Joe Rogan Experience #1713 - Mike Baker
Narrator, Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Mike Baker (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Narrator, Joe Rogan Experience #1713 - Mike Baker explores ex-CIA officer dissects COVID, Afghanistan, China, and covert power games Joe Rogan and former CIA officer Mike Baker cover a wide range of geopolitical and domestic issues, including COVID policy, the Afghanistan withdrawal, U.S.–China tech conflict, and information warfare. They argue institutions and media have become deeply partisan, facts are routinely subordinated to narrative, and public trust is collapsing. Baker explains how intelligence services exploit social media to sow division and how U.S. political theater obscures accountability for major failures like Afghanistan. The conversation closes with concerns about AI, hypersonic weapons, UFOs, and whether the U.S. can remain competitive without adopting more authoritarian tactics.
Ex-CIA officer dissects COVID, Afghanistan, China, and covert power games
Joe Rogan and former CIA officer Mike Baker cover a wide range of geopolitical and domestic issues, including COVID policy, the Afghanistan withdrawal, U.S.–China tech conflict, and information warfare. They argue institutions and media have become deeply partisan, facts are routinely subordinated to narrative, and public trust is collapsing. Baker explains how intelligence services exploit social media to sow division and how U.S. political theater obscures accountability for major failures like Afghanistan. The conversation closes with concerns about AI, hypersonic weapons, UFOs, and whether the U.S. can remain competitive without adopting more authoritarian tactics.
Key Takeaways
Media narratives around COVID and vaccines have been highly misleading and partisan.
They point to early promises that vaccines would completely prevent infection and transmission, censorship of the lab-leak hypothesis, and inconsistent messaging from officials like Fauci and Biden, arguing this erodes public trust and fuels polarization.
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The Afghanistan withdrawal was a predictable failure, yet no one will be held accountable.
Baker says senior military leaders clearly advised keeping at least 2,500 troops, intelligence indicated the Afghan government would eventually collapse, and yet political incentives in Washington led to a chaotic exit that’s now being spun as a success.
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China systematically exploits Western greed and openness to steal technology and gain leverage.
Using the ARM China ‘semiconductor heist of the century’ as a case study, they argue Western firms repeatedly underestimate Chinese state control over “private” companies and lose critical intellectual property with little recourse.
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Russian and Chinese information operations are designed to create chaos, not pick sides.
Referencing KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov and recent election interference, Baker says foreign services focus on amplifying division—on race, elections, or vaccines—so that Americans lose faith in their institutions regardless of which party wins.
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The U.S. operates at a strategic disadvantage because government and industry are firewalled.
Unlike China and many European states, U. ...
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Emerging technologies—AI, hypersonic missiles, and autonomous drone swarms—could outpace human control.
They describe hypersonic weapons that travel a mile per second and drone swarms with potential AI-driven autonomy, warning that shrinking reaction times may tempt militaries to remove humans from decision loops with unpredictable consequences.
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Social and political “woke” crusades can undermine institutional focus and are easily weaponized.
Baker criticizes performative diversity and inclusion campaigns within the CIA and military when they overshadow operational effectiveness, and Rogan notes such ideological movements are ripe for manipulation by foreign adversaries and domestic media ecosystems.
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Notable Quotes
“Facts don’t matter in Washington anymore. Facts don’t matter anywhere anymore.”
— Mike Baker
“You’re never ever, ever gonna be righteous enough for the mob.”
— Mike Baker
“What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American… despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions.”
— Yuri Bezmenov (quoted in the episode)
“It’s not as if Twitter is not involved in active measures, in their own way.”
— Mike Baker
“I feel like the future’s fucked.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
If foreign adversaries are actively exploiting our internal divisions, what practical steps can individual citizens take to resist manipulation and verify information?
Joe Rogan and former CIA officer Mike Baker cover a wide range of geopolitical and domestic issues, including COVID policy, the Afghanistan withdrawal, U. ...
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Given Baker’s criticism of both parties on Afghanistan, what structural reforms—term limits, new parties, or otherwise—could realistically improve accountability in U.S. foreign policy decisions?
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How should Western governments balance openness and free markets with the need to protect critical technologies from state-directed IP theft by China and others?
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At what point do AI-driven weapons and autonomous systems become too dangerous to pursue, and who, if anyone, should set and enforce global limits on their development?
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Is it possible to design diversity and inclusion efforts in national security institutions that genuinely enhance operational effectiveness without drifting into performative “woke” politics?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Hey, bro.
Hello, Mike Baker.
What's happening, buddy?
Hey, you know what? Um-
We turn to you...
Uh, we turn to you to find out what's happening.
... whenever shit gets completely sideways, it's time to bring in Mike Baker for, uh, some sort of analysis.
Yeah, that was... (laughs) Sounds very Sunday morning news talk show.
(laughs)
Thank you.
Yeah, great. I mean-
Well, thanks, Chris Wallace, for having me. (laughs)
Tell me, what the fuck is going on?
(laughs)
This place is falling apart. Who's running the show? What's happening?
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for my antibody test.
Ah.
I'm psyched about that.
You're psyched.
Yeah. Yeah.
You don't need that, that wacky booster.
No, no, I got that, I got that... I got a picture of it and everything? I'm like, "Yeah."
So, you must have been exposed. You've been vaccinated, but then-
Mm-hmm.
... you probably got exposed to COVID somewhere along the line recently.
Yeah.
You said you had a day where you were kind of run down?
I had a day where I was a little bit run down, and then, uh... But I got th- I got the second of the, uh, vaccines, uh, shots was at the end of February. So, that's, what, seven months.
Yeah.
So-
It's a long time.
Yeah, it's a long time. And so... And those little lines on the... Not that I understand it. I'm talking like I understand what I just looked at, but... But, um, the lines on the antibody test results looked pretty damn good. And-
Pretty stiff.
Yeah.
You had a stiff line there.
Very virile. And so...
It looked good.
Yeah. So, I think, uh... It does... And I've been traveling like a son of a bitch, right-
Mm-hmm.
... over the past three or four months. There's no way I, I haven't been exposed. Now, I got the boys, right, going to school.
Yeah.
They're coming home, you know, and, and it's not like they didn't bring back every germ, you know, ever invented before the pandemic.
Right.
So, they're doing the same thing with COVID. So, I, I'd have to assume at some point, yeah, I, I got exposed.
My kid got a regular cold recently.
No m- Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Do they still do that?
I didn't know they were still around.
They still get a cold? I don't-
She got a regular cold. I was like, "This is crazy."
I know. It, it's like... And it's... There's, uh, so many things that are fucked up about this, but... But it's... People have forgotten that every year, maybe you go out and you get your flu shot. It didn't mean you weren't gonna come down with the flu that season. It just would be maybe a little bit better, right?
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