Joe Rogan Experience #1923 - Mike Baker

Mike Baker draws on his CIA and corporate-investigations background to unpack how Chinese intelligence aggressively harvests data and steals economic secrets, using a real GE Aviation espionage case as an example. He and Rogan range across the Biden classified-documents story, Russia-Ukraine, Iran's nuclear breakout timeline, and the Harry-and-Megan saga. A long Tucker Carlson clip about the CIA and JFK sparks Baker's skeptical-but-open take on conspiracies, including his belief there was more to the MLK assassination. The back half dissects the FTX and Binance crypto collapses as failures of basic due diligence, plus George Soros's influence game, and closes on pandemic-era schooling, remote work, parental leave, and religion.

• Baker details a real case: a Chinese intelligence officer (Xu Yanjun) cultivated a GE Aviation employee for engine tech before the FBI posed as the employee and helped get him extradited and sentenced to 20 years.
  00:23:25
• Baker says some legitimate estimates put Iran's breakout time to enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb at about a week, with three weapons possible within a month.
  00:39:00
• Baker plugs his first book, an audiobook called 'Company Rules' on Scribd, framed as business lessons from his CIA days, not an agency tell-all.
  00:54:34
• A Tucker Carlson segment claims a source with direct access to withheld documents told him 'the answer is yes, I believe they were involved' regarding the CIA and JFK's assassination.
  01:11:46
• Baker says he finds the Martin Luther King assassination more suspicious than JFK's, citing James Earl Ray's sudden transformation, money, and travel to Europe.
  01:14:55
• Baker argues a little real due diligence would have exposed FTX and Bernie Madoff, noting FTX used QuickBooks and celebrity endorsements as credibility cover.
  01:36:16
• Baker and Rogan describe George Soros funding far-left DAs and local politicians to drive 'corrosion,' calling his open political influence operation both transparent and unsettling.
  02:00:18

• Reports cited claim the Penn Biden Center / UPenn received roughly $54 million in Chinese gifts, including about $23 million in anonymous donations, from 2014-2019.
  00:10:27
• India banned TikTok along with 59 other apps in summer 2020 amid a geopolitical dispute with China, but short-form content simply migrated to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat.
  00:17:11
• As of end of 2022 the US had spent roughly $50 billion on Ukraine assistance, about half of it military aid, versus only ~$250-270 million in military aid the year before the invasion.
  00:29:36
• A Taliban commander reportedly trolled Prince Harry over his claim in 'Spare' that he killed 25 fighters in Afghanistan.
  00:43:42
• Per the clip, the term 'conspiracy theory' barely existed in everyday American conversation before 1964, the year the Warren Commission report was issued.
  01:08:06
• CIA-contracted psychiatrist and MK Ultra figure Louis Jolyon West examined Jack Ruby in 1964 and declared him insane, a fact his New York Times obituary omitted.
  01:09:09
• Baker notes China dominates the world's supply of rare earth minerals, which are used in smartphones, missile guidance systems, electronics, medicine, and nuclear power.
  01:29:31
• A Forbes analysis found Binance lost about 15% of its assets and nearly a quarter of holdings left the exchange within two months of FTX's collapse.
  01:51:55
• Baker says he moved from New Canaan, Connecticut to Idaho to escape a three-hour daily commute on the Metro-North, which had the last bar car in America.
  02:18:01
• The US and Papua New Guinea are cited as the only countries without federally mandated paid maternity leave, prompting a debate about extreme 12-18 month parental leave policies.
  02:28:27