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Nov. 21, 2023 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:40:45
Joe Rogan Experience #2065 - David Grusch
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david grusch
01:56:53
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unidentified
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train my day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
What's up?
All right, man.
david grusch
Hey, good.
Good.
joe rogan
Thanks for coming here.
Appreciate it.
unidentified
Yeah.
david grusch
Yeah, no, it's a pleasure.
joe rogan
You've been on a whirlwind sort of tour.
I guess we should start from the beginning.
Yeah.
So, first of all, lay out to people what your job was with the military and how this all started for you.
david grusch
Yeah, yeah.
So I was an intel officer in the Air Force for 14 years, seven active, seven reserve.
Then I kind of had like a parallel tract in the civilian intel world when I became a reservist.
And ultimately, I got brought back in in civil service in a government way at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency a couple years ago at a senior level.
So I was a major in the Air Force and a GS-15 at NGA, which is like a Fulbright colonel equivalent civilian employee.
You know, I'm very humbled that I was able to kind of get that kind of job.
But my career mostly, I didn't even really think about this topic.
UFOs were not on my radar.
I wasn't really a believer.
I was agnostic about it.
Most of my career, I did a lot of behind-the-door special access program, technical type activities.
I was kind of a space intelligence expert, a cyber intel expert.
And like I said, this was not on my radar at all.
You know, like I would joke with my buddies because I used to handle the presidential daily brief for the National Reconnaissance Office director in my military capacity as a reservist.
And I was well clear to hundreds and hundreds of compartmented programs.
And, you know, the joke was like, when are we going to get the read-on for the crazy shit?
And that never happened.
And I do remember that the day that I really can remember that I was like, huh, what's with this UFO stuff?
I was briefing a senior person at the CIA into a couple hundred special access programs.
So I was at the headquarters at the agency.
And after the indoctrination I was giving to the senior person, this person who worked with Lou Elizondo previously was like, yeah, Dave, have you ever heard of this guy, Lou Elizondo?
He's running some UFO program at the Pentagon.
We all think he's crazy.
And I'm like, I don't know who this guy Lou Elizondo is.
And I don't know of any kind of UFO program.
So that sounds nuts to me.
But lo and behold, and that was like early 2017.
And lo and behold, in December 2017, that New York Times article came up with that named the ATIP program and the OSAP program.
So Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program being the other acronym.
And I was like, holy shit, wait, that's that guy, Lou Elizondo, that I heard about.
Oh, you know what?
I think I have heard of OSAP.
When I was a lieutenant, I used to read these reports from the Defense Intelligence Agency on black holes and stuff.
And I was like, oh, that's like stupid.
Why is the DIA looking in the black holes, time warps?
It just didn't make any sense to me back in like 08, 09 when I was a lieutenant.
And all of a sudden, I'm like, well, maybe there's something to this UFO thing.
I'm not saying I was like a believer either way on the subject, but this was a topic of concern apparently for the Pentagon.
And in 2018, I started doing kind of what I call my open source literature review.
Like, let me spin myself up on this topic, watching Chris Mellon, Lou Elizondo, Leslie Keene, all these people talk about the subject.
And then, you know, just trying to understand.
So what is this with UFOs?
Has this been going on for a while?
The answer is yes, like Foo Fighters, sightings of weird stuff in antiquity, et cetera, which we can get into later.
And so early 2019 comes along, and my boss at the National Reconnaissance Office in kind of my Air Force major capacity forwarded me an email from what became stood up in like, I guess it was 2018, which was the unidentified, well, it was aerial now anonymous phenomena task force, UAP Task Force.
So the UAP Task Force director sent my boss an email saying, hey, we're looking for a rep to the task force.
And as like any good officer, I was like, well, I'll put it on my performance report.
Hey, I was on a task force and, you know, that would look good.
And I, being well cleared and also a bachelor's degree in physics, master's in intelligence analysis, I'm like, you know what, I'll figure out what this shit is.
It's either going to be weather shit, maybe it's an adversarial program, maybe it's like a U.S. program.
People are misidentifying on rare occasions.
So fuck it.
I'll go see where the data takes me.
And early 2019 or so, I joined the UAP Task Force.
And then I started interviewing pilots, flag officers, general officer equivalent type Navy folks.
And they were seeing some really crazy shit.
And like a event that I talked about previously publicly in a YouTube video on the Yes Theory channel.
There was this one 30-year senior Navy officer that he was going to work, sober, no predisposition for fantasy, all that kind of stuff, because I interviewed the individual for a couple hours and he saw this crazy triangle hover over his car going to work at a certain naval facility and it like blew his mind.
He was serious.
The paint on his car turned milky white after the incident.
So that's, to me, that sounds like ionizing radiation.
So like ultraviolet, just like how your headlights get all foggy over time if you park your car out in the sun.
Same phenomenon just happened within 24-hour period.
And I'm like, whoa, if this is true and the oral testimony and crazy radar data that I saw when I was in the task force, stuff making turns that didn't make any sense.
Well, holy shit, what is this stuff then?
joe rogan
This anomaly with his paint, is this documented?
Is this photographs?
david grusch
Yes, I saw photographs.
It was documented, yeah.
joe rogan
And is there a conventional explanation?
david grusch
I mean, based on what he described, something to rapidly ionize his paint like that within a day, I can't think of anything off the top of my head in terms of some conventional aerospace technology.
And this was a certain facility in the continental U.S. This was not overseas.
So it's not like our adversary is flying some spooky thing in U.S. airspace.
joe rogan
So this thing hovered over his car for how long?
david grusch
A couple minutes while he was traveling at about 60 miles an hour.
joe rogan
So it was pacing away from his vehicle?
david grusch
It was probably a couple hundred feet in altitude.
It was less than 1,000 feet, which is also bad because from an airspace perspective, pilots would know this.
Anything under 1,000 feet?
No.
Unless you get special clearance.
And you only do that over controlled airspace, like a military test ranges, right?
People fly low and that kind of thing.
joe rogan
So is he on, what kind of a highway is he on?
david grusch
A conventional civilian highway.
joe rogan
Civilian highway.
So anyone could have been on it.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
And it just happened to be this guy.
Did he have any other experiences with this thing?
david grusch
No.
This was like a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
He kept it to himself for a couple years, but then he was his name?
I don't know what he's that individual still on.
joe rogan
That's called him Bob.
But did anybody say to him, hey, Bob, what the fuck happened to your car?
david grusch
You know, that's a good question.
I don't remember if people asked him about his car.
So he took pride in his car.
So it actually was probably more upsetting to him personally.
joe rogan
What kind of car was it?
david grusch
It was like a Toyota or something.
unidentified
Okay.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
So all of a sudden his Toyota's fucked.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so did he have to report this?
Is this something that...
david grusch
He did not report it, to my knowledge, to anybody.
It wasn't until he reported it to us about five years later that it happened.
joe rogan
So are these kind of experiences something that a lot of these pilots are embarrassed about discussing or have apprehension about discussing because they could be ridiculed?
david grusch
Yeah, a lot of people that are on flight status, they don't want to be sent to the psych, right?
You know, there's a whole aerospace physiology kind of empire in the military that, you know, if you're an operator or, you know, a guy, a missile key turner, you're on what they call a personal reliability program.
If you're taking like, you know, Tylenol, you got to report it.
If you have a fever, you got to report it because you're in control of nuclear weapons when you're on duty.
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And so this idea of being predisposed to fantasy, that's also something that they sort of talk to these people about or try to get a gauge of.
david grusch
Yeah, yeah.
These are people that are very sober-minded.
I mean, this individual was early in the morning going to work, not under the influence of anything.
And that person had a similar clearance as mine, no TSSCI.
So, you know, we've gone through top secret since the Department of Information clearance.
You know, just like myself, I've been through multiple polygraphs in my career.
So did this individual.
joe rogan
So does he have any idea or any theories about why this thing was following him?
david grusch
No, that's what freaked him out the most because he didn't have any experience in his life like this.
It like totally blew his mind when he looked out his moonroof and then looked out the side of his car door and saw this 300-foot triangle.
It was like pre-dawn sky, but it was darker than the pre-dawn sky.
And it had this like plasma edges, like it was like purplish glowing edges and these three lights that had like these omnidirectional, like almost like pole lights, you know, how there's, you can't really tell where the light source is.
And it was totally trippy.
And that, and that's just one example of many anecdotal with some evidence, you know, pilot stories.
And that's what made me dig deeper.
And I started, you know, cultivating my network.
Like, has the government studied this before?
This wasn't just OSAP and ATIP and Blue Book and all this shit in the past, right?
This seems serious.
So like, certainly the government has looked at this.
And, you know, I went to search for that program.
And that's what I ended up whistleblowing on, right?
joe rogan
So when you, what was, how did you initially discover this program?
And like, what was your first encounter with the information?
david grusch
A very senior individual in the Intel came to me when I guess I was asking a lot of questions because I'm a very inquisitive guy.
And it was like, hey, I need to introduce you to somebody.
You know, he listed that certain person's academic credentials, which were beyond reproach, you know, PhD level education, clearance.
Resume was insane.
I'm like, well, okay, sure, I'll talk to this person.
And I ended up meeting that person in a top secret facility.
And he started discussing like, hey, there's a program.
I was on it.
And we were reverse engineering crash material that we've recovered over the decades.
And he's like, I'm not joking.
And we're telling you because you guys have to report to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Congress on this matter.
And we were actively briefing Secretary Esper, Deputy Secretary Norquist, other cabinet-level folks.
And it's like, there's an oversight issue because you're the UAP task force.
You should be read into this stuff because why spend the taxpayers dollars looking at stuff that we already have data on?
And that spooked me.
And that was like fall of 2019.
And I don't take a guy's word for it.
I'm like, you know what?
Myself and my trusted colleagues that had a lot, a lot of special accesses like me, we cultivated our network and we ultimately interviewed about 40 people or so all the way up to multi-star generals, directors of agencies, mid-level guys that literally touched it, worked inside of it, all the stuff.
They brought Intel reports for me to look at, you know, documents, and a lot of that I could cross-verify with other oral sources that my high-level colleagues or I talked to.
And, you know, it checked out, especially when I had enough information on, and I know who specifically to ask, like, hey, well, I went right into this.
Like, I'm on the UAP task force.
And we went to those, I'll call them gatekeepers for the lack of a better term.
And they basically said, fuck you to me and my colleagues.
joe rogan
So why were these other people willing to discuss this with you?
david grusch
Well, they determined I didn't need to know.
I was already cleared at such a high level handling presidential material and everything.
It's like Dave needs to know.
And they felt that coming to us, it was a form of a protected disclosure.
They felt that they weren't really violating anything because we were the, I'll call it the investigatory body for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community and Congress at the time.
And they, you know, you are allowed to, you know, disclose to a government official in an official capacity.
And I, you know, did that.
And of course, I protected those people.
And do know I took those people, a lot of them, and I brought them to the intelligence community inspector general when I filed my complaint because I don't want people to hear it from a secondhand source.
You know, people call it hearsay, whatever.
Although I have some first-hand knowledge, I eventually talk about someday I'm trying to get it cleared, but through security processes.
So they could hear it and hear the details, like, you know, who, what, when, where, why, where the shit is, who's in control of it, what are the cover programs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So, and that's what deemed my complaint credible and urgent in July 2022, which is a so that my complaint, yes, was about reprisal too.
I filed that separately eventually to the Department of Defense Inspector General, and that's an ongoing investigation.
But it was my congressional oversight UAP crash retrieval allegations that was deemed credible and urgent.
It was sent to the Director of National Intelligence, and then it was sent to the Congressional Intelligence Committees around that time, July of 2022.
And I eventually went to Congress in December of 2022, and it's a crazy story why I took so long.
It's fucking nuts.
But I provided total about 11 and a half to 12 hours of classified testimony to the congressional staffers and their lawyers for both the House and the Senate.
And I went full open kimono.
I mean, I told them as much as I could within my time slot, if you will.
joe rogan
So this is obviously very compartmentalized, where there's only a few people that know about this information and they're not allowed to discuss it with other people.
When did this all start?
I mean, is this out of Roswell?
Is it predate that?
Like, when did they first realize that there are things that cannot be explained or can't be explained through conventional means?
david grusch
Yeah, I mean, the program goes back a ways.
The precise beginning of it, I can't talk about, but I did, because security stuff, but I did talk about publicly the 1933 retrieval.
And I did that tactically, and I ran that through the security approval office because I wanted to show that this is much older and it's international.
It's not like a U.S. thing.
I mean, this stuff is landing or crashing around the world.
And unexpected countries have had this happen.
And that's why I picked that because I thought that was an interesting case.
And then, of course, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican were involved back channeling it through the OSS, which became the CIA later, to FDR.
And that's how the U.S. knew something weird happened in Italy during, well, right before World War II.
joe rogan
So this is 33 was the first documented?
david grusch
That is the earliest one I can talk about.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Something that predates that?
david grusch
You could infer that.
joe rogan
You could infer that.
So this 33 one you said was in Italy?
david grusch
Yeah, magenta.
So it's a, I'm bad at geography.
I think that's like a Lombardy region.
It's like northern northwest Italy.
joe rogan
And what's the story behind it?
david grusch
So basically it looked like it crashed, right?
The original shape most likely was like a lenticular disc-like craft, you know, with like two dinner plates.
joe rogan
What does lenticular mean?
david grusch
So like two dinner plates, you know, smushed together, right?
unidentified
The hump.
david grusch
And there's like a, you know, like a bubble on top.
The classic classic, like that.
unidentified
Like that.
david grusch
Okay.
But it looks like when it hits, the edges broke off.
So it became this like bell or acorn shaped thing.
And there was nothing in it.
It was like just an artifact.
You know, there was no biological remnants, if you will.
So it's so funny because the Italians were so confused, they actually called up the Germans and they were like, is this one of Jovundawafa?
Like, what the hell just crashed in northern Italy?
Mussolini, and this is all publicly available information because some Italian researchers found all these original documents that some people were sitting on for years in Italy.
You know, they put a gag order on the press, et cetera.
And yeah, Mussolini asked the Germans to come down.
And of course, the Germans came down and they were like, that is not ours, but let's look at it together.
So that's kind of perhaps a tertiary reason the kind of Axis powers got together.
I'm not saying that's like the reason, but I think the Italians and the Germans were so intrigued with what they found from like an artifact perspective.
There was at least some scientific and military collaboration during the war.
The details of which I'm not sure of, but I know people that know that specific event that are currently still intel officers within this program in detail.
joe rogan
So was there witnesses to the crash or some sort of an understanding that something had crash-landed and then they discovered it?
david grusch
Yeah, I forget the precise discovery.
I don't know if it was like local police officers or local farmers found it in the field, something like that.
I don't want to misspeak.
I assume some of the Italian researchers might have some fact witnesses that can orally say, oh, yeah, my great-grandfather found it or something like that.
But I don't remember.
joe rogan
And what was the scale of this vehicle?
david grusch
It was probably like 20 feet by 10 feet, something like that.
Not super huge, but kind of big.
joe rogan
Do they think that this was a drone?
Do they think that this was occupied?
david grusch
There was nothing in it.
So if it was piloted, if you will, by some sentience, I mean, your guess is as good as mine.
joe rogan
Hmm.
So what happened to that vehicle?
david grusch
So we knew where it was being stored at a particular location after the crash.
And then the military came in and we grabbed it towards the end of the war, you know, 1944, 1945, because, like I said, Pope Pius XII already kind of let FDR know.
joe rogan
How'd the Pope get involved?
Because Italy?
david grusch
Well, interestingly enough, there's like a whole history of human intelligence prior to World War II and old money, the Vatican, the Italian mob, kind of the old country boys did a lot of informal intelligence collection for the U.S. And there's probably some books you can read on it, but it's really interesting.
You know, human intelligence collection wasn't really formalized until the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, which became the CIA in 1947.
You had Paul Mellon and all these other affluent guys of all these old money families that basically created the CIA.
So that's probably the reason why.
joe rogan
So this thing that was recovered, this was the first documented one that the United States had access to?
david grusch
I can't get into if it was the first or not, but it was an early one.
joe rogan
Very early.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
So it's almost 100 years ago.
Yes.
And so they take this thing and then they bring it where?
david grusch
Yeah, I can't get into those.
joe rogan
I can't get into that.
david grusch
No.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
So they bring it somewhere in the United States.
And was the attempt to try to back engineer this thing?
Was the attempt to try to understand what it was?
david grusch
Yeah, I mean, first of it, obviously, it's understanding the situation, right?
What do we have our hands on?
And like I've said in some other videos and stuff, you know, that we took the Manhattan Project secrecy and overlaid it on this issue because that secrecy worked well for atomic bomb developments and whatnots.
And certainly this whole program, in a nutshell, if I were to like summarize the 90-plus years of history, it is a reverse engineering program to garner some kind of insight.
And of course, not a lot of the things that we've learned from it are like directly, you know, ripped off the technology we found, but it has inspired other innovations that made its way into other U.S. classified programs over the year for national defense reasons, you know, and it's a myriad of different things.
joe rogan
The UFO folklore is that this is where fiber optics were discovered first.
david grusch
Yeah, I'm not going to break the seal on anything we've discovered or anything like that.
And yeah, it's a place I can't go to.
joe rogan
How limited are you in what you can discuss and what you can't discuss and why do they let you discuss any of this?
david grusch
Yeah, so anything sensitive that I want to say as it relates to like U.S. government activity, whether it be intelligence stuff, military stuff, et cetera, I have to submit it through what they call DOPSER, DOD Office of Pre-Publication and Security Review.
That is something anybody who's been an Intel officer, anybody with like a clearance, has to submit that kind of stuff.
Now, obviously, if you're writing a book about gardening, you don't have to, but if you're going to talk about anything military and intelligence related, you have to submit.
So it's kind of a catch-22 for this office, right?
They're only looking at it from a security perspective.
They're not vouching for it or anything like that.
And that's like any author, right?
They could write a book about Navy SEALs and they're not vouching for the story.
They're vouching that you didn't say any nasty code words.
You didn't burn a specific ongoing classified program.
And for them, I mean, I'm not in their OODA loop, but certainly it's a catch-22 for them where if they want to redact and they propose a redaction, they're like, hey, Dave, you can't say these sentences.
You can rewrite it and resubmit.
You know, we can't necessarily tell you what agency said to redact it, but you're not allowed to say this.
They would be basically self-certifying there's a there.
So in my opinion, probably the policy is like, if it has to deal with the subject, we're not saying anything.
We're not proposing any redactions.
As long as he's not burning a conventional program, we kind of have to allow him to exercise his First Amendment rights.
And so I think it's like a catch-22 for that office is kind of the long or the short of the long answer.
joe rogan
So this is essentially one of the very early ones, 1933.
How many crash retrieval incidents have there been?
david grusch
It is double-digit.
The specific numbers I do know.
However, I can't discuss that.
And I know it sounds like, oh, I'm being coy or whatever, but this show, any other interviews I do, right?
You know, Ford Intelligence Services are watching.
And it's like, I'm not here to help Russia and China calibrate their intelligence collection.
Like, oh, Dave said it's this number.
We missed a couple.
Shit.
Let's put it out for the KGB, SVR, and GRU are now going to hit the streets to try to figure out which ones they missed.
So I'm here to protect national security.
And I'm just trying to put all the general topics out there for public conversation to hold our government accountable, really.
So, because I'm here as a fact witness because we have a constitutional oversight issue because this program has not been reported to Congress in the appropriate way.
And I can get into a senator I talked to that has died recently.
So I can explain to you why I'm so sure, besides what I read, which we can get into what Intel reports I read.
I did get some stuff cleared.
So during my investigation, I'm like, you know what?
I need to talk to somebody at the highest levels.
And this will give you an idea of the kind of people we talk to.
And this is the only one I'm going to talk about using their name because they died two years ago.
So in spring 2021, I actually flew with a couple colleagues of mine to Las Vegas.
And I met with Senator Harry Reid about nine months before he died.
And of course, he's a private citizen now.
And I wanted to brief him on the topic.
And I wanted to get his kind of thought leadership on it because, you know, he was a gang of eight member, right?
You know, which is the top most cleared senators and congressmen.
He was the majority leader, for God's sakes, of the Senate.
And I knew, you know, he helped sponsor the OSAP program that I mentioned and where they looked at Skinwalker Ranch and some other things.
And I wanted to understand, like, what does Harry Reid actually know?
Like, why did he, you know, give $21 million to DIA and Bigelow Aerospace for this?
So I'm sitting there in Harry Reid's living room, you know, right next to him with some other witnesses that were there with me.
And he straight up says, he's like, yeah, I knew we had UFO material.
I was denied access for decades.
I tried to get access.
And then he explained some of his efforts during OSAP.
And I was like, holy shit, did the former majority leader just say, did he just confirm this to me as well?
You know, I was already talking to these amazing high-level people, but I have Harry Reid literally saying, yes, we have material.
And, you know, he knew it was non-human.
joe rogan
Did Harry Reid have personal experience with this?
david grusch
I don't know if he's had any personal stuff in his personal life.
joe rogan
I mean, did he see it?
Did he?
david grusch
He said, in terms of seeing the material himself, he said he was denied access for years, decades was his term.
And he actually told me on behalf of me, he was going, so he had like a weekly call with President Joe Biden at the time.
And he straight up said to me he was going to talk to President Biden about this issue, literally.
And then what he was telling me about OSAP, I was like, holy shit, I have like 20 other people that told me this, dude.
So the real history, what fucking OSAP was, because I think there's a lot of people out there that think they were looking at ghosts, Skinwalker Ranch.
Yes, they went to the ranch as a secondary and tertiary objective.
But the real reason, so like there's a document that came out a couple years ago through FOIA from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There was this special access program request that Harry Reid, you might have seen this, I think like George Knapp and company have reported on this, that he sent to the Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lin.
And it was asking for one of the most serious SAPs you can ask for, what they call a bigoted waived special access program.
So waived means it's limited congressional reporting that is a class of special access programs.
And bigoted means it's like by name.
And it's like, it was like, you can read the FOIA document.
It was like, you know, Harry Reid, James Inhoff, Lou Elizondo, et cetera.
And I'm like, why are you asking for the most serious SAP to be created for a program that ostensibly is looking at Skinwalker Ranch and stuff?
And it doesn't make any sense.
So what really happened there, and, you know, Harry Reid, God bless his soul, made this disclosure a couple weeks after we met in the New Yorker.
And you can look this up.
I think it was like a May 2021 New Yorker story where he says, I knew for decades, and he made this disclosure, not me.
So I'm going to say the name of the contractor.
Harry Reid said this.
You know, we knew that Lockheed Martin had this material for decades.
I tried to get access and I was denied.
And specifically with the Lockheed Martin stuff, he was talking about during the OSAP program.
And for the people who are on this program, I submitted this shit to Dopser, got this cleared, so don't freak out, but I'm telling the truth here.
So Lockheed Martin wanted to divest itself from this material at a specific facility that's known to me that I provided to the Inspector General, like street address, all that shit, right?
And the idea was if they made a catcher's met, a security catcher's met for this shit, you know, most serious SAP possible, the contractor and the other government customer, which was the Central Intelligence Agency, for that specific Lockheed material.
And it was shit that they recovered from like the 50s and stuff.
It was like bits and pieces of like hall structure, shit like that.
And so they were going to tech transfer it.
And the $21 or $22 million was actually for Bigelow Aerospace to build out, you know, facilities in Las Vegas and material analysis equipment.
And I saw the staff meeting slides.
I saw the paperwork.
Like there's a paperwork trail I've seen on this shit.
And I talked to the people involved in this program.
And, you know, even Jim Likatsky, who ran the program, who's a retired DIA officer, PhD in engineering, even made this disclosure in his book, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, page 152 to 153.
And he also made a disclosure a couple weeks ago.
I think it was on Weaponize podcast with Jeremy Corbel and George Knapp, where he's like, yeah, we had a whole craft and we broke into the hall and we gained access.
And he ran that through the same security process as I did.
And so Jim Likatsky, who ran this program, is also going on the record that he is aware, personally aware of intact vehicles and everything.
joe rogan
So they gained access.
What does that mean?
And by what method did they gain access?
david grusch
The way he wrote it in his book, I can only infer it sounded forcible.
So through some kind of means, I don't know if it was like CO2 laser or something.
I don't actually know how they gained access, but imagine it was not permissive access.
They like broke into the damn thing.
joe rogan
So this thing is essentially sealed and it's some sort of, what was the shape of this thing?
david grusch
Lukatsky didn't disclose the shape on this particular vehicle as far as I remember.
joe rogan
What about the dimensions?
david grusch
I don't believe he did in his book, but I think it's like chapter 11 in his new book or something.
I glanced at it.
But he did make that disclosure on video as well.
And I do encourage both the Arrow office, which is the DOD's UAP task force successor, and Congress to ask Dr. James Likatsky to come in for classified testimony because the disclosure in his one book that he wrote with Colum Kelleher, George Knapp, and then the second book, well, the guy saying he has close personal knowledge, he needs to go to Congress.
So I, you know, I don't know James Likatsky, but I do encourage him to be a fact witness.
But going back to that transfer with Lockheed, long story short, can't get in all the nuanced details, but basically the CIA said, fuck you to DIA and Lockheed, and it was totally killed.
So Harry Reid's request to get the material transferred to the OSAP program was totally killed because of bureaucracy and kind of fiefdom stuff.
So they used that money and then they, you know, they wrote those defense intelligence reference documents, the DIRDs, as a lot of people who's familiar with it listening will know about.
And then they did look at Skinwalker Ranch because they thought that studying kind of the more woo-woo phenomenon aspects of this, and I've never been to the ranch, so I've never experienced the ranch for myself, but obviously I think we both know a bunch of people that have been to the ranch and have seen some trippy stuff, or at least allege that.
They thought that they would be able to gain currency with the program, in this case, CIA to unlock the key for the Lockheed Martin stuff.
Which actually, I'll tell you right now, it's like so weird to say that, but I ran that shit through security.
To me, it's like an out-of-body experience to talk about that kind of detailed sensitivity stuff like that.
But basically, they studied the ranch to gain favor, to be like, hey, look at all this stuff we're figuring out, this paranormal stuff that's somehow connected to the phenomenon on the ranch.
But ultimately, they never gained favor with the government customer.
And then the program kind of died a slow death because of a lot of politics in the Pentagon.
So that's kind of the long but short of it with the OSAP program that, you know, I wanted to make sure the public knew it's not what you think it was.
There was some other stuff behind the scenes that, you know, I wanted to speak truth to power on.
joe rogan
So this particular vehicle that they had recovered from the 1950s, what was the source of it?
Where did they find it?
david grusch
Those details I did not get cleared.
joe rogan
So they have in possession this thing.
They gain access to this thing.
And what do they report once they've gained access to it?
david grusch
Oh, those details, I do not know.
That's probably a question for Dr. Likatsky.
I presume he knows those details.
I don't know.
joe rogan
So this thing is housed somewhere.
david grusch
It is, yes.
joe rogan
Currently.
david grusch
It may still be in the same location that I know about, yes.
joe rogan
And how many people have access to this?
And how did they prevent this information from being released?
david grusch
I mean, it goes back to the compartmentation and kind of the ecosystem of secrecy in this community, right?
You know, only a limited amount of people, you know, at least at the time, you know, on Lockheed Martin's side.
And Lockheed Martin was complaining basically like, look, like the secrecy is ridiculous.
We can't even bring the right engineers.
Like, imagine you're like a hot engineer, hot engineer, no, hot shot engineer.
You might be hot too, I don't know.
But that, you know, you're fresh out of grad school.
Maybe you're like the best PhD electrical engineer.
You want to do cool shit.
You want to publish an IEEE.
You want to like, you know, climb the ladder corporately, you know, and that kind of thing.
A Lockheed Martin executive comes to you, yeah, dude, you're going to, I can reach into something really crazy, but you're never going to publish papers on it.
You're never going to be able to tell people what you worked on.
And it's probably not the most career enhancing.
But if you want to work on something cool, but I can't tell you because it's unacknowledged until you sign this piece of paper, non-disclosure agreement, you know, sorry, but here's the raw deal.
And, you know, a lot of people are like, fuck you, no.
And it's not like Lockheed Martin could broadcast this to universities, like, come work for us.
You'll work on crazy shit.
But that is very akin to a lot of other black programs in the government that are out acknowledged in nature.
You don't know what you're signing up for until you get bred in.
And I've, you know, I've been briefed to a lot of that kind of conventional stuff in my career.
joe rogan
So that's one of the problems that Bob Lazar, and I'd love to get your take on Bob Lazar.
One of the things that he talked about was that science can't really operate in a vacuum.
When you separate the metallurgists from the propulsion experts, from the biological experts, and they're not allowed to communicate with each other, and they're not allowed to bring in other experts to have different...
david grusch
Well, that was the frustration that I had some friends that I've known my entire career, like almost 14 years, right?
I literally know them personally.
I had a relationship with them, but they ended up spilling the beans where, you know, look, we're on the program.
I'm an engineer for X, Y, and Z. We can't even cross talk across like the cubicles, for God's sakes.
Like, I can't.
I'm looking at Material X, doing some X-ray diffraction testing on it, which is like shooting a stream of electrons and seeing how it bends and looking at the atomic arrangements.
I can't even like crosstalk that with another aspect of the program.
This is like ridiculous.
And that's kind of their frustration.
Yeah, I knew you're probably going to ask me about Balbazar.
I know.
I figured as much.
joe rogan
Why did they do that, though?
If everybody was already sworn to secrecy, everybody already has NDAs.
It seems the most effective way of reverse engineering or at least gaining an understanding of how these things are structured.
david grusch
That's exactly how Manhattan was, right?
People working on the fuses for the bomb didn't necessarily know it was going to a nuclear weapon.
And so, and I've seen this kind of compartmentationist of two secrecy in other programs, and it is debilitating for progress.
And honestly, as a former fiduciary of the taxpayer dollars, it's not the best modus operandis to do it that way.
And very few people kind of had that top-down, could look across the silos and see what was going on.
It just became very dysfunctional, and they were afraid of people being too cross-briefed into the different silos for counter-espionage, counter-intelligence.
You know, they were, you're going to remember a bulk of this program is done during the Cold War.
And, you know, we were afraid of Russian spies, Soviet moles, and so we made it ultra-locked down, but to the detriment of national security.
And that was one of the crazy things that got me that I wanted to whistleblow on because I'm like, this is so stupid.
Like, we should be making more progress on this.
joe rogan
Were there any breaches that you're aware of where foreign agents were able to gain access to materials or an understanding of what we know?
david grusch
So I'll tell you about some Intel documents I read that kind of obliquely answers that question.
So there were sensitive human-derived foreign intelligence that I read.
So I had access to kind of the ATIP OSAP classified archives and I was like thumbing through everything and there's some other people were bringing me documents to evaluate.
And I'll never forget I had, I'll just say, stolen by the U.S. intelligence assessment from a certain foreign adversary discussing the U.S. reverse engineering program.
And I was like, and that was actually another like, what the fuck?
And so I had an adversary also confirm this program literally because of exfiltrated intelligence.
And so they certainly had a limited knowledge, at least fact of that the U.S. had a program like this, a particular adversary.
And actually, I was like, well, I want more.
Like, I know who wrote this literally, or who got it, right?
On behalf of the United States government.
So I went to that certain agency through the approved and official way.
And this is kind of part of the Mirias reprisals against me.
The agency was like, oh, yes, we have what you're looking for, Dave.
You're going to need to sign a one-time read-in to something.
You know, come visit us to go to the vault and read it, right?
You know, hard copy.
But yes, we have what you're looking for.
And ultimately, from what I was told by friends in higher places, my request kind of went up the flagpole at that agency.
And all of a sudden, the agency ghosted my boss and I for like two months.
And then when I really pressed them hard to gain access, because I'm like, I have a need to know.
I need to evaluate this intelligence for fucking Congress.
And they debriefed me from all my accesses over in that other sister agency and made up some bogus excuse, like I shouldn't have been briefed anything in the first place, literally.
And basically gave me an administrative middle finger like, persona non grata, don't ever fucking ask us about that shit again.
And I'm sure the person who made the oops that told me they had what I was looking for probably got admonished and slapped on the wrist because I never heard from that person again, even though it was somebody I actually used to work on occasion with.
So that was also another way I knew I was, you know, there was a lot of smoke and fire because I, you know, had stuff like that happen to me.
joe rogan
So this knowing that our adversaries were aware of this reverse engineering program, are we aware of their reverse engineering programs?
Yeah.
Which countries are.
david grusch
You could probably guess.
joe rogan
Okay.
david grusch
And the big ones.
And you wouldn't be, it won't be too shocking.
joe rogan
Okay.
david grusch
But I won't acknowledge what the U.S. may know.
joe rogan
Right.
So are we aware of numbers in terms of like at least a rough estimate of how many are available to these other?
david grusch
That's like super.
joe rogan
There's more than one.
david grusch
Yeah.
You can read into that.
joe rogan
You can read into that.
And has anyone made any progress?
david grusch
Yeah, I can't get into if we've made progress, if they've made progress, because that's like straight up some national security stuff.
But like, I want the, just to be clear, I want the U.S. populace to learn a lot of this.
And this is why, you know, another reason why I went public is like, I need to call everybody out.
I'm not here to admonish the entire government, mind you, but there is an element of the U.S. government and its clear defense contractor base that, you know, we have a three-branch of government oversight issue, like going back to Harry Reid, Harry Reid didn't even get access.
And I fucking talked to him myself to confirm that.
And he said he was going to go talk to Biden.
Because I think there needs to be a disclosure plan.
And this goes back to what's currently in legislation right now.
That's super fucking important.
Because 90 some odd percent of this should be open for public discovery, public analysis in academia.
This should be like at very least true nuclear programs such as nuclear physics, you study in a university.
Nuclear weapons, classified, because that makes people in the pink mist.
That's really sensitive.
We don't need everybody to know how to do that.
So I think the stuff that is like legit weapons-related stuff, that's like straight up national superiority stuff, sure.
Reasonably classify that.
But these programs, we need a change.
And that's why you saw the Schumer amendment, right?
And I think you might have read that on air or something in a previous episode, if I remember correctly.
You know, Chuck Schumer, and I knew about the amendment a couple months before I went public.
And that's kind of another reason why I did what I did.
I'm like, fuck, I'm like the only guy that kind of has the opportunity to do this.
I know what's in the chute, so to speak, that Chuck Schumer and his staff had with the Schumer amendment, which is 67 pages of literal we want to disclose.
And I'm like, I have to spike the football by going public because, you know, I can read the tea leaves on the hill and I think that they were hesitant to do anything without being able to point to something publicly.
And I'm like, oh, I'll be that fucking guy and just send it.
And then, of course, a month after I went public, I guess I pushed Chuck Schumer over the ledge.
And I do know he talked to the White House about the amendment too, because it's not like Chuck Schumer is going to propose groundbreaking legislation like that without talking to the National Security Advisor or president.
Like I imagine he did so.
And, you know, so you have the 67-page amendments, right?
It's called the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, known as the Schumer Amendment.
Co-sponsors were Young, Gillibrand, Rubio, Rounds, and Young.
And, you know, kudos for those senators for stepping up to the plate because they know this is real.
I know what meetings they've had with certain other individuals that are, you know, even more credible than myself.
And so this act, which is like super important, is currently in conference as we speak in Capitol Hill.
So the amendment is wrapped in something called the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
So that is the act that funds the military basically every year, right?
So it's an amendment within this bill.
And the act is really long, but the main meat of it is about halfway through the act, it talks about a presidential panel or agency, which is nine-person, and a controlled UAP disclosure plan that's six years in length, conceivably from 2024 to 2030.
And this panel, and you can read this, this is public law.
Anybody can read this.
They want a scientist, economists, you know, sociologists, et cetera.
It's kind of like who you would want to help craft the plan for the president.
And this whole bill was actually built off the JFK Records Act, which I know like they're like, well, they never released all the records.
Well, we put some teeth in the bill, some eminent domains, some other stuff to, you know, kind of force the issue.
Now, granted, the chief executive, the president has the final say, the panel can't compel the executive to do it.
But like, I hope the president does.
And I support that.
But so the Senate already passed it.
They're chill with this.
This is like, we're good to go.
And, and, but there's pushback in the House right now that is, you know, pardon my language, fucking ridiculous.
So they're saying, for one, it's duplicating the DOD Arrow's office activities.
They're doing good things.
They're looking at UAP reports, trying to figure out what's balloons and air trash and what's weird stuff.
And of course, they are doing an historical review to try to understand the U.S.'s history on this too.
But the problem is with that agency, it's within the DOD and IC, not above.
So you have an issue reaching into Department of Energy, other cabinet-level agencies.
You need a presidential level panel that can declassify stuff, reach into other agencies and tell certain secretaries, we're coming in, we want your stuff under presidential authority.
So what's happening in the House, from what I'm told from people on the Hill that are working the issue right now, you have the chair of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner, who's blocking this from Ohio, Dayton, Ohio area, right, Pat?
Weird.
joe rogan
Bright Pat meaning Bright-Patterson area.
Yes.
david grusch
Yeah.
And Mike Rogers, which I'm kind of surprised, from Alabama, who's the chair of the House Armed Services Committee.
So I have a problem with Mike and Mike right now.
So Mike Turner, now remember, I went to his committee in December last year.
He wasn't there, but his staff and lawyers were.
And of course, he goes on Fox business after the hearing, doesn't use my names like this whistleblower.
He has no idea what he's talking about.
I'm like, really?
Tell me, Mike.
Have you ever been an Intel officer or served in the military?
Oh, wait, you've been the mayor of Dayton, Ohio.
You were voted most corrupt person in Congress a couple years ago.
And pull up his PAC donors.
Who are his biggest donors?
Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing.
Okay.
So, and first of all, if you thought you needed more information or wanted to talk to me personally, why didn't you call me back when I reported to your committee?
So, and furthermore, besides blocking the bill, I'm sure you're familiar with like Representative Tim Burchett of Alabama, and he's been very outspoken on the issue.
And we may not agree with everything Tim says about conventional stuff.
That's, you know, here, no there.
But, you know, he's been a champion on the oversight committee.
And he was, you know, one of the members that I testified in public under oath regarding this.
So like, and Mike Turner is looking to fund, according to staffers I've talked to last two weeks, an opposition candidate for Tim's reelection in 2024.
So why is Mike Turner going out of his way to destroy the career of a courageous Tennessee representative on the Oversight Committee?
And why are you blocking a bill?
And it's not going to cost much, couple million a year max, you know, for the panel, which is like vaporware and U.S. government speak, right?
If there's nothing to see here, why are Mike Rogers and Mike Turner in the House blocking this bill that is, in my opinion, the most important legislation for transparency in American history?
If there's nothing to see here, if I'm fucking crazy, multi-star generals I talk to are crazy, the Intel docs that I read are incorrect, they're fucking forgeries or passage material or something like that.
Good friends of mine that worked on the program are bullshitting me in some concerted operation against me and my colleagues that it would be totally crazy to even conduct that because I took precautions.
Then why don't we just pass this and see what happens?
joe rogan
And what do you think the answer to that is?
david grusch
Special interests want to keep the genie in the bottle, even though the toothpaste is coming out of the tube.
And I think it's like a death rattle in this industrial complex that doesn't want change.
And I'm not here to be some total adversary.
I think there needs to be a truth and reconciliation process on this issue.
I'm not here to throw people in jail.
I'm not here for big contractors involved to lose money.
I think this would be a boon.
And I think the leadership in these companies need to think about this where if we're more open with this, you can hire people.
You can push the subject into undergraduate, graduates, and postdoctoral programs of research to study this in an unclassified, just like nuclear physics.
And this answers a fundamental question for humanity.
Are we alone or what happens when we die?
Well, I don't know about that, but are we alone?
Well, the answer is we're not alone.
And I know that with 100% certainty, which as an intel officer, you never say 100%.
But All things pointed towards based on the people I talk to, like Harry Reid, and I use him as an example, but I talk to the highest of the high people you could possibly talk to if you catch my drift.
So unless all of them are lying and they're covering up something else, which I don't even know what it would be at this point, because the phenomenon is real.
It's been going on for thousands of years.
People have been seeing strange things, and not everybody's mass hallucinating.
So that's kind of my long diatribe about what's happening.
joe rogan
What do they think these things are?
The people that you talk to.
david grusch
So they specifically, the people on the program that handle the material, that were in executive level briefings with Intel community leaders and other folks over the years, last 20 years or so, they did use the term extraterrestrial, ET or whatever.
Okay, that is a possible origin, but the Schumer Amendment, if you read it, it specifically uses non-human intelligence, NHI, very deliberately because we want to catch everything.
Because what if some of this stuff is not ET and they're going to use that as an escape clause?
Like, well, this stuff that we don't even know if it's extraterrestrial, so this doesn't apply.
So that's why we wanted to be as broad as possible.
I mean, besides ET, I mean, a lot of it would be my own personal opinion.
I think we have a couple conceivable buckets.
And I'm using the work of Jacques Vallée, other people that have thought deeply on the issue and how the phenomenon has changed since antiquity.
It showed itself in a different way.
Like a good example is like witches sitting on your chest phenomenon with paralysis in medieval and Enlightenment era became this alien abduction phenomenon in the modern era, excuse me.
And is it the recipient and their analytical overlay cognitively seeing the phenomenon based on a modern interpretation, you know, inside out?
Or is the phenomenon, this is like Jacques Valley's book, Passport de Magnolia, Magnolia, can I pronounce it right, 1969, where he talks about the phenomenon seems to like masquerade itself as different stuff over the years.
But, you know, we've seen roughly the same stuff.
If you look at the Foo fighters of World War II, there are declassified Air Force OSI reports from the 50s people can Google that talk about flying butane tanks with the same measurements, approximately what we saw in the 2004 Tic Tac incident, but they called it flying propane or butane tanks in the 50s.
So from a morphology or in the Air Force Intel, we call it Viz Recky visual reconnaissance.
They basically look the same.
And we can back azimuth that, you know, decades, if not hundreds of years in the past, you know, wheels of Ezekiel, right?
They're seeing these like disc type objects, right?
And unless Ezekiel is tripping or this is an allegory or fable in the Bible, you know, let's say the event happens.
Just like in the Vedic text, you have the battles, the blue people and the battles in the sky that sound like nuclear and directed energy weapons.
Like what's going on there?
I mean, maybe that's a Graham Hancock or Randall Carlson type thing.
They know more than I. So there is a real phenomenon that origin undetermined, but it's trippy.
And sometimes it presents itself in like a non-corporeal form too.
You know, orbs, balls of energy, you know, they don't appear as like some kind of bipedal hominid like some people have espoused.
So I think that might be call it interdimensional, call it shadow biome, crypto-terrest.
I mean, there's a lot of different theories.
joe rogan
What are the primary theories?
The primary theories are from another planet or from another dimension.
david grusch
I think those are the primary.
I mean, there's certainly origins that we probably can't conceptualize as humans because we're just, our meat is stuck in 3D and we don't understand and our IQs are only so high.
So there might be some origins that we don't understand.
joe rogan
In terms of like interdimensional travel.
david grusch
Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, if you talk to mainstream physicists, they say like crossing dimensions physically is kind of a trope of sci-fi.
And, you know, that's why I used an example.
And I know some physicists don't like me talking about this theory, but it is a theory.
So the holographic principle, which was originally conceived to explain how information is encoded on an event horizon of a black hole, which is a distance away from the singularity of a black hole, where if you cross it, you're fucked because you're going to get ripped to shreds or you're not coming back.
And that principle talks about how information basically from higher dimensional space can be encoded in lower dimensional space.
And the easiest example is like us casting a shadow on a sidewalk, right?
Three-dimensional object, 2D shadow on a sidewalk.
If you lived in two-dimensional space, flatland, you'd be tripped out.
What the fuck am I seeing?
But they just don't know that it's really just a person in higher dimensional space.
So is some of the, I mean, obviously we have physical material that's in three-dimensional space that we've recovered, but at least maybe some of the phenomenon is really operating in higher spatial dimensions, but is either being projected or quasi-projected into our 3D plus time space, which is really trippy to think about, but we literally do it on a day-to-day basis, like casting shadows.
So, and that might be some of what we're seeing too.
But I mean, I presume we know more.
The people I talked to did not expouse they had full knowledge either.
Like I said, the normal colloquialism was to say ET or extraterrestrial.
joe rogan
Could you dumb down this concept of interdimensional?
Like, what I know in physics, they have theorized that there are multiple dimensions other than those that we can currently detect.
david grusch
Yeah, and a lot of that is based off of like Laura.
This is my bachelor's degree talking.
I know there's going to be like some physicist who has a PhD.
He's like, oh, Dave, you fucked that up.
But basically, you know, from high-energy particle collisions and based on the deflection angles and all this stuff, what happens when the particles collide, you know, confirm certain theoretical frameworks about extra spatial dimensions.
And, you know, I can't speak with any real authority on, you know, precisely how that works, but a lot of, you know, whether it be string theory or quantum mechanics are based off of higher spatial dimensions.
And, you know, so that is a mainstream physics theoretical framework that's not like wacky or loony or anything like that.
So, but that's basically a possibility.
But like I said, like we don't really have a good theory if you if you work if you lived in like 5D space, for example.
It's almost like, remember the ending of the movie Interstellar, right?
Where he's pushing the books.
He's like in a Tesseract, you know, which is like a four to 5D structure, but he's trying to interact with 3D space.
And of course, he like leaves that space to come back to his daughter many years later at the end of the ending of the movie.
Great movie.
But so that's a way to conceptualize it in something you may have watched in film.
It's kind of like the ending of interstellar.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is based on what?
Like what theory?
david grusch
So the physicist Kip Thorne was the very famous guy.
He was a big black hole and wormhole guy.
I think it's Caltech or somewhere in California.
Kip Thorne actually did all the physics equations and everything for Christopher Nolan to make sure that they were conceptualizing and visualizing black holes and wormholes and all that stuff correctly in the movie, where you saw like the halo around the black hole when they were coming in with the ship and everything.
That's actually based off of real physics models that Kip Thorne did the calculations for, which is pretty cool, actually, that Christopher Nolan took it to that level, you know.
joe rogan
So this idea that these beings or whatever you want to call them exist in some other dimension.
Do we have, I mean, I don't know what you can say about this.
Do we have an understanding?
Do we have any sort of communication with these beings that give us some sort of an understanding or a map of this?
david grusch
Yeah, the interaction stuff, that's a sensitive area.
There were multiple very senior people that were concerned about talking about that kind of stuff with me.
I mean, that is certainly as nuts as it sounds.
That was a real subject of conversation.
Even though it sounds like something out of like Star Trek first contact.
joe rogan
But it doesn't if you have vehicles.
david grusch
Yeah, so it's like once you realize the phenomenon's real, then you realize we've recovered artifacts and biologics or dead pilots, if you will, even though it's kind of creepy to even think about that in your worldview.
You don't think they were ever, you know, alive sometimes too, right?
And, you know, I'll leave it at that only because that is something, you know, the president and his cabinet need to disclose this in a controlled manner going back to that amendment.
You know, I'm not here to push the subject in an improper way.
And that sounds like, why don't you just do it, Dave?
I'm like, there's a lot of secondary and tertiary ramifications, socioeconomically, theologically, our relationship geopolitically with our allies and adversaries.
This is not rip off the band-aid and it's simple.
There's a lot of complex stuff behind the scenes that need to happen.
And that's why I'm laying out all the general stuff that needs to be talked about during the disclosure process.
But I should not be the one disclosing.
And it would be highly inappropriate because I care about the health of the United States and its people and national security for me to do so.
So I know there's people that are like, oh, why doesn't Dave say X, Y, and Z?
It's like, this is serious.
This is not like, haha, let me tell you a good story.
I'm a serious guy.
I ruined my fucking career doing this.
I was going to make lieutenant colonel in the Air Force this winter.
I was on track to be, you know, a flag officer equivalent civilian in my career.
I spent 18 years in uniform, if you count the cadet time, right?
My whole adult life was serving as an intel officer.
But I wanted to see, and I'm 36, right?
Older millennial.
I wanted to see change.
So I'm throwing the flag out.
And I'm here to hold the government accountable to do the right thing in a manner that is mature and thorough because I don't begin to say that I know everything, all the different ramifications of saying certain things publicly.
I don't know all the answers to that.
And that's why I have to be careful because I don't even know, I'll call it, you know, collateral damage effects, to use kind of a military term, what may happen of certain things in detail that are revealed that I might not know the ramifications thereof because there's something that I'm not privy to.
So this is like a serious, this is not like a fun situation.
This is like humanity changing, hopefully in a good way, but this is like, you know, quite serious.
And I, you know, risked my personal and professional life and personal life because things have happened to me to be public like this.
And, you know, I swore an oath, but, you know, myself and my generation, you know, want to see it change.
joe rogan
Can you discuss the things that have happened to you personally?
david grusch
Yeah.
So a lot of the stuff I have to be purposely vague because there's an open Inspector General reprisal investigation on my behalf.
And I'm not here to compromise the investigation by tipping off my antibodies that may be watching right now.
But, you know, when I really started looking into this, I mean, they came after me so hard to try to revoke my clearance, ruin my career, kicked me out of my agency.
And they accused me of everything you could possibly think of with like no evidence.
For example, at first they wanted to say, oh, Dave, you have mental health stuff.
You didn't report to us.
We're concerned because we think you might have an ongoing mental health issue.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
I reported that I had PTSD from Afghanistan in my military service several years ago.
And I sought help for that.
Like, I'm not ashamed of that.
You know, I'm high-functioning autistic and I didn't know that until my early 30s.
And how I process trauma, I didn't really understand until many years later.
And, you know, I sought help for that.
And they were trying to say that I had some secret mental health problem that I haven't been reporting to.
So I had to go through this whole process.
Three agencies at the same time investigated me for that, which I don't even know if that's like legal.
They tried to say that I like mishandled classify, all this other stuff.
It was insane.
Apparently, I was under criminal investigation for a couple months and I didn't even know that.
And nor did they interview me, but they made a finding with no evidence they tried to use against me that I had to spend money to basically litigate and maintain my employment and my clearance, which I did for the record.
I maintained my clearance.
I resigned with full accesses.
I'm just debriefed now, but I maintained my top secret eligibility and I left with my own accord.
And so, and of course, they ruined one of my bosses' careers in another agency.
They walked him out of the building and revoked his clearance and terminated him as a show of force after they were going after me.
And I feel sorry for that certain individual.
And they came after coworkers of mine.
I can't get into who, what, when, where, and why to protect their identities and their own process.
But so that's what happened to me professionally.
And then what happened to me personally was very disturbing.
So I have to be very vague about this because ongoing investigation, but I think you'll understand what I'm saying, is they showed my wife and I they can touch me at any time, two times.
And it was very disturbing.
It was in conjunction with some other people getting a message like that that are, I would say, publicly well known, some that aren't publicly well known.
And of course, I immediately reported that to, you know, counterintelligence, federal law enforcement local to me, because it, you know, wasn't criminal, but it was like a fuck you to me.
And this was right before I filed my whistleblower complaint.
Now, I don't know who did this.
You know, entity who did X, Y, and Z to my wife and I, identity unknown, but it fucking happens.
And I, you know, provided that documentation to a couple special agents.
And I just knew that it was getting serious.
And, you know, as, well, first of all, I'm the kind of person, I'm from Pittsburgh, you know, like Steeltown.
I don't take shit from people.
And I decided, fuck it, I'm going to file an inspector general complaint to protect myself.
I don't, I'm in fear for my safety.
You know, my wife's an Air Force veteran too, and, you know, very strong individual.
But, you know, as a man, you don't want to put your family at risk.
And, you know, did certain other measures, which I won't talk about to protect myself, you know, physically.
And I could not believe that that was happening to me.
No kidding.
And I knew I needed to do something internally.
And then when I saw the writing on the wall earlier this year, and of course, I knew about the Schumer Amendment, like I mentioned earlier, and I knew I'm like, you know, I got to do this for my own protection because me leaving the federal service, because I resigned my Air Force commission.
I totally threw that career away to do what I thought was the right and patriotic thing to whistleblow on this, you know, and I swore my oath 18 years ago.
And that sounds hokey, but I believe, you know, integrity first, service before self, and excellence is all we do.
That's the Air Force motto.
And I'm like, this is not going to help me personally.
Like, love talking to you.
I like spreading this message because it's the right and ethical thing to do, but this is a nightmare for me.
I don't want to be public.
I've served the country in clandestine and covert operations for 14 years.
I've done technical intelligence for some of the most high-profile takedowns in U.S. history.
I shouldn't even be here, but I am because I want to see change.
I saw something unethical and unmoral.
I want to make sure I hold that element of the government accountable.
And it was the right fucking thing to do.
And I get kind of emotional about that because, you know, my career's been service and sacrifice.
And, you know, I had two friends of mine die.
And I've talked about this publicly before.
And I, you know, I'm segueing a little bit, but the suffering of the American intelligence officer is something that for their service of their country.
And we're not talking about this subject, obviously.
People don't realize the kind of trauma Intel professionals go through.
So first of all, I had a friend six months after I got back from Afghanistan.
His name is Captain Dave Lyon.
There's a park in Peterson Space Force Base named after him.
I remember seeing his cough and come off the plane stuff.
So, you know, I saw him die.
That fucked me up for a number of years.
And that's what, you know, gave me a lot of my problems that I ended up dealing with.
But then I had, I remarried, and then my best man, Captain Ben Heine, Air Force intelligence officer, Air Force Special Operations Command.
I've known him for years.
He's my closest friend, you know, best man at my wedding.
And then 28 days later, unfortunately, he suffered from depression.
And it was, you know, as his best friend, he didn't even confide in me.
You know, I remember chit-chatting him, chit-chatting with him on the phone one day, about 28 days after he was my best man.
And he didn't tell me anything was wrong with him.
And a few hours later, he walked in his backyard and shot himself.
And, you know, I gave his eulogy at his funeral.
And that really, you know, really affected me.
And with what Ben experienced, which I can't get into all the stuff he did, obviously, but imagine being the guy that decides that that person is bad, fire the Harrel fire.
That person is now pink mist.
They're dead.
You just played God.
Let's go back to, you know, the wife and kids at the end of your shift.
And a lot of that, you know, I did the same kind of thing.
I did a lot of stuff overseas that involved interrogations and ops that where you had to decide if a target is bad enough where you're going to affect their life forever and their family's life forever.
And that's the silent suffering of Intel professionals, especially during the Global War on Terror, which was 21 years or so.
And the trauma and the mental health problems that people get from being an Intel professional in an operational environment.
People think like special operators, pilots, et cetera, Army Marines, ground pounders, and they certainly have their own trauma, but it's this weird, insidious, am I in a video game?
Is this real trauma that intelligence professionals, and I just wanted to highlight that during this show because that was just near and dear to myself.
So people are aware of the service of military intelligence and civilian intelligence professionals that have to make really tough decisions for the country that affect people's lives on the receiving end, you know?
joe rogan
Was there a concern while you're going through all this that if you didn't come out with this, that we would be stuck in this same sort of loop for a long, long period of time and no one would ever have access to this stuff, that they would continue.
unidentified
Yep.
david grusch
Yeah, and that you nailed it on the head is, you know, I think my generation wants to change.
The under 40 generation, their parents went to war, their older brothers went to war.
We're fighting two dangerous proxy wars right now, which is extremely stupid.
I don't know the better way of saying it, to be quite frank.
And I can give you my own assessment on that if you want.
But like, we're in this loop.
We're not progressing in a healthy way as a civilization.
You know, it's becoming more divisive, whether we're on the left or the right.
You know, people aren't even looking up.
All they care about is TikTok.
You know, we're creating potentially dangerous artificial intelligence.
You know, I even saw that in my government service.
And I think humanity is kind of stuck right now and we need to change.
And this subject is like one of the only unifying, ontologically shocking, but I would think generally unifying topics where if announced by the U.S. and other major powers that have knowledge in a controlled manner, that this could change humanity for the better, make us look inside ourselves, become less divisive, and care maybe a little less about superficial things.
So that's kind of my philosophical motivation to do what I did.
joe rogan
And you're confronted with one of the biggest mysteries in human history.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is, are we alone?
And it seems like at least some people have the answer to that.
david grusch
100%.
I mean, the people I talked to certainly did, and they had close personal knowledge.
And the intel reports I read, you know, literally indicated that as well, like I talked about earlier.
And it just, so it's like this caste system.
I call it dudes with SCI clearances do not have an embargo on reality.
So it's a caste system of, you know, people in government and outside of government and the industrial complex that run this stuff under little oversight.
And, you know, I remember some of the people who denied us access, they were like, you know, I don't know what you're talking about, but if I did, why would you have a need to know?
And I'm like, well, why did you have a need to know?
You're just some multi-star general.
joe rogan
You're a human being.
david grusch
You're a human being.
You're not better than me.
I mean, who determines the need to know on a humanistic question?
It's like basic fact of life.
Why are we classifying fact of life at this day and age in 2023?
It's insane.
joe rogan
And the answer to that would be national security.
david grusch
Yeah, it's obtuse national security, right?
So like why we classify stuff.
It's called Executive Order 13526, right?
Section 1.4, sections E and F are why we classify science stuff, why we classify nuclear stuff.
It's like a one-liner.
It's very vague.
And are you saying this is these basic facts should be classified?
Are you saying that this fits in this bill?
And, you know, and you notice the Schumer Amendment, if anybody reads it, awkwardly calls out the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, right?
And they're basically treating this as nuclear secrets because it gives off nuclear radiation.
Because if you look at the ultra vague definition of special nuclear material, which is section 51 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, it says anything that gives off a sizable amount of atomic energy.
Literally, that's what it says.
Well, what's sizable and what legal gymnastics are you saying this stuff, which is obviously not a, well, who knows what maybe it is, a nuclear weapon.
And you're saying this is a U.S. nuclear secret.
You're trans-classifying it into a nuclear secret, which I understand maybe at first why they did that.
And I'm not admonishing the hard decisions that presidents and other folks did many years ago when this was more of an enigma and we wanted to like lock it down, figure it out, and then see what we're going to do.
But there's never been a disclosure plan.
I always ask that, like to these super senior people I've talked to, was there a plan?
Any kind of plan at all?
And they're like, no, never.
We tried to muddy the waters back and there, you know, tried to put it out there and test the populace, but, you know, there was never any cogent plan.
I mean, people think the government is like this fine-oiled machine.
They have plans for everything.
Well, I guess sort of, but like it's not.
I mean, look at the war on terrorism.
We left Afghanistan.
No general officer, Mattis, Petraeus, McCrystal, I call them the failed generals.
People allowed them, but really themselves and the Obama administration, Bush administration, except, you know, Trump, whatever, nobody had a cogent plan for success.
And we were fighting people who were much less of an adversary than like one of our peers or near peers.
And we couldn't even win that war.
Like, what the fuck are we doing?
But these protracted endless wars, let's be real, it's good for the industrial complex.
unidentified
Right.
david grusch
So, and I'm not like admonishing the whole industrial complex for the record.
You know, we need national lethality.
We need weapons to kill bad guys because there's evil people in the world.
But you got to control, you know, some of it, though.
joe rogan
Well, that's a part of the problem with people that have secrets.
It's like once you have secrets and part of your identity is the holder of those secrets.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And part of the culture of these industries is that they are the ones that have the access to that.
unidentified
Yeah.
david grusch
And I saw that in conventional, really black programs I was a part of in my career.
It was almost like you got that secret society vibe where it's like, if you're a career government servant, your salary is not that great, but knowledge is your currency.
And what makes you special?
What rice bowl do you control?
And I remember getting read into some stuff that like it was like the president and a very limited number of people getting read into.
And I was one of them because I was operating a certain thing for a certain op.
And, oh, you're part of the club.
You know, like only 30 people are cleared or whatever.
And I'm like, I don't get off on this shit.
It's so weird.
But like these like lifers, and I hate to, you know, talk so matter of fact about it, but like it just, it's kind of disgusting to me because it's like this like, it's weird.
It's just like a weird, like Gnostic cultish thing.
And, you know, I lived that community for 14 years of my career.
joe rogan
And people really do enjoy having information that other people don't have access to.
david grusch
I was like, I got a secret.
And like, that's why I whistleblowed.
Okay, so I know this shit's real.
I know we're not alone.
We have stuff.
No shit.
Am I going to sit on my ass for 30, 40 years?
I'm an old man.
I look back like, oh, I had that secret.
I knew about it, but I didn't do anything.
I didn't change.
So I couldn't just keep that secret because I thought it was just perverse and wrong that the people don't even at least get to know the basics.
joe rogan
It's insane.
So when it comes to these, I'm going to bring it back to these actual entities.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do we know or would you have an understanding of how many of them we're talking about and the variety of them?
david grusch
Yeah, there is a variety, and we have a certain number of different things.
But the total numbers of like what's interacting with us on Earth, I mean, nobody knows that.
joe rogan
And I mean, there's an understanding of some that they do believe are interacting with us, and there's a variety in terms of there's variables.
david grusch
Yeah, I talk to people who are familiar with the biological analysis and everything.
So we have some idea, not a complete picture, because it's like, you know.
You know, you're looking at it.
It's like, well, I don't even understand the physiology at all.
It's like, what the heck?
It's like way different.
Right.
So we have at least a description of this physiology.
Yeah, no, I was in the room when be careful.
I don't want to.
I was in Washington, D.C. with a very number of senior people that work for members of Congress, put it that way.
When I was still in government, and I brought the people who worked on that stuff to the Hill.
I mean, this is why the members were so confident to put out the Schumer Amendment and stuff.
And I was like, please explain.
And they went into all those details and stuff.
And I remember, you know, some of the professional staff members were like, whoa.
Like, like they were like in G-Lock, right?
Because I mean, like, a total world bubble got burst right there for a lot of people.
And so we have some idea.
It's not a complete picture.
I mean, it's just like, but you're not even bringing in the right the right people.
Like I think about my friend and colleague, Dr. Gary Nolan, which I started the Soul Foundation nonprofit with.
I mean, he's like, you know, Nobel level biologist, virologist.
Like he's the guy that you would want on it, but he's not on it.
So I think we can make a lot of progress in our understanding, once again, if this is more broadly studied in an open environment.
joe rogan
Are you aware of the Nixon, Jackie Gleason story?
david grusch
Vaguely, I stayed away from ufology because I had these contemporary people that were inside.
I could check all their credentials, where they worked, et cetera.
But I'm vaguely familiar where, what was it, like Nixon brought Jackie Gleason to some facility and showed him some stuff or something like that?
joe rogan
Yeah, supposedly that's the story.
And it's very hard to determine the origin of the story or whether or not it's real.
It came from, there's a story about one article that was supposedly published.
Was it Vanity Fair?
Something like that, yeah.
And you can't find the story.
But Jackie Gleason, by all accounts, was obsessed with UFOs and even built a home in upstate New York that looked like a flying saucer.
david grusch
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah.
This is the house.
He had this house constructed supposedly after he had this meeting with Nixon.
So Nixon, supposedly, they were drinking.
Jackie Gleason and Nick Nixon are tying one on.
And Nixon's like, you want to see some shit?
And they fly to wherever this base is.
And he shows them these frozen biological entities and this retrieved vehicle.
And then Jackie Gleason becomes a fanatic, obviously.
That's crazy.
david grusch
Yeah.
I mean, not crazy, but that's interesting that a president would do that to like an uncleared celebrity friend of his.
Like, oh, let me just show you the most sensitive shit our country has.
I don't know.
It's kind of crazy to me.
joe rogan
People are obsessed with celebrity.
You know, there's even world leaders, you know, kings and queens of, you know, they've always been obsessed with famous people.
And Jackie Gleason at the time was incredibly famous and also beloved, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So this is my pal, and I'm drunk.
You want to see some shit?
You know, I get it.
david grusch
I want to hang out with Nixon if that's how it was like, man.
Well, I bet Nixon is probably wild.
joe rogan
I bet he was like that in a lot of ways.
You know, I mean, Hunter S. Thompson famously recalled his, yeah, there's the two of them meeting together, famously recalled sitting in the backseat of a limo with Nixon talking about football.
And he's like, God, if I didn't think he was a piece of shit, I actually kind of like him.
david grusch
Oh, that's funny.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
We're just talking football.
Yeah.
You know, look, nobody in that job, nobody as a president is going to be loved by everyone.
And I'm sure Nixon has positive qualities.
And, you know, if Jackie Gleason liked him, I'm a giant Jackie Gleason fan.
He's probably fun to hang out with.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And if you're drunk and, you know, you're the president.
And also, we're talking about the 1970s, right?
So this is a different world.
You know, like, even if you tell anybody, who the fuck is going to believe you?
You don't have, you can't get on TikTok.
Like, what are you going to do?
How are you going to get this information out?
david grusch
Oh, exactly.
And that's kind of how, you know, in my personal opinion, you know, how the program was protected, right?
joe rogan
Forever.
david grusch
Make it crazy.
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
So if anybody leaks anything or has an unauthorized disclosure, people are going to think you're fucking nuts.
joe rogan
Of course.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But there are actual reports that we have biological remains.
david grusch
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
joe rogan
How many?
david grusch
It's up there as well, just like with the there's different kinds.
joe rogan
Do we have an understanding?
You don't have to answer where, of where they came from?
david grusch
Nobody I talked to espoused any specific origin to me.
We may know that, but I'm not aware of anything, so I don't know.
joe rogan
Are there reports of some kind of interaction with these things where they're giving information or discussing the problems of humanity and possible solutions or explaining why they're here?
david grusch
Interactions was a sensitive subject that my interview subjects did not want to get into.
I suppose that there's probably detailed documentation of those interactions that goes into a lot of the stuff you're asking.
I truly don't even know the answer to a lot of that.
Is there discussions amongst these people that there have been these sort of there was water cooler talk with some people I talked to on the program?
joe rogan
I love water cooler.
david grusch
Yeah, they're like, hey, bro, guess what I overheard in some weird meeting, you know?
Right.
And, but that is the problem with that is it's like secondary information.
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
And I'm so anal retentive, unless that person told me I had close, personal, I touched it, whatever, like, cool.
Well, you're coming to the Inspector General, or I'm going to at least give them your name because that's what you told me.
And then obviously I did that.
So those people who physically were there, were on the program, did the thing, I brought to the Inspector General.
joe rogan
Are there discussions of interactions with live beings?
david grusch
There was some water cooler talk about that kind of thing.
But, you know, I don't even want to get into it because it's like, there were some details provided to me, but it's like, it's secondary.
And I don't know if that's like the telephone game.
And I don't know if it was hyperbolized in any way, you know, in the break room, so to speak.
So I just, I'm so anal about making sure what I say is accurate.
I don't, you know, I don't know.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do we have an understanding?
I mean, if there have been these discussions, do we have an understanding of when they first took place?
david grusch
Yeah, some specific events were mentioned to me, and I provided that information in a classified setting.
joe rogan
And how far back do they go?
david grusch
Pretty far back.
It's pretty weird.
joe rogan
Yeah.
david grusch
So.
joe rogan
Well, one of the stories from Roswell that's fascinating to me is that Eisenhower had the wreckage flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in two separate jets in case one of them crashed.
david grusch
There has been some public testimony.
Is it General DeBose?
There were some old timers that at least did some videos in the 90s.
Like, I'm Brigadier General Exxon.
Here's what I heard, whatever.
I mean, that's out there in the open source.
So, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, and there was always a discussion of Hanger 18, right?
Have you ever heard of Hanger 18?
david grusch
There's a lot of hangers.
joe rogan
That's the one.
For whatever reason, I think it was maybe a movie.
Was there a movie?
david grusch
Well, you know, it's funny.
Speaking of senators being denied, there's a video in the late 80s of Senator Barry Goldwater of Goldwater Nickels Act famed, right?
He was a two-star general in the Air Force Reserve.
And like, literally, this video is like on YouTube.
It's like hard to find, though.
But Jesse Michaels on American Alchemy put together, I think, a short video yesterday.
And there's like a section in there where he actually has that Goldwater interview.
But General Goldwater is like, yeah, one day I called Curtis LeMay, who's a very famous Air Force general, and was like, General, I heard that there's this room that you have UFO material.
And Barry Goldwater expouses in this interview, like, yeah, and LeMay got matter than hell at me and told me never to fucking ask, ask about that again.
I might have added the F-word in there just for fun.
For fun.
But yeah, it's bad.
I was in the military too long.
My wife tells me to be careful of my language all the time around my niece and nephews.
But even Barry Goldwater knew that we had UFO material.
He asked General LeMay when he was in the Air Force, and General LeMay basically told him to fuck off.
And that is a literal interview you can Google.
So a lot of this like people disclosing fact of has really been out in the vernacular for a long time, but nobody really cared because, well, everybody was just kind of like desensitized from the whole subject and thought it was wacky.
And I'm not the first former government official to confirm that.
You have Goldwater and all these other Harry Reid, who made the same disclosure to the New Yorker a month after I talked to him in person.
Yeah, Mellon has said stuff.
Lou Elizondo said, you know, he believes we have material on, I think it was Tucker Carlson a couple years ago.
So there's certainly been other officials.
Now I'm just trying to spike the football and take it all the way to the end zone here.
And luckily, we have a Congress that's mostly motivated, minus Mike Rogers and Mike Turner.
You're getting cool in your stockings.
I'm going to make sure your office gets cool.
And, you know, they want change too, and they realize it's time for a change.
And presumably, you know, Chuck Schumer's talked to, you know, Jake Sullivan and President Biden.
And you know who's in the White House right now is John Podesta.
He is the Green Energy Czar or something like that in the White House.
But, you know, John Podesta, shout out to John Podesta in the White House.
He has an axe of grind on this issue too.
Because remember, he tweeted at the end of Obama's second term, you know, my biggest failure was not to have Obama release the UFO file and made the same kind of statement with Clinton.
So certainly if Mr. Podesta's listening in the White House, you know, I'm here to help.
You know, I hope that you're championing this within the executive office of the president.
And, you know, the other speaking of people like Goldwater who have made some weird non-sequitur kind of admissions, there's a John Stossel interview of Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director about two years ago or so.
You can find it online where Pompeo talks about the JFK file and like dismisses it or something about like there's no boogeyman here.
But then he quickly says, oh, I've seen the UFO file too and we have bigger problems.
But at least the way it was edited, John Stossel didn't even follow up, at least the way the final cut was.
I'm like, dude, if I was John Stossel, I've been like, what does that mean?
What do you mean, Mike Pompeo?
You've seen the UFO file and we have bigger problems.
And UFO file, the way I interpret that is a long existing file or briefing document or something that he had access to.
So I think the former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, should probably clarify what he said two years ago.
If anybody interviews him next, ask Mike that question.
What did he mean?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, but we have bigger problems.
Well, we certainly have bigger problems in terms of our current existence, specifically with what you were talking about earlier, the proxy wars and collapse of society as we know it, which it seems to be.
david grusch
Yeah, I mean, I feel for the Ukrainian and the Israeli people.
You know, I'm not taking any particular side, but certainly people forget U.S. aid in these wars.
What's the most expensive thing if you've studied phases of conflict?
It's the reconstruction costs after the conflict.
So are we in it for like triple-digit billions, like the war on terror?
I mean, certainly the Israeli conflict is a great distraction because, you know, like Russia is very tight with Iran, right?
And personal opinion, you know, this is just my own personal opinion, but I, you know, I'm sure they commiserated and was like, can you start a two-front war?
Because we would like to win in Ukraine.
And this will distract the U.S. because Israel is a longtime, you know, Middle East ally.
So it's brilliant.
It's brilliant.
joe rogan
It's public opinion.
I mean, the virtue signalers on social media have essentially completely forgotten about Ukraine.
It's all about Israel and Palestine.
david grusch
Yeah, you don't even see it.
And I understand, you know, what the National Security Council determination was that they've discussed publicly where they're kind of like trying to drain Russia's military capability and annexation of Ukrainian territory because they don't want Russia's sphere of influence to further enter that caucus region and stuff.
But yeah, it's funny.
Like you said, it's like you don't even talk about Ukraine.
It's all about Israel now, which is a horrible conflict on both sides.
Like it's just, it's unfortunate.
joe rogan
Without a doubt.
Yeah.
It was a very interesting statement, though, that we have bigger problems.
So even if we do, this seems to be like a this is such a human question because it's one of the biggest mysteries.
Obviously, you know, there's the Fermi paradox.
Where are they, right?
And if you look out into the cosmos, if you've ever gone a clear night and you look out and you realize those are all stars, and those stars are all surrounded by planets, and there's literally hundreds of billions of them.
david grusch
The Drake equation, you can calculate what probable sentient life.
And I've been an amateur astronomer since I've been a kid, and I've never, crazy enough, I've never seen anything remarkable.
I've seen some stuff that could have been ball lightning and some satellite passes that weren't registered online.
You could actually check to see if there's going to be like an iridium flare or something like that.
And maybe that was a satellite pass, maybe not.
But I've never seen in my personal life, never seen anything weird.
And it's funny, you mentioned the Fermi paradox, and it's like, well, where are they?
And okay, well, you know, if you're sentient life, you're certainly going to have sophisticated cover concealment and deception techniques.
It goes back to like what Jacques Valet's work is, where, you know, the phenomenon presenting itself in different ways.
But also, I live in the mountains of Colorado, right?
So there is a mountain lion den about 10 miles from my house in Colorado, literally.
You know, I'm, there are lower predatory sentients, I'm higher predatory sentients, and I'm using this as a device or an analogy for NHI and us.
Well, I don't, on a day-to-day basis, I don't care what a mountain lion is doing.
I may hike in that area to explore, but day to day, I'm afraid of it and I don't care.
And think about what humans might be, unfortunately, to some of these higher sentients where this monkey has a nuke.
Holy shit.
Keep them in the cage.
We don't want to go anywhere near them.
And so people think that there would be some kind of open contact with some higher sentience that is either visiting Earth or from another dimension or whatever the origin is.
But they probably don't care.
They're probably neutral at best and maybe actually fearful of us in some sense.
Or we're the progeny of, you know, personal opinion, progeny of some experiments.
And it's almost like living in the matrix, but it's not like an actual simulation.
It's like we want the simulation to go.
We don't want to intercede because we want to see what, you know, Homo sapien sapien 2.0 is going to do after the great flood or something like that, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's one of the more fascinating ideas is that we're some sort of a product of genetic engineering.
david grusch
I honestly would not be surprised.
I don't know that to be true, but we're so different than everything else is here.
joe rogan
So different.
So beyond different.
I mean, there's not another primate that is even reasonably close.
I mean, if you there's speculation amongst primatologists, and there's a not even speculation.
They believe that chimpanzees in particular have entered into the Stone Age.
So they're at the beginning of the Stone Age.
They're using tools, you know, and there's obviously some learned behavior.
Like there's some footage of orangutans using spears to hunt fish with.
david grusch
Oh, interesting.
joe rogan
Have you ever seen that?
david grusch
No, no.
joe rogan
That's cool as shit.
There's an orangutan that's hanging on a branch over a river or a body of water and he's stabbing at fish with a spear, which is incredible.
I mean, they're using tools.
I mean, we know they use tools to extract, you know, termites and the like.
Look at that.
david grusch
Oh, that's crazy.
joe rogan
How crazy is that?
I mean, he's clearly hunting.
I mean, he's going fishing in Borneo.
I mean, that is, you know, at the very least, a distant cousin of us, some, you know, intelligent primate that has figured out a way to use tools.
How long would it take an orangutan to become a human being?
How many millions of years are we talking about of evolution?
But it seems to be that process has started.
Interesting.
But why are we so fucking different than everyone else?
david grusch
Yeah, like, are we a product of Darwinian evolution or what is it?
Punctuated equilibrium is obviously another theory.
And I'm not an anthropologist by any means.
You know, I've watched some Netflix episodes, but a lot of YouTube.
But yeah, we seem to be oddly advanced, and we seem to just possess other skills.
I mean, it goes back to like the Stargate program, right?
You know, with declassified by Clinton and sensibly canceled, I guess, in 96, you know, where you had people trained in remote viewing and like there was feedback loops to confirm what they saw was real and either satellite imagery or human sources where they sketched out a room of where there's hostages and then they got a hostage out and they're like, and this is a real story actually.
And they're, and they're like, did you have a source in that room?
How do you know where all the corridors were and everything?
I was like, no, actually, Pat Price remote viewed you.
And he's like, what the fuck?
So there's something going on there.
And that's like Gary Nolan, you know, has studied a lot of this stuff.
Very famously, he's pointed out the caudate potanum in the brain, right?
It's like this horseshoe-shaped thing in the middle of your brain that if he's done MRIs and CAT scans, and I hope I'm not butchering his work.
Gary might, you know, slap me later, but it lights up with people who have those kind of skills.
They have like an overactive caudate potanum in the brain.
And it's like, okay, well, is it a transceiver of some sort?
I'm guessing that's the case.
joe rogan
Is it an emerging property of human beings as we evolve?
david grusch
Exactly.
And we're seeing just a few human beings that have this stuff.
And then if it is a transceiver, where's the information?
Is it in a higher spatial dimension?
Or how are they extracting?
How are they able to basically be non-locality, right?
They're able to like project themselves somehow their consciousness to a, and this is a declassified example from Stargate, a Russian missile base.
Sketch the crane and where the silos are, what the status is.
You know, satellite comes over, takes a picture, and it's exactly the way they sketched it.
How'd they do that?
Like, it's certainly real, real because there is a feedback loop.
Now, there's a lot of charlatans in the psychic space and all that, but like at least that government program.
And I've talked to, you know, Hal Putov and people who actually ran that program at SRI for the CIA, then DIA and the Army.
And that seems to be, and Men Who's Staring at Goats, right?
The George Clooney movies, the famous movie based on the Stargate program seems to be legit as far as we can measure from a feedback perspective.
joe rogan
What was the explanation for the discontinuation of that program?
david grusch
Oh, gosh, I'm not a scholar on that.
That something Russell Targ or Hal Putov or one of those guys could explain if it was just got caught up in the bureaucracy or what.
I don't remember.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So the idea of that being an emergent property of human beings as we evolve has always been fascinating to me because there's certainly something that goes on with human communication other than we make sounds that represent objects and physical things and that the other person interprets those sounds and understands it.
david grusch
There's communication between human beings that's oh, acoustic communication, like the symbol rate, if you will, is really slow.
Like if you were able to consciously communicate, you know, aka, you know, the hokey term, like telepathy, right?
And it's funny because that's what a lot of people expouse that have had, you know, alleged contacts, right?
A lot of the people that Dr. John Mack at Harvard studied over the years where they felt like they were getting hit with like a QR code.
It was like instant knowledge, or they heard like somebody speaking to them nonverbally in some way that they couldn't even conceptualize through, you know, acoustic communication or talk, if you will.
And it's the same thing like book Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander MD.
I remember reading when I was in Afghanistan and I was like, this is a crazy experience.
This medical doctor has necrotic fasciitis of the brain is a near-death experience.
And he gets this like crazy, like the feelings of love, other stuff.
It's a really interesting book.
It's like a scientific take on a doctor's own near-death experience.
But when he came back and somehow the fasciitis didn't eat away his brain and he was cognitively normal, he tried to write down what information or facts of the universe he learned during his NDE.
And he couldn't even put it in English.
It was like crazy.
He didn't know how to translate it into our language.
It was just, there was no like adjectives, if you were adverbs, et cetera, that could describe the knowledge that he knew like natively when he had that near-death experience.
It's a really fascinating book.
And he talks about the disease he had and his physiological condition at the time.
Really interesting.
joe rogan
What was he able to discern from that?
Like what was the overall message?
david grusch
Yeah, it was like this, like the, you know, there's the message of love, which has positive, but it was like this interconnectedness.
Everybody is kind of connected in a way that they don't really realize.
I mean, you think about, this is really trippy.
A lot of thoughts with people who are smarter than me, I like to talk to them about this kind of stuff where if you're, say, you know, a higher dimensional sentience, right?
The act of creation, so act of creation for 3D beings is having a baby, right?
It's producing another three-dimensional object.
Well, if you're in five-dimensional space, or even, I guess, four-dimensional physical space, what if act of creation is creating other conscious realities in other universes?
And the act of creation is creating the universe where you, me, Jamie, whatever, we might be connected to the same, I'll call it universal consciousness or a higher dimensional sentient life force or life form.
I know that sounds like really out there, but when you think about it, there's a lot of other theologies out there that basically espouse that.
I have a very good friend of mine who's PhD level, kind of higher up in the Mormon church.
And basically the Mormon theology is kind of like that.
The Mormons say you were once with God or like God, but then you were sent down to like a lower plane of existence.
And that's literally what I'm talking about right now, but just in a secular sense.
So maybe we're all created beings from, and this, you know, this doesn't like hurt Christian theology, whatever.
It's actually kind of enforcing the fact there's a creator and we're literally created in the image of a creator, literally.
And that's kind of what life really is.
It's like, think about it's like a weird 3D plus time temporal sensory experience for a higher dimensional sentience.
You're here to experience time in this weird linear fashion and to experience yourself divorced from yourself to gain knowledge and to report back is maybe what life is.
And that's just kind of my own personal theology as a summation of just during COVID, I was really bored.
And that's what I was looking at.
joe rogan
Well, I extrapolate that to the creation of AI.
And I think if you think about human beings as something that creates things, I think ultimately we create a new life.
david grusch
Well, exactly.
What if higher sentience is creating some kind of artificial intelligence?
You know, call it like a commander data from Star Trek Next Gen, right?
Not even really, it's made in the image of the creator in some sense, but it's not even, and that's what might get sent into these like long endurance, you know, missions.
And of course, you know, people are like, well, why would they, you know, come here so far to crash, et cetera?
Or are they crashing on purpose?
Do you know that for a fact?
Or are they crashing by accident?
And what if they're like von Neumann replicating probes, right?
You can Google that.
But, you know, what if they're just throwaway, which von Neumann probes are just like throwaway spacecraft?
Like, yeah, they're just, we send it out.
We don't really care what the mission success is, or they're seeding us.
Or as Jacques Valley says, it's like, you know, here's the key.
Can you unlock the cage kind of thing, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
And it seems that it would be a long, I mean, if you think about biological evolution, it's a long, lengthy process.
And if ultimately that led us to the creation of a technology that's far superior in terms of its capabilities of understanding and thinking, that seems to be what's happening.
And that's one of the reasons why so many people are concerned about the term artificial intelligence is a very strange term because it's not artificial.
It's intelligence.
david grusch
It's silicon-based at a carbon-based, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's just, it doesn't have blood and tissue and cells, but it has something that's superior.
But also something that's much more scalable, right?
We have a very obvious biological limitation in terms of evolution.
You know, if you look at evolution, we turn back to the orangutans that are fishing.
They're obviously learning new things.
And those new properties, those new things, we assume would be encoded in their genetics and then passed to their children.
Do you have children?
david grusch
No, I have three dogs.
We went the fluffy, I'm a fluffy dad.
joe rogan
The problem is dogs don't learn from.
Well, they do, but one of the most bizarre things about children is that they have properties that are clearly, it's hard to say, right?
Because my children obviously have the example of my wife and myself, and they obviously see a lot of how we live our life and discipline and hard work and creativity and all those things.
But they seem to have gifts that they seem to be clearly genetic.
Yeah.
And artistic gifts that just seem extraordinary, that are unusual, that I had when I was younger, that I was an illustrator.
I have a young daughter that's just extraordinarily good at art.
david grusch
Really?
Used to illustrate?
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be a comic book illustrator with that.
Oh, interesting, interesting.
But then I have this other daughter that's super gifted athletically.
Like, she can learn things really quickly.
It's extraordinary.
And it's weird.
And also this drive that she has.
I had a drive from poverty and from a lot of stuff that was wrong with my childhood that seemed to be I had this need to prove myself.
She doesn't have any of those problems, but she also has this insane drive.
It's weird.
It's a weird discipline.
It's extraordinary.
That seems to be very different than most kids.
And I just think that's an emerging genetic problem.
I think there's something encoded in whatever you are as a human that as you replicate and as you have children, they have that.
They have some of that.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, and I think that is this process, this biological evolutionary process with humans.
But there's so much chaos.
There's so much.
I mean, you could breed with a dumb person.
You can find a hot, dumb person and have a baby with them.
Now your kid's fucked.
And we see that.
Obviously, some people are just born with brains that just don't work that well.
It's just like, I'm sure you've met some dull-minded people.
You try to talk to them about things and there's no one there.
Right?
So, okay, good luck and good luck with whatever children you have and whatever, what are they going to have?
david grusch
Well, the word genetics.
Yeah, we're genetically encoding artificial intelligence now.
I think that's where you were going.
joe rogan
Yeah, what I'm going with, like these biological limitations that we have, it's very clear that we're essentially dealing with a Model T as opposed to a Tesla, which is just insanely superior to these ancient vehicles.
We create technology.
I've always said this, if you looked at the human race, if you were some sort of an outside observer and you stumbled upon this thing that occupies this planet, this apex predator of this planet, you would say, what is this thing doing?
What's making technology?
All the other things that it does.
It does all these other things.
But what do these things generally motivate?
What do they move towards?
They move towards the advancement of technology and innovation.
That is a constant aspect of human beings.
If you trace us back to the earliest civilizations, to what we have today, things constantly improve unless something goes horribly wrong.
Unless there's some sort of a natural disaster or some sort of a genocide.
If something doesn't happen to these creatures, what do they do?
They consistently make better things.
Well, that, if you extrapolate, if you follow that to its natural progression, well, what is that going to get to?
Well, once they've invented computers and once they've invented devices and once they've invented things that enhance their personal understanding of the world around them, which we already have now with phones, we already have with the internet.
We already have with our ability to communicate with each other.
The newest, latest Android phones that are coming out will translate natively on your phone in real time in conversation.
So you could be speaking Portuguese to me.
I would hear it in English on a phone call, which is fucking wild.
david grusch
It's crazy.
That's like Universal Translator and Star Trek, literally.
joe rogan
Yes, literally, literally.
Well, that is a real thing now.
Without it, and you use Google Translate, it's native to the latest Android operating system.
If you just sit down and say, well, where's that going?
Well, it's going to something way more sophisticated and way more capable than we are biologically with our limitations.
Our monkey bodies, we are the ancestors or the people that emerged from that distant cousin, that orangutan that's using a stick to hunt fish.
We're going in this direction.
What would be the most logical way we would completely accelerate that?
We create something that does what we do, but does it way better.
david grusch
Yeah, it's almost like to permanently harbor our consciousness eventually, right?
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
That kind of makes sense.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
It does make sense.
And there's a sort of an understanding of that that leads to this fear of our demise that everyone, you know, Elon's openly discussed this.
Sam Altman and I were talking about it.
What OpenAI is doing, what ChatGPT 4 versus ChatGPT 5, which is going to be insanely superior.
Well, what is ChatGPT 15 going to do?
Is that going to be the president of the world?
Are we going to bypass government and just say, it's obviously like this administration is incredibly corrupt and flawed and influenced by the military-industrial complex.
It's not good for the world.
It's not good for the environment.
We need something that is far superior that doesn't have all these motivations.
What would that be?
That would be an artificial intelligent creator that we, or a creation rather, that we use to govern life.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, that sounds nuts, but I think that's probably a better solution than humans with all of our fucking flaws and issues and greed and envy and all the things that we have.
That would be a better version of it.
But what are we saying then?
david grusch
Are we saying that we're programming empathy into it though?
joe rogan
Probably not.
Probably not, which is terrifying.
But we will become obsolete or we will merge.
And if we merge, it will completely change what we are.
And I think that's very likely what's going to take place.
I think the initial stages will be some sort of a merging with technology.
And then from that merging, it will essentially realize, well, why are we even fucking around?
Like this new thing is so superior.
And it doesn't have all the pitfalls.
It doesn't have all the problems.
It's not short-sighted.
It's not going to drain the ocean of fish so that we can make sushi.
It's going to do something.
It's going to be far more aware of all of the different effects of each individual act and how we affect everything around us and what is net positive and what is net negative and how to avoid all these things.
I really firmly believe that we are this biological caterpillar that is making a cocoon to create the electronic butterfly.
And we don't even know what we're doing while we're doing it.
We're just doing it.
And I think materialism is also baked into that.
One of the main problems with human beings in terms of like the ridiculousness of our actions.
We're so materialistic.
People are constantly wanting to get the newest, latest, greatest thing.
What's the motivation behind that other than social status?
Well, the motivation is that that's what fuels innovation.
If we all just stopped right now and said, hey, you know what?
iPhone 15 is pretty fucking dope.
We don't need to make new iPhones.
Let's just keep fixing those and just like exist the way we are right now.
And let's clean up the air and let's clean up the ocean.
Let's clean up the sea and clean up the rivers and clean up the forests.
Like let's just fix the earth.
No, we don't do that.
No, I want iPhone 16.
You know, when is the iPhone going to be able to communicate completely just with satellites?
We don't have to worry about cell phones.
david grusch
Well, it's almost like a drug addiction, right?
They did studies where people receiving in text messages is the dopamine rush, too.
Yeah.
So it's almost like an artificial drug addiction you're fueling because you want the more responsive tech, more integrating with your easier so you can get your fix quicker and more efficiently or something like that.
I don't know.
Right.
joe rogan
And why?
I mean, why would fucking staring at a stupid cell phone give you a dopamine rush?
Well, it does.
david grusch
It does, Adam.
joe rogan
It does.
david grusch
Yeah, I'm not a biologist.
joe rogan
And you get addicted to your goddamn phones.
And then why would it be that we would innovate and create things like Instagram and TikTok that are insanely addictive to the point where you look down and you've spent three hours staring at nothing?
Nonsense.
Like, why is that?
Well, that ensures a continual use of this device until it lures you into this ultimate integration.
david grusch
Well, it's right where they, there's people at Meta, I guess now, or Facebook, you know, where they actually have a whole team of scientists on how to make their apps more addictive, right?
So demons.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fucking demons.
david grusch
Yeah, I don't use social media.
I have never tweeted in my life.
joe rogan
Really?
That's amazing.
david grusch
I mean, I have like, I use Facebook back in the day when it first came out when I was going to college.
Yeah, I don't have Instagram.
I've never tweeted in my life.
I don't intend to because you don't want to get sucked into that mind virus, which is like people responding to you and you have to feel like you have to respond back.
I don't even touch it.
joe rogan
Well, I'm very aware of those traps, so I don't do that.
I used to, but many years ago, I stopped interacting with people because I just realized like overall it's negative.
There's positive aspects to it.
It's great for people that like you and they're fans.
It's great too that you're an actual human that you interact.
Occasionally I'll comment on a post like that's really awesome.
Congratulations, that kind of stuff.
But then I get the fuck out of there and I don't read any responses.
And I found that that's the very best way to mitigate all the negative aspects of social media.
But then you're also dealing with algorithms.
You're dealing with things that recognize what makes you more likely to engage.
And so those things are constantly showing you the things that you engage.
And, you know, it's not necessarily even positive.
It's just whatever you engage with.
That's what's coming your way.
Whether it could be cool stuff, like maybe you're just really into muscle cars and it shows you a lot of muscle cars, or it could be like murder.
Like I see a lot of murder on Instagram.
It's fucking crazy.
david grusch
Yeah, I'm a car guy.
So like my feed is like, oh, do you ever think about this mod for your Ford Bronco?
Ooh, those lights look nice.
I'm going to wire that shit up next week.
joe rogan
Yeah, I get those too.
david grusch
It's bad.
joe rogan
Yeah, I have a problem with that.
I have a car problem.
david grusch
Yeah, my wife doesn't allow me to have the good stuff anymore.
So I have to, you know, keep it under a certain price.
joe rogan
Well, that's good.
That's good.
I'm more actually interested in old stuff than I am in new stuff.
david grusch
You like rat rod stuff, right?
joe rogan
Well, I like muscle cars.
Like very specifically 1960s muscle cars.
Those are my favorite because what they are to me is it's a toy that you could drive.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like a ride that gives me immense pleasure to just drive around and it's really fun.
I don't even have to go fast.
It's just going around in a 1970 Cheval, just driving it.
It just, it's hard to describe for someone who has never experienced it, but it's just so engaging and it's like you're on this drug.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's like, it's like everything, you feel all of it and you're engaging all of these senses.
david grusch
Yeah, it's very tactile, very mechanical.
Yeah, I totally understand that.
I mean, the only kind of old cars I like are like black Lincoln Continental Suicide Zoys from The Matrix.
I remember seeing that when I was a teen when The Matrix came out.
I'm like, that car's badass.
It's like, totally, I want to have whatever Morpheus drove.
They're art.
joe rogan
They're essentially art.
It's functional art.
It's a piece of art that you could actually drive around in.
And it gives you this very bizarre sensation.
But the point is, that's not most people.
Most people want the newest, latest, greatest thing.
And there's a motivation to get the newest, latest, greatest thing that I think, if you just follow that up to its logical conclusion, it's going to create life.
It's going to create, I mean, how many films have been made about this?
You know, Ex Machina and all these different films that's what we're going to do.
We're going to, I mean, there's no way we're not going to do that.
It's, it's, if I had a bet on one thing, if the human race doesn't get wiped out by a meteor or a nuclear war, we're going to fucking do that.
We're going to make a life form 100%.
And it's going to be almost instantaneously able to figure out all the flaws in its own personal programming and make a much better version of itself.
If it's sentient, if it has the ability to make decisions.
david grusch
Well, I think we're close.
I mean, I think I saw some stuff.
There's like an open AI fiasco going on right now.
And there's a rumor that they might have cracked artificial general intelligence, right?
And that's...
That's frightening.
I mean, there's like, was it Sam Altman, I think you were talking about?
I think there's like the board of OpenAI.
There's some shuffle.
I was just removed.
joe rogan
When I went back, well, they removed him, but then apparently the shareholders are like, what the fuck are you doing?
And there was so much outrage that they're trying to bring him back instantly.
But Elon had a very good point.
Like, what was the motivation behind that?
And when you think about the implications for humanity as a whole, because this is such an emerging technology that's so overwhelmingly powerful, what happened?
Like, what's going on?
Like, I think this is one of those things where we need to know, like, what was the motivation behind your decision?
And if it was that he was holding back information about the actual creation of artificial general intelligence, it's already happened.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that he's like hesitant because he's a little cagey in how he talks about stuff.
When I was talking to him, you could tell it's like a little bit like he kind of knows that he is at the forefront of this technology that worst case scenario replaces us.
david grusch
Yeah.
And, you know, going back to is a program with any kind of empathy, et cetera, depending on if it handles critical.
I guess the thing I saw in the government, because I did a lot of cyber stuff in my career, is as AI gets more advanced, you know, you create, say, offensive cyber tools that literally have a mind of their own.
And if, say, theoretically, you release that on some target and you might not be able to touch that target again.
and say it's a one-time whoop, you put it in there.
Well, how do you control it?
It's almost like Skynet and the Terminator.
I hate to use that analogy, but like that was my fear when I was working at certain agencies working on offensive cyber tools.
I'm like, oh my God, this is not good.
And then, of course, with cyber, right, it's the attribution, actor attribution is the biggest thing.
How do you know it was, you know, hypothetically Russia that used the cyber weapon to attack you?
It could have been another actor masquerading as that foreign power using tactics, techniques, procedures, IP proxy operations to hide where it was coming from.
So it's like you have non-kinetic fires that can potentially create mutually assured destruction because you could take out critical infrastructure, blow up the power grid, et cetera.
No radiation, but potentially no attribution or can confuse the attribution such that you don't even know who to go to war with.
It's really scary to me.
joe rogan
It is scary.
david grusch
Yeah.
That's just my own.
joe rogan
It's already happening with social media.
I mean, think about how many troll farms there are on social media that are just stirring up discontent.
I mean, it's an active program that we know that Russia uses that is trying to undermine democracy and try to keep people fighting with each other.
And it's been very effective.
I mean, if you look at social media, it's just fucking chaos.
It's just people yelling at each other, particularly Twitter or X, you know, that's and Facebook.
It's like a lot of what's going on.
One of the studies showed that out of the top 20 Christian sites that are on Facebook, 19 of them are run by Russian troll farms.
So if we know that that on a like relatively rudimentary scale, if you look at the impact of social media versus the impact of artificial intelligence, they're already doing that.
They're already hiding who's responsible and what's the goal and how to manipulate consciousness and how to manipulate influence and how people think about things and what the public opinion on things are.
It's already very effective.
You would imagine that a creation of artificial intelligence would radically accelerate that.
david grusch
Oh, 100%.
Then I remember the deep fake stuff was a real problem for my old community because we're like, holy shit, you could really fake some stuff and you got to develop algorithms to make sure you can analyze, oh, hey, that is fake.
Because you've seen some of the deep fakes where it's like Obama or Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yes.
The Tom Cruise guy.
Holy shit.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
david grusch
That is crazy.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
david grusch
Like, you're going to be able to bring actors from the dead back at this point.
You're going to have like Carrie Grant doing a musical or whatever, you know, or whatever.
joe rogan
You know, so Bruce Willis, who has some sort of a degenerate, regenerative neurological condition, sold his likeness for the ability to make commercials and all sorts of other things.
Like he's essentially saying he's fading, unfortunately.
And now he will give this thing, which is this property, which is Bruce Willis, this famous person, and they will be able to create versions of him starring in films.
david grusch
Oh, and certainly if you train an AI model just like ChatGPT, you could actually get almost like what they would normally say, what their knowledge.
joe rogan
100%.
david grusch
And it's almost like having a permanent historian, too.
You could like, you know, if you want to talk to Clint Eastwood about his films in the 60s after Clint Eastwood, you know, passes, you know, may he live forever, but like that would be, it'd be crazy.
It'd be really interesting.
joe rogan
I mean, he might actually be able to give you advice.
He might be your personal advisor.
david grusch
I know.
That'd be cool.
joe rogan
I mean, that's probably one of the things that's going to come out of this.
But when we think about empathy, we also think about just human beings and the way we communicate and interact with each other.
Empathy is very important.
And also compassion and forgiveness.
All these things are very important qualities because we recognize that we're very flawed.
But when you create something that is not flawed, then the need for empathy, the need for all these things that we attach to human emotions and human reward systems, they'll no longer be a significant issue because you're going to be dealing with something that operates on a higher plane.
It might be the answer to all that ails us, which is so terrifying for us because we recognize that what we derive, the joy that we derive from love, from companionship, from friendship, from community, it's like a key component to life on earth for us.
But it's also because we recognize that without that, we are the Mongols.
Without that, we're Nazi Germany.
Without that, we're Hamas.
We're whatever the fuck we are that we recognize as being like evil or dangerous or horrible about humans.
When we think about the worst case scenario for human beings, we always think about things like the Holocaust.
We think about what is the worst, the worst acts that human beings are capable of with our current programming and our biological flaws.
Like, what are the worst things we can do to terrible, awful things?
Well, if we don't have those problems, if we no longer have envy, we no longer have greed, we no longer have evil, if we don't have any of those properties, they don't exist anymore.
We just have this new form of consciousness that's far superior.
david grusch
That's an interesting parallel because you have, you know, you're no longer maybe apex sentience if you have artificial intelligence, you know, governing certain things.
unidentified
Right.
david grusch
And I think that's also kind of this psychological issue with this UAP issue where we might not be the apex predator.
We may be that mountain lion.
And we're going to have to be comfortable knowing that we're going to be vulnerable.
There's people far superior that may have malevolent intentions.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
And almost be humbled the fact that, like, sorry, we're not the smartest of God's creation.
And that might be really hard for a lot of people to process.
And I think that's probably certainly, I would imagine, one of the deliberations they must have done years ago.
We're like, oh, we can't disclose because people are not going to feel comfortable in that worldview.
joe rogan
100%.
And they're not.
And then I wonder if these things that we're experiencing are the natural progression of what happens when you do seed life on planet or you do accelerate biological life.
You do have some sort of a genetic intervention where you take this thing that has emerging intelligence and you accelerate it.
And that thing will in turn, with all of its desire for innovation and creativity, and also all of its desire to control resources and have power and have influence, that it will eventually lead to the creation of what we're seeing.
That these things are the next stage of this process.
And that maybe we're dealing with one form of that next stage, but there's another stage that's a million years more advanced than that, that's far superior, that doesn't even have a biological limitation in terms of physical space, that it exists completely in some other undetectable realm that is not longer, no longer thinks about biological limitations of life and death and communication.
It exists completely in some other space.
That that's what these things are.
And then I always wonder when there's a crash or when there's a body or when there's this and that.
And people are saying, well, if they're so advanced, why are they crashing?
Well, hold on.
Which version are we looking at?
We're not saying there's one thing that's visiting us.
If there's one thing that's visiting us and we know where this one thing is, we could say, oh, well, that thing, it deals with a completely different solar system.
The sun is vulnerable.
It doesn't have asteroid clouds.
It doesn't have all these different things where it's like, it doesn't have a planet that has super volcanoes.
Maybe life evolved in a more stable environment and it allowed it to get to a far greater technological level, but not the ultimate.
david grusch
Yeah, we might be testing the extent of their adaptability.
And like I said, are they crashing by accident?
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
Mission failure or on purpose.
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
So, and then of course with the far distances and everything, I mean, if they're traveling here through some kind of space-time metric engineering construct, you know, the distances are not as vast as you think, right?
You could be going through some kind of, you know, traversable wormhole or something like that where it's like a walk down the street for them.
It's not, you know, a thousand light years.
joe rogan
Well, just think about communication.
Just our communication used to be you had to get in front of someone and you had to talk to them.
So you had to know their language.
You had to either nonverbal or verbal communication.
You had to figure out a way to say things to them.
That's no longer the case.
Obviously, with this new Android operating system, it translates.
But also, the fact that you could have a fucking FaceTime call with someone in Japan right now and you instantaneously can communicate back and forth, which is insane.
david grusch
That's a vast distance, but for us, it's like stupid.
It's like easy.
joe rogan
Vast distance and instantaneous.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, I was just in Scotland and I was FaceTiming my daughter back home.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fucking crazy.
You're nine hours by plane and you're having instantaneous communication, which is wild shit.
But that's just, that's fucking, that's like pong.
You know, that's Morse code.
It's like it's very primitive in terms of what if you physically can be in these places instantaneously.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And why would we assume that that's not eventually going to be on the menu?
david grusch
Yeah, it's just like the conventional propulsion stuff for not using an Elon Musk starship to get here.
It's like they're doing something else.
joe rogan
We talked to someone from the 1800s and you said, you're going to go to Nevada?
Jesus Christ.
You know how far that is on a wagon?
david grusch
You know, that's months, man.
joe rogan
No, you fly to Vegas.
It's two hours.
Yeah.
It's fucking easy.
You know, like we know that now.
So why would we assume that there's a limitation to that advancement?
I don't think.
david grusch
Yeah.
And of course, a friend of mine, Eric Weinstein, certainly expouses.
We don't even have the right theoretical frameworks right now.
He has his own geometric unity theory.
And he's way smarter than I. He's too smart.
joe rogan
He's confusing.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
He starts talking and you're like, it's so funny.
david grusch
If he calls me, I'm like, you got to call me in the morning after my 24-ounce monster energy drink.
Or I can't even keep up, man.
joe rogan
It's like, he's on another level.
He's got some unique theories himself about where all this stuff is coming from.
And it's all very, very, very interesting and intriguing, but also makes sense.
All of it makes sense, including being visited.
You know, I had this conversation with Neil deGros Tyson.
He's like, why would they be interested in us?
I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
david grusch
We're super interested.
joe rogan
Yeah.
david grusch
Neil, I mean, obviously he's a fine science communicator, kind of the success and of successor of kind of the Carl Sagan kind of.
joe rogan
I think Carl Sagan's a little bit more open-minded.
Yeah.
I like Carl better, but I'm more of a fan.
I wish he was still alive.
I love to smoke the book.
david grusch
I watched Carl.
joe rogan
He's really into weed.
david grusch
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yeah, really.
Really into it.
david grusch
I remember my aunt gave me Cosmos by Carl Sagan when I was in middle school.
And that book was from the 80s.
But that book tripped me out.
And I was like, I want to study science.
And I read, it was Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
And I read those two books when I was like in eighth grade.
And I was like, this is trippy.
I want to study astronomy.
joe rogan
This is insane.
david grusch
But I ultimately used kind of my technical background to be a spook, you know, for the government.
But I still observe.
I have a big telescope and I live like super dark skies in Colorado.
And I still have that boyhood fascination of the cosmos.
Now, ironically, I found out something else that kind of confirms that the cosmos is not lifeless.
And, you know, God paints with a broad brush, as like the Vatican has espoused a couple years ago when they said this is okay with their theology.
joe rogan
I have a theory that the universe itself is God.
david grusch
I think that's like what I was talking about with the multi-dimensional creator creating universes.
joe rogan
I think we have a very limited idea of when we say God, when God created the heavens, and they're like, right, right.
But what are we saying?
I think it's the universe itself.
I think it's one thing.
And that this one thing, it seeks to create these things that continually push the envelope and maybe gods themselves eventually.
I think if you extrapolate from our ability versus the ability of an amoeba and you continue to move that along, what does that do?
Well, it's going to be able to create universes.
There's already been like theoretical papers that have been written about the creation of other things like black holes, other things like a universe.
What is involved in the creation of a universe?
What is involved in the Big Bang?
Can that be replicated?
Well, not now, but if AI becomes sentient and AI eventually makes far greater versions of itself, if it keeps doing that, what are the limits of its potential?
david grusch
Creates the matrix.
joe rogan
Literally.
Literally creates a simulated environment that's indiscernible.
You can't tell the difference between that and regular life.
Well, maybe because there is no difference.
Maybe that is what.
I mean, that's the theory of simulation theory.
david grusch
Yeah, simulation theory.
Yeah, familiar.
And that is a possibility because the universe seems like a little too perfect.
It's a little strange, very created to me.
So just like we're in the Goldilocks zone, perfect temperature.
Like it's a simple thing.
joe rogan
How about the Big Bang itself?
Like, what?
What happened?
Something smaller than the head of a pin for no known reason becomes everything?
Yeah.
Okay.
david grusch
And what's the universe expanding into?
It's like a quantum foam or whatever the heck the latest theory is that's like beyond me.
joe rogan
And then it perhaps just retracts back down to that infinitely small thing and then expands again.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that this is an endless cycle and that we're just so limited because of our biological limitations.
Our life and death is such a small little tiny blip.
It's so minuscule in terms of just the overall known life of the universe.
And then you have the James Webb telescope that's, you know, there's people that question the actual length of time that occurred between the Big Bang and now, that maybe it might be far longer.
And there's people like Brian Keating that say that's not correct.
It's just a lack of understanding of what we understand currently about the creation of galaxies.
david grusch
Yeah, because I mean, obviously the length of the age of the universe keeps on getting older and older.
And a lot of that's because of the Doppler fit, Doppler shift, right?
The red shift.
As the galaxies are accelerating away, you know, we can calculate what their origin point probably was and how long it took for them to speed up like that, right?
joe rogan
And only based on our current understanding, which is obviously at least fairly limited in terms of what its potential is.
david grusch
Well, yeah, like we still don't quite understand the origin of the moon.
The moon is at the right location that causes solar and lunar eclipses.
It's like the right apparent size to block out the sun.
It's like super weird.
Same thing with like Mars.
We're not sure like what happened there where Mars had some probable life on it.
Either a protoplanet hit it or there was some kind of impact that vaporized stuff and like, who knows?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Who knows?
And this is just this little tiny neighborhood that we're looking at.
It's like we are in our backyard looking for evidence of like life in Africa.
You know, I mean, you're not going to figure it out here.
There's so there's just, we're just looking at it such a small scale in terms of what we could potentially discover or potentially observe.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I often wonder, you know, when we're seeing, especially with the idea of UAPs, UFO crafts, if we're seeing a version of what we will become or something like us becomes if given enough time.
david grusch
Well, that, that, I mean, there's like Dr. Mike Masters at Montana State.
He literally postulates, you know, he says time travelers, we could debate time travel, but like he thinks it might be like an advanced form of Homo sapien is what we're seeing coming back.
joe rogan
Yeah.
david grusch
Like a breakaway civilization and we're coming back to see an older version of ourself that was left on Earth or something like that.
joe rogan
Well, the way we would visit like North Sentinel Island and visit those people that are trapped on that island that are uncontacted.
Yeah.
david grusch
Yeah, exactly.
And then a lot of, and there's also like cargo cult religions and stuff, you know, the South Pacific and World War II.
They worshipped the P-51 and stuff.
They thought those were UFOs, but really they were just us, you know?
joe rogan
And we were probably alien to them.
I mean, 100%.
I mean, just look at how Cortez looked to the people that had no idea that people could ride horses.
Like, what the fuck is going on?
These guys are riding horses.
david grusch
These are gods.
These white guys come in.
joe rogan
That's insane.
They come on a ship in the ocean and they ride horses.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
david grusch
Exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's all based on our limited understanding.
And for someone, whether it's the federal government or whether it's military contractors, for someone to have key elements that could give us a better understanding of this whole picture, it's really inexcusable to not relay that to all of humanity.
So this is too much information to be secret.
It's too important.
If it is real, it's too important for someone to have access to just because they have power and money and influence.
It seems insane.
david grusch
I mean, that's the whole primer for what I did.
I mean, I think I'm a pretty moral and ethical person.
I just could not live with myself if I didn't try to make a difference, even though it was very uncomfortable.
Personal privacy and professional and personal health was at risk.
joe rogan
It also seems like the public understanding and appreciation of these things, particularly after the 2017 article in the New York Times, has changed.
There's been a shift.
Whereas before, if you would talk about UFOs or the idea of extraterrestrial life, you are automatically lumped into this group of people that believes in Bigfoot.
It's like you're in the loch nest monster.
You're kind of a loon who likes fringe things because you've probably got problems in your own life you're not addressing.
And so you're distracted.
It's like a gambler or something like that.
You're just like distracting yourself with this craziness in order to ignore the reality of existence itself, which is so complicated and difficult to manage.
And then I think that if we had a better understanding of the overall scale of the potential of life in the universe based on what we know, like physical evidence, undeniable physical evidence that shows us that we're not alone, that would be a massive change in just the overall shift of consciousness on Earth.
If we could understand that these territorial disputes that we have, which are almost always over resources or over land or over religions and ideologies, if we could understand that these are nonsense in the vast scope of the universe itself.
And this is the, what is that effect that the people that get into the space station have and astronauts?
Oh, the overview of it.
david grusch
The overview effect, yes.
William Shapner had that when he went up in the Blue Origin thing.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
I'm sure everybody has it.
I mean, I'm sure it's just like you go like, oh my God, like, what are we doing?
Like, this is one of the things.
david grusch
And that's how I felt.
I mean, like, after I found all this stuff, I could have continued my career, you know, made lieutenant colonel here this winter, made senior executive service in a year or two, did national security stuff.
But I'm like sitting in my office and I'm like, there's better things for me to care about than Russian troop movements.
Like, we're not alone.
joe rogan
Right.
david grusch
This is insane.
Like, I have to, like, blow the whistle on this.
This is insane.
Because certainly the people we talk to are not lying.
And the documents I meticulously went through, they were not forgeries.
They were not deception material.
So it's just like, I have to do something.
joe rogan
I'm sure you've seen those Freedom of Information Act disclosure papers from the CIA from, God, it was like the 1950s, where they're detailing all the various forms of life that we know are currently, that currently exist.
And you remember that, Jamie, we pulled up that document.
Do you think you can find it?
Jamie will find it.
It's like 1950 something where they were discussing these things.
david grusch
Interesting.
Yeah, I'm not sure which ones you're talking about.
I'd have to see them.
joe rogan
It's pretty weird stuff because if they knew about this in the 1950s, how do they know?
david grusch
Well, if there was like CIA docs about consciousness and like weird remote viewing stuff, I mean, besides the Stargate program that were released in the FOIA reading room on CIA's website too, that are pretty trippy where you're like, wow, CIA is looking into some really interesting stuff.
I mean, they're a hardcore intel agency.
What's going on there?
joe rogan
But it makes sense that they would kind of have to find out if that's bullshit or not.
Like you can't ignore that if you're really doing your job.
If your job is intelligence, like, okay, like, let's look at this.
david grusch
Or it's an aspect of the phenomenon because it's like a reach out from the crash retrieval program.
Like, hey, I need you to look into some weird stuff because it might be the key unlock for something that we got in a warehouse.
joe rogan
Whoa.
david grusch
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So as it stands right now, what's the future for this stuff?
What's the future for these disclosures?
And what are the bottlenecks?
david grusch
Well, I mean, certainly from the governmental process, as long as the House doesn't kill the Schumer amendment, and I'm, you know, that's why I'm discussing it here with you, because if they don't pass it, it's going to be the greatest setback to humankind in U.S. history, literally.
So the presidential panel gets impaneled about 90 days or so after the passage of the bill.
So by Christmas, as long as it doesn't get killed, we'll be in the National Defense Authorization Act.
Panel will be formed, say, February, March.
Then they have a 300-day process to develop a initial plan for the president.
And I don't know if Chuck Schumer and his staff are being kind of crafty or whatever, but the 300 days, if you actually do it out, it's like the election.
So I don't know if they want to make it an election issue, which certainly if this act doesn't pass, I think it needs to be an election issue because the senior executive needs to rule on this if Congress can't get their shit together, to be quite honest.
And we have a plan out to 2030 where this stuff starts getting rolled out, knock on wood, perfect storm, things could get delayed.
But then in parallel, and that's kind of why I helped found the Seoul Foundation with Gary Nolan and Dr. Peter Skafish, who's an anthropologist as well, is we wanted to figure out the STEM outreach.
We wanted to figure out the public policy, national policy to advise the U.S. and its allies on this issue.
And we're happy.
Like I said, I'm not here to slap the government in its entirety and admonish everybody.
Like I think there needs to be a truth and reconciliation process.
but I think our foundation, we want to be like, okay, well, bring us in as a think tank if, you know, based on my experience and experience of my colleagues, like you have an issue with X. Well, let's figure out how to roll this out and how to, you know, incentivize the National Science Foundation to look in this.
Make this like, you know, it's dual use, right?
You might develop a unique scientific process that actually works well with nanobiology or something like that, but also has dual use with UAP.
So there's parallel tracks.
I mean, there's public discovery.
There's like the Galileo project with Avi Loeb, right?
That they're trying to on their own collect techno signatures, which is, I applaud that.
I mean, obviously the government knows a lot about that, but we don't want to obviously rely on the U.S. government to do all the work for us and also to be honest.
So I think having a parallel track and, you know, Galileo Project, Seoul Foundation, Ryan Graves has his own foundation as well for pilots and people who have seen unique things to provide that data to people.
So I think you got to have those dual tracks.
And hopefully we can create a tsunami event where the U.S. government and its allies and maybe our adversaries.
But really, if the U.S. government doesn't get their house in order here, I mean, you could have uncontrolled disclosure events such that either maybe the non-human intelligence is like, yeah, let's do it.
Or what if one of our adversaries decides to disclose and they become the messiah figure on this and we lose sovereignty or national supremacy in that regard from an open and honest civil society perspective?
So I – but I think the governments – we're getting close, I think, as long as – Just the fact that they brought you in to have these conversations.
Yeah, no, I'm still advising the U.S. governments on this and I'm trying to carefully message this, put all the broad things on the table.
And I'm not trying to be coy.
I'm not trying to conceal anything, but it's like there's real national security and collateral damage with just releasing this willy-nilly.
And I'm just trying to get the government to get a plan together here and just be open and honest with the people of the world, really.
joe rogan
And there's still the bottleneck with these military contractors that allegedly have access to these things.
unidentified
Yeah.
david grusch
And like to those guys, and I know some of them, and the individuals that hold the keys, like this is a boon.
Like this is, don't look at it like you're going to lose money.
This is a recruiting opportunity.
Yes, you're going to have to let other people in the cookie jar.
That's how a fair and free society works.
And they should be able to compete for work.
And because that was one of the main, I talked to some individuals that were in an informal session for a previous administration on should we disclose or not for a former president.
And really insightful what they told me.
And one of the biggest impases to disclosure wasn't the ontological shock from a socioeconomic or theological perspective.
It was, well, there's some white collar crime.
We violated the federal acquisition regulations.
We sole sourced this work to some big companies for decades.
Contractors are going to litigate this to the Supreme Court saying they lost billions of projected income because they didn't get the bid on the work.
And it's going to be this like liability disaster for the U.S. government.
And the problem with that is, is like, I understand that, but like, that's why you need to have a truth and reconciliation process.
It's almost like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa, where people who committed like murder came in and was like, this is what happened.
Here you go.
And, you know, they don't get convicted of those crimes.
And I'm not saying, I mean, people who've committed murder as it relates to this subject, okay, we should probably hold them accountable.
But for some of this stuff, there needs to be a process where we kind of mitigate some of those unfortunate legal issues.
But that was one of the main issues a certain group for a reasonably recent administration came up with and advised that president, hey, look, there's going to be a lot of Supreme Court stuff.
Let's not be that guy.
So it's like, that's the barrier.
That's the reason?
Come on.
Well, it's ridiculous.
joe rogan
It makes sense, though, that they would think that way, because I do believe that lawsuits would emerge from something like that.
david grusch
Oh, certainly.
And also, it's like the government admitting that we can't protect its citizenry.
These non-human intelligents want to do something to you.
Sorry, we don't have any countermeasures to that.
It's like this, there's a social contract between the citizens and the government.
We can protect you, et cetera.
And in this case, it's like it's an enigma.
But I think this is almost like, you remember like after 9-11, I was in high school when 9-11 happened and people were afraid of dirty bombs, terrorists.
We didn't know what was going to happen next.
We lived in fear, but like, you know, we banded together in the presence of fear and apprehension and unknowing what the world was going to be.
And we made it through it.
I mean, that's a coarse analogy to this, but people just have to think in that mindset— Like it's going to be a little scary.
It's not going to be like kumbaya.
Let's move the shit to the Masonian and check it out.
It's going to be some, you know, awkward and things we're going to have to address sociologically, I guess.
joe rogan
Are you optimistic about how all this lays out?
david grusch
I am.
I mean, it's kind of like when I was testifying in the public hearing, oddly bipartisan in a good way, I had AOC and Matt Gates like agreeing on something and they were like smiling at each other.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
david grusch
This is crazy.
You know, I'm like, look, there's AOC.
There's Matt Gates.
There's Timbershett.
I mean, there's like people, Garcia, like people that wouldn't see eye to eye on most of the time.
joe rogan
It's such a human issue.
david grusch
Because they want to know the truth, too.
And I don't think the leaders in Congress want to be told that they're second-class citizens.
I mean, a lot of presidents weren't briefed to everything.
Some presidents knew a lot more than others, and I have a pretty good beat on that.
And it's like, wait, the chief executive that also forms foreign policy, you don't tell them about ostensibly a foreign element.
So how do they, as chief of state, how do they form foreign policy when you don't fully brief them on a foreign element?
It's like classifying the existence of Russia.
joe rogan
Right.
Right.
david grusch
So you're actually, you know, non-constitutional by not allowing our commander in chief all information sometimes.
You know, and I don't know what Harry Reid talked to Joe Biden.
I mean, it was certainly the substance that I mentioned here.
And I hope that Joe Biden has been briefed on the program, so to speak.
At least I'm giving him an oral unclassified briefing right now, I guess, if he hasn't been.
And I'm happy to talk to Jake Sullivan or Avril Haynes and Avril Haynes if she's not briefed.
Like she's supposed to be briefed to all intelligence in the country.
It's 50 U.S. Code, Section 3024.
The director of National Intelligence has allowed everything from all federal agencies that's intel related.
Well, ma'am, if you don't know what I'm talking about, we have a problem because you're not being briefed by CIA director and some other agencies.
joe rogan
Well, listen, David, I really appreciate what you've done.
I think you've done a great service to humanity just by taking a stand and communicating these ideas and letting people know how much of this is real.
And, you know, you've opened up a world of discourse that probably would not have existed if you hadn't done that.
Thanks.
Yeah.
david grusch
I mean, this was not easy.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much for being here, and good luck in the future.
david grusch
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you.
All right.
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