In the first episode of our new podcast, we take a deep dive into one of the most mysterious organizations in the world, the EcoHealth Alliance, and the people who run it. We talk to the VP of the company, Dr. John Wojtowicz, about the origins of the organization, how it got its name, and how the government funded it.
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00:28:05.000Yeah, again, I don't have any background information, so you could tell me anything, but everything you're saying sounds right to me, just based on what I have seen.
00:28:17.040Can I just back up a tiny bit and ask some practical questions about what EcoHealth Alliance was doing?
00:28:21.260So you said before you got to the portion where they were acting as an Intel asset, which sounds right, you said they were compiling, collecting a library of viruses from around the world.
00:28:39.980So it's a, I guess in my mind, it's very straightforward, but typically first you form a relationship with the diplomatic mission.
00:28:47.800So the embassy, the consul for the United States, they might refer you to either hospitals, professors, other academics or company in country.
00:28:56.080Or maybe you already have those relationships from past work that you've done.
00:28:59.720You then go on a trip to that country and you go and sort of do an assessment of their laboratories.
00:29:06.940You collect sort of information, try to gauge these people have the capability.
00:29:11.200Are they going to spend our money wisely?
00:29:13.140So it's a business trip and it's very business focused and you're assessing their capabilities.
00:29:17.980Then once you have a good feeling with their capabilities, you begin the contracting process with that foreign entity.
00:29:25.000And if you're doing everything by the book, you run these people through U.S. government systems to make sure that they're not terrorists or evil people.
00:29:35.760I found out about that after the fact as well.
00:29:37.980But we try to figure out who these people are and then if they're capable, oftentimes it's universities, either the ag school or at a foreign university, the veterinary school or human medical center.
00:29:50.980Then we formulate the contract, we send them the cash, and then they would either go out and collect the samples or we would travel or have our personnel travel to go collect the samples.
00:29:59.720So if we're talking about bats, it depends what species you're dealing with.
00:30:03.480But if you're dealing with bats, you set nets or traps in a bat cave, for example.
00:30:10.000You catch the bat in the net and then you go out there in your personal protective equipment and you take fecal swabs, blood, saliva from the animal.
00:30:19.880And then you then package that so that the DNA will not be degrade and transport back to the laboratory.
00:31:50.740So once it gets back to the United States, then it goes to, at least at Equal Alliance, it would go to Ian Lipkin's laboratory at Columbia University, where he was a specialist in...
00:32:02.360He's a pretty well-known viral epidemiologist with really good lab chops.
00:32:06.860And another doctor who worked with us named Simon Anthony would work with him to isolate and...
00:32:12.860Well, at first, identify and isolate new viruses or novel viruses.
00:32:16.600So that's where it typically took place.
00:32:18.060Then the mechanics of this or operations of this, that information or sample would be sent to another laboratory like Ralph Baric's laboratory, where he would continue the work...
00:32:31.260Can I just approach this from an autistic perspective?
00:32:33.800So what you're saying is there are like people around the world in bat caves in some faraway country sending potentially novel and dangerous viruses to New York City...
00:32:48.060Like all the time and people are not even aware of this.
00:32:51.500I wouldn't say huge, but I mean, a non-trivial amount of these types of samples being shipped around the world globally.
00:32:59.480And if they're properly contained and packaged, it's really not that much of a risk.
00:33:04.900And actually, Dr. Ralph Baric developed some of these methods of how to send what's called a chimeric virus on a sheet of paper and envelope, which is low risk.
00:33:11.480Like, the bigger risk becomes when you start to clone or replicate that agent at scale.
00:33:20.160You know, human medicine, public health, epidemiology, transmission risk, and how you look at this, you have to have a substantial quantity of a virus, which is a substance, mixed in the air or be exposed to it to become infected with it.
00:33:32.740Because you have an immune system that works, okay?
00:33:34.980And sometimes you get exposed to these things and you don't even know it because your immune system fights it off, right?
00:33:39.840So, I think sometimes the risk is overblown and the fear around transporting samples.
00:33:45.100I think most of the time that's actually pretty low risk.
00:33:47.220There's been a series of transporting accidents, which occurred from 2008 to 2012 or 14, I want to say, which actually led to the ban or partial ban on gain of function research.
00:34:03.020One of the high-profile ones was that, I think it was Bacillus anthracis was being shipped from one of our U.S. government BSL for laboratories under CDC control to another laboratory.
00:34:16.320And it went missing and they found it sitting in the corner.
00:34:22.640No, it wasn't a porch pirate, but they found it someplace and it wasn't properly secured or completely off the...
00:34:27.560Yeah, I mean, we live in a world with like Chernobyl and misdiagnoses and, I mean, I believe in...
00:34:33.120I think there are a lot of, you know, rigorous, responsible scientists, but, you know, people make mistakes.
00:34:39.760I mean, and over time and with scale, like mistakes will happen, right?
00:34:43.360Well, and we actually dealt with this type of low probability, high consequence threat risk analysis all the time at San Diego National Laboratories.
00:34:50.840And the big issue is what you just brought up, the human in the loop.
00:34:54.980Usually the engineered systems, you can engineer those precisely to account for whatever probability or consequence or risk.
00:35:01.760But it's always the human making a decision or behavior or action involved in the system that makes a mistake, which causes some kind of catastrophic failure.
00:35:23.960Well, yes, they had a digital library at EcoHealth Alliance.
00:35:27.240And then there's other systems that the U.S., or I should say, not only the United States, but the global virologist community maintain of genetic information on viruses.
00:35:40.900But the actual viruses, the living organisms, were they stored anywhere?
00:35:45.240Typically, we were buying negative ADC centigrade freezers as fast as we could, or as many as we could afford, and storing those at Columbia University and other laboratories where these things go in the freezer and they set.
00:35:58.280And the one nice thing is if the freezer does fail, it usually destroys all the sample on the inside because they do have to be maintained cold.
00:36:04.240We thought this through when we started this podcast a year ago, and we decided we're never advertising anything that we or people on our staff don't use, period.
00:36:12.420We're only partnering with companies that we agree with and endorse, actually, in our personal lives.
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00:44:32.640And also because I wanted to maintain my security clearance and good standing.
00:44:36.640And it's not that you can't have foreign relationships, but it becomes more complicated for your reinvestigation in the future if you have relationships with a country like China.
00:44:46.280And I've, you know, from a national security perspective, I've always been against what the Chinese have been doing.
00:44:53.480And that's lying, cheating, and stealing from us.
00:44:55.940And we never get anything out of the relationship, it seems.
00:44:58.500It's been a very abusive one-way relationship from the Chinese.
00:45:02.440And I knew this going back to my military days.
00:45:04.800And I had actually been invited to do other collaborative work with the Chinese at other institutions and places I've worked, sort of tied to national security.
00:45:13.660And I always stayed away from it because I never saw any benefit to it.
00:45:17.100And, well, if the government wants to, if the U.S. government wants to fund this or this entity wants to fund it, that's fine.
00:45:22.540I can protest by just not being a part of it.
00:45:24.540So, you leave EcoHealth Alliance after a few years, then COVID happens.
00:45:34.580And when it happens, everyone thinks I'm sort of the crazy one.
00:45:38.680And how this actually transpires is I was working at Juul Labs e-cigarette company as a senior director of population health, living in the Bay Area.
00:45:47.880And because of what I did for a living and my expertise, you know, I catch wind of this virus spreading around the planet.
00:45:55.900It was very obvious that people on the West Coast were becoming sick in, I want to say, late November, December 2019.
00:46:05.840You know, another really weird thing happens.
00:46:07.980So, I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life at this company.
00:46:27.700I actually met her while I was a PhD student at the University of Minnesota at a DH, Department of Homeland Security, Center of Excellence.
00:46:35.000She had shown up to a few meetings of ours.
00:46:36.680She was working with the Department of Defense at that time and the intelligence services.
00:46:40.320And she's a great, you know, scientist and very friendly relationship with her.
00:46:48.660And she contacts me and she informs me that she's now working with DARPA and offers me a position as a program manager in the biological programs directorate.
00:47:01.060And, you know, I thought it was sort of odd that she had contacted me on my brand new San Francisco area phone, cell phone.
00:47:10.020So, I had a new phone number because I relocated and I wanted San Francisco area code.
00:47:16.000And I couldn't figure out why she wanted me to come be the director of this biological program.
00:47:21.020I had been trying to get away from national security intelligence type work for several years and I kept on getting dragged back into it, it seemed.
00:47:59.780So, went home and had a conversation with my wife.
00:48:01.980Hey, do you want to move back to the Beltway or move to D.C.?
00:48:04.860Have, you know, Fed jobs and go work in that environment.
00:48:07.940And my wife had previously worked at USDA and she didn't want to go back to it.
00:48:12.240And I like, call up Amy and say, you know, thank you, you know, for contacting me.
00:48:17.200At one point, this was in my career, this was actually my dream job to be running a, have a blank check from the Department of Defense to go develop all the coolest biotechnology world.
00:48:26.340I mean, seriously, I had dreamed of that job at one point in my life.
00:48:42.640Well, okay, that phone call took place late September, early October 2019.
00:48:50.220Fast forward today with what we know is that DARPA had held a contest or I want to say not so much a contest, but put out a RFP, a request for proposals related to something called PREEMPT, which was preventing emerging infectious disease threats.
00:49:11.100And one of the proposals was something called DEFUSE from my former employer called EcoHealth Alliance, which was basically the recipe for SARS-CoV-2, which was done in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:49:27.340So, you know, I'm sort of hopping around here, but the reason why this is important is now I believe that DARPA was actually trying to recruit me back into the program.
00:49:37.560So, I wouldn't have done any of the things that I've done over the last four years, essentially.
00:50:03.660I actually believed the information I was seeing, which I think was a psyop potentially targeted at me, that this disease would be much more severe than it was.
00:50:12.620I'm not saying that it wasn't a severe disease.
00:50:14.900I mean, it wasn't as bad as they're making it seem.
00:50:41.200It turns out that that number was much lower and somewhere in the, you know, in the percentage category, not the 70, 80, or 90%.
00:50:49.800So, I went real quick from thinking that this was going to be the thing that could, you know, cripple society to being, I'm not wearing a mask in public.
00:50:59.940But my behavior in action in early 2020, the first weeks, I started looking for a place in a remote area.
00:51:05.200So, I'm considering Alaska, Maine, Northern Maine, Western Wyoming, or the UP of Michigan.
00:51:13.700My search criteria based on what I knew as an expert, you want to have access to an airport, transportation, high-speed internet, an hour drive from a major city center that's not too populated.
00:51:24.640Because if it's going to end the planet, it's going to kill everyone.
00:51:28.060You want distance from other people to break transmission cycles.
00:51:56.180In the back of my mind, though, I'm thinking about constantly that, and I know that EcoHealth Alliance had been engaged in this gain-of-function work at EcoHealth, or excuse me, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:52:12.500And I'm like, a bat coronavirus emerging in Wuhan?
00:52:16.620And, you know, I'm watching the news and the TV through 2020, and they're like, oh, it was a pangolin, or it was the wet market.
00:52:24.940And I'm arguing on social media that that's just not possible, that it doesn't make sense from an emerging infectious disease standpoint.
00:52:31.020Because a wet market, and the specific wet market in China, is a seafood market.
00:52:52.280And, in fact, I'm looking at the pictures of it, and my assessment is, I'm like, this is the kind of place I'd go buy groceries.
00:52:57.420You know, other than New York City, a very nice place.
00:53:01.200So, I'm like, none of this is adding up.
00:53:03.140And, you know, you're watching the story evolve.
00:53:05.300And next thing you know, my former boss, Dr. Peter Dasik, has put on the committee that's sent over by the World Health Organization to go investigate the origin of the disease.
00:53:16.700And this is getting weirder and weirder and weirder.
00:53:28.520I mean, I knew all the players in this big thing.
00:53:30.420I mean, I had been groomed since I was a Ph.D. student to be a Dr. Anthony Fauci replacement or that type of person.
00:53:36.200So, I mean, I knew all the people in the system and working on these things and the program managers, the officers, the different branches of the government.
00:53:43.440So, I'm watching this all play out, and I just can't believe it.
00:53:46.600And it's the kind of thing where I'm yelling at my computer screen in private.
00:53:49.980Like, they put, you know, they put fucking Dr. Dasik in charge of, like, investigating the origin.
00:54:10.520Why would putting the guy who had a hand in the creation of the virus in charge of investigating the origin of the virus be part of a PSYOP?
00:54:17.500To give the perception that it's an independent person that's well-trusted within the wildlife community and the scientific community that we know what you're doing and can trust what we're saying.
00:54:30.420Because if you look at how the psychological operation was waged, and I'm not just saying the U.S. government, but multiple entities.
00:54:38.400The pharmaceutical industry, the big companies that back all these different things, special interests just generally.
00:54:45.840You take the guy who's responsible, you put him in charge in the investigation.
00:54:49.320You know that he's not going to tie it back to himself, but he's already been branding himself for years and decades as being a person that cares, you know, a crunchy NGO person.
00:54:58.340And he has the relationships in wealthy communities on the West Coast and East Coast, the elite, to convince them that this is, you know, a naturally emerging disease from the wet market.
00:55:08.460So, you know, he's already the point man.
00:55:10.960He's already sold everyone all this bullshit related to we're going to go and forecast pandemics.
00:55:16.120And really, he's the guy who caused one.
00:55:17.860It's really, yeah, thank you for saying, I just wanted you to explain that a little more fully.
00:55:24.400I've, again, lived this, seen it, and it is effective because it's so shocking that someone would do that.
00:55:32.820It's so brazen, the chutzpah required to do something like that.
00:55:35.900You take not just like some random guy, but the guy who's responsible and you start telling everyone he's the savior.
00:55:42.940If you're, wow, man, that the human brain, a normal person is bewildered by that, is thrown off balance by that.
00:55:50.140Well, at least in my life, and we were discussing this a little bit at breakfast, the more of you see of this trickery, the more that you're exposed.
00:55:57.040And then they actually talk about this in the psychological research.
00:56:00.060Oftentimes, the more aware you become of a phenomenon, the more you see it.
00:56:04.300And then once you start seeing it, you can't stop seeing it.
01:05:35.200So DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
01:05:38.500It used to be ARPA before they added the D before.
01:05:41.400It's an Advanced Research Projects Agency.
01:05:44.080It's actually made most of the coolest technology that we have.
01:05:47.680Or one of the companies or entities that's federally funded that has the internet.
01:05:51.460So everything on the internet was developed by ARPA then, ARPANET.
01:05:55.880And if you are a tech nerd like me and you start digging down the DNS queries of how you search for information, you dig down, you start pulling up the tables of information.
01:06:03.460Eventually you get to something that says ARPANET in every communication that we do.
01:06:07.640So they make the most sophisticated stuff in the world.
01:06:11.400So it's a Pentagon-funded research lab, basically.
01:06:15.440Well, not necessarily just a research lab.
01:06:18.260I'd call it more of it covers a program area or series of program areas where some of the research is done by private contractors, FFRDCs, basically anybody who can do the work.
01:06:28.860And they fund high-risk, high-value scientific R&D on short timelines.
01:06:35.960So you don't receive 10 years of funding.
01:06:39.680The Department of Defense, rightfully so, is what capability will this give us within a year or two?
01:07:07.820Well, then I start, because my profile is increasing, and I'm starting to be actually followed by people out in the UP when I go to the grocery store.
01:27:51.960So, what I do, I actually put on my pants, go upstairs, and I pound on the door, and come out of this fucking room, I caught you.
01:27:59.840And I'm screaming this in the hotel room in Chicago, and I'm excited, you know, because this is the first time where I've actually been able to, you know, confront these people.
01:28:10.460I go over to the fire door, which is right next to this hotel room, it was up against the stairwell, and we're on the third floor, they're on the fourth.
01:28:19.400And I make a quick decision to sort of trick these guys.
01:28:24.300So, I open up this door, this heavy fire door, and I allow it to slam, and I make the noise with my feet that I'm going down the stairs.
01:28:31.480Actually, I went upstairs quietly and above the room to the fifth floor, and I'm standing there listening to the floor, and I hear cases closing, things snapping, and, you know, which way are they going to exit?
01:28:43.280They're obviously not going to go down the fire escape or at the end of the building.
01:28:45.700The only other way they go, they're going to go down the hallway to the next stairway or elevator.
01:28:49.000So, I start running down the fifth floor ahead of these guys, and I hear footsteps and cases and things.
01:28:56.360Well, I heard the case of closing, and I hear the footsteps coming down the hallway, and I get to the next stairway, and I open up the door, and they pop out right in front of me.
01:29:07.240But I'm up on the fifth floor, and they're coming out on the fourth, and I'm looking down at them, and they go running down the stairs to the first floor, and I'm laughing.
01:29:15.180So, I go over to the elevator, I go down the elevator casually, I come in the lobby like there's nothing wrong, and the two guys are sitting in chairs.
01:29:22.900And I walk over to them and say, hey, guys, did you see two guys come running down the stairs?
01:29:29.980And they have, like, wristbands on from drinking at the music festival or bars or wherever they were following us around all day.
01:29:40.140And they said, no, we haven't seen anyone there.
01:29:42.840You know, they look sort of like they're sweating.
01:29:45.080And I go over to them, I start laughing, I go over to the desk of the lobby and say, hey, what's your name?
01:30:10.560And sometimes the state police and federal agents would come onto my property and just, like, run around the bushes around my house, you know, to, like, you know, freak me out.
01:30:21.300And, or thinking that they were freaking me out, I laughed at most of this.
01:30:24.720So I called 911 to report the trespassers.
01:30:27.700And I'm working in my garage on some, you know, project.
01:30:30.300And they're playing music and sounds from their phones, like, trying to, like, get me to come out and, like, run after them or something.
01:30:40.420So anyways, 45 minutes go by, the police haven't arrived.
01:30:45.800And sometimes that's not uncommon, probably, for a trespassing claim in the UP of Michigan.
01:30:49.740So I call back, and the dispatcher, or the 911 operator, gives me the phone number of the state police officer that is responding to the call that I'm supposed to call on the cell phone.
01:31:01.740Well, I go call the phone number on my cell phone, and the phone rings in the bushes.
01:32:07.220And so, I don't know if they've ever been held accountable.
01:32:11.360I know for a fact that the FBI office in the state of Michigan had been spreading rumors with state and local law enforcement, excuse me, county and local law enforcement that I was dangerous.
01:32:54.720So, the other vice presidents, Dr. Epstein or Dr. Oval, I'm not sure where they are.
01:33:01.440I know Dr. Daszak's trying to get something new going, which is basically, it sounds like sort of the same thing.
01:33:06.680And, you know, I understand why there have been a series...
01:33:09.160Has Dr. Daszak ever faced any penalty at all for participating in this?
01:33:12.640No, and the best part is that what's crazy about all of this, I should say, is that I attended a number of the hearings in the COVID Select Committee in person.
01:33:20.580And I was there for Dr. Daszak's grilling.
01:33:24.440And they have the part where they go through where basically he's denying that any of this is gain of function, his involvement, and he's fighting back.
01:33:31.780And then, you know, it gets to the end of the congressional hearings where counsel for both the Democrats and Republicans get the chance to examine the witness.
01:33:39.760And during that questioning, they actually asked,
01:33:42.640Dr. Daszak, whether or not he is working with the intelligence community.
01:50:32.140Most of the places it's being developed are friendly to the United States or our allies.
01:50:37.540But this synthetic threat is rapidly emerging.
01:50:42.260That, so that's the biotechnology side.
01:50:45.220Now, if you take a look at, and I know I've been watching your show, recent episodes, AI has been a big hot topic and there's tons of investment going into it.
01:50:54.240We're going to see a fusion between this synthetic biology technology and AI.
01:51:00.440And it's probably on the four to five year horizon.
01:51:06.360And the AI will be programmed into the micro circuits systems of the nanotechnology.
01:51:18.200I mean, like you're going to use the best software, the best programs that you can get onto a, basically a nano computer within that cell, which does the programming.
01:51:26.540This might sound like crazy science fiction to a lot of people.
01:52:57.920And this is why the, what I was going to say related to President Trump and the Trump administration negotiating a new biological treaty with the international community.
01:53:11.120Well, one, looking at history back to the 70s, I don't think it's going to be effective.
01:53:15.860So the existing biological weapons convention we have is outdated.
01:53:18.820It focuses on select agents, basically, that which can be weaponized through gain-of-function technology.
01:53:25.520They baked a loophole into it to develop countermeasures.
01:53:28.400That's vaccine technologies and other prophylactics.
01:53:31.180And you can engage in the gain-of-function technology, bioweapon development, if you're developing the countermeasure.
01:53:36.660And they couldn't get anyone to go further past that with having inspections.
01:53:40.620And I don't see that posture, especially today in today's climate, changing.
01:54:08.620Wait, before we get to the path forward, can we just get to a broader description, more precise description of what the marriage of nanotechnology to AI means?
01:54:19.500So, the marriage of nanotechnology to AI means that the AI, or excuse me, the nanotechnology will have swarm-like capabilities.
01:54:29.960So, people or the general world is probably more familiar with swarm technology around drones.
01:54:35.740They're using this, and they're testing this, and they're trying to field these rapid swarm technologies.
01:54:40.380And if you watch these large displays of drone shows that you see commonly in China, that's really them just openly testing drone swarm technology.
01:54:49.020And that's the civilian, you know, this is cool tech application, but there's actually a much more sinister application of that same technology for defense, dual-use technology.
01:55:00.220So, imagine that these pathogens are like these drones, and you see them operate.
01:55:07.040AI will control the swarm technology around the synthetic pathogens so that they can control their behavior.
01:55:12.380And then also that the machine inside the synthetic cell can adapt to its environment without any human construction or code or decision-making.
01:55:46.760You could use this to deploy a container.
01:55:52.040Maybe it looks like a bomb into an ocean marine or a submarine is.
01:55:54.740The synthetic life could be magnetic and attract to the hull of a submarine.
01:56:02.700It would attach itself, and then it would make decisions about where it should collect on the surface of the submarine independently to create a biofilm and self-replicate to basically cause the sensors or to disable the submarine in some way.
01:57:51.120So, I remember Bobby Kennedy got into a great deal of trouble because he said at some event, of course, the New York Post led the charge against him, of course.
01:57:58.460But that COVID could be tailored or, in fact, for whatever reason, COVID had disparate effects on populations.
01:58:13.320Which populations suffered most from COVID?
01:58:16.320There was a finding in a scientific publication that two different populations of...
01:58:21.640Well, two different populations of people of Jewish ancestry, depending which line they're from, where one was more heavily impacted than the other.
01:58:45.980And that's through old game of function technology.
01:58:48.800And with synthetic, full synthetics, what I'm saying is you can make this so specific is that if I get your DNA, like off of, you know, say that you threw a cup, I can tailor an agent just to you.
01:59:02.520And if you're using AI behind that, I could then...
01:59:05.560And I say that I got a DNA sample from a couple of your relatives so I knew what your family tree partially looked like.
01:59:11.740Machine learning is very good at actually random forest and tree decision-making.
01:59:16.880You do a lot of complex AI behind this to figure out and make predictions that AI could about what your family tree looked like and have the disease travel through your family line.
02:00:28.420And I just say in general, I would much rather live in a world where I risked dying of tetanus and the common cold than live in a world with this technology.
02:00:37.480I have a million more questions to ask you.
02:00:42.040But that's what you just said is so upsetting that I think you've broken my spirit, Dr. Huff.
02:00:46.500Oh, I think there's a better solution.
02:00:48.440Let me give you the upside of this, though.
02:00:50.040So the solution to these problems is typically better biosurveillance.
02:00:56.100And this is what EcoHealth was trying to do.
02:00:59.480And the part of it that actually works is you can't really understand what's circulating in the world in terms of pathogens, life, unless scientists and engineers are measuring it or trying to identify and look.
02:01:12.340You can't find what you're not looking for.
02:01:14.800And it would be great to see an international team of scientists working on the technology to detect synthetic life when it emerges.
02:01:22.980Because if we all think it's a threat, we don't have to put our head in the sand an ostrich.
02:01:31.000If we're all just looking for it and we can identify it, early warnings of threats save lives, livestock, animals.
02:01:40.420The early warning signal is the most important aspect of defending against future emerging threats.
02:01:47.560And if we develop that technology, we'll be safer.
02:01:51.200Yeah, what you really need, though, to be safe is good people.
02:02:10.860Where can people, if people are interested in finding out more, people with a stronger stomach and stouter heart than I have, want to know more about the last 10 minutes of our conversation?
02:02:28.720I've done it, published a little bit on X and then also on LinkedIn.
02:02:33.220And it's not very, I don't think people are catching on.
02:02:37.220Actually, I just solicited proposals to DARPA and a few other places saying, hey, we should be looking at this.
02:02:43.360And I already know for a fact that they've been thinking at it and they've been dabbling and they've put a little money into it.
02:02:48.360So, I'm working, I'm actually actively working on this.
02:02:52.420If you want to, for the little, the limited time that I, or the few things that I do publish about this, I put it on X and AG Huff is my Twitter account.
02:03:02.380But other than that, this is all very much evolving and it's a work in progress.
02:03:06.520It's amazing when you said gain-of-function research has changed so much.
02:03:11.340And I'm thinking, what time frame is he going to lay out here?
02:03:14.620Because I think most normal people would assume after COVID, there would be a dramatic reduction in gain-of-function research considering that's what gave us COVID and wrecked our country.
02:03:25.380But you said in the last two or three years.
02:03:30.060So, if you're in biomedical research in microbiology or virology or bioengineering, it's something that you get trained on and you learn to now advance to.
02:03:42.740It's a building block to learn about synthetic biology.
02:03:45.860So, there's going to be more research professors at leading universities within the next five years teaching this to P8.
02:04:20.000And maybe we need to do a better, my community, the scientific community needs to do a better job of training our students not to be evil.
02:04:25.740And that comes through how we select our students, how we mentor them, and how we show them or teach them what the ultimate goals in life are.
02:08:00.100The CIA, for example, knew the hijackers were here in the United States.
02:08:03.420They knew they were planning an act of terror.
02:08:05.620In his passport is a visa to go to the United States of America.
02:08:10.020A foreign national was caught celebrating as the World Trade Center fell and later said he was in New York, quote, to document the event.
02:08:18.020I didn't know there would be an event to document in the first place because he had foreknowledge.
02:08:21.560And maybe most amazingly, somebody, an unknown investor, shorted American Airlines and United Airlines, the companies whose planes the attackers used on 9-11, as well as the banks that were inside the Twin Towers just before the attacks.
02:08:35.800They made money on the 9-11 attacks because they knew they were coming.