Speaking of the the possibility of the Cabal releasing a not-quite-apocalyptic plague to test it out, I seem to recall that the last update mentioned a surprisingly deadly disease outbreak in the USSR. Something tells me they were behind that.
There are arguments for and against it, from a narrative perspective it looks a lot like foreshadowing given Calbear's comments
From a scientific perspective, that's less plausible. The bacteria in question was from a new Phylum, a new Kingdom before an edit after a comment by me pointed out how huge Kingdoms are. That doesn't look like something that would be the result of a bioweapon program, Phylums are big things, there are only 29 Phylums of bacteria currently established, and an example of the difference between organisms in a Phylum is the fact that both humans and sea squirts are in the same phylum, as in a human is much more closely related to a fish or frog than this bacteria would be to any other extant bacteria. That is an incredible amount of difference and implies the thing was created from the ground up, something we are far away from today, and while the Cabal may be willing to void ethics and throw oodles of money at biotech, they can't be that far ahead given other limiters. A more likely output from a bioweapon program would be an organism derived from an existing one, with a combination of features cribbed from a bunch of other bacteria
Actually making an ethnically targeted bioweapon, you want either a virus, or one working in concert with a bacteria, either way you have to actually look at the genetic code to tell, and if this thing was working with a virus, that would be something the research team is looking at
A virus as opposed to a bacteria has the advantage that while both mutate quickly, bacteria do horizontal gene transfer far, far, more easily, so if one finds a way to get around your control mechanism it can pass it on to other organisms besides its children. This makes bacteria a riskier and less desirable choice if you want to keep your population alive