From the “what could go wrong” files:
Bioweapons Facility Expansion
In October 2024, the Nuclear Threat Initiative cited a Washington Post story publishing satellite images of extensive expansion work at the Sergiev Posad-6 biological facility outside of Moscow.
The Soviet Union had once engineered biowarfare agents at the Sergiev Posad-6 facility. As Putin pursues Soviet imperial glory once again, the biological warfare facility’s growth is a red flag for global security. More facilities equal more risk of accidents, aggressive use, passive-aggressive use, corrupt sales to bad actors, or negligence.
Preparation of Targets
Part of Russia’s larger active measures campaign against the free world is anti-vaccine propaganda, including the spread of conspiracy theories. Col. Michael J. Kelley (USA) published a 2024 primer on Russian disinformation and U.S. joint forces’ means for thwarting it. However, Russia has begun leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to saturate the field with its weaponized information online.
There are three main gray warring, parasitic effects of such information warfare waged by Russia that eat away at the United States social fabric:
(1) fear, distrust, and division over vaccines and health care in the USA;
(2) fear and distrust of public health, public health measures, and by association, American government, and;
(3) as a direct blow against victim nations’ overall resistance to infectious diseases, if possible, to degrade or destroy American productivity, competitiveness, and defense as a form of strategic competition.
A study published in the October 2018 American Journal of Health reported:
Using a set of 1 793 690 tweets collected from July 14, 2014, through September 26, 2017, we quantified the impact of known and suspected Twitter bots and trolls on amplifying polarizing and antivaccine messages. This analysis is supplemented by a qualitative study of #VaccinateUS—a Twitter hashtag designed to promote discord using vaccination as a political wedge issue. #VaccinateUS tweets were uniquely identified with Russian troll accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency—a company backed by the Russian government specializing in online influence operations.20 Thus, health communications have become “weaponized”: public health issues, such as vaccination, are included in attempts to spread misinformation and disinformation by foreign powers.
The ultimate purpose of planting disinformation in an adversary nation’s public awareness is to get domestic sources to adopt, repeat, and generate the disinformation all on their own to conceal its original source. This is a parasitic model of falsehood working negative effects on the targeted social fabric. Perhaps the most prominent indicator of this is that vaccine skeptic and conspiracist RFK, Jr. has been appointed to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he directly influences vaccine policy over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His influence and effect on American public health has brought widespread calls against his confirmation, for his firing or resignation, and his impeachment.
Worst Results To Date: Measles and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Measles
Measles is back in large part due to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. A spurious case study article published in the 1999 Lancet journal by former British physician Andrew Wakefield, attributed twelve cases of autism to the then-MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine. The Russian state has a history of driving uncertainty surrounding the case study and other conspiracy theories. Such disinformation has been a catalyst for creating an evidence-resistant, vaccine reluctant sub-population inside the United States regarding the MMR vaccine. The result was discussed in some detail by Senior Editor Dan Vergano at Scientific American:
With two children dead in Texas, an adult dead in New Mexico and nearly 900 confirmed cases of measles across 25 states, we are now at risk of a preventable, dangerous disease becoming endemic once more within a generation. A terrifically infectious disease, measles requires roughly 95 percent of people being vaccinated to stop its spread, and the U.S. has been below that since 2022.
Why is this happening? An April poll on measles beliefs from the health policy-centered Kaiser Family Foundation tells us. One quarter of the 1,380 people surveyed believe the false notion that the measles vaccine causes autism. Some 19 percent mistakenly believe the vaccine is more dangerous than the deadly virus it prevents. That’s simply untrue.
This is a shameful, mass propaganda campaign, unfolding in real time, championed by our top health official, a lawyer who recently announced a pointless study into the causes of autism.
COVID-19
In his May 2025 article at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists titled, “Amplifying doubt: How Russian trolls leveraged pandemic uncertainty for strategic gain,” Maksim Markelov has documented studies and literature tracking Russian state use of internet trolling to to worsen the COVID-19 pandemic among Americans by intensifying vaccine distrust and uncertainty.
The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in 2021 elucidated Moscow’s methods. Here is a useful excerpt on the tactical Russian approach:
Since 2014, Russia conducted social media manipulation campaigns in at least 70 countries in seven languages across 300 platforms and web forums, marking a continued increase in sophistication and intensity.3 Tactics include concealing, disguising, coopting, penetrating, and manipulating.4 Spreading conspiracy theories muddles the information environment and undermines public confidence in the nature of truth.5 Local proxies help Russia exploit social tensions and obfuscate the origins of its disinformation. Local proxies’ existence also hampers regulation by raising freedom of speech concerns.6
Pertussis, or Whooping Cough Also Rising from the Dead
In 2010, a Whooping Cough outbreak in California spread to 9,210 children in California. The outbreak was attributed to parents reluctant to vaccinate their children. An excerpt from researchers studying the outbreak in the journal Pediatrics:
The researchers of the Pediatrics study compared the number of intentionally unvaccinated children who entered kindergarten from 2005 to 2010 to the onset of the whooping cough outbreak in 2010. They were able to identify 39 regional clusters of kids with non-medical reasons for being unvaccinated, and two clusters that were significantly related to rapid spread of whooping cough. Children who are intentionally not vaccinated and become infected with diseases like measles or pertussis, can pass the illness on to those who can’t be immunized, such as babies under six months and those with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients.
Upshot
The Russian expansion of its biological warfare facilities combined with its anti-vaccine information warfare suggests that Moscow may be preparing the population of the United States to be vulnerable to deniable, health-degrading biological attacks. Russian officials have in the past threatened to use “asymmetrical” measures to answer sanctions faced after Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
Winston Churchill once called Russia a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Given the rapid propaganda levered by Russian sources against the United States following the outbreak of the significantly lethal virus in COVID-19, the Russians have proven their willingness to use gray informational warfare regarding lethal outbreaks.
The best approach to potential, deniable biological tactics is deterrence of such tactics by raising the odds that they will backfire against the aggressor. However, the best preventive health measures to save American lives whether there is a biological attack or a naturally occurring strain impacting the U.S. population is by disciplined, well-funded public health, and high vaccination rates.
