Something Scary Is Happening In Biolabs - Annie Jacobsen

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. 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. >> Yeah. 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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. drinklmnt.com/ modernwisdom. 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. 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Normally this level of testing would usually cost thousands, but with Function it's $365 a year. That's $1 a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing. And right now you can get $25 off, bringing it down to 340 bucks. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save $25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. 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. >> 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. >> This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. Gymshark makes the best men's and women's training gear on the planet. And here is something I realized a few years into training. When you actually like what you're wearing in the gym, you show up differently. You train harder, you stay longer, you get way more high fives. Their hybrid shorts are unreal. 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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. >> This episode is brought to you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly 2,000 days of my life and the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. That's because Whoop gives you a complete picture of your health every single day. Your sleep, your workouts, your recovery, your breathing, your heart rate, even your steps and over time you get to see what's working and what isn't. And the Whoop 5.0 is the best version yet. It's 7% smaller, you get more than 2 weeks of battery life from a single charge. It's got health span tracking to see how your daily habits affect your pace of aging. It's even got hormonal insights for the women that are listening. I'm a huge fan. This thing rules. It's been a huge part of my health journey and it's why it's the only wearable that I've ever stuck with. Best of all, you can join for free, pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap and you get your first month for free and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. 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. Yes, you did it. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're going to like this one [music] even more. Go on. Press it.