the present in a bit. But I want to go back into the past.