How Nuclear War Starts: WW3, Aliens, Nazi's & CIA Secrets | Annie Jacobsen PT 1

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: "How Nuclear War Starts: WW3, Aliens, Nazis & CIA Secrets | Annie Jacobsen PT 1"

Host: Tom Bilyeu (Impact Theory)
Guest: Annie Jacobsen
Release Date: May 14, 2024
Episode Theme:
Annie Jacobsen, investigative journalist and author, joins Tom Bilyeu to discuss her latest book on the terrifying reality and mechanics of nuclear war. The conversation covers the imminent risks of nuclear conflict, the systems built for deterrence, historical context, and the philosophy of disarmament. The episode dives into military protocols, psychology, human evolution, and technological advances shaping how humanity approaches annihilation.

---

Main Theme Overview

Purpose of the Episode:
To break down the realities of nuclear warfare – its terrifying speed, mystery, and mechanisms – with Annie Jacobsen, providing clarity on how close the world is to disaster and what might truly prevent it. The discussion unpacks truths behind headlines, the psychology of deterrence, the evolution of technology and warfare, and the ongoing challenge of disarmament.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. The Immediacy and Mechanics of Nuclear War

• Nuclear war as civilization-ending:

  • "Nuclear war is the only event other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization." — Annie Jacobsen [00:45]
  • The U.S. and Russia both have around 400 ICBMs on ready-to-launch status, with arsenals of 1,770 (US) and 1,660 (Russia) warheads prepared to go within seconds or minutes.
  • Once an ICBM is launched, it is irreversible: "An icbm, once launched, cannot be recalled, cannot and cannot be directed." — Annie Jacobsen [04:03]

• How an incident could unfold:

  • The Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) detects launches in fractions of a second.
  • Jacobsen’s research, involving interviews with former nuclear officers and STRATCOM commanders, revealed most regular people (and even experts) don't understand how quickly and inexorably escalation happens.
  • "A nuclear war essentially begins in the first fraction of a second." — Annie Jacobsen [03:45]

• Historical context and current threat level:

  • Jacobsen: "We are at risk because... we're at this precipice." [06:24]
  • The risk is at its highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis, echoing warnings from current leaders: "President Biden is the one who said we're closer to nuclear Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban missile crisis..." — Annie Jacobsen [08:46]

II. The Psychology and Philosophy of Deterrence

• Systemic dangers:
  • Nuclear command and control is "a system of systems" and once the process starts, "it ends in nuclear winter." [09:33]
• Why it's not winnable:
  • Referencing war games like Proud Prophet: "No matter how nuclear war begins... it ends in total Armageddon." — Annie Jacobsen [15:21]
• North Korea as the wild card:
  • North Korea's refusal to announce missile tests creates chronic, high-risk ambiguity for nuclear command everywhere[12:25]
  • "We are one misunderstanding away from nuclear Armageddon" due to systems designed for speed, not reflection.

III. Human Nature, Progress, and History

• Is nuclear war inevitable?

  • Tom frames himself as a "realist": believing that since nuclear weapons exist, deterrence may be the only path due to human aggression and cycles of history.[47:44-54:55]
  • Annie counters with optimism and belief in human evolution and progress:
    • "I believe that man does evolve ... progress is always being made." [36:30]
    • She describes the discovery of Göbekli Tepe as evidence that humanity's capabilities and social structures are not linear or predetermined.

• The role of taboo:

  • Proposes making nuclear weapons morally and culturally "taboo," as happened with chemical and biological weapons, as a first move toward true disarmament.
  • "If you can present the idea of taboo into the discussion... then you have a place that people can work from." [50:20–53:01]
  • Reference: Dr. Carlos Umana, Nobel laureate physician against nuclear weapons.

• Famous Quotes for Reflection:

  • "When he [Richard Garwin] was asked what he was most afraid of, he said: a mad king with a nuclear arsenal." [13:05–14:10]
  • Einstein: "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." [38:30]

IV. Obstacles to Disarmament

• Political inertia and vested interests:

  • Annie: "Why isn't Congress doing anything about it? People aren't paying attention." [22:30]
  • The military-industrial complex has a vested economic interest in maintaining or upgrading the nuclear arsenal (now a $1 trillion project).

• The perceived impossibility of "nuclear zero":

  • Tom: "I can't fathom a world where humans... would ever back off to nuclear zero because they know it only takes one madman." [30:09]
  • Annie: "I focus on the part of reducing." [47:44]

V. Real-World Scenarios and Solutions

• Realistic threat scenarios:

  • The book’s hypothetical: a North Korean missile is launched, misinterpreted, confusion spreads, Russia responds, and full-scale Armageddon ensues—driven more by systemic inertia and confusion than malice or strategy.[17:52]

• Is there hope for de-escalation?

  • Annie points to the Reagan Reversal: After seeing "The Day After" movie, Reagan initiated substantive nuclear reduction talks with Gorbachev.
  • "If people pay attention and say, this is madness, we must reverse course, we can go in that direction toward reduction." [19:37–22:30]

• Advice for leaders:

  • Annie, quoting Dr. Umana: "Start with the idea of making nuclear weapons taboo..." [50:20–53:01]
  • Favor gradual, verifiable reductions over sudden disarmament, encouraging reciprocal inspections and reduction among nuclear nations.

VI. Emerging Threats and the Future of Warfare

• Technological evolution:

  • Annie discusses DARPA’s pursuit of "vast weapon systems of the future" – autonomous systems, human-machine integration, and AI as the coming revolution.[68:14–75:48]
  • Brain-computer interfaces, biometric weaponry, and even the study of "moral molecules" to manipulate trust and possibly facilitate acceptance of super-soldier augmentation.[72:28–75:48]

• Dual-use dilemma:

  • Any invention—AI, biotech—can be weaponized. The rush to develop for fear of adversaries doing so first ("If we don't, someone else will") perpetuates escalation.
  • "If everything, you know, it's the old cliche, if you're a hammer, everything's a nail." [89:02]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"Nuclear war is the only event other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization."
— Annie Jacobsen [00:45]

"An ICBM, once launched, cannot be recalled, cannot and cannot be directed."
— Annie Jacobsen [04:03]

"We are one misunderstanding away from nuclear Armageddon."
— Annie Jacobsen [15:03]

"If you can present the idea of taboo into the discussion, then you have a place that people can work from."
— Annie Jacobsen (quoting Dr. Umana) [50:20]

"No matter how nuclear war begins... it ends in total Armageddon."
— Annie Jacobsen (paraphrasing Paul Bracken on Proud Prophet war games) [15:21]

"We just keep figuring this out and not do it, because mutually assured destruction makes so much sense to me that even a madman... I have a hard time believing that they would get in power anyway."
— Tom Bilyeu [84:25]

"You can have the takeaway and have precisely, you know, have exactly opposite ideas, which you have a different takeaway from my book than I do. Which is exactly the point, because we're not sitting here shouting at each other. We don't disagree. We just see things differently."
— Annie Jacobsen [46:28]

"When he [Richard Garwin] was asked what he was most afraid of, he said: a mad king with a nuclear arsenal."
— Annie Jacobsen [13:05]

"Just don't make me do it."
— Annie Jacobsen (on transhumanism, social change, policy) [83:44-84:25]

---

Important Timestamps

• 00:45–04:25: Annie lays out the terrifying speed and irreversible mechanics of nuclear war.
• 06:15–10:02: Are we closer to Armageddon than ever before? Discussion of current risk.
• 10:30–15:04: The mad king scenario; North Korea’s unpredictable testing.
• 15:21–17:52: Why nuclear war becomes unwinnable and always escalates to Armageddon.
• 19:22–25:57: Lessons from history; the Reagan reversal; hope for real change.
• 29:22–34:33: Human nature, the problem of true disarmament, and looking to chimpanzees for insight.
• 36:30–41:37: Göbekli Tepe, human evolution, and the paradox of progress.
• 47:44–50:20: Is nuclear zero possible or just desirable? How to begin: the power of taboo.
• 62:26–67:40: Missile defense (Iron Dome analogy), why it doesn't solve the problem.
• 68:14–75:48: The next era of warfare—DARPA, transhumanism, and AI.
• 83:44–84:25: "Just don't make me do it"—Annie's philosophy on technological and societal change.

---

Conclusion & Takeaways

• Nuclear war is not an abstract threat—it is mechanistically close and perilously automated.
• Despite structural optimism, the reality is one of persistent danger and inertia, fueled by human psychology, political rivalry, and institutional interests.
• Survival may hinge not on technology, but on shifts in public consciousness—making nuclear use taboo through moral, cultural, and political activism.
• The arms race always evolves: just as with nukes, emerging technologies like AI and biotechnology face similar threats of weaponization and ethical ambiguity.
• Finally, optimism and realism coexist: progress is possible, but only through active engagement, awareness, and a willingness to view adversaries as humans, not existential enemies.

---

Transcript

[Grainger Representative]

With VRBoCare, help is always ready before, during and after your stay.

[Annie Jacobsen]

We've planned for the plot twists, so

[Grainger Representative]

support is always available because a great

[Interviewer]

trip starts with peace of mind.

[Grainger Representative]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more and all all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Nuclear war is the only event other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization. If you believe your enemy is vicious and wants to kill you, you're going to create programs that mirror theirs. This is so dangerous.

[Interviewer]

Whoa.

[Annie Jacobsen]

These are the mysteries of some of the dark and dirty secrets.

[Interviewer]

Whether it's censoring social media, whether it's spying on our own population. We are effectively trying to we the government are trying to influence what ideas people focus on. That's that to me that is a self evident base assumption that my worldview is predicated on. So for instance, if you're like that doesn't make any sense. That would be a very good place to start disabusing me of my delusions.

[Annie Jacobsen]

This idea that nuclear arsenals exist on ready for launch status and no one thinks about it has always been intriguing. During the previous administration, when former President Trump was former threatening nuclear war in essence with the leader of North Korea, I was shocked because that was so unpresidential, meaning every president you know before him was like there was a tacit understanding. I mean look at listen to Kennedy's speeches talking about the horrors of nuclear war. So to hear President Trump talking about this as if it with a sort of cavalier attitude was shocking to me as it was to a lot of people. And then I began to think about this idea that many of my sources had said to me in the course of reporting the previous six books. Whether it was Billy Waugh or Dr. Bud Whelan, Annie I dedicated my life to preventing nuclear World War iii. And then I began thinking, what if that prevention fails? What if deterrence fails? What does that look like? And then it just became a thought experiment of asking people in the national security apparatus, people that I've spent years developing as sources, as people who would talk to me, their friends, their colleagues, national security advisors, military people who would be in the position of nuclear command and control were nuclear war to happen. And during COVID when there was a lot more time, people agreed to do zooms with me. So you can see now that my, my makeup, perhaps the ride, the horse and the direction going is probably a little more active than mental. It's like, oh, there's a horse. Let's hop on it and go for a ride. I am a very good horse rider, right? So that's what it is. Like, wait a minute. This is super interesting in a terrifying way. And I began to put this question about what would happen if deterrence failed. And then suddenly I realized this becomes a ticking clock scenario. This is not policy. And lean up. This is like, oh my God. You know, Starting with the basic fact again, sharing with you that I learned things with all my knowledge of nuclear weapons and having interviewed nuclear weapons designers in my previous books, I didn't know, literally or hadn't really digested that a nuclear war essentially begins in the first fraction of a second. That our satellite system, the Defense Department's powerful satellite system called sbirs, Space Based Infrared System of Satellites, everything's an acronym. That system detects nuclear launch because we have those systems parked over all of our nuclear adversaries ready to see it, because that's where it begins. Fact number one, Stunning. I'm riding this horse forward. Fact number two, that's stunning. An icbm, once launched, cannot be recalled, cannot and cannot be directed. How many people know that? How many people know that? And so while maybe printing money and inflation and all that is interesting to you, what's interesting to me is when I suddenly learn that. Wait a minute. This. And wait, how many ICBMs do we have? Oh, the United States has 400 on ready for launch status. And how many does Russia have? An equal number. And what are the total numbers of the arsenals? US1770. Russia, 1660. Those are just on ready for launch status, ready to go in seconds or minutes. Now you really have my attention. Now I want to tell that story. Now we're at second 10 of the scenario that I describe in nuclear war that lasts only 72 minutes. Because another shocking fact. When I did an interview with former STRATCOM commander who's heard of StratCom, most people. Not former STRATCOM commander in charge of the nukes, General Keillor said to me in US discussing what could happen if Russia and America had a nuclear exchange. Yes, the world could end in the next couple of hours. That's a horse I can't get off. I have to Ride that to the end and how it ends. Nuclear winter.

[Interviewer]

What makes you think that we are more at risk for nuclear annihilation now than any other time in history?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Well, I wouldn't. I mean, having written the book, I am now at the conclusion that we are at risk because I'm echoing the concerns of people like President Biden, like UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, like the Nobel laureates I just met in Brussels two weeks ago at a nuclear at the Nuke Expo, the Nobel laureate Peace Prize winners who have been studying this issue for decades, interviewing people, having written the book and realizing where we are and seeing people's reactions to it. People saying to me, I read your book in one night. I canceled everything. I couldn't stop, even though I know nuclear war ends in nuclear winter, because we are at this precipice. So I've learned that since the book has become public before. When the book began, when I was reporting back years ago during COVID it was like many of the Cold War warriors, because many of the people I interview for the book are in their 80s and 90s, including the man who drew the plans for that thermonuclear weapon on the COVID of that book. Richard Garwin, 93 years old now, just emailed with him yesterday. Apres moi, le des luge. He told me that's what he's afraid of. A nuclear madman, a mad king with a nuclear arsenal. But when I began reporting the book people, the Cold War warriors were like, annie, you must write this book. No one rem. You know, people have forgotten this is so dangerous as a threat to all of our existence. And here we are just a couple years later where nuclear war, the threats of nuclear is headline news that I can't answer now.

[Interviewer]

I had heard you say in another podcast that you thought this was the most. We'd never been closer to the brink than we are right now compared to Bay of Pigs or something like that. Do you think that we really are that much closer or is it just that the bombs are that much bigger? What makes you write the this book right now? Is it just that horse came up at this particular moment?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Absolutely, because it's a scenario. But in terms of the danger of it, again, those things have been said to me. President Biden is the one who said we're closer to nuclear Armageddon than we have been since the Cuban missile crisis when we were really close. And so, you know. But the interesting thing is that the degree of danger doesn't really matter. That's what is so shocking. And I really hope people read the book in one night or two nights because they you, the takeaway is, oh my God, it doesn't matter how it happens. She just showed one way it could happen. But what she also showed is the system in place. Once it begins, it doesn't stop. It is a systematic. It is a system of systems, nuclear command and control. It begins with the detection of a launch and it ends in nuclear winter. And that is how the system has been set up. So what is the most shocking to me about all of this is that most people have no idea. And in the same way, that's not a self righteous statement. I certainly had no idea before I reported the book.

[Interviewer]

Okay, you said it in French a minute ago. But the quote I believe is from Napoleon, after me the flood. So this idea of a nihilistic madman, I think in the book you expressly, obviously it's a fictional account, but based entirely on things that we know. What's the concept that North Korea basically decides we're just gonna burn it all down. Walk us through how it could pop off.

[Annie Jacobsen]

And one tiny distinction I would make is I don't refer to this as a fictional scenario. I call it a hypothetical scenario. Because every detail in here is linked to a concept, a military concept of how nuclear war would unfold. I very specifically stay away from a big buildup of how, how the war might happen, which many people have written about. You know, if China does this or Russia does this or then this could happen. That is not what I. The book happens in three acts. Thank you, Shakespeare. It's like 24. The first 24 minutes, the next 24 minutes and the last 24 minutes and then it's over. There's a really, it's five parts because there's a buildup. How we got here tells readers how we went from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to having this massive arsenal that could then launch. And then the end is Nuclear Winter, which I report based on extensive interviews with one of the original authors of the Nuclear winter theory in 1983 and others. And so the question you asked is why the apres moi deluge, which means after me the flood, which is this idea. I don't really care what happens after the world ends. And that idea to use that in the scenario came From Richard Garwin, 93 year old Richard Garwin Nuclear weapons engineer. People think of Edward Teller as the man who is the father of the thermonuclear bomb. Oppenheimer is the father of the atomic bomb. Teller was the father of the thermonuclear bomb. A thermonuclear bomb is so much more powerful than atomic bomb. It uses an atomic bomb as its triggering device. That is a 10.4 megaton explosion in the Marshall Islands when we were testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. And what Garwin said to me when I asked him what he was most afraid of, he said a mad king with a nuclear arsenal. And I took that to mean North Korea. As I write in the book, there are no rules to nuclear war, meaning anything goes, but there are a few rules to deterrence, to preventing nuclear war. And one of those rules is very specifically, which I think listeners can relate to, is that, and again, I did not know this per se and most people do not know this, that we test our ICBMs. Obviously there's not a nuclear warhead in it, but there's a dummy warhead and we test them, so does Russia, so do many nuclear armed nations. And we always announce a test before it happens because you have other countries looking at them and you don't want to start a nuclear war by accident. North Korea does not announce its tests. And when I learned that, I was shocked because they, in this one period when I was reporting the book, over 18 months, they launched over 100 missiles, including ballistic missiles that could hit the United States. And so when you think about, go back to that idea that I just shared with you about the satellite system in space watching for a nuclear launch. When the nuclear command and control in the United States sees North Korea launch a ballistic missile, A, it has no idea if there's a nuclear weapon in the nose cone and B, it has no idea where it's going for the first 150 seconds. And so when I describe to you the first 150 seconds in the book, you get and you realize how crazy everybody feels, how much anxiety. You realize that that happens to everybody in nuclear command and control that's watching every time North Korea launches a test. That's madness. That's why we're one misunderstanding away from nuclear Armageddon because North Korea's nuclear arsenal is relatively new.

[Interviewer]

Why do you have the premise in the book that if basically one nuke is launched, that this it is not a winnable war. It just goes all the way to effectively destruction of all life on earth.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Nuclear war games are arguably the most jealously guarded secrets in the national security apparatus. You could also say what's in the President's football is up there because that has to do with nuclear war plans. So Last reference to the UFOs. When I hear people, this is incredibly classified, don't buy it for a second. Nuclear war plans are incredibly classified. So much so that we have no idea what is in them. I write about two nuclear war plans in the book. One released by two men in their 80s, one of which was Daniel Ellsberg, the other which was John Rubell. That's the original nuclear war plan for general nuclear warfare. And the other was a war plan called Proud Prophet that was declassified by President Reagan in 1983. And from those two nuclear war plans, we can learn a lot. And the Proud Prophet in particular is super interesting. I reprint a page in the book and readers will see that and they'll just see like blacked out pages and maybe a number, you know, a word, aftermath. Well, and you might say to yourself, what good is this? It's just a bunch of blacked out, redacted information. We can't learn anything from it. Well, what we can learn is, is from a civilian who was invited to participate in that war game, who's a Yale professor named Paul Bracken. And because the Proud Prophet war game, nuclear war game was declassified, Bracken could speak about it in a general manner. And here I'm getting to answer your question finally, which is that what Bracken tells us is that no matter how nuclear war begins, this is from a two week nuclear war game with the Secretary of Defense and all the highest nuclear command and control people going through multiple scenarios. No matter how it begins, if NATO's involved, if NATO isn't involved, if China's involved, no matter how it begins, it ends in total Armageddon. And that's why the scenario that I write follows that architecture, because that is the closest we can get to the truth about what's in those war games.

[Interviewer]

Okay? Without knowing that, the thing that I took away in the book is basically confusion. It's just. It's moving so fast, everything is unknown. So for readers or for people that haven't read the book, it goes something like this. North Korea launches the initial strike. The US Is tracking it. So they see right away that it's launched. They don't know exactly where it's going, but it ends up detonating in Washington D.C. i think it hits the Pentagon. If I remember right, the President is too close to. It ends up crashing, getting injured so nobody can get a hold of him. So Russia's like, hey, we, we see nukes are, are being launched here. Has the President called? No, he hasn't called. Okay. Who from the White House has called and goes down a list of a ton of people, but he's like, none of them are the acting president, so we just have to assume that these are coming towards us. So launch back. And so it's like confusion begets because everybody has these like dead hand launches or launch at first warning. And so because everybody's policy is so aggressive that like you said, one misunderstanding and boom, it's just all over. And the book paints, as you said, a hypothetical that is distressingly convincing and extremely detailed in terms of at what distance your flesh melts off and the winds are 200 miles an hour. Yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty intense. Can you imagine a scenario where we can actually back off of this brink?

[Annie Jacobsen]

You mean a scenario where nuclear war doesn't happen?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, this seems, yeah, this seems inevitable to me that we would invent them. If I'm well one, is this inevitable that we invent them?

[Annie Jacobsen]

So I most definitely wrote the book to demonstrate in appalling detail how horrific nuclear war would be. My takeaway, because I am an optimist, is not. Therefore it's inevitable and it's going to happen. Although I'm perfectly comfortable with other people that are maybe more pessimistic having that view and then wondering to themselves, therefore, what could we do about it? Right. But my takeaway is the total opposite of that. My takeaway is that information is king and that situations change when people become aware of the danger and the threat. Nuclear war is the only event other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization. Technically, there's nothing we can do about an asteroid strike. There's so much that can be done about nuclear war. And the example I will give you is called the Reagan reversal. And what's interesting is I did an interview yesterday with Newt Gingrich. Okay. Newt was friends with Reagan. And we had a really interesting discussion about this. And digressing here for a second is what I love about the book, that having written this book, is that it's being read by so many different kinds of people who are embracing it. And that's where there is. I mean, Josh Klinghoffer, the former drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, now Pearl Jam is giving the book to all of his bandmates. So balance out that. And I mean, you have. You're talking about a wide group of very different kinds of people of all different political parties of all different ages reading this book and pretty much coming to the same conclusion, which is, this is madness. We must reverse course. Newt Gingrich told me he wished that my next book would be called Nuclear War A Solution. And that's coming from a fundamental lifelong hawk. So it is. Change is possible. So back to the Reagan reversal. President Reagan was an absolute nuclear supremacist. He believed in nuclear weapons. He thought we should have more carry a big stick, use it type thing. He believed that nuclear weapons, the concept of deterrence, would keep us safe. He was the man behind the idea of putting nuclear weapons in space in the Star wars program. Okay, so this is like. This was his position. And then there was a fictional television series on ABC called the Day After, A movie on abc and Reagan's advisors, which Gingrich confirmed, told him not to watch the movie, but he did. 100 million Americans watched that movie, and they were all horrified and freaked out. Reagan watched that movie and became so disturbed that he wrote in his White House journal that he was greatly depressed. His words. And because he's the President of the United States, he could and did take action. He reached out to Gorbachev, and the result was the Reykjavik Summit. And as a result, the big result was that the world went from 70,000 nuclear warheads to the approximate 12,500 that we have today. So that sure is progress. So why isn't the Congress doing anything about it? People aren't paying attention. Why isn't the President doing anything? People aren't paying attention. If people pay attention and say, this is madness, we must reverse course, we can go in that direction toward reduction. You know, just a general. There are people, legions of people in the disarmament movement who've been working on this issue. I'm not one of them. They know. So, yes, that is the right direction. Now, here, where I'm gonna loop it back to your original question, because this is a conversation we're having. Is the government, whoever that may be, trying to distract us? You could argue, hmm, maybe someone or some group of people doesn't want the reduction of nuclear weapons. Maybe some group of people prefers this idea, which is on the table right now in 2024. We need to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, which is what's happening right now, to the tune of a trillion dollars. We might even need new weapon systems. So that I meet you at a disturbing, possibly, yes. When I would ask you, could a group of people have, a powerful group of people have a vested interest in us not reducing nuclear weapons? And I think almost certainly the answer is yes. Where it gets difficult is you really have to drill down on that thinking. Do you want to just blame Air quotes, the military industrial complex, the nuclear weapons industrial complex. Do you want to just blame them? Them, whoever. Well, that's a fool's errand, I think, because where does it get you? Or do you want to try to look at the specifics? I believe the specifics are better. And that's where I would put my hat in the ring with the disarmament folks. Knowing what I know now about nuclear war and knowing how dangerous we are and having had everyone since the book in very high places reach out to me and say, you're absolutely right, something must be done. I would put my hat in the disarmament folks ring, not in the nuclear weapons industry. Military industrial complex industry that says deterrence is a really good thing. And for people who might want to just know the simple definition of deterrence, the idea of deterrence is the more nuclear weapons you have, the safer you are. To me that sounds a little Orwellian.

[Interviewer]

Okay, Russia, Ukraine. I have a feeling you don't love talking specifically about that, but do you, given Putin's saber rattling, what do you think about this moment as the moment for a solution where we're actually de. Escalating? Is it even plausible that he would entertain anything along those lines, given the current situation?

[Annie Jacobsen]

I mean, what I have to say about that situation is absolutely on the point of nuclear weapons is that President Putin has said on the record that he is not bluffing. His words about using weapons of mass destruction. That is terrible. That. Now remember, you know, former American president also was using nuclear rhetoric. So we can't just say how dare he use that rhetoric? And I think that's a tragedy. I think people, I think potus, the President of the United States has a responsibility to act presidentially. And I would hope that there would be a movement back toward that. And I would hope that there would be a movement among the people to have a young, fit, cognitive, you know, open minded, civic minded president. As far as Ukraine and Russia is concerned, the situation is what it is, which is profoundly dangerous. And for as long as these nuclear threats remain on the table, the world is at the razor's edge. And so the solution to that. I'm not a, I'm not a diplomat, but is exactly like you're saying. You want to reduce tension, not escalate it. It's too dangerous.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, unfortunately, I wasn't saying that. I'm, I am very much a. The genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back. You mentioned in an interview that I heard that synthetic biology is also this terrifying thing. That we have on the horizon. I, while I don't live in perpetual fear of nuclear war like I used to when I was a kid, because I actually grew up in the 80s and was literally terrified, I don't see how anything other than mutually assured destruction stops this from happening. Which is why I think the most plausible scenario for what you pointed out in the book is you need a nihilistic madman who just doesn't care. In fact, you say something in the book that we posted that photo of South Korea and North Korea at night and that if that were just something that pissed him off enough that he wanted to launch a nuke to show us just how dark the world could get. Yeah, that's the kind of thing I. This may be naive today. I can't fathom even a sort of crazy dictator would do that because they, if they have nuclear weapons, they have to understand that they are, they're going to get obliterated. So it doesn't make sense. So while I wish they could be uninvented, I think if you can't uninvent them, then you have to figure out what is the reality of humans and build your arsenal accordingly. Do you know John Mearsheimer?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Name's ringing a bell.

[Interviewer]

So he comes from the quote, unquote realist political philosophy, which is that the world is simply governed by power. And it's not that people only exercise power, but that if there is a vacuum and there is a weak country and there is no one there to defend them, then somebody who's more powerful will come and take over if they have anything of value for them to take. And so ultimately, the sort of stability that we get in the world is not stability gained through weakness. It is stability gained through mutual strength. And if you fail to understand that people will make a move on you if you are weak, then you will get surprised by, if you're Poland, by, hey, this guy with the lightning strikes, they've suddenly rolled into town. Or I mean, Russia invading Ukraine. So many people have said if Ukraine had never given up their nuclear weapons and Russia never would have invaded. Now whether or not that's true, I'm not deep enough in that issue to say. But it certainly speaks to this idea that there's. I can't fathom a world where humans with our current biology would ever back off to nuclear zero because they know it only takes one madman. And then if that guy really is the only one with nukes and he's like, yo, everybody else got rid of theirs, hahaha. Now I'm going to launch mine because people can't retaliate. Now you have a problem.

[Grainger Representative]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delays delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Annie Jacobsen]

The Ukraine thing, I have to speak to that just because I interviewed a number of people who were involved in the dismantling of the nuclear program in Ukraine when the wall went down. And what's interesting to note is that Ukraine never really. I mean, they had nuclear weapons physically, but they could never have used them. They never were in control of the launch mechanisms, of the triggering mechanisms. Russia always had that. So they would have just had an arsenal that they couldn't have used except for to make dirty bombs. So I think that's a little bit. And I'm also fascinated with your idea that you. Even with all the thinking that you do that you. And correct me if I'm wrong here, you're saying you kind of come back to this idea that deterrence is the best answer because man is inherently aggressive. Is that fair that maybe you're saying that?

[Interviewer]

I probably wouldn't have used the word aggressive, but let us not split hairs. Yes.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Okay. Okay. So two things come to mind. Have you seen Chimp Empire? The next the Netflix?

[Interviewer]

I haven't, but I've heard you talk about chimps on a treadmill.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Okay, so Chimp Empire is your homework assignment.

[Interviewer]

Okay, Tell me about it. I know a lot about chimps I just haven't seen.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Oh, my God. I mean, it's just so brilliant. It's like one of those documentaries that I watched, and then when it was finished, I watched it again. I don't want to spoil anyone.

[Interviewer]

Spoiler alert for anybody listening.

[Annie Jacobsen]

It just It, it's, you know, it says it's so much about human nature. I'm not gonna. I just. You have to watch.

[Interviewer]

No, please. Because I'm about to hit you with chimp facts. So if you don't give me your counterfacts.

[Annie Jacobsen]

No, well, it just. It's human nature, you know, you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Annie Jacobsen]

I'm not gonna spoil it because it's too good. It's four hours.

[Interviewer]

But is chimps acting well and disarming?

[Annie Jacobsen]

No.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Annie Jacobsen]

No.

[Interviewer]

It is.

[Annie Jacobsen]

No. No.

[Interviewer]

Chimps tearing each other limbs.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Somebody said to me, Somebody once said to me, we're jumping around here. But the. You know the Billy Wall, the Surprise Kilvanish book? I write about an organization called Ground Branch inside of the CIA, inside of its vision that are. You know, it's an incredibly powerful, incredibly frightening direct action group that does not adhere to rule of law or military rule. They have their own title 50. So they're really wild. It's just a great. Like, that's the best way I. They're just wild. And someone asked me what I thought of Chimp Empire, and I said, this is the best way. I can describe it to you without giving ways. It's the origin story of Ground Branch.

[Interviewer]

So is this you agreeing that we wouldn't be able to get to Nuke zero because humans are aggressive?

[Annie Jacobsen]

No, because that was millions of years ago that we were. Those are our ancestors from millions of years ago. We have evolved. Like, I mean, in the end of the book Nuclear War, I write about nuclear winter. And then I take us to this ancient archaeological site called Gobekli Tep. And it's the oldest known archaeological site made by man that exists. And when it was discovered in the 1990s by a German archaeologist named Klaus Schmidt and his young student Michael Morsch, whom I interview in the books, I love to get things from, like the firsthand pov. The discovery of Gobekli Tep upended the general thinking among all archaeologists, among all anthropologists about how man became civilized. The idea before that was man was hunter gatherers. So, you know, after chimps, we move, then we become hunter gatherers, and then we become civilized, and then we invent writing, and then the rest is history, literally, because once writing happened, we have history. So the idea was man needed to be able to domesticate animals and have agriculture in order to then keep progressing and develop language. So it's that it's a continuum that thought and the development of tools and the development of the brain and the development of community is progress. We can all Kind of agree on that. But Gobekli Tepe disrupted that because the sort of iconography in the carved stones suggest that the people that built Gobekli Tep. And it's this, you can see a picture of it in the book. It's like an amphitheater made of stone and it's, there's multiple amphitheaters and they have these 20 foot tall carved pillars that represent man or gods, who knows? But this group, 12,000 years ago were still hunter gatherers. The carvings on the stones are like ibis and crane and fox, wild animals, jaguars, not cows and goats and pigs, domesticated animals, chickens. And so archaeologists and anthropologists have to accept this was a hunter gatherer group that built a civilization. In essence, you can't have, I mean, it required plans. And so it just like suddenly you have to rejigger your thinking about man and his nature. And I've gone off on a tangent, but the point to this is I believe that man does evolve, even though how we get there, there are big gaps in our thinking and understanding because we simply can't know before if it's not written down. But progress is always being made. And after I take the reader through this idea of Gobekli Tepe after a nuclear winter, and I try to have like a thought experiment where I ask readers to think about how in this century came upon archaeologists, came upon Gobekli Tepe and were like, my God, what was going on here? We don't know, but we wonder. And it, it's so inspiring on the one hand to think about and it fills in mysteries. And I then was imagining, imagine thousands of years in the future after nuclear war, after nuclear winter, after the ruin of civilization, after man returns to a hunter gatherer state, which would almost certainly happen. Will the future men become archaeologists? Will they find remnants of our society? And will they wonder what were they up to? And the reason I posit that is because I believe that people can take away what Einstein took. What Einstein said of nuclear weapons when he was asked what weapons will World War III be fought with? And he said, I don't know, but World War four will be fought with sticks and stones. Einstein's idea that all these thousands of years of man's progress, all the movement we've made in our civilizations could be in the blink of an eye in a nuclear war. What a great tragedy. So then you must say, how do we change that? If you're me, you would say, having learned what I learned, disarmament sounds like what you're saying. Is deterrence. So maybe those are just two sides of the same coin.

[Interviewer]

Well, so after having read your book, I took away a thesis which may be part of my fundamental misunderstanding of you, which is that while I would be lying if I said I believed that you don't have a thesis, that maybe this is just something that's fascinating to you and you don't care one way or the other, but the book very much read to me like a warning. This red. Like, especially because you end with, is it Go Beckley Tepli, which is what I've always thought, or is it. Can you look this up, Drew?

[Annie Jacobsen]

It's Go Beckley Tep. Because Tep means Hill. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

The reason that I thought you ended with that was trying to give us like a earthbound pale blue dot moment of imagine that we do this, we destroy everything. And one day people find evidence of our civilization and begin asking questions, what the hell happened? Which is a really interesting way to poke us into being way more thoughtful.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

This goes back to your book. Felt like a story based version of what Eric Weinstein has hypothesized. He hasn't said we should do this, but he said maybe we should start doing above ground nuclear testing so people don't forget how unbelievably dangerous nuclear weapons are. And that's what I got reading the book was between the just minute by minute breakdown of how devastating this would be from radiation poisoning, your skin being ripped off, people getting sucked up into the cone of the mushroom cloud. I mean, just really, really fascinating levels of detail. How far? Like five miles of fire, nothing cellular exists in that five mile radius. Just really, really detailed. And then the pale blue dot moment of imagine being a failed civilization that people are looking back on. It was like, okay, hey, everybody back off. What I'm saying is we can't, so we might reduce. You're saying we can't back off Humans as a species, it will not work.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Is your position.

[Interviewer]

My position? Yeah. Now the question becomes, okay, Tom, how did you come to that position? And I will posit it to you as question. I would look back at history. I think history is the greatest predictor of our future up until AI. If we begin doing genetic engineering, then all bets are off the table and there really is a singularity and I can't see beyond it. But up until that moment, history is the greatest predictor of where we're going as far as I'm concerned. And if I look backwards, I see only people pushing the advantage, getting what they can. Brief periods of stability followed by instability. And you get that cycle that everybody is so fond of repeating that good men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make good men, so on and so forth, so that it exists in this loop. So hey, we've just had this period of stability that lasted roughly 70 years. It may just be that that's drawing to a close. And just like when we look back at history, it is a never ending loop of death and destruction. For anybody that has not looked at history, it's really pretty, I mean terrifying in its predictive ability of what humans are going to be like today. So when you look one, do you think looking backwards is wise to understand where we are going? And if so, what do you see when you look backwards that gives you hope about disarmament?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Maybe there are two different lanes of thought. So I again, sometimes I think it's a predisposition that I have toward optimism. So I have read many of those ideas and I've had conversations with people that believe, like what you're saying that it's this cycle of sort of man, the aggressor. The best example I can think about that is a guy called John von Neumann who was the original Pentagon's brain. I write about him, he was just so incredibly smart, but he believed in his nature that man was violent and prone to violent acts. He was a game theorist. And interestingly, it's where we got a lot of the theory, the game theory about nuclear war in the 50s, Prisoner's Dilemma, et cetera. And he attracted people who were like minded, who peopled the Defense department, who built up our nuclear weapon systems. So I think that a fundamental shift is definitely in order if you want to have change, have things be different. But I do also. So there's that lane, right sort of man's nature, but then there's another lane of the radical speed of technology, the Moore's law of it that is happening right in our own lives, that you cannot argue is makes this era stand out. I believe when you look at the slow, you know, the slow crawl of evolution, I mean of, of in industry with happening and you look at where we are now with science and technology, it's just astonishing. And so I believe that the, that that looking to, that's kind of looping into your AI theory that, that it is possible for history to go in a new and different direction. But you have to have thought leaders who are not all of the von Neumann ilk. You have to have both kinds of people for the sake of argument, we can call them the negativists and the positivists, or those who see man as naturally aggressive and those who see, well, we can get on along. We're no longer, I mean, chimps, chimp empire. Gotta watch it. It's just 50 chimps, right? They can't be 5,000 chimps. It doesn't work. So we can work as five, you know, so. But it has to have a fundamental shift in thinking. Now, to my eye, that would be an argument for why it's really important to be able to have friends on both sides of the aisle, to be able to have people with fundamentally opposing ideas hashing out what the future of nuclear command and control could or should look like. But as our society becomes increasingly adversarial, and I'm just talking about America, I'm not talking about the whole world, as our society becomes even more polarized and adversarial, then I think that becomes more and more of a problem. And then I would see things pessimistically. I would be inclined, but that would be my man's own demise. So if there's any takeaway, not necessarily inside my book, but in reading my books and having conversations with others about them, would be that you can have the takeaway and have precisely, you know, have exactly opposite ideas, which you have a different takeaway from my book than I do. Which is exactly the point, because we're not sitting here shouting at each other. We don't disagree. We just see things differently. There's a difference.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I'm not even sure if we do have a different takeaway. Let me ask, do you consider this. Do you consider nuclear zero possible or simply desirable?

[Annie Jacobsen]

The colleagues that I have met recently that are of the disarmament ilk, I have read their statements, and what they say is that what is possible is reducing nuclear weapons to zero. So what I see in that is I focus on the part of reducing. I since I'm not, I don't have to have a goal in that race. I can just be part of a movement or support. Because the other alternative, which is, let' swhich is what's happening, let's spend a trillion dollars, you know, upgrading our weapon systems, which, by the way, antagonizes everybody around the world, and that only moves things in this direction. So the takeaway from my book, no doubt, is we are one misunderstanding or miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. That is really clear to me after having written the book, more so than any book I have ever written it has a conclusion, and that is it. And so moving in that direction is just perpetuating the risk. Moving in that direction is reducing it.

[Interviewer]

If you were emperor, what would you. If you were emperor of America, let's say, and you don't have to convince Congress, the Senate, the voters, nothing, you're just going to do a thing. What would you do to our nuclear armament? We'll start there.

[Annie Jacobsen]

I could never be Emperor. I'm not suited to be emperor. You want people to be good at the job that they have. And that's not my, that's not my makeup. It's like asking me if I could be an astronaut. I would become completely claustrophobic.

[Interviewer]

Would you be good at advising the emperor?

[Annie Jacobsen]

I could maybe offer a little advice, but I would be one of many people offering advice.

[Interviewer]

Sure. Fair, wise. What would you advise? As one of the voices to the emperor, what would you advise that they do go to zero, reduce slowly, do a tit for tat reduction so that, hey, Russia, North Korea, Israel, France, China, all of the people that have nuclear weapons, like, we reduce in kind, and if I see you reducing and you let me send people in to verify, then we'll reduce.

[Annie Jacobsen]

I would probably not get that specific. I would probably quote Dr. Carlos Umana, who I met recently in Brussels, who won the Nobel, was one of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. He's a physician, part of the group of the Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons. And what he said to me was, start with an idea. Which is interesting because we are talking about ideas. Start with an idea. So as advisor to Emperor, I would repeat him and say, before you go there, start with the idea of making something, something taboo, because that is a powerful concept that people can wrap their head around. And then it, it has an example. So in other words, you're. We're talking about weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons and chemical weapons used to be viable arsenals that the United States government had. They have since become taboo. No one says, let's have a really great arsenal of weaponized smallpox on reserve. So in case somebody else wants to launch a bunch of weapons at us with smallpox, weaponized smallpox, we can do ours in return, and that'll keep us all from ever using these. We all know how crazy that is. That's just absolutely taboo. I mean, you'd have to be really living outside the general norm to think that was a good idea. And yet people still work from the idea. We're talking about it right now, that having a new weapon, a Giant, vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, 5,000 of them, by the way, we have, Russia has approximately 5,000 is a perfectly good idea. If you can make. What Dr. Umana suggested is if you can present the idea of taboo into the discussion, then you have a place that people can work from and they can go, oh, that makes sense. And when I think about the smallpox concept, I think about there are still a few samples of smallpox in BSL4 labs around the world, very dangerous, but they exist. Actually they didn't for a while and now they do. You know, let's use a different example or you get the idea.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Annie Jacobsen]

And so having a few samples and a few vials is very different than having biological weapons loaded onto warheads ready to go, which we used to have and Russia used to have as well, and North Korea has, by the way, right now. And so taboo would be what I would tell the emperor, think about taboo. And then that reduction makes sense in a graduated way. And once we're down to one, decide whether or five decide whether it's really zero. And in the graduated process, you would see the other nuclear armed nations responding. And then ultimately what would really be going on is you'd all be working together instead of you would be, you could be adversaries, you could be opponents, you could fundamentally disagree with communism, as I do, but we all share this blue dot, as you say, and so let's work together to reduce a threat as opposed to you're my enemy and I might have to kill you.

[Interviewer]

I love that. I think that the idea of taboo is extraordinarily good advice if done in a way where you were what I'll round to tit for tat. We do it. You let people come in and look at your arsenal and see if you know it's actually reducing. I do want to know though, do you feel you have earned your optimism or is this just a default stance that you were blessed with?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Probably the latter. It's just how I think. And also I personally think it's actually a better way to think. So when I begin to think pessimistically, it's time for a hike.

[Interviewer]

So I'll put forth that pessimism is not the only other option because I am very much not a pessimist. I would have called myself an optimist up until this interview. And now I'm realizing maybe I'm not an optimist, I am a realist. But I don't mean that in a self congratulatory way. I mean it in that I Can't necessarily see what is real, but I'm simply groping for what is real. And so I'm doing things like, okay, what am I going to use to inform my stance on this? Looking backwards is certainly one of the things. So I look back at history. Do I see periods of peace? Yes. Do I see a period of peace that ever lasts and wasn't violated? No. Not ever? Not once? Nope. Never. Not once. So I would now be asking for the first time ever in human history for people to be able to sort of put a genie back in the bottle. Yes. That's what you're asking. Okay. Doesn't mean that you don't try it, but it does mean that you go into this saying, okay, this is violating everything that I know about human behavior up to this point. But is there a plan that we can put together? Because if you don't believe it can be done, you won't even take the steps. Which is why I think your idea of making it taboo is really quite brilliant. And I get you're quoting somebody else. Fair enough. But still, nonetheless, I think the idea is really, really fantastic. Your book, however, posits a madman. And that is exactly the thing that I think people are ultimately going to bump up against. So there are nine with nuclear weapons. One of them will not let people come in and audit. That would be North Korea. I think there's a reason that your book says, hey, this probably starts with North Korea, the one person that's just sort of leaving things unhinged. Also, I think we did make using nuclear weapons taboo. I know there was a huge debate during Vietnam whether we halo dropped a nuclear weapon in there to just end that war real quick. We decided not to. Probably very wise in that. It just. Just the more conflicts we've had where nobody used them, the more we go, okay, wow, it really is. There'd be so much international pressure. However, we're now living in a moment where people really are rattling their sabers again, talking about using them, whether our own president or anybody else. It's certainly now less taboo to talk about it. And I certainly have deep fears that, that Putin gets backed into a corner, feels it's an existential threat, and maybe doesn't use an icbm, but, you know, a little dirty bomb or something, just to make a point to let people know, to back off. And now all of a sudden, it isn't taboo and potentially escalates from there. That would be a very deep and profound concern. But thinking about all of that, I, with my realist hat on. I worry that not only will we never get to zero nukes, but that as synthetic biology becomes more powerful, that China really will go, here's an Anglo targeted version of Ebola that's airborne or whatever. And we're like, yo, we, our spies told us that they developed that, so we need one aimed at Chinese people. And so now everybody does keep that in a secret lab. And I don't know where you fall on conspiracy theories around Covid, but like, you know, were we doing gain of function research? Does that make sense? So we're, we already have reason to at least be a little bit cautious about assuming that people aren't already keeping things, maybe not smallpox, but things like smallpox on hand, just in case, under the guise of, oh, we're just trying to learn about it. And so I have a very, what I'll call Matt Ridley's version of the rational optimist in me, where I look back and I see despite all the horrible things and the brutal, terrible things that we've done to each other, humans are also beautiful and wonderful and full of love and capable of the incredible. And so I don't want to look back at 12,000 years of moving in the right direction with there's no doubt, brutal blips that for any one person's life. It doesn't help that the long arc bends towards justice for all. But, but I think looking back and just seeing this progress, progress, progress, that I continue to believe that that's going to continue, but I have a feeling it will only continue if people look at the world not as they wish it were, but as it actually is. And so taking a very practical, maybe just the nice neutral term for it, a practical approach to how do we deescalate, how do we increase the sense of taboo, ends up being how we at least continue this 70 year run of good luck.

[Annie Jacobsen]

And to your point about taboo, another reason why it would be very valuable is that you could, first of all, it would keep more nations from getting nuclear weapons, period, because it would be, you would be the group of nine, or rather eight, because North Korea doesn't participate, would be having a stance, a unified stance. And if once you have to be unified about something, ideally you would be unified about other things, because that's how progress happens. So one of the problems right now, as you say, of Putin being backed in the corner, is that making, you know, friends with other enemies becomes even more dangerous. The missile that I write about, the ICBM that hits the Pentagon, is An Hwasong 17 North Korea's now second most powerful long range nuclear weapon. Just the other day in the news I read that Hwasong 11, a shorter range missile, hit Ukraine. Now this happened several months ago but the forensics were being done on it it to make sure this was accurate. And it was reported earlier this week that it was. And so what that says is you now have, you know, Russia and North Korea friending up in the weapons world to attack Ukraine.

[Interviewer]

I assume it was a conventional warhead.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Yes, yes, yes, it was a conventional warhead. But still that's the, those are the delivery systems of nuclear weapons and the bigger point is their friends. If you could make the person who isn't adhering to the deterrence rules to the disarmament rules, excuse me, Taboo. It would put more pressure on them to join the group. Watch Chimp empire versus people cutting deals with when everybody's enemies of everybody else. The potential for explosion, the potential for serious conflicts escalating gets greater when people communicate and when people have agreements about things, it lessens the pressure. Sure.

[Interviewer]

Why don't we build an iron dome style defense system? I know we have something that's sort of the beginnings of it, but why isn't that the answer here?

[Annie Jacobsen]

So America has. Well, first of all for listeners there's a difference between an icbm, an intercontinental ballistic missile which can get from one continent to another in roughly 30 minutes. It's mind boggling. That technology has not changed since 1957. By the way people talk about we have hypersonics. A ballistic missile is hypersonic and it's faster than a hypersonic. The new missiles, those are Mach, I don't know, five, six, something like that. A ballistic missile is going about 15,000 miles an hour. Mach 23. Short range and intermediate range missiles are easier to shoot down. That is what you saw two weeks ago in Iran firing missiles at Israel. You saw them being shot down by navy systems out on the ocean called the Aegis system which can shoot down those missiles. I write about them in the book because they have an 85% success rate. But they're not protecting the continental United States States, they're protecting our partners overseas. And so the Aegis systems which had the 85% success rate actually worked in a live combat situation which. So if you're, if you're me thinking about disarmament, you go, wow. Now a lot of people are going we should just have those. But those. The Aegis system cannot go up against an intercontinental ballistic missile. An intercontinental ballistic missile gets intercepted by what's called an interceptor missile. And I write about in the book how that goes down. We have 44 total. Many people have said, maybe, Annie, there's a secret program you don't know about. Doesn't exist. Unless I'm wrong, it doesn't exist. Even if it did, tell me where those 1,500 some odd or 2,000 missiles are hiding. They have to be somewhere. So we know Russia has 5,000 missiles. How is 44 interceptor missiles going to go up against them? Never mind the fact that the warhead in a nose cone of a missile can be mirv, meaning there are multiple warheads in there. There are decoys in there. The interceptor missile system, by the Defense Department's own records, has a success rate of between 40 and 55%. Those are on curated tests. That's when it's like, hey, guys, there's going to be a missile coming at 8 o', clock, try to shoot it down. Literally a curated test, 50% failure rate, approximately.

[Interviewer]

But you don't think the play is to put resources into getting better? I. I'm operating on the base assumption that if we had the Manhattan Project of stopping or the Manhattan Project of creating an iron dome essentially for these, that we could get better. Now, whether there's a lot better that we could get, I won't speak to. But my base assumption is that, yes, with enough time and energy, we could. But I know it's on strategic pause. So they're not even trying.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Well, they are. They're creating a whole new system. But the thing is, is that how many of them are you gonna have? Mostly they're all for show, really and truly. And most people, by the way, do not even realize this. I've. I have even said in an interview before, I was at a dinner party with a very knowledgeable person. When I told him I was writing this book, it was like, annie, we have an interceptor system for that. Whoa, did not say anything. That person used to be a staffer for a member of Congress. Just simply was completely wrong. Wrong. It's okay. People have different sets of wrong information, but we have 44 interceptor missiles and they cannot shoot down a thousand incoming missiles. And so to your point, if we. Okay, so that becomes a great idea. Let's have twice as many missiles. Well, then you're. That is exactly what a certain group of military industrialists would love to perhaps have happened it. More weapons, more weapons, more weapons. But I know nothing about the economics. You spoke of, of printing money. It sounded interesting, but what I can tell you is you could just Replace printing money with making weapons. Anyone can tell you you just need a narrative brain to be like, wait a minute, if we make more weapons, they're going to make more weapons. Weapons. And so that is madness. When you're talking about nuclear weapons, that is madness. The goal must be, I would think, based on what sources tell me, disarmament.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, well, we'll see if we can pull that off. It is a great goal to aim for. Speaking of goals, talk to me about the next era of weaponry. You've talked about darpa. Their sole mission in life is to build. I forget the exact phrase, but like the next generation of the most amazing weaponry. Do we have hints of what comes next? Drones, autonomous systems? AI warfare, anything like that?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Yeah, vast weapon systems of the future. That's the quote. Vast weapon systems of the future. DARPA is of course for listeners, the most powerful, most productive military research agency in the world. And they handle chicken and egg problems. That's. Those are their words and. Or they do blue sky research. Because the fundamental theory is if one of your. Call it an adversary, call it an enemy. If one of your enemies or adversaries appears on the scene with a weapon that you don't have, it's too late. That's DARPA's thinking. And so they are creating weapon systems to outperform anyone at all times. And they work directly with the intelligence community to have an eye on what weapon systems are being created over there in China, Russia, North Korea. So when I wrote the DARPA book and was reporting it 10 years ago, I found these very interesting to me documents in the Defense Department making explicitly clear that the weapons systems of the future were going to be autonomous systems that involved not just machine that become intelligent, but humans that interface with machines, like brain.

[Interviewer]

Computer interface.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Interface. Brain computer interface. And you can read the DARPA book called the Pentagon's Brain, which is now 10 years old. But again, I take you through the origin stories of DARPA and show you the different weapon systems in the different wars that came to be. And I think most readers can then figure out for themselves where we're going. You know, it's the Shakespeare past as prologue, like you said as well. And so the idea that DARPA is moving toward is to have humans and machines work together. And that includes ultimately bio hybrids where men are men and women. I use the word man to mean humans are augmented with machines. And this doesn't just mean in the brain, this also means in the body. And this also means that war fighters will carry technology kits to be Able to do all kinds of things from identify their enemies instantly through iris scans. I mean, all of this works together with biometric databases. I wrote about this in the book I wrote previously, right before nuclear war, I wrote a book called First Platoon, about a group of young soldiers that go to Afghanistan thinking they're fighting the Taliban, only to discover that they're actually collecting biometric information on locals as part of a program that the Defense Department was running to collect biometric information. That's your fingerprints, iris scans, DNA on 85% of the population of Afghanistan. It was just a big litmus test, in essence. And so this idea, if there's anything people would. Might want to sort of look at, I believe to wonder where all of this is going. It's biometric systems working in concert with brain computer interface systems at the Pentagon. And that becomes a very a world, not just, I mean, fill in the blank with the science. I saw your science fiction books on the shelf before we spoke. That is precisely the direction in which DARPA would have us heading. But let's not forget a quote from the former director of DARPA herself which said, darpa, where science fiction becomes science fact.

[Interviewer]

How taboo do you think transhumanism brain computer interfaces to move weapons is going to become?

[Annie Jacobsen]

How taboo? Yeah, well, again, it's what people decide is taboo. Taboo is a human. We. It's taboo is a completely human construct. And so I'll cite a kind of spooky example that I also found in when I wondered that question. And there, there is a survey I write about in the Pentagon's brain where the generals and admirals at the Pentagon. So the high ranking officers were asked how they felt about this movement toward, you know, brain computer interface, AI weapon systems of the future being drones, being drone swarms, humans being augmented with computers themselves, super soldiers is kind of the short form term for it. And the generals and the admirals gave pushback in this discussion, said we don't want that. We want to always have a human in the mix. And what I found, that was the end of that study. And then what I found was right around the same time DARPA became very interested in a scientist that was working on. He had discovered in his own words something called the moral model molecule. I gotta give an attendem there to the other concept. The generals basically said we want a human in the mix because we don't trust machines. Then at the same time I find this new program that gets initiated at DARPA with the professor Zach, who found to his alleged. He alleged to Find the moral molecule in the brain. It's something called oxytocin. And he was thrilled to have found this. It's like the. It's the same molecule. The way that Zach explained it to me because I interviewed him in his office, it's the same molecule that mother breastfeeding mothers emit. So it's just trust. And it had to exist. If we go back to our hunter gatherer discussion, because imagine a breastfeeding mother who has to worry about, like the wildebeest or the lion or the jaguar, but has to take the time to breastfeed the child so that evolution can continue. Well, there's the moral molecule. Trust. It's okay, everything will be fine. The wildebeest will not get you. I mean, that's how I think of it when I try to wrap my brain around what that molecule might be. And so DARPA gives Zach a gram to investigate the moral molecule. So that. And to his eye, he told me he was convinced it was so that they could understand how to make people more trusting. I posit a different idea, which is that it was going to be used to try and make people trust the Pentagon and trust that brain computer interface was a good idea.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Annie Jacobsen]

And I have lots of reasons why I. I have lots of reasons that I report that indicate that that was the direction that it was going. But again, readers can draw their own conclusion.

[Interviewer]

So interesting that you have that, but are still very hesitant to say that the government might be up to something. Certainly in this case, that the Pentagon might be up to something. It's interesting. Yeah. So getting people to understand how these things work, that the government is running these experiments, that, that you have this gigantic part of the military apparatus that has a instruction or reason for existing to create these vast weapon systems of the future, and that they're playing around with oxytocin, which, by the way, is also present in post orgasm brain chemistry. So to the point about bonding. It's there to bond the mother and the infant. It's there to bond the two people making love. So, yeah. And you can use it as a nasal spray spray, which is crazy. So, in fact, I brought this up to my wife once. So I had a doctor that was like, hey, if you want to experiment with it, I'll prescribe oxytocin for you as a nasal spray. And I went to my wife and I was like, oh, my God, this would be so amazing. Like, imagine we want to have a really hard conversation or we want to negotiate. We're, you know, Putin and Biden and we want to negotiate backing off of nuclear armament. We're each gonna take a nasal spray of oxytocin and. Or, let's be clandestine. We're just gonna pump it into the room. And now everyone's just like a little more trusting and open to it. I mean, it's interesting. I am very curious to know if any of this stuff ever plays out realistically. Like, I know, for instance, you wrote a book, Phenomena on the government Studying esp. So whether it's ESP or oxytocin, like, does this stuff get researched because there's so many dollars floating around, or. Or do they actually do something with this stuff?

[Annie Jacobsen]

I mean, I think again, it's, you know, case specific. I write about different programs that become the result of other programs. But there is the idea that a lot of what the most volatile, shall we say, programs get classified. And again, now you can take away from that what you will. What I do know about DARPA is it's fundamental that it's working on weapon systems of the future. And what I do know about DARPA is that it comes from the position that if we don't invent it, someone else will. And so that, like, I'll loop it back to nuclear war because it's so on my mind. Is this thermonuclear bomb here on the COVID of the book, the weapon drawn by Richard Garwin when he was 23 or 24 years old. The first thermonuclear explosion, the explosion that changed the world, you could say. I asked Garwin if he wish he hadn't invented it. And he said to me, after a very long pause, he wished it couldn't be invented.

[Interviewer]

Why do you think he said that?

[Annie Jacobsen]

I wonder about that. And I specifically didn't want to ask him a follow up because I enjoy thinking that there's two answers, which is that one, which other nuclear weapons designers have told me is, Annie, the Russians were months away from or invent, you know, from discovering or being able to explode a thermonuclear weapon, which is true. So there's that and then there's the idea of the pure scientist mind, which is not my mind, which is. That's my calling. So it's. And I guess the closest analogy I can think is like, I am a storyteller. I was born that way. I've always known about myself that that is me. And nothing gives me greater inspiration and excitement and purpose, really. And so I can't imagine if somebody said if I, you know, oh, you can't write that story, you're not allowed. And in an interesting way I faced a little bit of that, that with nuclear war, a scenario in as much that there was some concern that I was fear mongering. There's two concerns that were presented to me by, you know, very level headed people. Like one, is it fear mongering? And two, are you giving anyone any idea? And my answer to the first part was well let's let me ask my sources. Am I fear mongering? Which I did it, which was super helpful. And no one said to me yes, don't write that book, none of them. These are people in nuclear command and control. And to the second part, am I giving anyone an idea? It's like, I mean people with bad intention know all of this. And so. But circling back to the idea of, you know, do I wish it could not be invented? I think that's where my mind goes on. That question is about the part of our discussion about man evolving, man moving toward a world led by science and technology. That is the reality of where we are. You think back to the word Luddite, right? Because when sometimes people get afraid by that and they're like this is terrible. It used to be better before. And then you think of I looked up the other day, what an actual Ludda. It's like when the, I think it was the weaving loom was invented, people went crazy like oh my God, this is just gonna ruin it for the pre weavers. Same with the printing press. I've heard one of my favorite thinkers, James Burke talk about the printing press. And he, he was talking to Dan Carlin on hardcore history and he was saying that. And he's an optimist by the way. He was saying that when. And people say to him like, oh my God, you know, the iPhone is ruining America. And he said when the printing press was invented, everybody said this is going to ruin youth. Suddenly they're going to be able to read. And we laugh at that now. But you know what Burke said on the counterpoint up to that was that what the printing press did was liberate the world. Because liberate the world and give the world access to knowledge. Not just because average Jane and Joe could read, but because before that the priesthood controlled the information and what a great way of thinking. So science and technology, where we are now is no different than the printing press. And Burke's idea about how that that made society better. And so I think that kind of looping around to your transhumanism question Is that again, you can, you can frame your thinking in any manner. I can think, oh my God, it's the worst thing in the world to suddenly augment humans. Or I can think. That's part of progress. But the most important thing is my favorite expression of all. Time. Time. And probably sums me up better than anything. And even my own father said this is my favorite new expression. Just don't make me do it. Just don't make me do it.

[Interviewer]

Tell me more that sums you up better than anything.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Because I can hold both ideas. Maybe transhumanism is great, maybe it's terrible, but ultimately it's my decision. So you can't just don't make me do it. So whenever I hear any bad, like what I think are bad ideas, I can like, okay, interesting. That's interesting. I can listen to them. Interesting. Okay. Ask questions. So then if that da da da da da. And then my conclusion is not that is right or wrong. I mean with within reason. Some things are okay, I'm talking about like acceptable concepts. But then I say, just don't make me do it.

[Interviewer]

It right. Just don't make me do it.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Don't make me do it.

[Interviewer]

That's very interesting. Okay. A couple of things that you said really sum up where I'm at. And I think it's interesting how it also highlights the different interpretations that we have. So you said, if we don't invent it, someone else will. That's what's driving the creation of a lot of these technologies. That's very much an idea that underpins my thinking as well, that, that take the atomic bomb. If we didn't. The Germans were racing to do it. And then when they fell out of the game, the Russians were racing to do it. In fact, they had a spy at Los Alamos, which is probably how they got it. They were also trying to gobble up as many of the former Nazi scientists as they could. And so it's a race to get all the Germans, which is a fascinating question about why did the Germans have all the best scientists. But that's a whole different thing. And then, then the other was a quote that you said, which I wish it couldn't have been invented. I forget the gentleman's name, but Garwin, Richard Garwin. So you put Garwin's quote together with the driving ethos of if we don't do it, somebody else is going to. And you get everything that can be invented will be invented. I know somebody. I hope this doesn't become self evident. I know somebody who is very well versed in physics that worries that certain insights in physics will give birth to the unknown. So just as Einstein's insights end up leading to the splitting of the atom, and then that leads not only to energy, it also leads to weapons of mass destruction. And the age that we're in, you know, as we find new things like what's the new Manhattan Project like? Are they working on something? And if they are, is it gonna have positive, negative implications? It's very hard to know. But. But I firmly believe that the way the human mind works, if it can be invented, it's going to be invented. But where we put resources will determine how quickly something is invented. So certainly there are ways to forestall. But if you have the idea that if we don't do it, somebody else will. Now all of a sudden, you take the biggest, most dangerous thing, the thing that could be the vast weapon system of the future, and you go crazy. So take AI Partly because I guess I've grown up in the age where it seemed like in the 80s, for real, for real, we were all going to die from a nuclear explosion and then it didn't happen. I have a false sense of security that we're going to just keep figuring this out and not do it. Because mutually assured destruction makes so much sense to me that even a madman. Unless, I mean, I guess, unless they absolutely care about nothing. But I have a hard time believing that they would get in power anyway. I. I don't have maybe wrongly so this is one where I do not want people to adopt my thinking. I think that your book is a very wise thing, that if people listen to and we reduce, we're in a way better position. But anyway, that isn't where I spend a lot of my time being afraid. But I do spend time being very concerned about the psychological impact of A.I. now I am a huge proponent of A.I. ironically, I think that ultimately it ends up being a tremendous force for good. You couldn't stop it from happening even if you wanted to to anyway. So I think people ought to think about how to do it well. But I think there will be a transition period that's going to be ruthless. And so when you were talking about the printing press, yes, we look back and laugh now, but they were right. And so the generation where the clergy lost control of the church was explosive. It changed the very fabric of society. And whenever you change the fabric of society, even though it leads to something that I think universally we would all say is better, it would have been devastating for social structure at that time, and given how little the average human likes change, you can understand why those would be very turbulent times. In addition to that, the rate of change now is accelerating so much that even if we embrace that, oh, change is great, this is all going to be wonderful. AI is going to bring in, if not a utopia, something just so much better than what we have today. And it's a liberation in the same way that people were liberated by the loom first in and the printing press or the printing press first. But anyway, you get the idea. If that all happens at the rate that AI is going to happen, and then AI will self improve. Ooh, I think this just the rate of change alone will be very hard to metabolize for human civilization.

[Annie Jacobsen]

I don't disagree with you and I think think that would be another vote for people beginning to realize how important it is to see people as adversaries and opponents as opposed to enemies. Because if everything, you know, it's the old cliche, if you're a hammer, everything's a nail. And so what I take away from what you were saying was AI could be weaponized or AI could be generalized. Right. It could be a tool for people to use, or it could be a weapon. And that's just the fundamental reality of dual use. Any, all weapons, almost all weapons have a dual use. So the thrust should be on a, on a sort of human level level of being able to communicate and agree to disagree as opposed to having conflict. And the problem with the military industrial complex. And when I say that, I don't mean that in a conspiratorial way. I mean that in a literal way. Weapons production. Right. A colleague I know works for Raytheon and, and they just got rid of all their advertising, essentially their whole advertising department, because they don't need to advertise anymore. They just are backordered on weapons. So if weapons require conflict. So on balance, if people are moving toward a degree of, I don't want to say harmony, because that sounds very Pollyanna ish, but rather communication or agreeing on their differences, then I think the framework of inventions become, of technologies become different. And again, you would make it taboo. Like what, you're trying to use that as a weapon. That's right. So there's no taboo in weaponry whatsoever. And I'm even shocked by that just in my progression as a reporter over the past 20 years. I'll give the most obvious example being drones. When drones first came out and I reported on the earliest days of the drones and the initial drone that was during the Clinton administration that a group of people I interviewed. I write about this in Surprise Gil Vanish wanted to kill. Kill Osama bin Laden with a drone. And we're told, no, that you can't do that. And look at now. Drones are just completely accepted as part of the vast weapon systems of the present day.

[Interviewer]

What was the rationale behind not using it to kill bin Laden?

[Annie Jacobsen]

Because it would just be absolutely unacceptable. This was in the late 90s because

[Interviewer]

there's no human attached.

[Annie Jacobsen]

It's almost impossible to think about this now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Absolutely disorienting.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Right. Because are you ready for this? It was an extrajudicial killing.

[Interviewer]

Huh.

[Annie Jacobsen]

And the president, President Clinton at the time wanted the team to take along an FBI agent to. So they wanted to grab bin Laden. They could get him. He human.

[Interviewer]

This is before 9 11. Interesting. I didn't realize he was that kind of threat.

[Annie Jacobsen]

Yeah. Billy Waugh was operating against bin Laden 10 years before 911 in Sudan. The CIA knew he was a threat immediately after the Gulf War and they were watching him. And Billy Waugh is a great part in Surprise Kilvanish of Billy Waugh. His cover was an old man on a jogging crate. That's how he described it. Wasn't that old then, but he would just run around Khartoum in jogging shorts and he had to have a lead pipe in his hand while he was running because bin Laden's dogs would always run after him. I mean it's just such a great image and such a great scene. Billy Waugh wanted to kill bin Laden and asked. According. There's two versions of that story. Talk about. There's two versions of everything. Billy Waugh's version of the story was that he told his boss, Kofer Black. Black became a very famous person during the war on terror because. For a lot of reasons. But Khofer Black was chief of station in khartoum in the 90s and Billy was the singleton operator going up against bin Laden. And Billy said we should kill this guy. According to Billy. And he had a whole plan how he was going to do it. Throw a bunch of grenades over, go, you know, go over the fence. And he told. According to Billy told Covert Black Covert Black took it directly to the president. And the president said, said, don't ever suggest anything like that again. This is Clinton ever like Billy got sort of admonished for suggesting that. That's Billy's version. Kofer's version is I never took it to Clinton. But either way, what we do know is that some years later that same team tried to kill bin Laden with a drone and it was rejected because drones were teped. Taboo. Drones were taboo. It was just considered out of the realm of human behavior.