#2534 - Annie Jacobsen

**Joe Rogan** (0:01)
Joe Rogan Podcast, checking in.

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**Joe Rogan** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Come here, scaredy-cat.

**Jamie** (0:14)
Biological War, oh boy. Every time I talk to you, I'm fucking terrified.

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:21)
That is my part-time job, to actually scare Joe Rogan. If I can do that, wow.

**Jamie** (0:28)
Yeah, every time I talk to you, I'm like, oh no. Last time it was nuclear war, oh no.
Now it's biological war, oh no.

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:36)
Which is actually maybe even grimmer than nuclear because at least in nuclear, you're just like gone in the flash.

**Jamie** (0:44)
I did a show a while back on the sci-fi network called Joe Rogan Questions Everything. And one of the episodes we did was about biological war. And so we spoke to this guy who used to work for Russia.
During the Cold War, and he was talking about how much anthrax they had, and how much work they had done on biological weapons. And it was terrifying. He said they had like just giant vats of anthrax, like enough to kill everyone in New York City.

**Annie Jacobsen** (1:13)
They were milk. Was it Ken Alabeck? Do you know?

**Jamie** (1:16)
He was Russian.

**Annie Jacobsen** (1:17)
Russian. Yeah, there was a couple of those Russian defector scientists who came here and told us everything they were doing. There was like, you know, tons of anthrax and plague.
Plague. That's actually the pathogen that I use in the scenario I write, is plague, because it's so crazy scary, so dangerous, sits at the top of the government's tier one select agent of dangerous pathogens.

**Jamie** (1:46)
So one of the things that we did during this episode, we went to Galveston to, I guess, a CDC lab that they had there. So they have these super thick walls, and everyone's wearing space suits, and they have these tubes attached to them. And they were studying all these different really horrible fatal diseases.
And I'm like, well, what if this stuff gets out? Like, it's right here. Like, what happens if it gets out? Like, will we take ever precaution? This and that. But his concern, he said, was not for genetically engineered viruses. His fear was really just from natural virus. He says, that is just as scary as anything that's out there.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:24)
This is the Russian scientist.

**Joe Rogan** (2:26)
No, this is a different guy.

**Jamie** (2:27)
This is an American scientist.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:28)
Yeah, I think they like to say that. You know, Mother Nature is just as powerful. But in truth, that's actually not true. Because think about what you can do with genetic modification. Make it more virulent, more transmissible.

**Jamie** (2:42)
Yes.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:42)
And make it defeat existing vaccines and antibiotics.

**Jamie** (2:47)
Well, we are right now in the middle of the Fauci hearings.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:51)
Yes, we are.

**Jamie** (2:52)
So he is now testifying in front of Congress and pleading the fifth about everything, including the color of his tie. It's very weird to watch.
In one way, it's like I told you to a lot of my liberal friends that wanted to pretend that he was a great guy and that he wasn't doing anything wrong. And now that all these e-mails have gotten out, where it shows that he knew that the fatality rate was much lower than they were saying, he knew that it wasn't dangerous for children, that they didn't need vaccines. He knew that the social distancing thing was all nonsense.
And he's got a blanket pardon for 10 years. And the thing is, it's like these people get money for research. And that's what they do. They do research. So if you get money and you get grants for research, well, you're going to go do research. And if your research is gain-of-function research that makes viruses more infectious to human beings, and you have to do it because that's your job, that's what you do, that's what you studied, that's what you went to school for. What a crazy fucking thing we're doing.

**Annie Jacobsen** (3:55)
It is bananas. And it's also, I mean, it was really unfortunate, I thought, that yesterday you took the fifth because I, for one, just want to hear, call me Pollyanna, the truth be told.

**Jamie** (4:08)
Well, he's not going to tell you the truth no matter what. He's going to obfuscate and dance around it and use words that don't totally apply to what he's saying and just ramble on.

**Annie Jacobsen** (4:19)
I mean, COVID absolutely could have been this incredible lesson for all of us. I mean, the nightmare that it was.