The PDB Situation Report | August 1st, 2026: Annie Jacobsen’s Terrifying Warning About Biological War

Summary

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The President's Daily Brief: Situation Report | August 1st, 2026

Episode Theme: Annie Jacobsen’s Terrifying Warning About Biological War

Host: Mike Baker (Former CIA Operations Officer)
Guests:

• Annie Jacobsen, bestselling investigative journalist, author of "Biological War: A Scenario"
• Cliff May, founder/president, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

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Episode Overview

This episode of The President's Daily Brief delves into the chilling realities of biological warfare, led by investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen, whose latest book models a catastrophic biological weapons scenario. The discussion situates biological threats alongside nuclear risks, emphasizing the growing danger due to rapid biotechnology advances and insufficient global preparedness. In the second half, the focus shifts to the US-Iran conflict, with Cliff May providing insight into the regional and global stakes, the Iranian regime’s strategic calculations, and the challenges of deterrence policy.

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Annie Jacobsen on the New Era of Biological Threats

[00:07–17:29]

The Biological War Threat: More Likely Than Nukes?

• Introduction
  • Most focus on nuclear threats (Russia, North Korea, Iran), but Jacobsen argues biotechnology makes catastrophic biological attacks both feasible and probable.
    • “What if the next global catastrophe didn’t arrive in the form of a mushroom cloud, but an invisible pathogen?” — Mike Baker [00:27]

Jacobsen’s Research Approach

• Built on Pentagon-style war gaming and detailed expert interviews.
• Prior book ("Nuclear War: A Scenario") moved from history to plausible future scenarios; new book does the same for biological warfare. [02:10]

Is Biological Attack a Current Threat?

• Jacobsen: US Department of Defense now considers bio-weapons the “greatest overall threat”—more likely than nuclear, citing ease of genetic modification and lack of effective safeguards.
  • “Bio being the greatest overall threat because it’s the most likely... COVID taught us a biological catastrophe is not theoretical.” [03:24]

Did We Learn from COVID?

• Jacobsen: “Unfortunately, the answer is no.” [05:08]
  • COVID, with 1% fatality, should have been a wakeup call. She warns of potential pathogens with far higher fatality (e.g., pneumonic plague), which could be weaponized or accidentally released.
    • “I take readers through… one of the worst, most feared pathogens...pneumonic plague...has a case fatality rate of one hundred percent if you don’t take antibiotics immediately.” [05:26]

Gain of Function: “Euphemism for Weapons Engineering”

• Gain of function (making viruses deadlier/more transmissible) is widespread, often justified as necessary for defensive research but is the main loophole in the Biological Weapons Convention. [07:26]
  • “Gain of function is...precisely like it sounds: you are making a pathogen… more transmissible... more virulent… able to defeat vaccines and antibiotics.” — Annie Jacobsen [09:03]
• Financial Drivers:
  • Huge research grants sustain controversial research; paused and resumed under different administrations (Obama, Trump).
  • “There are extraordinary amounts of money involved… scientists who are supporting this idea... because there’s a lot of money involved by way of grants.” [10:58]

Safety and Regulation Gaps

• Over 3,500 BSL-3 labs and 110 BSL-4 labs worldwide; most lack unified safety standards.
• The Wuhan context: suspicious that leak may have occurred from a lower-security BSL-2 lab not meant for handling such pathogens.
  • “Many subject matter experts believe that the lab leak happened in Wuhan out of the BSL-2 lab...really shocking.” [14:14]

Why the Balance Tilts Toward Extreme Risk

• Jacobsen: After her research: “It’s really hard for anyone to say that the rewards [of gain-of-function research] outweigh the risks.”
  • “Too many possibilities of lab accidents… Not worth it.” [13:08]

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Scenario Walkthrough: How a 6-Day Pandemic Collapses Civilization

[17:29–30:00]

‘Biological War: A Scenario’ — How the Catastrophe Begins

• The spark: A real facility in Russia (Vector Institute) suffers a lab accident, releasing a genetically modified pneumonic plague.
  • “The inciting incident… is a lab accident at Russia’s BSL-4 lab… There was a real explosion there in 2019… In my scenario this unleashes a genetically modified pneumonic plague.” [23:38]
• The pathogen is quickly spread globally via air travel—much faster than historical plagues.
  • “Today you can get across the world in twelve hours... that's what happened in Wuhan and that's precisely what happens in Biological War Scenario.” [24:49]

The Pathogen’s Deadly Edge

• Nearly 100% fatal without immediate antibiotics; genetic engineering could make it resistant or trigger fatal side effects in response to treatment.
  • “They put in… a gene that when you took the antibiotics it would trigger encephalitis of the brain… and the reason? Because they hated Americans so much…” [27:08]

Role of AI in Making Things Worse

• AI can democratize bioweapon development and undermine emergency management by exposing stockpiles, plans, etc.—even ChatGPT was able to supply sensitive info.
  • “I was able to make ChatGPT tell me the location—a classified location—of a strategic national stockpile.” [29:06]

Civilization on the Brink

• FEMA and Pentagon plans expect “near extinction-level event” for airborne pathogens with high fatality; scenario war games end in anarchy within days.
  • “After six days we go from outbreak to anarchy.” [10:58]

Optimism vs. Cynicism

• Jacobsen: EternaI optimist: “Man-made problem, man-made solution...so much that can be done to make sure a near extinction event doesn't happen that's man made.” [31:06]
• Baker: Cynical, citing endemic lack of transparency (China’s handling of COVID origins), systemic disincentives for global cooperation.
  • "I don’t think the bottom line nature of humans is to come together and work for the good of all.” — Mike Baker [32:32]

Concluding Warnings

• The likelihood of a catastrophic bioevent is high—reason enough for radical transparency and new global efforts, not finger-pointing or business-as-usual.
  • “Lab leaks are the most dangerous threat because they're the most likely to happen.” — Annie Jacobsen [35:30]

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Notable Quotes from Jacobsen Segment

• “The point is pressure, not panic. And before you can pressure anyone to do anything you have to have a little bit of information.” [09:37]
• “Dystopian ending — collapse of civilization — that’s how the war games end.” [09:25]
• “Everyone is dying… and the is going to hit the fan.” [29:11]
• “Why are people… arguing about tribal politics when there is so much… to make sure that a near extinction level doesn’t happen that’s man made?” [31:40]

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Cliff May on US-Iran Conflict and the Geopolitics of Deterrence

[38:36–74:08]

Iran’s Enduring Threat and Ideology

• Iran’s theocratic regime—jihadi, not constrained by Western logic of deterrence.
  • “He has made clear that if it is necessary for Iran to burn in order for Islam to become dominant… then let it burn, that’s okay.” — Cliff May [41:24]
• Western governments (and especially libertarians) misjudge Iran’s willingness to use nuclear weapons—deterrence logic doesn’t match the regime’s motives.

Expanding the Conflict

• The war is spreading regionally—Houthis attacking from Yemen, Saudi Arabia now conducting direct strikes on Iranian proxies.
• “It seems as if this thing is starting to expand… It’s happening. It’s going to get worse.” — Baker [48:35]
• “Tehran is the root cause of all this… If you can collapse or cripple… the regime in Tehran then all this goes away.” — May [49:44]

The “Axis of Aggressors”

• New levels of cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—military, technological, and economic.
  • “You have shahed drones going to Moscow… missiles coming from China to Tehran… North Korean soldiers to Russia.” — May [44:36]
• Their common aim: dethrone US from global leadership and end “the American era.”

Strategy: Regime Change or Regime Crippling?

• May: Advocates strangling Iran’s regime economically (total blockade on oil, collapsing proxies’ funding).
  • “The spokesman for the foreign ministry should be standing on rubble, not on a nice carpet inside a beautiful building.” [52:38]
• Baker queries if the US should openly declare regime change as its objective; May cautions that “regime crippling” is more realistic and productive.

Challenges within Iran

• Widespread economic suffering; most Iranians oppose the regime and are willing to endure hardship for liberation. [54:20]
• “We need to go through this and we need to come out the other side… we want something new and we’re willing to suffer for it.” — Cliff May [54:41]

On Diplomacy and Power

• Effective diplomacy with enemies must be coercive—“the shadow of force” must always hang over negotiations.
  • “Diplomacy is war by other means… unless the shadow of force hangs over the negotiating table, you will capitulate.” [55:19]

Regional Allies and the Wider War

• Gulf states (such as Saudi Arabia) are increasingly directly involved but have capability shortfalls.
• Control of strategic straits (Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb) is critical to global security; Iran’s expansion threatens this.
  • “If the Islamic Republic of Iran gets to control the Strait of Hormuz, no reason why the Houthis can’t control Bab-el-Mandeb…” [62:32]

Missile and Drone Warfare: Underestimated Threats

• The US and allies underestimated how many missiles/drones Iran had and how quickly they could rearm.
  • “When I say cripple, that means way more than degrade, way more than decimate… you want to get to an agreement that this regime cannot project power at all.” [70:41]

Historical Lessons on Regime Change

• Most regime changes are messy—comparing likely outcomes to the French, not the American, Revolution.
  • “The guys most willing to kill their opponents usually end up on top… those who want democracy get their heads taken off.” [72:04]

Final Reflections

• The default approach is to “kick the can down the road”—unless fully crippled, the regime and conflict will persist, leaving future administrations to solve it anew. [68:34–70:24]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:07 — Episode & theme introduction; focus on biological weapons
• 02:10 — Jacobsen explains her “war games” approach
• 03:24 — Why DoD views bio as biggest threat
• 05:08 — Lessons (not) learned from COVID
• 09:03 — Gain of function: how it’s abused and why it’s dangerous
• 10:58 — The money politics of bioweapon R&D
• 14:14 — Wuhan lab leaks and global safety review
• 23:38 — Scenario: accidental plague release and its spread
• 27:17 — Weaponized plague, genetic modification to resist treatment
• 29:06 — AI’s potential to worsen bio-security
• 31:06 — Jacobsen’s optimism vs. Baker’s skepticism
• 35:30 — Why lab leaks are the most likely risk
• 38:36 — Cliff May on Iran’s ideology and nuclear path
• 44:36 — The “axis of aggressors” and its threat to Western power
• 49:44 — Iran’s regime as source; strategy: collapse/cripple
• 54:20 — Iranian population’s suffering and resilience
• 55:19 — Coercive diplomacy—negotiating with force
• 62:32 — Global consequences if Iran and proxies control key straits
• 70:41 — Crippling the regime: more than “decimate” or “degrade”
• 72:04 — The grim reality of most regime changes

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Tone and Notable Moments

• The discussion is urgent and sobering, reflecting both the technical realities and psychological impact of bio- and geo-political threats.
• Jacobsen’s blend of methodical detail and narrative tension (“After six days, anarchy”) gives the scenario visceral weight.
• Cliff May offers blunt, historically grounded, and sometimes grim assessments of both adversary motives and Western policy failings.
• Both segments resist false reassurance and urge an informed, engaged public.

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Essential Takeaways

• Biological warfare is no longer a fringe concern; advances in biotechnology, poorly regulated research, and the prevalence of labs globally make catastrophic events—intentional or accidental—a real, imminent threat.
• The world is dangerously unprepared and, post-COVID, has not meaningfully improved transparency or coordinated response capabilities.
• Iran remains regionally and globally destabilizing; current US strategy focuses on economic and military pressure but stops short of aiming for outright regime change, perhaps kicking the can to future crises.
• Both guests urge a sober reassessment of risks and a call for public awareness, less politicized international response, and global cooperation—whether with pandemics or proliferation.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

welcome to the pdb situation report i'm mike baker your eyes and ears on the world stage all right let's get briefed first up what would happen if the next weapon of mass destruction wasn't a nuclear bomb but a deadly engineered pathogen now that's exactly the question that investigative journalist annie jacobson explores in her new book biological a scenario she joins me to discuss the frightening realities of biological warfare later in the show we'll examine the latest developments in the war between the us and iran and where the conflict may be headed next joining me for that conversation is cliff may founder and president of the foundation for defense of democracies but first today's situation report spotlight here on the pdb we spend a lot of time talking about the threat of nuclear weapons whether it's vladimir putin's nuclear saber ratt north korea's expanding arsenal or iran's race to build a nuclear bomb those are the dangers we tend to think of when we talk about weapons of mass destruction what if the next global catastrophe didn't arrive in the form of a mushroom cloud but an invisible pathogen it's a question that's becoming increasingly urgent as advances in biotechnology make it easier than ever to manipulate dangerous viruses and bacteria while governments warn that biological weapons programs continue to operate around the world well there's a cheery thought investigative journalist annie jacobson explores the frightening possibility in her new book biological war a scenario using expert interviews and minute by minute account to examine how a biological attack or even a catastrophic lab accident could unfold and sounds somewhat familiar from our recent past doesn't it joining me now is bestselling author annie jacobson nanny thank you so much for being here on the situation report thanks for having me talk if you could try to set up for the for the viewers tell us just a little bit about we're here to talk about this this new book but tell me a little bit about your your previous book if you could well i'm

[B]

the author of eight books and i'm guessing you're referring to my book right before this which is nuclear war a scenario that was the first time i strayed from history into the future i wanted to model the nuclear war book and now the bio book after war games that are done at the pent and also with bio pandemic planning games that are done by public health officials

[A]

so i guess i mean obviously when when people see that your book this this new book biological warfare they're gonna they're gonna i think their mind's gonna go straight to the the pandemic obviously the COVID because it i depending on who you talk to i guess it's either modern history recent history or ancient history it's it's really interesting how quickly some people put that in the background but is this in terms of a biological attack in in the present moment is it a is it a current concern is it something when you started doing these interviews you started talking to experts was it something that was top of mind for them or did they have to sort of dust off their old concerns and and say well you know you know let's revisit this idea

[B]

not only is it top of mind i learned it's actually considered at the defense department which i will continue calling it's the greatest overall threat nuclear being the most destructive but bio being the greatest overall threat because it's the most likely i mean look your covid reference is very important because we now know that a biological catastrophe is not theoretical and now on top of that when you consider that mother nature's pathogens can be genetically modified very easily very low bar for rate for human to human transmission greater virulence able to defeat medical countermeasures like vaccines and antibiotics you throw that all into the mix as i show the readers in an unfortunately very dramatic fashion you realize why it's the

[A]

greatest overall threat yeah right now our listeners our viewers oh they're settling in for what they assume is going to be a very cheery conversation if you if you look at at the recent headlines anthony fauci was just up on the hill he took the he pled the fifth one hundred eleven times or so and setting aside the the the politics of of what happened during COVID do you think that there was any lesson learned from COVID that is positive that could prevent a future problem in this space that wasn't a very eloquent way to ask that question and hopefully

[B]

you know you have now hit the nail exactly on the head unfortunately the answer is no so in other words covid could have been something we all learned from because covid had a one percent case fatality rate if you ask the cdc many people say it was far lower than that but one percent means one in one hundred people who manifested symptoms of COVID died and in my book i take readers through a scenario of what is one of the worst most feared pathogens that could be let loose by the way it doesn't have to be an attack it can be an incident it can be a lab leak it can be an accident and i use the pathogen pneumonic plague for a lot of reasons we can get into but that has a case fatality rate of one hundred percent one hundred percent if you don't take antibiotics immediately as in within twenty four hours and i interviewed you sam rid world experts on plague who had been working on vaccine cures at the defense department's lab for dietrich and others who you know really drill down on the reality of these kinds of incredibly deadly pathogens that would absolutely not just cause a pandemic but cause mass death and lead to anarchy and insurrection

[A]

now i mean it sounds like in part you're alluding to it a little bit on the on the periphery gain of function which a lot of people had never heard about until until covid to what degree from your work your research is gain of function research engaged in around the world whether it's here in the us or anywhere else how common is that and then if you could kind of expand on to what degree you think that played a role i don't want to settle into covid i want to spend a lot of time talking about COVID because i want to get into the scenario that you outlined but i'm just curious because again fauci's appearance brought all of this back up to the

[B]

top of mind absolutely and here's two things we have in common no one has any idea what my politics are i just write the facts ma' am with a little bit of hypotheticals from pentagon war gaming but i also stay away from COVID like hitting it on the head in the book and let readers come to their own idea about what they think now gain of function is incredibly important it is just a fancy word or a different phrase for genetic modification which is also known as recombinant dna techniques so there is one lesson out of the COVID pandemic that we can now all benefit from and that is a little bit of knowledge about what gain of function is and hopefully your listeners all of our fellow americans and everyone around the world will actually read some of the long longer things written about what fauci is accused of what actually happened in the lab what gain of function is how scientists work to kind of COVID up this idea that gain of function was going on in wuhan and is going on all around the world and so hopefully readers will be really interested because this does impact all of us because i really believe that a little bit of knowledge goes an extremely long way i say right in the book spoiler alert dystopian ending i mean it ends in absolute collapse of civilization because that's what the how the war games end but i also say in the very acknowledgments i say the point is pressure not panic and before you can pressure anyone to do anything you have to have a little bit of information so gain of function gain of function is precisely like it sounds you are making a pathogen pathogen is a deadly bacteria or virus and you are making it gain functions so you are making it more transmissible airborne you're making it have more virulence you're amping up that case fatality rate from a lower number to a higher number you are making it defeat vaccines and antibiotics and that is something that people should most definitely know why is it going on if biological weapons are illegal which they are which all countries have signed a treaty in nineteen seventy two saying they wouldn't be making biological weapons gain of function and it's sort of other you know phrases that i took you through are the one carve out of the treaty provided you're doing it for prophylactic purposes a fancy word for like trying to find a cure and that's of course an obvious catch twenty two because you can really blur the lines between trying to find a cure and actually making a weapon

[A]

well it would seem like yeah that that would seem to be the and again you may not be surprised at this but i'm not actually a pathogen specialist or even a scientist but it seems to me that if you're doing this you have to you have to weaponize it before you can understand how to combat it how to fight it and i mean i don't see how else you would do it well you're

[B]

absolutely right and there is actually a very like a long history of all this and a short history but the short history that's important and i take readers through it very quickly in these little history lessons in the book where i break up the narrative of day one day two day three because after six days we have anarchy we go from anarchy from outbreak to anarchy and six days but i break up the narrative with the little history lessons to give you an indication of some important facts one of which talk about not political gain of function was was put on hold by president obama in his early in his administration because he was warned by scientists many of whom i interview in the book this is essentially a euphemism for weapons engineering he paused it then it went back into effect because there are extraordinary amounts of money involved as we from the fauci revelations as we saw many of the scientists who are supporting this idea that the origin of COVID was a wet market which fauci himself admits was not true so this idea why would a group of scientists conspire and i do not use that word lightly conspire means a group of people get together to deceive the public so why would they do this well because lots and lots and lots of money is involved by way of grants to do gain of function research so this has gone back and forth through multiple administrations people who want the programs to be going on in their labs and around the world because there's a lot of money involved push for it and people like andrew weber who has advised every president on biological weapons weapons since reagan says to me gain of function is a euphemism for biological weapons engineering but do you believe

[A]

it's it has value it's necessary i

[B]

do not believe i most certainly do not believe after after writing biological war scenario i think it's really hard for anyone to say that the rewards outweigh the risks although that is a quote that doctor fauci himself used back in twenty twelve in a paper that's on the public record arguing for these programs it's just simply not worth it there are too many possibilities of lab accidents there's more than three thousand five hundred bsl three labs around the world where you can manipulate plague three thousand five hundred in many countries that have wars going on the bsl four labs which is where you see the guys in spacesuits in movies those labs now number one hundred ten around the world ninety percent of these labs do not have an agreed upon set of safety protocols

[A]

and that would include i assume wuhan as a as a as a bsl

[B]

four lab you know what's crazy about wuhan is yes there's a bsl four lab there it's china's biggest bsl four lab yes there's a bsl three lab but many subject matter experts believe that the lab leak happened in wuhan out of the bsl two lab and that is really shocking because those labs are where you would should be like manipulating common flu but there is it fair

[A]

to say i'm sorry any for is it fair to say that the possibility of a leak out of that is because perhaps the safety protocols are less

[B]

oh absolutely there are pictures that you can see from legitimate scientists who show the what it looks like inside one of china's bsl two labs in wuhan where they were manipulating coronaviruses and you know it's like a mess there's like i mean i want to say there's a bag of doritos lying around as a poetic metaphor

[A]

so many so many questions to ask we do have to take a break but if you'll stick around i've got page after page here to try to get through in our next segment annie thank you very much we'll be right back with more from annie jacobson a biological warfare a scenario you got to read it stick around hey mike baker here now many of you know me as the host of the president's daily brief podcast or at least i i hope you know me as the host of the pdb but i'm also a business owner have been for years and i want to take just a moment to talk with all of you business owners out there you probably already know that small businesses face an uphill battle with big banks where getting a loan means endless paperwork and delays right but let me tell you about a business out there working to make life easier for small businesses there's a good thought i'm talking about cardiff for bank rates without the weight go to cardiff co pdb for up to five hundred thousand dollars in funding their takes less than five minutes has no impact on personal credit and approvals can happen in minutes with same day funding it's the fastest way to get the capital you need to keep your business moving forward look banks try to block out small businesses but cardiff has the key big banks may not want to approve your business loans but cardiff does if you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling in twenty thousand dollars a month in revenue apply now for up to five hundred thousand dollars in same day business funding at cardiff co pdb again that's cardiff co pdb real growth fast funding cardiff

[B]

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[A]

welcome back to the pdb situation report joining me once again is the author of the brand new book biological a scenario investigative journalist annie jacobson annie thank you very much for sticking around would have been super awkward if you hadn't and we came back and you had just left i disappeared into

[B]

a biological catastrophe i had to run you know with my gas mask you

[A]

in in the previous segment you mentioned that president obama had had paused gain of function research and then resumed in part because of of of the stakes the money involved was there an element of from a national security perspective was there pressure put on the administration from your insight to resume gain of function because our adversaries are doing it you

[B]

know i don't get really into the specifics of that because that kind of moves toward political situations and i also do not really drill down on gain of function other than telling you what it is because you don't need to know a whole lot more and also people are free to make their own decision you know they can say this is incredibly important that we do this but i think that the general consensus certainly of subject matter experts that have been dealing with biological threats ever since the soviet era cold war program was revealed to be in violation of the treaty they had an illegal huge biological weapons program that was only revealed when a soviet defector told an mi a british intelligence officer about it who then in turn shared it with cia officers i interview the handlers the cia handlers of these defectors and this takes us back to the nineteen nineties and we learn how the whole biotechnological military industrial complex began because there was so much of a concern that these illegal biological weapons by the way there were like tons of them it stored you know an actual program that was not disguised as gain of function and our diplomats worked with russia to make sure those arsenals of biological weapons were destroyed and not sold on the black market to terrorists or nations like iran who were very interested in getting them and so these are people who have had a really serious horse in the race since those days they've been tracking these issues all along that's who i interview that's who i look to for great information like you i'm not a scientist i'm not an epidemiologist i'm a narrative storyteller and a national security reporter who has become really increasingly clear with these two recent books that global catastrophic risks coupled with the the incredible speed at which technology is transforming our world must begin to be looked at in a new framework where you you can't apply the same terms like oh should we be doing this because they might it really has to be much more of a global effort kind of like the way we had to reduce our nuclear arsenals from seventy thousand nuclear weapons during the cold war to the twelve thousand three hundred that exist on the planet today because the threats are too great the numbers are too big there's too many bad actors there has to be agreements between nations

[A]

all right well here's where my cynical nature is going to come out annie do you think that that's actually a world that we live in today where the us and china for example can in good faith negotiate an agreement that says you know we're going to work together to ensure we don't have this problem in the future sure

[B]

i believe it has to because look at what happened with the pandemic we can no longer say oh something let loose in china isn't going to affect us just period full stop fact the spread of a pathogen a biological weapon unlike any other weapon in the defense department's arsenal is a living weapon you can you know you know this you can put a two thousand pound bomb on a on a target and the dod can tell you exactly how many people it's going to kill you can put a nuclear weapon on the target same thing biological weapons no way of calculating what is going to happen only that it's going to be catastrophic if the case fatality rate is high enough and it's airborne and it's going to end in mass death insurrection and anarchy around the globe everybody in the business of preventing a biological incident or attack knows that

[A]

i guess i guess what i'm getting at and then i want to i want to dive into the scenario to the degree that i don't want to do a spoiler alert on the on the new you may do

[B]

a spoiler alert you may do it i say it right away in the author's note i think people need to see how it happens and because that's what i show you my area of expertise is being able to get multiple people from multiple organizations to tell me how their individual lane will work so i show you how it goes down and i show you how the devolution plan a classified plan kicks in after the president declares the insurrection act so there's the spoiler alert but these are things you're gonna want to know the

[A]

details about okay so tell us what the spark is in in the book in biological war scenario tell us what the spark is that sets this whole

[B]

problem off i link everything to either an event that has happened in the past or something that the pentagon worries will happen in the future so very specifically the inciting incident of the book is a lab accident at russia's bsl four lab called the vector institute it sounds like it should be something in a marvel movie it's a real facility and there was a real explosion there in twenty nineteen in that incident a pathogen did not get out because the explosion was in a building that didn't have viruses and germs in my scenario this unleashes a genetically modified pneumonic plague weapon that is stored at vector and it quickly takes off and makes its way to the united states of america

[A]

in a similar fashion to what we saw with COVID just you know travel social contact and to what degree i mean again i keep going back to covid just because it's a baseline for i think a lot of people now

[B]

sure but another go ahead another comp is the bubonic plague the black death of the fourteenth century because that actually was plague and that wiped out a half of europe but in those days the rate of travel by caravan or by ship was one mile a day today you can get across the world in twelve hours that's what happened in wuhan and that's precisely what happens in biological war scenario for example a cruise ship a diamond princess cruise ship people may remember that from the very early days of COVID one passenger with COVID in his lungs infected seven hundred twelve other passengers that passenger was advised to disembark in the port of hong kong with its population of seven point five million people because the doctor had no idea he was dealing with sars cov to get do and so yes i use another analogy of a someone who had been in siberia i have ten hunters on a hunting trip international businessmen and they come across a scientist this is the real i'm giving it away here but they come across a scientist in the forest the guy who caused the explosion who's going to go out to the forest and kill himself with a crisis of conscience these ten hunters come across him one of them is a good samaritan gives him mouth to mouth resuscitation and those ten men quickly get on airplanes and they take it to every continent but antarctica

[A]

and and the aggressiveness of this pathogenic plague is

[B]

mnemonic plague is called a this is mother nature's mnemonic plague it doesn't even need to be modified it's called a fulminant disease which means it strikes like lightning and it kills really quickly it's about forty eight hours to once you develop symptoms of pneumonic plague and so the real genetic modification that has been done in my scenario is something that exists in science because the soviet weaponaires told the cia handlers that they had done this they were able to engineer plague so that it could defeat not only could it defeat antibiotics which would normally kill plague and reduce the fatality rate from one hundred percent down death to fifteen percent death not only did they do that but they put in the most dark hearted nefarious component that they actually inserted a gene that when you took the antibiotics it would trigger encephalitis of the brain so you would actually die of a brain swelling you would like turn in circles collapse and die and the reason they did this this they told their cia handlers because they hated americans so much they wanted the last thought of these hundreds of millions of dying americans to be my government failed me and western medicine failed

[A]

me to what degree from from everything that you've seen and researched is ai impacting this situation

[B]

in ways in which you and i cannot literally comprehend and also at a rate of speed that by the time we get off this zoom call more will have happened and i say that because i have spoken to darpa individuals who run the bioscience office there who are seriously concerned it's their top concern ai enabled biology and the problem is that you know the ceo's of the six largest ai companies don't know what they don't know i'm not quoting rumsfeld there i'm literally saying that literally because i myself did an interview with sam altman the details of which are in the book because i was able to make chat gpt do something not create a biological weapon which everybody talks about about but i was actually able able to make chatgpt tell me the location a classified location of a strategic national stockpile close to los angeles because i know from reading all of these documents and injuring subject matter experts that the real fear is the anarchy why does the anarchy happen because when people realize that everyone is dying and they find out that there are these strategic national stockpiles pre placed around the united states and america as country of five hundred million guns people are just going to go out and try and get anything they can for themselves and their family and the is going to hit the fan and i talked to sam about how i was able to do that that has since changed but that's why i say that ceo's of the ai companies don't know what

[A]

they don't know yeah well having seen or been through a handful of blackouts and weather crises it doesn't take much for just even sort of general behavior to start to shift and head south in the face of sort of adversity oh my god it's seven days we have no power right and you think okay well it could be a lot worse are you as a result of all the work that you put into this book are you this is again you're going to see where i have a question in my head getting it out into actual words sometimes is entertaining but are you an optimistic or a pessimistic person when talking about the ability for the human race to avoid a global disaster of this nature

[B]

i am an eternal optimist i mean i write about the most dystopian things to become more knowledgeable you know man made problem man made solution this is not an asteroid coming at the united states like the or the world rather like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and led to a near or rather an extinction level event certainly for a lot of animals but what it is is going to be a near extinction level event that's what it's called at fema at hhs at the pentagon it's called a maximum of maximums event a biological incident that's airborne with a pathogen that's airborne and that has a high case fatality rate and so why are people you know quibbling i just look at all this the optimist in me looks at this stuff and says why are people quibbling about really spending so much time about trivial things arguing about tribal politics when there is so much that can be done with our scientific advances to make sure that a near extinction level doesn't happen that's man made and that involves nuclear and biological okay well

[A]

i applaud the optimism but we also talked and i guess this is where i'm so cynical is that i agree with you one hundred percent when you said earlier that we had an opportunity to learn important valuable critical lessons from COVID but that we didn't and part of that is and here's where this is not political statement this is just an operational statement from somebody who spent a long time in and working overseas we really got no transparency out of out of the chinese communist party as to what happened in wuhan and i think that's an indication of the nature of the of humans right i i don't think the the bottom line nature of humans is to come together and work for the good of all right and so i'm i i i would say that your scenario is in the book is amazing but where you're an eternal optimist someone like me looks at it and thinks this is coming down

[B]

the pike i would love to say one last thought on that because of course we call them our enemies and adversaries for a reason it's not kumbaya with the chinese you're absolutely right they did not give us critical information about COVID certainly and they never have but they played completely into the hand of american politics completely into the hand and that is going on today i have people in my book on both sides of the aisle one hundred percent and now that the fauci revelations have come to bear what they agree on both of those seriously high ranking officials a number of whom are sort of in the periphery of a lot of the memos knows they agree that well the issue when i say why it's a system doctor fauci was basically kind of like a self appointed leader he was not the director of hhs he did not have a mandate to be in control he could have been taken out of power any number of people that knew what was going on that we were being misled that ten of the twelve scientists in that paper knew that the labor week leak was far more plausible than not there that's not like just i do not buy the fact that that's just a tiny inside baseball group and no one else had any idea i just don't buy it where is the secondary circle to that and the tertiary and so on and why didn't those people say it is a really bad form to create a conspiracy to mislead the american people people it's unwise and the reason that they go back to saying it is because well we didn't want one group of people will say we didn't want president trump to think it was a chinese weapon because we knew it wasn't a weapon i mean sorry we didn't want him to think it was intentional which which pretty much everyone is agreeing it wasn't but that doesn't excuse the fact that you would misrepresent the fact that it was a lab leak because that is the most dangerous threat because it's the most likely to happen

[A]

annie i got to tell you this has been absolutely riveting and fascinating and i am very appreciative of the fact that you took the time to join us here on the situation report i encourage everybody to go out and make sure you pick up a copy of biological war a scenario you can find it on amazon barnes and noble wherever you buy books books hopefully you're still buying books out there everybody should but thank you so much for your appearance i hope that next time we call you'll you'll agree to come back on because there's a lot more to discuss here i know our viewers would be fascinated thank you

[B]

so much for having me it was

[A]

a pleasure ah absolutely annie thank you great discussion annie jacobson's new book biological war a scenario out now again on amazon barnes and noble wherever you get your books go out out and get a copy fascinating stuff all right coming up next we'll be joined by cliff may founder and president of the foundation for defense of democracies we're talking all things iran stay put hey mike baker here with a pro tip for feeling your best now let me ask you a question have you ever finished breakfast or lunch or dinner but then find yourself reaching for a snack an hour later right i mean cravings can take over even when you're trying to eat healthy that's exactly why pendulum metabolic daily daily was designed now you've probably seen all the news about glp one s right but here's the thing pendulum metabolic daily is a science backed probiotic designed to support your body's natural glp one response helping you feel fuller longer experience fewer cravings and make it easier to stay on track with your health goals the secret is akkermansia it's a unique gut bacterium that helps signal the body to produce natural glp one just one capsule a day with food that's it it's that simple some customers report noticing fewer cravings and more energy in as little as a week though individual results of course can vary right now pdb listeners can get an exclusive twenty off their first order at pendulumlife dot com that's pendulumlife dot com for an extra twenty off your first order once again pendulumlife dot com and get twenty percent

[B]

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[A]

good life sleep welcome back to the pdb situation report the conflict between the us and iran perhaps you've heard of it has entered another volatile chapter iran's missile attack on an american base in jordan shattered a brief very brief period of relative calm and drew an immediate military response from washington with both sides continuing to now trade blows there are growing questions about what each hopes to achieve and how this war ultimately ends if it ends not to be a downer for more on this i want to bring in cliff may founder and president of the foundation for defensive democracies cliff thank you very much for joining us here on the situation report hey

[C]

it's good to be with you mike

[A]

well let's see what shall we talk about seems like everything's kind of going pretty well around the world not a lot of crises where are we with the iran conflict at this point i know that's a very open ended question but let's let's start there

[C]

let me start with this point the president has been very clear that this regime this is which in iran islamic revolutionaries as they declare themselves or jihadis it's the same thing it's one is islamic revolutionary sounds more left wing jihadi sounds more theological he does not want them to have nuclear weapons every other president has said that that none of them have done anything serious about it i don't think he's been as clear as he should be about why this regime must not have nuclear weapons so i'm going to say it very bluntly because they would use them this because this is a jihadi regime you have to understand they mean it when they say death to america this is a long war this is a war that started fourteen hundred years ago so the supreme leader of iran theologically is meant to be the supreme leader of all the muslims in the world and islam is meant to dominate and be supreme as it was for more than a thousand years so most people going to elite colleges now probably don't know their history and there's no such thing or i shouldn't say the ayatollah ruhlah khomeini who began this revolution and founded the islamic republic of iran he was very clear that patriotism is paganism a form of idolatry so our general view which worked with the soviets oh they won't hit us with a nuclear weapon because what we would do to them just imagine we would strike back massively that doesn't bother him at all he has made clear that if it is necessary for iran to burn in order for islam to become dominant in the world again then let it burn that's okay so if we it's hard for a lot of americans to get to kind of believe that they take this theology seriously but i'm telling you they do i'm telling you as somebody who has as you know i was in iran for the revolution in nineteen seventy nine i've kind of studied this all this time they take it seriously so that's the first thing to understand and even if they didn't use the nuclear weapon they could threaten to use the nuclear weapon in order to get whatever concessions they wanted they could say look the american imperialist soldiers must leave the new middle east american capitalists must leave the middle east we think that muslims in america should have the right to be governed under sharia law if you don't want to lose a city then you then this is what you have to to what you have to do is you're going to have to capitulate to us they you can see how firm they are after all the bombing we've done and the the economic strangulation that we've begun they don't want to compromise they don't want a deal they don't want a diplomatic solution they want to win and they believe that is their that that that is what they are obligated to do by their religion yeah i think

[A]

it's it's a very interesting point because i get asked this a lot by oftentimes libertarians right who really don't want to engage in anything and they'll say well what evidence do you have that the iranian you know regime would use a nuclear weapon and and they're approaching it from the mindset of western values and western logic and and the way that we process information which is entirely different from a jihadist right or a fundamentalist and so that's i i take your point i guess at this stage and also not to disappear down a you know speculation rabbit hole but there have been some recent intel reports that said that khamenei the the new supreme leader whether he's alive whether he's you know out of the country whether he's in hiding inside iran but you know a couple of interesting intel reports saying that he actually is more inclined to pursue a nuclear weapon than his father was that's an interesting piece of intelligence and and then to your point about where they are right now in the negotiations i think that's a really important issue because from a western perspective give you know and you see this from the white house the white house is well we've obliterated their their military we've decimated them they have no cards yet and yet they're the they're being aggressive in this negotiation right and they're they're acting as if they've they've kind of got the upper hand and that they've won so far through this conflict and i think that's hard for people to understand or to process if they're sitting out here with western values saying well look of course we can defeat them

[C]

well a couple of things one is i think we can defeat them but we have to be determined what do they believe keep in mind that khalid sheikh mohammed the architect of the nine eleven attacks when he was in gitmo in guantanamo and it was being interrogated by the cia he was talking about why they would win he meant jihadis he meant muslim revolutionaries and he was a non state actor and his interrogators had said how can you believe that i mean you don't have nuclear weapons you don't even have a state you don't have he said we will win because we know you will always quit and we will not that's very important also ruala khomeini again the founder of the revolution back in seventy nine when he took our hot when he took our diplomats hostage for four hundred forty four days his comment was the americans cannot do a damn thing to us he kind of saw the americans run out doing a damn thing to us he eventually did release the hostages he was apparently afraid that reagan was going to do something very serious that would endanger the revolution endanger his power and that's important one other to your point about western it's not even just western i also the other place i've spent a lot of time years ago was in the soviet union i was an exchange student there i was a journalist there the russians are not exactly western not quite but i would say you could deter them and you could have something like mutually assured destruction because they were after all as communists they didn't believe in seventy two black eyed virgins in heaven they were evil but they were very rational and they had lost so many people in world war two and for many years after that you would see people in the streets men you know hobbling on crutches they didn't want to go through that again that was clear didn't make them good didn't make but they were different from the jihadis but there's also this year that way when they take into account and this week particularly fdd has a book coming out it just came out three hundred pages i'm going to show it to you it's called the axis of aggressors countering the cooperation of china russia iran and north korea and this was two years in the works and i wrote a column about this pisa theory three years ago with a guy by the name of waller newell who is an academic expert on tyrannies throughout history basically what we're saying is and this shows the unbelievable really extent to which beijing moscow tehran and pyongyang are cooperating militarily diplomatically economically and in many other ways so you have shahed drones going to moscow so that putin can use them against the ukrainians we believe we have missiles coming from china to tehran to use against american planes these would be shoulder fired missiles we have tunnels in lebanon built by for hezbollah built by north korean engineers we have probably another thirty thousand north korean soldiers are going to be deployed to russia to fight against the ukrainians those who survive not a lot but those who survive are combat hardened and in exchange for what the north koreans are giving putin is giving technology for submarines and satell and other things to kim jong un of that dynasty and he's getting more threatening towards south korea towards japan the american territory of guam we need to understand that there is this axis of aggressors they are very different ideologically but they have one in common that they want to diminish american power replace america as a world leader make america a marginal power a former power the way that britain britain and france and spain are former powers not to be taken seriously anymore they have they just they just don't project power in the world

[A]

yeah you're touching on i think a really critical point here is as this conflict continues which is it's not you know contained in a bubble in any way between the us and iran to what degree are you concerned at this stage because you know aside from the influence and the you know interdependence the relationships between china russia north korea and iran you're starting to see obviously jordan is is is dealing with more attacks from iran you have the houthis now you know disrupting at the iranians behest the baba van de strait you've got the the saudis participating in direct strikes on iranian proxies in iraq yeah vessels you know being hit in the mediterranean opinion it seems as if this thing is starting to expand around the region to what degree are you worried that that's the case it's happening it's going to get worse do you believe that there's some strategy in place at the white house to contain this well then

[C]

two points there one is yes it is expanding but there is a it's all coming from one place it's all coming from terrorism iran the houthis in yemen a desperately poor country have missiles and drones because iran supplies them the drone that hit the ship in in egypt was from tehran tehran is the root cause of all this if you can collapse cripple or to replace the the regime in tehran then all this goes away the houthis where would the houthis get their weapons how would they do this yes iran this regime in because i always say it that way because i think most iranians oppose this regime there's no question they've hit maybe a dozen of their neighbors so far and they're hitting neighbors who have attempted to be neutral part of what they're saying is you have to understand the americans we're going to push out and then we will be the ruler of the middle east of muslims around the world everywhere you will be our vassals you want to side with the americans it's at your risk risk be very careful about that that's what what they're attempting to say if america is strong then the saudis and the maraudis and others will say okay we want to be part of the american architecture it's an interesting thing that that the the regime has not in recent in a long time hit the israelis and you have to ask why not why wouldn't they want to hit the israelis i think because the israelis are sort of chomping at the bit to do something the american that that the eager to do and that is continue the decapitation exercise figure out exactly which i think the mossad often knows what bunkers these guys are in are they going home to their villas can we knock them out and get down to a level of the islamic revolutionary guard corps not iranian revolutionary guard corps islamic revolutionary guard corps get down to i don't know the event planning stage where you might find some agnostics and charlatans who do want to make some kind of a deal i think there's a debate the white house over how to proceed i think the best way is what people like general jack keane has been talking about admiral mark montgomery who works with me at the foundation for defense of democracies absolutely continue the strangulation economically that means a total blockade no oil gets sold whatsoever no money no salaries for the guys who get in the fast boats and come out to shoot at ship ships nothing whatsoever it takes a little time but you can strangle this regime economically they're not selling tv's and computers they're selling oil don't let them do that but then also yes continue to hit military headquarters but also banks the spokesman for the foreign ministry should be standing on rubble not on a nice carpet inside a beautiful building do communications media really cripple this regime regime to the point where it really has no power whatsoever that will give at least a chance to the people of iran to say okay let's get some some some baseball bats and go after these guys not easy but it it will take they'll take time but that's

[A]

possible too yeah a couple more pages of questions to throw you away cliff but we got to take a quick break so if you'll stay right where you are we'll be back with more from cliff may foundation for the defensive democracy democracies and just a moment so stick around welcome back to the pdb situation report joining me once again is cliff may he's the founder and president of the foundation for defensive democracies cliff thanks very much for sticking around we just finished the previous segment talking about strategy about what can be done how do we how do we reach a logical conclusion here here in this conflict the economic pressure is i think is key i think you're exactly correct on that what are you seeing over there at the foundation what are your sources saying about the the current state of the economy inside iran in terms of its impact on the population on the people people and how are they processing all this how are they dealing with it level of frustration whatever it may

[C]

be from what we can tell the economy is in dreadful shape hyperinflation very hard to put food on the table it's very hard on the general population if you are part of the islamist elite the islamic revolutionary guard corps the basiji their sort of black shirts on the streets you know hitting protesters in the head or killing them you probably have a little more but they're going to still run out so it's very hard i would say however our belief is that the vast majority of the population not everybody the vast majority says we need to get we need to go through this and we need to come out the other side this regime has oppressed us for forty seven years and we want something new and we're willing to suffer for for it but don't let up the pressure and this is an important point too that i've argued and i've made this case to advisers at the white house there are those particularly on the left who say war is what happens when diplomacy fails no clausewitz and others would tell you i think that diplomacy is war by other means so you can negotiate but that doesn't mean you let people other up the pressure while you do you say at any point you want this the bombing to stop you want the conflict to stop there are concessions you have to make that's what we're doing here we're not settling your grievances so you want diplomacy with adversaries and enemies to always be coercive which means you don't separate between diplomacy and hard power you combine the two george shultz talked about this very clearly he said unless the shadow of force hangs over the negotiating table you will capitulate frederick the great understood this he said that negotiations without arms is like music without instruments this is a basic thing but i've heard very prominent people people like jack john john kerry for example this is giving you one example who don't understand this basic fact it's one thing if you're neg negotiating with with with a friend over you know how much you're going to tax or tariff imports of of of wood that's not what this is about this is an enemy you're in a conflict your diplomacy must be coercive the i it's simply not true that these guys are looking for a diplomatic solution something fair for both sides that's not where that's not who these people are if you understand them it

[A]

is it is remarkable that after all this time after all these years and all the evidence as to how the regime negotiates and their ability you know they're really quite on one level they're really quite sophisticated in understanding how to how to work the american mindset and how to game this this process and you do but you and john kerry was a good example right he was he he played into that right i mean i don't don't want to get political but just from a pragmatic or operational perspective right that mindset you know is you're basically a useful idiot for the iranian regime and because you're you're buying into this idea and maybe it's because we tend to mirror our values and our the way that we think and process information we tend to mirror them on other cultures that just doesn't work and hasn't worked and there's no evidence that they are changing their structure rights what do you where do you stand on on the situation with mostaba the new supreme leader have you seen anything that that pushes you in one direction or the other as to is he alive is he in the country is he out of the country is he actually making decisions if he's alive or is there a different type of leadership structure now as a result of

[C]

this conflict we don't really have sufficient evidence to know i would say it's unlikely he is out of the country country how badly wounded he is i don't know i think it's likely but we don't really know that he is alive that he's probably talking a lot with general ahmed bahidi who's the head of the irgc the islamic gulshagga guard corps but others he's probably if he's that badly wounded he's probably angry his father was killed he's probably angry angry of course his father was supplying ieds to kill americans in iraq his father was sending assassins into america more successfully in many cases to europe his father had dispatched qasem soleimani who president trump also correctly decided to eliminate since he was the leading probably leading terrorist master in the entire world but nonetheless that doesn't mean he's not pretty angry about what's happened and more than that we don't really know how how you know is he awake all day is he how rational is he we just don't know he would never have this job if if his father hadn't been killed or i don't think he would have the part of the the theology is you're not supposed to have dynasties you're supposed to have it's supposed to supposed to be the the those who best understand sharia law those who best understand the quran and the hadith the sayings of muhammad that's who's supposed to be in charge that's who is supposed to guide the nation but the way it worked out they just they put the kid in charge he's not he's not a he was not known as a great scholar of islam you think he

[A]

was the first do you think he was put in charge because the irgc can manipulate him i think it was

[C]

put in charge because it was convenient and you didn't want to have a big fight over who would take over and yes it's also possible that the irgc and particularly general vahidi thought he and i sit down together i'll get the authority to do what i want to do i think that's a credible assessment

[A]

so you mentioned earlier previous sessions segment about the gulf allies about our partners in the region and the attacks they've been dealing with from the iranian regime and i mean it's interesting that the saudis recently participated directly in strikes on iranian proxies in in iraq which i i think is a very interesting development there's been a sort of this narrative coming out i think of the white house that well we're in this why are we in this on our own why aren't our partners joining us why how come we have to do all the work and i would i would push back a little bit on that i think our the gulf allies have been working on our behalf off the radar screen they don't necessarily want to publicize it for their own obvious reasons out there but do you suspect that where this is going is that we will get continued more involvement direct involvement from the our regional partners out there partners allies however you want to refer to them the gulf states yeah

[C]

yeah absolutely look a part of the problem is that they haven't prepared for this properly they don't have a lot of capabilities the saudis have a they buy a lot of weapons but they don't necessarily you know train pilots how to use that use and fly those planes properly the saudis if you remember about ten years ago they were fighting the houthis and the international community as we like to call it and not least in the united states got very angry oh you're bombing indiscriminately it's a humanitarian crisis you must stop and they were essentially called off from fighting the houthis and so the houthis rose again and this is an important point just what i want to make if the islamic republic of iran gets to control the strait of hormuz no reason why the houthis can't control the bab balmandeb which is another hugely important choke point from the red sea and the suez canal and then you know the malaysians may want the strait of malamalaka and of course the chinese communist party will want the taiwan strait i mean this is a you know and that's that's the end of fundamental international law nothing more fundamental than freedom of navigation which goes back hundreds of years to freedom of the seas and the global commons so all of that is true but the houthis again if they're cut off from their pay patron then that's the end of them just as hezbollah if they're cut off from their patron although hezbollah is much weakened now because the israelis are still in the process of weakening them hamas is less than it was you have shia militias that obey tehran in iraq which has kept iraq from being as independent as it should be because the leaders there are afraid of these shia military militias the islamic republic of iran is very much an imperialist state it's imperialist islam but again as i said to you it's the supreme leader who is meant to control or guide or lead or rule over all muslims sunni and shia as well the saudis understand that very well saudis are sunnis the saudis are arabs the islamic republic of iran is shia and predominantly persistent persian their view of the saudi royal family is that they're interlopers usurpers how dare they be in control of the holy cities of mecca and medina they do understand that that's a threat so what we could see and what we'd like to see is a new is look as a regime change in iran if not a severely crippled regime with an architecture of arab states states the united states and israel the most militarily capable state in the middle east keeping this crippled regime in a weakened state you want your enemies to be weakened you don't want to do what we have done for forty seven years allow the regime in iran as it chanced death to america every friday night to continue to get closer and closer to having nuclear weapons they were probably within weeks of it before the twelve day war they're now at least a couple of years away we believe and a shield of missiles and drones that would put them in what marco rubio has called a zone of immunity by the way just another interesting fact is we were insufficiently prepared for what drones and unmanned weaponry means in modern day warfare we catch up considering we've

[A]

had a four year case study cliff in ukraine to understand exactly so you know that's important important

[C]

and they wanted to teach us and we didn't we said we don't need to learn from you for a long time now we've we changed our tune now though because they're the more most advanced in drone encounter drone warfare right now what they've been done what they've done is really really remarkable do you think it's a

[A]

do you think it's it's a mistake an error in judgment strategic messaging from problem that maybe the white house should have said the objective here is the regime's got to go because nothing will change unless the regime is gone but i know nobody in washington dc likes to say the words regime change but it strikes me as they keep dancing around from that and saying well it's not that that's not our objective we're just trying to to you know degrade their missile capabilities we're just trying to make them not attack their neighbors we're just you know at some point you know early on in this do you think we'd be staring at a different conflict situation if they had just come out and said honestly for the stability of the region and the world honestly for the the benefit of the iranian people this regime has to go well

[C]

i think it's putting is giving yourself a very high bar i think we've been clear i think the president has been clear that he would like to see regime to change but that's not his goal because if he doesn't reach it all his enemies will say you see you failed i think regime crippling should be the goal because that is absolutely doable yes another problem we've had something we didn't understand we've had two we've made too few interceptors right but one of the things that should be clear is you don't need an interceptor to stop a missile that hasn't been launched so you want to hit the missiles before they are launched now we also hear something else we didn't understand again the north koreans help with these tunnels so a lot of their missiles have been stored in what they call missile cities these are subterranean fortresses we hit these missile cities from above and the missiles are just fine underneath so what do we do we hit the entrance entrance that's good and then people say yeah but they clear the entrances yes they do but that's a couple of guys and a couple bulldozers we can hit them too and over and over again and we can cheap use cheap munitions to keep these missile cities closed as long as we have total dominance of the skies the israelis in the twelve day war established dominance in the skies which is why president trump knew that the b two stealth bombers would face no problem not that they aren't good and couldn't handle it anyway would face no problem problem being able to drop their massive ordinance penetrators on fordo natanz and isfahan so we keep control of the skies and keep bombing the missiles where they are with cheap munitions so we don't need to use interceptors in the meantime we build up our interceptors because we do have a problem our defense industrial base is not where it should be for wars that last longer than a few weeks and wars if a war with this regime is going to last a few weeks think how long a war over taiwan could last well cliff i want to

[A]

push back on on this a little bit i mean i think we we've dropped a lot of munitions right so far in this conflict and you know early days you know again you can argue about the messaging i think the messaging is always a little bit haphazard you know coming out of the white house you know talking about decimating we've destroyed they have no cards that they can't do it they're functionally you know un able to that okay all of that setting aside clearly we haven't because we've been striking hundreds and hundreds of target packages you know in this kind of second phase of however you want to describe this so we didn't decimate anything in the in the first go around we certainly degraded right we definitely degrade it right but i'm just saying maybe parse the words a little bit more carefully but here's the thing to your point about you can't change the regime because that's setting a high bar are if you're saying that you want to cripple the regime you're still you still have the regime and to your earlier point about you're dealing with jihadists who aren't going to give up you know the frustrating part here is we're basically kicking the can down the road if we come up with an agreement a ceasefire a negotiated settlement we're kicking the can down the road for yet another administration and i think you know there's a general feeling feeling that given the fact that previous administrations since seventy nine never dealt with this problem in this same fashion that future generation future administrations probably won't either i think we've got an outlier here with with the current administration so i just i guess there's not a question necessarily other than just saying i i worry that what we're doing is we're just getting to a point where we think okay that's good enough we've we've delayed some of this let somebody else do deal with it down the road no i i

[C]

i i do agree with you but let me just point out what does decimate mean it means the same as degrade so if we say we have

[A]

knocked out i think when they hear that and i think the white house was intending that i think they were implying that they have no capabilities left

[C]

and that's wrong because that's not what decimate means it's not what degrade means and if these if the white house says let's say probably properly we have destroyed seventy percent of their ballistic missiles that means thirty percent remain if they started with ten thousand well they still have three thousand what if they start with one hundred thousand i think for sure we misunderstood how many missiles they had built up and how quickly they're building up and drones even more so because drones you can make so cheaply and so plentifully so that we didn't understand so when i say triple i think that means way more than degrade way more than decimate way more than saying we got seventy percent good enough for government work no it can't be that it's got to go way beyond that and if at a certain point you want to get to an agreement that agreement has to be clear this regime does not control an international waterway this regime does not have any ability to support its proxies in other parts of the world such as the houthis and this regime cannot project power at all if you get to that point i do think you will end up with regime change but it will take a few years if you want to look historically you know after the fall of the ottoman empire it took a few years before the turkish republic emerged it was after the it took a few years after the fall of the russian empire for the bolsheviks to emerge on top and that's the other point to to make very often when you have regime change i'm sorry to say it ends up more like the french revolution than the american revolution why because the guys most willing to kill their opponents usually end up on top the guys who say what i want is a free nation in which we have democracy those guys get their heads taken off and i mean that quite literally

[A]

yeah now it's it's a very good point clip this well listen i've got i've got let's see one two i've got three more pages of questions to throw your way but we unfortunately are out of time which means you have to come back when we call you right you can't say no happy to

[C]

do so always good to talk to

[A]

you thank you thank you so much cliff cliff may of the foundation for defensive democracies man yeah there's it's a lot to unpack all right well that is all the time we have for this week's pdb situation report if you have any questions or comments please reach out reach out to me at pdb at the first tv dot com you know what i'm about to say the highlight of every week is when the mailman that's carl he drops off his sack of cards and faxes and emails and comments and telegrams with your questions and then we take some of those and we put them into an episode that by now you should know we call ask me anything we got another one of those making its way to the launch pad here shortly really so keep your cards and letters coming right and to listen to the podcast ad free and you say to yourself really i could do that well yes you could just become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting pdb premium dot com i'm mike baker and until next time you know the drill stay informed stay safe stay cool

[C]

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[B]

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