Sean Ryan

What if I told you you only have 12 hours to legally have sex?

Annie Jacobson

To finding true love or just like a good guy.

Sean Ryan

From the director of Easy A and Anyone but you. This whole thing is nuts. There's nothing traditional about this night. On August 7th, the clock starts on the summer's biggest rom com.

Annie Jacobson

I'm Owen.

Sean Ryan

Allie. What about you and me? Monica Barbaro. Callum Turner. I've been told I'm a seven.

Annie Jacobson

By who?

Sean Ryan

Your mom? Drink some Return One night only. Rated R only in theaters August 7th this summer.

Annie Jacobson

Say I do. I am marrying a stranger like never before. Am I crazy? It's a whole new Married at First Sight on Peacock. Thank God I woke up in love with new experts. My name is Dr. Lisa.

Sean Ryan

My name is Paul Brunson.

Annie Jacobson

Lord couples, this could be the start of a very successful marriage. And Lord surprises. Or maybe not everything is just not enough.

Sean Ryan

You're a little bit crazy.

Annie Jacobson

I don't know what's gonna happen. I want my fairytale ending. Married at First Sight now streaming new Epis episodes Thursdays only on Peacock. I just love doing podcasts so much. It just gives somebody like me an opportunity to have a conversation. I mean, in the old days, you had to go on like a news program and talk for four minutes in between a commercial break.

Sean Ryan

They gave you four minutes.

Annie Jacobson

Right?

Sean Ryan

That's generous.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah. Yeah. Podcasts have reach. Okay, good story. Sean Ryan story. I'm in. About podcasts having reach. I'm in. I'm an avid skier. I'm in the Italian Alps in February

Sean Ryan

a few months ago.

Annie Jacobson

Okay. Skiing Little hut, like a. Like a hotel that you ski and ski out. Couldn't be more in the middle of nowhere in the Dolomite Mountains there with a whole family. Go to settle the bill with the night manager at the end of the thing, and he says to me, I have to say, I really enjoyed seeing you on the Sean Ryan show podcast in the Italian Alps, as God is my witness. And my husband, who was standing there. Right. And I said, you're kidding. And he said, no. And he said, I'm a fan of the show. And now I read your books.

Sean Ryan

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Annie Jacobson

In the middle of the Italian Dolomite Mountains.

Sean Ryan

I'll bet it's beautiful up there.

Annie Jacobson

It's gorgeous. But that's reach for you. And it's incredible to think about how much we are alike instead of. I mean, what really would you think the night manager at a small hotel in the mountains in Italy.

Sean Ryan

Yeah.

Annie Jacobson

Would necessarily have in common with you or I. And then you have that, that is cool. Desire to communicate, desire for information, you know, listening to a good podcast. So congratulations to you.

Sean Ryan

I appreciate that. Well, it's good to have you back, Annie.

Annie Jacobson

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Sean Ryan

Awesome to have you back. I love talking to you.

Annie Jacobson

Oh, I love talking to you.

Sean Ryan

So let me give you an introduction here for anybody that missed the first episode. Annie Jacobson, you're a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author who spent your career uncovering some of the most secretive aspects of the US government. You've written best selling books including Area 51, Operation Paperclip, Clip, the Pentagon's Brain, Surprise, Kill, Vanish, Nuclear War, a scenario. And your newest release, Biological Warfare, a scenario. Everyone loved your last appearance on the show, so we'd love to have you back. And I gotta say, Annie, I think your, your timelines are a little reversed here with the previous book, Nuclear War, and the new one, Biological Warfare.

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But we're.

Sean Ryan

What do you think about all this stuff going on? You know, I mean, in Iran, the nuclear. I mean, I don't think anything's gonna happen.

Annie Jacobson

You mean, is the war in Iran ratcheting up the threat of nuclear war per se? I mean, you know, it's such a rabbit hole of a topic that war. I don't. Because Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon and because the alleged premise of that war is to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon, it exists in a little bit of a different lane that I, then I am really interested in reporting on, which is what if a nuclear war happens? Because, you know, Iran has almost had a bomb for a very long time. So it does seem to me like an easy. I don't want to use the word excuse, but I'm going to use the word excuse me, you know.

Sean Ryan

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, there is something that I wanted to relate to here. I mean, are you aware of the tick thing?

Annie Jacobson

Which tick thing?

Sean Ryan

Which tick thing? The alpha gall. I mean, we've got people trying to force us to eat fake meat, artificial meat, buying up all our farmland, then genetically altering insects, ticks. Now we have this alpha gall disaster going on right now. I don't know how many people have it, but what do you think of that?

Annie Jacobson

I think that anything talking about bio is like circling around what could eventually be the drain unless something isn't done. So in a bizarre way, bringing from where I sit, who just loves information, loves sharing information, loves having conversations about it. Not right, not wrong, uncertainty Being a huge principle, I think, whether it's the Legionnaires disease that just broke out in New York City right now, or the ticks you're talking about.

Sean Ryan

What is that one? I don't even have heard of that.

Annie Jacobson

It just happened yesterday.

Sean Ryan

The Legionnaires disease, what is that in like a small.

Annie Jacobson

You know, these are all pathogens that sudden make their way into a small population that is called an outbreak. And then the real question is, is it gonna become an epidemic? You know, local. And then the real question, is it gonna become a pandemic? So I think that any of these subjects that bring it to people's attention, there's an Ebola epidemic going on right now in Africa. There was a hantavirus scare on that cruise ship in May. These things surface, people talk about them, they learn a little bit. To my eye, it's just so much more helpful to kind of learn basics about bio and what a bio, A genetically modified pathogen is than kind of either be terrified by it or politicize it, because everybody is going to lose if there's a biological incident. And interestingly, because of course, I write about war and weapons, you know, biological war is one of the only threats in the defense Department world of sort of nomenclature and monographs and protocols. That doesn't have to be an attack. It can also be an incident. So a lab leak sounds familiar. A very, very high threat level situation for everybody. So again, it's like information, not panic. Pressure. Pressure to learn more.

Sean Ryan

I mean, they just. What would you rather go through? A nuclear war scenario or a biological pathogen that. Okay, first of all, because that could be a long, slow, painful death. I mean, so I guess so could nuclear war if you aren't in the blast zone.

Annie Jacobson

But I mean, one of the biggest takeaways that readers came back at me with after reading Nuclear War a scenario was I just want to die in the immediate blast. Because, you know, it's like that in Nikita Khrushchev. Quote, the survivors would envy the dead. In many ways, bio has that same component. Probably because of what you said, that you just think of having this like, long, slow, painful death. But the reality I learned when researching and reporting this book is actually a little bit more frightening, which is that. So in Nuclear War, I take readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter in 72 minutes. 72 minutes, not days, minutes. That's how fast it could happen, according to StratCom. In biological war, I take the readers from outbreak to anarchy in six days, because anarchy and insurrection is the real threat. And that Was shocking to learn again from the Defense Department. And you're talking about in the homeland, anarchy, insurrection. A common phrase I came across when looking at declassified documents was fear of infection will send America spiraling into anarchy and insurrection. Fear of infection. There's just something so visceral about this idea of being infected.

Sean Ryan

Do you prepare for this kind of stuff? I mean, you know, what does your house look like?

Annie Jacobson

What is my bunker?

Sean Ryan

What, you got a bunker?

Annie Jacobson

No, I just have a house, you know, I mean, you know, call me naive, but I just really think man made problems, man made solution, and that's the optimist in me. But it is really helpful to know what you're up against. It's very helpful to know. I mean, want me to give you, like, the three basic ideas of bio to understand? Yeah, because, like, sometimes I write for, like, everybody. Like, just give it to me so I can understand it. That's the questions I ask the smartest people in the room. And it's what I try to convey. Because if you try, if you're like, too knowledgeable on a subject, sometimes you lose your audience. So. And we all lived through the COVID pandemic. So whenever you're talking about a biological incident, three things. How might I get it? That's transmissibility. How might I get it? How deadly is it? Okay, Covid, 1% death rate. One out of 100 people died. Flu, 0.1%. Okay. Third thing is, is there something I can take that will heal me? That's called medical countermeasure. Three basic components. And so through all of modern history and Defense Department planning against biological war has been like looking at those three and creating lists of fears around them. And so when people don't know any of that, the fear, like, for example, your tick situation. A tick is called a vector borne disease, so it has to bite you for you to be infected. Okay. The most deadly threat is an airborne pathogen, and that's what Covid was. So something that can be breathed in, the something that can linger in the room, that's a real problem. And that's the scenario I take readers through. An airborne pathogen because that is what all of government fears. It's unstoppable. The weapon essentially becomes the human lung. The weapons delivery system becomes the human lungs. And, you know, another really interesting thing to me learning about all this was that the uncertainty idea is so huge in public health. Remember when Covid happened? Or maybe people don't remember this because it's kind of like, easier to forget for the first three months, the cdc, who is in charge, and the who, who's kind of in charge internationally were sending out tweets that said Covid not airborne. N O T in big letters. I reprint one of their tweets in the book.

Sean Ryan

Nice.

Annie Jacobson

Covid, not airborne. It was airborne. Who's airborne? And instead of admitting they were wrong or even out of the gate saying, look, we don't know, because they didn't know, to insist that then creates this kind of spiraling mistrust. Hence your opening question about trust. You know,

Sean Ryan

Just going through, you know, the outline and stuff. It brought a lot of stuff to mind. I mean, we'll get into the book here in just a second, but if you. If you looked@ancestry.com or like, any of these, you know, these. My mind's going blank here. Biometrics, you know, companies, I mean, and who owns them? And I mean, they could. They could take your DNA that you paid to have tested and create a bioweapon specifically designed to assassinate you.

Annie Jacobson

Absolutely. I mean, individual targets are a whole other dirty game. And historically, that has been going on for a very long time. The Soviets had huge assassination programs, specifically, you know, creating, like, poisons. Poisoning is like one of the oldest assassination ruses in the world. I mean, you can think of like a poison arrow or like somebody. There was a. There was an al Qaeda guy that got assassinated. I want to say one of the, like before the war on terror, he was in Kosovo, I believe, and he. Katab was his last name. Interesting. And he, like, opened up a letter or. And somehow licked it or closed the letter, and there was poison on it, and he died. So there are these very specific assassinations that way. But what I think is the really big threat is what the Defense Department calls what FEMA calls, what hhs, our Health and Human Services call. Because bio is a multi. Multi agency event, which is even more complex and threatening because now you're talking about multiple agencies and stove piping. But you have. You have airborne pathogens that can be. Or rather, you have pathogens that can be genetically modified to your point to become airborne. Right. So genetic modification of. Of path. Let's start. Let me. Let me say one thing, because the pathogen thing can kind of be like, what the hell is that? Viruses and bacteria are both pathogens. Germs are everywhere. We have germs in our stomachs. Germs are not necessarily bad. When you call it a pathogen, that means it can be deadly. Virus and bacteria. Covid was a virus. Plague, which I use as the pathogen. In my book, that scenario, plague is a bacteria. Plague was a bioweapon of yesteryear because. And then a medical countermeasure was invented to fight plague because it's a bacteria. So antibiotics kill the plague. Now, with genetic modification, you can tweak the plague pathogen, which is called Yersinia pestis, so that it is immune to the antibiotics. That's where we're into some very sinister genetic modifications that most people don't know about, don't want to know about, but probably should know a little bit about because it helps you know what you're up against.

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Sean Ryan

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Sean Ryan

and use code SRS. I mean, it's scary. You know, it's. From what I understand, it's a lot, a lot cheaper to produce a bioweapon, a lot easier to sneak it in the country, a lot easier to get it released. I mean, I. I don't. I'm not a scientist or anything, but, you know, you see, you know, all the things that are being created right now. The dire wolf, the woolly mammoth, supposedly, is coming back. We had Charles Hoskinson on who's one of the scientists. Have you heard about the plants that they're developing? They're big. They're making bioluminescent plants that can glow whatever color they want, which is amazing. You know, some of the use. I mean, he was saying, you know, you could put these things around. Put these plants around a nuclear power plant or. Or whatever, and if there's any radiation leaking, then the plants will glow red. And he showed me pictures of what these things look like. We couldn't put it on the episode because it was so early on, but, I mean, it's like something you would see in that movie, the Avatar.

Annie Jacobson

It's like science fiction, except for. It's science fiction.

Sean Ryan

Yeah, it's real.

Annie Jacobson

And this is, you know, when you're talking about these kind of modifications to Mother Nature, it brings up this idea which I think is super important and is kind of at the heart of all of this debate, discussion, science moving forward, which is dual use. So, yes, if you're able to create plants that can detect radiation leakage, that's another form of an intelligence vehicle, like what's called mazen. You know, like, we have sniffer technology. We have. We, you know, we can test sewer water. We can. Same as we can see, you know, explosions from space. That's signals intelligence. So measurement and signature intelligence called mason would be the plants. And that would be terrific for us because it's a way of, you know, understanding what an adversary is up to in the biomedical world. The reason you have genetic modification, the reason this all began, and by the way, it was kind of discovered, invented in 1971 in a lab in California at Stanford, genetic modification. So the idea of those scientists, they certainly weren't weapons engineers. They were like, we're going to be able to create incredible medical countermeasures in the same way that pentascalent, penicillin itself was a medical countermeasure and stopped infection. You know, so many soldiers died in World War II because of wound infection. Penicillin comes along, fantastic. You've taken. You've knocked out all of so many bacteria deaths. So that's the idea. If you're, you know, a doctor, if you're trying to do good in the world or trying to kind of keep the world in balance. But the other side of dual use is weaponizing something. And one of the original sort of components I saw after I wrote nuclear war, and I was like, am I really gonna touch bio? And I had had many sources saying to me, annie, you've gotta write about it. Cause it's more threatening. There's a threat spectrum diagram that I found an unclassified version of it in looking through the Defense Department documents. And it shows all the weapons of mass destruction on a Scale. And of course, nuclear weapons are at the worst end because they are the most destructive. But bioweapons are considered by the Defense Department the greatest overall threat.

Sean Ryan

Really?

Annie Jacobson

Greatest overall threat. That is shocking. That needs to be discussed.

Sean Ryan

Yeah.

Annie Jacobson

And it's because the bar for entry is so low. You know, think about what, Think about. We've had nuclear technology for 80 years now, weapons technology. There's an incredibly low bar for. I mean, a high bar for entry. You can't just make a nuclear bomb in your basement. Bioweapons people will now tell you that, like, a high school student with limited biology can essentially do some genetic tweaks to create this kind of thing. So the accident. Absolutely is. That sounds alarmist. It's true. That is, like, worthy of a discussion in and of itself.

Sean Ryan

That's basically everybody.

Annie Jacobson

Everybody. Yeah. High school students compete in sort of science courses doing genetic tweaks.

Sean Ryan

I had no idea. High school's come a long, long way since I was.

Annie Jacobson

I was dissecting frogs.

Sean Ryan

You know, same thing.

Annie Jacobson

I'm not doing genetic modifications. Wow.

Sean Ryan

Wow.

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So where do we start today?

Sean Ryan

Where do you want to start?

Annie Jacobson

Where do you want to start?

Sean Ryan

What was your inspiration? Your original inspiration? Yeah.

Annie Jacobson

Oh, God, what a funny word, right? I mean, inspiration for writing a book about the end of the world. You know, the fact that biological war is considered a near extinction. Potentially a near extinction level event. That's the nomenclature. A near el E. But I think, you know, inspiration. I am a storyteller. I am really interested in telling a dramatic narrative. I want people to read what I write. And it's not necessarily meant to terrify them, but maybe to put pressure on, you know, government people. But the most shocking part about it for me was that there are plans in place, like nuclear war. There are plans in place for this kind of a near extinction level event, which I, you know, spoiler alert on the end of this book where I take the readers through, you know, outbreak to anarchy in six days. What happens after anarchy is an actual government plan called Devolution. Devolution pronounced two different ways depending on who's saying it. Evolution with a D in front of it. It's exactly like you would think. Wait, what? Evolution moving forward. Devolution is going back. So it's a government plan. The name Devolution is unclassified. The program is classified. I had the man who signed off on the last version of it take me right up. Obama's FEMA director, Craig Fugate. Take me, you readers, right up to the edge of what can Legally be known that this program exists so that after anarchy and insurrection happens, which will. We can get into why a essentially secret government disappears off into a bunch of bunkers called hot sites, warm sites and cold sites to hunker down so that they can rebuild the government once everybody dies. Real, real program.

Sean Ryan

I saw that. So who? A lot of questions. So who, who determines who this, who this is?

Annie Jacobson

It is a pre chosen, pre designated list of people. Now that list is classified. Who is on that list is classified. How that list is determined is classified. But I'm glad we're talking about this because let's speculate because that's all we can do here. I would guess it certainly changes by administration. Right? In other words, the current president is not going to have a bunch of former President Biden's designates go off and run the government. So then you really think about it like, wow, imagine being in that room deciding, okay, who are going. Essentially there's kind of like a mirror image person of every high ranking official because you have to assume, okay, POTUS could get the airborne bacteria in his lungs and die. So who's gonna be the devolution? POTUS, the National Security Advisor, the SecDef. Right. So all of these individuals. And by the way, it's not just Defense Department, it's health officials, it's, you know, Supreme Court justices. The government has to run. So then, I mean, you have the eyebrow raising side that I had, which is, wow, that's a lot of plan. If there's that much planning that goes into catastrophe, why don't we have more public awareness about how to not have this happen?

Sean Ryan

We will get into that discussion. It's called D D Evolution.

Annie Jacobson

Devolution. Devolution.

Sean Ryan

And we don't know how often, I mean, is there, there's a lot of conspiracies on who really runs the government. They're running wild right now. They ran wild in the last administration as well. I mean, probably every administration that comes, there'll be this question. You think there's a possibility that maybe they don't get picked?

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Maybe they're the ones that are running everything.

Annie Jacobson

You mean the actual devolution is already in effect and taking care of things that I don't know. It's certainly, it's certainly an interesting thought experiment. You know, I mean, I also think conspiracy theory is such a bad term. I think it should be changed to speculative narrative. I love that because I mean, for example, when Covid happened on top of the WHO and the CDC saying Covid not airborne when it was airborne. So they got the most basic, most important, most critical fact wrong. And by the way, they've never admitted it. They just quietly changed the idea that Covid was airborne about a year later. And there's that. And then there was the lab leak component of things, which separate from what you think about that, is a real possibility. Okay? And yet when that was first reported, it was actually called a conspiracy theory by major news outlets. And we know it wasn't a conspiracy theory. So why not change that verbiage to speculative narrative? It just takes everybody way down off the ledge. You can even say, you know, if you talking about, you can say it's a wildly speculative narrative. But to call something a conspiracy theory, I think is such self righteous indignation and so potentially dangerous because once you say that, you have a really tough time walking it back and admitting you're wrong. And that term, I mean, the CIA

Sean Ryan

created that term correct conspiracy theory, didn't they?

Annie Jacobson

I don't, I don't know that. I have heard many different things. I think I would.

Sean Ryan

Or is that a speculative narrative?

Annie Jacobson

Good look at that. Change the, change the, change the thinking and the way people talk right here and now on the Sean Ryan show podcast. But you know what I mean, it gives room for being wrong. There's something really, really character building about being able to keep yourself open to, I might be wrong about this. And I don't know why it has disappeared from the government. I just really don't know. I mean, there's a famous JFK quote after the Bay of Pigs, which is a failure. Okay? And JFK said something like, you know, I'm paraphrasing like, success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan. And he was admitting his mistake in the Bay of Pigs, the CIA paramilitary attempt at invading Cuba that failed drastically. He was admitting defeat. He was admitting being wrong. And I think that's profoundly important. It's part of all of our personal lives. Certainly mine. I mean, right. You gotta be able to with your kids.

Sean Ryan

I do it all the time publicly. I've had to do it two or three times this year, unfortunately. But, you know, I think, I think, you know, it's, it's, it's, that's, that's why we're in the big distrust era of the government and all of our institutions. And pretty much everything right now is because nobody has been able to admit wrong. And you know, the funny thing is, is, you know, instantaneously reestablishes your credibility and even lifts it more because people Realize, oh, this person actually has a moral compass.

Annie Jacobson

Yes.

Sean Ryan

This person actually lives by a set of values.

Annie Jacobson

Yes. And is.

Sean Ryan

You can't say for anybody in government because they never do. They're. They're.

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They're too proud.

Sean Ryan

There's too much pride.

Annie Jacobson

Pride goeth before the fall. I mean, I just think about pride is ego or the unhealthy part of ego. Maybe the healthy part of ego is uncertainty. You know, being able to say, like, you know, I don't know, but I think it's this. I still cannot. I could not get a straight. I'm always trying to get a straight answer from government officials on these certain questions like that, like asking the cdc, why have you never admitted you were wrong about, you know, Covid not airborne? And they won't, they won't go there. So people mistrust.

Sean Ryan

You've asked them.

Annie Jacobson

I always ask, what do they say? I mean, usually you get ignored on those questions. Right. They. I mean, it's why I spend so much of my time interviewing former SecDef, you know, former StratCom commander, former FEMA chief. Because once they are out of government, they're really out of the catbird seat, which is kind of fair that when you are in a government position, you have to toe the party line. You can't really answer a straight question without going to 10 press officers and finding out what you're supposed to say. And maybe that is understandable in some component, but it also should change because people, I think, are advancing way beyond that in their own personal lives. Just the ability to get information on your fingertips is just so much faster now than it ever was that the government needs to adapt to that. We'll get back to you an answer on that. And then six weeks later, they're giving you the answer. And the question has already changed.

Sean Ryan

What about. What else about this deal. Devolution.

Annie Jacobson

I mean, it was.

Sean Ryan

Was that a surprise to you?

Annie Jacobson

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've heard that term referenced, but it's always. It's. It's referenced without any information attached to it because it's the only thing that's declassified. I was really kind of stunned that Craig Fugate was able to really share with me. He did, because he signed off on the 2016 version of it the last day of the Obama administration. And that is the set of protocols from which all updates are made. So the system hasn't changed the names on the list might. But there are other really, really interesting details I learned. Like, okay, again, spoiler alert. Right. The president gets Moved. In the event of a major biological catastrophe where people are, there is a pathogen that has a case fatality rate of 100%. I told you. Covid had 1% plague. Not bubonic plague, but pneumonic plague, which is pneumonic pneumonia. So in the lungs. When plague goes into the lungs, not bubonic plague. If you get bitten by a tick, you get bubonic plague. Your lymph nodes swell up and it, you know, it sort of takes over parts of the body, your lymph system. Pneumonic plague in the lungs. Hundred percent case fatality rate, 100%. 100%. You get it. You die unless you take antibiotics. You have to take antibiotics within 24 hours. Within 24 hours. By the way, I have one of my major sources on the book is one of the world's experts on bubonic plague, pneumonic plague. Dr. Henry Hein. He was at USAMRID, which is at Fort Detrick, studying this for a very long time until he left. Now, he works privately, so all of this information is, like, fully sourced. But the big fear, I'm going looping back to the president here. Big fear of Defense Department, cdc, hhs, all of these organizations would be involved in a bio event. A pathogen is released. Either a lab leak or an attack. It's airborne and it has a case fatality rate of 100%. Okay, then I said the medical countermeasures. How are we going to stop it? Well, what if it has been genetically modified to defeat antibiotics? Again? Sounds like Annie's talking science fiction. There are plans in place because this is what is feared. I'm sure there are, in this event, the president. I learned this is like, you know, sometimes you get information and you go, I gotta reverse engineer my book from that because this is just too dramatic. The president does not get moved to a big bunker like Raven Rock or Mount Weather. Any of these command centers we can talk about if you want more details. He gets moved to, like, what's called a cold site, like, really far away by himself. It's such a crazy visual to think about the President of the United States with a gas mask, by himself in a room. His military aid with the nuclear football out the door, outside the door, and a couple Secret Service agents watching the building. For how long? I mean, that, to me, sounds like science fiction. To realize it's science fact is like, I gotta know about this, and that's how I work as a reporter. Like, okay, so how does that happen?

Sean Ryan

I mean, who you are There, you know,

Annie Jacobson

that's the end of democracy.

Sean Ryan

Yeah. I'd like to go back a little bit and talk about maybe the biological arms race before we get to this. But it arises. I mean, who do they think they're going to even govern? You know, I mean, the trillionaires that are building, the billionaires and. And trillionaire that are building bunkers in Hawaii, what are they going to do? Come out of your bunker and do what? Are you going to govern Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? I don't think so. They're not being governed right now.

Annie Jacobson

And you got to think of the skills you have to have to survive in that kind of a world. Okay, so biological arms race. Here's an interesting fact. Biological war is illegal. Biological weapons are illegal. Nuclear weapons are not illegal. Crazy thought. Okay, okay. There's only a certain amount of countries that have them, and they're making sure no one else gets them. Hence Iran. But nuclear weapons are not illegal to those who hold them. Biological weapons. All biological weapons are illegal. They were made illegal by a treaty called the Biological weapons convention, the BWC. It's the treaty. In 1972. Before that, the United States had a massive arsenal of nuclear. Of biological weapons, which is just crazy to think about. That's Cold War paranoia for you. We had them. Russia had them. China was building them. North Korea. So they became illegal. President Nixon decided they're repugnant to the conscience of mankind. That's what he said. Okay. And makes them illegal. Everyone. We destroyed our biological weapons. It took 219 weeks to destroy them, by the way. So everybody says we're gonna destroy our weapons. Biological weapons. Everybody signs the treaty. Not for another 20 years would the United States learn from Soviet defector scientists that the Russians went like this. Oh, yeah, here. We signed that treaty. And then they began to build a colossal biological weapons program. They called it their Manhattan Project. And the idea, which is so spooky, is that they wanted to kill all the people in America and the west and leave the infrastructure intact. Those were their words.

Sean Ryan

Interesting. Smart and interesting and evil. I mean, you know, we were talking about Ancestry.com 23andMe.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah.

Sean Ryan

Who knows what else is out there that people are using. But, I mean, would you say an arsenal of biological. I mean, how many bio. How many different types of biological weapons do you need? Is. Can they. I mean, I'm sure they can. I mean, can they. Can they engine, you know, but by sucking that DNA out or LabCorp, you know, the biggest blood diagnostics company in the World. I mean, can they get that information, hack that information, or just sell it? I mean, I think 23andMe and ancestry and probably all the other ones have sold all the data, most multiple times, allegedly. But is it possible to create a biological weapon that would only target American DNA? Canadian DNA, North American DNA, Latino DNA, Black DNA.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah, any race there is. And that, by the way, this is not something I get into in the book. It was a little too speculative narrative for me to really go down. Okay. But let me tell you who took that was confirmed. I asked that exact question to Admiral Brett Druar. And he was the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services at the White House during COVID Okay. He's also a medical doctor. He ran DARPA's bioscience office. He's an incredible human being. He's a character in the book, for sure. I mean, he's really a remarkable person. Grew up in a small town in Texas. First guy in his town to go to Harvard, you know, fully dedicated to service his whole life. I asked him that question, and he said to me, after a bit of a pause, yes, and there are suspicions that China is doing that. So the suspicions part of it is where I make a distinction for Annie as a journalist, I'm going to work my scenario from what is known, what is on the record, and what has been confirmed by people on the other side. Because then I can never be accused of, like, fear monger. Like, if I were to go down that lane, perhaps people would say, well, you're fear mongering because it's speculative. Because you don't know for sure. Right now, when you have someone like Admiral Girard saying it's speculative, the subtext in that, you and I can infer what that means. So I don't think someone like that is going to say something like that to me off the cuff without a little more fear, shall we say, than speculation.

Sean Ryan

So there's speculative rumors that China is creating this or has created it?

Annie Jacobson

Yes. And there is also never been so

Sean Ryan

happy to have Asian blood.

Annie Jacobson

Yes. Really? How is that? You gotta tell me that. How is that?

Sean Ryan

Because I'm part Japanese. Wow. I'm good.

Annie Jacobson

I never knew that. Mom or dad?

Sean Ryan

Dad.

Annie Jacobson

Dad. Interesting. Okay, so you got the DNA immunity, perhaps. If that's the case, hopefully there's a very interesting paper for anyone who's interested in reading on this. So Dr. Robert Kadleck, source in the book he was in. He was. He is now the current administration, essentially the biodefense chief. He was dedicated to Biodefense, starting in the Bush administration, has had huge powerful jobs across every administration. He actually ran Operation Warp Speed during COVID which was the vaccine program. He's an Air Force colonel and a medical doctor and he's now the current president's biodefense chief. So he, you know, we had conversation before and then when you go back into the administration, you can't really talk to a journalist like me. But right before going back into the administration, he wrote a paper on Chinese, on China's bio biological program. So the State Department speculates China has a bioweapons program. The State Department confirms that Russia has a bioweapons program. North Korea has a bioweapons program, according to the U.S. state Department. China, maybe Iran. Maybe. That's what they say.

Sean Ryan

Maybe.

Annie Jacobson

They say maybe.

Sean Ryan

I'm sorry, what was the Wuhan lab?

Annie Jacobson

So here's maybe. And again, we're talking about language.

Sean Ryan

What about Ukraine?

Annie Jacobson

We're talking about language.

Sean Ryan

Well, those are our biolabs.

Annie Jacobson

Those were some of ours. So the position of the State Department is that the Russian biological program I told you about that very evil program in the 70s and 80s was absorbed, not dismantled. And so that is why they take the position Russia still has a program and China. So let me. This is how a diplomat would clarify maybe that the treaty I told you about, the bwc, which everybody is supposed to adhere to all the signatories and not have bioweapons. There's a tiny go around which is that you can do genetic engineering for defensive purposes, for prophylactic purposes. And so that's where you get the Wuhan excuse, which is that we were modifying the coronavirus so that we would know how to defend against it. You see. So that's the kind of catch 22, in plain language, I call it a hooky do, which allows these BSL4 labs, biosafety level 4, that's the highest level guys in spacesuits, to manipulate viruses and pathogens in really dangerous ways so that in case somebody else uses it, we know how to defend against it. And that has its own longer conversation. And it's extremely dangerous. It's called gain of function. It's just like it sounds. You are trying to make a pathogen and gain new function. Mentioned before, Virulence transmissibility. How do we catch it? Virulence, is it going to kill me and how fast? And is there a medical countermeasure? Those three components, gain of function tweaks, those. Okay, so let's make it more airborne. Let's make it from droplet transmission, which would be me coughing at you and, you know, sorry for my spit hitting you. That's droplet transmission versus us talking airborne, lingering in the air. Somebody else could walk in here after we leave airborne. It's still here. That's the number one threat. You can. With gain of function, genetic engineering, you can make a pathogen airborne.

Sean Ryan

Whoa. What are the different kinds?

Annie Jacobson

Do you know of pathogens?

Sean Ryan

Of bioweapons? Well, pathogens.

Annie Jacobson

Bioweapons, Yeah. I mean, great question. And again, stuff we should know about, right? Because then we, the public, can react appropriately as opposed to starting creating speculative narratives about what could happen. Ebola, for example, you know, the hantavirus, Right. So the CDC keeps a list of what are called tier one, common term, select agents. Those are the pathogens that they're most afraid will be weaponized. They subtext have been weaponized in the past. They probably have speculative intelligence are being weaponized. Plague is one of them. Why? Hundred percent death rate if you don't have antibiotics. Anthrax is another. Ebola is another because it's got fear factor. Ebola is not airborne. But what if you could tweak Ebola to be airborne?

Sean Ryan

What does Ebola do to you?

Annie Jacobson

Ebola is called a hemorrhagic fever virus, right? So think of what hemorrhaging is. He's just bleeding.

Sean Ryan

Bleeding.

Annie Jacobson

Okay. Ebola causes the body, the entire body to hemorrhage. You're bleeding out your eyes, your ears, your nose. I mean, it is a horrific, terrifying disease. It's also not airborne. It's. You get Ebola from close contact. If there's somebody over there in that corner bleeding out, you know, if you're a first responder, you may go help them. That's why doctors, first responders, if you're the patient's mother, that's why the loved ones die from Ebola. But the guy walking down the street is not going to get Ebola because he's going to keep his distance.

Sean Ryan

Mm.

Annie Jacobson

So that's again, takes us back to transmissibility. It takes us to virulence. Ebola is a 85, 90% rate killer, so it's super deadly. Is there a medical countermeasure against it? Third question to ask. Well, after the 2014 Ebola epidemic, doctors got at it. Those same kind of doctors that Dr. Kadleck worked with, with warp speed doctors got at it. They created in San Diego a medical countermeasure called ZMap. So when one Ebola patient arrived in Texas in 2014 and gave his two nurses Ebola. He died because he was further along those two nurses in this heroics that is completely unknown, but involves Dr. Admiral Girard. Which is why I know the story. He knew about the ZMAPP medical countermeasure being developed in San Diego. The CDC in Texas wouldn't help him. It hadn't been authorized. He got a friend who was a pilot and had a plane to fly to San Diego, get the Z map, brought it back, gave it to the nurses. They lived.

Sean Ryan

Wow.

Annie Jacobson

Now this new form of Ebola in Africa has mutated and the ZMAP doesn't work. Will doctors, will scientists be able to create a medical countermeasure fast enough before that epidemic that is going on in Africa become, you know, grows and becomes bigger? Who knows? Will that epidemic be able to be contained and put out?

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Sean Ryan

To Covis Point your toes West. When you're writing and doing this research, I mean, do you, do you. Have you thought about if you were to create a bioweapon, what it would look like? Me, I mean, that's what I do. I've been thinking about it the entire conversation. I already know what I would do. Now tell me, have you thought about it?

Annie Jacobson

I think about that. It's a fascinating question. I think about that from the dramatic narrative point of view. Working from what is scientifically possible. So that's why I chose mnemonic plague. And even more so, the reason why I chose mnemonic plague is for very specific reason that when, when the Soviet defectors came, finally revealed to the west what the Russians had been doing. And mind you, this is 30, 40 years ago when genetic engineering was not possible. They had created a super plague weapon airborne to, with plans to be genetically modified. This is early genetic engineering. Like, almost like imagine using scissors to cut film and taping it back together as opposed to digital editing today. That would be the analogy of where things were. The Russian, the Soviet scientists, by their own admittance, created a plague weapon that they had built in. They had genetically modified it to defeat antibiotics and even worse, to actually trigger a new disease, encephalitis, in the brain once you take the antibiotic. And by the Russian scientists own admittance, the reason they did that was because they hated America so much in the Cold War, not only did they want to kill all the people and take the infrastructure, march in and just take everything. The buildings would be there, unlike in nuclear, but they wanted people to die with the last thought in their brain that the government had failed them. Because the antibiotics that the American medical establishment and the government told Americans to take to defeat the plague weapon would kill them in an even more horrific way. This was their plan. This is on the books, this is documented. So to answer your question, I couldn't come up with anything more sinister than that myself. And I wanted to stick to science fact. And so that's the very specific pathogen that gets unleashed in Biological War Scenario, My book. And by the way, it's not a nefarious act. It's a lab leak.

Sean Ryan

Wow. I don't. You know, I think what I would do is I would have stages. Maybe you do something that is an attention grabber, like Covid. Maybe you make a pathogen that targets the reproductive system and then you get the news cycle going and it's, oh, we can't. You know what I mean? Nobody in North America can reproduce anymore. And. But you have the antidote. You let the headlines percolate. This is why you're not reproducing, because I've created this. And if you want the antidote, then your government is going to do X, Y and Z. Maybe it's something even quicker, you know, maybe, maybe it's. Maybe it is something like Covid, if you want to get better, this is what you're going to do. If you try to nuke us, you won't get the antidote. So this is what's going to happen. If you don't listen, then we're going to go to the next step and we're going to prove to you that it's real and this is what's going to happen to your body. Then that happens. Then everybody's, they know, you know, and then it just keeps escalating. If you want to save human life or give them the option to save themselves, that's, that's how I would do it.

Annie Jacobson

And that's a very sort of red teaming mind scenario, which is what war games at the Pentagon, from my understanding are entirely based on like getting people to think through those incredibly sinister ideas to try and have a plan in place to prevent that from happening. And so in my experience and learning about of all this, what's interesting about this is that is all very valuable and that's sort of historical red teaming and war gaming. But what has been left out of the discussion are two major components which is one, how fast science and technology are moving so you can't possibly keep up with it. Although yours did a, the three stage thing is like really sinister and you know, very scientific.

Sean Ryan

Well, it also gives them the option to save themselves.

Annie Jacobson

Explain to me that a little bit more on the third part of it on my plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean Ryan

My plan is you get the attention, okay, Everybody knows something's up. Then you take credit for what's happening.

Annie Jacobson

Okay, it's the bad guy.

Sean Ryan

Yeah. Is the bad guy or the good guy?

Annie Jacobson

Okay?

Sean Ryan

I mean maybe there is genocide going on somewhere in the world.

Annie Jacobson

Okay.

Sean Ryan

Like we see all over right now, right. And then the country that's committing genocide gets a pathogen. It makes their people sick. They're not dying. Maybe some die, you know what I mean? But it gets, it grabs that nation's headlines and then you make the statement, if you don't want this to continue, you stop the genocide right now. If the genocide continues, then we'll move to stage two. Stage two is you bleed out of every orifice in your body. Would you like that to happen, yes or no?

Annie Jacobson

You have two hours and this is

Sean Ryan

two hours goes by. They don't do it. The next pathogen is released, it's already staged, it stops, they get the antidote, that gets released.

Annie Jacobson

These are some of the hallmarks of early biological warfare thinking with another component mixed in, which is that you would need to inoculate, give a vaccine essentially to your own people that would be anywhere near that area to make sure they didn't.

Sean Ryan

Well, that's dependent if you, you know, if, if you target a certain race of people that all share a common strand of DNA.

Annie Jacobson

Yes. And this is exactly what that Cold War mentality was, by the way. Right? It was really, it's almost like mental, you know, hostage taking essentially on a grand scale. And then the conclusion by pretty much everyone involved was the blowback idea was that you couldn't, you couldn't contain it because the pathogen would have to be contagious to be, you know, really effective. And then you, you would have these co centric circles of people getting sick. So that's where kind of biological warfare became obsolete in terms of thinking, and that's why they made it illegal. But people still think about that. And now with scientific advancements, with genetic engineering, being able to target individual people is becoming much more of a reality. And by the way, that's what I meant to say in Dr. Kadlik's paper. He's the current biodefense chief. There's a public paper you can read that he wrote on China's, what he believes is China's, or rather what's on the record about China's biological program. And they, the Chinese officials in the Defense, their Defense Department have essentially said they are not against, they are actually, you know, programs in place for precisely the kind of warfare that you're talking about.

Sean Ryan

I mean, it's that it's been. This is what God did to the Egyptians in the Old Testament, correct?

Annie Jacobson

It is a narrative that has existed and it's like, you know, where does it go? The argument not to have that is it's too evil and it has, the consequences are too great. Hence the idea that is, you know, odious to the nature of mankind. So the bigger idea that I think we're getting to is like, so what is the solution? If all of this is possible, what is the solution? And right now we're kind of, I think, stuck in this idea of like, well, the debate is really only on the gain of function, right? The debate is like, we need. The bad guys are making those kind of weapons, maybe even targeting a certain genetic population. And so we have to create medical countermeasures because of it. And if that continue, you know, if you think that's utopian or dystopian, that's a worthy debate, I think, because I've heard arguments on both sides of the aisle like, you cannot prevent the bad guys, the adversary, whoever they may be, terrorist organizations, some crazy college kid or high school student in his basement. You can't prevent them you can't prevent all evil. The threshold's too low. So the biotechnology industry must prevail, must be allowed to work on these medical countermeasures that involve tweaking the virulence, the transmissibility and the medical countermeasures of different pathogens. Either way, I think it's very important that people know about this so that in the godforsaken event something does happen. There's not an immediate, wildly speculative narrative. Right.

Sean Ryan

So does the government have any countermeasures for the citizens of this country or is it just for themselves?

Annie Jacobson

Well, the countermeasure question, the reason why I use that Soviet sort of evil concept, it's called a chimera weapon, bioweapon. The chimera is this ancient Greek monster. You've seen images of it, like think of the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent or with a goat coming out of it. A chimera just means like a multi species monster. And that is essentially what genetic engineering is. You're taking the DNA of one viral species and you're mixing it with another. And so the chimera weapon, the original chimera weapon was this plague superweapon that would you take the antidote and it turns into a booby trap and it kills you. So, you know, that idea becomes what the Defense Department calls a wicked problem because there is no solution to it. Because how do you know whether or not the antibiotic is going to kill you unless you have evidence? And that's where the devolution plan happens pretty much really fast because the chances can't be taken because the threat's so high. And so on the public health side of things, you have a lot of people, instead of saying, well, this is. You can't just go down the evil rabbit hole of the military industrial complex of it. You have to have public health awareness. And that's why there are a lot of people I interviewed in the book who are like, it's all about diagnostics. Diagnostics, fancy word for test, you know, I mean, remember in Covid, by the end of COVID year two, whatever it was. I live in Los Angeles. You could buy a COVID Test at the 7:11. Remember, did you have that access kind of year?

Sean Ryan

You could literally, we may have, I don't know, the test didn't work. I got, I never wanted to get tested anyways because, you know, there was the speculative narratives that they were calling you after you got tested to make sure, you know, that, that you. Yes, that, you know, whatever and, but my wife was pregnant at the time. Nobody really knew what the hell was going on. And, and so I did, I, I did get tested and I took two tests and one was positive and one was negative. And the speculative narratives were correct. I did get calls.

Annie Jacobson

And you took them at like a urgent care.

Sean Ryan

Yeah, I took it at an urgent care. Yeah. And you know, so, so I, I never took another.

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Sean Ryan

So yeah, I guess that was. If I could have done something undocumented, then I would have done something undocumented.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah.

Sean Ryan

Because I don't, I don't want my information in the government's hands. But not that it isn't already, but.

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Sean Ryan

the over the counter tests at that particular point in time, which would have been around 20, 21.

Annie Jacobson

So in big cities they were, you could suddenly literally buy a dip. They were called dipstick tests. And you could sit in your car and test yourself. And then you were supposed to. Because they were asymptomatic people. In Covid, meaning people who carried Covid, the SARS CoV2 virus, it's called officially and didn't have any symptom like my son. So then you were supposed to work on the honor system of like not being around anybody because you were a carrier. It's called a silent carrier. You could get everybody else sick, but you weren't sick. But I think your point about not wanting the government to know is so incredibly important that the government has to learn from these errors. They have to work with the public. People don't. Do not want the sense that the government is lurking over them and looming over them, particularly with their health. It's the bio. It's like the biotechnology surveillance military industrial complex. And it's very real. But I found an interesting loophole in it that I drill on into the book, which I'm sure will raise some eyebrows from some groups of people and I don't care which is that. So there's a. After 9 11, Dick Cheney himself was like personally terrified of bioweapons. And he was part and parcel to this extreme elevation escalation, I mean of gain of function, of medical countermeasures, of opening up more biosecurity level 4 labs of all of the sort of biotech. Billions of dollars went into this industry, this brand new industry. Remember, there was 9 11, people forget. Then there were the anthrax attacks. Anthrax was mailed through the mail to some news outlets and a couple senators on Capitol Hill. Never been solved. Thank you. FBI. Okay.

Sean Ryan

Literally, that's a given.

Annie Jacobson

Okay. So it created an entire industry about biodefense. And one of the results of that was there is many people don't know about this. There is something called the National Syndromic Syndrome Surveillance System that monitors. That collects information in real time from more than 7,000 emergency rooms, urgent care facilities, yours included. All of these facilities across America, 7,000 of them in the 50 states. That is a lot. All the information goes in near real time to the cdc, where it is kept and monitored. Okay. So it's a very real system that is monitoring people, the goal of which was to create. Stop a pandemic if it happens. Well, how did that work out in Covid? Not well. But a little loophole I found in it, which is, you know, when you know this from your work in the military, that a hole is exactly what an adversary targets. And a fascinating hole to me is that, and this I learned from working with the world's or America's most senior epidemiologists, people who are trying to prevent like, outbreaks from taking over. And one of the holes in the system that they pointed out to me was the homeless population. There are 800,000 homeless people in America. None of their information goes into that important CDC national syndrome exam. A fact confirmed with me by hhs, by the way. So if you have that kind of a gaping hole, where are you going to target? Where are the super spreader events? Where is there no health care? Where are these people living on top of one another? Where are their symptoms of disease going to be mistaken for a zillion other things, if they even have any access to a medical doctor. And so that is where I have the outbreak in America, because I was told by epidemiologists that is a very serious warning.

Sean Ryan

With the last two books you've written, I cannot believe you're still living in Los Angeles. You gotta get out to the woods, Andy.

Annie Jacobson

I mean, driving around here, it's very beautiful, I have to say.

Sean Ryan

You know, we get a little walking around room out here.

Annie Jacobson

Mm. But, you know, the idea of insurrection and anarchy at the end of all of this, which is what happens, which is what the Defense Department is preparing for. Sure, the big cities are just like, get me out of here really fast. But there are components of all of this. You know, I did, in every book, there's always a couple interviews, a couple things that people say to you that just is haunting. And one of them was from former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle. So I just mentioned the anthrax attacks. After 9 11, Daschle's office received an envelope of weaponized anthrax. They all got an immediate dose of Cipro, which is an antibiotic assumed to kill anthrax. And it did. But Daschle, Senator Tom Daschle has spent decades since working on biodefense. He obviously is seriously concerned about this issue. And in my interview with him, he said to me, we were talking about nuclear war versus biowar. And he said to me, unlike nuclear

Sean Ryan

war,

Annie Jacobson

biological war will be perhaps more terrifying because. And then he said, yes, it will be death, physically death, governmentally death of everything we know in America. But most horrifying is it will be, this is his quote, people doing inhuman things to other people just to survive. And that's that desperation. Desperation.

Sean Ryan

This happens in. In any. Pretty much any event. I mean, eventually people get deal with hunger, thirst, disease.

Annie Jacobson

Absolutely.

Sean Ryan

A financial collapse.

Annie Jacobson

And so out in the country, in the city, you know, pick your battle. Literally. And again, the point of the. Of me working on these kind of scenarios is not to create panic think, it's to create pressure, it's to create conversation. You know, if nuclear war was about, we need to have this conversation while we can still have it. Bio is about stay informed, you know, because there is. There are actions that people have to take in the event that this kind of a situation happens, period, full stop. I mean, we. You could look, Covid could have been this brilliant situation from which to learn errors. Notice I said could have been. Instead, it's like either total denial about what happened or tribal anger about the wrongs that were done. And there were many. And so that I think is worth reexamining. I think it would be really wise to look at the problems that happened in Covid and not make those same mistakes.

Sean Ryan

Well, I mean, there's a lot of speculative narratives that's. That say that maybe that was. That was an experiment to see how the population would react.

Annie Jacobson

I have not heard that one. The speculative narrative on that is that it's internal, domestic or external.

Sean Ryan

I don't know, it could be both, you know, could be none. But. But I mean a lot of those narratives running around, I mean, they wanted to see how the people reacted. And if they, if they basically, if they listen to the government or if they do not listen to the government and you know, I don't know. I mean, they definitely learned a lot whoever. If it was an experiment, even if it wasn't an experiment, they learned a lot about how we're going to react? Are we going to take the vaccines? Are we going to do the. I mean, they learned that. Are we going to stay in our homes? How long are we going to stay in our homes? How long are we going to buy this? But, you know, they collected a lot

Annie Jacobson

of information there, a lot of information. And I'm going to really tap into your fear about the national Syndromic surveillance system here. Again, it's fact that think about. And I'm amazed that people don't ask this question, where did all the DNA data go from those Covid tests? Because it was collected. And so my eye as the journalist is like, why isn't. I mean, I certainly have asked a zillion people. What I do know is that hhs, so again, an organization most people have never heard of, maybe they heard of it during COVID U.S. department of Health and Human Services, current Secretary RFK Jr. Okay. An organization that most people have never heard of, that has a budget, an annual budget, twice that of the Defense Department.

Sean Ryan

Really Twice that?

Annie Jacobson

Twice 1.7 or $8 trillion is HHS. Defense Department is about 900 million. And yet nobody. People don't even know what the CDC answers to hhs, the nih, the National Institute of Health answers to hhs, the FDA answers to hhs. Another situation I'm always fond of is like bringing to the discussion, oh, there are some really interesting organizations that you might want to know about. And again, speculative narrative versus science fiction, science fact. HHS is the organization in charge in the event of a biological incident or attack. Crazy that in a biological incident is a lab leak. Okay. HHS is in charge, which is stunning to think about because what I learned also writing this whole narrative is like, I actually wish DOD was in charge.

Sean Ryan

Really? Why is that?

Annie Jacobson

I mean, there's a line I write in the book, like, kind of at the midpoint where I'm like, where I, you know. And again, I take you through what happens. I take you, you know, the Defense Department trying to figure out what's going on, what's happened. I have, I start the inciting incident in the book is an explosion at a BSL4 lab in Russia, in Siberia. It's called Vector. It's where a lot of the work took place during the Cold War. It's a real lab. There was actually a real explosion there in 2019. An explosion at a BSL4 lab is profoundly dangerous. At a place like Russia where they're going to immediately not be transparent, it's even more dangerous. Or maybe you could say that about every nation. But in the, you know, the COVID up begins. And I've got, I show you, I show readers how the Defense Department will be immediately eyes on trying to figure out what's going on. They will work with the State Department to try and get information. Information is king. Denial is dangerous. In the Wuhan lab leak, or natural, whatever you want to call it, when Wuhan happened, the Chinese government immediately shut down access to information. Incredibly dangerous. I spoke to epidemiologists who actually believe that pandemic could have been stopped had the Chinese government been transparent about what happened. So that's a real plug for transparency. And the more people that know about something, the more they're going to demand transparency.

Sean Ryan

Do you think they wanted to shut that down, Covid?

Annie Jacobson

The big. You mean the triangle?

Sean Ryan

You think they wanted to contain it?

Annie Jacobson

Did they want to contain it? That I don't know. But what I do know is because biological weapons are illegal, if any nation has bioweapons in their lab, they are certainly not going to be transparent about what happened.

Sean Ryan

Well, we already know and we already discussed the loopholes. You know, we already discussed the loopholes. So that, I mean, it's an easy excuse. I mean, I think China learned a lot about that. I mean, they, they, they also have the monopoly probably along with India for all the PPE equipment and, and antibiotics, especially the, you know, the ones that work Ivermectin, you know, they could have shut that down immediately because anything that, you know, Patton is up on, we don't produce it. We don't care about actual people. We just care about money here. And so they produce, they produce all that stuff.

Annie Jacobson

And I think Americans learned a little bit about that during COVID We learned about the supply chain. Most people were shocked to find out exactly what you just mentioned, and yet very little has been done about that. Although there are some, you know, manufacturing changes.

Sean Ryan

Even when Covid happened, you know, there was the big mask damage narrative. Oh, the masks are going to stop this. Who makes all the masks? You get, you get a virus that comes from China and then China supplies us with the masks that are supposed to protect us.

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Sean Ryan

line and sinker, buddy. Like, oh, yeah, cool. They, they're the ones that released the thing that leaked the, that leaked the virus and now they're going to give us masks. I mean, we can't even make our own fucking masks.

Annie Jacobson

We cannot make our own masks. And you can't even have a grown up in the room explain to people how A mask works. So instead you had sort of people going, you know, when I was reporting the book, at the very tail end of COVID I went to a BSL3 lab to, you know, see what it was like. And these are former USAMRID doctors. USAMRID is the U.S. army Medical Research of infection. You know, it's where the, it's where the BSL fore lab is at Fort Detrick in Maryland. And with regards to the masks, they were telling me that if you are working in pathogens, it's just basic common knowledge that an N95 mask, you have to wear it properly outfitted to your face. You get an actual lesson in how to wear it. And it's suggested that you, that it is only going to work for 15 minutes. And that's an N95 mask.

Sean Ryan

Those were gone in about two days.

Annie Jacobson

So the other kind of masks are essentially almost useless. And I think that kind of.

Sean Ryan

We were wearing two of them. I wasn't.

Annie Jacobson

People were wearing dirty masks, you know, and sometimes you still see people walking around Los Angeles.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

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Annie Jacobson

But that nobody spoke of this. And when I say nobody, I mean like sort of a public official in a position of authority. And meanwhile I'm learning that all the scientists in America are like shaking their head and going, but afraid to speak out because they're going to be called,

Sean Ryan

you know, be ostracized.

Annie Jacobson

So this was just again a dangerous situation from which extraordinary lessons could have been learned and were not.

Sean Ryan

Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll get into the the panic.

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Sean Ryan

let's get back to biological warfare. And so what does the panic look like if they paint? Did you talk to.

Annie Jacobson

Yes, people.

Sean Ryan

What they'll what that kind of desperation, that panic, what would it do to society? How fast would it happen?

Annie Jacobson

It happened so fast. So I like to try and look at specifics again so to keep the narrative on actual documentation. So we spoke a little bit earlier how an outbreak of this pathogen I talk about it starts with a lab leak in Siberia. It winds up in Los Angeles in a homeless camp. And so I looked and because I live in Los Angeles and I am very familiar with the public health system, I've lived there for 30 years. The public health system, you know, law enforcement. I can see a lot of the problems that have to my eye that have happened over the decades. It wasn't always like this. It certainly is just an absolute mess right now with very little trust and real serious problems. So I looked at, for example, what would happen in a biological attack in Los Angeles. Because unbeknownst to many people, big cities practice these things, and they happen at the federal level, I learned, and they also happened at the state level. And so Los Angeles state and county, California state and Los Angeles county officials get like, abysmally failing remarks in these efforts. And this just goes completely unnoticed. Like, for example, we put in a whole new 911 system recently, like in the past few years, and it completely failed upon its original test. Like a system overrun. You know, there are stories of people calling all the time. People are posting on X, like 911 from Los Angeles, and then you can see how many minutes they've been on hold, like 13 minutes on hold just to have your call answered. So this is a real serious problem, day to day. Imagine if there was a biological incident where timing is everything, timing is everything. You have to get the information out to the people. And instead I learned really interesting details. Like, okay, so Los Angeles has a 100,000 bottle of Cipro. Ciprofloxacin, which is antibiotic stash.

Sean Ryan

100,000.

Annie Jacobson

100,000 bottles.

Sean Ryan

How many people does that treat for

Annie Jacobson

the city officials, and I break it down of who it goes to. And so you've got like 16,000 bottles going to first responders. Obviously they need it. And then like, a bunch of them going to, like, the zoo officials, you know, and the cultural affairs officials. I mean, I'm not kidding. I give you the numbers. So it seems to be really poorly thought out. And really what I wanted to know is what happens to law enforcement? What happens to first responders? I did an inter with a fire commissioner named Jimmy Hara, who unfortunately, like, died tragically last month in a car accident.

Sean Ryan

Oh, man.

Annie Jacobson

I know. And he was an incredible person, completely dedicated. I mean, he served as a doctor in Vietnam, and he's been dedicated to LA public health and fire safety ever since. And he told me just flat out, Los Angeles is completely unprepared for a pneumonic plague attack, period, full stop. And then he took me through some of the details of what would happen. So in mixing these documents with interviews, like Fire Commissioner Hara, I could begin to see that it's just complete ignorance. It's like being an ostrich with your head in the sand. And the hundred bottles of Cipro, I also learned have this, like, wacky program attached to it. And I was going somewhere in this, which is where you're asking, where is the hole for insurrection and anarchy that the Defense Department and their documents is so worried about? Like, how does that happen? That's what I wanted to really drill down on so that I could explain it to readers. And the hundred thousand bottles are just perfect example that would repeat around the country. So this hundred bottle supply gets dispersed by volunteers. How does that work? How do you have. Imagine if you had a biological incident where you've got pneumonic plague with 100% death, death rate, no known cure, airborne killing homeless people, you know, which is being mistaken for something else. A mass overdose, for example, because that's happening all over the country. That's what epidemiologists are worried about. You've got law enforcement unprotected, rushing in to help, and then you've got this kind of wild chaos at city hall, rather in the emergency department of the city planners. And they are like, get the Cipro out to everybody. And they make an announcement on Facebook, which then goes viral. And so now you have everybody in Los Angeles trying to access what they believe is the medical countermeasure which will save their lives and the lives of their family members. And America is a Nation of guns. 500 million guns in America, according to a Gallup poll. That's. So you can see that's where insurrection and anarchy happens. That's the Dashiell quote. People doing inhuman things just to survive. And by the way, not from Annie Jacobson's imagination, looking at declassified or unclassified war games, that, that game, this out show, that is exactly what people begin to kill one another over perceived medical countermeasures.

Sean Ryan

Mm. Mm.

Annie Jacobson

It's a grim. It's a grim story.

Sean Ryan

I mean, I think it's pretty. I mean, I don't think people think about it, but I mean, of course, what, what measure are you going to take to save your husband and your kids? And I think it's going to be like that until the playing field is level. And it looks like Yemen, Afghanistan, you know, where there is not really much social hierarchy. Everybody's on the same playing field. You know what I mean?

Annie Jacobson

Yeah.

Sean Ryan

And so that it just, it will continue until that happens, until all the resources have been ransacked. It's done. There's nothing left to ransack. And, and, and, and then you have to learn to survive off what's left.

Annie Jacobson

The devolution component of that, that was stunning to me, was that at what the Defense Department prepares for. So what's interesting is I mentioned before that HHS is in charge of this when it happens. But very quickly, HHS realizes in its war gaming that they need the military's help. This is page one. Because, for example, they can't get supplies out to the States. And you're talking about. When you're talking about a pathogen that's killing people in like 48 hours, speed is everything. And so they're trying to get medical countermeasures out to States, and they need the military's help. They need transportation, command. And so I had this moment in working on this book where I realized that I mentioned earlier, my God, like, not Since World War II will Americans be so happy to see the military show up in their town or their city to try and, you know, regain control, to try and bring back order in sort of the insurrection that will be unfolding as people begin to panic.

Sean Ryan

Because, I mean, maybe they would be happy.

Annie Jacobson

Well, I think a lot of people would be happy because not everybody's criminally minded, okay. And are gonna be thinking help is on the way.

Sean Ryan

Well, I mean, how is the military going to treat the infected?

Annie Jacobson

And that's where it gets.

Sean Ryan

Especially if they don't have an antidote.

Annie Jacobson

So the military, I learned, and you probably know this, has issued 1.7 million gas masks to its personnel. So you have imagine so the military are protected. And now you have another situation, which is the mask becomes a coveted item. So now you have president declaring an Insurrection act so that Posse comitatus can be overridden. Posse comitatis the. The act after the Civil War that prohibits the military from carrying out law enforcement measures in the United States. That gets repealed with Insurrection Act. It's the only act that can do that. The president has the authority to declare it whenever he chooses. Okay? So the Insurrection act gets laid down, and now military can act with those orders, same as in a war theater. So there's like a moment in time, it seemed to my eye writing this where order could be restored. But then I learned that there's only so many military and there are 340 million Americans. So you do the math and then you realize that with shoot to kill orders and the fact that the devolution plan calls for the. There's a component of American infrastructure called critical infrastructure. You don't even really think about it until you hopefully read about it in my book. And go. Of course, like the roadways, everything from the communication systems, the banking systems, the roads, the nuclear power plants, electrical grid, the electrical treatment plants, water treatment, waste. This is critical infrastructure, and that needs to be guarded. And that's what the military begins to guard. And the military must also guard the hot sites, the cold sites I told you about earlier, where the devolution crews are going to. And so this kind of really spooky, almost science fiction, but again, it's science fact, kicks in in my reporting and as I write in the book, where you begin to see what unfolds and how it is sort of almost inevitable, the outcome of devolution because the center can't hold, because the people cannot. The people do not know what is happening to them and have no way of understanding what lies ahead.

Sean Ryan

I mean, if you want a small, like a small window, like a very small window of what that looks like, you can go, you can go to Florida during hurricane season and you see how fast everything has gone, how people treat each other. This one, that's one of the reasons I moved out of there.

Annie Jacobson

What was that experience like for you with a hurricane? I mean, it was, was there kind of like some anarchy going on?

Sean Ryan

I mean, I would not say anarchy at all, but I mean, there are, there are. And I'd like, I've always, you know, what I used to do, so I'm pretty prepared and I always have been. But you're looking at gas lines that are hours and hours long. You're looking at, you know, in, in people hoard. So you got a guy show up with a trailer and he fills up his car and he fills up his boat and then he fills up all his gas cans. You know what I mean? And you're wondering and is there going to be any gas left for me, all the bottled water is gone, all the food is gone, all the plywood is gone, all the generators are gone within 24 hours. And then you're waiting, you're waiting for X updates to see which Home Depot has been resupplied with plywood so that you can go board your windows up or which, which Walmart has some extra generator. Just got a new shipment of generators. In the last hurricane that went there that I did that, this was, this was like, I'm out of here. No, this isn't for me. There was a traffic jam from Miami, Florida all the way to Atlantic, Georgia. The entire, everybody trying to get out,

Annie Jacobson

everybody trying to get out of Dodge,

Sean Ryan

Everybody's trying to funnel out, you know, on a couple of highways and it's stop and go traffic. People are, are they run out of gas? They're pulled over on the side of the road. Everybody's hoarding. I mean, the grocery store is legitimate. They're, they're empty in 24 hours.

Annie Jacobson

Were people behaving like, were they following traffic laws? Were people driving?

Sean Ryan

It's bottlenecked there Are no traffic laws. I mean you can't get anywhere, it's gridlocked.

Annie Jacobson

Wow.

Sean Ryan

You know, I mean you, a gas line, I mean will go all the way down the interstate.

Annie Jacobson

So let me ask you,

Sean Ryan

fema, that's a hurricane. Yes, that's, that's a hurricane.

Annie Jacobson

That's a hurricane.

Sean Ryan

And that hurricane didn't even mess, it was like a joke.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

So I think it was Hurricane Matthew. I mean then you have all these

Sean Ryan

beams everywhere, the mass panic hurricane doesn't even hit. And I think it was Matthew. I could be mistaken. And then you see all these memes like the days after show like a lawn chair flipped upside down and we will rebuild.

Annie Jacobson

The threat of hurricane was even as compulsive as a hurricane itself.

Sean Ryan

Yeah, just the threat.

Annie Jacobson

Wow.

Sean Ryan

I mean what were we calling it? Speculative narratives, you know, I mean I've had speculative narrative that I mean maybe these corporations are paying the news cycle just to overhype this because the amount of revenue that happens instantaneously for everything, booze, cigarettes, gas generators, everything, plywood, water, bullets, guns. People get worried that you know they're just going to last forever and they go stock up on bullets, they go buy their first AR15

Annie Jacobson

did. Was there any site of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency?

Sean Ryan

No, no, no.

Annie Jacobson

Because FEMA, what do you think about.

Sean Ryan

FEMALE well, I don't really know much about it. I don't think they come in until afterwards. Right. But I mean I've never had any

Annie Jacobson

experience with fema but FEMA is another one of those really interesting organizations that's almost not known about and by the way they're the ones in charge of the devolution program. So consider that, I mean those FEMA

Sean Ryan

is all, it's not volunteers but I know a lot of, a lot of people after the hurricanes or after a natural disaster, they'll do a mass hire and they pay. Yes, supposedly pretty well.

Annie Jacobson

Yes.

Sean Ryan

So you got a bunch of people that are, you know, got hired yesterday

Annie Jacobson

that are running shit which, and again like the military is so interesting to me, always has been how they function, how. It's a system of systems, flaws, weaknesses, strengths. But the military has professional individuals who have a lot of experience doing what they're doing. And to your point, when you have an organization that has attention on it very sporadically, you really have an organization of bureaucrats, sort of pencil pushers, very sort of straight minded individuals who are not gifted, shall we say with flexibility as a leading care. They're really about organization. And then suddenly there's a Crisis. That's a really a mismatch of professionalism, which I think FEMA really drastically suffers from. And yet it's in the event of these sort of mass catastrophe, they're called complex catastrophes. The FEMA director calls it a maximum of maximums. Eventually that's really what they're planning for behind the scenes. And yet so few of their people are actually equipped like military personnel. And again, this is just my opinion, having studied all of this, seems like that needs a big reconfiguring. The question is, of course, as we move into the future, with science moving so fast, are these threats, weapons of mass destruction, that sort of hinge upon science, whether it's nuclear bio drones, are they making us move faster into. Toward a catastrophe? Maybe they could also be working faster towards solution. And if so, what is the government doing to kind of stay on top of that? And what I think is happening is not much. Governments consumed with, you know, all kinds of inside baseball problems, political tribalism, and the public's consumed with what should be called speculative narratives and are instead being called conspiracy theories. So it's just creating this extraordinary fracture, a further fracturing from solution toward more chaos, which is, you know, again, I write these books because I really believe that being informed, it gives you lift. It gives you a little bit of height on being able to assess the situation about what's best for you and your family. And it also, it takes away in a big component, I think, at least for me, of like, doom and gloom, inevitable. Cause I don't wanna just think America is doomed and we're just going downhill hill. I just. I'm. I'm. I'm too. I'm. I'm too much of a happy American to take that bath.

Sean Ryan

Good.

Annie Jacobson

Am I alone?

Sean Ryan

I have hope. There's a lot of us. But I'm also prepared because I've seen too many things go sour in my previous life. I did get you a present.

Annie Jacobson

I can't remember. I've been talking. I can't remember.

Sean Ryan

You can't remember what?

Annie Jacobson

Did I get a present?

Sean Ryan

I got you a present.

Annie Jacobson

You did get me a present? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Sean Ryan

Should I give it to you now?

Annie Jacobson

Sure. I thought you said. Did I give you a present?

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No, no, no.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah, you got me Joe Kent's long rifle, part two.

Sean Ryan

I would love to give you Joe Kent's long rifle.

Annie Jacobson

I have two. Fortunately, I have two young men who are like. Like, mom, I hope you get the. I hope you get the long rifle from Sig.

Sean Ryan

Unfortunately, the state you live in what?

Annie Jacobson

Wow. This is not.

Sean Ryan

Can't do that. So.

Annie Jacobson

Kidding me.

Sean Ryan

Here we go. This is the.

Annie Jacobson

You are kidding me.

Sean Ryan

Sig P365.

Annie Jacobson

You are kidding me, Sean, this is amazing. I am now prepared for bio.

Sean Ryan

There we go.

Annie Jacobson

Biological war scenario.

Sean Ryan

Well, I don't know about that. We might need to get some gas masks and some other things. Maybe some water filtration, but. But you're. You're prepared for mass panic to defend your home now.

Annie Jacobson

This is pretty incredible. I'm really amazed. Thank you so much.

Sean Ryan

You're welcome, Sig. So I got a friend over there, his name's Jason. He's VP of marketing, and he heard you were coming on and he loved the nuclear war scenario interview, so he wanted me to give that to you. It's got the Sig flashlight on there, so. So you're not ever in the dark. And the new Sig Romeo Optic red dot. So. So you can fix a lot of. You can. You can skip right through a lot of fundamentals of shooting and just point and pull the trigger with that thing. Put that red dot on there.

Annie Jacobson

Well, I'm gonna be sure to get a lot of lessons. And I do also know. And this is going to be like a subject of envy, the good kind of envy from a number of people I know. So thank you so much.

Sean Ryan

You're welcome, too.

Annie Jacobson

That's like. That is pretty incredible, Sean.

Sean Ryan

We'll do a little lesson after this. Hopefully.

Annie Jacobson

That would be. That'd be an honor. Literally, my kids were. That was like a joke about the. The Joe Kent long gun. And that's not far away. So I'm. I'm flustered. I'm. I'm amazed. Thank you. Really. It takes a lot to fluster me. So. Right.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Is that your first firearm?

Annie Jacobson

I do have two firearms.

Sean Ryan

Oh, nice.

Annie Jacobson

Right. But not that one.

Sean Ryan

Right on.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah.

Sean Ryan

Well, I hope you enjoy it when.

Annie Jacobson

Thank you so much. You know, I mean, California is an interesting state in terms of all of that, but speaking of the pandemic, when the pandemic happened, like, every ammo shop ran out of ammo.

Sean Ryan

I remember seeing the lines and of people in California that were. Were arming themselves. And I remember being disgusted with the Second amendment community because they were making fun of it and they were like, these people shouldn't even have firearms. Or they're basically Democrats getting firearms. And I was just. I'm thinking like, yeah, what the hell is wrong with you, man? Like, I mean, here you are complaining about second amendment rights and gun rights non stop. All Day and all night.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

And now you have the other side

Sean Ryan

of the aisle that is trying to arm themselves, and everybody's on the. On the same page, and. And you're gonna bastardize them for it.

Annie Jacobson

That's incredible. I mean, that's a great point, right? That's like. That gets into the sort of. When people start having self righteous indignation about when they shouldn't. They should be like, congratulations, you know, I had an interesting story with a firearm. Okay. I'm gonna. I'm gonna think if I can tell this, okay? So I get jury duty in Los Angeles. Being a good citizen, I go to do my jury duty. This was several years ago. This was before COVID So before, I

Sean Ryan

bet everyone was like, holy shit, Annie Jacobson's on jury duty with me.

Annie Jacobson

No, no one, you know, I'm like in a room. Room full of people who are all like, why am I here? Okay. But so before COVID I didn't own any. I didn't own any firearms or. But I did own a firearm because my grandfather was a captain in the army who was behind enemy lines in what was then called Czechoslovakia, who became like the guy in charge when the war ended and took a Luger off a Nazi and brought it home.

Sean Ryan

Wow.

Annie Jacobson

Okay, so this was in the possession of my mother. And when. Then it was given to me to give to my son, one of my two sons. And it's a really incredible artifact because it actually, like, they're all identifiable to certain Nazis. And in. At the end, it comes with a certificate from the war Department, so it's war booty, but you were allowed to actually have it. So it's officially my grandfather's. And now. Okay, so it's in our house.

Sean Ryan

Wow.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Annie Jacobson

It's incredible, right? Just as a piece of. You know, I have his purple heart and his Luger.

Sean Ryan

Man, that is right. What a great heirloom.

Annie Jacobson

So there I am doing jury duty, and it's a police brutality trial file.

Sean Ryan

And

Annie Jacobson

one of the questions that they're asking is they're trying to select jurors is who has a firearm. Right? So I'm down here. I'm like, okay, being a good citizen. I'm under oath. You know, of course I raise my hand, because I do. I am. And by the way, this is before jury selection, so there's 50 people in this room, in this courthouse, all of whom under oath are the variation of that. Okay. I'm the only one who raises my hand of having a firearm.

Sean Ryan

Wow.

Annie Jacobson

And I was like, looking like, what how is this even possible? And when I was home that night at dinner, I had this discussion with my kids and my husband and they're like, mom, everyone in LA has illegal guns and they don't want to admit it. Now I have no idea if that's true, but it's a very interesting observation. And what is true is that no one else raised their hand.

Sean Ryan

Man.

Annie Jacobson

Maybe it's a little. Maybe it's a little, little sort of perception versus reality, right? No one wanted to admit they had a firearm. I have no idea.

Sean Ryan

I could see it either way.

Annie Jacobson

It

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Sean Ryan

If you. When you talk to these people, I mean, what. What are the different scenarios? Do they have scenarios where it's certain parts of the country? Do they have scenarios where they use the country to spread it globally? Where are the targets? What, What? You know, I mean, obviously, if you want to spread. I mean, if it was me and I wanted to spread one globally, then I would definitely, obviously hit the airports, right? You would release it in the airports because people are constantly coming and going, and it would be impossible for to be able to trace. Trace it at that point. And it would spread. Like, I mean, with all the. If you wanted to hit it more locally and try to keep it contained, I guess what would you had you would hit, probably, unfortunately, schools, grocery stores.

Annie Jacobson

Well, a lot of early wargaming planning was predicated on precisely those kinds of scenarios. Like, what would happen? How would the targets disperse? In the past 20 years or so, with the advent, or rather the advancement of genetic engineering, all of that no longer pretty much matters. And we saw this in Covid. It wants an airborne pathogen, right? So there used to only be a very few truly airborne pathogens that a medical countermeasure didn't exist for. And so you would have to kind of do exactly what you're talking about, like, have multiple targets. This was the terrorist threat. But now that an airborne pathogen can be modified with ease, we saw in Covid that it just begins to spread naturally on its own. And if you shorten the window of contagion to death, you have one kind of effect if you lengthen it, right? So Covid had a lot of sort of what were silent carriers for a long time. Now it's spreading in a different manner. And so as a result, most of the war games have begun to focus on two things, which is like, first and foremost, and this is probably upsetting to a lot of people, is how to keep infected people out of the United States of America. There was one war game that I write about in particular. So I take the reader through the scenario, and then I kind of stop for, like, little history lessons about different war games. And one of them that was conducted in 2018 describes boats of Migrants. There's an outbreak in South America. So you've got all these panicked people leaving Venezuela in boats, headed to Puerto Rico, hundreds of miles away. Okay? This is actually war gamed out. You can read it online. And they have the CDC officials deciding what to do. Like, do we actually let them come on land? And the answer is no. And then the subtext is, is rules of engagement right now, that is. And then, of course, you have another debate within this war game about how to deal with the press. Like, if we start shooting at migrants in boats, we're gonna have a real problem. It's gonna be all over the news. And that kind of candor in planning for a biological incident was shocking to me because it really gets at the heart of the matter of the kind of sort of ruthless sort of, you know, fortressing that Homeland Security will immediately try to do if the pathogen is outside trying to come in. But what you learn from the war gaming is that the pathogen is almost always certainly already here. I mean, remember when President Trump's first administration Covid happens, He closes the border with Europe. He's restricted any flights from China, but the pathogen is already here. People have it in New York City. People have it in Seattle. I did an interview with the former defense official in Italy, the defense minister, and he was telling. Because there was a huge outbreak in Italy.

Sean Ryan

I remember, remember that.

Annie Jacobson

And you know why? It was because in Milan, which is a fashion capital of the world, had Chinese, you know, individuals working in manufacturing Milan to China. They had brought it to China. But another interesting fact I learned from the FEMA chief is that all, most of the initial cases of COVID in New York City were from Italy, not from Wuhan. And they can tell this through genetic testing later to determine the variants.

Sean Ryan

Did it start in New York or did it start in Washington?

Annie Jacobson

In the United States, the first cases were in Washington. But the real panic, the real sort of like, oh, my God, it's here moments, was once New York City was infected, okay? Because then people realized there's no way to stop this because of movement. You know, I looked at bubonic plague, the Black Death, the plague of the Black Death. Because bubonic plague becomes pneumonic plague in the lungs. And I wanted to show readers historically what has happened and what is possible. And what was interesting is, you know, I learned this. This very unique fact that, of course, pathogens travel at the rate at which humans move. So in the time of the Black death in the 14, 1300s, in the 14th century, people moved by Caravan people moved by ship, so it was like slow. Right now, people move by airplane. You know, you can get from one side of the earth to the other in 15 hours. That's how fast things happen.

Sean Ryan

I mean, they're still gonna attempt to isolate it.

Annie Jacobson

And I show that in the beginning of the book, because this is where you have the epidemiologists, this is where you have public health officials. This is where you have, by the way, I mean, by no means do I mean to make everybody in government sound like, you know, some kind of incompetent bureaucrat. That is simply not the case. The individuals that I interview, and I list them all in the front of the book, like Covid, I mean, like the nuclear war book, so that people can see, wow, you know, she's talking to the top subject matter experts in public health, in defense, in federal emergency management, extraordinarily competent people desperately trying literally to bring these different factions of the government together to pay attention to this threat, to actually take actions so that America is prepared for such a thing. And I show their stories that they tell me of how the good part of that, of how they have made progress and then also where they are so failing. And the failures are always political.

Sean Ryan

What measures would they go to. Through to isolate an incident?

Annie Jacobson

So one of the. It's this super important question. Quarantine does exist, but before that, it's all about diagnostics. We were talking about that a little bit earlier. Like you went and had a COVID test, right? Now that has spiraled into a. It's. It's whole set of rabbit hole problems. But the diagnostics, the testings are important because very few people realize that the doctor doesn't know what he's looking at. The doctor doesn't know. You can walk in with a sneeze and a cough and the doctor doesn't know. That's why the doctor will say, I think you have. Okay, want me to give you an example that's kind of easy to wrap your head around? Okay. Strep throat. Have you had strep throat recently?

Sean Ryan

No.

Annie Jacobson

Okay, so strep throat, you know, you go in like, Dr. My, my throat hurts. They take, they give you a strep test. Strep is a bacteria. Bacteria are killed by antibiotics. You go into the doctor, you say, I have, I have a strep. They give you a strep test. Because strep is ubiquitous, the test often happens in the back of the doctor's office. Takes five minutes for a strep test. When I was Growing up in the 70s, a strep test took two or three days. That's science. When you were growing up, it probably took 10 minutes. Okay? Now it's down to a couple minutes. The minute the doctor knows you have strep throat bacteria, you are prescribed antibiotics. You usually drive to the local pharmacy on the way home from the doctor's office. Certainly if your kids have strep, you want to get that antibiotic in them right away. Okay? Now they're fighting the pathogen. They're not going to get more sick. They're on the path to wellness. You go in there for strep and the doctor gives you the strep test and it comes back negative because you have a virus, not strep. Antibiotics do nothing for a virus. That's why the doctor sometimes says, go home and drink tea, you know, take some Advil, call me tomorrow. So that's diagnostics. If you know what someone has now, you can begin to treat it. So, so much of bio war is predicated on testing. It's predicated on testing people need, which is that dual edged sword because no one wants to like give all their information to the government. So again, that would be another situation where people realize, no, if there is an outbreak of something, testing actually helps you and your family.

Sean Ryan

What, what is the, what lengths is the government willing to go to contain? You know, I mean, we saw just in Covid, I mean, entering a department store. Entering. They get the thermometer gun where. Yeah, taking your head temperature. You know what I mean? Every, everywhere you go. And that was, I mean, at the time, you know, everything. If you were in a car wreck and you happen to have Covid, you died of COVID So they over inflated the numbers and it made it sound worse. And I think it took a couple months for everybody to catch on. And I think the majority of people caught on relatively quickly. And you know, at least around here that shit didn't last very long. Look at New York. And you got people eating in bubbles, like inflatable bubbles. And restaurants and everything shut down. And California, we've all heard the stories there.

Annie Jacobson

Our governor closed our parks.

Sean Ryan

Yeah. We couldn't go to the beach, get arrested for surfing, which is the place

Annie Jacobson

to go, by the way, like fresh air, but keep going.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah, but you know, so in.

Sean Ryan

So anyways, what I'm getting at is that was, I mean that was, was overreaction to a virus that did minimal damage. What is the government willing to do for something like Ebola? Are they going to surround a city with the military, are they going to have rules of engagement? Are they going to have an escalation of force? Are they going to kill people? What are they going to do?

Annie Jacobson

Yes, to every one of those questions. Right. So. And by the way, Covid was, you know, essentially a. I mean, a lot of people died. And to them, it was a lot, obviously to their family members. But in the scope of things, a pathogen with a 1% case fatality rate is nothing. And so if you have a Select, a Tier 1 Select agent, where you have a case fatality rate of 30%, 40, 50% or 100%, the extreme measures that the government will go to, there's no such thing as too extreme. Quarantine is. The president can. There are legally quarantineable diseases, and the president will absolutely declare a quarantine. So then the issue becomes, well, how do you enforce a quarantine? Which is why the military comes in. And the military can only come in if they have. They have two lanes. The military can function under what is called defense support of civil authorities. And it's just like it sounds. The Defense Department is supporting the states, the law enforcement. That's when you see the National Guard coming in. They do not have rules of engagement like the normal military because they're in support of the governor. When the Insurrection act is declared and it will be in a catastrophic biological event, the military has rules of engagement. Essentially, America is a war theater.

Sean Ryan

America is what?

Annie Jacobson

A war theater. You know, and I did this really interesting.

Sean Ryan

It's not gonna work. You just said there's 500 million guns in the country. Good luck.

Annie Jacobson

And so this is the kind of bloodbath. This is that quote from Tom Daschle, people doing inhuman things just to survive. And there are contingency plans in place. And what I learned is, of course, the tip of the iceberg. But it is enough that I describe in the scenario to I think, really get people thinking, like, just like nuclear war, this is a catastrophic situation that we don't even want to get even close to. And so what are the solutions? What are the solutions? You know, and I believe those are always there. When you read the worst case possible scenario, you begin to be able to think in terms of solution because you're aware of what can happen.

Sean Ryan

I mean, nobody's going to listen. Even if you do surrender, even if you. If you were to surround Nashville with military and the ROEs were to shoot anybody that's leaving and you have something like Ebola break out, how would you rather die bleeding out from Every orifice in your body or being shot and slights out immediately I know which way I want to go.

Annie Jacobson

I mean, this is, you know, this kind of maximum of maximum events is something that used to be very far afield in planning, I believe, you know, it was kind of in the Cold War, there was a real effort to push for what was called civil defense. You know, it was this idea that you could save the population from itself, essentially that everybody would sort of go along to get along. And those days are completely over. And what is left is essentially what's called Continuity of Government. Cog, that's the acronym and it's exactly like it sounds. The government must continue. You know, there's another interesting detail I learned. So you know about DEFCON defense readiness conditions. And you know, five is where we normally are. And then at 911 it went to three. At nuclear war, it's gonna go to one. That means nuclear war. Two is like nuclear war. We don't know because it's classified whether DEFCON we've ever gone to DEFCON 2. But DEFCON 3 was 9 11. There is a similar defense or similar civilian readiness condition that exists that FEMA is in charge of. The agency many people have never heard of or aren't sure what it does. The agency in charge of devolution. And it's called cogcon again, completely classified program. The term itself has been declassified, which is why former FEMA director Craig Fugate could discuss it with me. And there are four levels. And when COGCON 1 gets declared, that's the triggering point for devolution. So the situation you're talking about is going to go in concert with defcon, you know, as the situation ratchets up. And then once you hit cog con one devolution protocols and then everybody leaves Washington D.C. it's called, called the National Capital Regional. I love that there all is this weird nomenclature that like keeps the rest of us out. And I think, you know, why is that. But it's not called Washington D.C. it's called the National Capital Region. And everybody departs and goes to their bunkers and the military moves into the States.

Sean Ryan

Not a great scenario. Foreign. Let's switch gears here real quick. I got a hot question for you.

Annie Jacobson

100%.

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July 25, 1946.

Sean Ryan

Bikini Atoll. There are only seven atomic bombs on the entire planet. And the US is about to spend one blowing up its own ships underwater to see what happens. That bomb was called Baker. And it became the first time humanity really understood what fallout was. The ships that survived the blast were so radioactive they had to abandon the cleanup because it was killing the sailors doing it.

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Bikini's still uninhabitable today, 80 years later.

Sean Ryan

Can you walk us through Baker? Because this is the moment we learned a nuke doesn't just destroy, it poisons everything for generations.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a fascinating moment, moment in time that's being discussed there and journalist detail. Just because I have spent my life interviewing people who have actually been there, really, it's what gives me a little bit of an authority. And I mean that like, as an author, you know, I wasn't there. Like you were in the war theater. I never have been, but I interviewed people. So the man who wired that bomb, who wired the Baker bomb, he armed, wired and fired it. His name is Alfred o'. Donnell. He's now dead, but I interviewed him for my book Area 51, which was sort of my first foray into nuclear weapons. And o' Donnell was with a small team of engineers called E, G and G. And so even more interesting is that o' Donnell walked me through. How do you, like I said to him, how do you arm wire, arm and fire a nuclear weapon? To which he said, well, that's really classified, but I can give you the layman's version of it. Okay. Because that, by the way, is what prohibits most rogue groups from being able to, to acquire a nuclear weapon. They don't have the arming and firing device. That's what's so jealously guarded. It's incredibly complex. Al o' Donnell never left the country. He never left the country because he would be kidnapped. And he had a minder until he died. Like an FBI minder, keeping eyes on him, kind of always watching us. Whenever I was interviewing him, having lunch with him at the Chinese restaurant, he had a lot of secret. He wired 186 nuclear weapons for the government in the Marshall Islands and in Nevada. And what I learned about that Baker bomb is that in those days we've been talking about how science and technology have advanced. There was no remote wiring system the way there is now. I mean, it did exist, but it wasn't ubiquitous. Right. So now you do this and you blow something up at a distance or you do this and you blow. So they had cables, if you've ever seen that photograph of that. It's like ships in the atoll and you see this mushroom cloud. And coming up out of the water,

Sean Ryan

I have an atoll.

Annie Jacobson

Oh, it's an incredible photo.

Sean Ryan

We'll Put it up on screen.

Annie Jacobson

Incredible photo. And o' Donnell took me through how they had to lay cables from the arming facility to the actual bomb.

Sean Ryan

Wow. So how far were they?

Annie Jacobson

They were not far away. This is, like, in those days where, you know, they. They would. They would set the situation up. They had some remote control, right. So they would go out on a ship further out from the atoll, maybe 25 miles away, but. And they would do some remote firing. But the. The actual device had to be attached to its armed system on shore, which is just kind of an unfathomable detail in today's world.

Sean Ryan

How was he psychologically? How many sailors died?

Annie Jacobson

Well, that was the first atomic test after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, you know, that was a really pivotal moment in history because there was a kind of decision of like, maybe we're gonna sort of not go nuclear. And, you know, there was lots of debate in the international community whether it should be monitored. And the Navy stepped in and was like, you know, we're in business here. And then the nuclear arms race took off with that Baker bomb. And there were more than 100 atmospheric nuclear tests that happened after that. And the size of that test, by the way, was tiny compared to what would come later, because that was an atomic weapon. There was only atomic weaponry in those days. It wouldn't be until the very early 1950s that the thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, would be invented. And the hydrogen bombs are what are megatons. The atomic weapons were still in the kiloton range. So while that bomb looks huge, you'll see in the photo, it's not, you know, Castle Bravo or Ivy Mike, the megaton weapons that were going off later. So psychologically, how was o'? Donnell. I mean, you know, it took a toll on those individuals, but they also were so conditioned, some might say programmed to believe. And. No, I'm gonna say conditioned because Russia was such a threat. You know, I mean, totalitarian communism was just a looming threat, and everyone that worked within the military industrial complex in those days knew it was conditioned to be extremely fearful of it and was determined to beat it. And, you know, people have their opinions now, but having interviewed a lot of Cold War warriors, I completely reserve judgment on that and just go with what they. What they talk about, about how serious that threat was.

Sean Ryan

Wow. Last question.

Annie Jacobson

Yeah.

Sean Ryan

Is America prepared for biological war?

Annie Jacobson

I mean, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And biological war can never happen. You know, it can never happen. This is what I would talk about with nuclear war, where I would say, you know, Nuclear war is insane. And every person I ever interviewed told me that. And these are people in nuclear command and control that retired. You can never have a nuclear war. It's the end game. And biological war is the same situation. It is an end game. We cannot have one. Covid needs to be reexamined as a lesson. What can we learn from this? And what can we never do again with those same mistakes? And how do we educate people so that they can have conversations like we're having, airing a little bit on the like, oh my God, this is a disaster. So that you realize how do I participate in the dialogue so that it can never happen? You know, it can never happen. And that can be a specific different lane for all kinds of us. Each one of us, like some people will really take issue with gain of function, will say that must be shut down. The current president has shut down gain of function meeting research, you know, others will. I mean, I didn't even mention how many bio safety labs there are right now like I did. We did speak about how during, you know, before 9, 11, there were two in America. There was one in Atlanta at the CDC and one at Fort Detrick. Two now there are 17 in America.

Sean Ryan

There's 17.

Annie Jacobson

17. There are 110 around the world in countries where there are wars going on. Ukraine, the BSL3 labs, which are just one degree below which, by the way, you can work with anthrax, plague, hantavirus in BSL3. There are 3500 of them around the world. 90% of them have no safety protocols. They're just working, working away without kind. And no organization tracks this. No government organization, academics and scientists track this. So you pick your lane. Once you know about this stuff, what do I want to pay attention to and keep eyes on that would be a good. Well, keeping track of what labs are doing what is a great starting place.

Sean Ryan

Wow. Well, my conclusion would be the government's prepared themselves for it, but they haven't done shit to prepare the rest of us and they probably never will.

Annie Jacobson

Or it's a considered such a rarefied problem. You know, it's the old. It's a bit like the nuclear issue, like that's never gonna happen. But I do think that the COVID pandemic really has the potential and a good way to flip the switch on that ostrich in the sand thinking. Before that, people could say, oh, come on, there hasn't been a pandemic since the Spanish flu. You know, the influenza pandemic of 1918. That's of the past. And Covid really was a wake up call that you can just be caught completely off guard. You don't want to be caught unaware.

Sean Ryan

Yep. Well, Annie, that was a fascinating discussion.

Annie Jacobson

Always a pleasure.

Sean Ryan

Likewise. Thank you.

Annie Jacobson

Foreign.

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