Lawfare Daily: Bioweapons, North Koreans, and Musk, Oh My!

[Intro]

Dan Byman: The possibility that Russia is going to be backing North Korea, that Russia and China might be backing Iran in different contingencies, that their militaries will get better, that they'll have more diplomatic support, that they'll be more aggressive simply because they have major powers behind them.

All of this should be of tremendous concern, and the presence of North Koreans who are aiding Russia as it's fighting in Ukraine is tremendously consequential.

Benjamin Wittes: I'm Benjamin Wittes, Editor-in-Chief of Lawfare, and this is the Lawfare Podcast with Lawfare's Foreign Policy Editor Dan Byman, and Tim Mack, the proprietor and editor of the Kyiv-based “The Counteroffensive.”

Tim Mak: If I were Vladimir Putin and I was thinking strategically about what I would want to say on a call with Elon Musk, I would want to disrupt the Ukrainian military's ability to communicate from the front lines because a lot of these folks will use Starlinks.

Benjamin Wittes: Today we're talking weird stuff going on in Russia. A bioweapons lab reactivates. The country has North Koreans fighting for it, and its president is on the phone with Elon Musk.

[Main Podcast]

So, Tim, I want to start with this story that I think at any other time would have been a very big deal, but has largely escaped, I haven't seen a lot of discussion about it, which is that an old Russian biolab seems back in action.

This is a Washington Post story from October 25th that there is now satellite images that this facility called the Sergeyev Posad 6, which had been quiet for decades, but had been a bioresearch center now shows renovations going on and construction. So, help me out with this. What do we know about this story? And as somebody who you know, lives in Kyiv most of the time, how concerned about it are you?

Tim Mak: Well, I'm deeply, deeply concerned about it, to the point where, right now, Amazon is shipping me a bunch of CBRN suits and gas masks, so that me and my team can be adequately prepared for these sorts of attacks.

We already have a few, I want to make sure the rest of my team has enough. So, it's an issue of, like, not just concern for me, but real world, kind of implications, and it is a bit of a crisis. I mean, I think most people are not prepared for a serious use of bioweapons in the war in Ukraine.

Although other reporting has shown that Russia has seriously contemplated using weapons of mass terror, even, you know, a tactical nuclear weapon. So what the Washington Post story says is not only have they kind of rebooted this bioweapons lab with the history of experiments into things like smallpox, Ebola, hemorrhagic fevers, but they're expanding on the Soviet-era initiative by creating 10 new buildings and these buildings from satellite imagery, open source satellite imagery, seem to show that these new buildings are laboratories meant to handle very dangerous pathogens.

And so it raises a lot of alarms in terms of whether this Washington Post story might be a signal from sources inside the U.S. government that Russia is not only expanding its use of this kind of weaponry, but might be prepared to threaten to use or even use this kind of weaponry, which it seems like they're actively developing.

Benjamin Wittes: So, Dan, I read this story with a kind of head scratch. Because one thing we have learned about biological weapons, in addition to that we passed an international treaty to ban them, and we're not supposed to have them, but one thing we've learned about them is that they are remarkably ineffective. You can't target them well. They tend to affect people you don't mean to affect, including often your own people. They tend to, you know, they're instruments of terror, but they're not good instruments of war.

Do you read this as something the Russians are doing to be seen doing it, or do you read it as the Russians have an active biological weapons program that we should take seriously as such?

Dan Byman: I would say it's a bit of both. Biological weapons in the past have not been terribly effective, but we also haven't seen a major state in recent decades try to develop and weaponize them and then deploy them. So a lot of what we've seen in the past have been, you know, cults or terrorist groups that have relatively low capacity engage this and the Soviet Union had a massive bio-program. And, you know, how effective was it? Well, thankfully we don't know. But it certainly had the potential to be concerned.

One very plausible interpretation of what's going on is that the Russians simply wanted to be seen, right? They wanted everyone to be concerned. It was a bit like threatening to use nuclear weapons, which they've done, where they wanted to make it clear that the stakes are very high. And people should be afraid and knowing that this activity would be detected, that this was sending a message. But I'm more concerned that this goes beyond messaging.

We've seen Russia pull away from some of the limits that it had agreed to in the past, even when it was in a hostile relationship with the United States, so it says that it's not going to renew the New START Nuclear Treaty, and bioweapons are seen as even more beyond the pale. They're kind of, you know, the ultimate horror weapon, so this really shows Russia's rejection of a lot of the various rules of the game.

I also worry about Russian competence. Very famously in these circles, they had a leak in a bioweapons lab in, if I recall, 1979, and around 100 people died of anthrax. And this question of, you know, can they actually properly manage this to me is a question mark.

Benjamin Wittes: And just for a reminder for those who do not remember the anthrax attacks in 2001. Anthrax is not contagious, and is therefore a relatively contained biological weapon by its nature. It's, you know, it can get you very sick and dead, but you're not going to spread it to your family. Some biological weapons are you know, as contagious as they are engineered to be. And so, you know, in the nightmare scenario in a biological weapons environment is that you end up with a COVID-like situation or a smallpox-like situation in the extreme case.

Dan Byman: And this facility was believed to be the one of the ones or at least where the Soviets have been experimenting with weaponizing smallpox, so that the risk of a high impact infectious agent is of tremendous concern.

And the last thing I'll say is there have been a lot of advances in biotechnology, and especially when you get the marriage of artificial intelligence and, you know, much of that's been great, right? New drug development, new ways of healing people, but there's a lot more potential for harm as well, especially if some serious scientists, which Russians certainly have, has, get behind this. So to me, this is one of those, you know, watch this story carefully. And I assume it's a priority of intelligence agencies, but I think it deserves a lot of attention.

Benjamin Wittes: Tim, how is it playing other than with respect to your Amazon orders in Ukraine? Is, I assume this is the kind of story that appears in an American newspaper that gets noticed in Kyiv?

Tim Mak: Well, you know, the Ukrainians have been very frustrated lately because it feels to them that nothing is moving the ball on additional allied support. Not this story, not North Koreans actively fighting along the front lines.

Benjamin Wittes: We're going to come to that.

Tim Mak: And you know, that nothing is large, is sufficiently alarming its partners, that these partners would then feel like they could, for example, authorize long range strikes into Russia, or provide new air defense systems or provide more fighter jets or the things that Ukraine desperately needs. That these things are objectively frightening development, but none of that seems to be changing the attitude of even Ukraine's closest partners.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so, let's talk about those North Koreans. Look, I can see it in either of two ways, right? One is that it's an alarming development that you have a means of addressing this manpower shortage in Russia. There's no comparable way of addressing the manpower shortage on the Ukrainian side. And the one thing, one thing North Korea has to throw at a problem is human life, since it really, really doesn't care about the lives of its people.

The other way to look at it is that Russia has to rent North Koreans to keep fighting this war. And it strikes me as a remarkable show of weakness on the part of the Russian state that they have to import, you know, a Stalinist army to defend the Kursk region from invasion.

How do you see it? Like, I know that, you know, a lot of Ukrainians are kind of beside themselves about it, but I look at it and say, you know, Jesus, Putin must be really desperate at this point.

Tim Mak: There's, with regards to this development, there is a strategic signaling that really does align with what Putin wants the world to see, which is a sort of multipolar world with Russia at the center of that second pole that combines Russian and Chinese and North Korean and Iranian power, and other states.

But you're right to say that that on the kind of tactical level, it really is a, it is a sign of Russian weakness. And we can observe that by looking at what the bonuses have been proposed for Russian military volunteers in Eastern Russia and regions very far from the front. And you're seeing bonuses offered of up to $50,000 to join the, the Russian military, which is an extraordinary amount of money in the United States even, and an extra, extra, extraordinary sum in Russia.

And so when you see those numbers get floated for, as bonuses, you realizing that they're very quickly running out of people who would voluntarily agree, even at extreme sums, to join the fight on the front lines and that they desperately need people. Even though there are many times greater in terms of population size and scales greater in terms of territorial size than Ukraine, it's still struggling.

Benjamin Wittes: And do we have a sense of what Russia is giving North Korea, I assume sanctions relief in the sense, you know, of help with missiles and stuff, but North Korea provides cannon fodder for the Russian army which is paying an enormous price in just in body count for this, what is North Korea getting from Russia or don't we know?

Tim Mak: So, open-source reporting suggests that they'll exchange, that the things, I'm not privy to the details of that agreement, but the things that would be on the table in these sorts of agreements would be things like food aid and technological support for things like missiles and, and nuclear technology and things like that.

Benjamin Wittes: So it's not, as far as we know, it's not cash, as in it's not literally they're renting troops.

Tim Mak: I don't think that Russia has the capability or the funds to do that sort of renting right now. They're already stretched to its very limits in terms of government spending. Government spending in Russia is expected to be twice that on defense as it is on social spending for the first time in 2025.

They are really reaching their limit for throwing cash at the problem, and you're starting to see cracks show in the economy based on how much cash they've been throwing at that problem. The increase in inflation, the increase in government bond interest rates, those are all deeply worrisome signs.

People who went and attended the BRICS conference that was held in Russia recently, the attendees were told ahead of time, bring your own cash, because it's going to be very hard to get money out of an ATM while you're there. That shows you a little bit about the nature of the bipolar world that Russia claims to be leading.

Benjamin Wittes: Right. One pole has resources and money. The other pole has North Korean soldiers.

Dan, I want to turn the same question to you. I'm trying to imagine some situation in which, you know, Canada or Mexico is occupying some 500 square miles or so of American territory, and the U.S. response is to bring in South Korean troops to fight them.

That would be seen as a profound international embarrassment and kind of admission of a kind of deep state failure, but Putin doesn't seem all that ashamed of it. I'm kind of curious what you make of the geopolitics optics of it.

Dan Byman: So, you know, it's always hard to know what's going on in one person's head, especially someone who's pretty manipulative.

But having said that, he does seem relatively comfortable with some of these embarrassments, right? I mean, he has not made the recapture of territory in that Ukraine started to take in August as a top priority, right? I mean, one of the questions was, would there be a major diversion of troops? And that hasn't happened. So I think he is confident enough to have at least some embarrassment, right? One would think the occupation of Russian territory itself would be a top embarrassment.

I would stress, and Tim knows much more than I do on this, that, you know, both sides are facing exhaustion, right? One could write, you know, similar stories about how long can this go on and just, you know, swap Ukraine for Russia or Russia for Ukraine, in terms of concerns among the population about the sacrifice they're making and so on.

And so, Russia does have the ability to import North Koreans by the thousands or tens of thousands. That does matter. I mean, it is embarrassing. It is a sign of Russian failure, but it's also an asset. And, you know, to stress the point of your question, Ben, I'm very concerned also about the quid pro quo with this, right?

So, you know, what does North Korea get out of this? And part of it is fuel. Part of it is, you know, some degree of broader sanctions relief but does it get more intelligence on South Korea that Russia can provide with better systems? Do missiles have a major upgrade? How much better is this nuclear program, right?

Given the, you know, as frustrated as we all are and as concerned as we all are with Russia, you know, North Korea at times is terrifying because there is a, there are some real questions about how, you know, how far off the kind of norm the North Korean leader is and will he actually go nuclear at some point?

And so the capabilities question really matters there. And then, you know, just to take this one additional level, this broader sharing between North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran. I mean, you know, It's easy to look at the cooperation among these four countries and overstate it and see them as acting as one mind and one body.

But the cooperation is real. We've seen Iranian technology show up in Russia to be used against Ukraine. China has been incredibly important to Russia's economic survival as well as its military power. And the possibility that Russia is going to be backing North Korea, that Russia and China might be backing Iran in different contingencies, that their militaries will get better, that they'll have more diplomatic support, that they'll be more aggressive simply because they have major powers behind them.

All of this should be of tremendous concern, and the presence of North Koreans who are aiding Russia as it's fighting in Ukraine is tremendously consequential.

Benjamin Wittes: Just to foot stomp that point, I mean, North Korea has been remarkably isolated for a very long period of time. It's had some, it has had Chinese backing, sometimes. It has had Chinese protection in the Security Council, but, you know, the traditional thing to say about North Korea is, it really only has one ally, and now it seems to me it has two, and the degree to which Russia has received support from Iran is, of course, notable in the drones context in particular, but isn't limited to that.

And so I, is it fair to say that there is, you know, Tim said bipolar world but a real second pole, what George W. Bush would call an Axis of Evil forming here?

Dan Byman: So, I wrote a piece a couple months ago with my CSIS colleague, Seth Jones. We call it the Legion of Doom for our listeners who are DC Comics fans, but–

Benjamin Wittes: Or who hairs on their neck stand up when they hear Axis of Evil. We'll call it the Legion of Doom.

Dan Byman: I'd like to popularize my particular phrasing. And so, you know, yes, I do think there's an alternative arising. And it's not a cohesive block, and I think China's interests in particular are quite different because it's so integrated into the broader economic system. But having said that, yes, this is a much more divided world, and that's extremely consequential.

Benjamin Wittes: All of which brings us, as all roads ultimately do to Elon Musk, how he manages to become a player in every single story, I'm not really sure, but he seems to have a direct line now to Vladimir Putin. So, Tim, bring us up to speed here on what the Wall Street Journal has reported. What's new in it and what's not?

Tim Mak: Bottom line is that according to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk has had multiple conversations with Vladimir Putin. Here's the funny thing: for a long time during the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Elon Musk had been seen in Ukraine as a sort of hero and savior.

In fact, at the Counteroffensive, we did a story about this shrine that had been erected for him in Obolon, which was, which is a suburb in Northern Kyiv that had been attacked during the first days of the invasion. And they put on the wall the Church of St. Elon, and had this gigantic portrait of him in this traditional Orthodox style, calling him the Prophet Elon.

But Elon Musk has, in the words of one of those people that helped build the shrine, gone from Elon Musk to Elon Muscovite in his apparent support for activities with regards to Starlink and shutting it off at strategic locations during the war. There is a huge skepticism of him now.

Benjamin Wittes: And just to be clear, what I've never been able to figure out about Elon Musk is whether this is or is not, so the trajectory, as you described, he starts out, provides a bunch of Starlinks to Ukraine. He becomes something of a hero there. The Ukrainian military makes prodigious use of the Starlink system. It really makes a difference.

And then he shifts gears and he seems to, he puts restrictions on the use of the system at a critical time. And he starts talking in a, you know, in that way that sounds like he's been talking to Russians about peace, by which he means something less than Ukrainian victory.

Tim Mak: Yeah.

Benjamin Wittes: And my question is, do you take this to be about, this takes place at the same time as he becomes close to Donald Trump, as he becomes a kind of hero in the part of the Republican Party that talks this way. So is this a kind of acculturation to the Trumpian ecosystem, or is it that it is not on his, in his interests to be on the losing side? And Russia is a bigger market than Ukraine and, you know, Xi Jinping, you know, has, like, what's motivating him here? Is it business interests or is it Trumpy stuff or both?

Tim Mak: I think it's a combination of both, but even Elon Musk has said, and I don't know if this is hyperbole or whether he knows of something that's coming, but he's worried that him or his companies might be subject to prosecution should Donald Trump lose.

But in the same way that Twitter has made Elon Musk a huge player in the domestic political scene, Starlink has made him an indispensable political player in the international scene. You think about Taiwan, for example, can't use Starlink in Taiwan. Why is that? Because Elon Musk doesn't want to comply with Taiwanese laws that require that there be a Taiwanese component of ownership for satellite internet services to be provided in that place, but should there be some sort of conflict over Taiwan, the provision of satellite internet is going to be a critical method to be able to continue to communicate between people who are in Taiwan and people who are abroad.

So by expanding Starlink, he's become just a very powerful and indispensable political figure in all sorts of geopolitical conversations, because these sorts of comms have proven themselves to be very useful in military application, and particularly in these sorts of access denied electronic warfare environments.

Benjamin Wittes: So when you hear that he has repeated conversations with Putin over the precise period of time in which this shift in his rhetoric and thinking has happened, what do you assume is going on between him and Putin? Is it, I mean, Putin's capable of being charming, I'm told, although I've never seen any evidence of it. Is it a Russian charm offensive directed against him? Is it opportunities? What are they talking about? I'm obviously asking you to speculate. But, like, what do you assume it's about?

Tim Mak: Well, there are key decisions that the Ukrainian military has to take and they've used Starlink and integrated it into its communications systems in ways where someone like Vladimir Putin would very much have an interest in disrupting it.

So I don't know what they had, what kind of conversations they had. I can only imagine, but if I were Vladimir Putin, and I was thinking strategically about what I would want to say on a call with Elon Musk, I would want to disrupt the Ukrainian military's ability to communicate from the front lines, because a lot of these folks will use Starlinks.

You know, I've been to a lot of frontline areas and their only method of communication, cell phone towers are out, their only method of communication is a moving Starlink antenna, which they use for things like drones and piloting drones, but also as just basic comms enabled for different elements of a unit to communicate with one another. They're heavily, heavily dependent on Starlink to talk. So, if I had to guess, I would guess that Vladimir Putin wants to disrupt this in some way, and that's why he's had conversations with Elon Musk. That's the only thing that would make sense, to me at least.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, Dan, your turn to play ‘If I Were Vladimir Putin.’ If you were Vladimir Putin and you had serial conversations with Elon Musk, what would you be talking to him about?

Dan Byman: So, my number one goal would be to get a high-end Tesla, right? Like, I assume that's the primary purpose of it, but assuming he's thinking, you know, more narrowly, you know, then, of course, you know, the denying Starlink or really any of the technologies that are linked to SpaceX or Musk companies.

Is, would be, should be, a Russian priority. I want to editorialize a slightly broader issue, which is there's understandably an emphasis in national security thinking and the U.S. military on how to take advantage of the tremendous capabilities of the private sector. And, you know, this shows up with Elon Musk's company, but it also, you know, involves, you know, lift, right? Where so much of sealift is now commercially done. Critical infrastructure in terms of electricity supplies, often done by private companies.

All this makes sense, but it also is incredibly dangerous from a national security point of view. It's, to me, perfectly reasonable that the head of a company is thinking in commercial terms. You know, occasionally you get someone like Brad Smith who, you know, really seemed out of personal conviction to invest a lot of his company's resources in, you know, in his case helping Ukraine in the early days against Russia.

But in general, I would expect companies to be thinking about the legal and commercial implications of their activities and not asking, how can I be a patriot? And that's especially so for many companies that are multinational, where, you know, if they're going to be patriotic, what is the, you know, what is the nation? Who are they being loyal to?

And so of course a major company or set of companies that Musk owns is going to have interest in China. And that's going to differ from the policies of, you know, a, I'll say a Biden administration, but it would also from, whether it be a Trump administration or Harris administration and how the United States wants to isolate China and weaken its ties to U.S. allies.

And so, I think there needs to be some degree of redundancy on the government side, and that can be encouraged with multiple private sector actors, it can be encouraged with certain types of contracting, it can be encouraged with government-owned capabilities, but when we rely very heavily on private sector companies and international CEOs, there's an inherent vulnerability to this, and some of them, Musk being a prime example, have, kind of, reached a level where, you know, in my view, they kind of believe their own rhetoric, their rhetoric around them that they're geniuses who know answers to everything, and therefore kind of flit from topic to topic.

And that sort of person, you know, is going to come in very, you know, charging very hard on lots of different issues in ways that I don't think are good for a broader security interest.

Benjamin Wittes: Okay, I want to turn to the China component of this, because the one specific conversation we know actually involved Putin relaying a request from Xi Jinping, but before, so I'm going to come to that in a moment, but before we do, I want to advance the alternative hypothesis here, which is that this is a guy who's been kind of redpilled, and that the most obvious explanation for a sudden infatuation with Vladimir Putin is the ecosystem in which he's operating.

So, you know, at the time of the full scale invasion, he supplies all this stuff to Ukraine. He seems to, as Brad Smith did, behave like a patriot in a fashion that is consistent with the national interest of the United States. Then he buys Twitter, turns it into a cesspool of right-wing, including pro-Russian sentiment. Number two, allies himself with Donald Trump, who has this same set of attitudes about Vladimir Putin. Three, cuts off Ukrainian access to Starlink in the areas around Crimea, where it really matters. Four, makes some crazy statements about, you know, a peace plan and, you know, tries to hold a poll on Twitter about a peace plan that essentially involves Ukraine giving up a lot of territory. And in that context, five, turns out to have a whole bunch of conversations with Vladimir Putin.

It seems to me if this were anybody, but Elon Musk. If it were, say, Tucker Carlson, we wouldn't have a lot of doubt about why these conversations were taking place. We'd say, this is a guy who's got some form of Trump-Putin-positive derangement syndrome. And I'm just wondering whether the simplest explanation here is the straight line, like, he's behaving like all the other people who are doing this. Tim, what am I missing?

Tim Mak: Well, I think the point you raise about how recent, just in the last few years, Elon Musk's political identity has dramatically shifted and he's attached himself to one wagon, and one wagon alone, is a really good one.

The thing where it's most obvious that Trump and Elon Musk have similar personalities is this susceptibility to flattery. And it's very obvious that Vladimir Putin understands how to speak to or manipulate them both. And both have been reported to have conversations with Vladimir Putin in recent years since Trump left the White House.

And I suspect that Vladimir Putin is trying to build his own kind of personal relationships with folks on the you know, in, Trump circles and Elon Musk circles, because he believes that in, in the long term, Russia cannot prosecute this war indefinitely, and will need allies to help push the United States to pressure Ukraine to come to the table and ultimately produce a result that's more favorable to Russia.

Benjamin Wittes: All right, Dan, let's talk about the Chinese side of this, because as I say, the one thing we know for sure that they seem to have talked about, at least according to the Wall Street Journal, is that Putin relays a request to Musk not to turn on Starlink over Taiwan, which, as Tim earlier pointed out, is already prohibited by Taiwanese law. But Xi seems to have wanted to make sure that Taiwanese law was not the final hurdle here and seems to have relayed that through Putin. What do you make of that?

Dan Byman: So many people in the security space are looking at Ukraine and looking at Russia, but in the context of, you know, how do we imagine all this playing out over a conflict in Taiwan?

And as Tim pointed out, the value of Starlink and the value of other services for Ukraine has been fantastic. And it really negated a lot of, but I want to be clear, what I thought would be Russian advantages, early in the conflict. And so there was a workaround that I didn't anticipate that really hurt Russia and helped Ukraine.

I think China is being very smart in that in the event of a conflict, it wants to try to remove a potential workaround from the, you know, from the response and this is something, you know, more broadly as, you know, there are a lot of commercial interests that Musk has in China and, you know, and part of it is as a manufacturing center, part of it's a market.

And then this question of China has been always very clear that it will use its economic cloud to punish those who defy it. And sometimes this is directed at tech companies and often it's directed at states, but the scale of Musk's economic activity, you know, is bigger than, you know, some states.

Right? And he can be, we can talk about, you know, countries like the Philippines. We can talk about Musk, right? And so he is very vulnerable even as he's benefiting from his relationship. So it makes sense for the Chinese to weaponize this and they've shown in the past, you know, they will cut off both suppliers and customers as a way of punching them.

So, Musk, you know, in a way should be very concerned, especially as the United States in general has been trying to reduce economic relations and isolate China, at least to some degree, economically.

Benjamin Wittes: And Tim, what do you know about what really is the holdup with respect to Starlink and Taiwan?

I would think if I were the Taiwanese, I would be more keen to have Starlink on and available than to have partial Taiwanese ownership. Is it just a legal hurdle, or is there a real commitment to that on the part of the Taiwanese?

Tim Mak: Well, the Taiwanese have said that it welcomes any sorts of international satellite companies to enter the Taiwanese market, but that it does need, that any of these companies need to comply with Taiwanese law, which involve having Taiwanese business ties and that there are actually four companies right now that have been approved for satellite communications activity in Taiwan.

So, right now, it seems like the basis for Starlink not operating in Taiwan is purely a regulatory issue. Of course, satellite companies can provide coverage, because of the nature of the service, could pretty much provide service anywhere globally. The way I think about it is that there are two very alarming things we ought to think about from this revelation that Musk had been asked to do this.

One is that Putin is being used as some sort of emissary, from the Chinese government and has found it in his interest to pass on that message. And two, why would the Chinese make such a request? Unless it felt like it had a use for limiting communications on the island of Taiwan and what signal should that be to the rest of us about how imminent or how complex and far along are Chinese plans to take some sort of physical, real world military action.

Benjamin Wittes: And for that request to be important enough that it's not merely communicated, you know, by the ambassador to the United States, to an American businessman, but communicated from Xi through the president of another country. I mean, that's a big deal when you communicate a message that way.

Tim Mak: It's a very high level request, which suggests that the Chinese take that issue very, very seriously. And why would they take it very, very seriously, unless there was something, let's say, very strategic, very important, and perhaps imminent, that they would benefit from in this way.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. So, in the spirit of lions and tigers and bears, oh my, I'm going to ask you each to bring together these three stories, Bioweapons and North Koreans and Musk, oh my!

And Tim, go first: what do you, when you take these three stories together, just as a portrait of where Russia is, what do you make of it?

Tim Mak: These stories do not signal Russian strength. These stories signal Russia is running out of options. That Putin has been reduced to a protégé of Xi, and transmitting messages for him. That Putin is dependent on North Korea, the hermit kingdom, for troops. That Putin is trying to reboot a lab of mass terror, which, as you've pointed out, Ben, bioweapons have typically not fared very well, and are not very well controlled.

Benjamin Wittes: And are per se war crimes.

Tim Mak: Russia has shown its use and capabilities in the chemical weapons space. So it raises big questions about what kind of signals, and if it's merely signals that they're trying to send with bioweapons, I'll say that, you know, hey, I live in Kyiv full time and I'm deeply concerned about what Russian weakness will ultimately compel the Putin regime to do as sort of an overreaction due to their declining power.

I'm deeply concerned about how they continue to prosecute the war when it looks like they're running out of resources and running out of people and don't have a pathway forward and their economy is collapsing. I'm worried about what that will lead to and how many people will, frankly, will die as a result of that sort of activity.

Benjamin Wittes: Dan, what do you make of it, looking at the three stories together?

Dan Byman: So I'll make three observations, in keeping with the three stories. One, just to foot-stomp Tim's point, that there's a degree of desperation going on here. That what we see with the bioweapons and the North Koreans is Russia really finding its traditional military overwhelmed or, better yet, actually inadequate, to the task at hand and has to go beyond that.

A second is Russia's willingness, if you will, to kind of break the rules and obviously this is true in a legal sense and humanitarian sense, you know, literally with the biolab, but more broadly, was I expecting there to be North Korean soldiers fighting Ukrainians in territorial Russia, you know, three years ago? No, I was not, right?

And so, you know, certainly we're seeing, you know, very different combinations of conflict. And I'll emphasize that with the last point, which is, you know, all these show really the broader parameters of how the war in Ukraine has unfolded, but also how future wars might unfold.

You know, so you see a shift from conventional to possibly unconventional warfare, which, you know, thank God hasn't happened, to be clear. But it should be a terrifying concern. We also see the broadening, even if you will, the globalization of the conflict, where all these other players are coming in to affect the balance on the ground in a tremendous way. And so you can't just look at Russia and you can't just look at Ukraine. You have to look at the broader allied and partner situation for both parties.

And the last, of course, is, you know, the role of a major private sector player as someone who can tilt the balance in war. And really, as an individual, not just as, you know, part of a corporate leader.

And that, to me, is again, very consequential, where when you're thinking about national power, you have to look at these, you know, somewhat singular individuals who have the tremendous ability to affect war fighting.

Benjamin Wittes: We are going to leave it there. Dan Byman, Tim Mak, thank you both for joining us today.

Tim Mak: Thank you, Ben.

Dan Byman: Thank you.

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