Annie Jacobsen has a favorite word for America’s nuclear doctrine: madness. It’s madness that any single person has six minutes to decide the fate of civilization, madness that we’ve built weapons capable of ending the world in 72 minutes, and madness that everything hangs by the thread of deterrence. But to Tyler, life is “a lot of different kinds of madness,” and the real question is simply getting the least harmful form available to us. It’s a conversation sparked by her latest book Nuclear War: A Scenario, which Tyler calls one of his favorites from last year—and which is compelling enough that Denis Villeneuve is turning it into a screenplay.
Tyler and Annie explore whether we should be more afraid of nuclear weapons or if fear itself raises the risks, who should advise presidents during the six-minute decision window, whether moving toward disarmament makes us safer or more vulnerable, what Thomas Schelling really meant about nuclear war and rational actors, the probability that America would retaliate after a nuclear attack, the chances of intercepting a single incoming ICBM, why missile defense systems can’t replicate Israel’s Iron Dome success, how Pakistan-India nuclear tensions could escalate, why she’s surprised domestic drone attacks haven’t happened yet, her reporting on JFK assassination mysteries and deathbed phone calls, her views on UFOs and the dark human experiments at Area 51, what motivates intelligence community operators, her encounters with Uri Geller and CIA psychic research, what she’s working on next, and more.
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Recorded May 19th, 2025.
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Thanks to Roger Barris for sponsoring this transcript.
TYLER COWEN: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today, I’m chatting with Annie Jacobsen. Annie started off by studying at Princeton. She now has, I think, eight books, most recently and prominently is a favorite of mine. It’s called Nuclear War: A Scenario. It was one of my favorite books of last year. The book is also being turned into a screenplay and will be directed by the Dune director Denis Villeneuve. Annie also has co-written three episodes of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan TV series for Amazon Studios. Annie, welcome.
ANNIE JACOBSEN: Thank you so much for having me.
COWEN: Now, your last book, of course, focuses on nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Would it actually help if we were more afraid of nuclear weapons and thinking about them more often? Or does that just not help at all?
JACOBSEN: I think it certainly helps, and you probably gathered that from reading my book. Sometimes people say, “Why did you write such a terrifying book?” The answer is very simple. I wanted to demonstrate in appalling detail just how horrific nuclear war would be as a way, perhaps, for people to have precisely the kind of conversation that you and I are having.
COWEN: When I was a kid, people thought about nuclear weapons much more. It seemed more dangerous. It actually seemed more thinkable then. If we’re just obsessed with nuclear weapons and nuclear war, can’t that raise the risks by making it psychologically more salient?
JACOBSEN: I would say certainly not. Also, what we perceive and what we think about is not necessarily what happens. I doubt many people imagined a pandemic was going to show up and shut down the whole world as it did. I do think it’s valuable to think about things, not in any hypochondriacal way, if that is an exact word, but more about people asking, why is it that I focus on subject A rather than subject B? Maybe even one more degree of that is, what do I want to think about and what is important to me?
COWEN: If I think about the experts in the immediate post-World War II period, there’s John von Neumann, there’s Herman Kahn. It seems they got most things wrong, so maybe they thought there’d be another world war or nuclear war quite soon, or they might have favored a first strike on the Soviet Union. We almost did a first strike against China. Isn’t that an example of how expertise can just lead us to go badly wrong? And this more common-sense approach — maybe we had it with Ronald Reagan, and we actually do better with that.
JACOBSEN: Oh boy. It depends how you define expert, I suppose. I think of wisdom more than I think of “expertise.” I’ve met a lot of experts in my day, and I’ve met many people whose wisdom outperforms — and again, just in my opinion — their expertise. Which doesn’t mean you throw out the opinions of the so-called experts, but no one has a crystal ball and can predict anything. Boy, we could have such an interesting discussion about all of these Cold War thinkers, from Herman Kahn on down. You yourself were, if I’m not mistaken, a student of the fascinating Thomas Schelling.
COWEN: Of course.
JACOBSEN: So, you have a front row seat with the experts. I think my career has been such that I have a front row seat with the ground operators, if you will, the people, maybe even, you could say doing the dirty work.
COWEN: Let’s put aside the Trump administration, which some people would say is anomalous. Say we have a more typical president, and there’s a six-minute decision window when deciding whether or not to launch. Yourself aside, but who is it that you want advising the president?
JACOBSEN: This is the heart of the matter. I don’t want anyone to have to make a decision in six minutes. Would you? We get that from Ronald Reagan himself, one of the rare presidents who spoke about this six-minute window on the record in his memoir, I quote him in Nuclear War: A Scenario, where he says, “This is an irrational concept,” which it is, that any person, let alone one single man, the president of the United States, would make a decision, which we now know from war games would essentially end civilization, and that is America launching a counterattack.
I don’t think you can say, “Who would you want?” I think more the question is why would you want?
COWEN: Let me give you a two-part response to that. The first part: even if one agrees with you completely, in the meantime, we do have the system. It won’t be gone tomorrow. So, you get to choose the advisor. You don’t want it to be Kanye West, right? Who is it you want?
JACOBSEN: [laughs] I can’t not laugh at that. That is funny, and it’s not what I expected from you, so bravo.
COWEN: You didn’t expect me to be funny, or you didn’t expect that I liked Kanye West?
JACOBSEN: I just didn’t expect the fantastic pop culture reference when we are talking about the possible end of the world.
I think that I’m going to really insist on saying no human should have that power or have to make that decision. Which is why, even though it’s a conundrum, a puzzle, a Gordian knot, if you will — sure nuclear weapons aren’t going away tomorrow, but the movement toward disarmament makes us all safer. If that begins tomorrow or later today, the chances of the six-minute window arising reduces drastically.
COWEN: But as we move toward disarmament, don’t either we — or some other countries in that process — lose second-strike capability? And that makes the situation more dangerous. I’m very glad Israel has second-strike capability now, and they didn’t a few decades ago.
JACOBSEN: Yes, yes and no, no. We could drill down on second strike and what that means, and we could talk about the submarines, “the handmaidens of the apocalypse,” as they were referred to when I was interviewing the commander of the nuclear submarine forces and others. Let me just make sure I’m not ducking the question. Are you saying, don’t more nuclear weapons make us safe? That’s a question, too.
COWEN: I’m raising the question. It’s not obvious to me that fewer of them make us safer. Let’s put it that way. We could have had World War II without nuclear weapons, right?
JACOBSEN: Yes.
COWEN: And we’ve had relative peace since then.
JACOBSEN: Yes. If you read Nuclear War closely, as I know, it sounds like you did, perhaps . . . If you’re me — because I wrote it — you come to the conclusion that this is madness. You know what, if I may, I’m going to take this moment to quote your former professor.
COWEN: Sure.
JACOBSEN: I quote him in the notes of my book, and this is perhaps the only regret I have in the entire book, that I put this quote from Schelling in the notes rather than in the text. Maybe it’s more interesting for your listeners if we drill down on this than the big platitudes of, “Do more nuclear weapons make us more safe?” It goes like this. This was Schelling in an interview with WGBH Radio in 1986 in Boston.
He says, “The problem with applying game theory to nuclear war is that nuclear war, by its very nature, does not involve rational men. It can’t. What sane person would be willing to kill hundreds of millions of people, ruin the earth, and end modern civilization in order to make somebody called the enemy doesn’t win first?”
COWEN: But Schelling did favor nuclear weapons. That was his dark sense of humor, I would say.
JACOBSEN: You think what I just read was his sense of humor?
COWEN: Absolutely.
JACOBSEN: I believe it was a man in his elder years coming to the conclusion that nuclear war is insane, which is the fundamental premise that I make in the book.
COWEN: You can hold both views. It is insane, but it might be the better insanity of the ones available to us.
JACOBSEN: Yes. From my take, he, like so many others that I have interviewed, because, for some reason — call it fate and circumstance — I have spent my career interviewing men in their 80s and 90s, who are defense officials who spent their entire life making war or preventing war. I watch them share with me their reflections in that third act of their life, which are decidedly different — in their own words — than those that they would have made as a younger man.
I find that fascinating, and that’s my takeaway from the Schelling quote, that he came to terms with the fact that intellectualizing game theory — like von Neumann, who never got to his old age — is madness.
COWEN: Let’s say that Russia or China, by mistake, did a full-scale launch toward the United States, and they couldn’t call the things back, and we’re in that six-minute window, or whatever it would be with hypersonics. What do you think is the probability that we would do a full-scale launch back?
JACOBSEN: I think the probability is certain. That is based on all the interviews that I conducted with individuals who literally had the power to make sure that happened.
COWEN: But those are interviews.
JACOBSEN: Do you disagree?
COWEN: Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s p=1. It might be about 50 percent, but there’s some chance that in the actual heat of the moment, with everything at stake, and speaking to an outsider, someone who’s investigating, such as yourself, you don’t want to say, “I’m not going to do my job.” But in fact, I don’t know, I would put the probability at 60 percent that they launch back, 70 percent.
JACOBSEN: If you follow through with that thinking, which I get as an intellectual exercise, then you’re saying it’s great we have so many nuclear weapons because, if by accident, China launches against us, then at least we’ll show morality, or at least you’re saying a 60 percent chance of showing morality in the final moments. All of America will die, and all the Chinese will live, which would be exactly the premise of many of the individuals who are for more nuclear weapons in the first place.
COWEN: I would say a 60 percent to 70 percent chance that we retaliate, not that we do nothing. But a decent chance we do nothing. Who understands really what goes on in the president’s mind? Because it is up to the president, as you point out repeatedly.
JACOBSEN: Yes, no, okay. Again, we’re intellectualizing here. Doesn’t what you are suggesting really underscore this idea that this is madness to even have these arsenals that are capable of such things? Now remember, I’m not a peace activist. That’s not my job. My job is, as a national security reporter, to tell you the story of what would happen, what could happen in nuclear war: a scenario, not nuclear war: the only scenario. The takeaway, I believe, is that more nuclear weapons make us less safe, and I think you might be saying the same thing.
COWEN: The word madness doesn’t have much force with me. My life is a lot of different kinds of madness. I’ve heard people say marriage is madness. A lot of social conventions seem to me to be madness.
The question is getting the least harmful form of madness out there. Then, I’m not convinced that those who wish to disarm have really made their case. Certainly, saying nuclear war is madness doesn’t persuade me. If anything, if enough people think it’s madness, we won’t get it, and it’s fine to have the nuclear weapons.
JACOBSEN: Which is precisely the fundamental, I think, underpinning of deterrence. There’s no question that . . . Of course, your Schelling schooling is sneaking through here because this is exactly that idea. Again, this is a puzzle because, “Deterrence will hold, deterrence will hold, deterrence will hold.” That is what the Defense Department says time and time again. But if you look deep enough, as I did, you find number two at Stratcom saying, “If it doesn’t hold, it all unravels.”
So, we can talk about madness. What is madness? Is marriage madness? Certainly, nuclear war unfolding, unraveling. The unraveling of deterrence is madness. It’s madness because it ends civilization for what, for why?
COWEN: Keep in mind, the alternative to nuclear weapons — it’s not sticks and stones or pistols. It could be biological weapons, chemical weapons, many other nasty things. It could be AI as a kind of weapon. So, maybe the logic of mutual deterrence we can’t escape. We can choose in which physical form we want to manifest it.
We have more experience with nuclear weapons. In that sense, they may be safer. It’s been since 1945 that we’ve worked with them in some way. Should we trade that all in for mutual assured destruction with biological weapons? I don’t see the case for doing that.
JACOBSEN: Different lane, biological weapons, I would argue, and we can talk about that. But I think what you’ve hit upon would be exactly another scary point when you talk about “we.” The royal “we” have had these systems, and deterrence has held for 75 years since the Russians got the bomb in 1949. Very good point. You could say that the likelihood of a US-Russian full-scale nuclear exchange on purpose is therefore lessened because deterrence has held between these two superpowers.
One must imagine, assume — choose your word — that Putin is schooled in deterrence. He knows, even though he’s changed his policy recently — we can get into the fine points — we agree on this point, that the danger lies in the newcomers to the field that do not have decades of precedent, that did not grow up watching and fearing, like your point in the very opening of our discussion.
That is why, in Nuclear War: A Scenario, I chose the mad king scenario, which is North Korea launching, because this is a very new and formidable foe, if you will, a nuclear-armed superpower with rogue tendencies.
COWEN: They’re not ruled by a committee, right? I think of committees as more conservative on average than individuals.
JACOBSEN: Yes, and that brings us back to the six-minute window that you have to believe . . . Although, one of the most shocking things for me in reporting the book was learning from at least two former secretaries of defense, Bill Perry and Leon Panetta, that in their opinion, most US presidents are not well learned about nuclear weapons, about their role in nuclear war because it’s assumed that deterrence will hold.
Now, perhaps that is changing, but you could say that this idea of having grown up with this concept would help in the decision-making process, but to your point and to my point in the book, when you have North Korea, where you have a myopic lane of vision, and one hardly can imagine anyone giving the leader of North Korea advice that is something he might not want to hear. Then you have a real problem of talk about sole authority.
COWEN: Let’s say a single rebellious, crazy North Korean general launched a nuclear missile toward Washington, DC, and it was on its way, but there’s only one. What do you think is the probability we would be able to intercept it?
JACOBSEN: I just wanted to make sure I caught you. Did you say a North Korean individual?
COWEN: North Korean.
JACOBSEN: Yes, okay. Which is the premise in my book.
COWEN: That it has more range than maybe today. It can make it to Washington. It’s coming in. We get the alert. We think it’s a missile. What’s the actual chance we can blow it up and stop it?
JACOBSEN: Just a couple of technical points to drill down on. North Korea does have missiles that can reach the East Coast of the United States presently. That is the precise scenario I choose in my book because it was actually Richard Garwin who told me that was what he was most afraid of. He died last week at 97, the most knowledgeable person on the technical and the theoretical aspects of this, having looked at it since the ’50s and advised presidents since the ’50s.
Now you’re asking about, can our interceptor program shoot down that incoming single missile? That is a problem that the Missile Defense Agency faces. I write about it specifically. My answer would be no. There is technically a 50 percent chance of one interceptor missile on the US side being able to shoot down one incoming ICBM, but you have to remember those statistics are from a curated test.
COWEN: Sure.
JACOBSEN: It’s a test — just for listeners — which is like Vandenberg Air Force Base says, “Oh, we’re doing whispers to the powers that be.” They’re doing a test, and they know it’s coming, and less than 50 percent of the time, actually, it succeeds.
COWEN: You can’t have all your probabilities at one or zero. What’s your probability? I’d say 20 percent, but what’s your number?
JACOBSEN: You mean what is my mathematical equation for what — ?
COWEN: Yes, the betting odds. You’re indifferent on taking the bet or not. I’ll say 20 percent that we’d nail it.
JACOBSEN: To my eye, it’s either all or nothing. Again, I’m not a mathematician. I’m an author and a journalist, but it’s all or nothing. In the scenario I write, it’s nothing. We do not hit it with four missiles. I ran that by several former NORAD commanders, and they did not say, “Annie, not true.” Their odds are unfortunately, even with the [shoot-look-shoot] technology that we have on our interceptor systems, would not be capable of shooting down a warhead.
Let’s give listeners some specs just so that they can understand, so that you can visualize this, because that’s what helped me. The warhead coming in is traveling at about 14,000 miles an hour, 500 to 700 miles above the earth. The interceptor is trying to shoot it down, essentially, like a giant bowling ball at 20,000 miles an hour, 500 to 700 miles above the earth. The technology involved is exquisite, and it fails time and time again.
To me, the poetics of that are more important than to try and use a defense that we should have more interceptors, because that leads to, “Let’s just have as many interceptor missiles as the other guys have nuclear weapons.” Then you’re talking about bankrupting the United States.
COWEN: Israel has done a great job. They don’t stop literally everything, but it’s quite impressive. I know it’s a smaller country, but it can be done along some margins, right?
JACOBSEN: No, absolutely not. Wrong science. The Iron Dome you’re referring to shoots down short-range and some medium-range, including ballistic missiles. They come from either land-based systems, like the THAAD system, or they come from sea ships, the Aegis system, but they cannot shoot down ICBMs — intercontinental ballistic missiles — traveling, as I just mentioned, 500 miles above the earth’s surface.
That is an extraordinary distinction, and people incorrectly mix them, because it sounds great and it’s quite fantasy hopeful to think, “Wow, I can just build a system, an Iron Dome or a golden dome over the United States, over my head, and I will be free from nuclear attack.”
Now, because I have brought the golden dome up. I also must say, having interviewed Charles Townes, for example, who was the Nobel Laureate who invented the laser, and spoke to him a decade ago about whether or not an Iron Dome–type system could work. He said unequivocally no.
Now we are in a different field of technology that is above my access, because I don’t have a top-secret clearance. When you’re talking about cube sets, and you’re talking about space-based interception, none of us that are not inside that golden dome rubric that’s happening right now know what’s happening. We don’t know about the future, but the past tells us that the Iron Dome is a different situation.
COWEN: Surely, if we spent 5 percent of GDP, we could come up with something. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it could protect Washington and New York, right? If nuclear war is so unthinkable, so crazy, so destructive, so possible, then we ought to spend that 5 percent of GDP.
JACOBSEN: You are welcome . . . Listen, it’s a land of ideas here. It is a land of ideas, and if that is yours, that is yours.
COWEN: But it’s not my idea; it’s a question. You’re the one saying it’s so terrible, and it’s not so impossible, so you ought to be the one charging ahead with this idea.
JACOBSEN: Charging ahead with which idea? That I would spend —
COWEN: Spending 5 percent of GDP to construct whatever defensive system we need. Five percent of GDP is a lot. It’s very noticeable. Taxes go up, spending goes up, interest rates go up. We did it with the Manhattan Project. That was a pretty decent sized chunk of GDP, and that seemed impossible. This is something we probably could do. Maybe it’s only 4 percent of GDP.
JACOBSEN: Seeing as I’m not an advisor on the Defense Science Board, I would no sooner suggest or even put my brain to think about such things, because fundamentally, that is not what the solution is. The only solution I have seen in any of this . . . If I may, shall I tell you a short story?
COWEN: Sure.
JACOBSEN: Reagan, a nuclear hawk, takes office and absolutely believes that more nuclear weapons make us more safe. Not only that, comes up with the original idea of space-based defense, like what you had alluded to with the 5 percent GDP. This is back in the ’80s, and this is his position.
Then one night ABC television releases a movie called The Day After, and Reagan decides to watch it. His chief of staff says, “Sir, don’t watch it,” but he does anyway. He writes in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed — his word, depressed. As a result, he reached out to the then archenemy, the USSR. He reached out to Gorbachev. That led to Reykjavík. The two of them together took the world from the dangerous precipice of 70,000 nuclear warheads in 1986–70,000, you heard me correctly — to the approximately 12,300 that we have today.
That is because disarmament, and that is because of communication. Reagan realized that he could no longer treat the nuclear-armed Russia as the enemy that you want to kill. Enemies you kill in the Defense Department. They had to be an adversary. He had to work with them, and that is the only mental pathway, theoretical pathway I can see as a viable solution to this madness, and I own that word. It’s madness.
COWEN: But he did start with the big arms buildup and higher defense spending, and he called them the evil empire. He was hardly a nuclear pacifist. You need to be strong first, and then you can get the other party to disarm partly —
JACOBSEN: Absolutely.
COWEN: — but 12,000 weapons is still enough to create the scenario in your book. I don’t really feel safer now.
JACOBSEN: Well, no, but their intention was to disarm. Okay, you don’t have to go to nuclear zero. People can have . . . Their intention was to continue, and that didn’t happen.
One note on Reagan, lest anybody get upset with themselves and think, “Oh no, I thought the Iron Dome could save us.” Lest anyone feel badly for not being aware of nuclear weapons, let me quote. Ronald Reagan himself didn’t even know the capability of sub-launched ballistic missiles. In a press conference, he once said incorrectly that sub-launched ballistic missiles could be recalled. They can’t.
I think this speaks to the world in which there is so much misinformation about what could happen, what these weapon systems do. It’s really something I tried to demonstrate in my book, that you can’t win. You cannot win.
COWEN: As you well know, there was a recent conflict between Pakistan and India. They’re both nuclear armed states. For the moment it’s died down. Pakistan, of course, has inferior conventional forces, a smaller and poorer country. Say Pakistan, out of desperation, had launched some nuclear weapons.
What happens next? What does the United States do? Do we just sit there and watch? Do we threaten? Do we tell India, “Hey, don’t retaliate or we’ll zap you?” Do we threaten Pakistan? Do we preemptive on Pakistan? What’s your scenario?
JACOBSEN: You just got yourself a new book. There’s your scenario.
COWEN: [laughs] But you’ve thought about this. You read the news, and you said, “Wow.” In your scenario, what happens?
JACOBSEN: In my scenario — and we’re literally talking about the book I wrote — I make something painfully clear. Again, this is from sources. This is from Defense Department officials. This is from your former professor’s war game, Proud Prophet.
What we know from Proud Prophet is that no matter how nuclear war begins, whether NATO’s involved — I’m talking about the United States here, and I’ll get to Pakistan and India — no matter how nuclear war begins, whether NATO’s involved, not involved, China’s involved, not involved. No matter how nuclear war begins, if the United States is involved, it ends in total annihilation, in Armageddon. We know that from the declassification.
COWEN: Those people have been wrong about so many things. They were wrong about Joe Biden not being senile. My scenario is —
JACOBSEN: Well, I’m talking about nuclear war.
COWEN: — India would retaliate and take out equivalent parts of Pakistan, and then China would twist Pakistan’s arm, and we and Russia would twist India’s arm. I think that would be the end of it. It would be terrible. Millions of people would die, but I don’t think it would escalate beyond that. Is that wrong?
JACOBSEN: What I just said was, what I am aware of and wrote the book about is, what happens if the United States gets involved? I would have to really put my mind on that scenario to discern what the outcome would be. I don’t know necessarily if America would get involved. It doesn’t seem to me that there would be a reason.
Now, what I am familiar with is understanding the effects of, let’s say, a 200-nuclear-weapons exchange between those two nuclear-armed countries, and what would happen to the soot that would loft into the atmosphere and block out the sun, impacting all of us. That’s a different conversation.
COWEN: But that’s why we would get involved. It’s one reason of many, right?
JACOBSEN: What would be the reason?
COWEN: Not wanting that to happen. The second- and third-order effects of nuclear weapons would mean the US and China and Russia would call up the two parties and read them the riot act. I think we actually would get it under some kind of partial control.
JACOBSEN: I believe that would — well, witness what we just saw — would happen prior to the first launch.
COWEN: Sure, but you could have an angry, rebellious general. He controls a few nukes; he sends them toward Delhi. These things can happen, as you point out, right?
JACOBSEN: Yes. I don’t point that out in my book, but yes, I would agree with you that such things could happen.
Very specifically, in Nuclear War: A Scenario, I don’t get involved with geopolitics. Tyler, I take readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter, and it happens in 72 minutes. That’s because the former commander of Stratcom, General Kehler — when I asked him what would happen in a full-scale nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States, he said to me, “Annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours.” That is my focus when I think about and talk about nuclear war.
COWEN: But there are scenarios that last longer than 72 minutes, and presumably, you’ve thought about those.
JACOBSEN: That’s obviously going to be your next book. I just said that.
COWEN: But I can ask you about things you’ve thought about, but are not in your book.
JACOBSEN: Are you asking me, did I think about writing a different scenario?
COWEN: No, I’m asking you just a question about a scenario that’s not in your book, but you must have thought about, where there’s a limited exchange and then uncertainty hanging in the air, and something happens other than complete escalation.
JACOBSEN: Many people have written books about what they believe could be the lead-up to various nuclear war scenarios. That’s not my book.
COWEN: Are you surprised there’ve been no real drone attacks in the domestic United States yet?
JACOBSEN: Wow. I was on a podcast with a former CIA officer, and I said that I was waiting for that to happen and got a little bit of pushback. Obviously, that has been my position for a while. I’m actually surprised that we haven’t seen that.
COWEN: Do you think we’ll need to develop defenses against that? Which would cost a lot. There’re a lot of targets, right? We’re a big country.
JACOBSEN: I’m interested and worried about mimetics in that kind of a situation, that you don’t have something like that happen, but if you did, it would suddenly involve mimicry. I think that is shocking, and dangerous, and terrifying. Again, I haven’t put my . . . There’s another book for you.
COWEN: To ask about your work more generally. How many conspiracy theories do you think you believe in? A lot, a few, zero?
JACOBSEN: Maybe you have to define conspiracy theory for me.
COWEN: Well, if you think a group of people in the US government, say the CIA, plotted to kill Kennedy, that would be a conspiracy theory. If you think Jeffrey Epstein did not really commit suicide, that would be a conspiracy theory. If you think there are aliens hidden at Roswell, that would be a conspiracy theory. Maybe the definition has gray areas, but there’re plenty of cases where you can point to it and say, “Yes, that would be a conspiracy theory.” I would say I believe in a very small number of them. How many do you think you believe in?
JACOBSEN: Tell me which ones you believe in.
COWEN: I think the COVID vaccine was held up by the pharma companies to help Biden’s chances of winning the election. I used to be 50/50 on single gunman for Kennedy. Now, I think it was a single gunman with the new document dump. I think there’s more cheating related to sports betting than people think. That’s a kind of weak conspiracy theory. That’s about my whole list. I don’t think there are many more. I do think Epstein killed himself. Even Dan Bongino said so recently.
JACOBSEN: I’m so interested in the way people think and their belief systems. I spend so much time interviewing people at the very center of these issues which you would call conspiracies. I suppose I have a different definition of it, per se. I’ll just give you an example, so I’m specific and not vague. When I was writing Area 51, I interviewed the first director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. His name was Dr. Bud Wheelon.
He had his finger on everything that you might call a conspiracy. Meaning he was in the basement with Dulles. He was one of the five people that was brought down there after JFK was killed. Dr. Wheelon was the originator of the Corona Satellite Program. Science and Technology was just coming online at the CIA in the ’60s when he was there. He was also the mayor of Area 51 by his own definition.
I report on actual stories based on interviews of high-ranking officials about the landscape around what you have suggested is conspiracy, like that people love to think about JFK, aliens at Roswell. I put those in quotes on the record for people to contemplate. Operation Paperclip, another case in point — so many of what you would call conspiracies around that. I tend to be someone who doesn’t. I think sometimes, when you say that’s a conspiracy theory, it sounds so finger-pointing to me.
COWEN: I don’t mean it in a negative way. There’re plenty of other countries that have a lot of conspiracies, right?
JACOBSEN: Yes. Maybe just ask me specifically, and then I could answer earnestly what I think about a certain subject, because I have written about all of those subjects.
COWEN: Well, say the Kennedy assassination.
JACOBSEN: I’ll continue with the Dr. Wheelon story if I may. Yes?
COWEN: First, just tell us what you think, and then tell us the story.
JACOBSEN: I don’t have any information on Kennedy that isn’t already in the public domain that one can either say, “Okay, that’s actually what I would call a legitimate source.” Or, “Actually, I’m not sure I believe that individual.” I do have a feeling that Dr. Wheelon was someone who knew because famously — you may or may not know this, but after Kennedy was killed, Allen Dulles, then director of CIA, took five directors of the directorates down into the basement. They were all there for a number of hours.
When they came up, witnesses said they were pale-faced. Whatever they learned was something shocking. When I was interviewing Dr. Wheelon for Area 51, my handler — when you interview these former CIA guys, you have — I call them a handler. They’re called a liaison. This person said to me, “Dr. Wheelon will answer all your questions about 51, about the spy planes, about the Corona satellites, and whatnot, but you may not ask him about JFK.”
Of course, obviously, I wanted to ask him about JFK, but I didn’t because I was focusing on my Area 51 book. Dr. Wheelon said a very interesting thing to me when we finished up our interviews. He said, “You may call me anytime that you like before the book publishes. I’ll check quotes.” He gave me this long list, being very helpful. He said, “But once the book publishes, you and I will never speak.”
It’s very CIA to say such a thing. That was that. Sure enough, book publishes, never hear from him. Flash forward one year or so, my phone rings. I can’t find my phone. I find it, and it says, “Missed call. Dr. Bud Wheelon.” I said to my husband, “Oh my God.” You know what he said? “He’s going to tell you who killed JFK. Call him back.” I call him back. A woman answers the phone and says, “Annie, it was a missed call.” I said, “I’m sure he wanted to get in touch with me.”
He died a few days later. He must have known . . . Forgive the long-winded story, but I think it speaks to why these hidden mysteries are interpreted as conspiracies, because people know things that for whatever reason, they cannot say. My takeaway was that Dr. Whelan was going to tell me something. That’s why he called me on his deathbed. Pure speculation on my part.
COWEN: What’s your view on UAPs, formerly called UFOs?
JACOBSEN: That is a three-hour Joe Rogan podcast, Tyler, I’m afraid. The short version is, I report in Area 51, that they were not UAPs, that they were something else. A terrible human experiment program. That really is a longer conversation because it’s so dark, so ugly, and deeply controversial.
But I have no reason to believe that off-planet extraterrestrial beings or intelligence have come to the United States or anywhere on Earth. I have interviewed almost all of those players involved because they have crossed into some of my other books. A lot of what I don’t report is because it’s not an area that I want to spend a lot of time proving or disproving. I think it falls into the category of people’s beliefs.
COWEN: But if there’s no actual thing that happened, what makes it so dark and ugly?
JACOBSEN: If there’s no actual — ? Oh, there is an actual thing that happened.
COWEN: There’re no alien bodies. In your view, no alien craft, UFOs are not alien spacecraft. Why is it dark and ugly?
JACOBSEN: Because one of my sources, the primary mover and shaker in that whole world that everyone knows — he told me that it was a human experiment program and that he was involved in it. You have to read the whole Area 51 book to swallow that. That was the position he maintained until he died.
COWEN: Do you think people are overly inclined to believe in conspiracy theories? Just as we used to attribute the weather to gods, we anthropomorphize many things. It’s easier to think in terms of the people we don’t like as plotting against us rather than things being a series of accidents. I think we overly resort to conspiracy theorizing. Do you agree or disagree?
JACOBSEN: I disagree with the nomenclature because I think of a conspiracy in legal terms. It’s like two or more people plotting something. That is a word that exists in my brain in that lane. The other lane that you’re talking about, to me, is beliefs. If you really wanted to get flowery with your language, you could say crazy beliefs. You could attach any kind of poetic word to it, which I would, because it seems to me to fall more into the category of desire.
COWEN: Of all the parts of government you’ve had contact with, which do you think is the best run?
JACOBSEN: Wow. That’s a good question. As you know, from all of my books, I report on the Pentagon, the military, and the intelligence community. Many people do not realize that there are 17 or 18 intelligence agencies in the United States of America. The CIA is just one of them. I’ve written about a number of them. Some of them, like NRO, for example, are extraordinarily classified.
What’s the best run? They’re run differently. The mindset of the Pentagon is fascinating to me in terms of order and systematic control. The mindset of the Central Intelligence Agency is fascinating to me in terms of what I perceive to be individual action. They almost are diametrically posed in that regard that when you’re at the Pentagon, you are following the system. Often, not always, but often — I’ve interviewed many more CIA operators than analysts, people who are out there on the ground — it seems to be about individual course of action.
Which is better? I think you need both. Certainly, in our own human lives, I want to have order and discipline and work from a system, whether it’s in my professional life or my family life, my community. But I also want to have individuality and make decisions. In a strange way, I think that the intelligence community and the military community work hand and glove. Are they perfect? Of course not. Am I perfect? Of course not.
COWEN: I think of the Pentagon as being one of the worst run and parts of the deep state as being relatively well run. That’s my personal impression. You differ from that?
JACOBSEN: Interesting. When you say deep state, you mean the intelligence community?
COWEN: Yes, especially the consultants who are attached and the way in which they really bring very high intelligence and analytic powers to bear on questions. It may not survive the passage of a memo to the presidency, but still, I think they’re quite on the ball.
JACOBSEN: We probably agree in that regard, that if discipline and system is important — again, I’m just using myself like a personal example, but what you really want to lead with is your own character and your own decision. I would probably agree with you, but the government is such a . . . I’m also fascinated that most people just think the government is one whole thing. As you and I both know from looking at this, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
COWEN: The people you’ve worked with who were part of the secret or semi-secret deep state — overall, what do you think they’re like as people or what motivates them? Or what have you observed? What has occurred to you?
JACOBSEN: I’m fascinated that you call them the “deep state.” Again, that’s like loaded nomenclature. It’s right there with conspiracy.
COWEN: No, I’m fine with deep state. It’s this negative thing, but a lot of these words get inverted. Let’s just call them the deep state. I don’t mind. Some of it’s bad, but some of it’s good.
JACOBSEN: Listen, I spend time with people who others view as everything from a twirling-mustache bad guy to a savior. And I’m not dodging the question here; I’m trying to be earnest in my reportage, how I work with people. That has to do with the fact that I try to be agnostic going into interviews, as I would wish one would be with me, meaning not . . . Because if you’re going to prejudge someone based on what you “read” or heard on a podcast, that is dangerous.
COWEN: Yes, but I want your post judgment, right?
JACOBSEN: Okay, but be specific. Tell me —
COWEN: The people you’ve met from the deep state — what’s your overall impression? Some mix of what they’re like, what motivates them, what surprised you. Any impressions you’ve had about these people.
JACOBSEN: When you say deep state, do you mean specifically intelligence community?
COWEN: Absolutely.
JACOBSEN: So, you mean former operators for the CIA that I worked with?
COWEN: Former, current, whatever you’ve met. Yes.
JACOBSEN: I’m trying to wrap my head around the actual question so I can answer it.
COWEN: What are they like? What struck you?
JACOBSEN: Everybody’s different. I don’t think you could put people into a box. I am astonished. Look, one of the things about being a reporter is that you allegedly are objective. I think the past 10 years have shown us that that is actually not true, yet you should strive to be. So, when I’m reporting books, I aim to be objective so that I can gather agnostic details and come to a conclusion.
Sometimes afterwards, having spent a lot of time with a person, then they might even become a friend. The book’s out, and that is maybe where I would get to know someone even better.
Who’s coming to mind is Billy Waugh who became a friend of mine after I reported. He was the main character in my book about the CIA’s paramilitary called Surprise, Kill, Vanish. Billy was extremely complicated. After the book published and we became friends, he shared with me a lot of things that were deeply personal, that are not to be on the public record, but made me realize — and you are going to say this is a cliché, but I’m going to say it anyways — we are all so much more alike than we are different.
COWEN: That would be my answer, in fact. I don’t mind if it’s a cliché. I would agree with you. I think they’re more analytic than other individuals I meet on average, just as you might say, “Well, the Swiss are more orderly,” but they’re not that different deep down.
JACOBSEN: Incredibly. My husband’s Norwegian, and the Norwegian word is coming to mind, flink, like clever, like really clever and always operating on 10 frequencies. I went to Vietnam with Billy Waugh, to Hanoi when he was 87 and a half years old. I’m telling you, the things that happened. We could do a three-hour podcast on some of the things that occurred, that made me say, “How is an 87-year-old firing on so many circuits all at once?” But he was, because he was trained that way. He was always used to having someone on his tail, trying to kill him.
COWEN: What did you think when you met Uri Geller, which you relate in one of your books?
JACOBSEN: Uri was fascinating. Uri is another person — talk about beliefs. I met with Uri at his home outside London, and I traveled to Israel to meet with Uri there. What comes to mind is Uri, the person, who I spent time with — this was now nine years ago or something — was most certainly different than the public persona that he pushes forth. I believe that in my book, Phenomena, I capture the person, not the pretense. A lot of people — and I think Uri among them — become like a figure, and then they work to hold up that figure.
COWEN: If ESP is true or can work, why isn’t it relatively easy to show that in the laboratory?
JACOBSEN: I believe the takeaway from my book on that subject is that it’s a fleeting technique. It definitely, to my eye, falls into the basket of belief. I saw things, as I report, that were inexplicable. You couldn’t really explain them by logic or science, but you can’t repeat that behavior, and so it’s not science. I don’t think you can “use it.” I think that’s what the CIA spent a long time trying to prove. I think the Defense Department made the mistake of believing that perhaps you could use it.
COWEN: To what extent do government bodies still use self-proclaimed psychics?
JACOBSEN: Currently?
COWEN: Currently, yes.
JACOBSEN: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m almost certain that that program is still continuing.
COWEN: You see on TV shows, local sheriffs — a young girl disappears, they bring in a psychic. Does that happen in real life? Or it’s only on TV?
JACOBSEN: I think we all know examples of that happening in real life, which is why the polls — although now we know you can’t even trust polls anymore — but many polls suggest that an extraordinary majority of Americans believe in psychic functioning. It’s why they will, on occasion, “go see a psychic,” because everybody has a story of, “So and so said this, and then it happened.”
Again, a great way for me to think about belief and desire. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a magical force that was guiding us? I think that’s why people believe in psychic functioning. Maybe the placebo effect is true. Interestingly, placebo is, of course, a concept originated by a CIA doctor named Henry Beecher.
COWEN: Do you believe in ESP?
JACOBSEN: Do I believe in extrasensory perception?
COWEN: Yes.
JACOBSEN: Individuals have told me things that, “Wow. Oh, my God, that person said that to me, and that came true.” Is that extrasensory perception? I’ll leave you to decide.
COWEN: I’ll say it’s random, that a lot of things happen that are coincidences. I don’t believe in it.
JACOBSEN: Of course.
COWEN: Are you willing to say the same?
JACOBSEN: Of course. I think I believe more in . . . Someone said it to me this way. You know the red Rambler theory?
COWEN: No.
JACOBSEN: Neither did I. I said, “Well, what’s the red Rambler theory?” They said, “Okay, now watch. Now that I’ve said the red Rambler theory, you will end up seeing a red Rambler — one of those cars from the ’70s or ’80s — drive by.” That is that idea, like you just shared, that once something is in your consciousness, the chances of you seeing it are much greater. Is that ESP? It’s the red Rambler theory.
COWEN: I would say confirmation bias, but I don’t believe in ESP, do I?
What is it you read, say in science fiction or detective novels or genre fiction that has influenced you?
JACOBSEN: I love reading. I was doing an interview recently in Europe, and someone asked me, or rather stated that my book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, was clearly influenced by John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I thought, absolutely, each of those books, I have read more than once. I think I’m the kind of author and reporter that just reads, reads, reads, reads, reads, reads, reads, and then things quibble up in your subconscious and become manifest.
COWEN: What is it in your formative years, do you think, led you to take interest in the topics you’ve written books about?
JACOBSEN: When I was a young girl?
COWEN: Teenager, young woman, whatever it was, yes.
JACOBSEN: That is a mystery to me. We’ll have to leave that to the psychics. Really and truly, because I don’t have a military family. My training was not in war. I would most definitely say it was fate and circumstance. I really believe in that, just like — what’s the expression? Maybe it’s Bob Dylan, “Ride the horse in the direction it’s moving.”
I just began writing about war and weapons and national security, and secrets as a younger reporter, and it just took off from there. These subjects are absolutely life-and-death dramatic. They make me feel like I want to keep writing.
COWEN: What’s your favorite novel?
JACOBSEN: What’s your favorite novel?
COWEN: Moby-Dick or Bleak House.
JACOBSEN: Moby-Dick!
COWEN: Yes.
JACOBSEN: I’m not going to say one.
COWEN: Favorite movie?
JACOBSEN: Gladiator.
COWEN: Best movie about nuclear war?
JACOBSEN: Hopefully, Denis Villeneuve’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, forthcoming.
COWEN: Any idea when it’s coming out?
JACOBSEN: I don’t know. These things, they’re like the CIA. They’re secret and hidden.
COWEN: That’s right. I like the old, not well-known movie, Miracle Mile, which is about a pending nuclear holocaust and a couple in LA that fall in love with each other.
JACOBSEN: Wow, I don’t know that one. Miracle Mile?
COWEN: It’s from, I think, the late 1980s. It’s a fun movie.
JACOBSEN: Great. Great recommendation. Thank you.
COWEN: Last question. What will you do next?
JACOBSEN: I have a new book due on August 1.
COWEN: Are you allowed to tell us what it is?
JACOBSEN: No. That I take a page out of the CIA’s playbook: secret until revealed.
COWEN: So, it’s not on Amazon yet?
JACOBSEN: No, it’s not. My manuscript is due August 1.
COWEN: Oh, I see. It’s not coming out August 1.
JACOBSEN: No, no, no.
COWEN: It’s close to finished, then?
JACOBSEN: Yes. It is, shall we say, same cookie sheet.
COWEN: Great. Awesome. Annie Jacobsen, it’s been a real pleasure chatting. Thank you very much.
JACOBSEN: Thank you so much.