Russia's Plague Mystery: What Are The World's Labs Creating?

Russia's Plague Mystery: What Are The World's Labs Creating?

PNW STAFF

Something strange happened at a Russian laboratory that studies some of the most dangerous pathogens on Earth.

Twenty-eight-year-old Darya Shipilova, an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia, became seriously ill and died October 2 from what Russian authorities describe as pneumonia of unknown origin. Reports circulated that she may have been exposed to pneumonic plague in a laboratory accident, although Russian officials deny that account and say testing found no pathogen connected to her work.

Nearly 200 contacts were initially placed under medical observation or isolation. Most have since been released, Russia says no plague has been detected, and the World Health Organization currently considers the broader public-health risk very low.

Perhaps that will ultimately be the end of the story.

But the incident has opened the door to a much larger question that received far less attention during the COVID pandemic and deserves considerably more today:

What exactly are laboratories around the world doing with the deadliest pathogens known to mankind?

The World Health Organization maintains a list of pathogens considered priorities because of their epidemic potential and the limited countermeasures available against them. It includes Ebola and Marburg, Nipah virus, Lassa fever, MERS and SARS, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and something ominously called "Disease X" -- WHO's placeholder for a currently unknown pathogen capable of causing a serious international epidemic.

Consider Nipah virus. Some outbreaks have produced extraordinarily high fatality rates. Fortunately, Nipah has never developed anything approaching COVID's ability to sweep efficiently through human populations.

And therein lies the nightmare.

Imagine a disease considerably more lethal than COVID that also possesses COVID-like transmissibility.

Add another characteristic: symptoms that don't appear immediately, allowing infected people to travel and spread it before realizing they are sick.

Then add resistance to existing treatments.

That is the sort of combination that could transform a disease outbreak into a civilization-level emergency.

Why Are We Studying These Things?

There is an important answer to that question: because we need to.

Scientists cannot easily develop vaccines, diagnostic tests and treatments against dangerous diseases without studying the organisms responsible for them. Laboratories also monitor mutations, identify emerging threats and give health authorities a chance to recognize outbreaks before they become pandemics.

The problem is something scientists call "dual-use research."

The same knowledge that teaches us how to stop a pathogen can potentially teach someone how to make it more dangerous.

Research might examine what allows a virus to infect new species, evade immunity, become resistant to treatment or spread more efficiently. Such experiments can have legitimate scientific purposes. They can also create obvious risks.

Those concerns became serious enough that President Trump issued an executive order in 2025 restricting federal support for what the administration defines as dangerous gain-of-function research -- experiments capable of increasing characteristics such as pathogenicity, transmissibility, drug resistance or the ability to evade detection.

Even WHO acknowledges the changing danger. Its updated laboratory biosecurity guidance specifically addresses risks arising from genetic modification and manipulation of pathogens as well as artificial intelligence. The purpose is not simply to prevent laboratory accidents, but also theft and deliberate misuse.

That should get our attention.

Biological Weapons Didn't Disappear

Russia makes the present controversy particularly troubling because this is not theoretical history.

The Soviet Union operated an enormous secret biological-weapons program despite signing the Biological Weapons Convention. American assessments have concluded that Russia inherited significant portions of that apparatus rather than completely dismantling it.

A U.S. State Department compliance assessment concluded that the Soviet biological-weapons program was "absorbed, not dismantled" and that it "continued and evolved" under the Russian Federation.

That does not prove Shipilova's death had anything to do with biological weapons. There is currently no evidence establishing such a connection.

But it explains why the world is paying attention.

Former Soviet biological-weapons officials have described experiments involving plague and efforts to develop antibiotic-resistant pathogens. If antibiotics are one of humanity's principal defenses against bacterial diseases, deliberately engineering around that defense changes the equation dramatically.

And Russia is hardly the only reason for concern.

America's 2026 intelligence threat assessment warns that advances in synthetic biology, bioinformatics, nanotechnology and genome editing could produce novel biological threats while simultaneously increasing the possibility of accidental pathogen releases.

Technology is changing what is possible.

When Biology Meets Artificial Intelligence

This may eventually become the most important part of the story.

Building a sophisticated biological weapon once required the resources of governments, enormous laboratories and armies of highly trained scientists.

But biotechnology is advancing at breathtaking speed.

Scientists can manipulate genomes with increasing precision. DNA can be synthesized. Computer systems can analyze enormous biological datasets. Artificial intelligence is increasingly capable of helping researchers understand proteins, molecules and biological processes that once required years of work.

These technologies offer enormous benefits. They could help cure diseases, develop medicines and stop future pandemics.

But every technological revolution has a darker side.

The concern is not that an AI system will suddenly manufacture a pandemic by itself. It is that tools that dramatically accelerate legitimate biological discovery may also gradually lower the knowledge barriers that once kept extremely sophisticated biological manipulation beyond the reach of most people.

The distance between "What can governments do?" and "What can a small group do?" could continue shrinking.

Three Years of Jew-Hatred

Three Years of Jew-Hatred

Robert Spencer

Three years ago today, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas jihadis indulged in an orgy of rape and murder of Israelis, murdering 1,200 people and destroying the lives of many more than that. October 7 thus stands as a date which will live in infamy, like July 7 (the jihad bombings in London) and September 11 (the jihad hijackings in New York and Washington). But October 7 also stands as the beginning of a new and ugly era, one which is still very much with us, in which hatred of Jews has once again become socially acceptable to express, and Israel is more isolated on the world stage than ever before. From all appearances, it’s only going to get worse from here.

The first indication of the new and sinister world order were the demonstrations on campuses all over the country, with thoroughly indoctrinated far-left students denouncing Israel virtually from the moment Hamas concluded its jihad massacres. This was clearly an effort coordinated from above, although who exactly was behind it has never been definitively established.

Still, the signs were unmistakable: the courageous Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) sneered at the students who were thinking they were accomplishing something by, as he put it, living in “pup tents for Hamas,” but something else was striking about those pup tents as well: they were all the same. On campus after campus, the students who were camping out on their university grounds to protest Israel had tents that were all of the same model. These were not spontaneous demonstrations that student activists had undertaken of their own accord, dragging out their camping equipment from dad’s garage; these were carefully orchestrated, astoturfed displays.

In any case, Fetterman was also right about the Hamas part. In 23 years of covering jihad activity daily at jihadwatch.org, I can say with certainty that before October 7, I saw only a handful of occasions in which anyone in the U.S. dared to express open support for Hamas or any other jihad terror group. After October 7, open and vehement support of Hamas became commonplace to the extent that it is not remotely an exaggeration, much less an insult, to call the anti-Israel protests that engulfed North America and Europe “pro-Hamas demonstrations.”

At the same time, the broad pro-Israel consensus that was one of the last policies on which leftists and patriots could agree began to break down. Under pressure from the vocal Muslim congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) and Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu), as well as their non-Muslim comrades, the far-left Biden regime began to denounce Israel and to withhold from it needed military weaponry. The false claim that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza became mainstream, and is taken for granted in many circles to this day.

That was just the beginning. As the Democratic Socialists of America have become the most energized and powerful force within the Democrat Party, open support for Israel as facing a common jihadi foe that also threatens the United States became politically toxic among Democrats. Today, if you openly support Hamas, you can gain the support of the Democratic establishment and go far in your political career. If, however, you support Israel, you’re a dinosaur in the Democrat Party, and any political aspirations you may have are under a cloud that shows no signs of dissipating.

Then the same movement away from Israel began among patriots as well. Influential supporters of Israel, with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens leading the way, not only abandoned their previous support for Israel, but even began repeating ancient antisemitic myths that had not had a hearing in decent society since the National Socialists ruled Germany. “America-Firsters” such as Nick Fuentes and his followers boosted false claims about Israel’s supposed dependence upon the United States, and argued that the U.S. alliance with Israel undermined America’s sovereignty. None of them bothered to explain why an alliance with a country whose foes also target us, and that shares our societal values, was detrimental to the U.S.

This would have been an insignificant movement, even with Carlson and Owens leading the anti-Israel mob, were it not for the fact that Carlson in particular has friends in high places, notably, Vice President JD Vance. Should Vance be elected president in 2028, he has already made it clear that the U.S./Israel alliance would be in for a serious reevaluation. If a Democrat is elected, that alliance will likely end outright.

All this was set in motion on October 7. The global demonization and isolation of Israel, and the deterioration of the friendship and alliance between the U.S. and the Jewish state, began when Hamas jihadis massacred Israelis wholesale. It has been an exercise in victim-blaming on a global scale, and it will not end with any development that anyone could characterize as remotely positive.

Oct. 7, 2023: Israel pauses to remember 3 years later

Oct. 7, 2023: Israel pauses to remember 3 years later

ILH Staff

Nationwide events began at 6:29 a.m., the exact time Hamas terrorists launched their attack. Events include a presidential visit to the border and a national ceremony tonight to mark the third anniversary of Israel's darkest day. Protesters block Tel Aviv's main highway to protest government's conduct.

Three years after the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas at break of dawn, Israel is holding memorial and commemoration ceremonies nationwide Wednesday for those murdered. At 6:29 a.m., the exact minute Hamas opened fire in 2023, civilians shut down the Ayalon Highway (Tel Aviv's main freeway) in both directions, unfurling massive banners that read, "The nation shall remember its sons and daughters." At a ceremony in Kfar Aza (a hard-hit Gaza border community), the flag was lowered to half-staff at the same moment.

The protesters said in a statement, "This morning, we stand with the families of October 7. The memory of those murdered and abandoned cannot be erased, nor can the day of the massacre."

On Tel Aviv's beaches Wednesday morning, hundreds of people gathered around a display illustrating the scale of the massacre. The display read, "Lying here are families slaughtered in their own homes, elderly pioneers and founders of the state, party lovers who had just gone out to dance, security forces personnel, citizens who wanted to help… men, women and children. Their only sin was being citizens of Israel, or visitors in the country, on October 7, 2023. This is not a fated tragedy. It is a state that lost its way. A state with no moral compass. A leadership that abandons its citizens. A disregard for the sanctity of life and mutual responsibility."

Across the country, the Israel Police commissioner and the force's senior command staff saluted and stood for a moment of silence at every site where officers and fighters fell during the initial battles to repel the invasion.

Alongside the memorial ceremonies, a national day of remembrance and protest got underway Wednesday morning, led by families from the October Council (a bereaved-families advocacy group) and protest organizations. Tens of thousands turned out at gathering points across the country to remember and to demand the establishment of a state commission of inquiry (Israel's highest-level independent investigative panel).

Outside the Modiin home of Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a protest was held Wednesday morning marking three years since the massacre.

At 6:29 a.m., a Yizkor reading (a Jewish memorial prayer) and protest were held outside the Knesset, while a display called "the Fountain of Blood" was set up at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.

Alongside these, protests were held outside the homes of ministers and Knesset members who were in office at the time of the massacre, and a protest convoy departed from Caesarea, retracing the route the prime minister traveled on the morning of October 7.

At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest terrorist attack the State of Israel had ever seen. Hundreds of terrorists tore through the border fence from the Gaza Strip. They stormed Israeli communities and IDF bases. The massacre resulted in the murder of roughly 1,200 people. Thousands more were wounded, and hundreds were dragged into the Gaza Strip as hostages. That single morning shook the entire country, and to this day, Israel remains at war in what is known as the Swords of Iron war.

Between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., a display and protest were held at Trumpeldor Beach in Tel Aviv and at noon, a national pause will take place, with more than 500 authorities and bodies taking part. "Three years have passed, and the truth still hasn't been fully investigated," said families from the October Council, adding that the coming election campaign will put this question front and center as well.

Also Wednesday morning, at 6:29 a.m., prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot, who lost his son, Gal Meir Eisenkot, and his nephew, Maor Cohen, in the war, arrived with Shira and Moshe Shapira, the parents of the hero Aner Shapira, at the roadside shelter (a concrete bus-stop bomb shelter) in Reim where Aner fought, saved lives, and was killed

Family members of the late Libby Cohen Meguri stood for a moment of silence at 8:11 a.m., at the exact time and place where she was murdered on Road 232, near the entrance to Kibbutz Reim, as she tried to flee the Nova festival.

At 8:11 a.m., Libby called her family and told them she had been shot. As she said goodbye to her mother, father, twin brother and sister, Libby told them, "They're coming back to shoot me again." The family then heard a burst of gunfire, and Libby was murdered while her family listened to everything happen. The family later created a graffiti memorial recreating the way Libby was found.

More...

Israel remembers the third anniversary of the October 7 onslaught by Hamas | LIVE BLOG

Why Might Putin Finally Decide To Bring Ukraine To Its Knees After Nearly Five Years

Why Might Putin Finally Decide To Bring Ukraine To Its Knees After Nearly Five Years

Andrew Korybko

Regardless of why Putin might have held off on this for so long, he’s now arguably motivated at least in part by the tantalizing possibility of reaching big-ticket resource deals with the US after the conflict ends, the details of which his and Trump’s envoys have been negotiating for over a year already.

The New York Times cited allegedly intercepted Russian communications to report that Russia plans to obliterate Ukraine’s power, heating, and water systems this winter. While their claim can’t be confirmed, it aligns with Putin mildly “escalating to de-escalate”over the summer in response to Zelensky’s strike campaign, which has taken the form of ramping up attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. If the report is true, then Russia doesn’t just aim to sever Ukraine’s military logistics, but to bring Ukraine to its knees.

Putin has thus far eschewed this arguably due to his belief that Russians and Ukrainians are kindred people. Some have suggested that Russia might not have had the drone and/or missile capacity to do so earlier, however, whether due to low production till now and/or to hedge against the scenario of a hot war with NATO. In any case, Putin now seems to have made peace with the humanitarian consequences of ending the war on Russia’s terms sooner rather than later, or at least on as many of them as possible.

He might be motivated by more than just Ukraine’s “war of attrition” against Russia that began over the summer with American backing and interestingly enough France’s as well. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly told his Russian counterpart over the summer that no business deals are possible so long as the conflict continues. Since then, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Putin to discuss such deals among other topics, after which Kirill Dmitriev traveled to the US to follow up on that.

For background, Putin boasted in late February 2025 that American companies “will make a decent profit” from investments in Russia’s resource industry, and Trump’s Special Envoy to Belarus John Coale recently confirmed that he received approval to pitch a Belarusian-like deal to Putin. It would involve sanctions relief in exchange for the release of “political prisoners”. Putin’s ally Alexander Lukashenko already agreed to several such deals and is now negotiating a massive potash one with Trump.

Just last week, Lukashenko also proposed a trilateral Belarusian, Russian, and US fertilizer plant deal, but that requires the US lifting its sanctions on Gazprom. Russian officials from Putin on down have called for the West to lift its sanctions on Russia, and while the US might lift some if Putin agrees to a Belarusian-like quid pro quo, the Ukrainian Conflict will first have to end for this to happen at scale. Their resultant resource-centric strategic partnership could then revolutionize the global economic architecture.

The Russian economy has survived the West’s unprecedented sanctions onslaught, largely due to the combination of its natural resources and national payment system, but its Economic Development Ministry expects only 0.6% GDP growth this year. United Russia’s landslide victory during last month’s Duma elections, the first since the large-scale phase of the Ukrainian Conflict began, gives Putin the mandate to do whatever is needed to win the war and deliver more prosperity to his people afterwards.

It’s therefore within the realm of possibility, consistent with Russia’s policy of demanding the lifting of Western sanctions, that Putin is motivated at least in part to end the conflict on as many of Russia’s terms as possible sooner rather than later so as to then reach big-ticket resource deals with the US. This imperative, which could revolutionize the global economic architecture and deliver more prosperity to his people, contextualizes the New York Times’ report about him planning to bring Ukraine to its knees.

The Petrodollar Could Break Soon—and Upend the Global Financial System

The Petrodollar Could Break Soon—and Upend the Global Financial System

Nick Giambruno

The Iran war could claim a casualty far more consequential than a missile battery, an air base, or an oil tanker: the petrodollar system.

For more than 50 years, US protection of the Gulf monarchies has helped support global demand for dollars and US government debt. That bargain may now be coming under strain.

The concept is straightforward.

The US provides military protection to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar.

In return, these countries price much of their oil in US dollars and recycle large amounts of their oil revenue into US financial assets, including Treasuries.

Call it an alliance.

Call it a strategic partnership.

I prefer to call it a protection racket.

Whatever name you choose, the arrangement has provided enormous support for the dollar since Nixon severed its last link to gold in 1971.

Oil sits at the center of the global economy. Every industrial economy needs it. If countries need dollars to participate in the global oil trade, they have a powerful reason to hold dollars.

That creates demand for the currency that has nothing to do with buying American goods or services.

It also creates demand for US financial assets.

Oil exporters earn dollars. They need somewhere to put them. For decades, a large portion flowed back into US banks and Treasury securities.

That helped deepen the Treasury market, support the dollar, suppress US borrowing costs, and finance deficits that no other country could sustain.

But every protection racket depends on one thing:

The protector must provide protection.

The Iran war threatens that premise.

If the Gulf monarchies conclude that the US cannot protect their oil infrastructure, shipping lanes, cities, and regimes from Iran, why should they continue upholding their side of the bargain?

That question could reshape the international monetary system.

And one man warned almost exactly 20 years ago about the signal that would tell us this shift had begun.

Ron Paul Saw This Coming 20 Years Ago

On February 15, 2006, Congressman Ron Paul delivered a little-known but prophetic speech on the floor of the House of Representatives called “The End of Dollar Hegemony.”

He identified the signal investors should watch for:

“The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or euros. The sooner the better.”

I discussed this subject with Ron Paul at an investment conference years ago. He stood by that assessment.

His point was simple.

Watch the oil producers.

The day they start moving away from dollars and toward gold—or a monetary system that gives them access to gold—the foundation beneath the dollar-based financial system starts to crack.

We may now be approaching that point.

Why the Gulf States Could Turn East

The Gulf Cooperation Council includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Together, these countries rank among the most important oil exporters on Earth.

China sits on the other side of that trade.

It is the world’s largest oil importer and the GCC’s largest trading partner.

That creates a natural relationship: China needs enormous quantities of energy, and the Gulf states need enormous markets for their oil.

For years, China and the Gulf states have discussed ways to conduct more trade outside the dollar system.

But the Gulf monarchies faced a constraint.

They depended on the US security umbrella.

Moving too far toward China risked alienating the country they counted on to protect them.

The Iran war changes that calculation.

If the Gulf states conclude that Washington cannot protect them from Iran—and that the American military presence can turn their countries into targets—the value of that security guarantee falls.

They then have a powerful incentive to reach an accommodation with Iran while deepening economic ties with China.

That would weaken one of the political foundations supporting the petrodollar.

And China has spent years building an alternative.

From the Petrodollar to the Petroyuan—and Gold

China understands the biggest problem with asking an oil producer to accept yuan.

Why would Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or another exporter want to accumulate piles of Chinese currency?

Beijing has spent years developing an answer.

In 2018, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange launched a yuan-denominated crude oil futures contract. That gave oil producers another mechanism for pricing and trading crude outside the dollar.

But China has also built something that makes the yuan far more useful to commodity exporters: a path from yuan into physical gold.

An oil producer can sell crude into the Chinese market, receive yuan, spend those yuan on Chinese goods, or use China’s financial and gold-market infrastructure to convert surplus yuan into physical bullion.

That changes the proposition. The exporter does not have to choose between holding dollars and accumulating piles of yuan. It can turn part of its trade surplus into an asset with no issuer, no counterparty, and no foreign government standing between the owner and the wealth.

Think about the difference.

Under the dollar system, an oil exporter sells a finite natural resource and receives financial claims issued by the US government.

Those claims carry political risk.

Washington demonstrated that risk when it froze Russia’s reserves after the invasion of Ukraine.

Gold carries no such counterparty risk.

Nobody can print it.

Nobody can default on it.

And once an oil producer takes physical possession, no foreign government can freeze it with a keystroke.

From the perspective of a country trying to reduce its exposure to Washington, that has obvious appeal.

A viable path from oil to yuan to physical gold gives Gulf producers a way to reduce their dependence on the dollar without accumulating large reserves of Chinese currency. If the Iran war weakens confidence in US protection, the financial infrastructure needed to move away from the petrodollar already exists.

The Gulf states have a path from oil to gold that bypasses the dollar. But what happens to your wealth if they take it?