Evaluating a perspective expressed by Toby Rogers

Jessica Hockett, PhD

In a 4 July 2026 discussion with Jeffrey Tucker, Toby Rogers said [emphasis mine]:

“So we’ve spent the last six years trying to figure out who ‘They’ is. Who’s the ‘They’ that designed a weaponized virus, somehow contracted it out to Wuhan, somehow it got out and infected people…and who’s the ‘They’ that developed a new vaccine within 24 hours and then put it into production before the testing was finished?

Who’s the ‘They’ that can impose mandates on everybody, the military, injuring countless soldiers, impose it on the CIA? So we had this theory of the case that the day was some sort of supranational group Ruling class, old money, CIA, NSA, intelligence agencies, some sort of NATO, you know. NATO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust pharmaceutical industry, some sort of cabal along those lines. And yet, if the CIA is poisoning their own people, and that complicates the narrative. Is the CIA driving this or are they a victim of this? We still don’t know who the answer to who is they. And it’s, this should be figured out in about 10 minutes. And we’ve been working on this for six years and we still don’t have the answer. It is profoundly strange.

Now, there are those who put forward the argument and I’ve been persuaded by this in the past that there is no They. It’s just a series of structural incentives people are responding to. Structural incentives in ways that lead to these perverse outcomes that nobody would have wanted. But if that was the case, then when harm starts showing up, you would think that people would change course, the CIA would change course, the federal government, the military would change course when they see their soldiers, their employees being hurt, and they don’t change course. So we don’t have the answer and I don’t know which is scarier, if you know a secretive cabal of ‘They’ meeting, you know, somewhere in some castle in in Europe, or no ‘They’ and just a bunch of people responding to structural incentives and no off-switch to this entire catastrophic system that’s causing so much harm.”

Consistent with his past statements, Toby Rogers continues to assume that a virus was designed, “contracted out” to a lab in China, “got out,” and infected people during the event we call COVID — despite those foundational elements being disputed and either unsupported or contradicted by robust evidence.

“Somehow” (à la somehow, it must have escaped) explains nothing and skips the most critical parts of the putative pathogen plot: 

• What got out? When? 
• Who were the first people infected with “it”? 
• By what evidence was infection distinguished from a positive test? 
• Where is the observable transmission event? 
• What established that “it” caused a new (or existing) disease? 

The uploading of a genetic sequence and the rapid design of a vaccine from that sequence (or from other sequences) do not prove that it or any sequence represented a distinct, circulating pathogen; that such a pathogen caused a new disease; that deaths attributed to it were not ordinary or expected baseline deaths reclassified as COVID-caused; or that any excess deaths were produced by such a pathogen rather than by iatrogenic factors and political forces.

Rogers seems to be searching for an undefined “They” without necessarily wanting to establish what exactly happened. Although he names the pharmaceutical industry, government, media, regulators, universities, medical education, and journals elsewhere in the discussion, he treats the ultimate relationship among the actors as unresolved — even though many of the institutions and individuals that implemented, protected, and profited from what plainly did happen are identifiable, and many of the relationships among them are also known and understood.

At this point, saying that “They” developed a vaccine within 24 hours risks treating the vaccine as confirmation of the virus story when it’s nothing of the kind. 

Moreover, we know who developed a vaccine; it’s not a secret. U.S. officials have never hidden, and are very proud of, the fact that they activated development very quickly. In a January 2021 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, for example, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar stated outright, “The day after the viral sequence was shared from China, NIH researchers began working on a vaccine candidate with Moderna — and phase-1 trials for this vaccine began on March 16th — a record time to human testing.”

Even if we point to events in 2017, 2015, 2009, 2003, and earlier that show advance planning or “anticipation” on the vaccine-development front, there is little reason to think that U.S. players find public attention on those actions threatening because, as they see it, it’s evidence of their diligent and prescient preparedness efforts. I’m not yet convinced that the officials and entities responsible for developing, authorizing, and promoting the COVID shots regard evidence of harm as especially threatening. Under the “emergency” rationale, some degree of harm can be treated as an expected and acceptable cost.

Continuing to point to the speed of vaccine development without connecting that speed to a) the absence of evidence that anything unusual was going on and b) the absence of substantive vaccine design and manufacturing standards empowers the industries that produce or benefit from vaccines. Without the specter of pandemic events (and the annual version branded as “flu season”), a number of vaccines simply would not and could not exist or be sold.

If Rogers believes — as many Americans have long believed or, like me, have come to realize as a result of things learned or experienced during the COVID Event — that all vaccines are poisonous, have never been what officials claim they are or done what officials promise they do, and can only ever be harmful (rather than merely unsafe & ineffective or not net-beneficial), then his position would be strengthened by realizing that the COVID vaccines depended on an illusion involving a novel, spreading, deadly disease.

Sidestepping questions about who or what produced that perception and whether and when the alleged epidemiological events actually occurred, and on what scale, is unlikely to slay the vaccination beast and everything that continues to give it life.

Before asking who created a “weaponized” virus (or assuming such a thing was created), Rogers might ask whether places like Wuhan, Bergamo, and New York City experienced what we were told they experienced. If the foundational “outbreak” and “traveling virus” narratives are false, fabricated, manipulated, or badly misrepresented, then the search for the people who engineered and deployed “it” (a released bioweapon, in Rogers’ view) may be a search for the authors of various cover stories and perpetrators of crimes much worse than we realize.

Rogers’ question appears to concern who ultimately possesses or directs power, not the narrower question of who formally implemented the mandates. Even so, framing the entire matter through an undefined “They” risks obscuring the fact that the implementing authorities and bodies, past and present, are largely conspicuous and matters of public and historical record: presidents, governors, legislators, judges, public-health agencies, military leaders, employers who have drafted, enacted, issued and enforced the relevant declarations, determinations, laws, orders, contracts, and policies.

The fact that CIA employees or military personnel were harmed by mandates doesn’t mean the CIA or military were victims only. Federal agencies and departments routinely expose their own personnel to all kinds of risk. The U.S. military, in particular, has blatantly used soldiers for vaccine experimentation for decades (and continues to do so). Most staff don’t need to know what senior officials, particular units, contractors, or various “partners” are doing in order for harms to be executed and/or remain relatively secret.

“The CIA” is not a single person with one body of knowledge and one intention in any case. The same is true for the U.S. Armed Forces, the federal government writ large, the pharmaceutical industry, NATO, and intelligence agencies generally. Some people may be directing, some facilitating, some complying, some exploiting, some deceived, and some harmed.

Rogers wonders why agencies didn’t change course once evidence of harm became difficult to ignore. But leadership in corrupt enterprises often does the opposite: suppresses evidence, redefines the harm, blames something else, protects the original policy, and punishes dissent. Why? Because reversing course would expose liability, fraud, incompetence, or intent. Indeed, if some degree of harm is foreseen and tolerable — or, worse, necessary and useful — then why would we think that the first sign or ongoing signs of harm would necessarily trigger reversal or change? (We wouldn’t.)

In the excerpted passage, Rogers frames “a secret cabal” and “structural incentives” as competing explanations, thereby creating another false binary in COVID-19 discourse. His later references to “architects,” institutional capture, beneficiaries, and “millions” of accessories do contain elements of a more nuanced explanation, but he does not connect them or explicitly reject the binary. He would probably agree that a complex, proactive operation doesn’t require one group sitting in a castle and directing every detail. It can operate across overlapping institutions whose participants know different things, follow existing plans, and act for different reasons.

The harder questions involve how and why various actors operated (and continue to operate) in concert, what authority or information they rely on, and whether they were deceived, strong-armed, incentivized, complicit, or some combination thereof. But uncertainty about high-level or behind-the-scenes architecture and architects doesn’t make all implementing actors mysterious.

Tragically-little truth about the COVID Event has been admitted, revealed, or disclosed. Yet many who aided and abetted the fraud are known, currently hold federal office, and can be held to account.

Later in the discussion, Rogers wonders whether it is time to “exit the system” by buying a piece of land in a rural area. That’s one form of refusal, but individual retreat is neither the only available form of exit, nor the most expedient and enduring.

The “entire catastrophic system that’s causing so much harm” depends, in large part, on continued public acceptance of its claims and participation in the practices those claims are used to justify.

We the People are powerful, not powerless, and do have an “off switch.”

We can:

1. Stop accepting and repeating what we have been told about “a weaponized virus”; its sudden escape, release, or emergence; its alleged infective and disease-causing power; and the morbidity and mortality attributed to it.
2. Stop participating in the daily, seasonal, and periodic acts urged by government, public-health, and military authorities that feed the system. This includes just saying no to vaccines, testing, and outbreak theatre.

The vast networks here and abroad that continue to hurt and kill people are best disabled by refusing to believe their stories and refusing to perform the deeds that sustain their lies.

And the people who depend on our compliance know it.