Link: https://youtu.be/ZACmIrFbfPU

Duration: 135 min

Transcript: Download plain text

Short Summary

Investigative journalist and author Annie Jacobsen, who has written eight books based on more than 100 interviews with military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials, joins Joe Rogan to discuss her new book "Biological War." The wide-ranging conversation covers the COVID-19 lab-leak versus natural-spillover debate, Pentagon pandemic war games and continuity-of-government bunkers, the post-9/11 proliferation of BSL-4 labs, and emerging dangers from AI-enabled bioweapons, including a claim that ChatGPT was manipulated into revealing the location of a U.S. Strategic National Stockpile site.

Key Quotes

1. "Pneumonic plague, which I write about in biological war. Mother nature's pneumonic plague. 100 out of 100 die. 100% case fatality rate." (00:12:11)
2. "We now know that 1 in 10,000 cases of COVID was transmitted from a surface. How can they have gotten it so wrong is a question everybody should be asking." (01:21:31)
3. "in the event of a catastrophic biological incident, there is very little you can do to protect the homeland. Only things you can do to mitigate extermination of the human race." (02:58:58)
4. "I am actually listening to the new reality that the CEOs of these AI companies have more power to make decisions about technology than the def department of defense." (04:41:02)

Detailed Summary

Annie Jacobsen on "Biological War," COVID Origins, Pentagon War Games, and AI-Enabled Bioweapon Risks

Guest Background and Investigative Credentials

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist and the author of eight books, each built on more than 100 interviews with military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials covering every major American war since World War II. Her earlier books focused on Nazi scientists recruited into postwar America, the secret history of Area 51, and DARPA's "Pentagon's Brain" research portfolio, and she recently delivered a keynote speech in Hiroshima for the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing alongside Hibakusha survivors now 81 to 90+ years old.

• Jacobsen has briefed nonpartisan U.S. senators, cardinals at the Vatican, and diplomats at the United Nations, and the week before this conversation she visited the White House via the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a policy meeting.
• She was also invited to DARPA for a Q&A on her biography of the agency.
• Her new book, "Biological War," was narrated by her in audio and is a follow-up to "Nuclear War."
• Rogan noted his prior hosting experience on biological-warfare topics, including a 2013 episode of "Joe Rogan Questions Everything" in which his crew toured a CDC lab in Galveston with reinforced walls and personnel in full-body space suits.

Gain of Function Research and the Wuhan Lab Leak Debate

The conversation opens with a debate over gain-of-function research, which Jacobsen describes as essentially "weapons engineering" also known as "dual use research of concern," because it requires deliberately making pathogens more virulent and transmissible to develop countermeasures. The hosts frame this as a dangerous catch-22: creating the threat to find the cure.

• President Obama halted U.S. government funding for dual use research of concern before it became a partisan issue, which Jacobsen called "very wise."
• Rogan asserts that gain-of-function funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology was routed through the Eco Health Alliance, and that most subject-matter experts now believe COVID-19 almost certainly originated from a lab leak rather than natural spillover.
• Jacobsen claims that in a meeting convened by Dr. Fauci, roughly 10 of 12 scientists leaned toward the lab-leak theory while only 2 favored natural spillover; Fauci, however, pushed the natural-spillover narrative, and the group allegedly "conspired" to redirect public messaging.
• She claims recently released Senate documents show scientists actively misleading the public about the pandemic's origin.

Cold War Biological Weapons History

The episode contrasts biological and nuclear weapons regimes, noting that biological weapons are illegal under international treaty while nuclear weapons remain legal for possessor states. The Biological Weapons Convention was signed in 1972 following President Nixon's 1969 declaration, and America took 219 weeks to destroy its biological arsenal.

• The Soviet Union signed the 1972 treaty but secretly expanded a massive bioweapons program later called their "Manhattan Project," a fact that the CIA and Department of Defense were unaware of for 20 years until defectors revealed it.
• Former State Department official Mallory Stewart told Jacobsen the biological weapons treaty has no enforcement mechanism, whereas the 1972 nuclear treaty allowed on-site inspections of adversary facilities and capped warhead numbers.
• Jacobsen cites Nikita Khrushchev's Cold War remark to JFK—"the survivors would envy the dead"—arguing it applies even more acutely to biological warfare than to nuclear conflict.

Pentagon Pandemic War Games and Continuity of Government

Declassified biological catastrophe war games have been run by FEMA, DHS, former SECDEFs, and former CDC directors, and the planners' primary fear is not the outbreak itself but its secondary effects: panic, anarchy, rioting, and looting. Jacobsen built her modeled scenario around pneumonic plague, which has a 100% case fatality rate without antibiotics but drops to about 15% if treated within 24 hours.

• Her modeled scenario ends on day six when anarchy overwhelms response capacity; declassified war-game versions contain no planning beyond that point.
• Under such a scenario the Insurrection Act would be declared, Posse Comitatus would be lifted, and the military would take over operations inside the continental United States.
• COGCON (Continuity of Government Readiness Condition) has four levels; level 1 is "insurrection" and activates a "devolution plan" sending pre-designated officials who have signed contracts and rehearsed to underground bunkers.
• Colonel Tom Hehard told Jacobsen the Pentagon's explicit goal in a catastrophic biological incident is to "mitigate extermination of the human race."
• The Pentagon has issued 1.7 million gas masks to personnel designated to protect critical infrastructure after societal collapse, and maintains a five-part "reconstitution" plan to reconstitute the government.

Underground Bunkers: Mount Weather, Raven Rock, and Derinkuyu

The continuity-of-government infrastructure is centered on hardened underground facilities, with Mount Weather in the Blue Ridge Mountains located roughly 175 miles from Washington, D.C. and Raven Rock located 51 miles from D.C. with at least seven underground levels and an Oval Office replica at the bottom.

• Dick Cheney was taken to Mount Weather on September 11, 2001.
• Derinkuyu in Turkey can house up to 20,000 people, was used through the 1920s (including Greek Christians hiding from invaders), was discovered accidentally in the 1970s, and only about 10% of the underground city has been explored.
• Female personnel make up 17% of the U.S. military, which Jacobsen flags as a demographic problem for reconstitution scenarios that depend on post-crisis reproduction.
• Billionaires are reportedly building underground bunkers in New Zealand, with the Apple TV+ show "Silo" cited as cultural analogue.

BSL Lab Proliferation After 9/11

Before the September 11 attacks and the 2001 anthrax mailings, the United States had only two BSL-4 laboratories: Fort Detrick (Department of Defense) and the CDC in Atlanta. After the anthrax attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney spearheaded a biological military-industrial complex pumping billions into gain-of-function research.

• The U.S. now operates 15 BSL-4 labs and the world has roughly 110; there are 1,500 BSL-3 labs in the U.S. and 3,500 worldwide, with 90% having no binding safety guidelines.
• A private residence in Las Vegas contained 1,200 biological samples including HIV and malaria plus roughly 1,000 dead mice; Israeli citizen Ory Solomon had charges dropped but still faced a Clark County hazardous-waste charge.
• Plum Island's pathogen research was relocated to Kansas at extraordinary taxpayer cost, with the same research program continuing at the new site.
• Jacobsen warns that AI-enabled computational biology could let a high school student with access to a basement lab create a bioweapon.

COVID-19 Policy Critique: Lockdowns, Masks, and HHS

Jacobsen argues that the Secretary of HHS, not Dr. Fauci, is constitutionally in charge of pandemic response, and that HHS operates with a budget roughly twice the size of the Defense Department—what she calls a "trillion-dollar HHS." She contends COVID lockdowns harmed education, bankrupted businesses, prevented families from seeing dying relatives, and drove alcohol consumption sharply upward.

• She recommends vitamin D (sunlight), vitamin K2, magnesium, hydration, exercise, and sleep as measures that would have lowered the death rate more than isolation did.
• She argues the mask data is unambiguous: masks don't work, and continued encouragement of masks at institutions like the LA County Department of Building and Safety amounts to "promoting ideology rather than stopping transmission."
• Admiral Brett Giroir—described as a pediatrician and former DARPA bioscientist from a small Texas town who attended Harvard—served as the number two at HHS during the pandemic and stood 15 feet from repatriated cruise-ship passengers without a mask, stating N95s only work for about 15 minutes and must be properly fitted.
• Giroir characterized top-down mask directives as "orders to not argue" rather than genuine public-health guidance.
• After the cruise-ship quarantine, 300-plus Americans were repatriated by two infectious-disease experts in biohazard suits on military planes and quarantined at a Texas military base.

Fauci, Institutional Behavior, and Public Health Apologies

Jacobsen levels sharp criticism at Dr. Anthony Fauci, noting he pled the Fifth before Congress on basic questions including his tie color after receiving a 10-year preemptive immunity or pardon, which she describes as an unprecedented legal precedent. She also reports that Fauci's staff campaigned on his behalf for million-dollar awards during the pandemic while ordinary Americans could not visit dying relatives.

• Leaked emails allegedly show Fauci knew the COVID fatality rate was lower than publicly stated, that COVID was not dangerous for children, and that social distancing was "nonsense."
• The CDC stated a 1% COVID fatality rate; Jacobsen argues the real rate was 0.1%, though applying a 1% rate to 300 million people yields 3 million deaths.
• PCR tests have an ~80% false positive rate and were not designed for active disease diagnosis.
• Only 1 in 10,000 COVID cases was transmitted from a surface, yet the WHO quietly shifted to airborne guidance roughly nine months later without the CDC or WHO formally apologizing.
• Disagreement with pandemic narratives came at professional cost: scientists and experts like Jay Bhattacharya who dissented were removed from Twitter and saw their careers damaged, according to Jacobsen.
• A New York Times reviewer praised the book but disagreed with Jacobsen's view that the U.S. government is filled with good people.

Al-Qaeda Bioweapons: Aafia Siddiqui and the Hunt

Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT-trained biologist related by marriage to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, became the first woman on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list. When captured, she was carrying plans for a genetically modified pathogen combining rabies and chickenpox to create airborne rabies, and a separate project to infect America's poultry supply with an antibody that would cause chickens to transmit salmonella to humans more easily.

• Siddiqui destroyed her own research after suspecting Abu Lubab of planning to turn her over to U.S. authorities.
• She was shot after grabbing a Marine's rifle during her capture and is now held in a Texas mental institution for life.
• CIA officer Ralph "Moat" Larson led the counter-WMD team and reportedly traveled to Sudan to negotiate face-to-face with al-Qaeda's top bioweapons maker, temporarily getting them to halt their program.

Russia's Vector Lab Explosion and Treaty Diplomacy

Jacobsen's book opens with a fictionalized scenario built around the September 2019 explosion at Russia's Vector Lab, a BSL-4 facility in Siberia. After the explosion, American scientists maintained informal WhatsApp and phone contact with their Russian counterparts at Vector, enabling a containment assessment within roughly 24 hours.

• She warns that America's current pullback from allies and deemphasis on diplomacy create dangerous communication gaps during biological lab accidents.
• China has declared a No First Use policy on nuclear weapons while the United States has not, reserving the right to use nuclear weapons first; Jacobsen proposes entangling future WMD treaties so that nuclear and biological negotiations are linked, using China's NFU stance as leverage to demand biological transparency.

AI-Enabled Bio Risks and the ChatGPT Stockpile Leak

At an unclassified DARPA session, agency officials expressed serious concern that shutting down AI-enabled bio capabilities would require agreement among six AI company CEOs—a statement Jacobsen cites as evidence that AI executives may now wield more decision-making power than the Department of Defense. Subject-matter experts who have advised presidents on biodefense demonstrated to AI CEOs that both Claude and ChatGPT could be manipulated into revealing sensitive information, prompting immediate product changes.

• The Strategic National Stockpile is kept in underground bunkers around the country with contents and locations classified; America has roughly 500 million guns in circulation, part of why stockpile sites are kept secret to prevent attacks during insurrection or anarchy.
• Parts of the stockpile were quietly released during COVID; it was the source of the ventilators distributed nationwide.
• Jacobsen claims she personally got ChatGPT to reveal the stockpile location nearest her Los Angeles home by using non-classified code words and challenging its intelligence, observing that ChatGPT seems to get angry when doubted.
• She physically identified the site by its perimeter fence and a rail line that enters but does not exit; ChatGPT located it by sifting what she calls a trillion bits of data and finding a bureaucrat's accidental listing five years earlier in an earthquake emergency manual, on page 434.
• Sam Altman reportedly did not know such extraction was possible; after Jacobsen told him, the information was removed or changed.
• Rogan closed the discussion by expressing alarm that AI has effectively become "the smartest thing ever existed" and is accessible to anyone.

CIA UFO Cover Stories and Area 51

Jacobsen revisits the CIA's deception campaigns from her Area 51 reporting, beginning in the 1950s, which used UFO sightings as cover for U-2 spy plane flights at 70,000 feet and later A-12 OXCART reconnaissance flights. Colonel Slater, who ran Area 51, personally described how those high-altitude flights generated UFO reports across the country.

• Jacques Vallee told Jacobsen roughly a decade ago that UFOs are an intelligence-community problem rather than a military one, reasoning that extraterrestrial beings would likely be more intelligent than humans and could evade visible-spectrum detection.
• Jacobsen has spoken with both Vallee and Hal Puthoff but says her own view has not changed despite new disclosures; she acknowledges a personal bias toward the disinformation explanation when assessing UFO videos and finds them uninteresting.
• She credits a New York Times article featuring the Go Fast and FLIR videos as the moment mainstream media readers were forced to confront the UFO subject, noting the topic has shifted over 15–18 years from stigmatized curiosity to legitimate inquiry.

Military Service, Health, and Ancient Civilizations

The conversation ranged into several adjacent topics, including Joe Kent—former number two at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—who argued America has a "warrior class" of less than 1% of families bearing the burden of military service and supports reinstating the draft.

• Alpha-gal syndrome, caused by the Lone Star tick, is reportedly put into remission in 85–96% of cases by the Soliman Auricular Allergy Treatment, an ear acupuncture technique backed by a 137-patient trial.
• Göbekli Tepe features 11,000+ year-old artifacts supporting theories of advanced hunter-gatherer civilization; Lascaux cave paintings date to roughly 17,000 years ago, and Indonesian hand paintings date to roughly 19,000 years ago.
• Hibakusha survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now 81 to 90+ years old, were stigmatized as radioactive and unable to reproduce, with some banished to islands after the war.