Annie Jacobsen
speaker
83 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 28 Jul
Annie Jacobsen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And yet, biological weapons exist.
And that is of great concern to the U.S.
State Department.
Specifically, in its 2024 and 2025 report, it pointed to Russia and North Korea identifying those two countries as having active biological weapons programs.
And it also points to China and Iran as being countries of concern.
I think it's also good to know that there is a lot of research going on under the guise of what is called gain-of-function or dual-use research, whereby scientists are
are working to modify pathogens in these BSL-4 and BSL-3 labs under the pretense, or rather premise, that they are working to determine medical countermeasures to prevent a pandemic in the event of the release of a biological pathin.
That is a very dangerous catch-22 situation I learned in reporting this book.
That moment in time to which you refer is the kind of origin story of genetic engineering.
It was similar to the splitting of the atom.
And it has been a journey in the decades ever since as biotechnology advances
now at lightning speeds.
And so where we were in 1971 with that origin story experiment and where we are now, I take readers quickly through what has happened, but it is safe to say that the ability to modify
to genetically engineer pathogens now has an extremely low bar for entry because of machine learning, because of AI-assisted research, and that is a major concern with everybody in the business of preventing a biological catastrophe.
Well, that is a critical moment that has happened in the past and continues today.
And all people involved in public health and preventing weapons of mass destruction like biological weapons from killing a lot of people are deeply concerned with
the idea of mitigating the threat, God forbid, a dangerous lab leak happens or an intentional release.
Everything is about timing.
If nations could be more transparent about their labs, about what's going on inside of them, and ultimately, in the event that there was an accident,
we would be in a much more potential position to stop an outbreak from becoming an epidemic from becoming a pandemic.
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