S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on this episode of KPBS Midday Edition , Pulitzer Prize finalist and investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen is out with a new book called Biological War. She joins us to talk about what that could mean for society. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. What would happen if Russia inadvertently released a weaponized pathogen into the world? Is the United States prepared for such a scenario while biological war. A scenario by investigative journalist and author Annie Jacobson unravels what that could look like. Hour by hour. Over the span of six days and the chaos and destruction it leads to. I'm joined now by Annie Jacobsen. Annie , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Thank you so much for having me.
S1: It's great to have you on and I can't wait to to sort of dig into this book and talk about it. Um , because your previous book took us through what would happen in a nuclear war. So what makes the threat of biological war so different here?
S2: Uh , biological war is an entirely different animal , starting with the fact that it doesn't actually have to be an attack. It can be an accident. And that includes a lab leak. That makes it very , very dangerous to the Pentagon wargame planners. So much so that on the threat spectrum , it falls in line right after nuclear war. And it is also considered the greatest overall threat , meaning more likely to happen than nuclear. Wow.
S1: Wow. In the book , again , the scenario starts with an American traveler and a lab leak. Why start at that point?
S2: That's right. I wanted to show to , you know , the citizenry that it doesn't have to be an actual attack. Nefarious intent does not have to be there. A lab leak is also something that we all know can happen. There have been hundreds of lab leaks documented. And , you know , to add on to that , we all lived through the Covid pandemic. And so we know that a biological catastrophe affecting all of us is not something that is just theoretical.
S1: What's the pathogen you create for this fictitious scenario? And and how did you come up with it?
S2: Yes , I would say hypothetical perhaps , maybe more indicative than fictional , because although my book reads like science fiction , so I've been told it is actually science fact. And for precisely that reason , the pathogen in the scenario , a pathogen can be a virus or a bacteria. It is a bacteria known as plague. And the reason I chose that is because so many of us think plague is a scourge of the past , because antibiotics have historically treated plague , and yet now with genetic modifications and how easy they are to do. We know that a plague pathogen can be easily tweaked in a lab to defeat an antibiotic. And that's where you get into a real nightmare scenario. And that's precisely why I use that scenario in the book.
S1: Well , I mean , you know , and part of this scenario too , is that , you know , we are all social creatures , and our need to connect with each other is also a key part of this pathogen.
S2: I mean , absolutely , and before we go down this dystopian road , because in the book's Author's note. Right at the beginning , I do give a spoiler alert like it ends in dystopia , but in the very end of the book , I also make note that the point of the book is not panic as much as it is pressure , because for reasons that you say like we are all social creatures , meaning we're all somehow connected , at the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna , it really comes down to that. So the the reality that we are also connected is if something proper isn't done to deal with these kind of threats , the thing that makes us such amazing , an amazing civilization wanting to be part of is that which could also ultimately destroy us.
S1: What can events from our past , like the bubonic plague teach us about , you know , biological warfare and its potential impact today?
S2: Well , I think what it can teach us is that a little bit of knowledge goes a really long way. Like , for example , I've been on book tour around the country and it's been , you know , both fascinating to discuss the terrifying aspects of this scenario , but also really heartening to talk with people who read the book who are like , wow , I learned all these things that I knew kind of on the periphery from Covid , but I didn't really register and I didn't understand the importance. And so if you go with the fact that knowledge is both king and queen , that I do , you realize that knowing things like , um , for example , you know , airborne pathogens are what are such pandemic potential pathogens? Covid was airborne Ebola , this terrible outbreak in West Africa right now , not airborne , hence not necessarily pandemic potential. You can learn things like case fatality rate that like Covid was 1%. People go , oh , of course. And many people say 1% or lower when you're looking at plague , when you're looking at pneumonic plague , which is what happens when plague enters the lungs. Hence pneumonia. Now you're looking at a pathogen that can have a case fatality rate of 100%. And so you realize these facts about biology and the cert uncertainty therein actually really becomes part of one's knowledge base. And therefore you can act with sort of appropriate decision making , not necessarily like catastrophizing and panic.
S1: Well , your books are built on detailed research. You held dozens of interviews with officials across the highest levels of government for this book. How prepared is our government set up to to respond to such a scenario?
S2: Well , here's another spoiler alert and not a great one. The government is not prepared at all. And this , by the way , is not debated among subject matter experts. Neither the ones I interviewed for the book , nor the individuals that I've been in contact with since. And this is a major problem. There have been billions and billions and billions of dollars spent on bio defense , but none of these systems really work. Look at what happened in Covid. I mean , we all wound up being at home and many , many people got sick. So we need to ask ourselves , I think , as a society. Okay , so there is obviously an enormous budget for this kind of thing. Money is being spent , but it's not being spent in the right place. The programs are not effective. So I think what happens , having reported on , you know , national security for 20 years , is that it's a little bit like the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And so when people can realize why spend money in places that don't work , you can move away from that kind of excess , that kind of waste , and move into something that's a more viable solution. What that solution is , I can feel like that's the next question coming. I wish I knew , but I do believe that people are taking notice. And that's not just the citizenry , it's people at the level of government. Hmm.
S1: Well , let me ask you this question because , you know , here in San Diego , biotech is it's a big industry. We have major research institutions , high containment labs , a large military presence , and public health facilities specifically for identifying biological threats. Does being at the center of biotech , um , you think make us safer here? Given that there's expertise here , or does it present sort of a different kind of risk level for us?
S2: I think you have raised the most important question going forward in the future , and it's important not to confuse biological research with like , what often gets confused with biological weapons engineering , which is illegal. They are different lanes. And for the book I interviewed a lot of individuals , including people based in San Diego , who work in sort of , you know , cutting edge , future looking medical countermeasures. And this is this includes vaccines and antibiotics that can deal with coming threats. I chose not to write them into the scenario because these organizations and their programs are so new. And many also include artificial intelligence enabled biology. So there needs to be a serious broadening , I think , of subject matter experts being able to explain this into the public discourse , so that we all don't kind of get hijacked by one person's idea about what might work , because it could very easily become the biodefense industrial complex. In other words , more money being spent at something that doesn't work. But I do believe that that is where a positive future lies. What doesn't work are the what I can say from my reporting doesn't work are the massive , heavy duty bio surveillance programs that DHS and CDC have pumped billions of dollars into kind of monitoring people's health. This is like a very specific lane , but I think it's an anecdotal example that's valuable to people. Like CDC , for example , alleges to have this , you know , system , it's called a surveillance syndromic surveillance system. It's a fancy word for like keeping an eye on emergency room activity. And it takes incoming data , you know , allegedly anonymized so it doesn't have your name or my name if we're in the emergency room with a respiratory cold. But nonetheless , more than 7000 of these facilities pump that data to the CDC in near real time. So you'd think. Terrific. You know , if there's an outbreak. Wow. The CDC can. The CDC can stop it in its tracks. Except for you. Learn from the book. Well , no , because first of all , they're major holes in that reporting. Like homeless populations are not counted , 800,000 people with serious respiratory illnesses. And also that then the CDC gets logjam by something like diagnostics , for example , you know. So and diagnostics is a fancy word for testing. So , you know , what I try to do as an author is make the narrative dramatic enough and simple enough that readers can follow along , and they almost don't realize that they're getting a huge lesson in what may or may not work in a giant bureaucracy.
S1: And I want to talk a little bit about that , that writing and how you approach telling this story , because you lay out this scenario and , you know , this well-researched detail in an accessible and detached style. And yet it the story you're telling is absolutely. It's just terrifying. It is hard for you. Is it is it hard for you to write about topics like this and not be affected by them personally?
S2: You know , everybody has their threshold of like what they can , what they can intake. Mine when it comes to national security threats , seems to be perfectly suited to learn the most horrifying and terrifying information and then convey it in a dramatic manner. But there are other things I cannot report on. I mean , children being hurt , for example. You know , it's just not an area my brain can go to. And so I completely like if friends and family that sometimes say to me , I can't read your books , it's too scared , you know , I understand , like you have to be able to have a threshold and want to know about this. To. To actually read my book. But what I'm told by a lot of people is , you know , they end up reading the book. Apparently , you know , you kind of read it without stopping because you have to find out what happens in the end. And at the end of the day , I feel like on aggregate , people end up saying I was actually less. I am now less frightened because at least I know , like , the difference between catastrophizing and a real threat. I mean , that's a little bit of that Ebola , the Ebola scenario I mentioned earlier , where you can understand when something is an epidemic but might not become a pandemic. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. You know , one of the questions I was left with is , you know , what's what's more dangerous in a scenario , the the pathogen , the biological weapon , or is it the the lack of guardrails on science and technology Which are moving a lot faster than than what the laws and protocols can keep up with. What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely.
S2: Absolutely. Something we should keep thinking about , keep talking about , you know , pressing sort of people who are in a position to do something about that on because absolutely , science and technology are moving at this extraordinary pace. And I've written about science and tech in all of my eight books. This is not going away. The difference is that the acceleration is now dramatic , literally by the day. But that said , technology also offers a lot of solution. And so I think that the more informed we are about the parameters of what science and tech can do , the better off we all are. But these are conversations that can absolutely veer into , you know , catastrophizing When you don't have good solid information that is made simple.
S1: I've been speaking with Annie Jacobsen , author of the book Biological War A scenario. Annie , thank you so very much for joining us.
S2: Thank you for having me.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jayde Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
