Joe Rogan Experience #2021 - Mike Baker

Joe Rogan and former CIA officer Mike Baker run through the major news since Baker's last visit, opening with the Chinese spy balloon and arguing it was an intelligence-gathering platform that the US deliberately let cross the country. Baker dwells on China's dominance of critical minerals and the contradiction of pursuing green energy while over-regulating domestic mining. He frames the roughly 20 million dollars in Biden-family payments as showing classic money-laundering indicators, and criticizes poorly tracked US spending in Ukraine and Afghanistan. The back half is a long, skeptical discussion of the UAP hearings, David Grusch's claims, David Fravor's Tic Tac encounter, and whether disclosure is real, a cover story, or hiding a secret US propulsion program. Baker closes by promoting his new daily podcast, The President's Daily Brief.

• Baker says the Chinese spy balloon had propellers, a rudder and solar panels and lingered over Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to land-based nukes, so it was clearly not a weather balloon.
  00:08:28
• He argues the US intentionally let the balloon traverse the country to study its signals-intelligence capabilities before shooting it down.
  00:11:35
• Claim that China owns or operates about 15 of 19 cobalt mines in the DRC and controls 30 of 50 critical minerals plus most refining.
  00:18:51
• Baker's investigators see 20-plus single-purpose pass-through companies behind the Biden-family money as a money-laundering clue.
  00:34:25
• The Afghanistan Inspector General (SIGAR) testified he cannot assure Congress the US is not funding the Taliban through aid money.
  01:01:33
• The US spent roughly 80 billion dollars on Ukraine in about a year and a half versus roughly 73 billion over nearly 20 years in Afghanistan.
  00:59:28
• Baker recounts David Grusch's claim that the US has been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s and runs a crash-retrieval program, but is skeptical the government could keep such a secret.
  01:41:32
• Baker floats that the UAP disclosure wave could be a disinformation campaign to obscure a secret US advanced-propulsion program.
  01:58:37

• A Chinese company bought 300-plus acres near Grand Forks Air Force Base for a corn mill; the Air Force blocked it as a national security threat.
  00:51:04
• Canada is by far the largest foreign owner of US farmland.
  00:53:09
• Singapore researchers showed a robot vacuum's lidar sensor can be repurposed as a laser microphone to eavesdrop on conversations.
  00:55:47
• Carnegie Mellon researchers can map human bodies through walls using Wi-Fi signals.
  00:56:20
• Deaths from nuclear power are tiny compared with chronic illness from coal particulate near coal plants.
  00:31:19
• David Fravor commanded on the USS Nimitz during the 2004 Tic Tac incident; his wingman Alex Dietrich saw the same object with radar lock.
  01:31:12
• China and Russia are ahead of the US on hypersonic weapons because they invested earlier.
  01:35:20
• Legend that Nixon showed Jackie Gleason a retrieved UFO and alien bodies, after which Gleason built a UFO-shaped house in Westchester County.
  02:17:19
• Baker says Bill Clinton recalled, in detail, a CIA operation Baker ran while Clinton was president.
  02:24:41