Hahahahaha oh man, what a timeline.

What do you guys make of it?

  • TankieTanuki [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    My bet is it's real and they're tying it to QAnon to discredit it.

    • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Qanon is where the CIA dumps facts they want to destroy. Remember that they started with Epstein.

      • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It's a US op that got out of hand, but agents still dump info in there from time to time

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      One guy in his office in Lubyanka Square constantly going "holy shit they actually believe me, how the fuck is this working so well?"

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I'm kind of at a coin flip about it, sure it could just be a bio research lab or whatever with dangerous pathogens(which is stupid to put in eastern Ukraine close to the guys you've considered enemies for decades and the other guys you've been shelling for 8 years, but whatever), it could probably also reasonably be a bioweapons lab I guess, wouldn't doubt for a second that the US is willing and capable of putting bioweapons research in foreign countries.

    • NomadicWarMachine [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I kinda doubt it’s bioweapons. I think the idea of “bioweapons” is a bit over blown in the imaginations due to SciFi and shit. It always seemed dumb to me to sink so much funding into something so dangerous and unpredictable when you can just use bombs, that cheap thing we’ve mastered how to use.

      The only real benefit of a bioweapon I see is you could use it to clandestinely weaken a population before going to war with them. But still that’s risky, expensive, and something you’d have to under under tight wraps less you risk infecting your own population.

      More likely the US stupidly put a virology lab stupidly close to the border of a hostile nation for some stupid reason.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          if the us tried to use a bioweapon to weaken an enemy it would blow back spectacularly

          The American coyote trying to catch the Chinese road runner with a comically large box of Acme brand bioweapons.

      • Commander_Data [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The most successful imperialist campaign was won through the use of bioweapons, I wouldn't put it past them.

          • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Actual good idea for an alt history novel: someone goes back in time to arm Native Americans with Predator drones.

            • nohaybanda [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I've wanted to write something like this, but when I run it through my head it ends up pretty white-savioury. Or I could do literary blackface and invent a non-white protagonist to do it, but... yeah.

              I'd definitely buy something like that if a native comrade wrote it.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        More likely the US stupidly put a virology lab stupidly close to the border of a hostile nation for some stupid reason.

        The lab has a record of existing, doesn't it? It may date back to an already established research center or something, maybe something started in the Yeltsin era or even something older from the USSR. Otherwise it was probably just the Ukrainian government siting it there for some reason or another (land costs, adapting existing facilities, graft, whatever) and the US only got involved afterwards, maybe just throwing money at them to get the research it produced.

        I said this in another thread but I suspect that the US probably doesn't do explicit bioweapon research anymore after nuclear weapons sort of obviated the idea of carrying out genocide with plague bombs like Japan did in China, despite the US acquiring their research and doing live tests of it the Korean war. Instead I'd say they coopt otherwise innocuous research to source more-or-less-natural bioweapons for covert shit like the CIA's attacks on Cuban agriculture (something Cuba had accused them of for decades and which a few years ago declassified documents proved that they did in fact do).

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        I kinda doubt it’s bioweapons. I think the idea of “bioweapons” is a bit over blown in the imaginations due to SciFi and shit. It always seemed dumb to me to sink so much funding into something so dangerous and unpredictable when you can just use bombs, that cheap thing we’ve mastered how to use.

        And yet the US has done it dozens of times before? There's little reason to doubt they'd do it again.

        More likely the US stupidly put a virology lab stupidly close to the border of a hostile nation for some stupid reason.

        The obvious answer is that there are geographical reasons for needing the lab to be there. The accusation Russia have made is that they were collecting slav DNA and they were researching a way to genetically target specific ethnicities. This makes sense in the context of creating a bioweapon to potentially attack russia with if they wished to.

        • NomadicWarMachine [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          This makes sense in the context of creating a bioweapon to potentially attack russia with if they wished to.

          I mean, this also doesn’t make sense cuz that would be literally impossible to do.

          Edit: also, yes the US has pulled shit like this in the past, but a lot of that was during the Cold War when I think the US was a lot more insecure in its power and so people felt the need to research goofy SciFi crap like using LSD as a truth serum and making microwave guns. Nowadays the US sorta has that shit down pat, they realized methods for breaking people that require just a dark room and a guy in a ski mask, no brain chips or LSD needed, and we can assassinate people from like a 100 miles away with a robot plane and a tiny bomb. Who needs untested wacko SciFi shit when you got focus tested board approved methods.

          • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Which is what makes it an absolutely amazing military-industrial complex grift. Look at how much money they've poured into the dumpster fire that is the F-35; they'd happily piss away billions of dollars into a defense contractor startup that claims that it is going to pull Theranos-level bullshit, physical impossibilities be damned.

            • NomadicWarMachine [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I feel like the grift is easier to hide in a complex engineer project involving 100s of companies than it is in a project who’s base premise is so fallacious anyone with a biology degree could tell you it’s BS.

    • space_comrade [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Yeah I'm kinda on the fence about it too.

      Anonymous Official, which is somehow a verified youtube channel, posted this the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1n2X8YaTEw

      Take from that what you will. Personally I'm not buying that they're developing a "genetic bioweapon" to kill Russians, no idea how that would work even in principle.

  • GVAGUY3 [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    My stance remains the same. Any outcome could be true and unsurprising.

  • OgdenTO [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Bioweapons labs? These ones? No, you're a crazy QAnon conspiracy theorist if you think that these bioweapons labs we've been funding on the russia-ukraine border are bioweapons labs we've been funding.

    It's all projection :

    "This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine," she concluded. "Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It's a clear pattern."

    I feel like it's the same with the tactical nuke talk - america wants to false flag a tactical nuke so they are priming consent that Putin is crazy enough to use a tactical nuke, and saying that when he does NATO and the US will invade full force

    • Mao_Zedong [comrade/them,none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      There's very little verifiable information, but what I can gather is that there are BSL-2 bioresearch labs in Ukraine, which do research into diseases etc. And, the Ukrainian ministry of Health has received money from the USA, WHO, and EU, not unusual.

      I'm sure, with the gigantic budget they have, the DoD does research into bioweapons of some kind. The US has used them in past wars.

      But why would they do it... Across an ocean and half a continent? In a politically unstable region? Whereas traditional armaments are way easier to develop, and lucrative to the MIC? What's the accusation here, that the US funds research (?) on weapons for biological warfare (?) in Ukraine ???

        • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Yes, this is also a factor. The US has opened biolabs throughout the Soviet Union to "make sure the labs and scientists didn't fall into the wrong hands" - in the War on Terror era, this referred mostly to Salafis (that was the excuse given in Central Asia), now it's pivoted to neo Cold War hawkery.

          https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/25/soviet-bioweapons-labs-georgia-armenia-kazakhstan-coronavirus-russia-disinformation/

      • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        But why would they do it… Across an ocean and half a continent? In a politically unstable region?

        Outsourcing, and it's also a threat to Russia that the US could "whoopsy" those pathogens right next door. The US has funded biolabs in Kazakhstan for years for similar reasons (right next to Russia and China!)

        www.salon.com/2013/08/29/the_us_is_building_a_bioweapons_lab_in_kazakhstan_newscred

      • OgdenTO [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Partially because something like bio or chemical weapons make an effective gulf of Tonkin type false flag to get even greater use of traditional weapons to bring profit to MIC.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Pre-loading the population for future consent manufacturing.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    you guys, it's biodefense not bioweapons. like how it's the Department of Defense, not the Department of War.

    we're the good boys and all our technology is designed to be for defensive use only. of freedom. sometimes pre-emptively.

  • Koa_lala [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I think Qanon started out as a legit cook conspiracy, but then the intelligence agencies and media ran with it to paint certain people as insane.

    • bort_simp_son [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Yeah, the degree to which the media collectively screamed "There are no biolabs!! And if there are it doesn't matter!" is pretty eyebrow raising, to say the least.

  • Utter_Karate [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    It may make me boring, but I suspect it really is just fairly benign biological research on common infectuous diseases. Those labs would have to have dangerous materials, in the form of samples of common infectuous diseases. Russia may be worried about them being released into a zone they are about to occupy, the west is certainly detached enough from reality that they have no problem believing Putin would release them into areas that he is occupying or intending to occupy and China after two years of Covid news must absolutely relish the opportunity to talk about dangerous diseases grown in American labs.

    I think the way every side has reacted/overreacted is perfectly explained by everyone pointing fingers over a small risk that some normal samples of mumps or polio or something could get out from some research labs that were in Ukraine because there are biologists in Ukraine and biologists work in labs, which was financed to whatever extent by the US because the US is likely financially involved in pretty much all labs in Europe at the least.

    Not that the US would not be developing truly horrific biological weapons of course, I just don't think they would be keeping the T-virus or genetically engineered super smallpox in a bunch of labs in Ukraine, and if there was something truly biblical there I think we would see more urgency.

    EDIT: Also, whatever is in those labs, absolutely no one wants it released to infect people, so I don't see that happening either.

    • cawsby [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      These sort of biolabs are everywhere. You probably live near one.

      Anthrax is no joke and anywhere in the world that raised a lot of cattle, sheep. or goats will have these labs guaranteed.

      • Utter_Karate [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I know for a fact that I live near several biological research labs with significant American funding that have samples of various infectuous diseases. That is why I see no reason to believe these are some super secret special labs that work on unique bioweapons rather than normal diseases. My theory is just not very juicy, but I think it does a good job explaining what the labs are and everyone's reaction.

        You are of course right that those samples are no joke, but I feel like Russia is pointing them out partly to say "Everyone, be really careful not to blow a hole in this building and cause some kind of uncontrollable outbreak of an infectious disease in a country we share a 2000 km land border with.". The west is pointing to them and saying Putin might spread the diseases, but really they are also saying "Everyone, be really careful not to blow a hole in this building and cause some kind of uncontrollable outbreak of an infectious disease in a country where a significant percentage of the population is streaming into literally every NATO country as refugees.". And Ukraine is pretty much just looking around and going "I don't think anthrax would improve the current situation".

        So, bad as it could be with one of those labs that as you said are very common, I feel like this is the ridiculously roundabout way that everyone is coming together and deciding to not release anything from those labs.

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      We've known the true story for years. The US has funded ex-Soviet bioweapons labs in former USSR countries for over decade, in the name of "threat reduction" from potential bioweapons. Of course these labs are merely funded by the US for "global good", and if an accident were to happen with a subcontractor, oh whoops🤭. And that accident happened to infect to lvestock, right next door to a big geopolitical rival? Tee hee, how awful 🤭

      • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        "Whoopsie! We accidentally released a genetically engineered fungal blight that only targets specific strains of Russian winter wheat into the wild! Oh well, I guess now we can fix bread prices!" :pete:

  • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    QAnon is bonkers but the US having bioweapons labs in Ukraine woukdn't surprise me. That said, until some journalist with both popular credibility and a willingness to catch a bullet actually livestreams a bioweapons lab with American and Ukranian flags on the wall, one's views on the claim will become just another vapid shibboleth for what internet tribe you belong to.

    • cawsby [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The US doesn't even share weapon research with most NATO allies, it would never trust a place like Ukraine to conduct bioweapons research.

  • ComRed2 [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Qanon people just listen to what daddy trump says. He's pro putin? Then Qanon is pro putin as well. Plus just generally being contrarian against the "liberal" narrative. Whether the story is true or not is pretty irrelevant to them.

  • eduardog3000 [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Hasn't Nuland already admitted it? How is something that's already been admitted by the State Department a "conspiracy theory"?