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Krystal Ball

What a person Indeed we do. Lots continuing to break with regard to Iran. Apparently Trump is choosing between a negotiated deal and a major military operation. We'll break all of that down for you. He's also coming to the defense of Benjamin Netanyahu as Zoran floats the idea of arresting him when he's in town in September. China has erased our AI lead. There's a possibility that the Trump administration is going to ban the Chinese open source models. Big debate here extremely, extremely consequential for the economy, the future, all those things. So we will break down what we understand about this. Annie Jacobson is going to join us. She has a new book sounding a dire warning about the potential threat of biological weapons. Actually also ties in with the AI block because that enables, makes it more easy to produce these weapons. And I've got an interview today with Representative Adam and he is the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. They actually reached out to us. He wanted to have a conversation slash debate about the socialists, the future of the Democratic Party. But he also, Sager, he's the ranking member on Armed Services, just voted for that Thomas Massie amendment. After, you know, a career supporting Israel, AIPAC is kicking him to the curb. He's also the most consequential or one of the most consequential people in Washington with regard to that NDAA provision that would tie us in with the Israeli military. So I'm really excited to talk to him and press him on those issues.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, it's actually pretty cool. He reached out to us. And again, just to underscore the House Armed Services, or HASC as the Washington nerds call it, is genuinely, besides the Appropriations Committee, the most important committee in all of Congress. So to be the ranking member, you get to decide what gets in what debate, what comes out of committee before it reaches the overall floor. You have immense, immense power in this town. And so it's very interesting that he wants to stop by and to debate. Talk to Crystal. I'm gonna enjoy watching it. I think some of you will too. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting our BreakingPoints.com you are enabling the platform which allows members of Congress and such powerful people to reach out to us on a last minute notice like we did with Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. So seriously, thank you for the people who enable our journalism and if you could support it. We also have our newsletter which is available completely for free. You just have to sign up for it again at our website, breakingpoints.com you can enjoy that. If you're watching this on YouTube, please just hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to the podcast, please share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and start with the situation with Iran remains incredibly precarious. And we'll start with this from Donald Trump, quote, every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over. The directive has now been passed on to the Secretary of Wars, Pete Hextheth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Cain and every other leader in the military. So obviously not really something you want to see if you are hoping for any potential slowdown or ceasefire. We also had multiple ships in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, beyond count at this time. I recommend, if you want real time, you can go to the UK mto, the Maritime Authority. They put out a lot of the directives about which ships are on fire. We don't have an exact count of this morning. It's more than three or four, just in the last 24 hours. Some video actually coming out of the strait. We can show all of you. This purports to show a Saudi vessel which was on fire in the Strait of Hormuz. This also comes as multiple other vessels were on fire and had to be abandoned in place with the crew actually abandoning ships in some of these cases or calling for distress. Now, at the same time, there is a critical decision point here in Washington breaking this morning. Let's put it up here on the screen from Barack Ravid. Basically, President Trump, quote, is nearing a decisive fork in the Iran war with US and Israeli officials envisioning only two viable endgames. Option one, you will pursue a new 10 day ceasefire aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Option two, you will launch a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force tehran's capitulation. Obviously, 10 day ceasefire does not have, in my opinion, a very, very good chance of coming forward. I was listening to our friend Trita Parsi, he was on Al Jazeera overnight, gave his immediate reaction. Basically he said at this point, Iran has no choice but to conclude that any 10 day ceasefire would simply be used as a way to get oil prices back down without reaching the critical nexus point before they are then bombed again. And on and off and on and off with no memorandum of understanding, no reignition of the peace process. The option to there being a, quote, massive military campaign to take out Iran's nuclear program. And, well, at this point is really bad about it.

Krystal Ball

I thought it was obliterated soccer. What happened?

Saagar Enjeti

Supposed to be obliterated, but I mean, to even say it would be about the nuclear program is disingenuous. This entire war is the battle of Hormuz. That's really what you could call it. So the vast majority of the strikes if you're tracking inside of Iran, are either coming at nuclear facilities, some indication potentially of civilian infrastructure. Infrastructure, and you can always see it lights up right there along this strait. But the fact that Iran retains that capability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz to target all of these different vessels on top of, by the way, brand new announcement just this morning, the Houthis clarified we're not just shooting at Saudi ships. Any vessel that docks at a Saudi port you are liable to be hit. When you're in the Bab Al Mandeb Strait, Obviously they still have Suez, they have a few other ways that they can get out. So we shouldn't say it's like a total closure, but it is adding pressure to the global oil market at this time. So a resumption of the war with Israel all behind the scenes seems incredibly likely. Again, as of right now, things could certainly change.

Krystal Ball

And the problem with the Suez Canal is it's not large enough to accept the super large tankers that they typically use for oil. But I'm sure they will try to find as many workarounds as they possibly can because the situation is very, very dire. Anyt I hear Trita Parsi sounding negative on the possibilities of diplomacy and negotiations. I pay attention because obviously he's a big believer in diplomacy. I think he was genuinely optimistic when the MoU was signed. He someone said, you know, this has a possibility because both sides really don't want to go to all out war. So when I hear him being pessimistic about the near term prospects of any sort of a resolution, that is a real warning sign for me that things are really quite dire at the same time. Okay, so let's say that there is some new military take Cargill and we bomb Pickaxe Mountain, whatever. What is this even going to lead to? Now the idea I think that's offered by the by the hawks in this situation is oh, it will create more leverage so that we get a better deal in negotiations. Well, our own intel community says that's very unlikely to be the case. We can put a 9 up on the screen. Look, this won't be a surprise to any of you guys watching this show, but it's still interesting when our own intelligence community comes to the same conclusion. They offer a pessimistic view. New rounds of US military strikes against Iran, they are unlikely to have a significant impact on Iran or soften Iran's negotiating position. Current and former officials tell these journalists so, you know, the experts inside are saying, hey, guys, just like this hasn't worked up to this point and has only actually weakened our hand and strengthened Iran's hand, this is going to continue to not work, which is why these more insane options are being floated to do something that hasn't been done before. But, you know, this has been studied. This is Professor Pape's area of expertise. It has never worked that an air campaign alone is going to cause a regime change, is going to allow us to defeat Iran, defeat the government, and put us in a stronger position at the negotiating table. At this point, it's very unlikely, whenever we do end up back at a negotiating table, that we'll get something that is even as good as what was on the table with the memo of understanding. We should be so lucky to have such a humiliating deal from the US Perspective, it is only set to get worse from here.

Saagar Enjeti

It is so crazy to me that we're still even trying to do this a hundred years later. There's a book called the. Yeah, Command of the Air. I have it in front of me. I can't really pronounce it. It's like General Duche. I think it's Duche. Maybe Duhay. Some of the air power nerds will get mad at me. And this was this theory that we can compel and win all wars from the air. And obviously the United States tried at least some of this in the initial buildup to the invasion of Normandy. And what did we conclude is that while we were able to do significant amounts of damage to the Nazi war machine, nothing is ultimately going to win more than taking the territory. Now, there's a second correlate to that, which is the atomic bomb, which of course, brought the war with Japan to a close. But even that, you know, people say conventional air power was able to destroy some of this, but they still would have been able to put up some of a fight. So. So it's 100 years or so later, and we're still trying to do this from the air. Why? Cause it's easy and you take minimal amounts of casualties. And I'm not in any way under. You know, I'm not trying to underplay the 17, probably 18 now Americans that have been killed in this war, but it's not hundreds and hundreds enough to mobilize true popular resistance in the way that the war in Iraq did. But what we see in front of us right now is a crazy situation where the intelligence community. And I've asked around, from what I understand, the intel from our side is actually pretty good. Our intel analysts from the beginning were like, this Israeli stuff is nonsense. It doesn't back up with what we're saying. You can read the inside Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan account. The CIA director was like, I don't know about this. This is not what our people are showing. Trump and Vance and all of the guys in the situation room, they have all the munitions numbers in front of them, the real ones. We only have estimates they have, I mean oil. But frankly for us, there's no secret information on oil stockpile and all that is completely public. We know exactly where we are. But the Israelis continue to push their own versions, which Trump wants to believe because they are both much more optimistic and they give him the potential win. Let's put a nine up here on the screen from the Wall Street Journal just this morning. New magical analysis, the magic bullet, if you will. Israel believes Iran moved nuclear centrifuges into Pickaxe Moun. The US has now reviewed an Israeli assessment and President Trump has threatened to attack the site. Israeli intelligence believes Iran has moved thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside of a mountain last fall. Wait, I thought it was all destroyed. I thought it was unburied, unusable, unmovable. You can't even get to it. And yet now magically, it's all in Pickaxe Mountain. Perhaps, perhaps it is true. If it is true, one might even ask why the 12 day war even happened in the first place. And they say Israel's war aims have now diverged from the United States. Prime Minister Netanyahu has tried to persuade Trump to resume all out attacks on Iran and to further set back Tehran's weapons program and rebuilding efforts. And the US has now stepped up attacks in the past 10 days. Trump has said publicly that he would potentially target Pickaxe Mountain. He said a possible target for a nice big fat shot. Now many of you might remember the interview Trump gave last week in which Hugh Hewitt magically seems to bring up Pickaxe Mountain out of nowhere. I read the news and you do too. I hadn't really seen a ton about Pickaxe Mountain. So Israeli intelligence tells Trump about this magical pickaxe mountain. Hugh Hewitt, who is one of the major neocons radio hosts here in Washington, happens to have a show with a prime or sorry interview with Trump in which he goes president. He even signs off the interview. Do you remember this, Mr. President? Go get Pickaxe Mountain. One may ask Mr. Hewitt in which why he got and where he got some of that information and planted it there in the President's head. Not in any way taking any agency away from Trump, who of course could decide that this is obviously an Israeli info op, but you can see if you want to read the tea leaves where things are all coming from. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

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Saagar Enjeti

We also, and this is the thing too, about the other Gulf nations, they are taking an absolute pounding. So Professor Morandi from Tehran, of course, we've had him here on the show many times and he is very much in touch with the Iranian leadership. We can put a three, please. He put this out yesterday. People should evacuate Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and possibly Oman. If the Trump regime keeps pushing escalation, the fate of key infrastructure across these complicit regimes is not in doubt. They will become unlivable. You can now see that in all of the attacks that have happened on Kuwait, multiple days in a row now of desalination energy plants that were all being targeted in Kuwait. You also have critical energy infrastructure on top of strikes all across the region. Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan in particular, where many of those US Troops were killed. And we do, by the way, have A four. These are the images that we can show all of you of the American service members who we now know have confirmed to have been killed. One of them, Private Isabella Gonzalez, 19 years old, she just graduated from high school in 2020 in Carrollton, Texas. The other, First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan of Ewha Beach, Hawaii, killed in action July 18, 2026. We also getting some preliminary reports on the third casualty in that strike. Appears to be a father of a young girl. And so what we know also, if we put a five up here on the screen, is that inside of Iran, many civilians, including two students, were actually killed in the US Strikes on a bridge in province in Iran on Thursday. Iran has identified two of those students, two of them also younger girls. So you can see the cost, human cost now so far. I also think it is worth looking at the satellite imagery if we can go to the next one. A six, please. And Crystal, this is just what's so devastating. Obviously we have the video. We showed everybody this yesterday. This appears to be the strike on the barracks of the base in Jordan where these soldiers seem to have been killed either in their sleep or while they were running for cover. This is satellite imagery for those of you who are watching, which shows directly on the left side the damage that was done to those containerized housing units on the right is what it looked like before. So a direct strike on the barracks where these troops are being housed. And many of them were killed in this third strike, the details of which, Chris, will just show the targeting data and the ability of Iran to evade US defenses because this base was struck three separate times in one day and all three of the missiles came through debris was able to hit the first time around the second time around, there was also a hit that was on the base for incoming. And the third one is where the direct strike happened in the middle of the night in this housing barrack. And obviously, I mean, current indications are that's where they were whenever they were hit. Just makes it so. Well, and it's worth such a horrific thing to even think about.

Krystal Ball

It is truly horrific. I mean, that girl who's 19. I mean, this is basically my daughter's age, at her high school graduation, they asked everybody who was enlisting in the military to stand up. There were quite a few in her class who were going in. And it's like, for what? You know, for what did this woman and the other service. For what did they die for? What did these Iranian civilians get killed? I mean, it's just absolutely horrific beyond belief, you know, going back to Pickaxe Mountain. And another reason why everyone should be very, very nervous when we start talking this shit is it's unlikely that conventional weapons would be able to even come close to destroying Pickaxe Mountain. It's much deeper, much more hardened than Fordeaux and the other sites that we've attacked. So could we collapse the entrances? Could we do some external damage? Sure. With conventional weapons, sure. So that's why I continue to be concerned, because Trump is a complete maniac and is desperate for a win, for pulling some sort of win out of this absolute catastrophe that he himself has put us into, that he could be crazy enough to consider a nuclear weapon and breaking that taboo. And then. I mean, what a complete disaster. I mean, that. Then we're talking about any sort of moral leadership of the U. Are you kidding me? Like, the world will run to China as they should if we. You know, I mean, as they. We've already given them plenty of reason to do that, by the way. But that's why this is. You know, this is really quite terrifying, these talks and the constant efforts from not just the Israelis, but all of the hawks to push Trump in the direction of. And this is what he wants, some sort of wild escalation that, you know, this time it'll be different. This time it will be the play that is gonna strengthen our hand and provide you with the glorious victory that he is so anxious to be able to achieve. So that's very scary. The last thing that I wanted to bring up is this analysis from. His name is PolicyTensor, both on Twitter, and also he has a substack that is really worth reading. He says. He says not only does the US not have the military means to defeat Iran. It does not have the military means to prevent Iran from imposing its exclusive authority over Hormuz. The US should have honored the MOU it signed. At least we could have saved a bit of faith, brought Iran in from the cold. The next one's going to be even more humiliating if a diplomatic off ramp is still not found, as would be the case unless the US accepts Iranian authority over Hormuz. This ends either with a nuclear, nuclear armed Iran or with the US empire disarmed, or both. Regardless of how this ends, Iran will keep Hormuz forever for the same reason the US will control the Panama Canal. The reason all this is happening is very simple. The empire is no longer viable as an imperial project. Posen's command of the global Commons is gone. It was based on a decisive military advantage that has vanished with the arrival of the mature precision strike regime. You cannot argue with a technological era. You can bash your head against the wall, but all the head bashing is only going to yield more pain and humiliation. Very important to know when to fold, to accept defeat and to understand it so that the means and ends of foreign policy can be brought back into balance. And Sagar, I think that's really true. I mean, that's why, you know, in particular in this war against Iran, that's why it's hopeless that we're going to be able to secure some sort of decisive victory here. It's a fantasy. It's why Israel going up against Hamas, which has like nothing, which has scraped together weapons from the ordinance that's dropped on Gaza, that's why Israel was unable to defeat Hamas, is not able to secure their military victory in the way that they would want, using bombs alone. It's the reason why Russia is bogged down in Ukraine again, Russia, vastly larger population, vastly larger military, technological superiority, all of that stuff, and they're banging their head up against the wall in Ukraine and basically completely bogged down at this point. This is the era that we live in now and it is a completely different game than what was played in the past. And Trump et al just refused to reckon with the fact that this is never going to succeed. There is nothing that they can do that would allow it to succeed.

Saagar Enjeti

Right. And actually the Russian experience is one. Where is the United States prepared for what Russia is going to do to eventually, in my opinion, win the war, which is sacrifice hundreds of thousands of people for nothing. You know, there's a new CIA estimate who knows if it's true, where they say that the average estimate of lifespan on the Russian front for a new soldier is like 30 seconds. I mean, is that actually true? Probably.

Krystal Ball

I don't know if I really buy

Saagar Enjeti

that, but yeah, but you know, it's one of those where, okay, well, if it's not 30 seconds, I forget the stat from the First World War. I think it's like a new first lieutenant on the Western front for the British military. I think he survived like two weeks. Let's say something like that, that right where okay, yeah, you can, you can win. But it's going to take literally the sacrifice of an entire generation. Go and look up the statistics for Russian men born in the year 19. It's like 1920 to 1925. I, I forget the exact number who were either wounded or killed, but it's insane. Like the vast majority of people who eventually saw service on the Eastern front, is that what, is that how we want to live? That's not how I want to live. Well, do you want to see Isabella Gonzalez's and all of her classmates and all of those people either get killed or maime a generation for what? And yeah, I mean I talked a lot about this in our show yesterday about drones and how it was able to undermine specifically the entire idea that the US military was built upon of which those trillions of dollars have been spent. You just simply have to recognize reality. But this doesn't happen when you read a history book. Every time we say no, no, no, if we just do a little bit more and a little bit more, it's not until you absolutely get bitch slapped in the face, face like multiple times when the Japanese did it to the United States or there's multiple other battles. I think it happened to a British, I forget the exact. I think it might have been in Singapore, something like that around December of 1941 where it was same thing where the entire Navy just wakes up and goes, our entire theory of the last 25 years was wrong. And you find out in a two hour time span. But we found out. And yet, just like with them, all the writing was on the wall. Everybody knew, basically everybody had a chance to know if they wanted. But it's willful blindness or too much money spent sunk. And that's why when I say we haven't bled enough, we haven't. That's just the. I wish it were the case. To me, we have bled plenty. But for the policymakers, for the imperial like, for these people, for the Dubowitzes of the world, for the Wall Street Journal, for Trump, for Fox News, for these people to admit catastrophic defeat. It takes, you know, something like that, like Pearl harbor or something like 3,500 people who are killed. I truly wish it weren't the case, but it usually is. And there's just too much evidence to point in the other direction.

Krystal Ball

Well, and with Putin and Russia, I mean, not only could they continue to just feed their people into meat grinder, which is what they've been doing, they're also considering insane things, considering bombing further into Europe, considering using a nuclear weapon. These are active debates that are happening inside of Russia to try to again, secure something that they've been unable to fully secure on, on the battlefield. You know, I think you're right. Over time, if enough time, you already have Ukrainians who are, you know, would like to see a resolution to the war and are war weary and have had an entire generation that has been destroyed. But, you know, this has not been the easy pickings that Putin thought it was going to be. And then with Iran, you know, Iran is a, we underestimated them. They actually are a better industrial power than we are. They've got their shit much more together in terms of manufacturing, you know, the drones that they've developed and, and the things that they need in order to succeed. They understand their strengths in terms of their geography and what they need to do, what our weaknesses are, et cetera. They believe that they can withstand a lot more pain than we can. I think that's absolutely the case. And so here we are with Trump, considering, hey, do we pursue this 10 day deal which Iran probably, even if Trump was like, let's do it. Iran's probably like, no, I'm not doing that. Because you're just using that to calm the oil markets and then go right back to war. Or is there going to be some sort of a catastrophic disastrous escalation? So that's also.

Saagar Enjeti

I have the stats. 68% of Soviet males born in 1923 were dead by the beginning of 1946.

Krystal Ball

Jesus.

Saagar Enjeti

Basically 7 out of 10. And the rest were probably horrifically scarred by their PTSD or wounds. So I don't want to live that way. All right, let's get to bb.

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Krystal Ball

So you may recall that Mayor Zoran Mandani, when he was on the campaign trail, indicated that he would have Netanyahu arrested for his war crimes. You'll recall he's a wanted criminal by the ICC if he were to come to New York. He was asked about that in a recent New York Times interview. And he said, yeah, we're still looking into that. Let's take a listen.

Mayor Eric Adams

I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague. He's a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years. I've also said that I will follow the laws that we have here in New York City because I believe that there is an importance in following the law as a leader who presides over our city. And that's something that I plan to do.

Krystal Ball

Do, meaning.

Saagar Enjeti

I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means.

Mayor Eric Adams

Meaning that whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that's what we will do, but we won't be writing our own laws to that end.

Annie Jacobson

What does the law allow you to do?

Mayor Eric Adams

That's an active conversation with our legal department in seeing what the prospects are we have here in our municipality. However, what we've seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That's not something we have an interest in.

Krystal Ball

So I'm very much read those comments as a way to sort of walk back from the promise to a arrest. Netanyahu basically saying, like, yeah, I'd love to do it, but we gotta be constrained by laws. And we're looking into it. And the reality is, I mean, we're not even a signatory to the icc. It's hard to imagine what legitimate power he could use, even though I would love for him to figure out one. Nevertheless, Sagar Trump made sure to come to Netanyahu's rescue and defense here. I can put element one up on the screen. Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested in any way, shape or form while in the United States of America. He's fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protesters. I swear that number goes up every time we see it. And has spent the last 47 years killing American soldiers and others. The only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented spiral of death and destruction, something that should have been dealt with years ago by previous precedents. So there you go, Trump making sure that Netanyahu will be safe and sound when he comes here in September. I think for the UN General assembly is the reason that he's planning to be in town. Zoran was asked again about the possibility of this arrest and they tried to play like, well, why do you care? What about the treatment of Iran in New York City? Is there some sort of a double standard at work here? This is B3. Let's go ahead and listen to that.

Mayor Eric Adams

Our administration did not reach out to the Prime Minister of Iran. Our administration received a request from the Iranian consulate. And as soon as I heard of that, I made it clear that we are not meeting and we will not meet with the Israeli consulate here in New York City. And when it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, we're speaking about someone who's the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, and he's the subject of this arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity, for war crimes, and he's the architect of the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. As Israel's prime Minister, these are not facts of my personal assessment. They are facts of public record. Record. And I believe that when someone is charged with an International Criminal Court warrant, it's something that should be taken seriously, whether it's Benjamin Netanyahu or it's Vladimir Putin or whomever else. What I've also made clear is that my administration will follow all applicable local laws. That is our commitment. That is something that we will follow through on when it comes to an adherence to local law. And that's all I have to add on that. Thank you.

Krystal Ball

And now we're going to go to heather from News 12. Are you looking at arresting anybody else on that list of people who've committed international war crimes?

Mayor Eric Adams

My point is that if someone is charged with a warrant for by the International Criminal Court for these kinds of crimes, that's something I believe that should be honored. And I've also said that we will follow our local laws.

Krystal Ball

So there you go. Unlikely that Netanyahu is going to be arrested anytime soon, sadly. Although, I mean, possibly if he loses this election, maybe in Israel, but over corruption, not over war crimes, over Qatari

Saagar Enjeti

corruption, which is the best part of it for all the accusations.

Krystal Ball

Yes, absolutely. But in any case, he's probably safe when he comes to New York City. Sadly, it is wild, though, just to reflect, Sagar, that this is the mayor of New York who's like, under pressure to say that he would arrest Netanyahu. Just a couple years ago, the idea that you would have an avowed anti Zionist who wants to arrest Netanyahu, who support, is a supporter of the BDS movement, to be the mayor of New York City. Of course, the largest, largest concentration of Jewish Americans in the entire country, one of the largest concentrations of Jews on the Planet, period. It just shows you how radically things have shifted. And it's not, you know, in spite of opposition from Jewish New Yorkers, it's in part because of support from Jewish New Yorkers who are also disgusted with the war crimes of Netanyahu and the genocide that their tax dollars have funded. Along with, of course, the core campaign pitch, which was very appealing to the city.

Saagar Enjeti

I do think what's interesting about, first of all, you're totally so like, I went to gw, which is like the birthplace of Hillary Clinton liberalism. And when I was in college, the median position was, Hillary is great, but BDS is support for terrorism. Like, that was like the Democratic. And most of the people I went to school with, if they're involved in politics, they probably all work and, you know, the centrist industrial complex. So. But for them, I think a lot of them shifted. Also on Israel, it is inconceivable for something like that to happen. I also think it is so obvious that if you watch that first comment, he's backing himself out of what his most ardent supporters wanted, which is like, I won't name the person who we were arguing with this about where he's like, why does Zoron not arrest Ben gvir? Whenever Ben GVIR came to the Israel Day Parade, I'm like, dude, he's the NYPD or is the New York City City Commissioner or a mayor. Like, he doesn't have any statutory authority to arrest a foreign dignitary. And don't use that word in what

Krystal Ball

it means, the technical definition, what it

Saagar Enjeti

means he has zero authority to arrest a foreign dignitary on U.S. soil. Like, the fact is this U.S. state Department and the United States government at the federal level has total authority whenever it comes to that. So a local mayor has. Has zero capability whatsoever to do that and himself would be in violation of like, multiple US Laws. He knows that, which is why he keeps saying, we're gonna focus all our local laws, even at a higher level. As you said, we're not statutory to the icc. We don't even recognize this authority. The current administration, currently, and actually long in the past, even Bill Clinton and all of them, whenever they were under serious pressure to become signatories, they didn't wanna do it because explicitly, not just for this reason, but because it would undermine the empire status of the US So there is no way that this would ever happen.

Krystal Ball

I know it'd be popular if it did.

Saagar Enjeti

Icc, I don't know about that, but Israel, oh, yeah.

Krystal Ball

If they found a way to arrest netanyahu it would be popular. It would be very popular.

Saagar Enjeti

He did live here. Friends of mine in the government tell me basically everyone's guilty of wire fraud in some way or the other. So I'm sure he'd find some. Something, but, you know.

Krystal Ball

Yeah, well, he, like, he's from Pennsylvania, right? I think he's lived in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

Saagar Enjeti

No, Maybe not born there, but he lived around there.

Krystal Ball

I mean, I just know that he stayed in Jared Kushner's bedroom whenever he was in town, so.

Saagar Enjeti

And he would brag about it.

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Saagar Enjeti

Be like, jared, I used to sleep in your childhood bedroom. And I. I'm. I think I attended a speech where he said that publicly. And I'm looking around in the press corps, and I'm like, everyone else hear this. I'm like, no one else normal is this. Nobody else thinks this is super weird. Or whenever he would come to America on his frequent visits and visit, oh, I don't know, Jonathan Pollard, the convicted US or convicted spy in prison, but that's what he's all about. If we were to zoom out a little bit about Bibi and Trump, I mean, it's so hard to try and read the tea leaves. Can we put this before up here on the screen? This is from Barack Ravid inside Bibi's mystery Trump meeting, where Bibi kept saying all day, I'm gonna meet with Trump. I'm gonna meet with Trump. I'm gonna meet with Trump. Via these anonymous accounts in the Israeli press. No meeting has been scheduled. Netanyahu obviously has visited the Oval Office six times since Trump has entered office, more than any world leader under the Trump administration. All of those meetings were scheduled, quote, within an hour or days. This time, he's been trying to get an appointment for more than two weeks. From what we can see, a lot of this has to do with Lindsey Graham's funeral. Now, the funeral actually has been delayed to the July 21. Now Bibi is scheduled to attend the funeral, which. Okay, I mean, tells you a little bit about who's memorializing Senator Graham. But what is fascinating to me is Trump doesn't seem to want to meet him or at least publicly as of yet. But obviously, they're on the phone and they talk all the time. I just can't figure out who exactly and what the optics behind this are. Like, do they recognize as toxic? They don't want to send an explicit message to Iran at the same time we're bombing the hell out of him. It looks like a war could resume literally at any moment. And why. And this morning there's a report out of the Hebrew language press where the Israelis are blaming the Vance team, saying Vance's team is preventing Bibi from meeting with Donald Trump. I don't think that that's true. I don't think if Trump wanted to meet with him, he would.

Krystal Ball

The question is, I don't think J.D. has that kind of juice, frankly.

Saagar Enjeti

I mean, I don't think anybody, as a kind of juice, stop Trump from meeting with Bibi. But the question is why, like, ultimately, why did he decide Trump not to meet with Bibi? The White House came out multiple times and said it's not happening as of right now. So I have no idea. You know, you gotta read tea leaves and all of that. But at the same time, he comes out with some tweet being like, oh, he's not gonna get arrested. Actually, it's the Iranians who should be. Are the ones who are arrested. It's like he can't make up his mind about how to deal with this man.

Krystal Ball

Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on in his head. I really don't have a take on it either. It could just be that, like, on a personal level, he finds Bibi kind of annoying, you know, because they add that, you know, he was irritated with him because he congratulated Joe Biden on his victory. And he probably still holds that grudge. And he probably, you know, maybe Bibi is too. Whatever. He may just find him sort of personally irritating, but it doesn't really change the logic of the direction that he's pushing in in terms of the war with Iran. So I don't know. It's also interesting that Israel's not participating in this current bombing campaign. They had a big security meeting, cabinet meeting yesterday and said basically, like, okay, we're just going to hold our position for now. We're not going to join the US in this bombing campaign. I don't know if they were invited to join or not, but it seems that they're waiting for a bigger escalation and that they would want to participate in.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, the finance Smotrich gave an interview yesterday in Israel, and he says the state of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States. The current situation is the best one for us. And, you know, I think you might be right in the sense where Israel, as we all know, was getting the shit pounded out of it whenever the war was happening. For 40 days, they were genuinely rationing Interceptors. So it was a big problem for Them and they were not accomplishing their regime change goals. When he says the current situation is the best one possible for us, in some ways he's not wrong because Israel's economy is basically fake and a protectorate of the United States. So it's not their economy, which is in huge trouble, it's ours. So he's like, yeah, we didn't get our regime change and the Battle of Hormuz, nothing to do with us. That's Europe, United States and Asia's problem. No regime change on the horizon. So let them fight it out. And we'll continue to kill, you know, random Palestinians in the west bank every other day just because we can.

Krystal Ball

Yeah, well, plus their missile interceptors were down to like single digits, double digits. It was scraping the bottom of the barrel there. So, yeah, for them to just say we'll sit back and watch as. Plus, they don't care if Iran, you know, destroys Kuwait and makes the UAE unlivable or whatever. They don't care.

Saagar Enjeti

They don't care at all. Yeah, you know, and that's the funny part, is if Iran hated Israel, now would be or not hate. But like, if they really wanted to destroy Israel, wipe it off the face of the earth, now's the time, right?

Krystal Ball

You're at war. They got nothing.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, it's like America's firing at you no matter what. You could blow them off, you could wipe them off the face of the earth if you wanted to. Like, you know, if you, if you wanted like a full on military, if you focused all your concentration. Or maybe they're actually a rational nation which just wants to survive out of this and make a lot of money, money for itself and its people and then keep its regime in exactly the way that they decide. Just a thought. All right, let's get to AI.

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Saagar Enjeti

Turning now to AI massive development that happened over the weekend. Let's go and put this up here on the screen from Axios which a general summary of the situation. Quote China just erased America's AI lead. This is the number one non Iran related story that we wanted to make sure that we covered in extensive detail. So what happened is, is that over the weekend Kimi K3, which is a new model by Beijing's based Moonshot AI has now, quote threatened the foundations of America's AI boom. On Thursday it dazzled developers, jolted Silicon Valley and reset the AI race. Overnight. The AI Valuator arena actually put it in the number one spot for the first time ever. Let's put C2 up there on the screen just to show everybody. Since this time, by the way, they have reevaluated and they've dropped it. But at that time they said big news. Kimmy K3 is now the number one in front end code arena with 1,679 points surpassing Claude's Fable 5, a 17 place jump from the Kimmy K2 model. In the front end, Kimmy K3 ranked number one in in six of seven domains, brand and marketing, reference based design, data and analytics, consumer product simulations and content creation tools. Landing number two only in gaming behind Fable 5. The full model weights will be released by July 27th. This has basically enabled a gold rush for Kimi which has found itself deluged by new customers and other users. So much so like let's put C3 up here on the screen that they have now released this statement. Kimik3 has received far more love than we expected. Our GPUs are feeling it. Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity. To protect the experience of existing subscribers, we are temporarily pausing new subscriptions and prioritizing Compute for current members. Existing subscribed users are not affected. We're adding capacity as fast as you can and will reopen a new subscription spot in batches going forward. We will also split membership into two more focus plans. Membership for Kimi web app and work and then Kimi Code for coding workflows. This will help us match COMPUTE more precisely and keep the experience stable. Thank you for your patience and understanding. A lot of people reacted to this in awe because all of the other American companies, they take your money. One person responded, wait, so you're refusing to take money to give people a better user experience? You're not taking your best model out of the plans and you're not bullshitting your users into thinking so so very strange. American customers are so used they'll take your money, then they take the top model away and then there's some fuckery or something that's behind the scenes and then they rate limit you anyway. So a little bit of a better Chinese customer experience. But this has caused like a.

Krystal Ball

Well, can I just say on that note, by the way, the very next time I logged into Claude got a message from Anthropic that's like, hey, oh I know, here's a hundred dollar credit to use Fable 5, our company account.

Saagar Enjeti

They keep our company account. They keep bombarding me being like, buy Fable 5 credit. I'm like, we're fucking good man. You know, we're not doing any coding stuff over here. Yeah, but yeah, that's a little bit different. And by the way, of course we have a company account here for Claude and yet somehow they're still shaking me down for money. So a little interesting in terms of the difference in what's going on. But you know, geopolitically it's an earthquake moment and that's really what has set off this new discussion in the White House where let's put C4.5 up here on the screen. In the last three days there has now been a internal civil war over whether they should just ban these cutting edge Chinese models which would lock in the dominance of OpenAI and Anthropic in the US market. Basically it's a divide between the AI companies themselves, OpenAI and Anthropic, which are saying that these open source and or Chinese subsidized AI companies which are able to charge dramatically less than what the US companies are, would destroy their businesses and make it completely unable for them to go IPO to remain dominant. On the other side are the pro competition voices who say actually the Chinese AI model is a kick in the ass, exactly what the American companies need and if anything it shows that the government is that the government has put too much regulation on the AI companies. This voice I would say is more like the David Sachs front, which is enabled by a particular tweet. I pulled it actually for our segment. I have a report full of security issues of software I'm working on. Codex won't fix them because of cyber guardrails. Fable won't fix them because of cyber guardrails. Kimmy K3 fixed all of them. No restriction. It just gets the job done. This will end badly for OpenAI and Anthropic. The criticism there elevated by SACS is that cyber guardrails and the so called like security movement within the AI companies is actually holding back, you know, the competition. So you can see how all of this is being used by OpenAI and Anthropic which are like, hey, you know, they're coming after us, they're stealing our technology and they're undercutting us from one side. Some of the pro AI voices for the competition, open source voices are like, no, this is good and if anything we just need to let it all rip here in the US in the way that China is. There's a medium ground kind of analyst position which I kind of find myself in where you're like, wow. I was like, this is crazy. Yeah, you're like, well, you're like, okay, so well, it destroys the economics of it. Did you pull the Chamath thing? Why don't you summarize it? It's really good.

Krystal Ball

Go ahead and put this up on the screen, guys. The last element in the block. So this is Chamath who obviously very close with David Sacks. He says the leading AI has already forked into two options. A, a closed source American that close cost 26 to 56 per 1 million tokens or an open weight Chinese that cost $0.50 to $1 per 1 million tokens. If you force American companies to spend 50 to 100 times more than their competitors abroad, here's what will happen. One, American companies spending 50 to 100 times will at some point become financially impaired. The stock market will crater. This is the equivalent of the US government saying we can only buy oil at $800 a barrel even when the free market sells the same oil for $80 a barrel barrel. Two, in the short term, the revenues of the closed American labs may remain high. But when their revenue will also crater because their customers in the US will be impaired and their customers abroad will have already flipped to cheaper solutions. This would be a terribly self defeating form of intervention if it were to happen. There is so much to say. I mean, he's right on the economics. Right. The Chinese models are vastly, vastly cheaper. And now they are affecting, you know, the thing that the American models had in the past is they were a little bit better. They were like six months ahead of the Chinese models. They're not anymore. And it's not just Kimmy K3, there's a few other models that have already been released in the wake of Kimik 3 that are basically at the same level. A lot of competition within China, within China between these different models and labs that are operating in that space as well. So sort of, I don't know, ironically, hilariously, whatever, however you want to describe it, part of the reason why their models are so much cheaper and so much more efficient is because we banned them from having the top of the line chips. So they were unable to pursue the same like let's just throw as much compute at it as possible as our closed labs. So they decided to go in this open model direction and try to push the efficiency as much as possible. And now it's paying off for them. So in some ways the policy that we thought would help secure our company's AI lead is exactly what is undercutting them at this point. So that's one aspect of, of this you know, from a business Perspective, Anthropic and OpenAI, these companies are not profitable. They have massive amounts of debt and they're able to float it because investors look at the possibility of getting rid of the labor force and all of these productivity gains and think that it's worth the investment and think that large companies in particular will pay a lot of money to Anthropic and OpenAI once they get to the point point where that labor saving technology is truly, truly comes of age and can be fully implemented. That is what the whole bet is based upon. Kimmy, K3 open source model and other similar positioned competitors. That just kills the economics. I mean just, there's no doubt about it, it kills the economics. Why are you going to think that an American company is going to choose Anthropic when they could choose something that's just as good, that's way, way cheap? Of course they're going to do that. Microsoft already has announced they're evaluating Kim and K3 to use with their copilot and to host on their platform. Here's the other thing.

Saagar Enjeti

They own a stake in OpenAI too.

Krystal Ball

That's right. That's exactly right. And here's the other thing too is okay, open model versus closed model, what does that mean? Open source model means that anyone can get access to the model weights, which is the whole secret sauce behind this thing. They can host it themselves and you actually can't really. It would be very difficult for the government even to be able to block all American companies from using these models. Now what they could do is say basically you're not going to contract with the US government, you're not going to contract with the Pentagon if you're using any of these models. And that would work for all the large players, but a lot of small players would still use the Chinese models because they're not doing business with the US federal government. So there's that. If they do decide to ban the Chinese models or make it functionally impossible for large US corporations to use the Chinese models, there is no way to look at that other than a bailout for Anthropic and OpenAI. However, because so much of our economy is bet on the AI space, it could be the case that if you don't prop up these now sort of like behind the eight ball, overly expensive models that the whole ecosystem could come crashing down. Now what Chamath and others say is that's bogus. Just because these frontier models turn out to not be a good business and not profitable, that doesn't change the demand for data centers and all the other ecosystem that goes into this. So it won't be this catastrophic thing for the economy. Anthropic and OpenAI aren't even public yet. So they're not the things that are propping up the stock market. I don't know, maybe that's right. But it's hard for me to imagine that that is the case. Sorry, this is long winded. But the, you know, the TLDR is that I think whether it happens now or in the future, we are very likely to move into a situation where the AI models are sort of like the Internet. It's not the place where people are making gobs and gobs of money. It's all in the layers, the application. What you do with the Internet there is a lot of, you know it's going to be profoundly transformational. I think that is true, true. But the big the business models are gonna be what do you do with this? And the models themselves are like a utility or like the pipes or like the Internet, a sort of common good thing that everyone has access to more or less. And it's not the place where you're making these astronomical world changing returns.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, I mean we're running a bit short on time just because we want to get to Annie Jacobson. There's so much to say. I do think ultimately what this demonstrates is the real problem for the overall US economy. The US economy and this reminds me a lot of the chips in general. Chip design is an industry which the America dominates. We design the best chips, but we never made the actual chips themselves. We allowed all that to be outsourced. So from what I can understand, the deliberate frontier model business model is they spend oodles of money, trillions of dollars literally in the development of these. But they haven't figured out out the actual way to price it so that they can make up for what's ultimately a money losing product. The Chinese basically are waiting for frontier model development using the open weight strategy. They also have a force constraint because of AI chip bands, export bans. They had to train themselves to be more efficient which America never trained itself to do so and then on top of that there's a deliberate pricing strategy of the Chinese government where they subsidize, incentivize and create an ecosystem such as that they don't have to charge exactly at market price and they can have competition be the ultimate and the sole goal. Very much how they did EVs like to say China just blessed byd and said go forth and create is not true. China's EV sector was propped up at a basic level from the, from the

Krystal Ball

Chinese government seeded an entire ecosystem.

Saagar Enjeti

And then from there they were like, you guys fight it out. I mean one day some, some guy who can speak both languages languages will write a great book about that competition. Because that is one of the most interesting stories of the last two decades. Like that business, that genuine war. Like if you think our business price strategies and all that are interesting, it all just played out there. One of the most capitalist wars in history. But it was controlled, shaped and laid the groundwork for by the government. That's basically what they're doing here. That's basically what they're doing in China with AI. And Xi Jinping just gave a speech about AI, why it should all be open source and more beneficial to the world. OpenAI's Chief Policy Officer put out a long essay yesterday. He's a former Trump administration official. This guy's out here being like, what are we gonna do? Like how can we, how are we supposed to survive in this type of system? How can we be expected to compete in the future? And these are, I mean there's trillions in both cases. They both extract, expect to be valued. They're currently valued in terms of the private market, around a trillion dollars each. So that's 2 trillion in overall value. And if that gets, I mean even cut by half, I mean that's a catastrophe, right, for the overall economy, not for maybe for us, but it's like for them, for the data center build out. I mean the capital crunch that would follow would be.comesque and the blowout from our overall, not to even mention that's the case too.

Krystal Ball

But then I look at the stock market and, and it's like, no, that's fine.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, it's up today.

Krystal Ball

Yeah, okay. It's actually up right now. What do I know? Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about some parallels with the American auto industry, which I think is really in trouble. There's a big piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the fact that you had a Biden policy that was pushing EVs. There was some significant research and development. There were some improvements, new models coming out. Then Trump comes in, cuts all the subsidies and now they're shelving all the. And ends the build out of a charging network, which is one of the big barriers in a vast country such as ours. And so now they're paring back. They're not investing in new research. So meanwhile BYD and Other Chinese car companies too are just lapping us in terms of technology. I mean, they're vastly ahead of even Tesla. They are wildly cheaper than, certainly than Tesla or any of the other EVs on the American market. Market. And so by protecting the American auto industry from that Chinese EV competition, you're allowing them to persist longer. But it really is a pretty dim trajectory for them because the rest of the world is going ev. I mean, this is happening, right. And at a really quite rapid clip once you have the charging infrastructure in place. It is a superior technology. There's just no doubt about it. That is where the future lies and our car companies are being left behind. So if you have a similar situation where the American models are basically protected. Yeah. That will allow them to persist. It will function effectively as a bailout for them. Corporate large corporations based here in the US will use their models, et cetera. But you're sort of setting yourself up for a broader failure in the world as these Chinese models continue to progress and are adopted by the entire rest of the world and by small companies, by the way, here in the US which will just sort of flout the US regulation or go abroad so that they can use the much cheaper Chinese model. So I don't know, it's quite a conundrum and with major, major consequences for the economy, for these frontier labs and for the way that we're all going to interact with this stuff going forward.

Saagar Enjeti

Very true. All right, we got Annie Jacobson standing by. Let's get it to her.

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Saagar Enjeti

Very excited now to be joined by Annie Jacobson, one of my favorite authors and the author of this new book. Biological War Comes on the Heels of Nuclear War A Scenario. Here we have Biological War A Scenario. She is also the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books. One of my personal favorites, Operation Paperclip. Very excited now to be joined by her. Truly one of my favorite contemporary authors of all time. Annie, thank you so much for joining us.

Annie Jacobson

Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for that intro, of course.

Saagar Enjeti

And so you have now come out with this new book, Biological War. It is a warning of what you say could be even more of a terrifying apocalypse for mankind and for the United States. You divulge not only some of the reporting, but where you've uncovered a lot of the ways the United States is set up to or to deal with a potential biological war, but also detail how exactly such a thing would happen. What inspired you to write this Book after the Nuclear War book.

Annie Jacobson

It was many of my sources who also work in counter proliferation. It's a fancy word for keeping weapons of mass destruction out of bad guys hands. And many of them said, annie, after you do nuclear, you have to look at bio. I did not realize what an extraordinary threat it was until I really drilled down on the scenario.

Krystal Ball

And so Annie, talk to us about why it's such a threat and what the vulnerabilities really are that people should be concerned about.

Annie Jacobson

One of the most stunning facts I learned was in a Defense Department doctrine, sort of a threat spectrum. And it defines nuclear weapons as the most destructive and it defines biological weapons as the greatest overall threat. And that has to do with this incredibly low barrier for entry. Unlike nuclear weapons which are controlled, you know, first of all they're very hard to access because you have to have fissile material, you have to have weapon systems for delivery. And they're controlled by a nation state's nuclear command. And controlled biological weapons. I learned, learned particularly now with AI systems in play, can be made in a basement by sort of a high school student, if you will, with a very low knowledge of biology. That is terrifying.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah. That we actually, just before you came in, we're talking about these open source models and potential guardrails and more. I know that you've highlighted the AI risk, but you've also talked about many of these labs. We have a map that we can put up here on the screen which was provided to us by your team. These BSL4 labs that are all around the world. Many of us learned about some of these types of labs with COVID and the leak of the COVID virus. But tell us about the danger that is posed for a biological war scenario, potentially even a lab leak of a biological apocalypse.

Annie Jacobson

Well, first of all, thanks for showing that map. And let's give credit to the academics and scientists who keep track of those labs because there is no government organization monitoring this. There are 3500 BSL3 labs around the world in places of, you know, where wars are going on. You can work on plague and anthrax hantavirus in a BSL3 lab. 90% of those labs do not have safety standards. An astonishing fact. BSL 4 labs, that's like the CDC's lab in Atlanta, the Defense Department's lab in, at Fort Detrick. These are the highest level of biosafety. There are now 17 in the United States and 110 around the world.

Krystal Ball

Help people understand because I think everybody knows that or most people Know, biological weapons are technically illegal. So how is this sort of bioengineering allowed? What enables, enables this sort of research, which we all learned with devastating consequences, can be extremely dangerous to humanity.

Annie Jacobson

Well, there's lots of different euphemisms for genetic engineering in this world. There's dual use research of concern. Everyone knows about dual use. You can use a kitchen knife to make your dinner or to kill someone. So then there's this idea of gain of function, which is exactly like. Like it sounds. You modify, genetically modify a pathogen to give it more function, be it virulence, be it transmissibility, to defeat a countermeasure. This is often done in the name of science, in the name of medical countermeasures, looking for vaccines, looking for antibiotics, to defeat a biological weapon in the event of an attack or incident. But interviewing presidential advisors, as I did, there's another side of the equation. People like Andy Weber, who is Obama's top biological weapons advisor, will tell you gain of function is a euphemism for biological weapons engineering. And he is not alone.

Saagar Enjeti

Right. And of course, we learned quite a bit about that term after the leak of COVID from the Wuhan Lab. But what from the COVID experience did you see in terms of the breakdown of the US Health infrastructure? A lot of the lack of trust between the mainstream population and the authorities that is also woven into this narrative that you've written in Biological War.

Annie Jacobson

I think you pointed out, like a really important point. I found two. One, in terms of lessons learned from COVID or rather maybe lessons not learned. Number one was, was the United States is woefully unprepared, despite spending billions of dollars. And I quickly take the reader through some of those numbers, but, you know, it's remarkable to think that the case fatality rate of COVID was 1%. So that's the number of people per 100 who die of the disease, who catch the disease. There are pathogens out there with a hundred percent case fatality rate. And so that that fact that we are unprepared should really make people wake up and pay attention to what can be done. The second important point is what you mentioned, which is the absolute fracturing of public opinion about science, about medicine, about the trustworthiness of public health officials. This was a disaster in Covid. And to my eye, not only has it not been sort of resolved, there hasn't been a sort of, you know, denouement about what really happened. Okay, this happened, let's move on, because this is a real threat. Instead, you just have this two sides digging deeper into their positions. And this is at the peril of the American people.

Krystal Ball

Well, and let's talk about some of the moves the Trump administration has made. RFK Jr. Installed as HHS Secretary. There have been something like 25% of the CDC workforce which has been cut. We've withdrawn from the World Health Organization. You know, are you concerned when you see those cuts that that further degrades our readiness?

Annie Jacobson

I'm concerned because of the narrative. I'm concerned because what, you know, the actions, of course, and those really need to be looked at. But the narrative on both sides. I am doing this because we are doing this because it's very rarely in the name of the general public. It's instead, you know, sort of a dis get the political opponent. And again, I do not write about politics. I try to stay above the fray so that I can just deliver the facts. But I think people that read biological war as an area, and it's just one scenario, it's not only scenario, will be astonished when they learn of the government's own plans in the event of an outbreak or an incident of a genetically modified pathogen. When the people learn that the government has plans to save itself. It's a very classified program that I learned about from one of the authors of the program who took me, and therefore you, up to the edge of what can legally be known about this program called Devolution. You learned that there are plans in place for certain components of the government. While in essence, hate to be a dramatist here, but the rest of us die miserable deaths of some kind of horrible pathogen.

Saagar Enjeti

Yeah, you write that it's a classified last resort program that will transfer power to a hidden legal leadership group. So can you maybe go into that a little bit more? So we're not talking about elected officials necessarily. We're talking about civilian or military officials who would effectively govern or govern whatever's left of us.

Annie Jacobson

Absolutely. The program is even spookier than you would think. It's called Devolution, or devolution, depends on how you pronounce it. I was taken through some of the details by Craig Fugate, who was Obama's former FEMA director and who signed off on the sort of lady last monograph about this program, which is classified. The name Devolution is not classified and that's why we can learn a little bit about it from him. But it's a pre selected, pre designated subset of individuals who will move off to these secret sites, bunkers, if you will, called cold sites, warm sites, and hot sites sites. And they take over plans to restore the Constitution in the event of anarchy and insurrection. And this, you know, is. It's pretty astonishing to learn that the idea is that most of the powers that be that are in power will likely die. And so there has to be this secondary group of individuals. Those are the people, you know, who have a go bag stashed in the trunk of their car.

Krystal Ball

So tell us a little bit more about this, because it sounds wild. It sounds like the sort of thing like Alex Jones would be ranting and raving about. And yet you have hard reporting on the reality of this last resort plan. In what type of event would this process be triggered? Who has selected these people? Who decides that? Okay, it's devolution time. How does this all work?

Annie Jacobson

Yes, and anyone who doubts the reality of this can certainly Google FCD1 federal continuity directive want. And that's the unclassified version of what I'm talking about. And, you know, the. The list itself is classified. Who has been chosen, who is on that list is classified. What we can know is that the program actually exists, and the event that would trigger it is what is called a Near Extinction level event. It's kind of exactly like it sounds, which in itself is terribly unsettling. And the. The protocol that triggers it, I learned, is something called COG con, and that stands for Continuity of Government Readiness Condition. And in this case, it would be one. Number one. COG CON1 triggers devolution. The way that Fugate explained it to me, many people are familiar with defcon, the system for the. Of defense readiness that the Defense Department runs by. And of course, DEFCON 1 is nuclear war. And so you have this idea that COG Con won in a biological attack or incident doesn't have to be an attack. It can be a lab leak. And if it begins to take over, an anarchy and insurrection occurs, which is what many of these Defense Department war games I looked at, anticipated, anticipate. We're at devolution.

Saagar Enjeti

Well, what concerns me about that, Annie, is that DEFCON 1 is a definable condition. That means the United States is under immediate nuclear attack. COGCON 1. I mean, who defines what an extinction level event is like? Is there a percent? I mean, obviously you don't know exactly, but like a percent? Lethality? A lab leak? Could it be used potentially as a pretext for a seizure of power? I mean, can you maybe go into a little bit of that and then some more on the war games as well, which I know that you write about of the worry within the war games that the civilians may technically be in control, but they lack the ability to actually enforce many of the laws that they necessarily would want to, which would enable effectively, like a military takeover.

Annie Jacobson

One of the most stunning things about really looking at a biological attack or incident was that the real fear of the Defense Department and its partners, hhs, you know, fema, dhs, the fear is the secondary effects. The fear of infection. That is a quote I came across often. Fear of infection is what will likely lead to anarchy and insurrection. And we all know what that's like. There's this visceral sense of, you know, getting a disease. And of course everyone's thinking, I have to make sure I don't catch this. And that's where you have insurrection come in. And so what precisely triggers the level of cog con? I certainly want to know more and I would hope that now that I've put some of this information into the public discourse, that others would begin to really drill down on this through FOIAs and other means, and get awareness to the public about what we're up against. Not just to sort of be furious with the government that there's a group that will save itself. But, you know, the point of me writing a book like this and nuclear war is not panic as much as I believe it is pressure. Pressure to begin looking at what systems need to be put in place to protect all of us. Because in the event of a near extinction level event, it's exactly like it sounds. We all die.

Krystal Ball

Right? Sagar mentioned earlier, we just did a block on Kimi K3 and the development of these very powerful AI tools which are now widely available with really no safety guardrails to speak of. How much does this concern you? When you're looking at these developments, you know what thoughts are going through your head about the potential consequences.

Annie Jacobson

It's interesting you should ask that question because I've often thought about that and I'll give you a really sort of disquieting answer, which is that last week I was asked to do a Q and A for DARPA for their Biology, Science and Technology Studies group, and that was raised by others. There was a part of that Q and A where I was just listening and one of the charts that was put up was precisely how dangerous AI and biology are together. And there was even talk about whether or not a situation needed to come about where the, the plug would be pulled. It's just a fascinating concept that you could actually pull the plug on bio and AI and From what I understand, the real hurdle in that is getting all six CEOs of these AI companies to agree to all pull the plug, which is a very, very bizarre concept when you're a national security reporter who's been looking at this for 20 years and is suddenly realizing this is actually true, that now there is more power in the hands of six private individuals, full stop, than the government organization that I myself have written about, darpa, which I used to say, when I wrote the book the Pentagon's Brain, which published, you know, 10 years ago, I used to say, no one is more scientifically advanced than darpa. And I must shift that statement now based on new information.

Saagar Enjeti

That's fascinating. Yeah, you really wrote the book on DARPA and blew a lot of the. Nobody really knew anything about it until, I think your book came out. And so when you've written now multiple of these successes, from DARPA to nuclear war, a scenario to biological war, a scenario kind of zooming out. When you say you want to provide information so that things could be done, what recommendations then would you make? Is it just awareness? Conversations like these so people like us know, for elected leaders, what should they be thinking about as they deal with the hullabaloo of whatever's in the news today while this kind of lurks in the shadows behind them?

Annie Jacobson

I am an old school journalist, trained that way, so I stay out of tribal politics. I think it's really important for people to sort of lay down their swords and begin to realize that uncertainty is a pathway towards success. If you can admit, you know, I don't really know, then I believe we can begin to make progress. You know, an interesting point that I raise in the book, and I stay away from sort of, you know, spending too much time on Covid. But a pathogen that is airborne is the biggest fear within the biological community. Airborne means the weapon system is our lungs, individual human lungs. For the first three months of the COVID pandemic, the WHO and the CDC tweeted repeatedly. I have a copy of the tweet in my book. Covid not airborne, not was in capital letters. Millions of people were dying and they were tweeting this. And of course, we now know Covid was airborne. Airborne. Covid is airborne. Covid is a respiratory disease. That is how it was being transmitted. And yet when I tried to get an answer from who, from cdc, why haven't you gone on the record and corrected this, apologized, explain to people that uncertainty is inherent in biology. We all have different physiological. The answer was no comment.

Saagar Enjeti

Wow.

Krystal Ball

Annie lastly, since we have you and we've been covering the Iran war with great interest, we've been covering Russia and Ukraine with a lot of interest. Obviously, nuclear weapons are at the heart of both of these conflicts. You know, as you survey the current geopolitical landscape, what conflagrations concern you the most with regard to a potential break of the nuclear attack taboo?

Annie Jacobson

Well, nuclear threats, to my eye, are profoundly dangerous. I've looked at this since the book Nuclear War Scenario first published. And Putin was threatening the use of nuclear weapons, which is extremely dangerous. But we must be factual here. The current president in his first administration sort of set the bar by essentially, you know, rhetorically threatening nuclear war with North Korea. And we all remember that exchange from the first Trump administration. So I believe that threats are extremely dangerous. And this is because I know from looking at Pentagon war games involving nuclear war that everybody in the Defense Department knows that nuclear war, no matter how it begins, only ends in one way, and that is total apocalyptic annihilation.

Saagar Enjeti

Well, Annie, as always, thank you so much for joining us. I'm gonna be reading the book. I hope everyone, everybody reads the book. And then I hope they pick up the rest of your catalog, everything you've ever written. Again, as I said, one of my favorite contemporary authors. Thank you so much for joining us.

Krystal Ball

Another thing for me to be terrified about. Thank you, Annie.

Annie Jacobson

Pressure, not panic.

Krystal Ball

There you go. There you go.

Annie Jacobson

Thank you.

Saagar Enjeti

Thank you.

Annie Jacobson

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