On the menu today: I don’t mean to pooh-pooh those who are really interested in former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt signing with Fox News, or the White House blocking Politico from getting on Air Force One, or Ken Paxton lamenting that he doesn’t control his own campaign’s messaging. (Considering his track record and demonstrated political instincts, that’s probably for the best.)
But compared to what’s going on around the world, the inside-the-Beltway turf fights seem awfully small potatoes. The U.S. determined there was a serious threat of a drone attack against its planes at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom; Russian drones are killing people on civilian cargo ships off the coast of Romania; there are still far too few answers about that state-run plague research lab scientist who suddenly dropped dead in Russia; and new reasons to believe that Xi Jinping may not be in the best of health. Oh, and the Russian military may have misplaced the hand of a saint on the battlefield in Ukraine. Read on.
Drone Woes
First, an update to yesterday’s story about the U.S. withdrawal of all B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford. It is, apparently, as bad as some people feared; the U.S. worried that the Iranians were preparing a version of Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web — smuggling drones into the county or near the country and attacking planes parked on the airfield. From the Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. abruptly moved a dozen B-1 bomber aircraft from a U.K. military base on Sunday because of urgent concerns about a potentially complex drone attack ordered by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. and European officials briefed on the matter.
The planned attack was part of a multifaceted Iranian plot to target the aircraft and kill personnel at RAF Fairford, including American pilots, the officials said.
In Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine smuggled 117 attack drones hidden in trucks and shipping containers deep into Russian territory — in some cases, thousands of miles into the country — then used them to attack 41 Russian planes worth $7 billion at four air bases. Reportedly, Ukraine used unwitting Russian truck drivers to deliver the drones to the launch locations such as gas stations and rest stops near the bases.
In the spring, I visited the Finnish drone company Sensofusion, which is developing a “Tactical Drone Factory,” which the company touts as a “fully self-contained drone manufacturing facility built inside a standard shipping container. Equipped with industrial 3D printers, an electronics assembly station, and a complete parts inventory, a single Drone Factory can produce approximately 50 interceptor drones per day. The factory can be operated by a small team and deployed anywhere in the world.” Having seen their prototype, I can assure you, from the outside, they are indistinguishable from a regular shipping container.
Just about anything the good guys can do, the bad guys can do as well.
About 83,000 cargo vessels arrived in ports in the United Kingdom in 2024. The Port of Bristol, which is geographically closest to RAF Fairford, handles about 150,000 containers per year.
Last month, the U.K. Independent reported that “some 340 security incidents involving drones were reported at or near Ministry of Defense sites in the year to August 2026, data obtained under freedom of information laws show.” No doubt, some of these are just dumb civilians flying their drones where they’re not allowed, but it is highly unlikely that all of them are. The news site quoted former U.K. defense minister Tobias Ellwood saying Russia and Iran were “100 percent” responsible for many of those incidents. “They are absolutely active in Britain in plotting, mapping, and then recruiting useful idiots to prosecute this targeting.”
Also in July, there was this insufficiently noticed report in the U.K. Daily Telegraph:
Smuggling networks run by Iran are responsible for transporting people with links to the Iranian regime across Europe and into Britain, Tehran’s officials told The Telegraph.
They added that some human trafficking routes between the Middle East and the Channel were “owned” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
It comes after Iran vowed to attack RAF Fairford following Andy Burnham’s decision to renew permission for the US to use the British base to launch air strikes.
The IRGC “owns” certain human trafficking routes into the U.K.? Does it feel like the puzzle pieces are falling into place?
Meanwhile, out in Nebraska, President Trump seemed to allude to potential Iranian attacks during a stream-of-consciousness speech touting U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts’s reelection bid:
It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take . . . out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay, and it’s gonna be over very soon. It’s essentially almost over with. And they might keep going a little long, you know? They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you. They need it. But it’s gonna end very soon, and it’ll end one way or the other. . . .
“Let them take out San Diego.”
Speaking of drones. . . .
Drones struck a Turkish-owned commercial merchant ship, the Royad Mammadov, within the waters of Romania’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, and two people were killed. The ship was on its way to Ravenna, Italy. The ship’s last known location was nowhere near Ukraine. The Russian military is declaring that non-Ukrainian civilian ships in or near other countries’ territorial waters are fair game for fatal strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the ship was attacked by Russian drones; considering how the Royad Mammadov’s last stop had been in Izmail, Ukraine, it wouldn’t make much sense for the Ukrainian military to hit a ship that was likely carrying their grain exports.
I hope the Russians know enough history to remember how the U.S. responded to Germany’s unrestricted warfare against merchant vessels in 1917.
Awaiting More Information About That Dead Plague Researcher, a Little Too Patiently
Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first statement on the reports of an accident at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia:
We know what we know, obviously, about whatever the Russians have provided, which is it seems that it was a worker at the lab that was infected and there’s concern that that you know could have spread at least internally. So you’ve seen them do quarantines and events of that nature. There’s very limited travel between the U.S. and Russia obviously. But like anything else, something like that gets out, it could quickly spread. So, we’re watching and monitoring it closely. I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on it.
I’m not going to give Rubio much grief for what appears to be a tone designed to prevent panic. But it’s Tuesday morning, and we still have no statement from the World Health Organization. The only real information we have is a vague and brief statement from Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, telling everyone that the researcher suddenly dropped dead from “pneumonia of unknown etiology,” and that they’re certain it had no connection to her work.
Thankfully, during a news conference with Icelandic Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir in Reykjavik, Iceland, Rubio pressed the Russians to provide more information:
First of all, anytime you hear that there’s some disease that infected someone in a lab anywhere in the world, you’re going to be concerned about it, especially given recent events not so long ago, obviously in 2021, so in 2020 when we saw that happen. That said, it would be irresponsible for me here to sit and speculate because we just don’t have all the information yet. I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world, that’s what they should do, and that’s what we hope they will do. And the more we can learn about what happened, then the better all of us can be in a position of responding. And maybe, you know, there’s nothing there, maybe it’s bigger than we thought.
We don’t know, but I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have, to speculate about what this might or might not be or what this is or what this isn’t. Suffice it to say, we’re watching it very closely. And I think the whole world is watching it very closely because depending on what we learn about it, we would know how to respond. We already, you know, have measures in place to be able to address it if it’s, if it’s something, you know, more serious than what so far has been acknowledged. Suffice it to say we’re glad to be aware of it. We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour. We have multiple agencies, not just in the United States but internationally that are watching it. We encourage Russia to be transparent and share more information with the world so that all of us could react accordingly and appropriately, but we’ll have to make those decisions on the basis of the information that we’re learning and are being provided, and so far that’s still quite limited, but hopefully that will change in the next few hours and days.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon — former “commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, and NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion” — writes in the Daily Telegraph:
If a laboratory worker really has contracted plague while working with the pathogen, the obvious questions are: how did it happen, what strain was involved, what safeguards failed and has anybody else been exposed? Those questions should be answered quickly and transparently. Instead, information has apparently been restricted and reporting suppressed. If an outbreak is natural and under control, transparency should be the order of the day. During the time that China attempted to keep Covid secret, the disease spread to every corner of the world. . . .
The Siberian plague outbreak may be effectively contained and turn out to be entirely natural. I sincerely hope it is. But if that is the case we should use this moment to ask why we were not better prepared to establish the facts immediately. The lesson of Covid was brutal: pathogens move faster than governments. The lesson of biological warfare is even more chilling: somebody may deliberately help them.
So far, it appears we’ve learned nothing from the experience of Covid-19. Here we are, six years later, with another autocratic regime, another pathogen research facility in the middle of a crowded city with a busy international airport, another paranoid, bureaucratic culture where the incentive is to sweep problems under the rug instead of risk punishment for reporting them, and another case where the autocratic government insists everything is fine. And world leaders ask for more information like Oliver Twist asking for some more gruel.
Speaking of sickness. . . .
Xi Sick
Back in September, 73-year-old Chinese ruler Xi Jinping skipped the dinner of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi. By itself, that’s not much of an absence, even though it set off a lot of rumors that Xi had a stroke or suffered some serious health problem.
But now, thanks to the WSJ, we know more details about Xi’s unusual schedule during his visit to Washington:
Chinese officials made unusual demands that the U.S. accommodate Xi Jinping’s need for rest during a summit with President Trump, offering a rare glimpse of the 73-year-old leader’s emerging physical limitations, said people familiar with the visit planning.
Chief among the requests was a private room inside the West Wing for Xi to take a break between events, with only his wife, Peng Liyuan, permitted to join him, the people said. No others from the Chinese delegation were allowed to use the “hold room,” as it was called — not even Cai Qi, Xi’s chief of staff, they added.
Beijing officials told their American counterparts they preferred more time for Xi to rest during his Washington visit, the people said. The result was a roughly five-hour gap in the summit agenda, a long stretch of downtime during a visit that lasted barely two days.
In addition, the people said, the Chinese delegation arranged no activities for Xi on the evening of his arrival, and the Chinese leader spent only about 10 minutes inside the National Archives on the final day of his visit, Sept. 25 — far less than U.S. officials had planned.
One unexpected absence is not necessarily a big deal, but an unexpected absence and a light schedule — well, that does point to something fatiguing Xi beyond the long flight from Beijing to Washington. One Taiwanese analyst studied all of the available footage of Xi on his foreign trips and concluded, “Analysis suggests that Xi’s aging has indeed accelerated in recent years, as evidenced by a significant deterioration in his stride symmetry. . . . Footage of Xi disembarking on September 12 showed signs of a circumduction gait and frequent small, shuffling steps, indicating potential brain or muscle degeneration. However, his cardiopulmonary function appears to be relatively good.”
Back in 2025, Xi and Vladimir Putin talked about scientific advances helping certain people live to 150 this century. Putin turns 74 tomorrow; Xi turned 73 in June, and President Trump turned 80 the same month.
ADDENDUM: Over in the Washington Post, examining a report that the Russian Orthodox Church lent “a reliquary containing a particle of the relics of the holy and faithful Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy is en route to the front line. . . . The holy commander is heading to where the fate of the Fatherland is being decided today, to invisibly stand in battle formation with our defenders.”
And then, reportedly, the Russian soldiers came under attack and lost the saint’s hand.