Up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the USSR maintained an extensive bioweapons capability. Ken Alibek (aka Alibekov) defected to the U.S., debriefed the CIA and wrote a book about it called Biohazard. But it was never clear what was dismantled with Russia under Putin. I don’t have any inside baseball on this, but it was a reason I became concerned when DHHS under RFK Jr dismantled our pandemic preparedness and cut off vaccine development. It was tone deaf to the bioweapons from our enemies. People forget that it was both flu and the threat of bioterrorism that led DA Henderson and PK Russell to build BARDA for new countermeasures. Guessing this will be contained but it’s a wake up call that our national biosecurity is being dismantled and we’re vulnerable