YouSaid · the spoken record

Annie Jacobsen

lines on the record: 192
first: 2024-03-22
most recent: 2024-03-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Destroyed Paul Benowitz. They sent him to a mental institution by pulling a massive strategic deception campaign against him because they didn't want him to know about the technology that he was seeing at Kirkland Airport. So look that up and then you go, oh my God. And, you know, to my eye, you can apply any of these other names, substitute in Paul Benowitz or any of the current individuals who really become convinced of X, Y, or Z when in fact there's a strategic deception campaign going on.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. I mean, Google Paul Benowitz. I'm always amazed that Paul Benowitz's story is not more widely spoken of. And I think that's because there's like the sort of ufologists or the people who are like absolutely convinced that aliens are among us. And I use that term loosely, but you know what I mean? And then there's the quote-unquote skeptics. And the skeptics tend to be sort of like self-righteous. And I would never want to be self-righteous. So I'm not a skeptic. I'm just, you know, agnostic, I suppose. But Google Paul Benowitz, and you can learn the story of that man who thought he saw UFO in the 70s, early 80s, and the Air Force, because the Air Force intelligence community works hand in glove with CIA a lot and some of the other intelligence agencies, of course they're 17, not just the CIA. And they just...”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This U2 spy plane, this giant long wind, long winged aircraft flying seventy thousand feet up. People didn't think airplanes could fly that high. And it's, you know, the sun shining off of it. It looked like a UFO and all the reports coming in. And the CIA opened up a UFO disinformation campaign office headed by a guy named Toto Autorenco. You know, specifically for this reason. Now, does that mean that every UFO sighting in the world has been a U2? No. But I come from it from that lane of thinking. And there are so many strategic deception campaigns. And as I look over the decades of how these same UFO stories, and again, this is just my opinion based on my reporting, this narrative that keeps reoccurring. It seems to me like a very large Catch all to keep the public's attention on that, not on that.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is correct and even perhaps more important, and perhaps this colors my thinking, but I am uniquely familiar with disinformation programs put forth by the CIA or the agency, as it's called, by insiders, right? And I've learned firsthand about these programs, or rather learned from first-hand participants in strategic deception campaigns that the CIA has engaged in, beginning with Area 51. the idea that all these reports”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've interviewed hundreds of people. The net, well, not just at Area 51, but in all the different national security and military intelligence and intelligence programs. And I personally have no reason to believe that aliens have ever visited Earth. That's just me personally. I have no information that causes me to conclude that's the case. Now, with that said, many of the primary players in this present day, you know, there are aliens among us narrative are in my phenomena book. I continue to communicate with a lot of these people. I'm talking about astrophysicists who fundamentally believe that there are aliens among us, right? So we beg to differ on that issue”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love so much. They all had a hankering for lobster one day, right? And here they are in the middle of the desert in Nevada. And they have these really fast plains, you know, and they literally called, like they arranged. They didn't take the oxguard out for that one, but they got some lobsters from Massachusetts, like delivered to them in record time. They didn't even need to put them on ice, you know? And again, those are these details where you're like, thank God, at least for me. Thank God I got these details. These guys are all”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God. I mean, you know, look, I describe in detail in Area 51, but also the amazing thing like about that was that, and you know, I just look back on that with such fondness. This is like in 2009 when I was reporting that. And all many of the guys who were in their 80s and 90s were World War II heroes, like serious World War II heroes like Colonel Slater, who was the commander of Area 51. He flew the U-2 on the missions called the Black Cat missions over China in the early 1960s to see about their Lopnor nuclear facility, right? So all of these things tie in when you're reporting on military and intelligence programs. But these guys had been World War II heroes and then were given this cushy job out at Area 51, you know, and it just came with all these perks. Colonel Slater told me this one perk. I just”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean Area 51 is huge, by the way, and it's a secret, it's a top secret military facility inside a top secret military facility, inside the Nevada test and training range, which is this massive, not secret facility, right? So you're just talking about layers, talk about peeling the onion in reverse. And it began as a place to test the U-2 spy plane. Literally the CIA set up shop there to build this plane away from the public eye. And then that led to another espionage platform called the A-12 Oxcar, which is, you know, anyone who's seen the X-Men movies knows about the SR-71. And that's a two-seater, right? And before that, there was the A-12 oxcart. And that was the CIA's stealth Mach 3 spy. Think about that in the early 1960s. It's astonishing. And I interviewed the pilots who flew it.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think everybody wants to know about Area 51 because it kind of, it's like this American enigma, you know, it's like to some people it's the Shangri Law of, you know, testbed aerospace programs, right? And to others, it's the place of captured aliens, right? And everything in between. I had the great fortune of interviewing 75 people who lived and worked at that base for extended periods of time, mostly leading up to the 90s because everything since then is classified, right? So things get declassified after decades, not everything, but some, and that allows you to piece together stories.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then when the trip was finished he gave me that flag, and it's in my office. And that's the kind of relationship that you can develop with people as a reporter if you're willing to go the extra mile with them, to trust them, that they'll tell you things of value. And to me, something like that is as a value as any secret mission I'm able to get declassified because we are a nation of people.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the trip home in the taxi that I got at this really big reveal. Billy reached into that small suitcase my husband had given him and pulled out a rolled up American flag. He had taken this flag I had tried to help him pack and he wouldn't let me. And I just thought it was like an old guy being stubborn, but he didn't want me to see that he was bringing an American flag to Vietnam, which is not legal. He wanted to bring that flag and take it around everywhere with him, as he explained to me later, to honor all of his friends who died there fifty years ago.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what he would do. When he arrived, whatever he needed, he would just get. You know, it's not a fashion trip, right? So he had no idea how to pack for an overseas trip. This was like, oh my God, how can you not have the hugest smile on your face going into this? I'm with a guy who's 89 years old. He's got eight bullet, you know, he's got eight purple hearts from Vietnam, right? I mean, he operated against Osama bin Laden 10 years before 9-11. He went after bin Laden and Afghanistan when he was 72, and he went after Gaddafi during the Arab Spring when he was 82. And now here he is with me going to Hanoi, you know? The details, those human details. But my husband repacked his bag, you know, like got him a proper suitcase that was carryable and small and didn't have the hangers. You know, he wasn't trailing the hangers.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, so much of it was the details are just every detail, right? I mean, starting with the fact that he showed up at my house with a giant suitcase and a bunch of clothes, you know, dry cleaning, pressed clothes in plastic hangers, carrying them. I'm like, Billy, we're going to Vietnam and we're going back into the jungle to find the Oscar 8 battle site. Like, what? What are you carrying right? And he got really mad at me. Did not like anyone correcting him. And I got my husband on the job. Like, Kevin, you got to sort this out, right? And what transpired was that Billy Wah had never taken a trip for personal reasons. He operated, I think, in 62 countries every single time for the CIA. And it would go like this. Billy, go to there and get to there, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The expectations I might have going into something are dwarfed by the outcome because people are so interesting and because the people that I interview because I write about war and weapons and national security and government secrets and the people I interview are at the heart of all of this, I mean, they are really capable people, intellectually brilliant, physically capable. They go so far out on the limb to do their jobs. And by the way, the reason they're talking to me is because they're still alive. And so many of their colleagues are dead. So it gives them also a wisdom about, you know, life, about sacrifice, not in cliched sort of nationalistic jingoistic terms whatsoever. I'm talking like real. Real, what is their real truth? You know, when I went to Vietnam with Billy Wa.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Willingness We were talking about trust earlier. Like, you have to trust that I have to trust that there's a reason I find myself in a certain situation, right? Otherwise, it would just be a constant, you know, doubt paradox, right? Why am I here? What am I doing? And so I trust that I'm going to learn something of value. And so I'm willing to listen. I really am willing to listen, right? And so far it's always”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our personal lives, right? So you have a professional life where your national security are in your hands. I don't know what that is like.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I work with sources to report my books, and so Yourself in my shoes, right? Interview for dozens or hundreds of hours, my primary sources. In the case of the Surprise Kilvanish book, I traveled with Billy Wah, the longest serving CIA operator back to the scene of the crime, you know, back to the battle. We went to Hanoi, we went to Havana. And you really get to know someone. And that's when I say conflicting, you know, I work with sources on a real trust basis, right? And sometimes people will tell me things. They'll say, Annie, this is off the record. This is for you to know about me on deep background because I want you to know who I am. And that's powerful. And a lot of times it's personal, right? It's personal. It's about their personal life. And they don't want that. And it isn't apropos to what I'm writing about, but I need to know that. And that's where it gets conflicted because you, in a good way, because you realize where we're all such creatures of”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“CIA's paramilitary. Surprise kill vanish. So just when I was thinking, wow, the CIA is doing all this amazing, you know, Non kinetic activity with aerial reconnaissance, then you learn about their kill programs. And that's a whole different set of issues.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen, I have such mixed feelings about the CIA as one should. I think you should have mixed feelings about anything that you cover as a reporter or as a human because maybe change that from mixed to conflicting, right? Because there are really positive elements of every organization within the federal government. I mean, my first learning about the CIA came from the work I did on the Area 51 book about their aerial reconnaissance programs, which were set up, again, to prevent World War III, right? Nuclear World War III. It was this idea that information was king. The U-2 spy pain was developed out at Area 51. And I interviewed Hervey Stockman, the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U two, gathered all this intelligence. Prevented wars. Later I wrote a book about the”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“CIA. And not only that, I can tell you that Dr. Henry Beecher. Harvard. I think he was also at MIT for a bit. He came up with that term. And you might even say for the CIA.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Programs still exist. There's a Navy program which is working on based on a lot of data that came back from the war on terror with certain soldiers knowing, wait, don't walk down that path. There is an IED there. And they call this the spidey sense. And they actually have a program that works from this. So these things never go away. They kind of circle around in terms of being made fun of and then taken seriously and a little of this and of that. My biggest takeaway from writing that book was a quote that I referenced in the beginning, which is the Thomas theorem. And it says, if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The CIA most definitely believed from my reading of the documents that there was something very legit, shall we say, about ESP. It was uncontrollable. It was unreliable. But nonetheless, it existed. And being the intelligence agency that they are, they cared less about why it worked. They just wanted to know how they could use it. And then it got into all kinds of elements of placebo effect and this, you know. And when the military stepped in and got involved in the programs, that was a complete disaster, in my opinion, because the military needs to control everything in a mechanized, systematic way. And so they started, for example, teaching people to be psychic, which is a really, really, really bad idea. I mean, and, you know, flash forward to where we are today, these”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of everything went to the Soviets Union, and I'm talking about the trove of Nazi documents from which the superpowers were then going to learn to fight future wars, and half of them went to the United States. And so we got this trove of documents about all of this. And the Soviets got the other. And so it set off a kind of psychic arms race, which in a weird way paralleled the nuclear arms race, which we've been talking about, inasmuch that it led one side to constantly wonder what the other side had.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ESP programs, I think, pull from that origin story, right? The leaders desire to know. And so I really found it amazing that many people think these systems, or rather these programs started in the 70s, I learned they actually began right after World War II. And that was because, and here, you know, in my reporting, I find all things sort of always circle back to the Third Reich, to the Nazis. The Nazis had a massive occult program, an ESP program, psychokinesis program, astrology. Both Hitler and Himmler were deeply interested in these occult concepts. And after I learned from records at the National Archives that after the war, you know,”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The book was so interesting to report because I spend so much time dealing with like mechanized systems, machines, war machines. And yet the military and intelligence were and continue to be incredibly interested in the human mind, in consciousness. And so, you know, if one is called hard science, what we're talking about now is called squishy science, right? And it was really interesting to delve into that world. It just couldn't be. Farther from weapons and war, or could it, right? And then I really began thinking, well, before science and technology, sort of the supernatural ruled. World, you know, the oracle of Delphi in Greece exists for the before the common error rulers to go and beg to learn from the powers that be what was going to happen, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Human consciousness, the way to understand it had something to do with realizing that man's inner life and man's outer life are deeply connected in the same way that man is connected to the galaxy. And he said it much more eloquently, but you kind of get the idea that. And I think it's why humans have always loved to look up, right? That there's more there. And it's a bit like the wish, it's like the big version of the wishing tree. What do I wish for for myself? And what is maybe perhaps the realignment of thinking for those of us in search of happiness, right? And rather instead of war is Know what does it mean to have a conscience, to have consciousness? What does it mean to be a thing person? What does it mean to be on this earth to be born, to live, to die? And then there is legacy. And so all of those ideas.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Answers that great filter question, I think in a way I might want to adopt, right? Which is this, that he said that As they were returning from the moon to Earth. He looked down at the earth and I'm paraphrasing him. I write all this in phenomena, an earlier book, but the paraphrasing is that he looked down from the earth. And it was 1971, and he thought about all the conflict going on down below, particularly the Vietnam War, where many of his friends were. And then he looked behind him into the great vast galaxy. And he had a moment, he says, that was like an epiphany, like not a near-death experience, but a sort of near life experience, right? Where he believed that the human consciousness, which is where so much of this thoughtfulness about metaphysics and ESP perhaps come from. Mitchell's theory was that”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure I'm going to have to think about that question. But what does come to mind is an answer that was given to me similarly, right? A man by Ed Mitchell Who Went to the Moon, right? And he was the sixth man to walk on the moon. And so, his opinion, I think, might count a little more than mine on that subject because his lens is so much greater, right? Mitchell was Vilified when he got back from the moon because it became known that he believed in things like extrasensory perception. And this kind of mystical, metaphysical way of looking at the world. And he really suffered from that. I mean, he was ridiculed and he lost a lot of his career and his friends. But what he said to me in our interview. About his trip home. From the”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come from what happens metaphorically around the dinner table, right? Like what people put their eyes on becomes interesting and expands, what people talk about. And ultimately, when you think about the long arc of time and human civilization, it does kind of make you want to communicate more with your enemies, with your adversaries. And I think about the quote, what Einstein has said to have said, which is that he was asked what weapons World War III would be fought with? And he said, I don't know, but I know that World War four will be fought with sticks and stones.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think for me, the idea of What is buried becomes very interesting and very human and in a strange way optimistic and positive because if you can visualize that wishing tree and I have a picture of it in the book from one of the archaeologists who work on that, right? You think, what were they wishing? What were they wishing for? Right. And then you think of your own self. What do I wish for in this world, right? Because, you know, I do think all things.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I imagined when through Morshe's descriptions of coming upon, like, you know, he tripped on a rock, he told me, right? He tripped over a stone that turned out to be the top part of a 12,000 year old sculpted man, giant pillar, right? And he talked about coming upon that. And then no one knows really what Gobeklik Li Tepi was for. And that makes my mind try and answer the question you asked me internally, right? Just as like a human who's here on earth for the amount of time I'm here. Like if there were a nuclear war, what would it be like? What would it be like when someone in the future, would we become archaeologists one day? Would civilization rebuild? Would we develop computers? Who knows? It's interesting to think about. I hope we never have to.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Archaeologists who first found this site in the early 90s. And the lead archaeologist was a guy named Klaus Schmidt and Michael Morsch was the young graduate student who was with him. And Mors' description of like coming upon this rumored to be site, there was something called a wishing tree on the site, which I just found so human and perfect that it was this magical place and it was locatable because there was a wishing tree on a hill and it's where people went to wish and to hope that their wishes came true. I mean, how human is that, right? And that is where beneath the wishing tree, kind of like in the shadow of the wishing tree, there was a tip, which is a hill. And beneath that, there is the oldest known civilization in the world. 12,000 years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers built this site. Why don't you?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Carl Sagan talked about that in his amazing book that he wrote with two scientist colleagues called The Cold in the Dark. And they have, there's a bunch of essays about exactly this, right? Like what would happen and how long would it take? It's really interesting. It's dated. You know, it's from the 80s, but man, is it shocking? And you think about that where, okay, so men return to sort of the worst, most base versions of themselves. Civilization is gone, right? Meaning, you know, civil society. There's no rule of law. It's just fend for yourself. There's, you know, people fighting over what little resources there are. Man returns to a hunter-gatherer state. And to really think about this idea, I looked at the oldest known archaeological site in the world, in Turkey, which is called Gobekli Teppu. And it's really fascinating to me because I interviewed one of the two”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the species, and nuclear war would likely do the same. And so here we are talking about this because there is a difference. There's nothing you can do about an asteroid, but there is something you can do about a nuclear war.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we haven't even spoken of radiation poisoning because the radiation poisoning kills many people in the aftermath of the nuclear exchange. But after the nuclear freeze ends, after nuclear winter, after the sun starts to come back, let's say eight, nine, ten years, now you have no ozone layer, or you have a severely depleted ozone layer. And so the sun's rays are now poisonous. So if you have people living underground and you have this great thawing, and with that great thawing comes pathogens and plague, and you have this, you know, system where the small bodied animals, the insects and whatnot begin reproducing really fast and the larger body animals like you and me begin to go extinct. Professor Toon said it to me this way. You know, he said, 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth, killed all the dinosaurs, and wiped out 70.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Temperature plummets. And there are all kinds of papers that have been written about this using modern systems. And the numbers vary, but the bottom line is agriculture fails.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How the climate models today with the systems we have, the computer systems, reveal that actually nuclear winter is worse, right? So to answer your questions, Bomb stopped falling. In my scenario seventy two minutes after they first launched, the bomb stopped falling, and then the mega fires begin. Each nuclear weapon will have, according to the Defense Department, a mega fire that will burn between one hundred and three hundred square miles, so a thousand weapons, 1,500 weapons. Think about those megafires. Everything is burning, forests, cities. Think about the pyrotoxins in all the cities, you know, high rises burning. And all of this soot gets lofted into the air according to tune some three hundred billion pounds of soot. And what happens? It blocks out the sum. Without sun, we have nuclear winter. We have a situation whereby”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was super privileged to talk to Professor Brian Toon, who is one of the original five authors of the Nuclear Winter Theory. And that theory was developed and was published in nineteen, in the early 1980s, one of Professor Toon's professors was Carl Sagan, who was sort of the most famous author of the nuclear winter theory. Know there were all kinds of controversies about it when it came out, including the defense department saying it was Soviet propaganda, which it wasn't. And what the nuclear winter author authors Conceded back in the 80s was that their modeling was just the best it could be based on what they had at the time. And so now flash forward to where we are in 2024 and talking to Professor Toon, who's been working on this issue for all these decades since, he shared with me”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Place, however many hours you're going to be safe or days or maybe weeks or maybe months. But as I also learned from the cyber people I interviewed that, you know, there's a complete fallacy that these military bases can continue functioning. They run on diesel fuel. And when the fuel stops pumping, there's no more generators.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transparently human with me, and I quote him directly in the book, but he spoke about you asked me earlier about like what would be going through the president's mind and we don't know, I don't know. But Craig Fugate told me what would be going through his mind. And he said, along the lines I'm paraphrasing, like, it's almost something you couldn't even comprehend. It would just like ruin you. You know, his words are really powerful. And of course, the FEMA director in the scenario is notified in that first window while the launch, you know, while the ballistic missile is on its way and no one in America yet knows. And I have the FEMA director pull over to the side of the road and jump in a helicopter that sent for him to take him to the bunker that FEMA goes to, which is called Mount Weather. And so he's aware that Fugate was aware that as FEMA director, you would likely be taken to a safe place.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't imagine that not happening. I think that's why people love post-apocalyptic television shows and films because they see that. And then, of course, there's always one great charismatic person who's trying to restore morality. And these are great narratives that people like to tell themselves in the world of science fiction. But what we're dealing with is science fact in this scenario, and it is meant to terrify people into realizing, wait a minute, this is a conversation that absolutely should be have had while it can still be had. Because the realities, when you have the director of FEMA telling you this, it's a real wake-up call. And by the way, Craig Fugate was so.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And by the way, those details were given to me by Obama's FEMA director, Craig Fugate, who was in charge of, so FEMA is the agency in America that Plans for nuclear war. Okay. And what Fugate said to me was, you know, Annie, we plan for asteroid strikes. These are called low probability but high consequence events. And FEMA is the organization that, you know, when there's a hurricane or an earthquake or a flood, FEMA steps in and they do what's called population protection planning, right? They take care of people. And what Fugate told me is after a nuclear strike, after a bolt out of the blue attack, he used those terms, there is no population protection. Everyone's dead, right? And he means that metaphorically, but also kind of more literally because he just said at that point, you just hope that you stalked pediolite.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the cloud thirty, forty mile wide mushroom cloud. Blocking out the sun, and that speaks nothing of the radiation poisoning that follows.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That speaks nothing of the megafires that will then ensue. So once all these people die and third degree radiation burns, did you even know there was such a thing as fourth degree radiation burns? Right, we're talking about the wind ripping the skin off people's faces many miles out. And then you have a sucking action, right? Everyone is or many people are familiar with what the nuclear mushroom cloud looks like. And it's STEM is actually creates, and again, this is from physicists who advise the defense department on this, the sucking up into the nuclear stem 300 mile an hour winds. You're talking about people miles out getting sucked up into that step. When you see the mushroom cloud lex, that is in a nuclear war, that would be people. Those are like the remnants of people and of things.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And again, rings defined by defense scientists. But before that, you know, the bomb goes off. Then there's this blast wave that's like several hundred miles an hour pushing out like a bulldozer, knocking everything down, bridges, buildings. I mean, you can read FEMA manuals about what the rubble will be like. You're talking about 30 Feet deep rubble as the buildings go over six, seven, eight, ten miles out.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A hundred and eighty million degrees. The fireball on a one megaton nuclear weapon is nineteen football fields of fire. Think about that. Nothing remains. Nothing remains.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On cars will spontaneously combust, the pine needles will catch on fire. They will start more fires, you know. You have all kinds of ma'am and chaos happening. Based on reported facts from observations, and this is really shocking and grotesque at the same time.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what's worse me writing that all out or the fact that it's all documented by the defense department. I mean they have been documenting the effect of nuclear weapons on people and animals and things since the earliest days of the Cold War and all of the details I pull are from these documents like the effects of nuclear weapons. And again this document was the original information, the original data in this document come from Hiroshima Nagasaki right was all classified and then it was built upon by those 200 some odd atmospheric nuclear weapons test we did and you know we're talking about like millimeters and inches we're talking about the defense department knowing that oh seven and a half miles out the upholster”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was told by many people I interviewed that the biggest fear in Washington, D.C. is what's called a bolt out of the blue attack. That's an unwarned nuclear attack against Washington, DC. The target would be the Pentagon. And that's what I begin the scenario with, you know? And I reported in graphic horrifying detail what happens because...”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to answer those questions, I interviewed a number of people, but most specifically General Tuhill, who was Obama's cyber chief, and he was actually America's first cyber chief. And the nuclear command and control system and really the triad. Functions on analog systems. It functions on old school systems. If there's not digital interface, you can't hack into it, right? So most of the issues that I raise in the book have to do with what happens to cyber after a nuclear attack, right? What happens to cyber in the minutes after a bomb, a nuclear weapon strikes America, and how that impacts The ability for people to communicate with one another. And that's when chaos Takes control”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source