@DrPatrick
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$IBRX Release the Kraken.
Not my words. The man who runs American healthcare said them on Monday night, under a MAHA banner, at a Washington reception most investors have never heard of.
Ever since ImmunityBio's earnings landed, the boards have been three straight days of doom and gloom. Perfect conditions for missing the thing that actually matters.
Because while the panic was soaking up all the attention, something happened behind the scenes that could reshape American healthcare. And at the end of that chain, quietly, sits ImmunityBio. Promised nothing, as you will see. Positioned close.
It did not start Monday. In late January, the founder of ImmunityBio went on this movement's own show and asked it for help. On Monday night, nine months later, the movement declared the road clear.
Each event was easy to miss on its own. Put them side by side and they tell a story.
Every quote below is word for word. At the end, you decide.
THE NIGHT THE FOUNDER WENT ON THEIR SHOW
MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, is the movement Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs from the top of HHS. Its organizing arm outside government, MAHA Action, is run by Tony Lyons (@tonylyonspub), Kennedy's own book publisher. Weekly livestream. Monthly Washington parties. A tracker they say covers every health bill in the country.
In late January, that livestream had a first-time guest.
Patrick Soon-Shiong (@DrPatrick).
LISTEN TO HOW THEY INTRODUCED HIM
Before Soon-Shiong said a single word, the movement set the stage for him. First, the host named the enemy. Word for word:
"We talk a lot about all the things that we do that make us sick. All the terrible foods that we've been persuaded to put into our body, that we've been lied to, we've been propagandized. And those kinds of things have led to the incredible increase in cancer."
Then, in the same breath, he introduced his guest:
"He is a physician, a scientist... pioneering cancer therapies. But he's also just a visionary... a lot of entrenched groups, a lot of powerful people, would prefer that he didn't have these ideas... that he couldn't actually use these ideas to make people so much more healthy and to cure so much cancer in this country."
And then the line that tells you exactly where this movement places this man:
"He's putting everything on the line. He's going on every podcast. He's at this day and night, because he wants to cure cancer. He believes that he can do it. And so many of these forces are conspiring to slow that down, because they have other priorities."
Hold that sequence. Their diagnosis: poisoned food, rising cancer. Their guest: the man who says he can treat it. That pairing was the movement's choice, not mine. The host speaking is Tony Lyons himself, MAHA's chief organizer, Kennedy's own publisher.
WHAT THE FOUNDER ASKED FOR, AND WHAT MAHA PROMISED
The founder looked at the movement's audience and told them that the thing he has pursued for 35 years is, in his words, "truly I believe a core principle of MAHA."
Then the founder introduced them to IL-15, the molecule he says the National Cancer Institute called "the most important molecule that could cure cancer." And to the drug built on it, ANKTIVA, which wakes up the body's natural killer cells and T cells, the immune cells whose job is hunting cancer. FDA approved, "but just for bladder cancer."
And then Soon-Shiong started dropping lines that should have made every holder sit up:
- "The Saudi government came and visited us and said, we have 37 million people... we want this for our nation. And they just approved it now in Saudi Arabia."
- "I have 13,000 requests now sitting. Desperate calls for this treatment."
- "We need to bring this to this country. It's invented here. And this is really what we really mean by America first."
Tony Lyons listened to all of it. And then the host answered his guest.
Word for word:
"These are ideas that can change real people's lives, cure millions of people from the scourge of cancer that has overtaken this country... we need to find a way to cure cancer. And I want you to help us get there."
And then Lyons made him a promise:
"I want to do everything that I can do to make sure that you get the platform and the access that are necessary to make the arguments. And I believe that those arguments will succeed."
The platform and the access. To help cure the scourge the movement exists to fight. Their words.
That alone would be a story. But a week later the founder came back, and the second call made the first one look shy.
THE SECOND CALL, AND WHO WAS WAITING TO SPEAK
February 4. Same movement. Soon-Shiong opened by going further than in January: "the core essence of MAHA, to make America healthy again, is actually your immune system." Their whole name, his life's work.
And then the ImmunityBio founder stopped explaining and started pleading, straight at Washington:
- "During the Biden administration, four years, 700,000 pages of review. And then finally they gave us the approval for a tiny little piece of bladder cancer."
- "In frustration, I moved my attention to Saudi Arabia, and very quickly, literally quickly, they approved this for lung cancer."
- "I just had a call this morning with the United Arab Emirates, who want this as well. This should be something that Americans should be able to have access to. We are now 13,000 requests and growing."
- "It should not be who you know... it should be anybody and everybody."
- "I'm just struggling, I must say, openly, to convince the current FDA..."
And then one sentence that reads differently now than it did in February:
"Please help me help the American public have access to this."
Those are Soon-Shiong's claims, made on a political platform, and I quote them exactly as that. Now the part that made me sit up.
The speaker who came on right after the founder was Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The sitting administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. Who, Soon-Shiong mentioned, had shared with him his own father's book on the lymphatic system.
Read that again. A plea about FDA access, delivered to the movement's base, with the man who runs Medicare waiting for the microphone.
And how did Tony Lyons close that second visit?
Like this:
"We've got this generation where we've destroyed our immune systems, and so we have to rebuild them and use technologies like yours to strengthen them to get that power back."
Technologies like yours.
That was January and February. The movement heard the ImmunityBio founder, twice, and said so in its own words. But a movement that is being throttled cannot act on what it hears.
Then, last week, the throttle came off.
WHAT CHANGED LAST WEEK
Republicans lost Congress in the midterms. The headlines called it a defeat.
Inside this movement, something else happened entirely.
- Friday, November 6: Susie Wiles' last day as White House chief of staff. Kennedy thanked her publicly the same day, and posted: "Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration. It's time to unleash the Kraken."
- Monday, November 9: Miller took over the White House.
Three days. A changing of the guard.
And on the very evening Miller took over, the movement threw a party.
MONDAY NIGHT, NOVEMBER 9
MAHA Action's monthly Washington reception. Reporters in the room. And mark that date twice. It was the new chief of staff's first day in power. And it was the same Monday ImmunityBio's earnings landed and the boards went dark.
While the boards filled with doom, Kennedy stood up at that party and explained, calmly and in detail, why he believes the next two years will not look like the first two.
He began with grace for the woman who had just left. Wiles, he told the room, had been "vilified this week," but "without Susie, I wouldn't be here."
Then the other half: "There were things that we didn't get done. And that was very frustrating to me. And they were very, very important things."
Then, what those first two years actually felt like. His words:
"You get throttled in this position by a lot of different people. People in the agency... people in the White House and with access to the White House, and people in Congress."
Then the sentence the clips carried and never explained:
"Every time I tried to do something robust, I would get calls saying, if you do that, we're not going to confirm your appointees."
Here is what that means, because it is genuinely strange.
While his own party held the Senate, every senator had a personal veto to trade: give me what I want, or your people never get the job.
After the midterms?
Once the new Senate is seated in January, confirmations are dead either way. The other party will not confirm his people. His own party can no longer deliver the votes. A threat to withhold what nobody can grant is an empty threat.
"The Senate no longer has any leverage over me."
Sit with that.
Losing the election is what freed him. That is the paradox the room was toasting.
THE DINNER THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN
Then Kennedy told the room about a dinner at Stephen Miller's house, the day after Halloween. Where the incoming White House chief of staff said to the secretary:
"I'm the only one in the administration who's more radical than you are on MAHA."
And Kennedy, about the road ahead:
"I don't think anything is going to get in our way now."
What exactly are they going to do? Kennedy would not say. "There's a lot of press here, and I don't want to unveil our strategies."
Only this:
"I said, just write: release the kraken. Because that's what we're about to do. And so stand by."
CANCER WAS IN THE ROOM TOO
Tony Lyons had opened that same night by naming the destination:
"We could be the beacon of health in the world, so that people would come here for treatment."
People would come HERE. For treatment. Hold that phrase against everything you read above from January.
And then Kennedy, introducing an Iowa candidate, named the issue that now dominates that state's politics:
"Iowa has the highest cancer rate in the country. Iowa and Kentucky, the fastest growing cancer rate in the entire world. And it's coming from the nitrates and the pesticides and all of these contaminants."
That cause is Kennedy's claim, and I quote it as exactly that. But hear what the room heard: the movement that just declared nothing is in its way treats cancer as its unfinished business.
So run the thread once. In January, this movement said poisoned food is driving cancer up, and put ImmunityBio's founder on its own stage, describing Soon-Shiong as a man fighting "day and night, because he wants to cure cancer."
In February it told him: we have to rebuild our immune systems "and use technologies like yours."
And on Monday night it declared the road clear.
Who stood on their stage talking about that disease in January and February, you already know.
HAVE WE HEARD ALL OF THIS BEFORE?
Yes. We have. And this is the section that keeps your feet on the floor.
The 2024 campaign promised sweeping change. Two years in, the movement's own stage recited what actually landed:
- Dietary guidelines rewritten around one line: eat real food
- A draft FDA policy expanding access to six peptides
- Psychedelic-therapy research advancing, including trials in veterans' hospitals
- Cell phone legislation in schools in half the states, which Kennedy credits to the movement
- By the organizer's own count: 230 state bills backed this year, 31 signed into law across more than a dozen states, under both parties
A real list. And not the 2024 list. No transformation of chronic disease yet. Nothing in those plans that touches cancer care.
Although one cancer move did land this year, from the FDA itself: in October it approved ANKTIVA's expansion to papillary bladder tumors nearly three months ahead of its own deadline. Nobody promised that either. It happened anyway.
They delivered some of it. Not all of it. Both facts are true, and the room knows both.
That is exactly why "I don't think anything is going to get in our way now" was the sentence of the night.
So calibrate: the next two years will probably rhyme.
Some of it. Not all of it.
QUESTION ONE: DO THEY BELIEVE THE SCIENCE?
Does this movement believe in the science ImmunityBio is built on, immune restoration through NK cells and IL-15?
On the record: yes.
- They put its inventor on their own platform twice in two weeks
- Their host introduced him as a man working "day and night, because he wants to cure cancer" while "forces are conspiring to slow that down."
- Their chief organizer promised him "the platform and the access."
- The man who runs Medicare spoke right after him
- And in neither session did anyone push back. The movement embraced the pitch as its own
Tick the first box.
QUESTION TWO: DID ANYONE NAME IMMUNITYBIO ON MONDAY?
On Monday night, with the road supposedly clear, did anyone name ImmunityBio, ANKTIVA, or cancer therapeutics in the plans?
No. Peptides, psychedelics research, vaccine studies, food. Not one word about cancer drugs. Not one company in those plans.
The second box is empty.
That is the whole picture. One tick, one empty box, and anyone who tells you more than that is selling you a feeling.
THE OTHER EMPIRE AT THE TABLE
One more thread, because ImmunityBio is not the only thing Patrick Soon-Shiong brings to Washington.
Around the public company sits his private Nant empire, a decade and a half in the making, built on one idea: American healthcare runs on broken plumbing, and somebody should rebuild it.
- AirStrip, a NantWorks company, puts live hospital monitoring on a doctor's phone, and partnered with GE HealthCare to push that into hospital systems nationwide
- His fiber-optic work is aimed, in the founder's own words, at "moving data at the speed of light.
- His newest tease, alongside one of the world's top photonic scientists: detecting disease with light itself
- And NantIQ, the AI app for giving patients their own records, which Soon-Shiong announced at the White House in July 2025, at the launch of the government's health-data initiative, standing alongside Apple, Google and Amazon, thanking Dr. Oz by name
Now ask the question the loudest voices skip. When one founder keeps handing the government working machinery for its health agenda, does the goodwill stay in one pocket? History says no.
Is any of this a promise to ImmunityBio? No. But every useful thing the Nant side gives this administration makes the founder harder to ignore when his medicine asks for a hearing.
WHAT IS HIS, AND WHAT IS THE COMPANY'S
Now the precision, because precision matters most when people are scared. Look at where that Nant machinery lives:
- NantIQ, the patient-records app: private
- The health-data networks: private
- The laser-based diagnostics: private
- AirStrip: private
Whatever doors this movement opens for those, the value lands with the founder, not inside $IBRX shares. The public company owns the medicine, ANKTIVA. Keep the two separate, because the loudest voices this week will not.
Can they deliver the next two years?
Unknown.
The first two already answered that in advance: partially.
Count on some. Never on all.
TWO ROOMS, NINE MONTHS APART
Nobody in power has promised ImmunityBio anything.
Keep that fact where you can see it.
Now hold the sequence one last time.
In January and February, the movement that runs American health policy heard the founder of ImmunityBio say that restoring the immune system, the exact thing his approved drug ANKTIVA exists to do, is the core of what their own name means.
Their organizer promised him a platform.
The man who runs Medicare took the microphone right after him. And the founder's last words to them were: "please help me help the American public have access to this."
On Monday night, November 9, the very evening ImmunityBio's earnings had the boards in despair, that same movement stood up and declared the road clear.
The Senate has no leverage. The new White House chief of staff calls himself more radical on their mission than Kennedy himself.
And the secretary who oversees the FDA said, with reporters in the room: "I don't think anything is going to get in our way now."
Release the kraken. Stand by.
What swims out, and whether any of it swims toward ImmunityBio, is promised to no one.
I connected the dots as far as the receipts reach.
Not one inch further.
Whether they connect the rest of the way, nobody can guarantee you, and nobody should.
Read it again. Then you decide.View quoted post on X
Well said @SenRonJohnsonView quoted post on X
