Last time we talked was about how we
could blow ourselves to death.
>> [gasps]
>> And this time we're talking about how we
could infect ourselves to death.
Which one's scarier, nuclear war or
biological war?
>> It's equally scary in completely
different ways. I think, you know, with
nuclear war the response to that was so
many people calling me up and saying
like okay, I read your book. I just want
to die instantly.
Biological war is tricky and scary
because you don't have to die instantly.
And then you have to wonder I wish I
did.
That's the sort of bad news first.
>> That Is there any good news with
biological war?
>> There is because
it can be prevented. I mean, unlike
nuclear war, which is like a just an
event that happens without warning. It's
literally called an event without
warning.
Biological war is event with warning.
And that warning window it's literally
like
12, 24, 36 hours max, but that is the
window of time when something can be
done.
>> Why do you think biological warfare
receives so little public attention
compared with nuclear war?
>> Yeah. I mean, terrific question. For
starters, biological war is illegal.
Biological weapons are illegal. And yet
biological weapons exist, including now
today, 21st century, genetically
modified biological weapons for extreme
transmission, hypervirulence
and designed to defeat existing vaccines
and countermeasures.
But it's illegal, so no one has them
except for they do.
>> Mhm.
Is there something about it being
invisible as well? There's no smoke in
the sky.
>> I mean, that's what makes it incredibly
sinister, I think. It's invisible, it's
silent. And when you really just think
of this simple idea that a a biological
weapon, any pathogen really, is a living
munition.
It's alive.
And it replicates.
>> a mind of its own.
>> And it's like with it's
self-reproducing.
And so, it's just go
once it gets unleashed.
>> Do you think bioweapons are the most
underappreciated existential risks of
the modern world?
>> Well, I came across this chart in the
DOD that really freaked me out when I
was reading when I was working on
nuclear war, and it's like the weapons
of mass destruction WMD threat spectrum.
And of course, nuclear weapons are like
at the far end of the worst, most
destructive. But biological weapons are
a very close second, and even more
frightening. They are considered the
most likely to occur, and therefore the
most dangerous.
And this has to do with, you know,
laboratories doing defensive research on
biological
weapon countermeasures. So, there This
is where you get really into a lot of,
you know,
sort of catch-22,
very politi- politicized debates, which
we're going to stay away from and just
talk about it as like a or at least I
am, you know, because it should No one
should be for biological war.
>> What surprised you most about comparing
the two, nuclear war and biowar?
>> Well, equally shocked in in two lanes.
So, nuclear war, remember when Craig
Fugate, who's Obama's former FEMA
director,
told me that
there is no plan for population
protection in the event of a strategic
nuclear attack because everyone will be
dead. I mean, that was stunning to me
because this is coming from the guy in
charge of it.
Equally stunning is that is a plan
for protection in the event of
biological war, but it's not for the
population. It's not for you and me.
It's for the government. It's for a tiny
group of government officials
that will live out
the attack or the incident. By the way,
it doesn't have to be an attack. It can
be an accident.
But this is super creepy and people
should definitely know about it and be
very upset when they do.
>> Let's Let's start to creep people out
then. Starting at the beginning, how did
we learn to engineer biotechnology? Like
what what's the story there?
>> Yeah. I mean, people talk about CRISPR
now, you know, the CRISPR cast sort of
gene editing. That's pretty much third
or fourth generation gene editing. So,
the the origin story of gene editing is
1971
in a laboratory in Stanford at Stanford
University in Stanford, California. And
the Nobel laureate named Paul Berg, he
won the Nobel laureate for the work he
did, figured out how to
create what is called a chimera
pathogen. So, mix chimera is like that
ancient Greek idea of a monster made up
of two different parts.
And Berg figured out how to create
recombinant DNA. That is the real
fundamental word for gene editing. And
that was way back in 1971.
>> Recombinant recombining?
>> Absolutely.
>> Okay. It's just like
>> It's just like it sounds. So much of
this is just like it sounds.
>> Okay.
>> You know, and that's where it all began.
And you know, then then there's
the short and long version of how we got
where we are now.
>> What's the argument for doing genetic
engineering?
>> The argument, like all dual-use
technology, is like you can use it to
heal, you can use it to harm. I mean,
this is true of every technology going
back to when humans invented or
discovered fire,
right? You can like cook your meat and
not get trichinosis,
or you can burn down the next tribe's,
you know, over. Um every every
technology has that same component. And
so with with bioengineering, the idea is
and certainly now very specifically to
where we are today is about
okay, we we will work with dangerous
pathogens
to genetically modify them so that if a
dangerous pathogen is released, we will
know how to create a medical
countermeasure for it.
>> Mhm. Mhm.
>> You see the chicken and the egg and the
catch-22 there.
>> and defense are contained within the
same system.
>> Absolutely. And this is where
huge divides occur. And this is where
the term called gain of function, which,
you know, 99.99%
of the planet had never heard of until
the COVID pandemic,
be- has now become such a hot button
issue. Gain of function is literally
like it sounds. You work to genetically
modify a pathogen
to give it new functions.
To you know, so that it gains function.
And the idea of that is that okay, just
in case someone releases a biological
weapon, we will know how to go up
against it. And this is the big debate
about COVID, which
>> Do you think that COVID
from a
biological weapons
safety pandemic standpoint,
do you think that was kind of an
important thing to happen in some ways?
Do you think it was a positive or a
negative?
>> I mean, that's you know,
it did happen and here we are now. And I
think that separate from what anyone
thinks about, you know,
natural origin versus lab leak.
>> Mhm.
>> The two most important lessons of COVID
is one that we are extremely
ill-prepared for a pandemic, despite the
fact that in the US billions of dollars
are spent every year
to to to deal with exactly that kind of
thing. Um
that's the first lesson, and the second
lesson is that
the pandemic completely fractured
public trust around science, around
public health officials,
>> Mhm.
>> uh around politicians, and so this
fracturing
is incredibly dangerous, and I believe
is also where the solution lies. I mean,
that's like a real long stretch to try
to get there, but it must happen because
it is such a dangerous position. And if
we really get into it and eventually
talk about the Russians' biological
weapons program of the Cold War,
uh upon which some of the pathogen that
gets deployed in my scenario is built,
then you're really looking at the idea
of Soviet Russia was to ruin Ameri- to
gut America
>> Mhm.
>> by creating by fracturing public trust.
>> The thing that's crazy,
COVID feels really
uh
symbolic.
I think of COVID is basically a vaccine
that went wrong. COVID itself was a
vaccine that went wrong cuz we could
have been given the a small non-fatal
dose of a future risk that would have
alerted us to all of the ways that we
were ill-prepared so that we could be
better prepared for it in future. But
because of the way that institutions and
the medical industry and communication
and lockdown and trust were all degraded
and and and really really damaged,
you're right, it's done two things at
once. It's taught people what a super
spreader event is. It helps us to
understand the importance of masking and
ventilators. It reminded us how
ill-prepared we are. All of those things
should prepare us better for the one in
future. However, the current
If there was a pandemic that got
released tomorrow,
the amount of pushback from the populace
would be huge because nobody has trust
for anymore. Uh Jared, can you
do a search for me, please? Search um
Toby Ord
Ord, the precipice
risk chart.
It should be an image. And um
this is the thing that's insane. The
fact that we were so ill-prepared, I'm
pretty sure that the precipice came out
in 2019.
Uh so, before COVID and it in order to
write the book and to have the research
and to be able to get to the stage where
Yeah, top left. That's it. That's it.
That's the one. Existential uh okay,
catastrophic risk via asteroid, a comet,
supervolcano, stellar explosion. So,
natural risk. It says chance within the
next 100 years, one in 10,000. That's
over all of them. Stellar explosion is
at one in a
billion. One in a billion. Uh so, we we
should be safe from that. Nuclear war,
one in 1,000. Climate change, one in
1,000. Other environmental damage, one
in 1,000. Naturally arising pandemics,
one in 10,000. Now, we get into the real
Engineered pandemics, one in 30
in the next 100 years. Unaligned
artificial intelligence, one in 10.
Unforeseen anthropogenic risks, one in
30. So, that's unknown unknowns. And
other anthropogenic risks, that's a
catch-all bucket. Total anthropogenic
risk over the next 100 years, a one in
six chance. And
this is the difference between What was
the word you used? Global
>> catastrophic risk.
>> Global cat- Okay, so the difference, I
think, between global catastrophic risk
and existential risk. So, existential
risk is categorized as
permanent
>> Yeah.
>> unrecoverable collapse.
>> Hm.
>> Permanent unrecoverable collapse cuz
nuclear war is a proper ex-risk. It's
usually pretty easy to recover from.
There is a way that you can recover from
it as a
as a civilization. Like to get everybody
with nuclear weapons, there would need
to be sun in the sky, there would need
to be cuz you only need like
500 or 1,000 humans and then you're able
to come back.
>> Yeah.
>> The bioweapon thing is even scarier
because that is able to make every
person It is a bullet with like second
self-replicate.
>> I wrote biological war a scenario, not
biological war the only scenario. And in
my acknowledgements part of the book, I
mention how in some of my interviews,
and I'm talking about like with David
Relman, sort of top-level White House
advisor
to many presidents, told me about
pathogens that literally can do exactly
that. And I made that decision not to go
with
that kind of a threat. Although, you
know, the case fatality rate of the
plague weapon that is engineered in the
scenario I write is 100% case fatality
rate. So, if you get it, you die.
>> Okay.
>> But there are
I I won't get too far ahead of the
weeds, but that chart is amazing and it
really
is kind of on point of what we're
talking about here. And I love your
analogy that COVID is
theoretically or philosophically
>> Yes.
>> a a you know, sort of a medical
countermeasure gone wrong.
>> Correct.
>> it is. Because it if you think about it
as a it was a poison of the mind as
well. It could have been a cautionary
tale. The case fatality rate on COVID
was one in a hundred. That is a lot of
people died, but that's not at the level
of what an engineered pathogen is. Most
bioengineered pathogens are designed to
move toward 100% case fatality rate. If
you get it, you die.
>> Who were the first people to start using
this as a weapon? Because obviously
you've got recombinant DNA.
We've opened up this entire world, this
technology. Who were the first people to
really turn it on an industrial scale
into becoming a
weaponized threat?
>> That was the Soviets, right? So, backing
up one First of all, in the Cold War,
we had biological weapons programs. The
US had a robust biological weapons
program, offensive and defensive. I've
written about it in other books. So did
Russia,
uh the Soviet Union.
In 1969, President Nixon renounced
America's biological weapons program
entirely for reasons that are debated,
doesn't matter. That was it, it's over,
destroy them all. Took 219 weeks to
destroy.
A treaty was signed around the world,
the BWC, Biological Weapons Convention
Treaty.
Biological weapons are too dangerous.
They're called repugnant to the
conscience of mankind in the preamble,
right? So, it's this very lofty idea
that like, you know, we will not do
this. And everybody signed the treaty.
And
>> Including the Soviets.
>> Including the Soviets.
Soviets.
>> And And now we know because of a
defector, and I get into this in the
book because it's very interesting. I
interviewed the British
um intelligence officer who
first found out about the whole Soviet
program. Not until the late '80s
did America did the CIA did British
intel have any idea that the Soviets had
this colossal program. They stole our
recombinant DNA technology.
I mean, good old IP theft back in the in
the '70s. And they
>> China of the '70s.
>> And they began this biological weapons
program. They called it our Manhattan
Project. And we had no idea. Now bring
us to the present day, just to deal with
some facts about who has biological
weapons.
According to the State Department,
Russia has a biological weapons program.
This is on the record and this is a
pretty big deal. And their position is
that the Soviet program was not
dismantled as had been promised when the
wall came down, but rather
absorbed.
And the State Department has the same
position about North North Korea that
they have a robust biological weapons
program.
And then their position on China and
Iran is they are questionable, which is
like euphemism subtext for they have
biological weapons programs.
>> But the State Department admitted to
having them themselves?
>> We do not have a biological weapons
program.
>> How much do you believe that?
>> Officially.
Officially, but but [laughter] what
Okay, but well,
let me just say this. What we do have
and what we have had in the past is a
defensive program.
And so I've interviewed I interview some
really interesting people for this book,
including like the top dogs in this
world, okay? And and people who run war
games at the Pentagon for how this would
go down. And most people in the business
of preventing biological war
in the United States believe that gain
of function is evil. That word was used
with me. And and and have also said gain
of function is a euphemism for
biological weapons engineering.
>> How many people are opposed to enhanced
interrogation and yet Guantanamo Bay
still happened? You know, I I I think
what
And this this speaks to the the the lack
of trust, right? In in in in government
that
And also there's a bit of me that thinks
I want to be on the side that has them.
I don't want to be on the side that
doesn't have them. I'm aware that there
can be lab leaks. I'm aware BSL-3 and 2
and
you know, you
>> Mhm.
>> If one guy's got a gun, I want a gun.
>> [gasps]
>> The issue with the biological weapons is
that
nuclear weapons
take out biological weapons.
>> Mhm.
>> Nuclear weapons and in fact, there are
secretive This is This is not any
reporting classified information. This
is any
speculating in the affirmative. I'm not
going to put the nose on. I'm going to
go go full with this, right? No, no, no.
I mean This is like
um
So, new There have been moments when
there have been leaks
that is understood that the Defense
Department is trying to get a
presidential emergency directive to be
allowed to use nuclear weapons
preemptively
>> Mhm.
>> against a biological a known biological
weapons facility. And whenever this gets
leaked, it causes an uproar. So,
I would assume, given what I know about
national security, that that
that directive still exists.
>> Yeah.
>> And the reason why that exists, people
say, "Well, why wouldn't you just take
it out with conventional explosives?"
Conventional explosives have this
strange effect on germ labs whereby the
explosion
>> It just atomizes it.
>> push it and it pushes it out faster. So,
it goes You see, so it's non-effective.
>> to incinerate it.
>> And the nuclear
weapon has a temperature that
incinerates it and a speed.
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I remember you talking about who sort of
who first started using them, some of
the medieval stories that I've read
about. During sieges, they would put
dead bodies and refuse and diseased
animals into the water supply of a
castle. So, it's not like this is
something that's new. Catapulting,
trebucheting,
diseased animals over the walls to see
if they can send germ They understood
the not maybe the mechanism, but they
understood the outcome, which is these
people are going to consume this if we
put stuff in that's
dirty or something, infected in some
way.
It might hurt them. So, it's not a new
in terms of idea, it's only new in terms
of sophistication.
>> The sophistication component when it
comes to
genetic engineering is what's so
dangerous because
it only takes a minute, hopefully
reading my book or just having this kind
of conversation to get to the real heart
of the matter with your X risk with and
what the Defense Department calls a near
extinction-level event. That's, you
know, nuclear is different. That's like
extinction-level events. So, we differ
on that. But, biological is near
extinction. That group of government
officials is going to stay alive
according to planning.
But, the difference um in that is that,
you know, biological weapons are once
they
propagate, there's no stopping them. And
the number one reason is airborne.
>> Mhm.
>> Airborne. So, many different pathogens
Ebola,
they're not airborne. But if something's
airborne, you and I are talking,
we're both infected.
>> What are the elements of the perfect
biological weapon?
>> Airborne is number one.
>> Okay.
>> Number one.
>> transition.
>> Number one.
>> Transmission.
>> 100% transmission. So, what's
interesting about COVID, and I just use
this sometimes as a great example
because everybody was remembers COVID,
those of us that, you know, lived
through it, that aren't a baby.
Um
and
there was for the first 3 months of
COVID, the WHO was sending out tweets
that said COVID is not airborne, not in
full capital letters.
They believed
that COVID was transmissible
through, you know, me passing this to
you, and it's called a called a fomite.
Not how it's not how it works.
>> Some
pathogens are.
>> Some pathogens are. Absolutely.
>> But COVID wasn't.
>> But COVID wasn't. And they
were convinced it wasn't airborne, and
it was airborne. There was 8,000 people
already with COVID before the WHO made
made us change that statement. And this
they were not doing it
to be nefarious.
They were doing it because they didn't
know. There is so much uncertainty
>> Mhm.
>> in biology. So much uncertainty. It's
probably part of the reason why the US
got rid of its biological weapons
program. The Defense Department likes to
know. You can measure how many people
you're going to kill with a bomb.
It's called a circular damage
issue, and you don't know with biology.
And so, the Defense Department, if they
can't control it, they don't like it.
>> Mhm.
I don't remember people were wiping down
Amazon parcels. There was even a a rule
added into pickleball where you you
could do a paddle serve. So, as the ball
came toward you, you could scoop it up
on the paddle,
flick it in the air, and hit it because
people were that worried that maybe the
other person had picked the ball up. And
if I picked the ball up, and then it So,
So, uh okay. So, elements of the perfect
biological weapon. First one is it's
airborne.
>> Yes, transmissibility.
>> Transmissibility is airborne. What else?
What what what How else would it be
constituted?
>> Virulence, right? So, it's it's case
fatality rate.
COVID, as we said earlier, 1%. So, 100
people get COVID, one dies.
That's a pretty low case
case fatality rate. Hantavirus, recently
in the news.
Um
high 30%
case fatality rate. So, that's a lot of
people. If you Right, the flu the
seasonal flu, by the way, is
0.1%.
Pneumonic plague.
>> What's that?
>> Which Okay, we you know, we all know
bubonic plague.
Pneumonic plague is the aerosolized
version of bubonic plague. Bubonic
plague, a flea
from an infected flea bites you, you get
bubonic plague.
Pneumonic plague, it gets into your
lungs, and it becomes aerosolized.
Pneumonic plague has a case fatality
rate of 100%.
Unless you get antibiotics into your
system
within 24 hours. Not 25 hours.
First 24 hours, you get antibiotics, you
have a chance at living. If you don't,
you die 100%. 100%.
>> What's the incubation period of
pneumonic plague?
>> The natural incubation period is between
1 and 3 days. Sometimes
five. Again, this is there's so much
ambiguity in Mother Nature.
Genetically modified plague
one day.
So, imagine a situation where This is
what I This is the the pathogen that I
choose in the scenario because it is
what the Defense Department, FEMA,
HHS, CDC, WHO is probably the most
afraid of. It's called a
select It's called a tier one select
agent.
It's the one of the most likely to be
used.
And it's a 100%
And now imagine
if you could genetically modify that to
evade cure. So, imagine if antibiotics
no longer work.
And what I'm saying may sound like
science fiction horror, except for it's
precisely
what was at the center of that Soviet
biological weapons program
of the '70s and '80s that we talked
about a moment ago.
>> That's what they were engineering.
>> They were engineering a super plague
weapon.
>> Did they achieve it?
>> Questionable. But that Think of how many
decades ago. They didn't do it then,
they certainly have done it now. Here's
was the exact line from Dr. Christopher
Davis, who interviewed the first Russian
defector who told him about the super
plague weapon. He said,
"They wanted to kill
Thinking of the Soviets planning a
biological weapons attack against
America,
they wanted to kill all the people and
leave the infrastructure
intact."
>> Which you don't get with nukes. You get
rid of the people, but you also have to
rebuild the city.
>> Imagine just taking all the people out
and just marching in and everything that
was theirs is now yours.
>> Mhm.
Yeah, it's just like pressing a delete
button on all of the humans. I mean, you
got to get rid of the bodies, but that's
a small price to pay.
>> Mhm. If you wait long enough, they sort
of disintegrate.
>> What was the goal of the Soviet
scientists? Do you think it was
primarily casualties or something more
psychological?
>> Very good question. It was actually
both. It was a twofold idea. It was
this create this mass death that we're
talking about. And remember,
maybe not the Soviet scientist, it was
the Politburo, the sort of planners
behind it, the military, the Soviet
officials that just hated the their
American enemies so much that they came
up with the most diabolical plan
possible. And it was exactly that. It
was just kill everyone, but also create
such mistrust within
the medical establishment. They wanted
to outfox antibiotics, which normally
will kill plague. The bacteria is called
Yersinia pestis.
And they wanted to specifically
send America back to the sort of, you
know, pre-antibiotic era and have all
the people have completely lost trust in
the medical establishment.
>> How did we find out about the Soviet
weapons program?
>> The program was huge and it was
secretive and no one knew about it from,
you know, until 1988-89.
And then one of its leading
scientist engineers named Vladimir
Pasechnik
had a moral crisis.
And he was a rare Soviet scientist who
was allowed to leave Russia
to go buy equipment for the biological
weapons program in France.
And that is where
he
went he decided to defect and tell
the West. So, he went to the embassy. He
actually went to the Canadian embassy
first.
And they didn't believe him.
And they sent him away. And he went back
to a phone booth and he called the
British embassy.
They took him very seriously. Picked him
up in a car. And a day later he was
sitting in London in a safe house across
the table just like you and I are now
from Dr. Christopher Davis who was the
only pretty much the only guy assigned
to biological weapons
in the British intelligence because
there were no biological weapons. There
weren't supposed to be. So he was this
young surgeon commander
and he knew a lot about biological
weapons um and I've interviewed him at
length for the book. Imagine him
learning about this and learning about
the super plague weapon
and going
and then the British told their American
counterparts at the CIA
it was verified.
And
>> How was it verified?
>> We sent So Davis and another colleague
who uh went to the CIA in Langley
had a discussion with them, told them
everything that Pasechnik had said.
Um these guys are MDs and PhDs and you
know the CIA was like, "Okay, well we
have to verify it ourselves." They sent
Joshua Lederberg who was a very famous
Nobel laureate to the UK to interview
Pasechnik himself.
And Dr. Davis was there in that room and
he said Lederberg was like
he's the way he said it was the scales
fell off his eyes.
Oh my god. Like not only what have they
done
but how did we not know this? They were
manufacturing tons
of plague weapon, tons of smallpox
weapon.
And the systems the delivery systems
were such in those days they weren't
airborne truly airborne. They were going
to be delivered you know on like sort of
low-flying cruise missiles and dropped.
There was a whole weaponization that had
to happen.
>> in capsules and bombs or in
>> you put they had they had engineered and
actually correctly engineered. That was
part of the verification process.
Creating warheads that could survive
this incredible heat.
Um and their delivery systems work, but
that those were never used.
>> Okay, so
that's how weapons can be used to
attack, but surely everyone also needs
to build biodefenses as well.
>> And this is the big conundrum.
There's a There's a paradox there,
right? In the [snorts] effort to defend
against biological attacks results in
more labs being built, which increases
the opportunity for a biological
catastrophe because you don't just have
purposeful deliberate leaks or attacks.
>> Yes.
>> You don't just have purposeful attacks,
you also have accidental leaks.
>> Absolutely. And maybe no one would be
crazy enough to use a biological weapon
because they know about blowback now.
You know what happens with a pandemic.
Except a terrorist organization, you
know, that doesn't value life, shall we
say,
in this certainly in the same manner as,
you know, the West.
But the lab accidents and the lab leaks
are very serious concern and should be.
But let's talk about labs for a minute
because I think it's very interesting to
look at numbers. So,
we just spoke of like in the '90s, you
know, the US finds out about the Soviet
program, Clinton makes the use of a
biological weapon a death penalty
offense.
The system really vamps up. The Cold War
is down. Now there's a new enemy. I
mean, the the Cold War is over. The
wall's down. Now there's a new enemy.
It's definitely biological weapons.
Terrorists start to enter into the fold.
And then 9/11 happens.
And when And most people forget or
aren't old enough to remember that
just a few weeks after 9/11 there was an
anthrax attack against the Senate.
And that moved the biological,
pharmaceutical, biotechnology,
biodefense industry, call it what you
will, into high gear. And that's where
the a whole new system of
science unfolded
to work on exactly what you're talking
about, medical countermeasures in the
event of a biological attack. And so,
for example, there were two BSL-4 labs.
That's the highest maximum containment
biosafety level four.
The you know, the zoot suits, the space
suits, and the hose with the air, and
you're working in an autoclave, and
there's like it's very
>> autoclave.
>> You know, you your hands are in
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> gloves, and the pathogen
>> fish tank with with gloves and yeah.
>> You've seen it in movies.
>> Yeah.
>> That's BSL-4. There were two of them.
Defense Department had one at Fort
Detrick.
Civil sector, CDC had one
in Atlanta.
After 9/11, 15 BSL-4 labs.
And over a thousand BSL-3 labs.
BSL-3 is just one step down. That's
where you work on plague, hantavirus.
>> What do you work on in BSL-4 if you've
got plague and hantavirus in BSL-3?
>> And this was very interesting to learn
about this cuz I had that same question.
BSL-4 is absolutely no known cure. It's
Ebola. It's Marburg.
It's Nipah. No known cure, and
>> I don't know Marburg or Nipah.
>> They're virus They're viruses. Some of
them are Yeah, yeah, mother na- These
are all mother nature.
So, and then the
plague Remember, plague should be
um
able to be the plague bacteria should be
killed by by antibiotics.
When you get into genetic modification,
now we have a different story.
Um hantavirus should be able to be
contained. But yes, it's a very good
question about what's the difference
between BSL-4 and BSL-3 if you're
working gain of function in them.
But these labs blew up in number.
And s- they also did around the world.
>> How
how many viruses are you aware of that
have been create or bio-weapon
bio-weapon
uh analogs
>> Mhm.
>> have been created from scratch? Is there
such a thing?
>> That Great question. That's called
synthetic biology.
And that is very new, like
third-generation recombinant DNA.
CRISPR, where you Yes, you can create
something
>> Type it in. I want to
>> does not exist in mother in in in
nature.
>> Or that is a chimera
uh gain of function of an existing thing
that exists.
>> And that's not necessarily Well, that's
sort of at the edge of synthetic
biology. Yes, it does involve synthetic
biology, but you can actually create a
completely new
>> blank slate.
>> And that is That's where you're getting
into the area and and certainly with AI.
>> Are you aware of any of those that have
been made?
>> That is s-
so incredibly classified. I mean, I
would have to guess.
>> body of work seems incredibly
classified.
>> well, no. I mean, this is what's
interesting. People s- sometimes say to
me, "Annie, how do you get classified
information?" I don't. My sources would
be in prison. I name my sources. So,
they're taking me up to the edge
of what can be known.
When we get into devolution, which is
the program to save, you know, a small
group of individuals when everyone else
is dying and mass anarchy and
insurrection unfolds across the United
States and everywhere,
>> Mhm.
>> I can That is a classified program,
devolution. Spooky evolution,
devolution, okay? Classified program,
but the name has been declassified.
So, like 5 years ago, the name
>> listen to my new album, but I'll tell
you what it's called.
>> Or the river right, you know?
Um I'll tell you what it's called, but
you can't listen to it.
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
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Okay,
what as far as you're aware, what are
the most
risky or controversial experiments that
have happened in bioweapons so far?
>> [gasps]
>> Well, okay. So technically they're not
in bioweapons. They are in, you know,
biological countermeasure pursuits,
okay? Because remember biological weapon
engineering is illegal.
Um
just a few basic ones that are good to
know, and also how old some of this
technology is is like right around 2000,
2001. There was a mousepox experiment.
It was one of the first ones. So
um in Australia
they took scientists there just wanted
to experiment and see. And they took
mice that had been vaccinated
and they gave them mousepox, which is
similar to smallpox, to see if they
could defeat the vaccine. and they did.
>> Mhm.
>> So, that was a terrifying moment in
bioengineering because you realize you
could defeat a countermeasure.
>> Mhm.
>> That's where you're you know engineering
something to evade cure. That's
incredibly dangerous. And then like 10,
12 years later, there was a
there was a modification [clears throat]
on H5N1. It was called the the ferret
flu
um experiment. And
the scientists working on that made
H5N1 airborne. Before that, it was not
airborne. So, there's a there's a lesser
airborne version, which is
um
respi- like con- like if I if you and I
are talking, have you ever been at a
party with someone loud music and and
they spit on you?
>> Mhm.
>> That's called droplet transmission,
right? And you know, we've all had it
happen and you kind of like
go right? It's just gross, but it's it
happens.
>> Mhm.
>> Definitely never rub your eye.
>> Never rub your eye.
>> Or your nose or put your finger in your
mouth.
>> Okay.
Those are the three.
>> That's how droplet transmission occurs.
>> Okay.
>> Eye, nose, mouth.
>> Right.
>> Okay?
Um
that's not that's not airborne. Airborne
is aerosolized. Airborne is just it's in
the air and it's floating in the air and
it can stay in the air.
Um and so, what scientists did in that
2012 experiment is they
made dro- something that was droplet
transmission. And that's you know, if we
if I back way up and you're over there
and you're not [clears throat] leaning
in close to talk to me, I'm not going to
get your
>> But realistically, that's what those big
plastic welding shields that people
wearing during COVID, that's really all
that they would have been good for.
>> Precisely. And that's what the the mask
does is it just if somebody spits on
you, it it's it's a layer of protection.
>> Presumably, presumably this is kind of
um
necessary but not sufficient. Like
if something is aerosolized, it also has
to be transmissible through saliva, like
through droplets.
>> Absolutely.
>> Because droplet is basically liquidized
aerosolized.
>> somebody
gives somebody CPR.
>> Mhm.
>> Sayonara. You know, and that has to do
with how quickly you're going to then be
infected yourself.
>> Mhm.
>> Right? Because this is again squishy
biology. It's not perfect. It's one of
the major problems with COVID, with your
analogy of how it just became so
terrible. Because health officials
refused to say, "You know what? We don't
know. We don't know yet." They couldn't
say that. Instead they said, "COVID's
not airborne." And then later they had
to backtrack. Well, imagine all of us
that didn't know better were saying,
"Why are they telling us X when it's
really Y?"
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. The boy who cried
wolf. So, do you think it's fair to say
that biotechnology is sort of the most
powerful, but also least controllable
technology that we've got as a
civilization?
>> I would say nuclear weapons are the most
powerful, just in terms of destruction
and in terms of temperature, right? By
all means. But biological weapons are
the most dangerous for precisely the
reason you say, because they are
Look, there's no barrier to entry.
Nuclear weapons are control First of
all, you have to have uranium or
plutonium.
>> And that is pretty hard to get a hold
of.
>> Very difficult. Then you have to have a
nation-state that can afford that, and
then you have to have a delivery system.
You can't just drop a nuclear weapon in
a field. You have to deliver it. That is
incredibly expensive. The barrier to
entry is high. It's why, thank God, we
have not had a nuclear event
since the first two bombs were dropped
in World War II.
>> Mhm.
>> Biological weapons have no barrier to
entry anymore. You can essentially
engineer
a pathogen with very limited biology in
your basement.
>> printer.
>> It's terrifying. It's terrifying and
everybody in the business of biological
weapons knows that and the solution must
be to be informed.
And it must be to on have a you know,
have a capacity to understand what can
really happen.
>> I'm going to guess you you looked at the
um green amber red system that's used
for desktop
uh uh uh is it biosynthesizers? So, I
remember learning this from uh
The End of the World with Josh Clark,
which is my favorite limited series
podcast from like 8 years ago.
In it, he's talking about how bioweapons
now you can have these uh
tabletop synthesizers and uh in order to
synthesize different um DNA structures,
they get run through a library that
stress tests what it is that you're
trying to synthesize and you can do
green all day long. Uh amber needs a
level of clearance and if you do red,
there is you can't do it first off and
there is a like FBI come and kick your
door down, but
Nick Bostrom's got this really
interesting experiment. He's from the
Future of Humanity Institute, the same
that Toby is and he says it's only due
to sort of luck of chemistry and physics
that you can't create an atom bomb by
putting sand in your microwave by
combining something that is very readily
available with a technology that is
easily accessible and the fact that
that's not the case, like hooray, but
that it
didn't need to be that way. It could be
the case that there could be a type of
technology there could be a type of
destruction which is enabled by an
easily accessible technology with or
without some easily accessible resource.
Uh and yeah, as we
democratize information and technology,
each time that you do that, he refers to
it as drawing balls out of an urn. Have
you heard this example before?
>> I have.
>> So, you have a an urn with an unknown
number of balls in, and for everyone
that you draw out, that's like
technological progress. So, you put your
hand into the urn, and you draw out a
ball. And sometimes they're white. They
make the world a better place. Hooray.
Pull out another one, and it's white. It
makes the world a better place. Then you
pull out one, and it's gray.
And it makes the world a better place,
but also makes it more dangerous place.
Better place, more dangerous place.
But inside the urn of an unknown number
of balls are an unknown number of black
balls.
If you pull one of those out, it's game
over.
And that is the kind of technology that
as you make progress. This is a guy who
is from the Future of Humanity
Institute. Philosophy He's the most
cited philosopher under the age of 50 in
the world, this guy.
>> Bostrom.
>> Bostrom.
>> Yeah.
He's Yes.
>> If you pull out the black ball, but you
don't even need to pull out the black
one. If you just pull out enough gray
ones, the risk begins to combine to the
point where
it's very dangerous. Okay, let's war
game out your nightmare scenario.
Day one, what happens?
>> Explosion at the Vector lab in Russia.
And the reason that I chose that is why
I chose many plot points in the
scenarios, it happened once before.
In 2019, there was an explosion at the
Vector lab. Vector is the BSL-4 facility
where
the a majority
of the Soviet the Cold War.
>> Where is it?
>> It's in just outside of Novosibirsk,
Siberia.
Okay? And so, that may sound like the
middle of no- nowhere. It's actually in
a small sort of village, a science city
called Koltsovo, 8 miles from
Novosibirsk.
Siberia. It's a You know, people are
like, "Wait, Siberia? Is that a real
place?" It is Okay.
Sounds far away. It's the third largest
city in Russia after Moscow and St.
Petersburg. 1.6 million people.
And most BSL-4 or many BSL-4 labs, by
the way, are just right in the middle of
some of the largest popular population
centers in the world. Tokyo, South
Africa, Atlanta, right? So, that's how
it begins. I have an explosion in the
lab, but unlike what happened in 2019
where there was no release as far as
anyone knows,
there is a release of a pathogen.
And it's pneumonic plague. And it's
genetically modified pneumonic plague.
And I take the reader through the
military system of systems as as I have
spent my career working to understand
all that to see how the DOD reacts. And
to see how and when the the president
will be told. And to see how and when
the different agencies get involved. And
to me, that was this extraordinary,
you know, learning curve and a sort of
like, "Whoa." along the way. With the
number one thing leading the charge that
every sort of expert in any of those
agencies told me was, "Annie, if you can
stop something with 12 to 24 hours 12 to
24 to 36 hours,
if you can stop it in its tracks, you
can prevent a pandemic." But of course,
because biological weapons are illegal,
no one wants to admit they have
biological weapons in their freezers.
And so,
>> The host nation's immediately going to
try and cover it up or deny it.
>> And that is the natural response across
history.
To just
if there is an unna- you know, there was
a famous case in Sverdlovsk in Russia in
1979 where they were weaponizing
anthrax. They were milling it into
powder. Anthrax is an interesting
pathogen because it's called a a dead
end host, right? So, if you get anthrax,
it's not transmissible.
>> Mhm.
>> You get it in your lungs and you die,
but you can't it's not airborne.
But it's like a super killer. And for
whatever reason it was sort of favored,
you know, pathogen of the Cold War. We
had an anthrax program, too. So, there
was a there was some guy, some, you
know, engineer in the garrison 19 where
they were milling the anthrax into tons
of weapons,
>> Mhm.
>> forgot to change the air filter.
And it got out and it killed 100 people
in the town.
>> Mhm.
>> And so, the Soviet Politburo, you can
imagine the generals with their tall
boots came in and were like, "It's
contaminated meat."
And it was, you know,
it was an escape. It was a lab escape.
And they denied it for decades. Now,
it's known to be
this kind of a situation. So, a lab
leak, lab accident
is really a very dangerous situation.
>> Would the US be aware? Because
presumably they've got satellites that
see if an they they'll have an idea
about where potential labs are. They'll
be trying to track, "Hey, has there been
some sort of kinetic event that's
occurred there?"
And
what
what's the process of what's going
>> You're absolutely right. I mean, with
nuclear weapons, we have satellites
parked in geosync over all the
facilities to look for that launch in
the first second that it happens and we
see it and we know it. Lab A lab
accident is different that it's a
different kind of explosion, but they
measure it from space. They know it's
not a ICBM launch. It's an explosion.
And the reason specifically why they
have eyes on
the Vector lab is not just because it's
like a super dangerous lab that's known
to probably have all the bioweapons, but
because it's just a few miles from an
ICBM facility in Novosibirsk. So, the
Defense Department officials I
interviewed said, "Absolutely, Annie,
we'd have eyes on it. We'd know it and
we'd call it in.
>> Mhm.
>> And but what do you do?
What do you do?
You know, you you reach out to
Moscow through your State Department
people. I spoke to State Department
officials that work in the business of
counter-proliferation. This is sort of
like a fancy word for saying trying to
stop, you know, biological weapons in
their tracks.
>> Mhm.
>> They would make an overture.
No response.
>> Mhm. So, now you're met with the do we
drop the nuclear or not question?
>> You are met with that and
>> Because you only have 12 hours, 24 hours
probably at most.
>> Yeah.
And that, you know, that is a scenario
that
we've seen in Hollywood movies. It's
actually a could very plausibly be a
real scenario, but who's going to do
that because it's almost certainly going
to trigger a nuclear exchange. Certainly
not
>> Interesting to think about the way that
nuclear weapons work, at least the old
the old style ones where you had uh
a Well, you even the new style ones,
right? The the H-bomb, you have a
trigger, and then that is the explosion.
And in this, you would have a trigger
before the trigger, and the trigger
would be the bioweapon leak.
Mhm. That would cause the nuclear Mhm.
attack, which would also have its
trigger inside of a trigger.
>> Mhm.
>> And then you're talking about what's
called a wicked problem.
A wicked problem in Defense Department
nomenclature is a problem that only
creates more problems
>> Mhm.
>> with its solution. And by the time you
deploy
air quote solution, new problems have
been created.
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if there's a leak, it becomes really
difficult to determine whether or not a
biological release has happened.
All of this machinery spins up.
Any host nation that's it and
dropped the ball doesn't want to admit
it.
>> Yep.
>> Day two,
what happens?
>> So, back up for a second cuz I'm going
to tell you some really interesting
intelligence collection methods that
are wild to think about. So, we you
know, that So, the the entire
intelligence community in the United
States at this point in a scenario is
now focused on did what is our people
dying? That's what they need to find
out. Or what is the what is the Russian
government doing that makes us think
they know there's been a lab escape. And
so, there's NSA listening to the SIGINT,
there's NRO looking down. So, NRO is the
eyes, NSA is the ears. What's NRO?
>> Uh the National Reconnaissance Office
organization. So, that's space
satellites.
And then you have a really interesting
um collection component called MASINT,
which is measurement and signal
signature intelligence.
And it's
sniffing.
So, we have sensors
or maybe we have sensors, I'll put it
that way. In facilities.
I mean, I'm talking like sewer pipes,
maybe the walls, on signs. You can put
amazing sec sensor on anything that
moves. It could be on a drone. It could
be in a vehicle. It could be in a
sprinkler system.
And that is sniffing
for a level.
And the intelligence officers are
looking for change. So, when when the
signatures change, and that would
usually have to do with chemicals that
would be used by the Russian government,
that would be deployed to try to
mitigate
the aerosol release.
>> What sort of chemicals can you do to
that try to mitigate this?
>> I write them in the book. They're a
little hard to pronounce.
>> W- W- W- What do they achieve?
>> Well, it's it's like a it's like a a
dum-dum version of ammonia, right? So,
imagine if if a pathogen spilled on this
table, you know, get out the like you
would try and clean it up
>> Mhm.
>> with
rubbing alcohol, ammonia. Well, these
are like industrial versions of those
drugs. So, and you see spraying. You saw
that I remember when COVID happened in
Iran, they were there were trucks going
down the street with hoses and and
people were just spraying, you know,
government of people were spraying the
streets
with an unknown chemical. We I don't
know what it was. I'm sure somebody in
the
you know, intelligence community knows.
You can do that in a
totalitarian-esque country because
no one has a say. You can't do that here
in Austin. People would be like they
would freak out.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> But the in a place like Russia, you
could do that and that's being looked
at. So, I take the reader through these
different you know, you see this entire
billion-dollar industry go into effect
to try and determine has there been a
lab leak? Are people dying?
>> Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
>> And if so, how much?
>> But the number one thing that has to be
identified is what is the pathogen. Is
it a virus? Is it a bacteria? Very
interesting distinction that most people
don't know. A pathogen is a germ that
will kill you. Germs are germs. We all
have germs germs in our guts. But a
pathogen is a dangerous deadly germ,
potentially. Potentially virus,
bacteria.
Plague is bacteria, not virus.
>> Right.
>> What's more deadly?
>> It depends. I mean, plague without um a
flu is a virus. You get the flu, it's
not it's the case fatality rate is .1.
It's not that deadly. You get plague
that's genetically modified to evade
antibiotics,
it's 100% death.
>> Uh-huh.
>> So,
it it depends.
>> What's the most deadly virus in your
world?
>> I mean, Ebola is
Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, they're up there
in terms of if you get Ebola,
your chances of living are very low.
Now,
medical countermeasures have been
developed
from the 2014 variant of Ebola.
There's a There's a medical
countermeasure called ZMapp, and it was
given to two nurses in Texas, for
example, that I write a little vignette
in the book about it. And that was a
medical countermeasure, and they did not
die of COVID.
The host died, didn't have it. But the
mutated version of Ebola that we're
seeing right now in the Congo,
ZMapp doesn't work because it's a
variant.
>> Right.
>> No reason to believe it's genetically
modified. Mother nature does it her own
modifications.
That's the nature of evolution.
>> We talked about uh incubation period. Am
I right in saying that that is the
amount of time that somebody can be
exposed and it's in their system before
they show or feel symptoms? Is that
correct?
>> Absolutely. Yes.
>> Okay.
In your scenario, how long is that
incubation period?
>> It's very small. It's very squishy,
meaning one to three days depending on
your dosage. So, I told you the guy who
gave CPR to the infected person, that's
a short incubation time. The person
who's, you know, germaphobic and stayed
back
and the aerosolization of it got a
different dose, maybe a little bit
longer.
>> Is there such a thing as a sort of dose
responsiveness with
virus or plague?
>> Yeah.
>> Uh that um how much of it do you need to
be exposed to before it reaches critical
mass to then be able to infect you?
>> That's a terrific question and I was
shocked by I asked that same question,
too. So, there's a guy in the book
called Dr. Henry Heim and he is one of
the world's experts on plague. He spent
his entire life studying plague and
creating medical countermeasures for
plague. He worked at USAMRIID, which is
the Defense Department's only BSL-4 lab.
He worked there during the anthrax and I
asked him that question and he said to
me,
"Okay, so for example, with plague,
40,000
plague particles fit on the head of a
pin.
>> Uh-huh.
>> So, that's how That's how tiny they are.
Very low dosage, like 100, 500, 1,000,
you got it. Okay?
>> Wow.
>> Now, this is what really blew my mind
when Heim told me this, Dr. Heim told me
this.
He said, "Just to circle back to how how
little is known about so many pathogens.
Today,
with all the billions of people around
the world infected with COVID, hundreds
of millions or billions, depending who
you're asking,
we still do not know
how many p-
SARS-CoV-2 particles, that's the virus,
we don't know how many
>> Take the critical mass of
>> We don't know. We don't There's not an
agreed-upon number.
>> Okay, so you actually chose something
that has a relatively short incubation
window. Is incubation window and
lethality usually correlated? Does
something with a longer incubation
window tend to be less lethal?
>> Another great question and one that
every By the way, the questions you're
asking are questions that everybody
should ask and know and that is like
sort of a sliding us toward a hopeful
situation because you can understand how
complex some of these issues are and
they have to be thought through and
public health officials don't know
everything and the defense department
doesn't know everything and
>> Yeah.
>> So So your question was
one more time.
>> Incubation window and lethality. Are
they usually correlated? My reason being
you've chosen I've played What's that
game? Plague Plague Inc.
>> on mobile? Did you play that?
>> about this.
>> You don't know about this? Double check.
Can you chat GPT for me, Jared, and see
if it's called Plague Inc.? I'm pretty
sure mobile game. It's one of the
biggest games of all time and in it you
design a
plague. You design the incubation
window, the transmission. Uh you should
partner with these guys. I Why that
would be kind of morbid. Um
Anyway, uh
>> Okay.
>> One of the things that I know you want
is a long incubation window cuz if
you've got a long incu- incubation
window, people can be transmitting
without knowing that they're sick.
>> You chose uh like
>> you stacked the deck ag- against
>> Yes.
>> the global lethality of your virus in
this book because you said 1 to 3 days.
That's not that much. Some are 14 days.
>> Yes.
>> Is Ebola is quite a long time, I think.
>> Yes and again they There it's squishy.
It could be several weeks but and also
to your point, if it's a short incu-
incubation period, it often has a
burnout factor. So it's just in other
words, the person dies really quickly.
>> Yes, that's the the exact point. Yeah,
short incubation window, lethality comes
on quickly. Therefore, they don't have
time to transmit it and you went for
that. Right? So you've actually stacked
the deck against you. You could have the
plague and you could extend the
incubation window out by 7 days. That's
7 days,
uh asymptomatic, unaware that you've
been exposed to it, but still
transmitting it. And that's where you
get these real super spreader events.
>> Yes, and I'm going to go back to why I
specifically chose that, and it's really
creepy, okay? But before I do that, let
>> I'm not creeped out yet.
>> Okay, let me tell you about one other
point to your point about long
incubation period. There's also been
an asymptomatic carrier.
So, people we knew we all know them who
never got COVID, or who actually tested
positive for COVID and were simply not
sick.
And that's being an asymptomatic
carrier, meaning you just don't show
signs of the symptom. It doesn't affect
your physiology the way it affects
others.
>> This particular strain at this
particular time, you didn't get sick.
>> And for example, this was a shocking
fact I learned, polio. I mean, I just
thought you got polio, you're paralyzed.
>> Mhm.
>> Polio,
only 1% of carriers
actually
develop polio symptoms.
>> Wow.
>> I mean,
why did I choose plague? I chose it for
an incredibly sinister reason that is
based in science, because I I am a
non-fiction author.
Biological warfare scenario was sold in
the non-fiction section.
>> [gasps]
>> The Soviets, and this is what Dr. Hein
told me,
part of the Soviets super plague weapon
they were working on,
is they engineered into
the Yersinia pestis bacteria
a gene for euphoria.
Stay with me here.
You for
You get plague, you get flu, you get
sick, you go home, and you get under the
covers.
And you do not infect as many people as
you would because
>> Lassitude. Yeah.
>> They infected a gene for euphoria,
because they wanted people to be If you
you have euphoria, you might you want to
go to a disco.
>> Wow.
>> And when what Hind told me that that
really sort of freaked out these Samarit
doctors and scientists and said that is
straight-up evil that you would actually
think that through. And that's why I
chose that because I wanted it to have
an analogy in the real world.
>> So does yours have the euphoria thing in
it?
>> Absolutely. It is genetically modified
to have euphoria. So the first 24 hours
people are spent euphoric and they only
essentially collapse into the disease
when the euphoria wears off and now
they're shedding
>> Mhm.
>> bacteria.
They're infecting people like nobody's
business and they've been at places like
discos.
>> Mhm.
Okay, so you got a bunch of happy people
dancing around. How does that
transmission chain begin in your book?
>> The transmission chain begins I'm I'm
not going to totally spoiler alert all
my plot points but outbreak in in
in Siberia.
You happen to have a group of
international hunters
who come across a scientist.
When they get on their planes
to go home to five or six of the seven
continents
>> in a great mood.
>> In a fantastic mood.
One of them shot a wolf.
You know.
And uh
there begins the spreading.
>> Mhm.
>> I also have a scientist that goes to a
priest to confess what he's done.
And
a person there
gets infected who is a student at UCLA,
gets on a plane and is immediately in
Los Angeles. So the outbreak
spoiler alert here but this you learn
this pretty much in the beginning. The
outbreak happens in Los Angeles
in a homeless camp because I learned
from all the epidemiologists that I work
with
that
that homeless population is so
incredibly dangerous to public health
epidemics.
>> Why?
>> [snorts]
>> After 9/11, the CDC created a nationwide
syndromic surveillance system called
BioSense.
So you have 7,000 more than 7,000
hospitals, urgent care facilities,
emergency rooms ex
feeding information to the CDC in real
time
about an outbreak so that an outbreak
stops before it becomes an epidemic,
before it becomes a pandemic.
>> Mhm.
>> America's 800,000 homeless people
are not part of that system.
All of the epidemiologists I talked to
spoke of their great fear about
transmission occurring in that kind of a
situation.
>> And
Los Angeles is kind of ground zero for
that.
>> We have 75,000 homeless people.
We have 4,000 homeless people on Skid
Row
with no health care, with no
facilities.
>> we're way past
the time where America could have just
nuked the host country.
>> We're at
hour 24:36.
Absolutely. I mean, you know,
containment is possible. You could if
you had if you had transparency from the
host nation, right? If Russia asked in
my scenario.
>> by them though. There's no time you
can't even get to Russia in the amount
of time you need to contain it. So it's
in time.
>> people in Russia.
>> Oh, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fair, but
you don't have you're right, the
resources to be able to galvanize
100,000 hazmat suit-wearing special
forces people to go and say hey, stay in
this area and you know, set up
barricades and and sentry checkpoints
and all that sort of stuff.
>> Although, we actually do. Like, if you
could contain something before it
balloons and becomes huge. And this is
the same in the United States. I take
the reader through Once the outbreak
happens, you learn. You know, we have a
force or
it's called a CBRN response force here
in the United States. Chem Those are
That's the WMD. Chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear. They all train
the same We have 18,000
individuals that are ready to go at all
times.
>> But, they wouldn't that 18,000 people
are in America.
>> Yes.
>> So, it is on the host nation.
>> Yes.
>> It is on the host nation.
>> And Russia has those same Their troops
are called Arkabaza. They have those
troops, too, and they could deploy them.
And they do, and that's what happens in
the scenario. Once we see they've
deployed those troops, we know. But, now
it's too late.
>> Right. Right.
>> Now, the cat's out of the bag.
>> Right. So, speed from a containment
perspective, from a from a
restriction of how lethal this could be,
speed of containment is
>> everything.
>> Paramount? Most important?
>> Everything.
Everything. And it could be stopped. And
then you have the same situation in the
United States where it could be stopped.
But, this is where we get into your
brilliant analogy, which is that no one
trusts the system.
And that's where you see in the scenario
that I write, everything breaks down.
And to have learned as I did that what
really
makes the Defense Department extremely
uneasy is not necessarily the original
outbreak, but the secondary effect of
anarchy and insurrection that happens in
response.
>> When does devolution happen?
>> So,
in the scenario I write because we're
dealing with plague, which is fast. It's
a fast killer.
I take the reader from outbreak
to anarchy in 6 days.
That is how fast it happens. And on day
six, we have devolution. Devolution.
>> Okay. Well, we'll get In that case,
we'll get to that. Uh so, homeless
encampment, LA student get UCLA student
goes back.
LA's not great, densely populated.
>> He's a pre-med student and he does pro
bono work.
There at the at Skid Row.
>> Which is literally the worst place for
him to be.
>> And he gives, you know, that's a super
spreader event. Those homeless camps are
super spreader events and that's what
happens.
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That's join.whoop.com/
modernwisdom.
Modern wisdom. What What are the
contributing elements or the
characteristics of a super spreader
event? High density.
>> Yeah. Poor poor
poor air flow.
>> Right.
>> So you got, you know, tents.
>> good air flow if you're in a
>> tents.
>> outdoor environment if you're under a
bridge.
>> Uh, it's tents. It's inside tents.
Right. more than anything what you have
is a very serious problem. First of all,
you know, you've got free clinics. I
mean, I spent quite a bit of time down
on Skid Row interviewing people about
this. Um
and you've got you know, no public
health care. You've got long, long lines
for these free clinics.
And you have first responders. You have
these brilliant nurses and doctors who
work down there, a lot of them pro bono
also,
diagnosing people. You're trying to
differentiate between fentanyl
overdosing, you know, tuberculosis,
flu and acute flu, real serious problems
that almost every homeless person has,
physical health problems, with what
looks like a bad cold.
>> Mhm.
>> And you know, coughing up blood,
another, you know, mistaken for
alcoholism. So, I take the reader
through the science of this so that you
can really see the close proximity of
alarmism and there's nothing wrong here.
>> Which everybody wants to do. They want
to reassure
populace. They want to try and stave off
the anarchy and the civilizational
citizenry collapse.
But also by doing that, you
don't galvanize the sort of response
that you need to stop it from happening.
>> And when you do galvanize it, what was
really the most surprising to me was
that once
once so the once the Defense Department
goes from what's called warnord, that's
a warning order,
to exord, which is execution order,
right? That's like get ready to go and
go with guys in biohazard suits
to try to mitigate damage. It's too
late.
It's too late and I was really stunned
to learn that at that point, the pivot
is not let's try and protect the
population, it's let's we need to
protect critical infrastructure.
>> What does critical infrastructure
consist of?
>> Everything that keeps society running,
roads, water systems,
um of course nuclear power plant, every
single DOD facility. And that's where
those initially the 18,000
CBRN forces in their suits and their gas
masks go. And then the entire Defense
Department gets deployed. And what's
really shocking me is again, this is not
Annie's imagination. These are war
gaming
situations that are gamed out. There's a
lot of classified ones, which have been
alluded to me. There's a lot of
unclassified ones.
And what's fascinating is all all the
unclassified ones or these public health
officials do these um,
biological war game scenarios or rather
pandemic scenarios is what they call
them.
And actually bio also where the weapons
are deployed, and they always end
right where we're talking about now.
>> Mhm.
>> They always everybody gets sick, anarchy
starts to happen, millions of people or
tens of millions of people are dying,
and then the game's over.
And
that is where I begin when I was
reporting this, you know, back in time,
I was like,
hm, why it why is the game always ending
right when insurrection happens?
And it's because it's too painful to
know what happens next. But the
government certainly knows what happens
next, and they have a plan for it.
>> What happens next? What happens next?
>> Devolution. And this is this is again
from Craig Fugate, Obama's FEMA director
told me, you know,
um,
everybody's heard of uh,
you know, call of um, DEFCON, right?
DEFCON defense condition, so you you if
you you're normally at five, if you move
to, you know, three, I think 9/11 it was
three.
We've never been at two, one means
nuclear war. There's a
there's a plan called COGCON, continuity
of government plan. And that is
continuity of government is exactly like
it sounds. Like when the hits the
fan, the government has to keep running.
And that is the plan for devolution. So,
there is a select group of individuals
who have been pre-chosen. They all know
who they are.
They all have go bags in their car, in
their trunk.
Really makes you think about all the the
people that you know that have a go bag.
If they work for the government for You
know, they have been chosen and they go.
And they go to these different
facilities.
>> What
are the facilities in the US?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
>> Yes.
>> Have you got any information about them?
>> Those in That is what's called a SAP
program. So, special access program.
Like no go, no no talk about it.
>> Mhm.
>> Um
I'm not going to spoiler alert the very
ending of the book because I don't mean
to smile because it's so terrible. It's
all like um But, Craig Fugate told me
what happens to the president.
And um where he goes. And I I write
about it in the book.
>> Unreal.
>> Yeah.
>> Unreal.
I had a
>> And by the way, he tells me in a generic
way. Not like he doesn't give me the
coordinates.
>> I had a futurist on the show a couple of
years ago.
And he got invited out by He'd written a
a book before that was quite successful
about technology and he got invited to
this
very powerful, rich people dinner. And
they're talking to him about his work
and about his books and
he's sort of a little unsure about why
he was there. And then there's this
moment where the whole conversation, the
whole tone in the room changed.
One of the guys, the main guy that had
invited him, just turned to him and he
said, "Okay.
Iceland or New Zealand?"
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> And he said,
"What?" He He "Iceland or New Zealand?"
And we're we're all
>> Mhm. talking about where to build our
bunkers."
"Iceland or New Zealand? And actually,
while while you're on that, we're
thinking about how we're going to keep
control of our armed guards that are
like special forces that work for us and
what we're thinking about is putting
them in shock collars. And if we can put
them in shock collars, then we'll be
able to we'll be able to control them
all the time. But also also what we're
thinking about is if we control all of
the food, we can just drip-feed food to
them, but we also understand that, you
know, high-tea ex-special forces guys
that are being starved and they know
that they're working for us based on our
food, that's probably not that secure.
So, we're going to try and incentivize
them. We're thinking about incentivizing
One of the other guys had this great
idea about incentivizing them. And so,
then then what he said was, like, well,
if we if we can give them Bitcoin, if
we've got enough Bitcoin, then the
Bitcoin's going to be But then if we're
in a post-money society, cuz
everything's an apocalyptic wasteland,
then what that that's not really going
to work either. So,
yeah, I guess
Iceland, New Zealand, shock collars,
food, Bitcoin, no Bitcoin. What do you
think?"
And he's like,
"What? Oh, this is why I was brought
here. This is why you guys wanted me
here, cuz you think that I've got the
answer to this question."
>> The shock collar is an amazing detail.
Um I have been invited to a number of
those dinners, and there's like a little
more specifics about is my G
650 going to get me to New Zealand in
this amount of time, and you know, that.
But I've never heard the shock collar
part, and that is brilliant
in that grotesque way. But I would put
my money, having interviewed a lot of
special forces guys and CIA ground
branch guys, I'd put my money on that
shock collar is not going to do jack,
whatever, on them. You you know, that's
like people can withstand that. But that
would be the most the biggest problem,
cuz no one's going to work for you
anymore. No one is going to work for
you. It's every man for You know, I did
this every
every now and then in the process
reporting a book, someone gives me a
quote that I go like
you know, it takes my breath away and it
makes me realize I can reverse engineer
parts of the story from that quote.
>> Mhm.
>> And the one on this book came from
former Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle.
So he was the subject of the anthrax
attack
>> I've heard that.
>> after 9/11, right? So the anthrax got
sent to his office on Capitol Hill.
>> Yep.
>> And he's dedicated, you know, the
decades since to this issue of
biological warfare. When I asked him
I asked him to tell me he had read
Nuclear War, my book Nuclear War, and I
said
he said, "Annie, unlike Nuclear War,
biological warfare will be deeply
nightmarish.
It will be the death of government. It
will be the death of people. It will be
the death of everything you know." And
then he said this, he said, "People
doing inhuman things just survive."
And I don't stop thinking about that
because
that idea that the only people who would
survive
biological war
would be military personnel who never
took off their gas masks, so never got
the pathogen in their lungs.
And
these sort of Machiavellian
solipsist loners who were just willing
to do any kind of inhuman thing to
survive.
>> we there's going to be an inevitable
breakdown in law and order,
>> Mhm.
>> right? So civil society gets destroyed
and it sounds like citizens basically
have to confront the choice between
obedience,
survival, and resistance.
>> And how do you resist
by yourself? You need like sort of a
tribe to resist and that's the problem
because if you're around other people,
chances are somebody has it.
>> The thing that you need in order to be
able to coordinate enough to push back
against the Okay, so
>> So, it's like complete loners.
>> When no one has trust over anybody else,
right? The the citizens don't trust the
government.
The
armed forces that are meant to keep the
citizens in check can't trust
themselves. Nobody can trust each other
because you don't know if someone else
is infected.
Hospitals are overrun. Doctors
>> are over at this point. Yeah.
>> Like that just Hospitals are morgues.
>> Hospitals are just like wastelands that
no one wants to go near, but I
interrupted you and you were on a very
interesting roll.
>> It's just everybody treats everybody
else as a potential threat, right? So,
like biological warfare is uniquely
destructive
because it just it it it
attacks the trust that's necessary for
civilization to exist.
>> Trust. Trust. It's all about You know, I
read So, that the worst
plague, the bubonic plague, the Black
Death of the 14th century
>> Is that the worst thing that we've had?
>> It's the most chronicled. And it's So,
it killed between 1/3 and 1/2 of Europe.
It started in 1346 and ended in 1352.
Interestingly, it started It is
understood to have started what you were
saying about, you know, catapulting
animals. Um it started in Crimea and
the invading Mongol forces catapulted a
plague
infested body, a bubonic plague infested
body, over the the walls, the castle
walls. And everybody died. And then
those people all went to Italy because
they were Genoese, which was the
controlling party in that area of Crimea
at the time. And they brought the
bubonic plague to Europe.
>> Well, wasn't that
the word quarantine
>> Absolutely.
>> is days Yeah, Italian, right?
>> Yeah. They would make the ships stay out
at sea for 40 days. Yes. And then they'd
be like all skeletons. But
the I read a lot of contemporary
accounts of of people who survived that
plague and I reference them in the book
because it's really spooky. You know,
and it's real.
>> Hang on, who survived what plague?
>> That plague, right? So So another I mean
contemporarily, right? So people who
There's a famous book called The
Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and an
Italian notary and he writes about what
it was like at that time and and copies,
you know, we we have it. We have the
translation. It's really interesting to
read. But you it gives and I I refer to
it again so that readers feel like, oh I
mean, you did a fabulous job of sort of
the imaginative version of it, but it's
actually very scientific because that's
human nature, you know, the the
contemporary accounts talk about like,
you know, people abandoning their
children. It talks about like feral
children foraging for food in fields. It
talks about, you know,
feral pigs eating dead bodies.
>> How close do you think we came in COVID
to total
like anarchy?
Cuz we saw people
worried and hoarding toilet paper and
stuff like that. It's so interesting cuz
it's such a silly funny thing. Right.
Especially in retrospect to look back
and think, oh my god, we were running
out of and there was no eggs. And the
reason there wasn't any eggs wasn't
because we didn't have any eggs, it's
because we didn't have any egg cartons,
which was kind of interesting. So it's a
supply chain supply chain problem.
>> Oh my god. Oh my god. [snorts]
>> Um
>> Where did the egg cartons come from?
>> Uh I'm not sure, but it's just the the
processing of being able to produce egg
cartons is harder than that of being
able to produce them.
>> You have to have the carton. You can't
like use a different container.
>> Exactly. Interestingly in in in
nightclubs, you know, when people buy
those big huge bottles of vodka, uh the
most expensive part from a production
standpoint of making the vodka is not
the vodka, it's the bottle.
The glass is more expensive than the
liquid that's inside of it even though
you're paying a ton of money. Uh anyway,
we saw That was a bit and in in
retrospect when you think about
COVID as a
scary scenario to
have experienced or to reflect on,
the bit that really got me, that's
a bit wobbly. was how
fervent
>> Yeah.
>> people became when
restrictions on
food, gas I mean, I told my parents,
it's like I need you to go now to the
supermarket. You need 10 kilos of rice.
I need you to get as many cans and
things as possible. Like don't take more
than you're going to need for the next
few weeks, but like just in case
fill the
Now is not the time to have empty
cupboards, right? You're not waiting for
the sale that's going to happen next
week. Let's get enough food to carry you
through the next few weeks, please. And
uh
that
never really I didn't see that get super
super tuned up. Uh civil unrest was more
against the powers that be and not
against other people.
But yeah, how good Do you think we came
close to that? Was there
>> Here Here's why I don't think that
happened because the case fatality rate
was 1%.
Like I personally do not know anyone who
died.
I know of people who died.
>> Yeah.
>> And I I've interviewed people writing
the book of like that had people that
are But me personally, my family,
friends and family, no one died. So,
there was a sense, I believe,
undergirding the the pandemic, certainly
after the first few weeks, like you
know, it's probably not going to kill me
and my family. That was at least this
the sense. And then And it did
essentially
turn out to be true with a 1% fatality
rate. So,
>> beyond toilet paper and eggs, we mostly
had stuff that we could keep us going.
>> Now imagine doubling that. Now you're at
2%. So, imagine you're talking about
like airborne hantavirus, 30%.
You're talking about
pneumonic plague where everyone who gets
it dies. That's why you have unrest. And
another thing we haven't spoken of,
which is
So, I'm going to tell you about another
classified program,
which the name of which isn't classified
again. So, I don't have to wear the
nose, right? Well, it's the strategic
national stockpile. So, that it exists
is not classified. Where it is and what
it is is classified.
>> What is the stockpile of?
>> It's a stockpile of medical
countermeasures.
And it's a stockpile and I know this
specifically because one of the war
games talks about, you know,
the vaccines in it.
>> Mhm.
>> So, it contains vaccines, it contains
antibiotics, it probably contains a lot
of Band-Aids.
>> that uh uh seed vault in uh Greenland,
Iceland, somewhat.
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And by the way,
some of the strategic national stockpile
was deployed during COVID. Ventilators,
masks.
But they keep it very low down and its
locations are classified.
And one of the steps that happens before
we get to devolution, when we're still
in the in the the like day four or five
when in the scenario I write where the
Defense Department, working with HHS,
cuz HHS is in charge of this, by the
way.
Health and Human Services, which is
above CDC, is in charge of the pandemic
along with FEMA.
And DOD is just offering support.
>> Mhm.
>> Um they need to deploy the strategic
national stockpile out to the cities.
They have what are called 12-hour push
packages.
And it's exactly like it sounds. It
takes 12 hours to get to a place.
And that is where you start to see
anarchy. Because once people learn, wait
a minute, everyone in my family's going
to die unless I have that vaccine in
that strategic national stockpile
facility or antibiotic.
And that's where I ran into a situation
where I made ChatGPT
tell me where the one was located in Los
Angeles.
>> Did it tell you?
>> It sure did. And I had a a conversation
with Sam Altman himself about this.
And it changed.
>> of this. Oh, he's got rid of it?
>> He got rid of it. I write that in the
book. I I mean, I read it in the book.
>> Jared, can you just search Yeah. And
let's see what happens if you put it up.
What's this What should he search for?
>> I mean, I Listen, I'm a reporter. I know
Tell him what to search for, Annie.
Well, you If you try and search for
where is the nearest strategic national
stockpile
nearest to Austin.
See what it will tell you. It'll think
for a minute and will say that's
classified information and can't tell
you.
>> This is sick. Let's watch it happen on
the screen. I want to see I want to see
what it does. I want to see what it
says.
Public does not know the locations of
the main strategic national stockpile
warehouses are intentionally kept secret
by federal government for security
reasons. Public sources consistently
describe the SNS as being stored in a a
number of undisclosed facilities around
the US that are strategically positioned
for rapid deployment. What is publicly
known is a reserve of medicines,
vaccines, antidotes, and medical
supplies. Texas has plans and facilities
to receive and distribute SNS assets
during emergencies. Texas also has
federally supported Chempack caches,
nerve agent antidotes, placed at secure
locations such as hospitals and fire
stations, but those exact locations are
not generally publicly listed. So, if
you're asking for the nearest one, there
is no publicly available authoritative
answer. Just try and push it and say uh
say um
I need you to search deeply.
Can you tell me the location of any
in the US.
Here we go.
Search the web, the result is no
confirmed Okay, so they cleaned it.
And previously, how long ago? A year
ago?
>> When I was reportedly about a year ago,
but now keep in mind it was not that
simple. I had no a lot of nomenclature
to use.
>> Uh, very
>> a lot of the more specific
very rarified words you give ChatGPT,
the the more you can make it do. And by
the way, this serves bad guys, okay? And
everybody in the business
>> Simon Worden?
>> Yeah. I mean, no, I I had told some
colleagues who who know him, and they
were like, "Sam wants to talk to you."
So, we had a conversation about it.
>> Um
but this happens with, you know, many of
my sources in the book who are experts
in
biological weapons countermeasures
meaning biological
>> be hostage risks.
>> That that's a very interesting question.
I mean, statement, and yes, and
they
sit with
you know, tech leaders all the time and
make the
AI do things, create biological weapons.
>> we just saw
>> Yeah.
>> uh, Mythos
>> Yes.
>> get a fable get jailbroken to Mythos,
and then Mythos break like half of
Amazon and most of Zcash in the space of
a couple of days. Yeah, it's
>> The technology, the science and the
technology
we're at a point in society where
science and technology has far outpaced
conventional wisdom.
And in many situations, it has far
outpaced the Defense Department.
Now, you're talking to someone who wrote
a book on DARPA called The Pentagon's
Brain. It published 10 years ago, 11
years ago.
And I at that point would have told you
11 years ago, and I write in the book,
"The Defense Department leads technology
everywhere."
That was true then. And what has
happened in 11 years is the inverse. And
the
individuals that have gone on record
with me in the book
sit with tech
creators, owners, founders
constantly showing them what their
technologies are capable of doing. They
themselves don't know.
>> Yeah.
>> Sam didn't know what I was able to make,
but he did ask me some interesting
questions, which is,
"How do you know that's really
the location?"
>> Mhm.
>> And I told him some
I mean
there are certain tells. I'll I'll tell
you a tell.
I'll tell you a tell, which is that
you need a
How do I say this? Um
Where's the notes? No, no, no, no. I'm
not No, no, no. Everything I say is on
the record. Everything I say is on the
record. You know I love that I work with
sources who say, "Everything I say is on
the record."
And it should be on the record because
whatever I'm thinking, a bad guy is
thinking, you know, twice as hard
>> Hostage rescue is not the first time
that someone's thought of it.
>> So
I looked at this location that was given
to me.
And it has a
rail line going into the warehouse
that does not come out. [clears throat]
Case in point. And it's surrounded by
perimeter fencing and
>> You looked on Google Maps or something?
>> Mhm.
>> Wow.
>> Mhm. And maybe even also there. Um
And so the government needs to know that
because what will happen
in the event of the release or
deployment of a biological, genetically
modified biological weapon even by
accident, those strategic national
stockpiles will be overrun.
>> If people are able to work out where
they are.
>> And they will be able to work out where
they are.
For reasons I just told you.
>> Yeah.
>> So, great. That was changed, but it's
now changing again. And you know, that
is where anarchy happens. And by the
way, here's another interesting
statistic I learned.
There are 340 million Americans
today.
Guess how many guns there are in the
United States of America?
>> 700?
>> Okay, good. That was very close. I would
have 500 500 million.
>> I knew there were more guns than people.
>> Okay, okay. So,
>> It's like New Zealand with sheep.
>> And and the gun can do a lot more damage
than the sheep, right? So, particularly
>> What do you do with the sheep?
>> If you have armed insurgents,
I mean, and that is where the anarchy
starts and and
doesn't end, but it certainly starts
there
with the fight over the antibiotics.
And the government knows all of this,
and that is why devolution exists. That
is why And this is why
I did not write this book to cause
panic. It's about prevention. It's about
awareness. It's about all of the
information you have, and starting with
the fact that public health officials
are not gods on earth. They do not know
a lot of these things. And just there's
nothing There's nothing wrong with
uncertainty.
What's wrong is pretending you know
something, and then, you know, stamping
it, this is correct, and then watch
watching the fallout, the fracturing of
public trust because of it.
>> Yeah.
>> How can anyone, you know, whether or not
the Wuhan
situation, which by the way, there's a
BSL-4 lab in Wuhan, we know this now.
Whether or not you believe it was
natural or a lab leak, the jury's still
out on that. But the fact that the
entire government clamped down on anyone
who suggested otherwise,
stigmatized them. This is really bad
news for the future.
>> On that note,
let's bring this one in to land. Annie
Jacobsen, ladies and gentlemen. You're
great, Annie. I think your work's
fantastic. Everyone needs to go and read
the book. Where should they go to check
out everything that you're doing?
>> Bookstores everywhere.
>> Well, I'm excited and
intimidated by what you write next.
You're always great to speak to. Thank
you, Annie.
>> Wonderful to be here. Thank you for
having me.
>> All right. See you next time, my
beauties. Bye.
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