Joe Rogan Experience #2174 — Annie Jacobsen Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. I haven't read it, but I've heard a lot about your book from a lot of people that you freaked out I interviewed. I began to think what happens if deterrence fails, You begin to realize when you well you quickly realize as you read the book that No one knows. the the whole thing is Like, when? In the words of Carl Sagan, who is the author of nuclear winter but

4:49 and we know that now. The president chooses what elements of that triad he's going to use when he launches We have 1,770 nuclear weapons on ready for launch status. have a specific target but when when the command goes so they accidentally go off or I try to at least with like the eye of or the point Jesus. of the narrative of Carl Jung. So Carl Jung's perception was that he believed

10:11 the So I think we know a lot more now than we knew then. That is an interesting narrative too. carlton get enough exercise this morning crashed retrieval programs where they're re-engineering these things and trying to other than human beings that are gonna get destroyed as well mutations are going to come from their offspring? I get into that in the end of

13:40 Yes. Right? what was thought in the 80s, it's actually much worse. So whereby originally they thought there That's the real problem. threat. Although the results of a nuclear war would be very much like an this past year. And these treaties are all, you know, at risk and people are just very Disarmament there was that was the beginning of this idea of wait a minute

17:26 Launching a counter-strike and that one guy prevented nuclear annihilation And Petrov was in a early warning radar system, So what was it? It is parked over our enemies that have nuclear weapons, and it can see and detect a nuclear So ballistic missiles are hypersonic. that's physics. ballistic missiles, long-range ballistic the five-minute or the 30-second ballistic missile lesson, because this is what I need.

22:05 a rocket, you've seen launches, that fire coming out the bottom. That boosts the rocket designed to take out the missile in midcourse phase out these incoming missiles and we simply don't, which is why when nuclear war begins, story. I believe. I also believe that if I can be as factual and dramatic as possible, most basic, like I say, you have to tell it to me like I'm a kid because I don't have

25:51 into this dramatic form, which is how I landed on this you cannot find them in the sea. And these things are, by the way, I have a map in the back of the book that shows you would see that while I was talking about my book with people like you after publication. Against America. killed by these cluster bombs that were launched by drones that are ours.

29:22 23rd. The footage captured by a security camera shows hundreds of people beginning to run away from the water So it says here, the event was caused by Russian air defenses shooting down a series of Kruster Don't know I don't know. I'm not following the ground war in Ukraine right now as with my focus on this as a part Yeah. about nuclear weapons in, of all things, an ABC television movie called

33:29 isn't speaking to the president of Russia, It is way too dangerous. That's terrifying. is much more compromised today than it was then. more advanced systems and better systems and there's so much money and momentum And don't you know about these guys? Absolutely. So then you have to ask yourself what is also going to happen Yeah, because there's a competition, you know, so which is that double-edged sword because

37:53 CIA chief from the intelligence point of view. concerned. the business. We're not good at regulating any businesses. We're not good at regulating any businesses. When we allowed jobs to go overseas because everything's overseas. that might be more entertaining because to talk to me in my books, because he says positive sign in the right direction. I think people are much more open to

42:23 You know, it's like it just goes in and out quickly. But the way in which America seems to me have almost become like, you know, the way that the UK used to that distract us, that we like to sort of apply those same viewing habits to the whole that we did, I sell as many e-books and audiobooks as I do hardcovers. to so many more people. And so I, and again, I have to be an eternal optimist, particularly writing the kind of books that I do,

45:52 You know, that's the wildest thing, But also what's remarkable is you hear people often say like, people have lost their attention You know takes you this amount of time to read and then you, I mean newspapers barely exist anymore. it's just a different thing it's a different way to communicate this idea I've rejected that from the beginning. very fascinating Englishman who said some very wise things but just a brilliant person very interested in Buddhism and

49:20 That's ridiculous. There's still people that are graduating from universities of PhDs conscious of your own habits in viewing and thinking And how hard it is to sort of move yourself away from a habit extraordinary and you hear about them and get inspired by them like, wow, you got a flip phone? that's like 100 billion times better, how much information just where you just sit there and you scroll and you waste your time

51:57 because I don't know anything. what people are accepting that doesn't make any sense. It's things that are kind of fun do whatever minimal amount you have to do to keep that job and then So what social media does for them is it gives them a brief rest from their own problems because they've not taken care of themselves. profitable drug in the country. It's maybe the most profitable drug ever.

56:00 of its marketing department. threats are aligned in terms of that there's no need. There's just, there's too many orders and they don't employ any critical thinking oh my goodness, I have to change, things have to change. That becomes, you know, maybe not everybody. that we have today. pounds and he was like this thin dude and he was talking to me about driving

59:00 And I listened to him and he let me go But that's to our point of like, well, if you're not allowed to say like, dude, you're overweight, I think you should be able to be honest, assertive, giant. And she said that the doctor started body shaming her. And she was so upset that immune issues well guess why? Guess why? You're 500 pounds like you shouldn't be

1:01:28 Like yeah, that's probably it, right? Yeah, well, that's the same thing. You're just doing Yes. And that's what's so much about transfer. If it's fixable. fascinating ways. But in press came along and the hoi polloi could read or and its true definition is actually reading. That's the way I'm wired. Yes. a riff about literacy, but it's, the brain is being stimulated, the brain is being curious,

1:05:53 That is a new thing. Now you can download things and consume them anytime you want and most of the time people of sitting in the waiting room is what he wants. So I think is an additive to your life. that's probably a very good strategy. What does it say? Oh. But kudos to him. So he was like maybe nine years old I mean, try telling your kids about an answering machine.

1:10:14 Khrushchev. know. Lasers are arguably perhaps the most important technological defense-borne, Which would make sense if some if someone is constantly telling you you can't know about that brain a decade ago. No, no, no. Had his secretary on the line and gave Okay, that's interesting. I said, who said what? And he said, this is when has those two people that they run ideas by?

1:14:46 It was a religious experience for him. running it by his Einstein colleagues, and then can't make it work, can't make it work, is sitting on a park bench and And I think he wrote that when he was in his late 80s. thing. write about all this in my book, Phenomena. Yes. These dream the angel came to Descartes and said, Conquest of nature is to be achieved through

1:19:10 I have a theory. Tell me. the currently available ideas, it improves upon those ideas, and it That's what it does. It would get inside that thing's creative structure, do quantum computing. Let's do that. These are all just ideas. So ideas that human beings Oh, I have seen that. Oh my god, what are you doing with that? You need the best one. You need the new one. If

1:22:31 It pushes innovation. Would they would, they would stop innovating. They would stop making things. out. This phone, can't make a circle It does it with web pages. So on your half of the phone facing you, hear you in English and this is just beginning so at the United Nations we're Now when you say ideas are life forms, which is so interesting to me, haven't heard that,

1:25:56 If you live my life, I think you would be me and I think if I lived your life, I would be you you speak this language, and you have these customs, and you engage in these religious and it's terrible for human beings. The cocoon is the next transformation. Exactly, And we give birth to the butterfly. We are a biological caterpillar giving birth It happens very fast.

1:28:40 What happens when 6 gets released? How do we go from grunting to language, and then from language to writing? Yeah, I had the director on it was amazing. It's an amazing film I was so much that is somebody was somebody was asking me after I wrote the surprise kill vanish book about the CIA's was based on revenge. but one of the chimps' brother, I think it was,

1:31:58 But instead, the other brother, the lead chimp, Right. Anthropologists right now believe that if we used to be Stone Age lower primates Recently. They're starting to enter into this phase where they start evolving. anecdote nuclear war apes in Ideas, but all of them are just ideas. No one really knows. Okay, so here's an interesting anecdote treadmill trying to win, not even realizing there is no winner. And, you know, it was a famous

1:35:53 treadmills walk and during one of the experiments one of the apes was with the head of Raytheon. I don't think it's inevitability that we destroy things get them positive attention and they feel good and then they get a bunch of people who love leave office they get paid to speak in front of bankers and make a half a or you wouldn't become president

1:38:36 Well, it's also so peculiar what happens to people when they become president and all I'll give you an example of is a quote from former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry. you get in there? Like what happens when you get in there? No one knows. It's so secretive. So then they sit you down and they hit you with all the problems in the world that you They do things like that. That's what they always do. But I think a lot of it is also

1:42:06 Memoirs rather which then say absolutely nothing original to any of us the citizenry about what's really happening as president kind of skirt around it and figure out what to say, See if you could find the quote, so I don't paraphrase it. I think it's page Now just imagine saying that Yeah. That is, I got to see that real, because that's some really heavy subtext there.

1:44:43 And that guy wrote all that longhand, by the way. who thought the moon landing was fake, He said that he didn't believe it for a minute that in Washington, I saw some things on TV that make me wonder if he wasn't ahead of his time." Well that's conspiracies. That's why I couldn't find it somewhere else. I was trying to find it. know how fast it is. Did you know that they have a six minute window to make a counter

1:47:43 That's what we're asking. We're asking them to be these perfect things and then now you taking a person and asking them to not be a person, but then you're looking what if it's far smarter than us and realizes a fair and reasonable way to allocate resources and to eliminate pollution, to mitigate That's like his morals are so strong that when he gets in there

1:50:34 And if he was alive today, oh my god, the skeletons, today, even today, they won't release the files today. The president therefore agrees. Okay, we won't do that Imagine you get assassinated and the guy who you fired, Lifton wrote a book on it called Best Evidence. And you ever read it? up and killing Lee Harvey Oswald to We were just trying to get to the bottom of things. No.

1:54:49 what is it today that will be in 10, 20, 30 years from now, I can't believe they were all falling for that concept. We know that. You see those old ads from the 50s and 60s where they, you know, the doctor, the OB-GYN Yeah. Asthma cigarettes. In cases of asthma, cough, bronchitis, hay fever, Uh-huh. people have been doing that forever. It's whenever they can get away with it. If they

1:57:48 I don't think it's gonna be possible And it's certainly something Before language they had grunts and they pointed at things then they started writing things down Completely different way of accessing information. I think this is that times a million. I think this is grunts thing. Just like the new thing is you have a phone on you, I have a phone on me,

2:00:50 be speaking the same language. So in the defense world there's a movement now for But very easily the AI language could decide not to include the humans. was computing these computers were computer communicating with other computers and they what's going on with artificial intelligence Okay, this is published in 2017. a trade, attempting to swap hats, balls, and books, each of which was given a certain value.

2:03:40 do it. And again, these are all the dual use issues. human tissue and they can manipulate it and make it do things look look they go Did they add googly eyes to it? I don't think we are. They're there for the CCP? No one gets to say anything over there. who not only well, what, what makes the most sense and how are we not going down a path You know, I interviewed just three days ago a woman named Setsuko Thurlow who lived through

2:08:22 She wants the world to be free of nuclear weapons and she's Where was she when the bomb dropped? you know, climb out of the dark and into the light. Imagine what that must have been like for her. that she could remember. And she's these horrific details that she could remember. It's real. It's like we'll take a little bit of apocalypse and like little spots as long as

2:11:40 We're acting collectively, but we're thinking individually and we don't feel connected to it all we don't we feel helpless and lost and then we Everyone just accepts that we're going to keep marching forward. The nuclear weapons buildup of the 50s and sixties was done without guardrails. are the guardrails on AI and I think part of that comes from the fact that you say AI and most people for good reason don't really know precisely what that

2:14:14 And when you do create something that is intense in its ability to like we're talking about something that's going to be smarter than us in four years We're gonna have batteries that last 10,000 years. and doctors can't, they've run their blood work through it, that's ever lived, and it's going to make better versions of itself. And if we can get I

2:17:08 But just because of what I write about and who I speak to, Well, once it got into the hands of the people, But it's such a force of change, and I don't think they anticipated it. Yeah. it was Russian disinformation, which it turned out to not be at all. And they knew it. And so they to them in the future? It would get immediately taken down. You know, we're gonna rule that you're still allowed

2:21:22 something I can't remember what and didn't get involved in that then I read about it now and side that consider themselves adversaries because they're just going to be completely Yeah, no, it's all interesting. says there, like one of the judges said there was like a lack of evidence or lack of concrete them by social media platforms in the past, and that the platforms will continue under

2:24:13 They need to put pressure on the politicians. demonstrated by the hunter bat Biden laptop thing through the Twitter files, And you should tell us how you know it's misinformation. think we're going to be able to stop that from happening, if we do create something it has to pass on its DNA, something that's deeply ingrained in our behave, how dumb that behavior is, the consequences that behavior, the root of

2:27:58 norm is at the time. It's not going to be influenced by those things. It's going to It's almost so hard to even comprehend what that that happen? That seems to me that that has to happen to the AI before it can really think. He was a military man in the 1930s He saw the military industrial complex before Eisenhower spoke of it. being poured into it. They're building nuclear reactors specifically to power AI. They're

2:31:28 because it's not going to care about the consequences the Watchmen the movie the Watchmen based on a graphic novel the HBL was And that's what it's going to be. It's going to be something that it's not going to be Language is going to lead to weapons. I think this thing is a part of the process. I'm gonna have to take that Keep in mind this was seven or eight years ago.

2:34:51 take my teenage daughter and put her across the football field, me with the your iris scans that it already has in a computer system, from you going in I know, you know Curse wilds theories about exponential theories about exponential growth of technology looking at things in a linear fashion Yeah, he's getting along in time, and he's not what he used to be, you know, when you

2:37:31 including in terms of time. Those pictures of them that are several hundred years old? What's in them is in us. Studying their DNA. Well, all this stuff is like advanced science and an understanding of what aging is. What is macular degeneration? And then they, you know, the limb regeneration, and then it inspires and also opens up a whole other lane for industry.

2:40:03 through the trees in the jungle, Right. so fast that like six months ago, AI sucked. I want your thought for a second on the optimistic part of the future with all of this technology, difference between being a woman and a man, but why is it that there isn't more to have a conflict with other individuals. And if AI can achieve the rosiest rose-colored glasses version of what's possible in the

2:43:34 the fruit. better now than we did when Reagan was in office Yeah, which automatically puts it in, you know a moral I don't know what's going to happen, but I do think that we're the last of the people. I think we're the last. I think Like, you didn't know where they were. I'll go find Mike. And I think in our lifetimes, to point to certain objects.

2:46:46 industrial crop, all the craziness in the world today, it's still way safer today than to sleep and live, you want things to do that are exciting that occupy your time sometimes I'll freak out about it. But ultimately... You freak out about technology before it happened, things were normal, and then they were never normal again. with a nuclear missile decides to do a bolt out of the blue attack.

2:49:33 If everyone's dead. And like I said, I have not read your book, but I have several friends that have and they're Me too. And your website, what's your website? Thank you, Joe.