Annie Jacobsen UNLOADS on WW3 Scenario, Hidden Nazi Weapon & Exploding Julian’s Car

you know annie the first time i ever heard of you was back in 2019 when you were on joe rogan's podcast and i'll never forget it because i think it had come out maybe like october november something like that and that first monday after thanksgiving i'd been down in south jersey with my parents for the weekend and i was driving back up to north jersey where i lived and worked early in the morning so i turn on the podcast i see like oh this lady came on talking about like the nazis and stuff cool and you know i start listening to it and i'm sure people have told you this but you have a very entrancing voice and it's kind of like a trippy experience because i'm sitting there listening to it and i'm sure people have told you this but you have a very entrancing voice listening to like you speak very sweetly but you're like and then the nazis killed everybody i'm like wow this is like kind of dark so i'm on the garden state parkway and after a while like all of a sudden this smell hits me like right in the face and i'm like what the fuck is like the kind of smell where you're like this had to be happening for a while and i just didn't notice it and i look on the front of my hood and my car's on fire so i'm like oh shit and like in the background you're like and then they were dueling with each other and had these guys i'm like oh shit so i look and go we go off the side of the road i open up the windows because i think there's smoke in there and then i'm like i gotta get the fuck out of here so i get out of the car i don't press pause like you're still talking car's on fire i get off to the side on the grass i call 9-1-1 and i hear like out of the car you talking about the nazis and then and my car just explodes no and so whenever i think of you i think of an exploding car and now i met you so oh my goodness that's the best introduction i have ever had well thank you so much listen i'm i'm happy it was it did come at the expense of a car but i think it's worth it oh my i mean like you can't make that up that's brilliant i'll show you the videos afterwards but it's just like literally like you can hear and then the you know the speaker starts going out so you hear the like the and then it starts like going like all dark and shit i was like oh my god but i did get insurance money for it so it worked out so i'm i'm delighted to hear that story well you have another book out as i understand it you've written what like 10 11 books eight at this point feels like more but your books are also thick and detailed and cover the things that we are all interested in and i always kind of wondered that like how do you how do you zone in on picking a topic that you want to write about it is fascinating that my books i mean eight books first six are history books the most recent two are scenarios based on war games nuclear war biological war it's fascinating that my books have gone from kind of niche like people who are very interested in national security military intelligence community work to very mainstream and i i don't know the answer why i wonder if this is like in the zeitgeist that suddenly everyone is much more concerned about national security than say 10 years ago or i don't know but it's very interesting to me and it's certainly kind of wonderful that my backlist people tend to sort of read my books and i'm like oh my god i'm so excited to read my books and i'm like oh my god i'm so excited to read one of my books and then they read my backlist hey guys if you're not following me on spotify please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review they're both a huge huge help thank you well that's what happened you build a great library it doesn't actually get read get read on day one or day five but then you get the one that hits and people are like wait a minute i'm going back in time look at all this other stuff and of course they all entwine you know like you mentioned the nazis the nazis kind of hit two points that you asked which was how do i get my ideas in the book operation paperclip which was my second book um in 2013 it came out you know america had a biological weapons program in the cold war and it was largely sort of it flourished because of the nazi scientists that we brought over under operation paperclip and so that planted this seed in my brain about biological war because it's such a bizarre concept like it's so strategically ineffective when you really think about this and this is such a common question that people ask because like the obvious thing is blowback uh you use a biological weapon and you're going to kill a lot of your own people you can't control where it goes i see yeah and so the fact that it existed for decades and the fact that it's illegal now except for people still make biological weapons what a bizarre kind of paradox that has this origin story that's really dark and nefarious why do you think why do you think the nazis if if they if they were so extensively like unfortunately good at science which obviously they were i've always thought like man you look at what they use like in the camps you look at what they were willing to do but they're not going to do it they're not going to do it they're not going to do it when they were going down why do you think they didn't drop some of these secret serums that they had just on you know the invading armies left and right all over the place it's a really good question and in fact in paperclip i write about how the chem so they had a biological weapons program and they had a chemical weapons program their chemical weapons program was seriously advanced to the point where they actually had munitions like sarin gas loaded onto warheads ready to go and they never used them and this remains a puzzle among historians why didn't the nazis use the chemical weapons that they had in that sort of you know fire and brimstone ending of it all right and the best that anyone can come up with which i think is fascinating is that because hitler himself was the subject of a gas attack in world war one and was hospitalized right and so he was able to use the chemical weapons that he had in that sort of you know fire and brimstone ending of it all right and the best that anyone can come up with which i think is fascinating is that because hitler himself was the subject of a gas attack in world war one and was hospitalized he had some kind of deep personal aversion to chemical weapons that's speculation i mean he he authorized the whole program but he you know he had a deep aversion to their use that's really interesting to think about that even hitler had his limits right and the best that anyone can come up with which i think is fascinating is that because hitler himself was the subject of a gas attack in world war one and was hospitalized I've always thought about that even at the next level with nukes, because like these guys, unfortunately, like some of the scientists were very talented and very smart. And I always wondered, and it's pure spec. I mean, I have no evidence to back this, but it's just a hypothetical. Like, even beyond chemical weapons, what if they really did figure out the nuke thing? And they had just enough humanity left in whatever little humanity they had, which wasn't much to start with, to say, you know, maybe the guy with the stash shouldn't have this. And I wonder if that was a calculation that could have been made at the biological level, too, where, yeah, maybe he did have an aversion to it. But if he was cornered like a rat towards the end, he would have been like, fuck it, you know, do it. Interesting. I'm not sure I would agree with that, and I'll tell you why. But you're absolutely right, because the chemical weapons conundrum remains this mystery. I'm like, well, if he didn't use that, you know. But I'm pretty certain they did not have nuclear weapons. I mean, at least the historical record is clear about that. Lots of conspiracies about, you know, maybe. But the most compelling evidence I found, because I'm so interested in human details of it all, is Albert Speer, who was Hitler's sort of secretary of defense, if you will. Said to him very early on, we should really have an atomic weapon. To which Hitler responded, that's Jewish science. We're not going to do that. Well, the one time his racism really came through and did something good for everybody. That's wild. Isn't that wild? I mean, and it says so much, and it's like, wow. But the biological weapons are interesting, because he was really pushing for the biological weapons program, which was led by Dr. Kerr. Who was his, like, Reichsgesundheit Führer is the German name. That was the deputy surgeon general of the Third Reich. And Blum had been a cancer specialist and became this biological weapons designer. And most of his, I mean, I really got into this in paperclip because I visited the Bundesarchives in Germany with a German PhD, by the way, because that's the only way that they will take you serious. If you go in there and say, I'm an American journalist, like, you don't really get very many good documents. Oh, so you had to go with someone. Yeah, I had a German PhD with me who would, like, they really respect their PhDs. And so the biological weapons program was really sort of like a Hitler favorite. But they were having problems developing. And Blum was actually working on a plague weapon. A plague weapon? Yes, the weapon of plague, which is the weapon. The weapon I use in the book. The Siberia scenario. Yes, the pneumonic plague. There's, of course, bubonic plague. There's septicemic plague. And there's pneumonic plague, which is transmissible because pneumonic, think pneumonia. Right. Think the lungs. Right. Think airborne. Right? Yeah, it's been a while since I read paperclip. But if I remember correctly, I hope I'm thinking of the right book because I think this was the Nazis. But you were saying that in the closing days of World War II in Russia. right after they like found some of these guys in underground bunkers right and they were building the stuff down there but they were able that was also was wild back in 1945 1946 you come in touch with insane biological weapons and there wasn't like an accident at least reported or something like that where it got out well they were under very early development right so glum was in charge of it and what from what we know from those records i was talking about that like when the allies were attacking and coming from you know the west um hitler sent his scientists east into poland you know not realizing that the soviets were going to kind of come in from the other side and that blum had a biological weapons laboratory underground in a place called posen in poland and that's sort of like the last remaining um evidence of what happened to his sort of test tube filled with you know pathogens and what's interesting is the soviets got a hold of that facility and this kind of kicked off the biological weapons arms race of the cold war because america became obsessed after the conclusion of the war after the peace was won with like the soviets are now the new enemy and they have all the nazi secrets and so much of it was divided up between the two of them and this just spawned this profound cold war arms race the results of which we're dealing with today before you did because this is all tied to the book you wrote right now biological war this is like the predecessor if you will like the hobbit to the lord of the rings but before you did operation paperclip obviously you had found out about it you knew the specs of like okay we had taken nazi scientists when the war was over and gave them nice houses in huntsville and they built rockets but you know it's also hard at least as a human no matter if you're a historian or not to go into something a story that sounds so wild like that like wow america took nazis in and then said you know what you can work for us too and have a nice life it's really hard to not fully judge that out front so i guess my question is upon writing that book and doing all the research was there any nuance to it that you had at the end that that you did not have at the beginning of writing the book if you're constantly low energy dragging through the afternoon or hitting a wall by two to three p.m the fatigue could have more to do with your liver than you realize your liver is your body's primary metabolic regulator storing and releasing glucose to help maintain steady energy throughout the day but when it's constantly busy processing highly processed foods drinks and everyday stressors the system can slow down so that afternoon crash might not just be about sleep or needing another coffee your liver might actually just be working too hard so if you're on a diet and you're on a diet and you don't feel like you're working too hard which is why you got to check 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it that's d-o-s-e-d-a-i-l-y o slash julian for 35 off your first month subscription to dose for your liver check out the link in my description below try it for three months and see what you think i mean what a great question and what you're asking is really important it's like try and hold the ideas of the opposition of the of the of the adversary in your own head before you go black and white right i think this is really important you know um and i was asked to do that by my very wise book editor because it was so easy to see these nazis as these odious individuals that should have at least from my perspective going into it that should all be hung at nuremberg right that's exactly what my position was and might still be however i hold a little bit of room for the idea that at the time the cold war warriors in the united states were absolutely convinced that the soviet union wanted to take over the west take over the world and they would do anything they could to stop the soviets and so that's where you have the birth of this program and so you know one idea that some of the when i was interviewing the book there were people that were in that book that were still alive that were alive you know that fought in world war ii world war ii heroes and they would often say to me like there was the threat that we would all be speaking russian if we didn't do this which is an interesting exercise in putting yourself in the shoes of someone in history yeah it it goes down to the do you say the enemy of my enemy is my friend i think it's weird because you can even see like i think there was a famous quote we can check this a minute but there was a famous quote from like patten where he's like damn did we fight the wrong enemy or something like that you know which communism and fascism are both like pretty but it's it was a strange bedfellow moment because it went from like all right we'll be friends for a few years just to get this done and then it's like all right now we kill each other bizarre but it's it's so human nature you know um and so i think it's endlessly interesting and it's why all my books kind of it's very easy for me to move on to another subject that links up with the previous subjects because so national security and human nature go hand in hand like war fighting offense defense war peace these are those opposites that's that black and white that we were just talking about that you have to think about okay it's black and white or is it you know how can i think a little differently here and that to me makes for serious drama yeah i you ever read devil's chessboard by talbot i have not it's the cia book about dylan dallas yeah you should read that for sure because you know it does kind of show to me it's never like every single person is bad in any type of situation and it's also not every single person is good but there are good guys and there are bad guys and i think the real villain story of like the dallas brothers was they were just their own mercenaries kind of out for themselves and they used the vehicle of the united states government to do that and they built precedent with people who had to say yes sir to what they did and i you know they kind of liked the nazis in business before the war and then after you know then they're like all right i guess we'll fight him and then they're instrumental in some ways in some of the operation paperclip particularly alan dallas yes you know and it's like i understand people aren't perfect but i don't think he had a moral compass at all to begin with even before yes alan yes even before he was starting to make calls on stuff like that i just didn't exist so you know do you judge john f kennedy for sitting next to verner von braun at nasa while they're trying to get to the moon 20 years later maybe but also like he inherited that so i have a very interesting alan dallas story if you want to hear it i would love to hear anecdotally too okay so so um because i think it's really interesting what you're saying of like when you when you make that point about a moral compass and can we really decide yes we can look at somebody's actions but maybe for me i'm always trying to get either talk to the person themselves or talk to their family members to get an idea and yes people can hide things from their family members but i had this interesting moment when i was um writing operation you know when i was writing the pentagon's brain about darpa about darpa so alan dallas had a son named alan macy dallas and he uh decided to go to korea to be a soldier in korea much to his father's chagrin and he goes to korea and he's like you know in that war and he goes out to check the perimeter and everyone's like no no no no don't go check the perimeter you're the son of dallas was then the deputy director of cia not quite the head number two if you get captured we're like all in serious trouble and alan macy dallas insists and he goes out and he gets hit with a mortar in the head they drag him into the base and he has brain damage like serious brain damage and then the story of what happened to alan macy dallas gets a little wonky like he gets into a mental institution and then he disappears well i found him and he was still alive was he with it so um alan dallas happened to have gone to princeton where i went so i go to princeton because they allow you to look look at this library they're called the mud library if you're alumni and you can pull up records and i found where he lived in santa fe new mexico under the care of his sister who was dallas's other um child and joan was an amazing person she was in her 90s and and i and they told me the whole story of what actually happened to him so he was as chipper and old man and he looked exactly like alan dallas there's a picture of him in my book the pentagon's brain um but he has what's called retrograde amnesia i think is that's the correct term for it so he can remember every or he could he's now since died but he could remember every single detail from his childhood up to the moment he was hit in the head with the mortar with extraordinary precision and he was an expert in greek and roman warfare which he studied at princeton and he still had and he still like we had this long talk where he relayed everything to me wow so he could remember everything perfectly but he couldn't remember beyond five minutes of the present time or really kind of like 10 minutes so you could have a conversation with him that was perfectly real you know and and i would say to him alan it's in the book i quote him and i would say you know because i recorded the whole thing like you're not going after i leave and he would say no no no i'm not it was an incredible experience but here's here's a real kicker which is which is what's super interesting is that that is the reason why mk ultra began because of the sun so there had been some early workings for mk ultra um at a place called camp king and they were doing a lot of work and they were doing a lot of work and they were doing a lot of work and they were doing a lot of work and they were doing a lot of work and this is tied to operation paperclip because dr blum i told you was the doctor there oh that's nice so right which makes a lot of sense i'm shocked that this hasn't been more explored everyone's very focused on mk ultra in the 60s to me the early program is the interest origin story is always really interesting was he working under gottlieb at the time or like the godly was later later later later this is camp king this is like a few years after the close of the war we set up um a facility in uh just outside of frankfurt we're controlling nazi germany at the ever it's no longer nazi germany we're controlling germany and we decide to do these programs to try and get secrets out of soviet prisoners through torture through torture and through sort of like giving them drugs and seeing how you can make them squeal and this is how it all began it's called art operation artichoke operation bluebird so dullest sort of like is working a bit on this as deputy director then his son has a brain injury and he pivots over and tries to get help for his son from some of these doctors and that is you know a really interesting dark thread and it but it's sort of a full circle loop to the idea that the father is trying to help his son and it spawns this profoundly dark mind control program the sun gets shipped off to a mental institution in switzerland where he lives all the way until his father dies at which point his sister joan whom i would meet with him and have long conversations with brings him back to the united states after dallas dies was that out in bern like where his father had been during world war ii is that why they sent him there that was sort of the area that dallas was familiar with and it was like jung was there and they were trying to do some you know carl jung they were trying to do some things more sort of beneficent if you will with you know therapy with him at that point after heavy duty sort of mind programs did not work on al and macy dallas that is such a that's a strange thing awful thing to be like a prisoner in your own mind in that way where you can it obviously when people see their loved ones get alzheimer's and they can't remember anything it's torture on loved ones but the fact that someone could be aware of their existence in their previous existence and they can't remember anything it's torture on loved ones but the fact that someone could be aware of their existence in their previous existence and also be aware that they are not going to remember the things they have now that was what was the most intense moment when he's when he could acknowledge that yes i won't remember it like you're just in the moment well that's crazy that's gotta be one of the craziest sit downs you ever had i mean you've had a lot of them but that was pretty next level it really was and also that joan explained to me that al and macy dallas her brother had he could read and somehow he he had like an obsession with his father and he would read a lot of books there were a lot of books there in the library um and he like would sometimes talk about their father in a conspiratorial manner interesting i was gonna ask that like what his opinion of his dad was but this is i haven't ever been able to make sense of this because he couldn't remember his father's opinion of his dad because he couldn't remember in real time and so yet he was able to like books had a really big impression on him that was really clear he would read even though he couldn't remember what was he like 30 years old 25 when his when his head got hit something like that younger i think he was in his early mid-20s i mean he was 86 when i went to him i think the ages are actually in the book but it's a wild picture because he looks a lot like he has a mustache and everything he looks just like his father yeah i'd be curious because he can remember everything from before he got here to the time when he got here to the time he was in his early mid-20s i mean he's got a lot of memories of his dad he's got a lot of memories of his dad he's got a lot of memories of his dad or had a chance to talk with him about stuff and can relay that i mean me too and i asked those questions of joan you know really and she was such an honorable person she was so interesting she gave me a couple really interesting books on war and on warfare and she was very much a pacifist and she was very interested in america's obsession with war that's fascinating isn't that interesting yes and the book one of the books she gave me um she she had read it herself and lined it you know with things that interested her and wrote notes in the side and it's an incredible thing to look at it's a great artifact i have so many of those interesting artifacts from my reporting career that even gain more interesting and sort of momentum in my mind over time because you know they lay down tracks of history that are so mysterious and interesting to all of us i gotta imagine because of all the different things you cover that happen to come back in some way to like a the history of america and the world order as you will and also like the national security apparatus of everything i gotta think that there's a lot of interviews or sources or investigations over the years that you get to and you you're like wow this is this is crazy but then five years later you're like that was even crazier than i thought and you're absolutely right and sometimes things make more sense when you say make more sense meaning you just get more pieces to the puzzle to put together yes you kind of have aha moments yeah but you can also see programs like for example you know i looked a lot in early nuclear threats this is sort of like in the cold war america had this incredibly robust and completely ineffectual program called civil defense civil defense that's what i'm talking about that's why you would see old photos of the 50s and 60s of you know there would be like a nuclear symbol and it would say bunker and there was this idea that america could survive a nuclear attack everyone would go into these bunkers and you know wait it out and there were even plans like if people were road driving on the road there was like missives to oh have a shovel in your in your trunk so that you can dig a ditch and climb in it i mean absolutely apocryphal sounding now when you think about it and eventually the government realized this is ridiculous it's never going to work and they canceled the civil defense program and so there was a long sort of period of time that i would look at where there was no civil defense program and i always thought that was fascinating like yeah what usually stuff gets replaced that's right in working on biological war a scenario one of the things i really wanted to know was why do all the pentagon war games and the pandemic planning games these are unclassified or declassified why do they always end at a certain point which is basically anarchy and chaos in the united states i'm talking yeah why is that okay right like that is how they go and you could look at them i cite them in the book you can read them online you know they show it shows how it happens and then takes you to the end of the book and you can read them online and you can read them online and then it takes you all the way up and then it's game over everybody's dead they don't say that okay so of course naturally they've passed on right no it's just it's not death yet it's like some people are dead and or you know anarchy's happening and cities are collapsing and and then then there's kind of like game over what so i asked all kinds of people and i got you know you get a little bit of like yeah that is an interesting question you don't get taken there and sometimes that has to do with the fact that people simply don't know and people in government aren't really trained to ask questions that they don't have a need to know that's right but in my interviews with president obama's former fema chief okay okay or he was president obama's fema chief he's now retired what's it craig fugate great and he was extraordinary helpful with me in nuclear war you know he's the one who told me like in a nuclear war there is no population protection planning because everyone's dead direct quote from him he said we plan for asteroids we plan for nuclear war it's called a high consequence low probability event everybody's dead no planning bio was different i got a little bit of a okay so and then i learned about the devolution plan the devolution plan that sounds pleasant evolution with a d information uh-huh okay right like d for dead okay okay and this is a highly classified program and the reason that fugate could tell me about it is because about 10 years ago a journalist by accident sort of wrote the devolution plan learned about it and somehow wrote it was just a one line according to fugate by accident by accident it's a hell of an accident so it got the name got declassified as a result and there is an unclassified version online which i was directed to okay and then i learned from craig fugate what can be known and this is like the teeny tiny tip of the iceberg and that is that you know so in biological war i take the reader from lab accident outbreak to anarchy in six days six days six days how far are we talking we can get into what happens with the pathogen but okay so okay so then then that then there's that what happens that i had the question of well then you have in the united states of america the president declares the insurrection act how often do you hear about a supplement that's one you never heard of before and that you gotta try and that multiple other ones you've been using for years that someone else told you to use actually aren't good and here you are starting over and you gotta go on amazon and buy it if you're like me this happens all the time in health everybody disagrees with everyone it's absolute chaos they all sound confident and it's hard to know who to trust but who needs twitter threads from random bot farms when you got blueprint longevity mix blueprint is built on scientific evidence so the guesswork is over every ingredient they use fights for its life they earn their place through population level research and real world testing not just what's trending on tiktok and instead of having just a whole cabinet full of pills you got one scoop water mix it and you're done and that one single scoop is going to help support energy cognitive performance mood focus sleep cellular resistance and healthy aging blueprint is also third-party tested for purity and toxins like heavy metals they publish their results on their site so you can see exactly what's in their supplements and this whole thing is the work of brian johnson who is the guy who is literally trying to live forever quite a lifestyle he lives but it's fair to say he knows a lot about what goes into the human body this is a company that's science-backed precision dosed with no bs for a new customers are going to get 20 off plus free shipping at blueprint.brianjohnson.com link in my description below by using code julian at checkout that's code julian at blueprint.brianjohnson.com link in my description below for 20 off but if it's black friday skip the code and take advantage of even bigger markdowns during their exclusive black friday sale after you purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them please support our show and tell them i sent you okay when anarchy takes over we're going to tell you where you heard about them please support our show and tell them i sent you okay when anarchy takes over now the military can act like law enforcement oh okay without that the military is not allowed to act like law enforcement that's called that's because of the posse comitatus act the president has the sole power to be able to activate that he doesn't have to go through congress or anything insurrection act he just declares it i don't like that and then separately the department of defense is going to have to go through the insurrection act and then the president declares the insurrection act now the military can act like law enforcement oh okay without that the military is not allowed to act like law enforcement that's called that's because of the posse comitatus act the president has the sole power to be able to activate that he doesn't have to go through congress or anything insurrection act he just declares it okay and then separately the department of homeland security has a readiness condition you've heard of defcon one you've heard of defcon right of course that's defense readiness condition for the pentagon homeland security has its own readiness condition almost completely unknown to most people it's called cog con continuity of government condition and once the insurrection act is declared and cog con one goes into effect four would be the lowest we were i think at two during the pandemic although that is not declassified oh they haven't declassified that like what we were after no no interesting okay but cog con one gets declared and then the devolution plan goes into effect and there the devolution plan involves a pre-selected group of government officials they've been chosen they know who they are they've signed a contract they've rehearsed they disappear into a set of secret classified underground bunkers across the united states who picked these people that's classified we don't know we don't know who's on the list i would guess it changes by administration right and they disappear off to the to the bunkers cold sites hot sites warm sites depending on how much is set up and then they wait out and they allow the pandemic the plague the catastrophic biological event that started all of this i write this end the scenario they waited out it burns out plague eventually does even like a mnemonic plague or something would just burn out it will burn out it kills 150 million people how would you mind explaining the science of that as someone who's not an epidemiologist okay okay tell me where you know i look like one yeah you do look like tell me where you want to start so if you had like let's compare it to covid which had a way lower kill rate or something like that like minuscule compared to something like this i'm just throwing round numbers on this you have a mnemonic plague it's something that can kill 40 of all people it touches how does something like that die out yeah at if you're saying 150 million and you're just referring to america i can understand the math there because there's 350 million people here but like i'm thinking this from a global standpoint how that ever fully dies out while people are also somehow still being born yes etc okay so three things to think about i'm going to keep this simple oh i like that okay it's good you're in new jersey when we're talking about pathogens for starters virus bacteria right two different but they're both pathogens that's why i'm using pathogen okay virulence transmissibility medical countermeasures these are the these this is the recipe for a bioweapon okay how virulent is it how many people will it kill covid had a case fatality rate of one percent or less so it killed one in a hundred people who got it at the very beginning maybe yeah transmissibility covid was airborne cdc and who said it wasn't airborne for a very long time remember the whole oh you can get it from a surface inaccurate one in ten thousand cases came from a surface right covid was airborne there's a lot of insecurity in biology a lot of unknowns and this is important because people pretend that they don't know and they don't know there aren't unknowns there are unknowns okay so you have virulence transmissibility and then you have medical countermeasures so can you stop it can you kill the disease well if you have a strapped throat and you take antibiotics gone right so that's bacteria so you get bubonic plague you take antibiotics you pretty much have a very good chance of living if you have a high level of care even with bubonic plague bubonic plague is the least the least of the problems am i misremembering that or is that what the black plague was well you're not misremembering so which this was not understood by epidemiologists and historians until recently that it starts as bubonic fleas transmit yersinia pestis it's a bacteria okay it attacks your lymph system and you get big buboes hence the black pay they turn black and that's a product yeah um it can go into the blood system then it's called septicemic plague like septicemia in the blood okay if it goes into the lungs you have pneumonic plague now it can be transmitted generally by spit or by coughing okay because of your lungs function because of your lungs because think about when you have a terrible lung cold right okay so that's how all the people died in the bubonic plague which began as bubonic but the cases turn into pneumonic and that's how 150 million people across europe died did that one come from a rat it did it came well it's naturally in the environment okay not all environments but like in the in the american west there's some plague in mongolia there's plague in parts of russia and siberia there's plague so it's naturally occurring bacteria which is killed by antibiotics so Pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague, you said 40%? Yeah, I just drew a rain. Pneumonic plague has a 100% death rate. 100%. 100% unless you have antibiotics within 24 hours. So it's like a faster acting different rabies. Good point. Rabies and pneumonic plague are pretty much the two 100% killers without medical countermeasures. So this is why pneumonic plague is what's called a tier one select agent on the biological war threat spectrum for everybody. Because it is so virulent, it's transmissible. And it has. It has such a high death rate. Now move into where we are and where we have been since 1971, since genetic engineering came to be. You can now goose up the virulence, the transmissibility, and you can create a way to defeat a medical countermeasure. That's biological weapons engineering. So they can basically. It's like steroids, but for killing people. I mean. I mean, you can't make it more virulent. So it's at 100%. But you can make it more transmissible. You can make it airborne. Okay? You can goose up the sort of spitting and coughing into actual breathing like with COVID. Yeah. Okay? And then you can make it defeat antibiotics. So what happens in all the biological war gaming scenarios when you have plague, and there have been many of them, gamed out at the Pentagon. And I interviewed subject matter experts on this, people who designed them. And they. And this is how the book lays out because I base it on the science behind what the Pentagon is most worried about. And so you have a situation where if pneumonic plague were dispersed, people panic about getting antibiotics. because the government doesn't want to show that you know it can only have so many antibiotics stored in the strategic national stockpile also classified yeah why is that i would think because you know i when i sometimes when i've had like a like a long lingering like lung cold or something like that my doctor probably three times in the past eight years has been like go get a z-pack boom yes got it exactly so why is it so limited why why isn't that something we just have on on tap if you will it's it's not the quantity that's the problem it's the expediency with which you can get it out to the people so mnemonic plague 24 hours right that's your window or you're dead the strategic national stockpile is located all around the country in underground bunkers all classified where it is, okay? Are these bunkers just everywhere? I feel like everyone's got a goddamn bunker now. I've never seen one. I mean, the bunkers that the government has are basically big warehouses. The Strategic National Stockpile is in warehouses. They have pictures of it online. They just don't tell you where they are. You haven't been in one? No, but I was able to get ChatGPT to tell me where the one closest to my house was, which is another story. Okay. Okay, but stay with me here. this is this is what happens the strategic national stockpile which is facilitated by dhs in concert with you know hhs cdc i mean think of the bureaucracy i'm talking about right now right they have what are called 12-hour push packages that's how they get the antibiotics out to the places where the plague has broken out in the event of a biological catastrophe which by the way it doesn't have to be an attack it can be an accident it can be a lab accident sure some elite yeah we know a lot about that yep so think about that it's a 12-hour push package you got 24 hours that's not enough time there's a run on the strategic national stockpiles and that's what the pentagon war games are focused on many of them which became most interesting to me and that's where anarchy happens. And that's where when you consider America is a country of 500 million guns, what do you think is going to happen with an outbreak of a catastrophic outbreak of a biological weapon? It doesn't have to be an attack. And that's the premise of the book. And that's what's so terrifying. It's scary. And what's scary about it is that it's not beyond the realm of possibility you know at all unfortunately and precisely and people say to me well why do you write such terrible you know terrible books well the reason they sell no well here's the thing i actually believe in prevention yeah okay so there's no hollywood ending in this book there's no one to come save the day i follow it through the logical conclusions that the pentagon and epidemiologists pandemic planners come to and the reason i do that is because i want people to be able to confront this idea of like oh my god we spend so much money there is a system in place and it's completely flawed and it's not going to work man-made problem man-made solution there's a solution to these this there's a solution to nuclear war but there isn't if people pretend that it's never going to happen yes it could never happen i do think you have especially over the past two books in particularly been really good as like a mainstreaming educational resource on like hey these things exist that previously maybe we took for granted or weren't thinking about somehow obviously because of covid people are a little exhausted by like the whole like, oh, a pandemic and stuff like that. But I think about this a lot because I don't know what COVID was and all kinds of thoughts. Like I'm sure a lot of people go through my head. One of the things like when you're talking right there and you're talking about these people who have been secretly assigned to go into mode, like, are these going to end up being the same people who blew it last time? You got to ask that question. Like who, how are we deciding who's going to do this and then also you know was something like covid and all the psychological warfare of the people that happened as a result of that some sort of precursor i don't know psyop or whatever to make sure that the next situation just gets royally fucked up when it's actually way worse or something like that i have no idea i just think about this a lot you know I agree with you. I think about that a lot, because I cannot believe that people are so black and white in their insistence about the origin story of COVID. They are either or, or they don't want to discuss it at all. And, you know, it goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning about like, you should be able to hold two ideas in your head simultaneously. And the other thing that I find fascinating- You listen to my podcast. I like this. Okay. The other, is that really something you say? All the time. I'm like, I got this insane superpower. I never thought it was a superpower. But I can hold multiple thoughts at the same time. Unbelievable. Wow. Yes. Well, it actually makes your life a lot better. It does. Because you don't sort of spiral into anger and resentment. Right. Because you're like, hmm. And it also leaves the door open for changing your mind. Yes. But I think it's fascinating that people also conflate. You can really question the origin story of COVID, as I certainly do, and have a separate position on vaccines and have a separate position on government response. They don't all have to go into one bucket. That's interesting. Yeah. And I think people jump to a conclusion that if you're saying one thing, you also mean all of the others, and that has to do with tribalism, Which is, you know, I worry, not worry is the wrong word, I contemplate whether or not how much of this is like a deep effort by America's enemies to create that division. Because that's an old Cold War spy tactic. Sure, like you can thrive on division and then when you inject into it censorship and stuff like that, oh, you can market that. And there's so many people that I have a lot of respect for in COVID who were canceled off the internet, who would find a way to just come back with studies and information and say, decide for yourself. And like that is – that's what it's supposed to be about. Like we really exposed – you use a great word there, the awful tribalism that we are unfortunately capable of, especially from behind keyboards these days during COVID. And I would like to think that you could respect people for having a different opinion or, you know, coming to a different conclusion from going through evidence. I was talking with someone the other night who went through, I mean, all kinds of studies of every goddamn thing from a scientific lens and has that kind of background on the vaccines and had concluded that this was a huge went through a bunch of their studies and decided like okay i think this was fine if those two could respect each other then maybe we'd be okay but instead you know one's like no cancel this guy for thinking that and i think that's that's so it goes science is supposed to be about questioning everything so like if you don't let that happen you don't have science anymore you have religion i have to tell you about this game-changing product i drank before a night out on the town it's called pre-alcohol by z biotics and you've heard me talk about it before z biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic it was engineered by phd microbiologists to break down ace taldehyde an unwanted byproduct of alcohol metabolism so make 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first through like an article in a newspaper in india literally and then it sort of like went to the eastern block country and before you knew it this idea was being circulated that america was the sea and actually of course they involved the cia um and that this was going you know the idea was that america was willing to kill all its homosexuals and this was in the 80s and the expose of this became a state a really important state department effort because it was so dangerous and it could create such division and it was such a horrific idea and so i just think about that a lot like that is an actual program um and so i just think about that a lot like that is an actual program and that is an actual program the reality of which has been documented and when you look at the way in which and the whole point was to divide people of course to make you but even more specifically to make americans mistrust their own government that's the most dangerous thing you can do as a precursor to civil war you want to hold two thoughts at the same time with this one yes i love living here i count my lucky stars every day i was born here we got our problems i think i think there's so much great about america in this 250 year ongoing experiment at the same time i can also recognize mistakes we've made in the 250 years i can recognize rot that has happened in our own government and stuff like that and while i can recognize as places like the soviets that are now russia obviously china saudi arabia israel britain all these different places that have their own interests and certainly engage in psychological warfare i also have to recognize like in the interest of fairness that we do it all the time too you know what i mean sure and so yeah i hate it and i wish it didn't happen but i i you know if you're a russian looking at me like well you guys have fucking been doing this to us forever i say well then i understand why you're doing it too and i think everybody loses in all societies because no one ever knows the truth they just know whatever gets the most volume in their region of the world you ever think about that a lot especially with the people you talk to absolutely but that's the reason to hold multiple ideas in your head precisely that because you can hear something and learn something i often say oh that looks like this to me and then i'm thinking about it and thinking about it and then i'm kind of putting it into the context of certainly any issue having to do with national security i can look at the bigger the bigger picture maybe you know right and there's a maybe in that that is really important absolutely you know i always ask this question of the journalists like you and my friend joe b warwick and people who are reporting on anything around national security and in particularly the bureaucracy intelligence agency stuff like that and it's kind of an impossible question but you know are you ever in situations or is it every situation where you're constantly asking yourself why are they telling me this mm-hmm i mean of course that's a something you're always thinking about but that usually comes let me think of you're talking about like specific sources telling me anything basically you're covering some of the most sought after secretive high-stakes stories known to man yeah kind of comes with the territory i gotta think absolutely i mean so you mean am i being misled sure yeah i mean you always have to think about that but a lot of times that has to do with what people want me to write about as opposed to what i want to write about so most of the things i'm like really trying to get the answer to the question and sometimes i have to go about it in different ways and sometimes i have to go off sometimes someone will not talk about something and i will go and find declassified documents and make them comfortable that this is a program that has been declassified and therefore i want to know what it was like and then that opens up the dialogue because people who have top secret clearances um in the past you know most of my sources are retired they really honor those they're not like trying to keep things secret unnecessarily they have a obligation to do that yeah they go to prison in some cases if they get caught yeah so it there's a you know there's a give and take in terms of but i'll tell you what i also am interested in is i think that i know that i'm really interested in people and in their motivation and like why something was done and how individual people think within that operation and like this is actually what led to the nuclear war book in the first place because so my first six books you know i've covered a lot of them and i've covered every i've interviewed let's say a hundred or so people for each book fought in world war ii korea vietnam i mean you go through every war to the present i've heard these stories about just absolute horrific situations violent lots of people dying including people's friends you know um and then i've also heard stories about like and then i did this and then i did that and you're that's like hard to hear sometimes and i write a lot of it in the book because people are not shy about telling me and then i cut the guy's throat right so often i would ask especially if i work with someone for a long time why did you do what you did like why and many times people said to me i did what i did to prevent nuclear world war three it was always this north star and that's why i wrote the nuclear war book because i wanted to know well what would happen what would happen if deterrence failed do you ever think that you're running into situations maybe with that specific example where you were talking to people where that was their north star and in your head you're kind of thinking good north star great north star but maybe some of the actions you're taking are an example of road to hell is paved with great intentions absolutely and i if you work with sources like i do where you you know people start out as sources and kind of become a friend yeah and they're supposed to stay a source until the book is done and i do make every effort to you know follow that journalistic code but which is why a lot of times afterwards a lot of-- a lot more information gets revealed. And then I can begin to understand people personally. And then I become a better reporter. I become a better journalist because it goes back to, like, -being able to hold multiple ideas in your head. - Yes. I mean, who am I to comment on, um, you know, slitting someone's throat in warfare? Meaning-- You never did that? I mean, you know, call me an armchair journalist. I am an armchair journalist. I've never been to war. I remember once I was reporting on Afghanistan when I worked for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. And, um, I wrote some things, and I got, uh, uh, an email from one of the soldiers of this area, and he said, "You should come to Afghanistan." And I was like, "I am Jet and Finley's mom." You know? And I-- For me, that's the earnest truth. Like it or not, that's the truth. Some people get offended by being called an armchair journalist. But unless you're there on the ground, that's what you are. No, it's really self-aware. -You know? -To say that, 'cause it-- Yeah. And then it gives you awareness of who am I to say, "You shouldn't have slit the guy's throat." -And that's a great-- -And by the way, that was a woman, that Billy Wah. I'm thinking specifically of Billy Wah telling me in Vietnam, you know, creeping up, uh, on a-- on a camp that they had to assault. -And, um-- -It was a woman. -It was a woman. -Wow. It was a woman. And he did it, not the '82 police. It was the '82 people behind him. This is the thing I-- I do my best to keep this in mind. I fall short sometimes, but, like, people get really liberal with how they throw around the phrase, "If I were blank, then I 100% would blank." And it's a serious thing. It's not like, you know, "If I woke up, I'd have coffee." It's like, "If I were in Vietnam, I definitely wouldn't have killed that person." -You don't know. -Yeah. You don't know until you're in it. And that's the really weird part about human nature. So, it's like, you still have to zoom out and try to judge the information that was available and whether or not someone made the right decision or not, but to be able to play God from a glass house. -Mm-hmm. -Don't really work, no? And also, neither you nor I, I think, I can certainly speak for myself, are in a situation where we have to answer to a boss. -Right. -Specifically, right? Right. Which is very different being an entrepreneur and being in the military or the CIA or any intelligence organization. You must answer for your actions and you must follow orders. And this is not something that most civilians ever really think about. -Mm-mm. -You know, I heard this. I heard this really interesting comment from Joe Kent. You know who Joe Kent is? He was sitting in that chair. -He was on your show. -Three months ago, yeah, yeah. -Good guy. -He spoke after he left the administration. He was doing a discussion and he talked about. I guess the subject matter was whether or not there should be a draft. And he said this really interesting, very evocative thing. He said, "There should be a draft, but not for reasons you think." And the point that he made was profound to me. He said he was part of the professional. He was part of the professional military class. And this professional military class hangs out with other members of the professional military. -Maybe he said this on your podcast. -Oh, yeah. And that their kids socialize. And they all understand war because they have been there. -That's right. -And his point was, if everyone had the same stakes in the game as the professional military class in terms of warfare, the decisions would be very different. And that really blew me away. I 100% believe in that. I don't believe in the draft, per se, but talk about holding two ideas. -Sure. -He is correct, in my opinion, in terms of the major point that he's making. I agree 100%. And I think, you know, I've openly admitted this before. When I have on, especially like my tier one operator guys and just military guys in general, sometimes it's people that have a worldview that's somewhat close to mine. And then other times it's like my friend Dale Comstock, who has a very different worldview than I do. But I give those guys way more leeway to say what they want to say unchallenged on certain things. It's a fine line dance. I play with that. You know, you still have to pick your spots, but like they've been there. They've done that. They've seen that. They've had the hand on the trigger and had to make the call. They've had to have the hand on the trigger and have someone else make the call that was against what should have been done, you know? And there's a reverence I have for that. And what I was really impressed with with Joe Kent is while I was really watching him after he wrote that letter and came out for a few months before we ended up doing the podcast, but his ability to stay right here and never raise his voice or, you know, up the histrionics of things, which no one would blame him for, blew me away. And particularly, I knew it was coming, but like when, you know, because Trump will just do fucking, he'll do the worst rim shots at people. It's his style. When he hit him over his wife, I saw red when that happened. And Joe, you know, it affected him, but still found a way to be diplomatic and breaking down what was happening in the war that day. And, you know, I do wonder sometimes the other side of what you said was like you're in those worlds so much that you were all like, "Well, we just understand, therefore, no one should get this." But Joe was able to step out of that and think for himself. And whether or not he's 100% right or not, I don't know. It probably lands, it's nuanced, probably lands somewhere in there. But like, he's making points that people should listen to. And I just had a lot of respect for it. I really did. I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by people's character, you know, like really, think about people's character. I do. Consistency, flexibility. You're talking about somebody that does not get defensive when attacked. That's right. I mean, that to me is a brilliant character trait. And it only makes you wiser. And it also keeps you moving forward instead of sort of spiraling off into an area of defense that is just, you know, it's lessening. Yes. Yeah, I got the Marcus Aurelius meditations sitting out there. I'm an emotional guy from New Jersey, so I always have to like kind of check that. But with Joe, it felt like he was kind of that in real life. He was very, very stoic, but not unfeeling, you know, as a human. And that's why he's talking on the things he does. But, you know, to be a fly, fly on the wall in these decision rooms when the decisions are actually being made. I mean, I'm sure you think about that even way more than I do. It'd be fascinating to see what the conversations look like before they go pitch it publicly, you know, like who's really actually against something and then pretends they're the biggest fan of it. It's a tough spot to be. I mean, I would not want to be in government under any circumstances. I'm always amazed when people, there's all kinds of conspiracies that I, you know, am in the CIA. And it's like, why would I want to do that, right? I mean, it does not make any sense if you're, particularly if you're, you know, an author. I think that's always going to, when you cover stories like you do, that's always going to come with the territory where people are like, "How is she getting these things?" But like we were talking about earlier, you still have to question, "Okay, why did they tell me that?" You know, and I actually want to go back to it. You mentioned like you'll go find something where it's like declassified and then prove to them, "Hey, this thing here is declassified, so I do know this exists, please tell me about that." What I always do wonder is like, how do you know that they don't decide in a limited hangout scenario, like, "Oh, fuck, she figured that out. All right, let's feed her that and make sure she doesn't see this really shiny thing over here." You know, that's got to happen sometimes, right? Of course, of course. But I mean, you know, another, there's another part of the process, which might be interesting, which is that we were talking, earlier about how there's like, like a, there's a North Star, right? But there's also a triangle, you know, the people in power at the top have a lot more room to speak freely than people at the bottom. That's, that's my experience. Now, that's not, that's kind of starting to shift with podcasts a little bit. But I'll give you an example. You can find out really shocking components of national security from a wide variety of places. When I was reporting the nuclear war book, I mean, this is very, very, very difficult to report on, to find out what happens after an incoming missile is launched and how that counterattack goes down. So this spoke to my, you know, decades of always looking at nuclear weapons in all of my books that are history, because they've been part and parcel to national security since the invention of the atomic bomb. That's right. But certain details, how do you get confirmed? So here's an example. I learned from a scientist or a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists named Hans Christensen that there was a really dangerous hole in national security that goes like this. So we have 400 nuclear missile silos across the Middle West of America. 400. 400. You can find them on Google. The launch of them takes 60 seconds from the time the president authorizes the launch to the time they leave the silo. Not a lot is known about the detail. I mean, certainly the science is known that it takes approximately 30 minutes to get to a target across the world and that there's three different phases of it. But not a lot is known about transportation. Trajectory and things like that. So what I learned from Hans Christensen was that there's a hole in the trajectory, meaning if North Korea launches at the United States and the United States is going to do a counterattack before the missile hits, which is policy. It's called launch on warning. We don't wait to absorb the attack. Our missiles, apparently, I learned, do not have enough reach. to get to North Korea without overflying Russia. Oh, that's good. Okay. Now, this is an extraordinary detail. When you say overflying Russia, literally over the land or over places like on the edge of the sea? No, they have to go over Russia, over the actual land. Okay. And this is an astonishing detail. And it's obviously something you don't want to get wrong if you're writing an entire book. And it's a major, major problem. Because in the scenario. In the scenario I wrote in Nuclear War, when Russia, Russia doesn't believe America. Imagine if you imagine you you're the president and you get the Russian president on the phone and you say, oh, there are missiles coming over you. They're, they're missiles coming. It looks like they're coming at you, but they're actually going to go over you. Okay. And Russia's set up to launch on warning as well. So they would launch. So I needed to confirm this. And people got very squirrely with me. When I was trying to confirm this. So eventually, I reached Leon Panetta, who was not only the director of the CIA, former, but the SECDEF. And before that, he was Clinton's chief of staff. So extraordinary experience, extraordinary positions. He's seen it from multiple angles. Yeah, big angles. And the SECDEF knows about nuclear weapons and counterattacks. So I asked him, is that true? And he said, Yes, it's a very big problem. Wow. So trying to think what his incentive to even say that would be national security. His incentive is exactly I believe what my incentive is, which is, we do not have to have a nuclear war, but people should know that if it happens, it will only end in nuclear Armageddon. That is what every Pentagon war game on nuclear war spells out. Full stop, period. The whole system is set up to launch the mother load. Can you walk me through that 60 seconds? Like, as best you know it, like what exactly happens, what the process is, who talks to who? The 60 seconds from president to? Well, I mean, the president has the football. That's right. The football has a list of options. They've been very simplified. That book is called the black book. And I was told the reason it's called the black book is because it involves so much death. The black book, and I spoke to people who did the equations, the calculations for the black book. And that's kind of as far as you can, they can be known. But you have to think of the nuclear armed nations and the nuclear armed enemies and know that there is on this, what has been described by someone who carried the black book as a Denny's menu type. The black book is a set of options, this or that. Okay. And you have to think, so how simple the information is, how simplified. Is this literally like the double deluxe will get you 200 million deaths? This is like if North Korea attacks, here's what you do. Okay. If Russia attacks, here's what we do. If China attacks, here's what we do. Does it matter where they attack? Like LA versus New York? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. I mean, technically, there's nuances. But as far as the president is concerned, it doesn't matter. If the president's counterattack, you have his, you know, he's being advised, but it's sole presidential authority. So only the president decides. What was I, I'm a little hazy on the story. I know Jesse Michaels had talked to Harold Malmgren before he died. But I'm pretty sure if I'm remembering this right, he was the guy who like prevented a nuclear attack or something like there was some sort of, can we Google Harold Malmgren, M-A-L-M-G. M-A-L-M-G-R-E-N. There was some sort of order that came through and he decided that there was something wrong here and didn't do it. So we didn't have it. But like, I think about that stuff all the time. Like how easy is it to accidentally have the wrong button hit or, you know, someone developed some sort of quantum fucking AI and they're able to hack something crazy and be like, oh, look, the president just ordered a nuke. Run it. Well, the, the way in which that information is delivered is a little differently. A little different. So the president has authentication codes, which is a call and response, a verbal call and response. And that information goes directly to the bunker beneath the Pentagon, which is the NMCC. Okay. That's the military bunker. And then they authenticate that it's the president. And then that information goes to STRATCOM, which is the bunker beneath strategic command in Omaha, Nebraska. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then the missiles are launched. Now, it doesn't have to necessarily be the ICBMs that are in the silos. There's also the options of the B-2 bombers and the nuclear-powered submarines that have ballistic missiles. Right. Right. So it's very, very clear that, you know, the targets are hit. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it's very clear that, you know, the targets are hit. Yeah. America has 44 interceptor missiles. Four of them are in Santa Barbara at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and 40 of them are in Alaska. Okay. So I just told you there's 1,700 approximately Russian ready for launch. I don't like that math. That math. Now, the current president has authorized the building of something called the Golden Dome. The Golden Dome. Which is based on the Iron Dome that the United States built with and pretty much for Israel. We do a lot of that, apparently. But it will not work according to every subject matter expert that I know. And the current weapons developers that I've spoken to about the Golden Dome generally, you know, sort of the way in which they phrase it is that it's classified and I can't really know about the CubeSats. Talking about the technology. The technology that may, in fact, work. But I really strongly believe that the Golden Dome will not work, and it's an extraordinary. amount of money that's being spent on it i mean i'm not a weapons designer so i can't tell you about the current um but i did interview sort of the nobel laureates who worked on the first version of what is now being called the golden dome which was called sdi the strategic defense initiative of the reagan era where they tried to do the same thing they tried to sort of put in space um space-based lasers and missiles that would attack you know incoming icbms and the science was certainly not there then and the question is is it there now i mean i hope it is but you know it 44 doesn't sound too great and you don't sound too excited about a golden dome idea working so that's not good but i do always go back to the same question everyone else does with this which is that we've had them for 82 years approximately right now in the world and in my old studio on my parents house i used to have two pictures on the right side over there one was a picture of the test of bikini atoll and just wow blew the island up basically for shits and gigs and then below it was a picture of michelangelo's hand of god but instead it had a robot as the hand and it was just like it was a symbolic thing for me in my life and i think that's what i've been doing for a long time and i think that's what i've been doing for a long time and i think that's what i've been doing for a long time and that i was like this was the most recent existential threat we had to humanity this is the next one we're going to be facing with like ai and i would look at it because it's selfishly the optimist in me it would give me some hope because at the time i got that i guess you know early 2020 so we were 75 76 years into nukes and no one had ever done it yeah and i always wondered obviously the first thing people come to is like mutually assured destruction everything but then i remember and i it might have been in one of your books where you said this it was your book or maybe it was talbot's book it was one of them but there there were guys in the pentagon you know in the 60s who very matter-of-factly would say things like yeah well you know if russia hit us we'd lose 60 but we'd hit them and they'd lose 240 so we win by 180 and they were talking about millions of lives that's how callous they were about it and i'm like and yet even with callous psychos like that existing even in our own government to say nothing of other governments we've never done it why do you think is it just mutually assured destruction just just a good accident or it is the idea of deterrence and many people will tell you deterrence will hold like we have an arsenal pointed at them whoever them is you know and they have an arsenal pointed at us and therefore we would not be insane enough to use it but you know i begin nuclear war scenario with a single launch of a one megaton thermonuclear weapon at the united states at washington dc from north korea it's called a decapitation strike a decapitation strike yes it's also called a bolt out of the blue attack and every subject matter expert that advises the president on nuclear war told me this was what everyone fears most a north korean one well and no they did not say no just a bolt out of the blue attack it's also called a preemptive strike but usually a preemptive strike would involve you know hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons you would but one why one and the reason and i would often ask that is because out of everyone i interviewed perhaps the most knowledgeable certainly the most senior was a scientist named richard garwin he died recently at the age of 97 i think he was and during covid i did a number of zooms with garwin garwin advised every president since eisenhower on nuclear war he was a founder of nro the national reconnaissance organization office okay but even more important and this was classified until very recently everyone thinks of edward teller as the father of the hydrogen bomb oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb hydrogen bomb is just at scale okay everyone thinks of edward teller as the father of the thinks of Teller. Well, really, Teller couldn't make it explode. He could do the physics of it theoretically, but he couldn't figure out how to make the bomb explode. Richard Garwin was 23 years old, and he figured it out. And they kept it classified for his entire life because they didn't want him kidnapped. But then he told you on Zoom in 97? That was known before. It was declassified, right? He didn't tell me. Just see like Putin checking on them. So when is Jacobson talking? Okay. He's incredibly famous, Garwin, like among the circle of nuclear physicists. But I did many Zooms with him. He was incredible. He had a stroke during our interviews. And then I thought, wow, oh my God, that's the last interview. Like during the- No, no, no. Sorry. Not actually during. He had a stroke in the process over the time, the weeks and months, the months we were interviewing. And I thought, oh my God, you know, I'm never going to, I'm so happy I spoke. And he bounced back. He bounced back. And we did more Zooms. Like his brain was just extraordinary. That's unbelievable. At 97, he bounced back? Yes, he bounced back. I think he was 93 when he had the stroke. I mean, I talked to him over a number of years. Just if I have a stroke at 93, just end it. Pull the plug. But I asked him what he was most afraid of. And he said, a madman with a nuclear arsenal. He called it the mad king theory. And then he even said, which is often attributed to Napoleon. It means after me, the flood. Yeah. Like I don't care. And that's what he was worried about with North Korea. And so I think that's the existential threat that I really wanted to point out. Um, that because one, since nuclear war begins, there's no stopping it. And there's no stopping it. There's no stopping it. You see that. And I mean, read the book, you see it. I lay it out and you go, oh, right. It's, and this is because out of an error, Russia gets involved. So in that type of scenario, North Korea does an out of the blue decapitation strike. They hit us in a city. You know, we lose millions of people. We immediately fire something back, but it, because we have to fire a missile to North Korea that goes over Russia, Russia thinks they're getting hit. So then they hit us. And then we, is that kind of dominant? Yes. Let me give you like an interesting detail on that, of how the reporter may works to find this out. So for example, um, when, during the first Trump administration, the fire and fury, remember that that sort of rhetoric between Trump and the leader of North Korea, um, General Hyten, the commander of STRATCOM went on CNN, which is unusual. And he said, he said, North Korea needs to, no, I'm paraphrasing him. The exact quote is in the book. North Korea needs to know if they hit us with one, we hit them with one. If they hit us with two, we hit them with two. Well, I found out that's not accurate. That was like the general, just giving a, a nice talking point. In fact, if North Korea launches a single nuclear weapon at Washington, DC, 82, 82, 82, so we turn North Korea into a fireplace. Why? Because their command and control needs to be taken out. There's a, there's all these incredible phrases in the nuclear nomenclature, which are just the one that I found fascinating on the 82 was it's called escalate to deescalate. How does that deescalate? Deescalate when it creates radioactive material. And I don't know, again, not a scientist here, but South Korea is in the area. China's in the area. Russia's in the area. There's not like a iron dome of biological stop the air right here that exists. How does that? Well, it, you have, you have taken out the command and control of North Korea with 82 nuclear weapons. So that's considered deescalation. And yes, everything you said is also just true. You know, the South Korea part of it was so interesting. And after the book published, I got a lot of invitations to go to a lot of places. I've spoken at the Vatican, at the United Nations, at the Vatican, to the Cardinals, Pope, this was Pope Francis was still with us. He was still with us. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying, were you above ground or down in the secret? I was not down in the secret place. So no rituals. I was at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. That sounds important. It was really fascinating. I was doing kind of like a briefing for the Cardinals. Yeah. I used to live like a quarter mile from there. From the Vatican? Yeah. I thought it was like really cool at the time. But like if I lived there, I studied there in college. Wow. That's that? Yeah, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My grandfather actually bought that. But yeah, but like, it was always wild. Because now I go back and I'm like, damn, because I used to like run, like they would literally let you run in St. Peter's Square, like in the morning. I was like, wow, that's cool. That's like a big religious place. And now I'm like, wow, there's a lot of shit in there. Yes. But you were in it. Yes. Speaking to I'm interested in a nuclear treaty that would reduce the arsenals from, you know, today there's approximately 12,500 nuclear weapons on the planet. 12,500. Now, if you think that's bad, go back in time to 1986. There were 70,000. So we've depleted from 70,000 down to there. How – can you explain, like quantify that and give me the story of what happened there? So the story is beautiful and it's one of the only hopeful stories that I know in the nuclear weapon disarmament sort of narrative. But it's really important because it goes like this. Ronald Reagan, nuclear hawk. He was building SDI, putting, you know, possible nuclear weapons in space even. Believed that more nuclear weapons made us more safe. That was his fundamental belief. Peachtree strength. 100%. Nuclear strength. So ABC TV comes out with a movie called The Day After about a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union. And Reagan's chief of staff encouraged him not to watch it. He watched it anyways. He wrote. He wrote in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed after seeing it. What year is this? 1983. Okay. 100 million Americans watched that television show. 100 million Americans. How many – what were there, 200 million at the time? I mean, check the figure, but it was an extraordinary amount of people. And as a result, Reagan reached out to Gorbachev. He was the leader of the Soviet Union. And they agreed. They released a joint statement that said, nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And they worked starting in Reykjavik and this very famous meeting in Iceland. Didn't they just make a movie with Jeff Daniels about that? Yes. And they agreed that they needed to reduce these arsenals. It was just insane. And that's why we've gone from 70,000 to 12,500. Did other countries also reduce their arsenals in the fallout of that? There aren't really many other countries with nuclear weapons. I know. But, like, there's still some. Yeah. I mean, you know, China – so think – there was like 30,000 and 30,000 or 35 – I mean, you've got to look at the numbers that are in the book. But it was really about the U.S. and Russia. That's where the emphasis is. Now, there's – you know, so as a result – you can realize that this idea of disarmament is not implausible. You know, are we really going to get to zero? I don't know. Am I on the team that absolutely believes in nuclear disarmament? 100%. Like, having 12,500 nuclear weapons is insane. China's now building new nuclear weapons, you know. So that's why I write a book like that. Like, man-made problem, man-made solution. It's been done before. Progress has been made. That's an insane drawdown. How do you – what's the science of, like, destroying nuclear weapons? How do you do that safely? Yes, yes. Okay, so – And prove you did it, by the way. In this book, by the way, there is a scene at the end at a place called Pantex. Pantex? In Texas. Okay. And Pantex is the only place in the United States where the nuclear warheads are dismantled. Right. Now, what's really crazy and very frightening is that you can never dismantle a nuclear core entirely. So the cores are actually all lined up at Pantex. And I tell the story from two CIA officers who are the chiefs of their individual departments of countering weapons of mass destruction. And both of them are in this book. And they tell the story of going down into deep underground. I mean, talk about an underground bunker. I mean, Pantex, the airspace, is completely closed. It's probably the most dangerous place in America. Do we know the exact location? There's a photograph of it in the book. Whoa. And – but that's where all the pits are stored. And so they keep all the cores next to each other. Can we – is there a picture of what a nuclear core looks like? Do you have that in the book? That – you know, nuclear weapons themselves are – when I was at Los Alamos, like, I would – like, hey, could I – you know, that's the kind of – that's exactly what no one will show you. There are drawings online that are, is my understanding, are pretty accurate. And if you go to the – Anything there look right to you? Pantex. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's basic. Because these are drawing representations. We're just looking at the computer. Yeah, a lot of nuclear reactors. But you can see, you know, the exterior of the warhead is visible at some of the – some of the museums in Los Alamos. But they're mock-ups. So – That's crazy, though, that they got to keep them all. So you – And the story in there was – It was incredible because Jim Lawler, who was the – I know Jim well. Okay. So he's the one who tells me the story of going down there with Rolf Moat Larson. They were – Lawler was running counter-WMD sort of, like, really long efforts. And Rolf was running sort of, you know, tactical operations, if you will, like, really going after the bad guys. Jim Lawler took down AQ Khan and that network. And they – Rolf became head of intelligence for DOE after leaving CIA. And he brought Lawler with him down into the Pantex plant to witness one of the nuclear warheads being dismantled. And the description in there is unbelievable. You know, them – the scientists unscrewing the components to take out the core. And the way Lawler describes it, he's talking about the scientists doing a call and response. You know, turn to – To the left type thing. That's a terrible rendition of it. But you get the idea. And he described it to me like it was almost like a Gregorian chant. Or you could imagine, like, a priest, pre-science kind of working in this magical, mysterious sort of concept. And I just – I think it's very, very spooky. It's very spooky. That guy – Jim was – mad dog Jim Lawler. Did he come on the pod? Yeah, he was in my parents' house. Danny Jones called. He called me up. He's like, you want to talk to mad dog Jim Lawler? I'm like, if he's named mad dog, hell yeah. Who is he? And then he's like, well, I think he's pretty serious. But that's crazy. Do you know why he's mad dog? Why he's called mad dog? Yeah, because he almost got – he got rabies and they had to take it out. He got bit by a dog on a mission in Paris. Fucking insane. Rabies. A rabid dog. Fucking insane. He's a savage. He's one of those guys, like, when you're talking to him, he, like, kind of hypnotizes you. Where he's like, and I'm talking to you just like this, Julian, and you're going to become a traitor. You're going to become a traitor against your own country for me. I'm like, you know what? I like what you're selling, Jim. I don't know why. But, yeah, one of the things, side note, that I asked him that – oh, that it's one of those moments that sticks out in my head from all the podcasts I've done is we were establishing, like, his timeline. I don't think he ever left CIA to be very clear. But, you know, he was like, well, I was there for 25 years. I said, okay, so he had an official term for it and I'm going to get it wrong. But, like, for sake of argument here, it was like – He specialized in anti-weapons of mass destruction spying. I said, okay, so you're there 25 years. Yeah. Is it fair to say, you know, by the last 10-ish years or something like that, you were the highest or one of the highest up in that department of CIA? And he was like, yes. And I'm doing math in my head of the years he said. I'm like, so this is when the Iraq war is going to happen? He's like, yes. And I said, okay. What involvement did you have in the investigation of WMDs in Iraq? And he said, I had no involvement in that. I said, like Joe Kent says, I'm like, data point. That's interesting. So you're telling me it's basically like saying in that department, you know, yeah, Mike, Jordan, we got this. Like, don't worry about it. 12th guy on the bench is going to win the game. That's a little weird to me because that was a huge whiff with obviously nuclear weapons in that case. But, you know. I never got to ask him about that again. And that's one of those I wonder. People have very different siloed jobs, you know. And what Lawler explained to me that was deeply valuable for me was understanding about human, right? Human intelligence. Because we live in this world where technological intelligence is so extraordinary and colossal and really kind of like covers most of everything. And I'm talking about signals intelligence or images. Imagery intelligence. You know, listening devices. Mazint is measurement and signature. intelligence. It's sniffing chemicals. These are all very important to biological war, or rather preventing biological war. I take readers through what the intelligence community tries to do when they learn of an accident. And Lawler explained to me that human intelligence is perhaps the most important component in biological war, in preventing it. Or if there's an outbreak in keeping the outbreak from becoming an epidemic or a pandemic, because you have to know people's intentions. So that was like very, and I think that's really what Lawler is so good at, is working with people. Oh, you can tell. Like when, I mean, obviously you probably talked to him a lot more than I ever did. That's a guy that you're with him and you're like, I can fully understand. I can fully understand why against my will, I would do exactly what you want me to do within two hours of talking to you. Like it is, he's got a real gift with that for sure. And he also was very open about the whole, how CIA for case officers in particularly recruits for people who are dangerously on the line of being a sociopath, which means sometimes they do land someone that actually is a sociopath. But he talks about that. He's like- Meaning the assets we gather or the people inside CIA? I can't speak to the assets they gather. That's a separate department. That's an interesting thought though. I should think about that more. I'm talking about the people that actually work as case officers like him. And he was like, yeah, I'm dangerously on that line. I'm willing to do some shit and not think twice about it. And I'm like, okay, I can see why that's effective. It's most certainly a personality type that I can only imagine. Right. Not necessarily a quality that I cultivate. That's right. That's right. I think I'm happy that didn't nick us, if you will. But it's interesting that that's one of the things that they go for. And I think you write in this book about biological war. To me, I could see why if I were spying to try to figure out nuclear secrets of a nation, of course, I'm probably. Maybe that's a strong way to put it. There's a decent possibility the way I'm thinking about it from my armchair right here, that I'm going to run in as a spy. I'm going to run into a nuclear secret. There's a lot of intelligence that gets into these programs too, because in some ways, just like symbolically, they're intertwined. They cause mass destruction to people. Is that fair to say? You mean are nuclear and bio intertwined? That's a good question. I mean, they certainly are in that they fall into the same weapons of mass destruction and they can cause what is known as an ELE or a near ELE, an extinction level event. Right. Right. These are. These are global catastrophic risks. And unlike, you know, conventional weapons, they're really the razor's edge between civilization functioning and civilization collapsing. That's what I show in both my books. And so for that, in that regard, if you're an expert in that kind of warfare, certainly if you're playing the long game as someone like Lawler does, meaning he's developing assets to really understand intention, then the weapons of mass destruction program are going to be very. They're going to be generated from very high up. Like, for example, Eamon Zawahiri, the number two at Al-Qaeda, was in charge of Al-Qaeda's biological weapons program. And I specifically did not use a terrorist attack of biological weapons because it's so loaded. You know, it's so loaded in the. Having just been involved in the war on terror for 20 some odd years as America has been. And. But it doesn't mean it didn't exist. Sure. And Rolf Moet-Lorison talks about that in the book. And it's terrifying to think about terrorists with biological weapons because they don't. You know, one of the issues we talked about a little bit earlier was blowback. Like, you're not going to use a biological weapon per se because you're going to kill a lot of your own people. So they're kind of. This idea is that they're in the labs being experimented with to see what can be done and what could be done. Yeah. And also, allegedly, to create medical countermeasures. I mean, biological weapons are illegal. So any of this work that's going on with biological weapons is violating a treaty that everyone signed. Right. Right? But it still goes on. And this is known by the State Department. But I wanted to. Not use a biological attack and instead use an accident for precisely the reasons we've been talking about. Same as with nuclear because many subject matter experts fear that that is actually more likely than an actual attack because everyone knows it could be a near extinction level event. It just takes one human mistake, even an objectively smart human. They do dumb things. And all these countries, including our own, are working on these things. You think it's secure. Yeah. And it's not. And when you had that scare that happened a few weeks ago pop out, we were all sticking on our tinfoil hats and saying, how did he get the place down on that? Like, were you a little surprised that it was like almost down to what the scenario was in your book? I mean, think about it. I wrote a scenario that begins with an accident at a BSL-4 lab in Siberia, Russia, involving pneumonic plates. Pneumonic plate. Genetically modified pneumonic plate. You were either a really good guesser or you knew something. Well, I mean, it's just the worst nightmare scenario. And that's why I chose it. And it's something that a lot of subject matter experts are seriously concerned about. So that's why we go from outbreak to anarchy in the United States in six days because it's been genetically modified for that greater virulence, transmissibility, and to defeat medical countermeasures that we spoke of. And what actually happened a couple weeks ago was an accident at a BSL-3 lab in Siberia, in Russia, involving pneumonic plague at an anti-plague institute. One worker died. One lab technician died, allegedly. 200 people were quarantined by FSB, which is Russia's federal law enforcement agency. Very draconian. Yeah, they succeeded the KGB. Right. Right. So the, you know, the setup was remarkably similar. Now, we didn't go from outbreak to anarchy in six days. Right. Either because it wasn't genetically modified or the FSB shot everything down or both or neither. But we don't know much. We don't know. We don't know. And this was in Siberia. Where's the exact location? It's about 900 miles from the – so I use as the inciting incident this lab that really exists called Vector. Vector. In Siberia. And that's where the Russians ran their biological weapons program. That sounds like a James Bond film in place. I mean, it sounds like it's straight out of a film, Vector, the Vector Institute. Yeah, you could name the film Vector. Yeah. That would work. They had Spectre. Yep, Vector. Is that it right there, the second one? Top left corner. Top left. That's in my book, yeah. Left all the way top left. And that's an older picture, but they don't – Yep, perfect. Yeah. So that's – And, you know, there really was an explosion at Vector in 2019. So what I try to do in biological war scenario is tie these major plot points, if you will, to actual events. That have happened, or events in wargaming scenarios that the Pentagon is seriously worried about, so that readers always feel like they are in science fact, not science fiction. Yeah. And if you wonder where information comes from, you can go to the back of the book in notes and follow along and realize, right? That's right. And when you're reading the book, you can be like me and you can read it in Annie's voice. Yeah. That's my one problem with like – I do like a hundred pages and I'm like, wow, this is like hypnotizing me a little bit. You listen to the audiobook? No. Oh, you should. I literally hear your voice when I'm actually reading. Okay. It'll be like, that the Nazis didn't know. I'm like, ah, I'm like singing it in my head, but that's – it is fascinating that people from such a recent administration as well, you mentioned like some of the Obama people as well. What was it? The head of FEMA under Obama, these were the guys laying it out because they would have been involved, I guess, in recent Red Bull tests, for lack of a better way of putting it, where they go through this. Yeah. And they actually disclose any simulations they had done that previously weren't publicly acknowledged or known, I'm sorry. Well, I mean, that is the job of the journalist to find that on the public record, right? So no source is ever going to disclose something that they can't. So it's my job to be aware of a scenario and then ask the questions and it just depends how far someone wants to take me. in terms of what I don't know and what they can speak to. I think you started to say this at the very beginning of our conversation. I just can't remember if it was when we were on camera yet or not. So apologies if this is repeated. But when you got to this book, Biological War, what was the initial spark there that said, oh, this is definitely the one I'm writing? Well, there were a couple things. It started with the fact that Dr. Blum, also pronounced Dr. Blum, you know, had this biological weapons program. And I always thought about just how dark and nefarious it was. And I've written a lot about the Cold War programs of biological weapons that America had, which all became illegal when President Nixon decided to get rid of the entire arsenal of biological weapons in 1969, just out of the blue. It literally surprised many people. The reasons for that are debated. I have my theory. And then in 1972 is when the biologics. The Biological Weapons Convention Treaty went into effect, and people began to sign it, people being different nations, agreeing not to make any biological weapons because they were, this is a great quote, odious to the conscience of mankind. But what's important to know is that the Soviet Union signed the treaty, fingers behind the back. They immediately began an even more robust, much more nefarious. Biological weapons program that we learned about only when a few of the Soviet scientists, one of them defected to the United States, I mean, defected to Britain. I interviewed his handler, Dr. Christopher Davis, British intelligence. And then when the wall fell down, a number of other scientists, Soviet biological weapons scientists came here. And we learned about this program, and it was just huge and outrageously malicious. They were working specifically on a super plague weapon. A super plague weapon. That's what it was called. To make mnemonic plague more virulent, more transmissible. You can't really make it more virulent, but I'll tell you how they did it. More transmissible. But they engineered, they didn't just make it able to defeat antibiotics. They did an incredibly dark genetic tweak. That would, once you took antibiotics, if you were an American with mnemonic plague, thinking, okay, maybe I can survive, the antibiotic would trigger Venezuelan equine encephalitis, which will kill you by making your brain swell. Wow. So the goal of which, and this is from the Soviet defector scientists, the goal of which was. So that the last thought an American would have as they were dying was, modern medicine failed me. My government failed me. That was the plan. And it's so dark. Yeah. Okay, you want one more dark detail? Yeah. Really, just while we're at it? Might as well just, yeah. Okay, so there was a scientist that I interviewed who's one of the world's experts in plague, and he worked at USAMRID. Which is that BSL4 lab at Fort Detrick, Dr. Henry Hine. And he told me that they became familiar with the Soviet program on super plague. And I report for the first time in the book something that had not been known before, which is even darker. In addition to splicing in on the back end that triggering effect that made antibiotics invalid, they spliced. The gene for euphoria into the front end, so that, think about it, when you become sick with something like plague, you're going to go home and be under the covers. Instead, by splicing in the gene for euphoria, you would have the pathogen in your lungs and you would feel fantastic. And you would go out and socialize. And you would infect more people. Which is why I begin the book with. Someone infected with pneumonic plague at a disco. I was going to say, this sounds like MDMA. Wow. And that was their plan. And this, by the way, was 40 years ago. So imagine what can be done now with modern day genetic modifications. Yeah, I think about this all the time. I think you wrote in your DARPA book that they were like maybe telepathically talking to dolphins in like 1992, when computers back then that have our power now were the size of like 12 football fields. I'm like, what can they do now? Yeah, I mean, science and technology just moves at an astonishing speed. I've written about it in all my books because you just, you know, I remember when I was working on Area 51, my first book, I interviewed Dr. Bud Whelan, who was, he was the mayor of Area 51, in essence, the CIA spy plane programs that were going on there. But he was also the first director of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. Wow. And that was in the 60s. I think it was in 62. Pre-DARPA. No, DARPA began in 58. It started in 58? Yeah. But the CIA didn't, the CIA was like old school. Like, no, no, no, no, we're about human intelligence. It took them until the early 60s to be like, okay, we need this directorate. And it was kind of, you know, not exactly embraced originally. And then very quickly it was. I mean, Dr. Whelan actually developed the first satellite program. The spy satellite program called Corona, which is, you know, I mean, so the point is, is that the pace of science and technology is extraordinary right now. And it is pretty much outpacing, essentially, democracy. It's outpacing public opinion. Oh, yeah. Yep. And so this is why, you know, the things I write about, I think, also have inadvertently become more interesting to people. Over the years, because you can see where it all began. I think you had the perfect timeline by accident of like getting into the writing the books because you built the library in the earliest years of like people going fully onto social media and having access to internet 2.0. And then you started to peak your library like even more when COVID hit, which just totally changed everyone's worldview and the fallout of that. Right. And now there's things that everyone across so many different demographics thinks about because there was some sort of recognition. And in this way, this is a good outcome of how fragile things really are. Like, I think back to summer 2019. This was a decent time, like I had a great time in 2019, right? And it's not that you feel infallible or whatever, but you go outside, the sun is up, the sky is clear. You can breathe everything in, which I remind we right now can do that outside. But you're not thinking about if just that basic reality weren't available. And now people are at least thinking about it because they watched everyone go inside in 24 hours back in 2020 and you start to realize like maybe some of this stuff is not what I think. And so yes, people look at it a lot more because of that, but you talk about the fingers behind the back like this, that the Soviets did with biological weapons. I was thinking this when we were talking about the nuclear drawdown. Why is it so much more reliable that we know for a fact both the United States and Russia in particularly did draw down all those weapons and didn't secretly create more or something like that? Quick break and I'll answer. Absolutely. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. So I had asked you right before we went to the bathroom break about how we know for a fact that both the US and Russia didn't stick their fingers behind their back and actually create other nukes when they were drawing down in the '80s, like how that was proven. Treaties allow for verification. Those are the mechanisms in place where you can look. You allow scientists and officials to come in and see your stockpiles. So this is entirely missing from biological weapons, an important point. Because biological weapons are illegal so you're not supposed to have them and that's one of the main problems where no one knows what really goes on in any of the labs because everyone is like, "Oh, this is pharma. These are medical countermeasures." None of your business because there's no treaties. There's no verification regimes. I still get confused as to how that can't be circumvented though because we know Israel has reported at least 300 nuclear weapons and they're not in the NIEA treaty or anything like that. That's to say that America, Russia, these other places don't have some sort of similar secret stockpile. Yeah. I mean that's where somebody like Lawler or his colleagues, maybe not his department per se, is working the long game to try and understand exactly what's going on. I'm not really an expert in understanding that. Fair enough. That's the other thing. Yeah. -there's no way you can-- - There's so many rabbit holes. of this yeah might be another i can't even really speculate i mean some things i can okay speculate on but i can't i can't really think through that you know other than the other than the treaties which is the old trust right and you're absolutely right because um you know the problem with the biological weapons convention was that there was no one was going to even look at what a lab looked like because everyone agreed that these were odious to the conscience of mankind and they wouldn't develop them but they do but they did that's crazy well i found those pictures i've been talking about at the break so this was the i don't know how well we can see this amanda but this was the ai one i think it was this way right something like that yeah right with the hand talking to the ai robot and i had that below this one is this bikini atoll that's bikini atoll that's 1946 so that's like this incredible i'm i'm very impressed that you had that on your bedroom wall by the way my studio your studio okay it was yeah yeah um and that's like a real hinge point in the development of the nuclear arsenals because there was a big debate when the war ended of like you know maybe we shouldn't go bigger we shouldn't develop more weapons and that test was the moment 1946 it was just a year after the war ended like we're going and i interviewed the man who wired that bomb because this was for the area 51 book because the manhattan project scientists were still alive and we were doing nuclear testing out at area 51 the nevada test site is right there and area 51 was put there specifically so that no one would go like who wants to go there they're testing nuclear bombs and so the eg and g scientists were there um at the test site and then they would go to the marshall islands and where bikini is and why are these bombs so you talked to the guy who wired that yes what did he say that was like well what was incredible this is like right on the heels of our science and technology um concept okay so that other the very very famous picture in the top left corner is the one everyone knows about and they're the palm trees in it and you can see there's even like a little beach shack and what the engineers did as it was explained to me was they laid cable from the barge where that bomb was exploded in the middle of the atoll all the way to the shore so that they could push a button and explode it literally and how far away was it again approximately that i mean i we can google that that's a yes i wouldn't want to guess but it's like i'm you know i want to say a couple miles yeah and that's not that far that's like dangerous and the thing is is that they were like but that's remarkable to me that you would have a nuclear weapon with like cable um under the on you know going through the water and this is why that arming firing what was the wiring arming and firing party was so critical to nuclear weapon development and what's interesting is they also none of those guys ever left the country who worked on that team because they would they would be kidnapped i mean that kind of engineering knowledge people don't think about that but the triggering device of a nuclear weapon is what really prohibits from what i understand from the original manhattan project guys um that prohibits a lot of the proliferation because the triggering device is incredibly complex and i was even told they never left the country no no no and you were even told what i'm sorry i cut you off well that this was back in like i was doing these interviews in like 2010 and that that that's why according to them or that's why iran didn't have the bomb yet because it was having so much trouble developing the triggering device they also had some stuxnet problems too that was before stuxnet yeah yeah stuxnet was 2013 i think right yeah that happened a little bit later which was fascinating kind of a hilarious story not gonna lie if you know you know but so amanda you pulled this up the japanese fishing boat daigo fukuro maru lucky dragon number five was 60 miles or 96 kilometers away from bikini atoll when well that's the boat that was that was during castle castle bravo so what's crazy is that is referring to the first hydrogen bomb okay we spoke a little bit earlier about richard garwin so garwin drew the plans to the first thermonuclear weapon that exploded and it was called ivy mike that was the test it's insane it was like it was like it was 10 something megatons and it was just extraordinarily huge but it was so big it was essentially a series of warehouses set up on an atoll they hadn't figured out yet how to shrink it down to be essentially a warhead and the first warhead design was that castle bravo 1954 explosion which was the biggest bomb ever exploded by the united states in the marshall islands did extreme damage to the atmosphere radioactive poisoning now those eg and g engineers were in a bunker an underground bunker 19 miles i believe it was from the center point and then how long did they have to stay in that bunker after they were supposed to stay there and they were so overwhelmed with radioactivity that they're they had the u.s army sent in a helicopter i write about this in the pentagon's brain it's the opening scene in the book because it's so insane and they um they had to be rescued because the radioactivity was just so incredibly intense and they would all be cooked and died jesus christ and 19 miles away these were like extraordinary first-hand stories for me to receive you know they're really when i think back on that um and all of those people are dead now and sometimes i will go back and listen to those interviews you know the cadence of the old person's voice when they're 90 telling you about something that was so intense and so strong and so powerful and so powerful and so powerful and it was such a profound experience not just in their own life but in the history of and not just america but in the history of nuclear weapons it's one of those things where it's so beyond comprehension that i don't know how guys like that went to a restaurant 20 years later and just sat around people it's funny that you would say that because i would think exactly that we would like okay one of the things was some of these guys were such old spies they were like patent project guys and also cia people and they were all in their late 80s or 90s and we would meet at um this uh casino in vegas and i was like why are we meeting here it's really loud okay and for a long time like in that first interview i remember like asking that and they were like chuckled and then i had my tape recorder and when i got home i realized why it's because with all the sound of you can't clearly hear what is being said and it was such a great trick right but to your point um we would be sitting there you know and the and the cocktail waitress would come up and all right what do you guys want and you know i thought exactly what you just said which is like god if she had any idea what these people did with their lives and by the way they fought in world war ii and the battle stories from world war ii alone some in the pacific theater um some in the european theater i mean it was just remarkable it was a real privilege for sure i had i had the opportunity to have a couple world war ii vets in here who fought over there and one of them just recently died and everything but it was what it's like you're talking to i mean this very respectfully like a relic of history and you're just like absolutely yeah tell me about bavaria in 1944 like what yeah or 1945 it's like god the things that that generation had to see and then you think of the high level people like this who went on to work on some of this top secret type things i mean you know goes back to the old oppenheimer quote i've become death well there's people who saw what that looks like and then they have to go home and try to live a normal life that feels like ptsd on steroids to me you know just knowing not even necessarily seeing bodies fly with something like that they blew up some empty island but like knowing oh that's all that's all we got to do yeah crazy do you think that do you think that the united states government right now is playing with fire setting off something like a like a war in iran and also where that's located in other players who are involved do you think that they're playing with fire as it pertains to nuclear weapons i've said this before and i will here, is that one of the reasons I refer to the Department of Defense in my book as the Department of Defense is because it's the Department of Defense. It's what it's supposed to be. And by the way, it is still the Department of Defense until Congress changes it, changes that name. So that may answer my question-- your question. We should not have a Department of War. The goal should not be war, the goal should be peace or defense, and I believe in that strongly. I also believe in a strong national security, but I think that we are on the razor's edge in terms of destruction. And I think that, you know, the whole national security apparatus is in deep jeopardy with the concept of I'm just following orders. And it's why I have so much respect for Joe Kent stepping away from that. Yes. I think that, you know, when you see so many different geopolitical and economic interests at play surrounding with like the reverberating effects of something like there being conflict in Iran-- It's even stretching, they're trying to stretch it to Ukraine now and everything. It's the first time in my lifetime where the fragility of like diplomatic relationships actually feels like this could go really, really wrong. Like I remember when Ukraine broke out and it's like, "All right, what are they going to do?" But there was still that feeling in the back of my head like it's a proxy war. This doesn't feel that way. This feels like it's an economic war. It's an economic war on top of an actual hot war that could escalate at any second. And it feels like there are so many competing interests that that is-- that's where I think I'm more the madman theory. I was going to ask you this a little bit ago, good time to come back to it. But when you talked about the scientists you talked to fearing a madman and something like that, the one thing I go to is, well, we've had a lot of those, even in our own country, right? We've had a lot of those around the world in the last 80 years and it hasn't happened. We've had a lot of those around the world and it hasn't happened. So, is the theory maybe better stated that it's the multi-madman theory, when enough of them are at the poker table that there's no way that the pot's not going to blow up? I mean, that I don't know. But I share the sentiment that things feel fraught. I will also remind myself and others that starting an unnecessary war from my way of thinking is an extremely bad idea. It's incredibly dangerous. It's horrific for every reason you can think of, from economic to the people involved. But it's not the first time that it has happened, certainly not in my reporting career. And I have often written about how impactful it was, the, you know, attacking Iraq and going to war in Iraq in the Bush administration. And having interviewed people from all of the wars up, including the war on terror, that was a real turning point in prosecuting a war, I think. And I just, I find it, you know, I find it a lot to think about. Why do you think we repeat so many mistakes over and over again and don't learn these lessons, no matter what party's in charge? It appears to be a pretty bipartisan mistake apparatus. It's funny, because I like suddenly feel extremely uncomfortable talking about this. And I'll tell you why. It's because I do not fancy myself a, like, political analyst. I'm not. I don't. I really try to focus, or I rather I really do focus on actual operations, either historical that have happened, or future operations that have happened, or future operations that have happened, or future scenarios where I can take you through the logical next steps. But speculating on why leaders do things is not, it's certainly not my forte. And it's, I feel I'm far more valuable in the areas that I do write. Because, I mean, which doesn't mean I don't read about it and think about it. But me having an opinion on that is really just an opinion. I don't know. I mean, I really feel strongly that I can, I'm an authority on the situations that I write about. And I'm not an authority on like, why current leaders would enter into an unnecessary war. It baffles me. Well, good for you. I like when people are willing to say something in the family of like, I don't know, or that's not my lane. Because you're so incentivized on the internet now to just be the armchair expert on every goddamn thing. Oh. And that's not the case. Oh, you mean people in general are incentivized? In general. Yeah, everyone. Yeah. I mean, I mean, opinions are, you know, sometimes they're interesting, like at dinner, but I don't know that they're, for me, mine are going to be less valuable than, okay, this happened, or this is how I think things, you know, unfold. Yeah. You do have access though, to outside the opinions and the politics and the downstream of that, the actual like apparatus of these things, unfolding that you talk about. You do have access to so much information on this stuff that it's, you know, again, you're not the ones that, you're not the one they're doing it, but you've been alluding to it all day. And I can imagine it's stressful. Diplomacy? No, no, just in general, like whether it's nuclear war, biological war, whatever the fuck DARPA is doing, you know, are there aliens out there? Like you got to sit with this all day. And sometimes you got to be sitting in that restaurant, like if you only knew what I did, you know? That's, I, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that that's a low bar or anything just because of how much information you've uncovered for so long. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that, do you think that there is, when you go into a book, like maybe you have three, four sources right off the bat that you're trying to get to, but is there ever like a set plan of I need to have X number of sources? I need to have sources in all of the following places right here, or do you kind of let that develop as you go along writing? So considering how many books I've written, I now have a lot of sources that trust me, that, that have read my books, that know what to expect. Sometimes I go back to sources I've used in the past. In the beginning, it was incredibly difficult. You know, you just, you just have to be really, you know, you just, you just have to be really, you know, you just have to be really focused on what you're doing. You know, you just, you just have to be really, really relentless. And then you make your way and then you build your career upon trust. And for me, that the most important component is, you know, presenting to someone what I am doing, and then actually doing that. You know, I'm the opposite of a gotcha journalist. I've always amazed that people do that because that burn sources because, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't make much sense to me either as a human or as a professional. But it's certainly a different path, but that's not mine. But I also, it's incredible how many people say no to me. That's also what I think is interesting. People are like, oh my God, you talk to everybody. It's like a lot, a lot, you know, I bang on a lot of doors and a lot of people respectfully pass. Are there a lot of people as well that you've been able to get to eventually as sources who passed for a long time? Yes. By all means. Is there any sort of one secret trick with that or is it just kind of. I'll tell you a funny story about that because you might appreciate it. We've been talking about Billy Wah. So I was trying to get Billy Wah to let me interview him for a very long time. He's like the most famous, you know, CIA paramilitary operator in CIA's history, right? And he was always like, you know, he wouldn't, he was not interested. So one day I was in Florida interviewing Ed Mitchell, who was an Apollo astronaut. And, you know, everyone has an ego. So I called up Billy and I'm like, you know, I'm in the neighborhood. I'm here interviewing Ed Mitchell, the Apollo astronaut. I thought maybe I could swing by, right? Reporter's trick. And Billy was like, come on over. So. And you got to talk a bit and you talked with him a lot. Well, then that, then that opened the door to that, you know. But Billy was really a fascinating person. He really was. We traveled together. We traveled to Hanoi. We traveled to Cuba. What was that? You went to Cuba with Billy Wah? Yeah, I went to Cuba. When was that? I write about it in the end of Surprise Kill Vanish. It was a really extraordinary trip because we were a guest of Ernesto Guevara, who is Che Guevara's son. Whoa. And the CIA killed Che Guevara. Yeah. So, I mean, they didn't actually pull the trigger. The Bolivian army did, but we were right behind them. Yeah. Felix was sitting there going, go. So that was kind of extraordinary. And made me wonder if Billy was retired. Let's put it that way. Did they ever really retire? Mm-hmm. You know, especially, there's no way a guy like that actually retired. There was a story Joe Tedai told on the podcast. Joe Tedai was in ground branch for CIA. And he went to a place where, I don't think he disclosed exactly what it was, but there's a place in Afghanistan where he did a lot of missions that the guys would stay. And there's a bar downstairs. And he walked into the bar and it was Billy fucking Wall. And this is like, I want to say 2006 or something like that. He's like, that's Billy Wall right there. And he's like, pull right up, kid. And he's like, is this guy on the clock right now? Oh, yeah, he most certainly was. He most certainly was. I think they all thought that. I mean, Billy, when – remember when we went to Libya and sort of we were – like when Qaddafi was killed? Right. Billy was sent to Libya to try and get Qaddafi. Before he was killed by his own people. How old was he? 80? I mean, he was definitely in his 80s. And that's a fact. So Billy was always working. And, you know, I mean, Billy was somebody who was incredible because he just – I asked him one time, like, what is the motivation? And he just said, I don't want to get left out. It's such a – it's such a like little kid's, you know, state. And there's a little kid in all of us. It's one of the things I really admired about Billy. He was deeply honest, you know. He told me a lot of things about his own life, not to go in the books, but so that I understood him. And one of the things that he said to me was, I don't want you to think I'm a hero. And it was really, you know, that is also like a reporter's trait for me. Like if you tell me this is off the record. I just want you to understand my character. That's it. It's off the record. So – What made you so confident he was so honest about everything he said? Well, define honest. Oh. Honest about – all right, let's start with this. Yeah. Honest about himself as a person and his life experience. Like, I mean, in the general form and worldview. Well, worldview is opinion, right? But honest about experience. One of the things I've learned being a reporter is you can most certainly leave information out, which fundamentally changes a story. Of course. Okay. So, for example, why we went to Cuba. Okay. Billy – the reason we went to Cuba was because allegedly Ernesto Guevara wanted to halo jump with Billy. Okay. So, Billy – do you know what halo jumping is? Yeah. This is in like, what, 2019? Oh, my God. I have videos of Billy halo jumping. Is this like 2019? 2018, I think it was. The book came out in maybe 17, 18. Yeah. He was 87 and a half. He was 87 and a half years old. I have videos of him halo jumping. I'll send them to you so you can cut them in. I don't know if he was human. Okay. He might have been the alien. So, he – this was the – you know, and Billy went on the first or actually the second halo jump in the Vietnam War into Laos. So, he was like incredibly famous for this. So, the pretense when I'm like, why are we going to Cuba? And by the way, I love traveling with Billy because if you got him like in a taxi cab in the foyer of a hotel, he would just – in an airport with his binoculars, you know. He would just tell me. He would just tell me stories because it brought back all these incredible memories for him. He'd just be ripping binoculars in the airport? Oh, hell yes. We were in South Korea and he had binos and he was explaining things. Well, that might blend in there. But, you know. It was – so, you know, it would really – it was really an extraordinary experience. And – but why were we in Cuba? It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense whatsoever. And you were allowed to go there? Well, and we – It was open for a pinch and then it was closed by the – when we actually went. And suddenly we got State Department permission to go. Like it was kind of like – and I write in the book that the suggestion was that it was an agency mission and I was the patsy, you know, because it was like, oh, she's writing a book. Okay. So, it was like super interesting. But I have since learned more information about what that might have actually been. And what's that? And it's – I can't say yet. But it's probably the most extraordinary story you could ever even imagine. You couldn't imagine it. I'm still working it out. They were sending him to cut the lines to the power grid? Well, more will be revealed as they say. But here's another interesting thing on Billy's – You're really going to blue balls me on that. I mean, I'm – you know, as a reporter, it's like I got to really make sure it's – but here's another thing about Billy's character, right, which was fascinating to me. When we did that halo, you're reminding me of it. So, he jumps and the Bolivian army – I mean, I'm sorry, the Cuban army was like retired army were kind of our escorts. And it was very strange because we were going up in this aircraft and I was just like, I'm not going up in the aircraft. It just – I'd seen too many movies like The Good Shepherd where they throw the reporter or the woman out. Scarface, yeah. So, I'm like, I'll meet you on the ground. And then it's decided, well, Billy actually needs to jump into the sea. Okay? So, I'm out on this boat with – by myself with the Cuban – retired Cuban military going like, hmm. And then I watch them jump out of the – out of the aircraft. And Billy comes down and he lands in the sea. And then the Cuban guys go and get him. And they pull him up to the boat. It's a very funny thing. He's like, Annie, how are you doing, Annie? You know, he's like – it's just an incredible clip. The Cuban guys. Yeah, the Cuban guys go and get him. Who are retired from the Cuban – Military. We're in Cuba. We were in Cuba. I understand that. Like the Castro – Yes, 100%. Just chilling with Billy Wall. 100% chilling with Billy Wall. Absolutely. I mean, we went to – we went to the bar where Castro and Che Guevara – there's famous photographs of them on the wall smoking cigarettes, plotting. And they were doing the downfall of the United States with nuclear weapons. Right. Like we're – Billy and I are sitting in there, you know, with all the children of Castro and Guevara. It was a fascinating trip. I write about it in Surprise Killed Amish. I know. So people are going to have to check that out. But like – So, okay. So here's the end of the story. So Billy finally – the Cuban military pulls him up into the boat. And I realize that Billy has – he's ripped probably on the lanyards. He's got this massive wound on his arm. It's – the skin is ripped off. And he doesn't say anything. And I'm watching him. And it was such an incredible – I said, Billy – actually, I knew better than to mention that because Billy was like – the few times he ever got mad at me was when I ever kind of asked him if he was okay about something. He was just furious with me. Like he did not want a mother. Okay? So I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. And then it started to get progressively worse. And the other individuals that were with us, we were all like, Billy, you need to get that looked at. And he wouldn't. He was just so stubborn. And he had like this makeshift bandage on it. He didn't want anyone to know that he was vulnerable. That makes sense. What a fascinating guy. His wife told me that later when he got back to – Florida, he had to go and have it debrided and like got really infected. That's insane. He really is – it doesn't sound real. He sounds like a real life southern non-vet version of James Bond. Like how does he not die? He just – he's a cat with like 99 lives. He was one of a kind. And there was the story like he had been lauded in his sights in like 90. He was a photographer who was staging as a photographer. Was that it? Bin Laden, Carlos the Jackal, Imad Mugnia, Gaddafi. He actually worked for Gaddafi in the 70s. He did. Like he worked for Gaddafi or Gaddafi was really working for him. Well, this is the famous Billy Wall story that he had written about before that he told me. So he comes back from Vietnam. Where he was like everybody's hero, you know? I mean I write about the missions in Vietnam and they're just – they're just insane. You really actually can't believe them. He comes back and he gets a job in the post office. I mean imagine Billy Wall in the post office. And actually now the post office, by the way, is the Billy Wall post office. It was named after him. That's kind of – In Texas, okay? So he's working in the post office and he'd rather just like shoot himself, you know? And he gets a call from one of his SOG buddies. Mac V. SOG was the sort of CIA military unit that he worked for in Vietnam. And the guy says, are you ready to – "You ready to do some stuff?" Billy's like, "Hell, yeah." And he is going to go to Libya to do some things. -I get into it in the book. - Do some things. Do some things. And he finds out, like, the night before he leaves, that it's ac-- And he assumes it's a CIA mission. And he finds out the night before he leaves, it's not a CIA mission. It's basically like a-- like a criminal mission. And the CIA says to him, "You're gonna work for us." - Oh, so it's the same thing. - Well, no. Because the people who ended up doing the mission that were not Billy got arrested. Yeah, that sounds like what the CIA does. Well, the CIA does what it does under Title 50 authority of the president. So, it's legal. And then they got the Title 57 that no one knows about. So, Billy goes over to Libya, and he ends up, uh, training Qaddafi's guys how to halo jump, and he, you know, works directly with Qaddafi, for Qaddafi, and he develops a relationship with him. What did he think of Qaddafi at that time? I mean, you gotta read the book for, like, Billy Waller's version of it. And he's taking photographs, um, the whole time, which is so incredibly dangerous. But that's why Billy ends up getting sent, flash forward 30 years, whatever, the fall of Qaddafi. That's why the CIA sends Billy to Libya, because he had a relationship with him. Oh, they thought that he could walk in there -and Qaddafi would trust him. -Yes, yes. And I think-- I mean, this is speculation. This is something I will speculate about. My guess is that they would bring Qaddafi to America as an asset. And we didn't want him to die. Oh, so maybe not kill-- That's interesting. And instead, he was killed by his own people. Yeah. And that's another one, too. Like, he was a bad guy, obviously. He was a dictator, like, all that's true. But, like, the way we ended up handling that created a vacuum behind it that was a total disaster. Nightmare, yes. Like, we do this again and again and again, you know? I-- I wish the world were a perfect place that weren't filled with really dumb people -who hurt other people. -Mm-hmm. But, like, unfortunately it is. And sometimes, as shitty as it is, we talked about nuance earlier, you have to deal with the bishops and knights that are on your board, if you will, and try to minimize the damage they can cause. And that is-- we're talking about lessons. That's another one that it feels like over and over again, we just kind of, "Nah, this time it'll work. -Knock the domino down, it'll work." -Yes. It's why we should be the Department of Defense. -Yeah. -Not the Department of War. Yeah. I agree. That's-- that's crazy, though, that you got to spend some years there, and, like, even go on-site, if you will, -Mm-hmm. -with. one of the most insane people to ever live. Like, not even just in this country. Like, his life story is the Forrest Gump of death, you know, or whatever you want to say, death and spine. -That's kind of cool. -Mm-hmm. It was a real privilege. You know, it's funny, because I'm such a believer in sort of-- I call it fate and circumstance. You could call it coincidence, whatever, but-- And in fact, in every one of my books, somewhere I write the phrase "fate and circumstance." -Mm-hmm. -Because it is just remarkable how if you love what you do, it seems like you love podcasting. I love writing. I love being a journalist. I love listening to people's stories. I love trying to figure things out. I love finding my own mysteries out. And if you just go with that, and you also are building your character, those are your guardrails, you know, you can pretty much wind up in some spectacular places. Yes. And you got to keep putting yourself in that whole, like, the cliche of. What is it? Preparation and luck creates opportunity. -Yeah. -Right? You just kind of keep going. Fortune favors the prepared mind. That's right. That's right. Yep. So, did you always want to be a journalist or did that come later? I always wanted to be an author. I wanted to write the great American novel and imagined I would. I went to boarding school age 15 with a typewriter. -That's how old I am. -Wow. Talk about science and technology. I actually wrote my high school papers on a typewriter. -Okay? -I'm not going to ask your age. -It's, you know. -You can figure it out. -That's next level. -Right? Okay. And when I was in university, we were the first class of the Macintosh. -Wow. -It was called the 512K. And you know why? -Because it had 512K. -Mm-hmm. You had to put a disk into it to save it. -Wow. -To save the document. You know, it was really. So, yeah, I wanted to-- I always knew that writing was my absolute love. -Um, yeah. -What do you think caused that? I don't know. I mean, some-- I mean, I suppose-- I think now that I'm older, I'm like, "Wow, I'm really lucky." 'Cause so many people wonder what they should do. -Right. -I mean, my pathway was a little bit different in that I was completely not successful for 20 years. -Mm. -And so, and actually, it's, like, been brilliant because people always say, like, "How on earth do you write a book every two years?" Well, I know what it's like to not be successful. -That's right. -You know, and I love talking about that. I love when I'm asked to speak about success, and I share with people that my-- you know, I was in my early 40s with my first international bestseller, Area 51, and people are like, "What?" 'Cause everybody thinks, you know, "Yes, I've been at it a really long time." But success, you know, it's-- it's its own animal. The internet has created this false expectation of. - -Overnight, it can happen. And once in a while, for someone, you know, "Cash me outside, girl. Call it lightning in a bottle. Good for her." But, you know, they don't see-- That's an interesting-- That's an interesting comparison right there. But, you know, people don't see the years and years and years that go into it, and the failures, even when you didn't deserve it. Like, maybe you made something great, and you know afterwards, like, "Wow, that was awesome." Just didn't get seen yet. And then eventually, you get that one and go, "I love stories like that." 'Cause-- especially because you're telling me that you wanted to do this from the time you were a little girl, basically. Like, so you get to live your dream. And the torture of the dream sometimes is it just takes a minute to actually see it bear the fruit. But you did get there, and that's what matters. And I had an extra-- I also really believe in the people, -and the people who mentor you. - Yes. And that's why I do that as well. Because I was 34, and I had, um, my first child. And I had no success as a writer. And I remember going to my mentor and saying, "Maybe I should become a lawyer. Because I'm obviously-- this is not happening." And she said to me, "Stop making shit up. It's the truth that matters. Go be a journalist." - Mm. - And once I began writing nonfiction as a journalist, you know, success. Well, even, like, before you wrote these books with scenarios that take real things and turn it into a scenario, narrative-driven story. Like, when-- I remember reading Operation Paperclip, and it reads like a thriller. That's-- like, you and Joby Wark do that amazing. Yes, that is the concept of narrative nonfiction. - Mm-hmm. - Which really actually comes from thinking about novels, from reading novels, because you understand for the reader-- - Yes. - It's the story. I mean, that's not true of every-- you know, some people write nonfiction books that are their opinion or a lot of facts, very encyclopedic, but I tell you stories. That's why I interview people. Because I really believe that the engagement comes from, "Oh, my God, this was a real person doing this." And then you kind of sneak in the history lessons. Right. Now, what's your writing process, though? 'Cause you're doing insane extensive research. It involves traveling, talking to all these different people, organizing all that stuff, going to primary sources, secondary sources, synthesizing that all together, just to get the idea of, like, what you're gonna write about. But, like, when you actually start sitting down to write, what are the checkboxes that have to be done before you even begin that process? I write every day. I'm always writing. - No matter what? - No matter what. I mean, I'm just writing all the time. I always have a notebook with me. I'm just always writing. Sometimes, I'm writing a lot. Um, I think of the Stephen King quote. Someone asked him once, "What does it take to be a writer?" And he said, "Ass glue." Mm. So you spend a lot of time sitting and typing. You keep your phone away from the keyboard, too, when you're doing that? Absolutely. I mean, you just have to write. - Yeah. - You can't. Yeah. Is there, like, a-- you know, do you have, like, a ritual way with it all? I know you were saying you write every time. - Yeah. - No matter where you are. But, like, is there a specific place you most like to do writing and a time of day you most like to do it and, like, a process you have -to get into that zone? - Mm-hmm. I have a writing bungalow. - A writing bungalow? - A writing bungalow at my house, on my property, where I live in California. - Oh, I like that. - In the Hollywood Hills. - Okay. - So I have, like, a 50-pace commute from the house to the bungalow through the garden. - Oh, I like that. - It's very sweet. And that's where I've been writing for-- I've written all my books there. Except for Area 51, actually. Area 51, I wrote in the house. -That was pre-bungalow. - Pre-bungalow. And then Area 51 allowed for the bungalow. - Oh, that's cool. - Yeah. Yeah. Does this-- so that space, do you have, like, whiteboards and stuff or things where you can write down-- Everything. Whatever you need. Lots and lots and lots of books, a big desk, lots of windows. Um. But is there, like, a place where you can, you know-- - Yeah. Yeah. - Not that Charlie always sunny it, like where you're literally tying together all your evidence so that you can see that. I tend to write on big artist notepads. Oh, cool. And I actually save a lot of them. They're really interesting to look at. And I write, you know, you have like multiple different markers in different colors. And it's just like a way, that's a process. It's a way to kind of look at, and then you can tape them up. I also write longhand most of my, I certainly write the beginning of every chapter longhand. And often more than that with actual pen. Yeah, because it's a great thing for the brain. Like if I type, it's too fast. So I write longhand, and then I type that in. And then I keep writing, you know, because ideas for me, the way it's just better and thinking like this. I've never heard that one before. That's how I do it. I've had interesting, amazing authors, and they all have really cool processes. I've never heard of the longhand thing. And then, of course, you're like. And editing, by the way, I own, like, I can't tell you how many stacks of paper with like pen on the sides I have. Because that's how I edit, you know, print out. And I have to edit with a pen reading the page. I can't edit on the screen, period, full stop. No way. I would ruin my books if I did that. I actually, I kind of, I've learned to do it on the screen with writing. But like, I think there really is something to the physical. You know, like even with, I'm showing you Deep's script outside. Yes. I kept, he kept updating it. And I kept making him print the new one. Because I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. I have to note this up here. And I want the fucking PDF. Yeah. I like, I think that kind of gives you, there's something about the physicality with the edit to where you're actually crossing something out and then putting it in red. 100%. Right? Also, the brain, I mean, it just depends what you get used to, too. If your brain is accustomed to that. That's the, you know, that's what you know. Yes. Right? Yes. Now, some of the people that stand out, David Gran, Martin Duggar. Have you had him on the pod? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. He was awesome. So cool. We have the same film agent. He's got a really good film agent. So he must be doing okay. Matthew Snyder, best film agent ever. David Gran writes a book and Leo DiCaprio and Scorsese are like, yeah, sign it up. But, you know, he, I think that was episode 284. He was just like. You know, that whole process of like, I go in there, I shut the door and I write this many words, no matter what, just to get it out. And then I'll refine it later. And then Joby Warwick talks about how he's got a basement with like a treadmill and elliptical in the middle and just whiteboards around the whole thing. And he's just noting it up and staring at it. And then I'm trying to remember Martin Duggar. I think he was very similar to, to David Gran as well, where he's like, his wife knows not to bother him. His wife actually just passed away. Which was really sad, but, you know, knows, knew not to bother him when, when he was in there. And, you know, that's how you write so many books that are like high octane. And I think all four of you, what's fascinating is you guys will all write these books that are nonfiction and they read like Ian Fleming wrote it. And that is such a skill because like when I was talking with Joby, he talked about how critical the first paragraph of a book is. But then also in particularly how critical. The first, you know, page of every chapter is. And to hear you describe, it's so important to you that you will write it out physically first. From a storytelling perspective, it's like those things start to click and you're like, all right, I see what kind of separates the great ones from everyone else. And you learn from other people. I already got a few new tricks from listening to you talk about the others. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's cool. I love it. I don't know. I'm obsessed with whiteboards. I like the whole, like seeing how Joby would put it together with the Carlos the Jackal, the one recently. That was so cool. That's how it works in screenwriting, which I also write television. And it's just a totally different process. That's also fascinating because I really like the idea of collaborating with people. And like, you know, there's a major trust element because you end up sharing a lot of ideas. Even sometimes like, okay, this is an idea I'm working on over here. So cone of silence on the. The sharing of it. But, and it just, it's very, it's very transformative working with others. For sure. That's my experience. That's a whole, like you were saying though, that's a whole different approach when you're writing a screenplay versus a book. Had you ever done that before you did like the Jack Ryan stuff? Jack Ryan was the first TV series I worked on. And it was, I mean, it was incredible team. So like worked really well. But we had to map out the whole season on whiteboards essentially, or actually you note card them. Hollywood, every, every sort of different writers have their different ways of whoever the show runner is. You kind of follow their method. But it was a really interesting process. And then of course the studio steps in and is like, and then you have to change everything. So that is, you know, when you're an author, you're, you're kind of in charge. And if you have a really good editor, as I do, your editor is just adding, they're using their brilliance to, you know, point out like, you know what, maybe, and then dot, dot, dot. And what happens is your mind catches on fire and you go, wow, at least this is my experience. And so my books become so much better with editor input. For sure. Like leaps and bounds. It's that skill in publishing from a good editor. That's just remarkable. And I owe, I literally owe my career to that. That's cool. To John Parsley, who's been my editor. John Parsley. John Parsley, yeah. Shout out, John. But like you said, you got to, you have to have someone who understands you where it's like a yin and a yang, right? Yeah. Like that's critical. I mean, I wouldn't know if he has that same relationship with all of his authors. I, you know, publishing is very singular. It's author and it's editor. But screenwriting is so different. In many ways, it reminds me of sort of being by committee. And it's a different experience. So I'm super grateful that I do not have just one that, you know, I couldn't. I could never just do screenwriting because there's too many people in the mix. So it's an, for me, it's an experience of like, hmm, how's this going to work out? There's a little bit of a sense if you're not really careful of too many cooks. For sure. Spoil the broth. What's the expression? Too many cooks in the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think about that a lot because like you have a vision with things. Yeah. So you're so used to having a vision for a 750 page book or something where you just get to write, write, write. And then you go in and you may be working with brilliant people, but now you get on that stretch where you're like, oh, I got an amazing idea. But then another person also has an amazing idea and it's moving in another direction. Like that's got to be a pretty big adjustment before you even get to, then the studio comes in and tells you what you can and can't do, you know? Yeah. It's why it's fascinating in Hollywood that there's a lot of people that are like, oh, directors now are really becoming so important to the success of a film. And I love this because that's the concept of the auteur. Yes. Right. And of course they have to have a magnificent script. I'm talking about films now and on television. And when the two work together, then you have a fantastic movie like the one behind me. Oh yeah. Gladiator. All time. Perfect movie in every way. Sometimes when people say to me, like, you know, a newcomer to the profession is like, what do I do? How do I even begin to write narrative nonfiction? I say, watch the Gladiator with the clicker and stop it because it's essentially 120 minutes. First act, second act, third act, denouement. Minute 30, minute 60, minute 90, end. You can just literally, when you see this incredible moment, you push pause. Pause. And you're going to just be astonished that that's, those are those minutes that you just hit. First act, second act, third act, climax. It's amazing what they did with that movie. And at the time they did it too, with not the same resources they have now. Yes. Like that script writing team, I would imagine maybe, maybe you've heard some of these stories. So apologize if it's repeated for you, but like they changed it. They took it from, it was a movie about revenge and Ridley was- I don't know this. Ridley was like, well, wait a minute. That's going to make it 100% male audience. I want a movie that appeals to 50-50. And so they took the revenge tone and they kept the elements of vengeance while making the tone of the movie a love story. And yeah, you know, he has like the back and forth, obviously love interest with the emperor's sister. But the real love story is like the return, the full cycle return to his family. Spoiler alert. In the afterlife. And that's what made it right. And so they would do little things like that opening scene when it comes up, they have him, he's about to go basically murk a bunch of motherfuckers on the battlefield, but they have them there like leaning down with the dirt where they do that first thing. And then he looks up and he starts seeing a bird and they're like, oh, this is a man of nature. This is a man of calm strength, if you will, more defense department than war department. Right. And then- when you look at how they made that come together I didn't know what you said about where the marks are as well with the story it it's just it's one of those things like that the godfather there's just a handful of movies where you're like cinema they just everybody got it and they got it right and it worked but that's that's amazing that they did it mathematically too I never knew that that's like you know script writing is so cool but you also are limited by what you can do descriptive description wise you know like if you want to do a description in your book you can dedicate five pages to describing what the air sounds like but on a script they're like minute per page right and so you have to there you can only do a limited number of oh my god what's the term a limited amount of exposition exposition right like when deep and I were writing a script last summer I would do these like he's like that's really good not a novel down to one not one line right like is that frustrating when you're going to write things and you have it in your mind what you're going to write and you're you want it to be but you have to leave it open to interpretation it's a different medium and it leaves me with extraordinary respect for people who do it really well yeah how did you get involved with the Jack Ryan thing where did that come from you know I was doing a um a service commitment if you will I'm a excuse me you're good I um love the library and so I'm always going to participate in any fundraisers for the Los Angeles library and I was doing exactly that they have a group of dinners called the literary feast where an author speaks to a group of people at all these different beautiful homes around Los Angeles to raise money for the library foundation and I was the one giving the talk and Carlton Cuse is the showrunner of Jack Ryan he's a writer and he's a writer and he's a writer and he's a writer and he's a very famous showrunner he also did lost and many other tv shows um and his wife was there at the dinner and went home and essentially said you should definitely hire Annie to be on Jack Ryan it's all about the people that's so cool and then you're you're now even having your books getting optioned yeah for movies and stuff don't you have one that's like Dennis filling away then once I do it Denis Villeneuve um yeah I always will yeah um nuclear war yeah so he's one of the greatest auteur filmmakers of of the time so that's going to be very very exciting last conversation with him he told me he was going to do it after Bond so he's filming James Bond through their screen testing what are they down to they're down to Callum Loudon and O'Connell right something like that I think it's gonna be interesting to see a Daniel Craig's that's some tough shoes to fill very tough shoes he was good yeah he was good so that's cool so that'll be in the next couple years and then you know going back to the early books that you wrote you know obviously you're covering area 51 you had the whole story about Roswell and all that what is your opinion you know 30,000 feet in the air here no pun intended on NHI and there being life beyond earth that maybe we have witnessed in the past but I think that's a real thing or do you think that that's a real thing or do you think a lot of it has just been I don't know defense department psyops there's so many interesting things to think about for me that's not one of them and it probably has to do with the fact that um you know I think about existential risks I think about war fighting that seems to be in its own lane of psychological operation and people are really really interested in it and that's what's interesting to me the narrative of it how you can get a group of people to really hook on to an idea I mean of course it makes sense I mean imagine you know if there really were extraterrestrials are they really among us that's seems to me somebody else's right yeah but you got to go out to places by area 51 and all that when you wrote the book are there stuff that you saw there that you had to keep totally off record well I didn't I mean you can't go to area 51 right I went to the Nevada test site with the guys who wired the bombs and the security guard who watched to make sure that no one got in to the areas where they were setting off nuclear weapons and also that was his name was Richard Mingus and he was also the security guard at area 51 great stories in that book and of course the CIA actually had a program a UFO program in the 50s which I write about which was to trick people into thinking that the U2 spy plane flying up at 70,000 feet where airplanes weren't supposed to fly in the 50s you know people thought they were seeing a UFO and the CIA fostered this idea seen all the declassified documents and I interviewed the people who worked on this program why does I want to do that to keep it from the Russians it was a top secret program not until Gary Powers got shot down over the Soviet Union the U2 in 1960 did Russia know we were building that plane and that plane was going to fly and did fly over the Soviet Union and take wet film speaking of typewriters and wet film take wet film of what was happening down on the ground and it was so important to keep it secret because the minute the Russians knew about it they would of course develop missile technology or armament technology to shoot it down which is what they did and so it was terrific cover literally that people thought they were seeing a UFO it is wild how that ramped up so much right after World War II like when you look at the timeline it's not that it didn't exist before that there's ancient sightings allegedly and stuff like that but where it just happens all the time and the one that does get me and I don't I don't know if it's aliens or what but it's very fascinating to me is all the reports of strange vehicles above nuclear sites and it goes back to the premise of like is this just something keeping babies from playing with matchsticks again somebody else's area of expertise I have so many people that come to my book signings with their card you know you know I was at this military base and I saw this but it doesn't interest me the way it interests other people why not it doesn't seem it doesn't seem serious to me I think there seems like deep wish fulfillment yeah yeah I think unfortunately like some of the whistleblowers who have come out you know I think that's muddied it big time because it just it doesn't pass the sniff test at all and and I've had there's at least one I'm thinking of in here that I've had them like well none of this happened provably and that's who they're sending out you know that's where it gets to okay I don't know if I want to be a part of that you know I'm open-minded I think it's a big galaxy you know big universe obviously out there I should say but you know maybe they've been here maybe they haven't I just I heard a really interesting analogy the other day was an interview that Bill Gates did with Ezra Klein on AI and Gates is really seriously setting off the alarms about you know the dangers existential dangers of AI and it's interesting because he uses an alien analogy he says like and I'm paraphrasing him like people used to say you know such and such a thing and he said he says it's like the aliens have already arrived except we made them in a lab and if you reverse engineer that quote it kind of is my position on what I think about it meaning the wish fulfillment of aliens is you know both offense and defense right it's this idea of like the alien you know the aliens are here they're attacking and what I found fascinating is that wish fulfillment Gates was pointing out is like becomes obsolete when you really think about AI that we have created you know an intelligence a machine intelligence in a laboratory that is a threat that really got me thinking I take that very that to me is serious for sure I've you thought about writing a book. On the rise of a I. I see where the spark just happened. It's you know there's some of it that I'm like all right is this overhyped and there's other parts of it that terrify me. You know like if you let it out of the box and can't control it I've talked to people from both sides and I'll continue to do that of that argument. But you know we're definitely entering some strange time so we're in need to manage a person books for sure. To cover that. I'll be back. All right, good. I know we got to get you to a flight, but thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. For stopping through while you were in town. This was awesome to finally do this. And now I'm not just picturing an exploding car when I see you. Excellent. Thank you so much. I'm going to retell that story. You have my full permission. It's very good. It's an interesting time in my life. But we will link – I'm going to put a master link to your Amazon page downstairs, down in the description, as well as a link to your latest book, Biological War. So people can check that out. But your full library, obviously, is pretty amazing. So we didn't even get to like DARPA that much today. So we'll have to do that. But thank you so much, Annie. Thank you so much. All right. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Hey, guys. If you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you.