Loading summary

Transcript49 lines

[00:00]
A
I would say as far as the public is concerned, and this is like me speaking not just as a journalist, but as a mom, that like the way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way.
[00:20]
B
Andy Jacobson, it's a pleasure to speak with you.
[00:23]
A
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:24]
B
The new book, Biological A Scenario. It's built from interviews with former defense secretary, CIA, weapons of mass destruction officers, biodefense scientists, and it imagines a lab accident that becomes a global catastrophe in under a week. We should establish for our audience. What's your background? How did this become the focus of your work?
[00:50]
A
I'm a national security reporter who writes about war and weapons, national security and government secrets. The this is not my first rodeo. This is my eighth book and the first six were written in the past tense. I cover history in essence. And with the previous book, Nuclear War A Scenario, I moved into a future hypothetical situation modeled after Pentagon war gaming. And that's what you also have in Biological War Scenario.
[01:24]
B
And why did biological war deserve the same treatment in your view?
[01:29]
A
When I was working on nuclear, you know, it was meant to be a solo project. And so many of those high ranking presidential advisors that I was speaking with in discussing nuclear, after we were finished, would kind of say, you should look at bio next with a shark in the water feeling to it. That was deeply unnerving. And I did look into bio and what I found, maybe unnerving is a soft word because it is really shocking, but spoiler alert. Because the first spoiler alert, of course, of the book, and I say this in the author's note in the front, it ends in dystopia, the scenario. But as I write in the end of the book, in the acknowledgment, the point is not panic. The point is pressure, which we can of course get into.
[02:22]
B
Yeah. Well, let's start with the germ at the center of this book. It's a form of plague and it's engineered by Soviet scientists during the Cold War. And the design is such that if you take the antibiotic, that should save your life. That is what actually kills you. Explain how that, how that works.
[02:39]
A
Well, thank you for pointing out that it's tied to the Soviet bioweapons engineers of the Cold War. Because my book is sold in the nonfiction department, I write about science fact, even though it reads like science fiction. And so I want readers to always feel like they are embedded in truth. And there was this horrific bioweapon created by The Soviets during the Cold War. And this is 40 years ago, before genetic engineering, that what they called a super plague weapon. And of course, many people know about plague, bubonic plague. This is a form that goes in the lungs called pneumonic plague. And as you mentioned, it is what is called a chimera pathogen. Chimera, that Greek mythological idea of a beast of, you know, multiple parts. The head of a lion, the body of a serpent. Two organisms at once. The chimera is a genetically modified pathogen so that it has a booby trap effect. So what you think is going to cure you will kill you in an even more horrific way.
[03:59]
B
This book, as you mentioned, it's a work of nonfiction, and you call it a scenario, not a novel. What in these pages is documented fact? And where did you have to make assumptions in order to build the story?
[04:13]
A
So this book, like all my books, has a very large set of notes in the back. So whenever readers are confronted with that exact question, you know, wait a minute, this seems too far fetched. Like the chimera, they can go to the notes and see the actual sourcing. Whether it was an interview with a national security official, a presidential advisor, a secretary of defense, whether it was a declassified document, whether it was an interview with a Soviet defector scientist himself. I also quote people in the book in real time to give that narrative flow to readers of like, oh, you know, this is actually has this could happen.
[04:59]
B
Biological weapons. They've been illegal under international treaties since 1972. Every major power signed it. And yet countries have still moved forward with their, with their programs, some of them.
[05:13]
A
I mean, you've hit upon like a really interesting paradox and also something that most people don't know. One of the things I try to do in my books is make them very readable and at the same time give you some information that is kind of shocking. Like the fact that biological weapons are illegal, unlike nuclear weapons, which are legal. So try and wrap your head around that. That's a logger podcast. But you know, the countries that have nuclear weapons have deemed them legal. No one else can have them. Okay, but biological weapons, you're absolutely right. There was a convention and a treaty in 1972 that made biological weapons illegal. They're called odious to the conscience of mankind. That's how malevolent biological weapons are. It's a living weapon. It can self replicate. I mean, the whole concept is horrifying. There's something about this idea of you being the delivery vehicle of the weapon, you or I, because An airborne pathogen means our lungs are transmitting the weapon. I mean, that's a lot to think about. Everybody signed the treaty, but the Soviet Union kind of crossed its fingers behind its back and began building up this massive illegal biological weapons program, which, by the way, neither the CIA nor the Pentagon had any idea about until a single Soviet defector blew the lid open when he went to British intelligence.
[06:50]
B
Well, tell me more about that. How could that have been the case that this country's government would not have known?
[06:56]
A
I mean, you know, talk about having. Okay, well, you could say it's the ostrich with its head in the sand, like you have to. But then you get into that problem of you're being paranoid and not trusting people. So this again is something that's really worthy of thinking about because paranoia is a theme in the book. And as I say, paranoia will destroy you. Right. So on the one hand, you have these treaties, you must take a position of trusting others, but you must also be able to have transparency that you can look in their labs. And that's where what I call the hooky do, you know, the carve out took place. So there's the carve out in the treaty that you can do research, dangerous pathogen research for purposes of medical countermeasures. And so that's where we now realize people disguise their programs as good old research.
[07:54]
B
And you write about that in the book. The ways in which the Russians disguised what they were doing, their labs, what did that look like?
[08:01]
A
Well, they just looked like, you know, health facilities. They looked like they were working on medical countermeasures. I mean, I choose the plague pathogen in the book for two reasons. One, because I think it's great that people recognize that it's not just viruses that are deadly. Bacteria are also deadly. That's pathogens, both of them. You call them together, pathogens. Many people think, oh well, antibiotics will kill any bacterial infection, which used to be true, but now with genetic modifications, you can very easily override that. That's a whole new set of nightmares.
[08:42]
B
You also describe biology as a dual use technology. The same research that produces a cure can provide a weapon in. And often it's the same scientist doing the work in the very same lab. Have governments really caught up to that and how that works and the threats posed by that sort of work?
[09:03]
A
I mean, look, it's an area again that is going to ultimately fall on trust, or rather, maybe I'll quote Reagan here, trust, then verify. Because you have to be able to look at someone's research to really get A sense of what it is they are doing and how dangerous it could ultimately be. One of the original sources that I have in the book are the hand typed journals of Russia's original super plague sort of bioweapons engineer, a guy named Igor Domoradsky. And he was also the leading researcher on developing a plague vaccine for the Soviet Union. And so, you know, if you went and spoke to him during the Cold War, he was hailed, this incredible scientist who was going to get rid of the scourge of plague outbreaks in Russia. But at the same time he was working on bioweapons. How do you really know what is a. What is going on in the program? It has to start with communication, transparency, and building trust, not just assuming trust.
[10:18]
B
Everybody watching this and listening to this certainly lived through Covid. What's the single biggest lesson from that pandemic that you think governments have not yet fully absorbed?
[10:30]
A
I think there are two lessons, and I think it's shared responsibility between the government and the people. Right. The first thing is that despite billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on biodefense in this century, we were completely caught off guard and ill prepared. So you got to ask, where's all that money going? And is it being spent in the right direction? And then the second part of it is that I think that it must be known how uncertain biology is, how much uncertainty is involved. I mean, you and I have totally different physiologies, immune systems. How a pathogen is gonna affect you is gonna be different from me. That's all. That idea of like public health officials being able to admit they're uncertain about things and also admit when they make mistakes. Because ultimately the biggest lesson is that the fracturing of trust among the people about what happened in Covid, why things happened the way they happened. I mean, it has set us up for a worse nightmare. It could be something to really learn from.
[11:50]
B
And in many ways, an engineered outbreak could be. Would be more destabilizing than what we
[11:57]
A
saw during COVID Yeah, I mean, it has been said that an engineered pathogen a. A catastrophic biological incident, accident or attack could be man's last invention.
[12:16]
B
Were there any positives that you think came from the COVID response?
[12:20]
A
I thought you were going to say, about writing the book, any positive? Well, absolutely, because I think. I'm not sure I could have written this book if Covid hadn't happened without people saying, that's a bridge too far, Annie. You know, nuclear. We know about our nuclear arsenals. We have all this science that Tells you horrific things that happen when bombs go off. But let's be clear, you know, a pandemic isn't really going to happen. It hasn't happened since the influenza epidemic of 1918. That was a zillion years ago. Well, you can't say that anymore. And so we know what you can happen. We know how the whole world can shut down, how all of us can be impacted. So that to my eyes, should be a cautionary tale, but also a positive one because, you know, we're all, we're all impacted the same way. At the end of the day, fast
[13:15]
B
forward to the current moment. There is this question. If our government can't track a parasite in the lettuce supply with a two month head start, what happens when the pathogen is engineered and someone is deliberately hiding the source of it?
[13:31]
A
I mean, that is a rhetorically good question. And I think that when I see the kind of lettuce outbreak or even the hantavirus outbreak in May overseas, when you look at Ebola in West Africa right now, I think that the information, good information coming out of those outbreaks or epidemics, you can start to realize some, something must be done. The system isn't working the way it should and people can really kind of demand change because there is so much money involved. You know, the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS is in charge of a biological incident or outbreak. CDC is below hhs. Most of your viewers, most of the people in the world don't know what HHS is, and yet it has a budget twice that of the Defense Department, twice. So that's a lot of money. Yes, it involves Medicare and Medicaid, but there's still a problem with that. We don't know. We, the royal, we don't know the source of the lettuce outbreak.
[14:44]
B
You've spent years interviewing former defense secretaries, senior administration officials, experts. When you were, as you said, when you were writing the book about the nuclear threat, they would describe the biological threat as shark in the water. What were they most afraid of?
[15:01]
A
Well, you certainly get that sense in the book, I think, because I give it to you in no uncertain detail. But the big general idea is echoed in a Defense Department document I found. It's called a threat spectrum and this is an unclassified document. But it looks at weapons of mass destruction on a scale. And of course, nuclear weapons are at the far end of the scale as the most destructive. No one would argue that. But biological weapons are a very close second. And even more disconcerting, they are, quote the greatest overall threat. And that is because the barrier for entry is so incredibly low. You need fissile material to make a nuclear weapon. You need a delivery system like an icbm. We know now particularly with AI enabled bio, you know, the barrier for entry is so low, high ranking officials tell me a kid in a basement with very. A bad actor with a nefarious mind in a basement with very little knowledge of biology can make a biological weapon.
[16:14]
B
Wow. And the other thing that struck me is the conclusion in your book that there is no real homeland defense against a large scale biological attack. It's only mitigation after the fact.
[16:27]
A
That's right. And that's a quote from retired Colonel Tom Erhard who used to run Pentagon, used to run biological war scenarios, nuclear war scenarios at a catastrophic level at the Pentagon. And he said to me the. Exactly that. But not only that, he said the only thing you can do is mitigate extermination. And when you realize that the Pentagon is thinking of bio as a near extinction level event, and so is FEMA and so is hhs, and then you add into the mix that it doesn't even need to be a biological attack. It can be an accident, which is why I chose a lab leak. Then you're going, okay, something's really got to be done here. We need to put eyes on this issue and make sure that it's a scenario. It's not something that gets written in the past tense.
[17:18]
B
You mentioned AI, and one of the interviewees in your book is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Why was it important to bring someone from that world into your reporting?
[17:29]
A
Well, that's a great question. And I specifically wanted to leave AI enabled bio threats out of the book because not enough is known by myself or by sources. And there's not a lot of examples of that. Right. So that's still things theoretical at this point. And I wanted to show just how dangerous pathogens that mother Nature makes and that could be tweaked would be. Sam Altman came into the book because there's a component of outbreak where I take readers through. It's kind of like the second act of the book where the pathogen is now in the United States and HHS is working with its Defense Department partners to try and get medical countermeasures, vaccines, antibiotics out to the people. This is like day four and day five. Okay. And those medical countermeasures are a classified program called the Strategic National Stockpile. The name is unclassified, which is why I can write about it and Why? I could learn a little bit about it, but the Strategic National Stockpile is located throughout the United States in underground bunkers, completely secret for a reason. They don't want it attacked. Well, I, as an experiment, wanted to see if I could make ChatGPT tell me where the Strategic National Stockpile closest to Los Angeles, where I live, was located. And it took a little bit of doing, and I have a lot of nomenclature and specific words as a journalist that I could really force ChatGPT up to the edge. And lo and behold, I found out where it was located, and that is really bad news. And I told colleagues who knew Sam Altman, and they said, sam would like to talk to you about that. And when I spoke to him about it, he asked me a number of questions. And then that component of ChatGPT was changed so you can no longer find that information out. But it's a cautionary tale.
[19:41]
B
And the reason it surfaced was because a government employee buried the address on, I think it was the 45th page of an earthquake plan. And you, knowing what to do and knowing what search terms to enter, were able to yield that information from ChatGPT.
[19:57]
A
It's absolutely right. And that's when you think about the trillions and trillions and trillions of bits of information that are available to a large language model in seconds. And you think about the kind of what we all now know are like manipulative commands you can give chat GPT or any of the other models to get around that. That's when you're really realizing that sort of government has a lot more work to do with working with the CEOs of these AI companies, because they don't know clearly. I believe I was telling Sam Altman something that he had no idea about. You can't know what you don't know.
[20:37]
B
Yeah, there is this idea too, that were this to happen, God forbid, no one's coming to save us. So what can we do to be prepared? Apart from stockpiling penicillin and rubbing alcohol and peroxide in our cabinets, what can the average person do to prepare for. For something like this?
[20:55]
A
You've hit upon like an Interesting catch 22 where no one's coming from us, and what do we do? And do we panic? In all the Defense Department war gaming, I came across fear of infection. That actual quote is repeated continually. Fear of infection will lead to. And what it always leads to is anarchy and insurrection. And all of the Pentagon war games know that or assume that. And so that is where there are plans in place if we have time to talk about that are shocking. But on the fear of infection point, I would say as far as the public is concerned, and this is like me speaking not just as a journalist, but as a mom, that, like, the way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way. I'll just give you an anecdote of information which is an airborne pathogen, right? Like, we all lived through Covid. Covid was airborne. And yet, you know, the lettuce outbreak is not airborne. I mean, it's a completely different animal. When you're talking about Hantavirus, for example, it's not airborne, which is why it didn't turn into an epidemic or a pandemic. And that's just tiny example of basic information that can be known by moms and dads across America and all of us that can keep this idea of fear of infection spiraling out of control,
[22:28]
B
fear and the domino effect of destabilization and what that would do ultimately to our democracy to play that out. It's just one thing after another.
[22:40]
A
All of the Pentagon war games, by the way, which are fascinating. And anyone that's interested in this can also look up public health officials, do what's called pandemic planning. And these are unclassified. And they, you know. But interestingly, when I was reporting this, I would find many of these scenarios would take you right up to about what's day six for me in this, you know, book where anarchy and insurrection takes over and then the game ends. They don't tell you what happens. And so. But I found out they know what happens. And that is also disconcerting. Like, let the people know that anarchy and insurrection happens and then it gets even worse so that we can sort of reverse engineer our potential panic to a little bit. You know, let's all stay calm and try and understand what's going on before anarchy takes hold.
[23:36]
B
It's that the tabletop exercises and. And no one's thinking that far or they are thinking that far, and they're just not telling us the latter.
[23:45]
A
I mean, I interviewed a lot of the people who work on this, and it's like, you know, there's kind of like a. Mm. You know, I say that. That you just said to me, and it's like, mm, mm. Which is that they're not in a position where they wanna write about the devolution plan, which, by the way, is classified. The name's not classified. And I had Obama's FEMA director, who Craig Fugate, Tell me precisely what happens after anarchy and insurrection that our public officials have not in the past written about this, tabletopped it out for us to know about, I think is an oversight. Because if they know it's going to happen, we should all know it's going to happen. Because why have that scenario on the table if there's not some work done to prevent it from ever happening?
[24:35]
B
Is the modern day threat posed just by Russia? What's the threat matrix when you think about China and Iran and North Korea?
[24:45]
A
Well, the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty is in State Department monographs being violated by Russia and North Korea in no uncertain terms. They say that that's not just this administration's State Department report, that's the previous one. And both of those reports also say China and Iran have programs of concern, which I think is a euphemism for they also have biological weapons programs. And so, you know, where is the diplomacy in all of this? Where is the transparency? That's what I think people have to ask for or rather demand.
[25:29]
B
In your acknowledgments, you say sources described scenarios that were worse than the ones you published. Can you say what you chose not to write?
[25:37]
A
I mentioned it in the acknowledgments. I mean, I did an interview with David Relman, who's a Stanford professor and he's also a presidential advisor for multiple administrations. And he told me about a program or rather sort of a biological, synthetic biological pathogen called, called Mirror Life. And I write about it a little bit in the end, and you know, that isn't a near extinction level event, in his words. That's an extinction level event that kills every human on Earth and that has also been written about publicly. Relman told me that there was some debate about whether or not they should even admit that this is a possibility, kind of like the scenario planning. And he felt very strongly that the public needs to know. And I'm all on the side of the information is king because, you know, I no longer believe what we don't know can't hurt us. That is not true.
[26:35]
B
How, how has your reporting changed the way you move through the world?
[26:40]
A
Anybody who knows me personally knows I'm an inherent optimist. You know, I do not. My books present a dystopian scenario, but to me they're always a cautionary tale. What to avoid? I just don't. Every reporter has areas they don't want to go. I have some. I can't write or even think about kids being hurt, for example. But because I write about war and weapons. Because I've interviewed so many individuals who have been involved in wars and weapons making, I feel like it's the proper lane for me to move forward through, which is a scenario that you never want to have happen.
[27:26]
B
The book is phenomenal, Biological A scenario. Annie Jacobson, a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.
[27:32]
A
Thank you so much for having me.

Summary6 min read

Settle In with PBS News

Episode: "Is America prepared for biological war?"

Guest: Annie Jacobson
Date: August 4, 2026
Host: PBS News

Episode Overview

In this episode, PBS News hosts an in-depth conversation with Annie Jacobson, acclaimed national security reporter and author of the new nonfiction scenario, Biological: A Scenario. The discussion explores whether America—and the world—is prepared for biological warfare, diving into historical precedents, the contemporary threat matrix, lessons from COVID-19, government transparency, the dual-use nature of biology, the rise of AI-enabled biological threats, and what individuals and societies can do to mitigate panic and catastrophe.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Knowledge as the Antidote to Panic

Opening Perspective:
- Annie Jacobson underlines the importance of public knowledge in preventing fear:
  
  "The way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way." — Annie Jacobson (00:00)

2. About the Book: 'Biological: A Scenario'

Book’s Approach:
- Built on interviews with ex-defense leaders, CIA officials, WMD experts, and biodefense scientists.
- Employs a Pentagon-style hypothetical scenario modeled after real war gaming (00:49–01:23).
Why Focus on Biological War:
- While writing about nuclear threats, high-ranking advisors insisted biological threats are a next-level concern:
  
  “After we were finished, [they] would kind of say, you should look at bio next—with a shark in the water feeling. That was deeply unnerving.” (01:29)
- The scenario ends in dystopia, but the point is “not panic, the point is pressure.” (01:58)

3. The Chimera Pathogen—Fact, Not Fiction

Historical Roots:
- Describes real Soviet-era bioweapons programs, making clear the scenario is grounded in documented science (02:39).
- The chosen pathogen is a form of engineered pneumonic plague, a ‘chimera’ that is specifically lethal when treated with the usual antibiotics—a real idea, not speculative fiction (02:39–03:58).
Documentation:
- Jacobson emphasizes the thorough sourcing in the book, referencing interviews, declassified documents, and Soviet defector testimonies (04:13–04:59).

4. Treaties, Paradoxes, and the Reality of Bioweapons

International Law & Hypocrisy:
- Biological weapons are illegal under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention—unlike nuclear weapons, which are legal for certain powers (05:13).
- The Soviet Union covertly built a massive illegal program under the guise of defensive research, undetected until a defector came forward (05:13–06:50).

5. Dual-Use Dilemma

Science for Good…or Harm:
- The same facilities and researchers can develop both vaccines and weapons (09:03).
- Cites Igor Domoradsky—both plague vaccine developer and bioweapons engineer—as a symbol of this duality:
  
  “[He] was hailed, this incredible scientist...but at the same time he was working on bioweapons.” (09:03)

6. Lessons from COVID-19

What Wasn’t Learned:
- Despite billions spent, the U.S. was “completely caught off guard and ill-prepared.”
- The greater uncertainty and variability inherent to biology challenge public trust and response, especially without officials’ openness about unknowns and mistakes (10:30).
Breakdown of Trust:
- Fractured trust is America’s biggest liability going forward:
  
  “The fracturing of trust among the people about what happened in Covid... has set us up for a worse nightmare.” (11:16)
COVID as a Cautionary Tale:
- Now people can no longer claim pandemics as implausible, which should inform preparedness:
  
  “You can't say that anymore. And so we know what can happen. We know how the whole world can shut down.” (12:19)

7. Challenges in Tracking and Responding to Outbreaks

Systemic Weaknesses:
- Jacobson points out the limitations of tracing sources, even in relatively minor outbreaks like that of lettuce-borne parasites (13:31–14:44).
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with a budget twice that of the Defense Department, is in charge, but the system is still opaque and insufficiently responsive.

8. Why Biological Threats are ‘the Greatest Overall Threat’

Expert Fears:
- Defense officials see bioweapons as second only to nuclear, but more accessible, especially with AI:
  
  “...the barrier for entry is so incredibly low. ...high ranking officials tell me a kid in a basement... can make a biological weapon.” (15:01)
Lack of Real Defense:
- Homeland defense “doesn't exist”—only mitigation after the fact is possible:
  
  “The only thing you can do is mitigate extermination.” (16:26, citing Col. Tom Erhard)

9. AI and the New Landscape of Risk

AI Risks:
- Jacobson recounts discovering that ChatGPT could reveal the location of the Strategic National Stockpile by probing public documents—an unintentional security flaw that was only fixed after she spoke to Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI). (17:29–19:57)
  
  “I found out where it was located, and that is really bad news.” (18:41)
- This underscores the unforeseen vulnerabilities created by AI’s access to vast, uncurated public data.

10. Advice for Individuals: Preparation and Mindset

Fear vs. Knowledge:
- Jacobson repeatedly asserts that knowledge counteracts panic:
  
  “The way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge.” (20:54)
Actionable Tips:
- Understanding pathogen basics (airborne vs. non-airborne, e.g., COVID vs. lettuce outbreaks or Hantavirus) can help avoid unnecessary panic (21:36).
- Defense Department war games show fear of infection leads to anarchy and insurrection—knowledge is the remedy.

11. Government Plans and Transparency

The ‘Devolution Plan’:
- Many tabletop exercises end at the onset of anarchy and insurrection—what comes after is classified (23:45–24:35).
- Former FEMA Director Craig Fugate: officials have mapped out “devolution”—how government continues post-anarchy—but won’t discuss it publicly, a stance Jacobson critiques as dangerous.

12. Global Threat Matrix

Beyond Russia:
- Russia and North Korea are named State Department-confirmed treaty violators. China and Iran have “programs of concern,” likely bioweapons programs (24:44).
- Jacobson calls for heightened diplomacy and greater transparency.

13. Unwritten Scenarios & Extinction-Level Risks

What Wasn’t Published:
- Stanford professor David Relman told Jacobson about “Mirror Life,” a synthetic pathogen capable of eradicating humanity—an extinction-level, not just near-extinction, scenario (25:36).
- Jacobson:
  
  “I no longer believe what we don’t know can’t hurt us. That is not true.” (26:19)

14. Jacobson’s Personal Outlook

Despite the bleak scenarios, Jacobson identifies as an optimist:

“My books present a dystopian scenario, but to me they’re always a cautionary tale. What to avoid.” (26:40)

Notable Quotes

Annie Jacobson (00:00):

"The way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way."
On bioweapons’ legality (05:13):

"Biological weapons are illegal, unlike nuclear weapons, which are legal. So try and wrap your head around that."
Regarding COVID-19’s lessons (10:30):

"Despite billions and billions...spent on biodefense...we were completely caught off guard and ill-prepared."
On the accessibility of bioweapons (15:01):

"A kid in a basement with...very little knowledge of biology can make a biological weapon."
On AI vulnerabilities (18:41):

"I found out where it was located, and that is really bad news."
On extinction-level scenarios (26:19):

"I no longer believe what we don’t know can’t hurt us. That is not true."

Timestamps for Important Segments

00:00 — Opening remarks on knowledge v. panic
01:23 — Why write about biological, not just nuclear, war
02:39–03:58 — The Soviet chimera pathogen and its real science
05:13–06:50 — Bioweapons legality; Soviet cheating
09:03 — Dual-use threat: Vaccine researcher as bioweapon engineer
10:30–11:16 — COVID-19: Unlearned lessons, public trust's collapse
13:31–14:44 — System failures in outbreak response (lettuce, Ebola)
15:01–16:14 — Defense Department threat spectrum: Bio as greatest risk
17:29–19:57 — AI’s role and ChatGPT anecdote
20:54–21:36 — Knowledge as key to resilience and calm
23:45–24:35 — Tabletop war games, devolution plan secrecy
24:44–25:28 — Contemporary threat actors: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea
25:36–26:19 — 'Mirror Life' and extinction-level event scenario

Conclusion

This episode underscores that America, and the world, face immense, complex risks from biological weapons and engineered pathogens—risks that are made worse by lack of transparency, weak preparedness, and new vulnerabilities like AI. Jacobson’s central message is that neither panic nor ignorance will protect us; instead, broad public knowledge and demands for government accountability and true preparedness are society’s best defense.

Loading summary

Transcript49 lines

[00:00]
A
I would say as far as the public is concerned, and this is like me speaking not just as a journalist, but as a mom, that like the way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way.
[00:20]
B
Andy Jacobson, it's a pleasure to speak with you.
[00:23]
A
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:24]
B
The new book, Biological A Scenario. It's built from interviews with former defense secretary, CIA, weapons of mass destruction officers, biodefense scientists, and it imagines a lab accident that becomes a global catastrophe in under a week. We should establish for our audience. What's your background? How did this become the focus of your work?
[00:50]
A
I'm a national security reporter who writes about war and weapons, national security and government secrets. The this is not my first rodeo. This is my eighth book and the first six were written in the past tense. I cover history in essence. And with the previous book, Nuclear War A Scenario, I moved into a future hypothetical situation modeled after Pentagon war gaming. And that's what you also have in Biological War Scenario.
[01:24]
B
And why did biological war deserve the same treatment in your view?
[01:29]
A
When I was working on nuclear, you know, it was meant to be a solo project. And so many of those high ranking presidential advisors that I was speaking with in discussing nuclear, after we were finished, would kind of say, you should look at bio next with a shark in the water feeling to it. That was deeply unnerving. And I did look into bio and what I found, maybe unnerving is a soft word because it is really shocking, but spoiler alert. Because the first spoiler alert, of course, of the book, and I say this in the author's note in the front, it ends in dystopia, the scenario. But as I write in the end of the book, in the acknowledgment, the point is not panic. The point is pressure, which we can of course get into.
[02:22]
B
Yeah. Well, let's start with the germ at the center of this book. It's a form of plague and it's engineered by Soviet scientists during the Cold War. And the design is such that if you take the antibiotic, that should save your life. That is what actually kills you. Explain how that, how that works.
[02:39]
A
Well, thank you for pointing out that it's tied to the Soviet bioweapons engineers of the Cold War. Because my book is sold in the nonfiction department, I write about science fact, even though it reads like science fiction. And so I want readers to always feel like they are embedded in truth. And there was this horrific bioweapon created by The Soviets during the Cold War. And this is 40 years ago, before genetic engineering, that what they called a super plague weapon. And of course, many people know about plague, bubonic plague. This is a form that goes in the lungs called pneumonic plague. And as you mentioned, it is what is called a chimera pathogen. Chimera, that Greek mythological idea of a beast of, you know, multiple parts. The head of a lion, the body of a serpent. Two organisms at once. The chimera is a genetically modified pathogen so that it has a booby trap effect. So what you think is going to cure you will kill you in an even more horrific way.
[03:59]
B
This book, as you mentioned, it's a work of nonfiction, and you call it a scenario, not a novel. What in these pages is documented fact? And where did you have to make assumptions in order to build the story?
[04:13]
A
So this book, like all my books, has a very large set of notes in the back. So whenever readers are confronted with that exact question, you know, wait a minute, this seems too far fetched. Like the chimera, they can go to the notes and see the actual sourcing. Whether it was an interview with a national security official, a presidential advisor, a secretary of defense, whether it was a declassified document, whether it was an interview with a Soviet defector scientist himself. I also quote people in the book in real time to give that narrative flow to readers of like, oh, you know, this is actually has this could happen.
[04:59]
B
Biological weapons. They've been illegal under international treaties since 1972. Every major power signed it. And yet countries have still moved forward with their, with their programs, some of them.
[05:13]
A
I mean, you've hit upon like a really interesting paradox and also something that most people don't know. One of the things I try to do in my books is make them very readable and at the same time give you some information that is kind of shocking. Like the fact that biological weapons are illegal, unlike nuclear weapons, which are legal. So try and wrap your head around that. That's a logger podcast. But you know, the countries that have nuclear weapons have deemed them legal. No one else can have them. Okay, but biological weapons, you're absolutely right. There was a convention and a treaty in 1972 that made biological weapons illegal. They're called odious to the conscience of mankind. That's how malevolent biological weapons are. It's a living weapon. It can self replicate. I mean, the whole concept is horrifying. There's something about this idea of you being the delivery vehicle of the weapon, you or I, because An airborne pathogen means our lungs are transmitting the weapon. I mean, that's a lot to think about. Everybody signed the treaty, but the Soviet Union kind of crossed its fingers behind its back and began building up this massive illegal biological weapons program, which, by the way, neither the CIA nor the Pentagon had any idea about until a single Soviet defector blew the lid open when he went to British intelligence.
[06:50]
B
Well, tell me more about that. How could that have been the case that this country's government would not have known?
[06:56]
A
I mean, you know, talk about having. Okay, well, you could say it's the ostrich with its head in the sand, like you have to. But then you get into that problem of you're being paranoid and not trusting people. So this again is something that's really worthy of thinking about because paranoia is a theme in the book. And as I say, paranoia will destroy you. Right. So on the one hand, you have these treaties, you must take a position of trusting others, but you must also be able to have transparency that you can look in their labs. And that's where what I call the hooky do, you know, the carve out took place. So there's the carve out in the treaty that you can do research, dangerous pathogen research for purposes of medical countermeasures. And so that's where we now realize people disguise their programs as good old research.
[07:54]
B
And you write about that in the book. The ways in which the Russians disguised what they were doing, their labs, what did that look like?
[08:01]
A
Well, they just looked like, you know, health facilities. They looked like they were working on medical countermeasures. I mean, I choose the plague pathogen in the book for two reasons. One, because I think it's great that people recognize that it's not just viruses that are deadly. Bacteria are also deadly. That's pathogens, both of them. You call them together, pathogens. Many people think, oh well, antibiotics will kill any bacterial infection, which used to be true, but now with genetic modifications, you can very easily override that. That's a whole new set of nightmares.
[08:42]
B
You also describe biology as a dual use technology. The same research that produces a cure can provide a weapon in. And often it's the same scientist doing the work in the very same lab. Have governments really caught up to that and how that works and the threats posed by that sort of work?
[09:03]
A
I mean, look, it's an area again that is going to ultimately fall on trust, or rather, maybe I'll quote Reagan here, trust, then verify. Because you have to be able to look at someone's research to really get A sense of what it is they are doing and how dangerous it could ultimately be. One of the original sources that I have in the book are the hand typed journals of Russia's original super plague sort of bioweapons engineer, a guy named Igor Domoradsky. And he was also the leading researcher on developing a plague vaccine for the Soviet Union. And so, you know, if you went and spoke to him during the Cold War, he was hailed, this incredible scientist who was going to get rid of the scourge of plague outbreaks in Russia. But at the same time he was working on bioweapons. How do you really know what is a. What is going on in the program? It has to start with communication, transparency, and building trust, not just assuming trust.
[10:18]
B
Everybody watching this and listening to this certainly lived through Covid. What's the single biggest lesson from that pandemic that you think governments have not yet fully absorbed?
[10:30]
A
I think there are two lessons, and I think it's shared responsibility between the government and the people. Right. The first thing is that despite billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on biodefense in this century, we were completely caught off guard and ill prepared. So you got to ask, where's all that money going? And is it being spent in the right direction? And then the second part of it is that I think that it must be known how uncertain biology is, how much uncertainty is involved. I mean, you and I have totally different physiologies, immune systems. How a pathogen is gonna affect you is gonna be different from me. That's all. That idea of like public health officials being able to admit they're uncertain about things and also admit when they make mistakes. Because ultimately the biggest lesson is that the fracturing of trust among the people about what happened in Covid, why things happened the way they happened. I mean, it has set us up for a worse nightmare. It could be something to really learn from.
[11:50]
B
And in many ways, an engineered outbreak could be. Would be more destabilizing than what we
[11:57]
A
saw during COVID Yeah, I mean, it has been said that an engineered pathogen a. A catastrophic biological incident, accident or attack could be man's last invention.
[12:16]
B
Were there any positives that you think came from the COVID response?
[12:20]
A
I thought you were going to say, about writing the book, any positive? Well, absolutely, because I think. I'm not sure I could have written this book if Covid hadn't happened without people saying, that's a bridge too far, Annie. You know, nuclear. We know about our nuclear arsenals. We have all this science that Tells you horrific things that happen when bombs go off. But let's be clear, you know, a pandemic isn't really going to happen. It hasn't happened since the influenza epidemic of 1918. That was a zillion years ago. Well, you can't say that anymore. And so we know what you can happen. We know how the whole world can shut down, how all of us can be impacted. So that to my eyes, should be a cautionary tale, but also a positive one because, you know, we're all, we're all impacted the same way. At the end of the day, fast
[13:15]
B
forward to the current moment. There is this question. If our government can't track a parasite in the lettuce supply with a two month head start, what happens when the pathogen is engineered and someone is deliberately hiding the source of it?
[13:31]
A
I mean, that is a rhetorically good question. And I think that when I see the kind of lettuce outbreak or even the hantavirus outbreak in May overseas, when you look at Ebola in West Africa right now, I think that the information, good information coming out of those outbreaks or epidemics, you can start to realize some, something must be done. The system isn't working the way it should and people can really kind of demand change because there is so much money involved. You know, the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS is in charge of a biological incident or outbreak. CDC is below hhs. Most of your viewers, most of the people in the world don't know what HHS is, and yet it has a budget twice that of the Defense Department, twice. So that's a lot of money. Yes, it involves Medicare and Medicaid, but there's still a problem with that. We don't know. We, the royal, we don't know the source of the lettuce outbreak.
[14:44]
B
You've spent years interviewing former defense secretaries, senior administration officials, experts. When you were, as you said, when you were writing the book about the nuclear threat, they would describe the biological threat as shark in the water. What were they most afraid of?
[15:01]
A
Well, you certainly get that sense in the book, I think, because I give it to you in no uncertain detail. But the big general idea is echoed in a Defense Department document I found. It's called a threat spectrum and this is an unclassified document. But it looks at weapons of mass destruction on a scale. And of course, nuclear weapons are at the far end of the scale as the most destructive. No one would argue that. But biological weapons are a very close second. And even more disconcerting, they are, quote the greatest overall threat. And that is because the barrier for entry is so incredibly low. You need fissile material to make a nuclear weapon. You need a delivery system like an icbm. We know now particularly with AI enabled bio, you know, the barrier for entry is so low, high ranking officials tell me a kid in a basement with very. A bad actor with a nefarious mind in a basement with very little knowledge of biology can make a biological weapon.
[16:14]
B
Wow. And the other thing that struck me is the conclusion in your book that there is no real homeland defense against a large scale biological attack. It's only mitigation after the fact.
[16:27]
A
That's right. And that's a quote from retired Colonel Tom Erhard who used to run Pentagon, used to run biological war scenarios, nuclear war scenarios at a catastrophic level at the Pentagon. And he said to me the. Exactly that. But not only that, he said the only thing you can do is mitigate extermination. And when you realize that the Pentagon is thinking of bio as a near extinction level event, and so is FEMA and so is hhs, and then you add into the mix that it doesn't even need to be a biological attack. It can be an accident, which is why I chose a lab leak. Then you're going, okay, something's really got to be done here. We need to put eyes on this issue and make sure that it's a scenario. It's not something that gets written in the past tense.
[17:18]
B
You mentioned AI, and one of the interviewees in your book is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Why was it important to bring someone from that world into your reporting?
[17:29]
A
Well, that's a great question. And I specifically wanted to leave AI enabled bio threats out of the book because not enough is known by myself or by sources. And there's not a lot of examples of that. Right. So that's still things theoretical at this point. And I wanted to show just how dangerous pathogens that mother Nature makes and that could be tweaked would be. Sam Altman came into the book because there's a component of outbreak where I take readers through. It's kind of like the second act of the book where the pathogen is now in the United States and HHS is working with its Defense Department partners to try and get medical countermeasures, vaccines, antibiotics out to the people. This is like day four and day five. Okay. And those medical countermeasures are a classified program called the Strategic National Stockpile. The name is unclassified, which is why I can write about it and Why? I could learn a little bit about it, but the Strategic National Stockpile is located throughout the United States in underground bunkers, completely secret for a reason. They don't want it attacked. Well, I, as an experiment, wanted to see if I could make ChatGPT tell me where the Strategic National Stockpile closest to Los Angeles, where I live, was located. And it took a little bit of doing, and I have a lot of nomenclature and specific words as a journalist that I could really force ChatGPT up to the edge. And lo and behold, I found out where it was located, and that is really bad news. And I told colleagues who knew Sam Altman, and they said, sam would like to talk to you about that. And when I spoke to him about it, he asked me a number of questions. And then that component of ChatGPT was changed so you can no longer find that information out. But it's a cautionary tale.
[19:41]
B
And the reason it surfaced was because a government employee buried the address on, I think it was the 45th page of an earthquake plan. And you, knowing what to do and knowing what search terms to enter, were able to yield that information from ChatGPT.
[19:57]
A
It's absolutely right. And that's when you think about the trillions and trillions and trillions of bits of information that are available to a large language model in seconds. And you think about the kind of what we all now know are like manipulative commands you can give chat GPT or any of the other models to get around that. That's when you're really realizing that sort of government has a lot more work to do with working with the CEOs of these AI companies, because they don't know clearly. I believe I was telling Sam Altman something that he had no idea about. You can't know what you don't know.
[20:37]
B
Yeah, there is this idea too, that were this to happen, God forbid, no one's coming to save us. So what can we do to be prepared? Apart from stockpiling penicillin and rubbing alcohol and peroxide in our cabinets, what can the average person do to prepare for. For something like this?
[20:55]
A
You've hit upon like an Interesting catch 22 where no one's coming from us, and what do we do? And do we panic? In all the Defense Department war gaming, I came across fear of infection. That actual quote is repeated continually. Fear of infection will lead to. And what it always leads to is anarchy and insurrection. And all of the Pentagon war games know that or assume that. And so that is where there are plans in place if we have time to talk about that are shocking. But on the fear of infection point, I would say as far as the public is concerned, and this is like me speaking not just as a journalist, but as a mom, that, like, the way to prevent fear and panic is knowledge. And so having a little bit of knowledge goes a very long way. I'll just give you an anecdote of information which is an airborne pathogen, right? Like, we all lived through Covid. Covid was airborne. And yet, you know, the lettuce outbreak is not airborne. I mean, it's a completely different animal. When you're talking about Hantavirus, for example, it's not airborne, which is why it didn't turn into an epidemic or a pandemic. And that's just tiny example of basic information that can be known by moms and dads across America and all of us that can keep this idea of fear of infection spiraling out of control,
[22:28]
B
fear and the domino effect of destabilization and what that would do ultimately to our democracy to play that out. It's just one thing after another.
[22:40]
A
All of the Pentagon war games, by the way, which are fascinating. And anyone that's interested in this can also look up public health officials, do what's called pandemic planning. And these are unclassified. And they, you know. But interestingly, when I was reporting this, I would find many of these scenarios would take you right up to about what's day six for me in this, you know, book where anarchy and insurrection takes over and then the game ends. They don't tell you what happens. And so. But I found out they know what happens. And that is also disconcerting. Like, let the people know that anarchy and insurrection happens and then it gets even worse so that we can sort of reverse engineer our potential panic to a little bit. You know, let's all stay calm and try and understand what's going on before anarchy takes hold.
[23:36]
B
It's that the tabletop exercises and. And no one's thinking that far or they are thinking that far, and they're just not telling us the latter.
[23:45]
A
I mean, I interviewed a lot of the people who work on this, and it's like, you know, there's kind of like a. Mm. You know, I say that. That you just said to me, and it's like, mm, mm. Which is that they're not in a position where they wanna write about the devolution plan, which, by the way, is classified. The name's not classified. And I had Obama's FEMA director, who Craig Fugate, Tell me precisely what happens after anarchy and insurrection that our public officials have not in the past written about this, tabletopped it out for us to know about, I think is an oversight. Because if they know it's going to happen, we should all know it's going to happen. Because why have that scenario on the table if there's not some work done to prevent it from ever happening?
[24:35]
B
Is the modern day threat posed just by Russia? What's the threat matrix when you think about China and Iran and North Korea?
[24:45]
A
Well, the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty is in State Department monographs being violated by Russia and North Korea in no uncertain terms. They say that that's not just this administration's State Department report, that's the previous one. And both of those reports also say China and Iran have programs of concern, which I think is a euphemism for they also have biological weapons programs. And so, you know, where is the diplomacy in all of this? Where is the transparency? That's what I think people have to ask for or rather demand.
[25:29]
B
In your acknowledgments, you say sources described scenarios that were worse than the ones you published. Can you say what you chose not to write?
[25:37]
A
I mentioned it in the acknowledgments. I mean, I did an interview with David Relman, who's a Stanford professor and he's also a presidential advisor for multiple administrations. And he told me about a program or rather sort of a biological, synthetic biological pathogen called, called Mirror Life. And I write about it a little bit in the end, and you know, that isn't a near extinction level event, in his words. That's an extinction level event that kills every human on Earth and that has also been written about publicly. Relman told me that there was some debate about whether or not they should even admit that this is a possibility, kind of like the scenario planning. And he felt very strongly that the public needs to know. And I'm all on the side of the information is king because, you know, I no longer believe what we don't know can't hurt us. That is not true.
[26:35]
B
How, how has your reporting changed the way you move through the world?
[26:40]
A
Anybody who knows me personally knows I'm an inherent optimist. You know, I do not. My books present a dystopian scenario, but to me they're always a cautionary tale. What to avoid? I just don't. Every reporter has areas they don't want to go. I have some. I can't write or even think about kids being hurt, for example. But because I write about war and weapons. Because I've interviewed so many individuals who have been involved in wars and weapons making, I feel like it's the proper lane for me to move forward through, which is a scenario that you never want to have happen.
[27:26]
B
The book is phenomenal, Biological A scenario. Annie Jacobson, a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.
[27:32]
A
Thank you so much for having me.