嘉宾访谈·中文精读

比尔·格利:寻找费曼

Bill Gurley: Searching for Feynman

比尔·格利在 All-In 峰会上做主题演讲,借费曼的求真精神审视当下科技业的研究风气与创新路径。

官方音频00:00 / --:--

本期章节点时间可跳到音频对应位置

  1. 0:00比尔·格利登上 All-In 峰会舞台
  2. 1:29比尔的演讲:寻找费曼
中文精读由 AI 基于原始节目改写,非官方翻译,可能存在偏差或错误;观点归属与表述以原音频与官方文稿为准。说明

Bill Gurley 走上 All-In Summit 的台,第一句话就交代了:今天不讲 AI。

他讲的是六年前那件事。2019 年 12 月开始的 COVID,造成 1500 万人死亡,让这个星球上每一个人的生活都脱了轨,全球代价 45 万亿美元。六年过去,根因仍然没有定论。

Gurley 在硅谷待了 25 年以上,投出过 Uber 和 Zillow,经历过每一轮技术周期。这场演讲他准备了五六年,读过的材料他自己估能排进前 1%。开场时他说这个题目不太有笑话可讲。

为了让听众明白 COVID 究竟缺了什么,他先讲了另外五个灾难。

五个灾难,每一个都是技术失败叠加机构失败

2021 年 6 月,佛罗里达州瑟夫赛德的 Champlain Towers South 突然垮塌,98 人死亡。三重问题叠在一起:设计从一开始就有缺陷,维护计划形同虚设,业委会无视了一份明确要求整改的检查报告。技术层面的链条更具体,泳池平台长期暴露在含盐空气中被腐蚀,塌进地下室,带走了结构柱,整栋楼跟着倒下来。

《纽约时报》为这件事做了 3D 调查报道。国家标准与技术研究院(NIST)在 9·11 之后被赋予调查建筑倒塌的联邦职能,两名调查员为此投入五年。被称为「建筑倒塌界的狼」的 Allyn Kilsheimer 被市政府请来。佛州法官召集大陪审团,17 起受害者诉讼合并成一个集体诉讼。

《迈阿密先驱报》当时刚刚经历破产重整,新上任的总编 Monica Richardson 还是让团队硬上。记者 Aaron Leibowitz 两小时内到达现场,Sarah Blaskey 带队做调查,团队最终扩到 37 人,还挖来华盛顿大学的 Dawn Lehman 教授,也做出一套 3D 模型,拿下普利策奖。Richardson 领奖时说,他们会继续追查,确保这样的悲剧不再发生。

后续是规则的改变:佛州全面修订公寓管理法规,多个沿海州跟进。这就是灾难该有的完整闭环。

第二件事是 737 MAX。空客推出了一款极其省油的飞机,开始抢波音的市场份额。波音想回应,但重新设计一款新飞机意味着海量的培训和认证成本,卖起来更麻烦。于是他们决定把更省油的发动机挂到老 737 上。问题在于发动机太大,只能往前移。发动机往前移,机身配重就失衡了,试飞时偶尔会出现机头上仰。

于是他们写了一段不告诉任何人的软件,叫 MCAS。传感器一旦报告机头在抬,自动驾驶就把机头压下去。埃塞俄比亚航空那架飞机上,传感器故障了,软件以为机头在仰,一路把飞机推向地面。2018 年 10 月和 2019 年 3 月,两起坠机。

Gurley 把参与调查的力量称为「六个搜寻者」:美国参议院委员会、众议院委员会、司法部;印尼的 KNKT,它有权检查黑匣子,很快就发现飞行员在跟自动驾驶搏斗;媒体,西雅图时报的 Dominic Gates 跟了波音 16 年,拿下普利策,Peter Robison 写了《Flying Blind》;57 名举报人给参议院写信举报波音;受害者家属全程在场,持续给国会施压;飞行员协会的人对这段秘密软件极为愤怒,他们跟波音会面时偷偷录音交给媒体,波音不再回应后,协会反过来对波音发起 FOIA 请求。

挡路人也有:波音和 FAA。波音一开始指责飞行员训练不足,FAA 拒绝向参议院小组提供文件。参议员 Ted Cruz 当着 FAA 局长的面说他被「captured」,用回了三年前 Gurley 演讲里那个词,还问了一句:先生,你知道你不为波音工作吗?

最要命的一点是时间线。第一起坠机发生 45 天后,几乎所有人都已经知道 MCAS 是元凶,没有人停飞。波音没停,FAA 没停。第一起坠机本就不该发生,第二起更不该。

第三件事,2005 年的卡特里娜飓风。1800 人死亡,40 万人流离失所,损失 1250 亿美元。而它登陆时只是一个三级飓风。

陆军工程兵团想让公众相信水漫过了堤坝,也就是天灾、不可抗力。实际情况是堤坝从底部被掏空。《时代皮卡尤恩报》的 Mark Schleifstein 和 John McQuaid 在三年前就写过这件事有多危险,他们拿下两个普利策奖。国家科学基金会(NSF)专门搞了一场「比稿」,让另一支团队独立调查,加州大学两位教授带队;路易斯安那州又请了 LSU 的团队。所有人得出同一个结论:这是人为错误。

工程兵团请美国土木工程师学会(ASCE)加入他们的内部调查,付了 100 万美元。时间一长,ASCE 被裹进这套体系里,自己也成了挡路人。加州大学伯克利分校的教授 Raymond Seed 事后写了 42 页报告,逐条列出 ASCE 在哪些环节上阻拦。那份文档现在还在网上。

这次的结果是好的:各路调查提出 90 条建议,全部被采纳,150 亿美元重修海堤,20 年过去没再垮过。

第四件,福岛。2200 人死亡,15.4 万人疏散,2000 亿美元清理费用。防波堤高度是 5.7 米,海啸漫过去,打掉发电机,堆芯熔毁,没有办法冷却。内部文件显示,他们预期 30 年窗口内可能出现 10 到 15 米的海啸,报告被压了下来。把墙加高就能解决的事,没有做。

又是熟悉的一对:TEPCO 是运营方,NISA 是监管方,两边都在挡。Gurley 的判断更狠一点,他说这本身就是监管俘获的结果,监管者和被监管者几乎成了朋友。

这一场的英雄是黑川清(Kiyoshi Kurokawa)。日本国会请他主持该国历史上第一次民间独立调查,规定委员会里任何人都不能跟监管机构或电力公司有机构关联,并且授权他们查任何人。黑川清定下三条原则:关心人的安全,不要让调查变成一场关于核电的论战;调查必须产出可执行的建议;考虑到三哩岛和切尔诺贝利在全球留下的印象,他清楚这件事的分量。

他是医学博士,不是核物理学家,但他主持得很好。七个月后发布报告,而且先用英文发布,因为担心全球透明度和外界的看法。报告第一句是:

福岛核电站事故不能被视为自然灾害。它是彻底的人为事故,本可以也应该被避免。(黑川清)

第五件,1986 年 1 月的挑战者号。Gurley 记得那天是周二,他还在上大学。固体火箭助推器上的 O 型圈不是为低温设计的,那天早上佛罗里达很冷。分包商前一晚试图反对发射,被压了下去。

里根成立罗杰斯委员会,成员大多是圈内人:尼尔·阿姆斯特朗,几位宇航员,几位将军,华盛顿的官员,NASA 的高管。有人提议把费曼加进去,Gurley 猜测大概是想找个物理学家盖个章。费曼是加州理工教授,诺贝尔奖得主,参与过曼哈顿计划,确实够格。

他们不知道的是,这个人极度独立,极度求真的,而且对不必要的客套毫无耐心。费曼本来不想干,说自己讨厌华盛顿,是妻子说服了他。一旦答应,他把未来六个月的日程全部清空,委员会里没有第二个人这么做。他去华盛顿之前就开始自己调查,直接跑到 NASA 的各个设施找人谈。阿姆斯特朗跟他说过:我们只评估,不调查。已经太晚了。

三个细节。罗杰斯在洗手间碰到阿姆斯特朗,说费曼真是个麻烦精。费曼在电视直播里把一块类似 O 型圈的材料浸进冰水,拿出来一掰就断,全场哗然,委员会其他人气坏了。最后委员会把报告打磨得四平八稳,费曼打电话给罗杰斯,要求把自己名字拿掉,逼得委员会让步,把他的全部笔记一字不改地收进报告附录 F。

科学界早有一套流程,叫 CAPA,核心是不能跳过根因

Gurley 把这套流程拎出来单独讲了一遍:纠正与预防措施(CAPA),五步,检测、调查、确认根因、纠正、预防。落点是预防,但根因这一环不能跳,你不知道真正发生了什么,就不知道该怎么修。FDA 在药品和医疗器械领域强制要求 CAPA,航空航天业也有类似法规。

然后他话锋一转。

COVID:1500 万人死亡,六年后不知道根因

他把前面五场灾难的死亡和损失加总,得到 5000 人和 3490 亿美元。COVID 是它的三千倍。他把所有空难、飓风、核事故、建筑倒塌、太空事故全部加进去,也还只有 COVID 的三分之一。

他说自己的孩子在高中和大学阶段正好撞上这三年,人生最成型的几年被拿走。他不想再经历一次。

六年后,我们不知道根因是什么。所以请原谅我不怕某个 AI 公司的聊天机器人会对人类做什么,当你连这件事已经做了什么都说不出的时候。我对再来一次疫情的 P 值,远高于我对末日的 P 值。如果他们的模型真的那么聪明,告诉我这里发生了什么。让他们来解决这个问题。(Bill Gurley)

「P 值」是投资人的口语,指概率。

费曼在纪录片里被劝过要温和一点,他回了一句:可是死了七个人。Gurley 把这句话放大了:如果死七个人的时候你都必须穿过客套去追真相,那死 1500 万人的时候,你该怎么表现?

该发生的调查,一件都没发生

他列了一张清单,语气比前面任何一段都重。清单上的每一条,在那些规模小得多的灾难里都发生过,而且做得认真、有目的。

  • 没有一家新闻机构为 COVID 组建超过 30 名调查记者的团队。主流大报一家都没做。
  • 没有 Gates、Schleifstein、Fackler 那样的执拗记者,背后有整个编辑部撑腰。
  • 没有像卡特里娜和 737 MAX 那样的两党参众两院委员会。
  • 没有费曼或黑川清式的独立调查。
  • 没有科学资助的第三方调查。前两个案例里 NIST 和 NSF 都主动启动了,这次 NIH 什么都没有。
  • 没有大规模的受害者诉讼。

他点名的五个人,他不认为是专家,是挡路人

Francis Collins,Anthony Fauci,Peter Daszak(EcoHealth Alliance,一家做病毒学研究的非营利),Jeremy Farrar(Wellcome Trust,资助了大量相关工作,后来去了 WHO),Ralph Baric(北卡罗来纳大学,美国顶级病毒学家)。

Gurley 给出四条理由,说明为什么他认为这五个人扮演的角色跟 FAA、波音、NASA 在那些事故里一模一样。

第一,他们是病毒学圈内人。聚光灯打过来的时候,圈内人的本能反应是围起车阵。他觉得这里面未必有恶意,但确实是一种病态的应对方式。

第二,他们领导了一场误导运动,把公众带离线索,并且明确叫人不要去搜。

第三,他们在 COVID 之前都公开主张功能增强研究(gain-of-function),也就是把病毒改造成对动物或人更危险。奥巴马曾禁止过这类研究,他们一直推动让它更多地发生。Fauci 2011 年在《华盛顿邮报》写过一篇评论文章,说这件事利大于弊。行为心理学家会告诉你,一旦你公开说过这个方向利大于弊,你就毫无可能在调查真相时保持中立。因为要让你在晚上躺下时相信自己参与的事造成了 1500 万人死亡,那是不可能睡着的,大脑更可能骗你,让你相信它没发生。有这种偏见的人,连陪审团都进不去。

第四条他放在最后,说这是最重要的一条:他们从来没有开始搜过。不是停止了,是压根没开始。他们本该在搜,现在也该在搜。

确实有人在搜。Drastic 是一群松散联合的科学家,共享信息,有网站,Gurley 形容「差不多相当于 20 个 Nick Shirley,全是病毒学家或科学家」。U.S. Right to Know 是一家非营利,这里大部分 FOIA 请求都是他们提的,可以捐钱,他自己捐了。

他另外点了五位他称为英雄的人:Alina Chan,最早意识到病毒看起来像是为人类设计的分子生物学家之一,与 Matt Ridley 合著过一本书,《纽约时报》这两年发过她两篇评论文章;Katherine Eban,第一个公开说「我们看这件事的方式不对」的人,那篇文章发在《名利场》,标题是《The Fight to Discover COVID Origins》,重点其实是「发现过程」本身也有一场战斗;Emily Kopp,曾在 U.S. Right to Know 工作,可能比任何人都知道得多,大量文件是她挖出来的;Zeynep Tufekci,普林斯顿教授;Alison Young,写了《Pandora's Gamble》,梳理了 COVID 之前所有实验室泄漏事故。

这五位都因为站出来被攻击过,有些攻击直接来自上一页那几位男性。Gurley 说这完全不合理的,他们是英雄。

被制造出来的共识,和一份早该在 2020 年 1 月曝光的文件

关于那场误导运动,Gurley 说自己的用词可能还轻了。他们成功地让所有人相信动物溢出是确定的起因,任何考虑实验室泄漏、哪怕只是问一句的人,都是阴谋论者。他们熟悉学术期刊这套玩法,《Proximal Origins》那篇论文一周就写完了,根本不可能做过调查,就是想赶紧发出去。《柳叶刀》也有一篇类似的。这些论文被反复引用,维基百科绕来绕去总是回到它们身上。

他们还把这件事党派化了。民调问「你认为 COVID 是怎么来的」,民主党人和共和党人给出不同答案。Gurley 说这太荒唐了,这件事跟政治倾向本不该有任何关系。

Zeynep Tufekci 45 天前发过一条推,措辞非常小心。40 万浏览,零社区笔记。Katherine Eban 说得更短,她管这个叫 manufactured consensus,被制造出来的共识。

然后是那份文件。COVID 三年之后,Drastic 团队挖出了它,叫 Diffuse 提案,可以公开下载。他说现场举手的人寥寥无几,主流期刊从未报道过这份提案。

文件内容是 EcoHealth Alliance 的一份研究计划,把北卡(他在演讲里说成杜克)的顶级病毒学家和武汉的顶级病毒学家连在一起,后者就是被称作「蝙蝠女」的石正丽。计划是在一个蝙蝠冠状病毒的 S1-S2 交界处插入一个弗林蛋白酶切割位点,理由是这会让它在动物体内更具感染性。

Gurley 说他用 AI 做了一次干净会话,也就是不让模型看到之前任何对话,问它:如果我想用 CAPA 的科学原则来解决 COVID 起源问题,看到这份 Diffuse 提案会怎么反应?AI 的回答是:这是直接的调查线索,高度关键,属于最高等级的一手文件证据。

他的判断很直接:如果这份文件在 2020 年 1 月就被曝光,我们当时的对话会完全不同。它没有。

按 CAPA 流程的下一步,该去要杜克和北卡的文件。搜寻者一直在做,北卡罗来纳大学和北卡州政府在挡,拒绝交出文件。Gurley 向现场听众提了个请求:如果有人跟 UNC 有关系,或者认识董事会的人,请让他们想一想,他们保护的东西是不是比预防下一次更重要。

他还推荐了 Matt Ridley 今年三月跟 NIH 院长 Jay Bhattacharya 的一场访谈,作为快速补课的入口。

收尾时他引了一句归于柏拉图的话:

我们可以轻易原谅一个害怕黑暗的孩子。人生真正的悲剧,是当男人害怕光明。(归于柏拉图)

问答:为什么没有记者去追这个普利策

杰森(Jason Calacanis)上台后说,认识 Gurley 三十年,只见过他情绪激动过两次,一次是 Jason Isbell 的演唱会,一次是限量球鞋被仿冒。这一次是私人的,因为「他们对我们孩子做的事」确实伤到他了。

Gurley 的回答回到预防。他说自己对下一场疫情毫无信心,如果明天再来一次,可能应对得更糟。误导运动造成的信任缺失已经埋下去了,下次没有人会听,也没有人有能力领导。

杰森追问:你反复强调调查性新闻和普利策的分量,那种新闻跟点击量新闻是两回事。为什么这次没人去追这个普利策,没人投大笔资源?这本身就很可疑。他还记得 Fauci 好像被赦免过。

Gurley 说他列那些普利策,就是为了把这一点摆出来。布鲁金斯学会有一场很好的讨论,他提到的那几位女性中有三四位组了个小组,专门讲媒体为什么错过了这件事。Katherine Eban 和 Emily Kopp 都把矛头指回病毒学专家们的误导运动,是他们让「问问题」本身变成了一种失礼的举动。考虑到后果的规模,这件事糟透了。而信息还在往外冒,离真相在靠近,他希望新闻室现在进场。

杰森把话说得更直:这次你要是问了问题,你就会被归为不相信专家的阴谋论者,你因为提问而受罚,这是纯粹恶意的做法。你只是问一句,这件事有没有可能来自武汉?你们确实资助了功能增强研究。为什么这个问题这么难回答?

Gurley 说,行为心理学家会告诉你,为了保住自己的理智,人是可以骗自己的。

最后杰森问:基于你现在掌握的,你认为最可能的起源场景是什么?

Gurley 说他刻意没有在这次演讲里站边,因为根因还没找到。他愿意支持任何方向的调查,任何人如果百分之百确信是动物溢出,他支持去做那个研究,如果谁想去找动物,他也愿意出钱。但他补了一个数据点:中国检测了 8 万只动物,没有发现一例跨物种传播。而中国有巨大的动机去找,只要能找到,湿地市场理论就能让他们彻底摆脱嫌疑。动机这么强,为什么还没找到?另外,Fauci 在已经解密的文件里承认,在湿地市场那个超级传播事件之前,就已经有多起病例。

杰森收尾时说,这可能会成为 Gurley 一生中最重要的工作。

整场演讲里,Gurley 有一个立场始终没变:不要让这件事变成起诉,也不要让它变成党派之争。他明确说 Rand Paul 把重点放在追责上是走错了方向,重点应该是根因和预防。

我不是在替科学说话,像 Anthony Fauci 那样。我是在替科学探究说话。没有任何人有资格告诉你不能去搜。(Bill Gurley)

这件事对普通人意味着什么

  • 遇到灾难性事件,先看根因有没有被独立确认。找不到根因的预防方案,都是表演。这条标准对公共卫生、对安全事故、对你公司的线上故障复盘,一样适用。
  • 信息增量最大的地方往往不在大机构。Drastic 和 U.S. Right to Know 这类小组织,才是目前还在往外挖文件的一方。关注它们的更新,成本极低。
  • 调查性新闻和非营利的 FOIA 工作,是可以直接捐钱支持的。这是唯一还在持续推进的渠道,而且它缺钱。
  • 在自己的专业领域里,如果你曾公开为某个方向站过台,就要承认自己不再适合当这个方向的裁判。这不只是道德问题,是认知结构问题。
  • 不要把「问一个可能性」和「相信一个结论」混为一谈。把提问污名化,代价会比一次错误的假设大得多。
  • 如果你有北卡大学或杜克大学的关系,可以推动他们公开文件。这类施压不需要专业背景,只需要有人问。
  • 看下一次公共卫生事件的应对时,重点看有没有独立的第三方调查启动。它是否启动,比事后谁来道歉更能说明制度有没有学到东西。
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(00:00:00) Silicon Valley royalty, legendary investor, Bill Gurley. Track record's incredible. The legend who backed Uber and Zillow, who's lived through every major tech cycle for over 25 years. You're not just a commentator, right? You've been an operator. I'd love to unlock this latent human potential. There's been no time in the history of the world where you can learn faster. You can increase your surface area for luck. I'm not a big fan of these dystopian narratives. The thing to do right now is to run as fast as you can. Please welcome Bill Gurley. It's good to be here again. (00:00:46) Three years ago, I gave a talk on regulatory capture, and this group was quite kind in how they reacted and how that video was promoted. And I'm very happy we got that word out into the public discourse. Obviously, today you hear it quite a bit. I have a different topic I'm going to talk to you about today. I'm not going to talk about AI. It's a serious topic, and so there might not be as many fun joke parts in it. But it's something that's been weighing on my mind for the past five or six years, and I'm thankful that the team here allowed me to come to talk to you about it. And I'm hopeful that we can have an impact by getting the word out on this as well. I'm going to start by talking to you about some catastrophes that have happened in the world (00:01:33) and how humans normally respond to them. This is the Chamberlain Towers in Surfside, Florida. You may remember in June of 2021 when the building suddenly collapsed. Ninety-eight people died. What happened? There were design areas from the very beginning. There was poor maintenance schedule. And then the board of the condominium did not listen to an inspection report that said they needed to take care of this. Three different things. That's kind of the institutional failure. The technical failure was different, and you can see it here. This is a New York Times article. Hopefully they can push play so you can see. It's a 3D article. If they can't make it play, you'll have to watch it on your own. Here we go. But the reason I want you to see this isn't to talk about the details of exactly how this collapsed. (00:02:23) It turned out the pool deck was exposed to saltwater air. It corroded. The pool deck collapsed into the basement, which took out the structural columns, and the building came down. But what I want you to take away from this is the New York Times and its investigative team had excruciating detail about how this happened, which comes from doing primary investigative work. There were four other parallel investigations that happened. The NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology. After 9-11, they were assigned as a federal agency to go investigate what happens in a building collapse. These two individuals, Matrini Reisner and Bell, would spend five years on this. Alan Kilsheimer is the wolf of building collapses. (00:03:10) He's who you call when you want to figure out what happened. The town of Surfside hired him. Judge Randall would convene a grand jury in the state of Florida to investigate this. And there were 17 victim lawsuits, which got put under a single class. Tropin was the litigant, and Hansman was the judge that did that. All of these different groups were doing investigations on their own, sometimes running into each other, sometimes helping each other out, but all trying to get at what caused the failure. One particularly heroic group was the Miami Herald. They had just gone through bankruptcy. They had a new executive editor named Monica Richardson. But they went after this hard. The beat reporter, Alan Leibovitz, was on the scene within two hours. Sarah Blaski would lead an investigative team. (00:03:58) They would eventually find Dawn Lehman, who was a professor at the University of Washington, and she would join the team. They would staff up to 37 people on this. They have a 3D model that's equally impressive to the New York Times win. And they would deservedly win a Pulitzer Prize for the work that they did. When they won it, Monica Richardson, the executive editor, who also won an award for executive editor of the year from her peers, said, we will continue to investigate the collapse to find answers to how this happened to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again. Now, finding the failure cause doesn't help if you don't prevent. This is a list of some of the changes that went into all the condominium rules in Florida. And thankfully, multiple other states, especially coastal states, adopted them. (00:04:47) So you have change that causes prevention. And that's what you want to have happen when these things happen. 737 MAX crash. Unfortunately, there were two crashes, October 2018 and March 2019. For those of you who don't know what happened, let me give you the really short version. Airbus had come out with a plane that was incredibly fuel efficient. And they were starting to take share from Boeing. Boeing wanted to respond. If they built a new plane, it required tons of hours of teaching and training. And that makes it harder to sell. So they decided they would attach a fuel efficient engine to an old plane, the 737. That's how you get the name 737 MAX. The problem is the engine was too big and they had to move it forward on the wing. (00:05:33) When you move it forward on the wing, the plane is imbalanced. And they had this problem during test flights when it would occasionally tip up. So they wrote a piece of software, secret software called MCAS, MCAS. And they put it in there without telling anybody. And if the sensor went off and told them the plane was tipping up, the autopilot would push it down. The poor pilot that was flying the Ethiopian Airways flight, his sensor malfunctioned. The software thought that the plane was tilting up and it pushed it into the ground. That's what happened. Okay. There were many people that investigated this. I call them the six searchers. The U.S. government did a Senate commission, a House commission, and the DOJ went after it. (00:06:21) KNKT is the Indonesian firm that, or the Indonesian agency that had the right to inspect the black boxes. They could tell very quickly the pilot was fighting the autopilot. The press played a key role. Dominique Gates had followed Boeing for the Seattle Times for 16 years. He would win a Pulitzer for his work here. Peter Robeson wrote a book called Flying Blind. You can tell why it would have that title. Fifty-seven whistleblowers sent letters into the Senate to tell on Boeing. The victim's family showed up and were ever-present and put pressure on Congress to make sure something happened. And the head of the pilot's union was very upset that they had put this piece of software in there and not told the pilots. Boeing tried to come have a sit-down with the pilot's union, and they secretly recorded what Boeing said and gave it to the press. (00:07:14) And then when they wouldn't respond to Boeing's request, the pilots' union issued FOIA requests against Boeing. It's unheard of. Now, in these situations where you have six searchers, you also have blockers. And unfortunately, in this case, both Boeing and the FAA were being unhelpful in trying to find out what happened. Boeing initially accused the pilots of not being trained well enough. The FAA refused document requests to the Senate panel. And one thing I would tell you about these big organizations, when you put a spotlight on them, they can feel the weight of that spotlight, and they circle the wagons. I think part of it's institutional. I don't think they're necessarily evil. They have a sick sense about how to respond when they're put on the spotlight like that. (00:08:02) The other thing that's interesting here is a lot of people came to think that Boeing and the FAA were working as one. Senator Ted Cruz, when he had the head of the FAA in front of the Senate, literally accused him of being captured. There's our favorite word again. And he even said to them, Sir, do you know you don't work for Boeing? One of the real failures here in this case, 45 days after the first crash, almost everyone knew the MCAS software was at fault, and no one grounded the plane. Boeing didn't ground the plane. The FAA didn't ground the plane. And the second crash, I mean, the first crash should have never happened because that piece of software should have been identified, which would have required retraining, (00:08:49) but the second crash should have really never happened. I wanted to share with you, I don't want to go through this in detail, but these are the two different committees in the House and the Senate, and I just want to highlight that they were decidedly bipartisan. DeFazio was the head of the House committee, very active. Ted Cruz and Wicker were super active. No one thought this was anything that should be partisan, nor should it be. It turns out the scientific community has a process they use when they want to do failure analysis. It's called CAPA, captive and preventive action. And there are five steps. You detect, you investigate, confirm root cause, correct, and prevent. And it's all about prevention. You want to stop this from happening again, but you can't skip root cause. (00:09:35) That's a requirement. You don't know how to fix it if you don't know actually what happened. CAPA is required by law by the FDA and pharmaceuticals and medical device. The aerospace industry has regulations that require this type of process if you have a failure. Now let's move on. Hurricane Katrina, 2005. Look at these stats. They're horrible. 1,800 deaths, 400,000 people displaced, damage $125 billion. What happened here? Well, the Army Corps of Engineers that built the levee want you to believe that the water went over the levees. But that's, you know, an act of God, natural disaster. But this was only a hurricane, a category three level hurricane. (00:10:21) What in fact happened was the levees gave way from underneath. They washed under. And that's what's unfortunate is this was a preventable accident as well. As with these others, you have searchers and blockers. The House had a commission. The Senate had a commission. The press played a key role. Mark Schlefstein and John McQuaid had written a series three years earlier about how this could happen. They would win two Pulitzers. I actually had a chance to talk with John about it. The NSF, the National Science Foundation, cared so much about this. They did a bake-off to have another team doing investigation. And these two professors from the University of California led that. And then the state of Louisiana hired a team out of LSU. (00:11:07) And they all investigated. And, you know, I talked to John. Sometimes, once again, running into each other, sometimes blocking, sometimes sharing notes. And they all came to the exact same conclusion that this was a man-made error. The U.S. Corps of Engineers is the one that built the levees. And they naturally, as I talked about, are going to act as blockers. What's weird here is they asked the American Society of Civil Engineers if they would join the investigation, join the internal investigation. They paid them a million dollars. And over time, they would just get kind of encapsulated inside the Army Corps and become blockers themselves. When this dust doll settled, Raymond Seed, the professor from UCAL, he wrote a 42-page report to the ASCE explaining all the times that they blocked. (00:11:57) That document's on the Internet. You can go see it. Like 42 pages. That's a lot of blocking. The other thing that happened here that's great is prevention. These different investigations led to 90 recommendations. Those changes were made. And the seawalls have held. It was $15 billion. Seawalls have held now for 20 years, which is great. Let me move through a couple more real quickly. This is Fukushima. 2,200 deaths, 154,000 displaced, $200 billion in cleanup. What happened here is pretty simple. The seawall in front of the nuclear plant was 5.7 meters. The water went over the wall, took out the generators. The cores started to melt down. There was no way to cool them. And the disaster happened. (00:12:45) There were internal documents that showed they expected tsunamis in a 30-year window to be in the 10 to 15-meter range. And they buried the report. So if you had simply raised the wall, this never happened. But it didn't happen. And in a lot of these cases, there's a combination of a technical failure and an institutional failure. The technical failure is what happens, you know, to the product or the surface of the building or the seawall. The institutional failure is why did the humans let that become a weak point here? As with the others, there's searchers and blockers. The press played a role. Martin Fackler would, at the New York Times, spent 20 years in the Tokyo Bureau. He would be a Pulitzer finalist. Mr. Yorimitsu took the third-place paper and added 20 investigators to his staff to go after this. (00:13:35) Had a huge impact, won two awards. The Japanese citizens were out in force, both protesting and filing claims. And just like the FAA and Boeing, TEPCO was the company running the power plant. NISA was the regulator. And they blocked. And they blocked and they got in the way. And in fact, the failure was partially just a result of regulatory capture once again. That they weren't playing the right role of regulator and regulatee. They had almost become friends. Now, the real hero of this story is a guy named Kiryosho Kurokawa. He was asked by the Japanese parliament to lead the first ever private investigation they've ever had in their country's history. And they had a lot of power. (00:14:23) They were told that no one on the committee could have any institutional connection to the regulator or the power company. They had the full authority to go after anybody in any way. And they had a ton of meetings. Here are some of the stats. Kiryosho Kurokawa, when he kicked this off, said he had three mandates that he wanted to adhere to. One, he cared about human safety. He didn't want it to be a battle about nuclear energy. Two, he said the investigation should definitely result in recommendations. And third, he knew the weight of this because of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl from a global perspective. And he cared about that. Now, interestingly, he's a medical doctor. He's not a nuclear physicist, but he led this commission with a level of grace and professionalism that makes him a hero from my perspective. (00:15:10) All these searchers are heroes from my perspective. He would publish a report seven months later. Interestingly, they chose to publish it in English first because they were worried about global transparency and how they were perceived. And in the first sentence, he says, the accident at the power plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was profoundly man-made and it could have and should have been prevented. Powerful. One last one. This is the Challenger shuttle disaster. January 1986. I remember where I was. It was a Tuesday. I was in college. It was a long time ago. Now, everyone, if you've seen the documentaries, you know what happened here. (00:15:56) The O-rings on the solid rocket boosters weren't designed for cold. Turns out it was cold that morning in Florida. And that flaw caused a problem. Unfortunately, the subcontractor that had worked on that piece tried to object the night before that they shouldn't launch and he got shut down. So you have a technical failure, an institutional failure once again. Now, I could talk about a lot of searches and blockers, but I'm just going to talk about one, Richard Feynman, who was already mentioned during the All-In Conference this week. Richard Feynman was a professor at Caltech. When the shuttle Challenger blew up, Ronald Reagan created the Rogers Commission. And they added mostly insiders. (00:16:41) Neil Armstrong, they had astronauts, they had generals, they had people from Washington, people from NASA executives. But someone had the idea that they should put Feynman on there. And I think they wanted like a stamp of approval from a physicist. The good news is it made a lot of sense. He's one of the most famous scientists of all time. He won a Nobel Prize and he worked on the Manhattan Project. So he had a lot of credibility. What they didn't know is he's fiercely independent. He's highly truth-seeking. And he has zero time for unnecessary diplomacy. They didn't know that was coming. He didn't want to do it. He said he hated Washington. I kind of get that. His wife talked him into it. (00:17:27) But once he did it, he cleared his schedule. He took everything off his calendar for six months into the future. None of the other commission members did that. And he started doing investigation on his own before he ever went to Washington. He's like showing up at NASA facilities and like asking to meet with people. And when he got to Washington, none of the other members wanted to act that way. In fact, Neil Armstrong told him, you know, we just evaluate. We don't investigate. It was too late. He was already doing it. Now, three fun facts about this. First of all, there's a famous story, if you watch any of the documentaries, where Rogers runs into Neil Armstrong in the bathroom and says, Feynman's being a real pain in the ass. The second thing is he staged a stunt on live television. He found some material that was similar to the O-ring and in front of everybody, he dipped (00:18:15) it in his cold ice water in front of him and pulled it out and cracked it to show the failure. It infuriated the rest of the commission. And then lastly, when he submitted all his notes to the commission, they wrote a final report. They really kind of smoothed over everything and he was pissed. And so he called Rogers and said, you know what? Take my name off of it. Of course, he'd already done the thing on TV. There's no way they could take their name off of it. They caved. Appendix F to the report is all of his notes included in their entirety. Now, why am I talking to you about all these catastrophes and searchers and blockers and heroes like Kirokawa and Feynman? Because I want to talk to you about COVID-19. In December of 2019, COVID-19 caused 15 million deaths, disrupted every life on the planet, (00:19:08) and cost our globe $45 trillion. It was particularly hard on children. You've read about learning loss. My kids were in high school and college and missed three years of the most formative years of your life. I never want to live through this thing again in my life. But guess what? For all the... For all the other catastrophes, I told you what root cause is. Six years later, we don't know. So forgive me if I'm unafraid of what some AI guy's chatbot is going to do to humanity when you can't tell me what this thing already did. My P second COVID is way higher than my P doom. (00:20:06) And if their models are so f***ing smart, tell me what happened here. Let's get them working on this problem. I want to put this in perspective. I've added up all the deaths and costs of the five catastrophes I walked through with you. And you get to 5,000 deaths and $349 billion. COVID is 3,000 times bigger than that. Feynman in one of the documentaries said, someone was telling him he needed to be nicer. And he said, but seven people died. If you have to get through niceties and seek truth when seven people died, how are you supposed to behave when 15 million people die? (00:20:53) I can take it even further. I add up all plane accidents, all hurricanes, all nuclear accidents, all building collapses, all space accidents. You still only get one third of the way to what happened with COVID. We should want to know what happened here so we can stop this from happening again. Here's what didn't happen. And this is shocking because all these wonderful people, all these well-intended people did this in the other cases, which were much smaller. And they did it in a purposeful and meaningful way. There's no committed newsroom with over 30 investigators on COVID. None of the major papers did that. There was no Gates or Schlefstein or Flackard, like a dogged investigative reporter that had the backing of his newsroom going after this. (00:21:41) No bipartisan Senate congressional committees like you had in Katrina and 737 Max. You didn't have a standalone investigation with someone like Feynman or Kierkegaard. There was no science-funded investigation. The NIST and the NSF launched them in these other two cases. NIH didn't fund a third-party investigation here and no massive victims lawsuit to figure out what happened. So what went wrong? I'm going to share some thoughts with you, and I want you to be aware of a couple pieces of information that I think are kind of new or new to be understood. And I want to make one qualification. This has been bothering me for a long time. I've read a ton. I'm sure there are people that are smarter than me on this, but I've got to be top 1% in terms of how much information I've consumed. (00:22:31) The first thing I would tell you is these five people were relied on as experts. You know the first two, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci. Peter Daszak runs something called the EcoHealth Alliance. It's a nonprofit that did virology research. Jeremy Farrar was the head of the Wellcome Trust that funded a lot of this stuff and went on to work at the WHO. And then Ralph Baric is the top virologist in the U.S. at the University of North Carolina. What I'm here to tell you is they weren't experts. They were blockers. They acted exactly like FAA and Boeing and NASA did in these other situations. And I'm going to give you four reasons why I know they're blockers. First, they're virology insiders. So as I said, there's going to be a natural instinct to circle the wagon when someone shines a spotlight on you. (00:23:18) Two, they led a misinformation campaign to take us off the lead and to tell us not to search. I'm going to tell you about that in a second. Three, they were all outspoken gain-of-function advocates prior to COVID coming along. And if you don't know what gain-of-function is, it's when you take a virus and you make it intentionally more dangerous to animals or humans. They felt that that was smart to do. Obama had outlawed it. They were constantly promoting to try and make it happen more often. Fauci in 2011 wrote an article in the Washington Post, an editorial, where he said the pros outweigh the cons. Now, if you talk to any behavioral psychologist, if you've told the world we should definitely do this and the pros outweigh the cons, there's zero chance you can be impartial when it comes to figuring out what happened (00:24:07) because to go home at night and think that something you did contributed to the death of 15 million people would be impossible to go to bed. Your brain's much more likely to trick you into just thinking it didn't happen. You wouldn't be allowed on a jury if you had that kind of bias. And the fourth reason and the most important reason I know they're blockers is because they didn't search. I tell you they stopped searching, but they never started searching. And they should have been searching. They should still be searching. There are people that did search. They're not at large institutions. The two on the bottom, Drastic, is a loosely affiliated group of scientists that came together and share information. They have a website. You should follow them. It's like 20 Nick Shirleys that are all virologists or scientists. (00:24:55) U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit that's filed the majority of the FOIA claims here. And you can donate to them. I have. But I want to tell you about these five heroes. They're heroes of mine that have been actively trying to find out what happened from the very beginning. Alina Chan was one of the first molecular biologists that realized that the virus looks like it was designed for humans. She wrote a book with Matt Ridley. And here's some really good news. In the past couple of years, the New York Times has published two of her op-eds. I would rather it be the investigative team at the New York Times, but it's a start. They're really good. Read both of them. So, Catherine Ebon was the first person to really stick their neck out and say, we're not looking at this the right way. (00:25:40) She published an article, oddly in Vanity Fair, titled The Fight to Discover COVID Origins. And I think the title is important because the fight was about the discovery process. Emily Kopp worked for U.S. Right to Know. She may know more than anybody. She's been the one uncovering all of these documents. And we've been getting more and more documents each and every day, so we're learning more. Zeynep Tufekci is a professor at Princeton who also writes sometimes for the New York Times. I'm going to tell you something she did recently that I think is super important. And then Allison Young wrote a book called Pandora's Gamble that looks at all of the lab leak failures that have happened prior to COVID, which is an interesting and relevant data point to study if you want to consider whether or not that was part of the problem. (00:26:28) These five women have been attacked for sticking their neck out. Some of them directly by the men on the previous slide. And I think that's completely unreasonable. I think they're heroes. Now there's two things I want to tell you about and then I'll wrap it up. There's two pieces of information you should know about. I said earlier that the five experts slash blockers had created a misinformation campaign to take us off the lead. I think that's an understatement on what they created a highly successful misinformation campaign to convince everyone that animals spillover was the decidedly determined cause of this (00:27:17) and that anyone that considered a lab leak even thought about it or asked a single question was a conspiracy theorist. And they were successful at it. They leveraged the scientific journal community, which they understood. The Proximal Origins paper went out. Like this thing was written in like a week. There's no way you did an investigation. They just wanted to get it out there. And then the Lancet had a similar one. These papers have been cited over and over and over again. If you try and like go through Wikipedia, you just always end up going back to them. So they were highly successful. They also somehow made this thing partisan. Using the word conspiracy theory with Trump, I don't know how it happened, but they were able to get people in their surveys and polls. (00:28:03) People, what do you think caused COVID? And if you're Democrat or Republican, you have a different answer. That's nuts. Like there's no way that should be relevant in this discussion. Recently, more and more of this information has come out. So you have more understanding of how they came to write these papers. And you can see inconsistencies between what they think and what they wrote. Zeynep put this on Twitter 45 days ago. And I think she chose her words very carefully. She said, Those are strong words. (00:28:52) She put that up 45 days ago. It has 400,000 views and zero community notes. At least today. Maybe tomorrow we'll have some. Catherine Ebon was more terse, but equally opinionated. She calls it manufactured consensus. If you feel strongly, you think you know what happened in COVID, you need to understand that this happened. It took people off the scent. Three years after COVID, the drastic team uncovered this document. It's called the Diffuse Proposal. Who's heard of the Diffuse Proposal? Raise your hand. This is nuts. Look, it's like three people. Okay. Okay. No major journals ever covered the Diffuse Proposal. There was a survey of scientists who, they said, what do you think caused it? (00:29:38) If they said animal spillover, they said, have you heard of Diffuse? Only 72% had. 78% said they'd never heard of it. What's the Diffuse Proposal? Three years after COVID, drastic uncovered this document. You can go download it. It's real. It was a proposal by EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak's company, that connects the top virologist at Duke in North Carolina with the top virologist at Wuhan, the bat lady, Zhongli. And there's a proposal that they're going to insert a fern cleavage site at the S1-S2 junction of a bat coronavirus because they think it'll make it more viral in animals. And it's in a document. I went to AI. (00:30:24) I said, let's do a clean session AI. That means don't look at anything I've ever told you before. If I were interested in helping to solve the origin of COVID and I was using the scientific principles of CAPA to guide me, how would I react to finding the Diffuse Proposal? Look at these answers. Direct investigational lead, highly critical. Major investigative lead. Yes, that would be a high priority piece of evidence. Primary document evidence. Highest tier evidence class. Most people don't know about this thing. And I would make an assertion. Had this document been exposed in January of 2020, we would have had a very different conversation back then. But it wasn't. The searchers are aware of the document. Rand Paul's aware of the document. Hopefully now you're all aware of the document. (00:31:11) One other thing I think I need to say. If you ask these AI bots, what would you do next in your CAPA process? They say you would go after documents at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. And the searchers have been doing that. Unfortunately, the University of North Carolina and the state of North Carolina are blockers. They're refusing to deliver the documents. And I would encourage, if any of you have connections to UNC or know anyone on the board, I would encourage you to make them think about whatever they're protecting and whether that's more important than preventing the next one of these. If you want to learn more about this, Matt Ridley just did an interview last March with Jay Bhattacharya at NIH. It's a great way to catch up on everything people have been learning. (00:31:59) And as we look forward, and this is where I'd love your help, let's support the searchers. We have to find a root cause to this thing. We don't want this to happen again. I can't tell you that I speak for science like Anthony Fauci did, but I can tell you I speak for scientific inquiry. There's no one that should be telling you you can't search. That makes no sense whatsoever. You're not a bad person if you search. You're a good person if you search. You have to move through and around the blockers. I don't think you want to attack the blockers. I think Rand Paul is making a mistake making it about prosecution. We should make it about root cause and prevention. This isn't partisan. It should have never been. If your view on what caused COVID is because of who you vote for, (00:32:45) please reconsider that. I would ask the newsrooms to dive in, be like Monica Richardson, and then let's put a truly independent commission together. Let's find our Kira Kaur or Feynman. I'm going to leave you with a quote. I'm way over time. I'm going to leave you with a quote that's attributed to Plato that sums up what I've been thinking here. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy in life is when men are afraid of the light. Thank you. Wow. I've got to ask you a question. Stay out here. No, no. Stay out here. Stay out here. I'm going to do a question. Another standing ovation here. Bill, wow. You put a tremendous amount of effort into this. (00:33:34) We've known each other for 30 years. I've seen you emotional, I think, two other times. One was a Jason Isbell concert. Another time, your top set got counterfeited or something. But this is emotional and this is personal for you. What they did to our kids is really clearly impacted you. Maybe you could talk about why it's so important that we consider the damage that was done to this generation. Well, I mean, for me, it's all back to prevention. Like, you have to stop it from happening again. I have zero confidence right now that if another pandemic started tomorrow, we'd have any better way to navigate it. I think we might do worse. Because the misinformation campaigns cause a lack of trust. (00:34:21) Next time, you're not going to listen to them. There's not going to be an ability for anybody to lead. And I'm struck, as you can tell by the presentation, by the difference between the attitude of the people that searched in these other catastrophes, how they were viewed as heroes, and what happened to the people that were looking here. Yes. And you repeatedly talk about the power of journalism, Pulitzers, and investigative journalism specifically, which is different than clickbait journalism. There is something very virtuous about investigative journalism and those type of journalists. Maybe you could speak to that. And then explain to us why people didn't go after the Pulitzer here. Why they didn't put a large amount of resources to it. Because that seems incredibly suspicious. (00:35:09) And I seem to have a recollection of Fauci getting a pardon, which also seems to be a red flag that you didn't bring up. So take those two issues. Well, yeah. So on the investigative part, I mean, one of the reasons I mentioned all the Pulitzers was just to highlight that fact, right? There is a wonderful video on YouTube, if you're interested in this topic, at the Brookings Institute. Three or four of the ladies that I showed led a panel to talk about why the press missed this. And both Catherine and Emily Kopp pointed back to the misinformation campaign by the virology experts and how they kind of made it like a faux pas to actually ask questions. But considering the scale of the outcome, it's just horrible that that happened. And I would, once again, I would encourage them, like there's still work to do. (00:35:55) There's still information coming out. We're getting closer. Like, come on in. Yeah. And there's something really tragic here in that if you asked questions this time, you were put into a conspiracy theorist who didn't trust the experts. And you were the damage for asking questions. This is pure evil. It's crazy. I mean, it's pure evil to take the people who just say, hey, is it possible this came out of the Wuhan? You guys have, you in fact funded gain of research. Why is that such a hard question for them to answer? Well, I said, I think a behavioral psychologist would tell you, you're able to fool yourself to keep your own sanity. (00:36:40) Yeah. Now, I'll just end with this. Knowing what you've known, you've put thousands of hours into this. You and I have been talking about this for three or four years now. Yeah. And this has been a passion project of yours. And I really appreciate you sharing it with the audience. What do you believe, based on what you know now, is the most likely scenario of how COVID originated and what we can learn from it, just based on you being in the 0.1%? I would tell you, I intentionally didn't take a side on that here. Sure. Because we haven't found root cause. And I would celebrate anyone that's 100% convinced it's animal spillover to do research there. I funded U.S. Right to Know. If you want to go search for the animals, I'll fund that too. (00:37:27) You should know China has tested 80,000 animals and not found a single crossover. And they have a huge incentive to find one, if they could. Yes. The wet market theory would absolutely free them from having fingerprints. Right. So there's a massive incentive. Why hasn't it? But if you want to keep looking, go look. Fauci, in these documents that have been uncovered, admitted there were multiple cases prior to the spreader event at the wet market, which also is another problem you have to deal with. Yeah. Listen, Bill, I think this could wind up being the most important work of your life. And as your friend, I'm just in awe of your passion and your doggedness. And any way we can support it. I think everybody here and in the audience at All In would love to donate to more research being done. (00:38:16) So we'll tweet that in the future. Let's give it up one more time for Bill Gurley. Thank you. Thank you, brother. Keep crushing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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