Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Bill Thompson (2026) - Hacking Terrorist Phones and Tanning Bear Brains

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Bill Thompson (2026) - Hacking Terrorist Phones and Tanning Bear Brains · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  So imagine spending your Friday writing code to exploit
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  unpatched vulnerabilities in terrorist cell phones.
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  Which is already, you know, a pretty wild way to spend a
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  Friday. And then your Saturday you're
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  outstanding in the mud, using the literal brains of a bear to
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  tan its own hide. Yeah, it's quite the transition.
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  It really is. So today, our mission for this
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  deep dive is unpacking the mind of a man who does exactly that,
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  Bill Thompson. We're looking at a guy who
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  pioneered military computer network operations, tracked
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  terrorists all over the globe, and literally dumped the binary
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  data from Osama bin Laden's hard drives.
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  And now he runs a hunting app called Spartan Forge.
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  But really, his old philosophy on life is like this master
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  class in the search for true individual sovereignty in a
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  world that is just way too connected.
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  OK, let's unpack this. Wait, I mean, let's really get
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  into this because to anyone listening, going from hacking
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  enemy networks to living in an 1840s style canvas teepee sounds
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  like an extreme paradox. Like what is the actual
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  mechanism driving that shift? Why the 1840s?
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  Well it's because of what 1840 represents, right?
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  It was the absolute peak of the fur trapping era.
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  Like the real Jeremiah Johnson days right before the industrial
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  revolution. Kind of sanitized survival.
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  Right before machines took over everything.
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  Exactly. And think about his professional
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  life. He deals in the invisible, the
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  highly centralized, totally abstract architecture of modern
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  cyber warfare. So stepping into this analog
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  decentralized environment, what they call a rendezvous camp, is
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  this radical reclamation of individual autonomy.
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  Because his day job is literally observing how easily systems and
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  people are controlled through their devices.
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  So you'd instinctively crave an environment where you are
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  entirely self reliant. Yeah, you hit the nail on the
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  head. It's a profound juxtaposition,
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  but frankly, it's a necessary survival mechanism for him.
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  And they take that self-reliance to an incredibly granular level.
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  Oh yeah, these rendezvous camps are intense.
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  I was reading about the strict juried camps.
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  Where you have to pack your gear in on a mule and it's not just
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  camping. No, not at all.
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  They will literally inspect your clothing.
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  Right, to ensure there is no modern machine stitching, like
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  if your shirt was sewn on a Singer sewing machine, you just
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  have to take it off and leave. It's intense, but what's
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  fascinating here is the physical reality of that existence.
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  They eliminate the easy way out to force complete engagement
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  with the physical world. Which brings us to the brain
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  tanning. I I had no idea about the
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  chemistry of this. To traditionally tan a hide like
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  a bear hide, they use the animal's own brain.
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  Yeah, the mechanics of it are wild.
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  It turns out every single animal naturally has the exact
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  mathematical amount of brain matter required to tan its own
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  high. Wait, really?
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  The exact amount? That's insane and you don't just
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  rub it on you. Know you have to extract the
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  brain, mix it with water to create an emulsion of the fatty
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  acids, stretch the scrape, hide over a dull shovel and then
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  repeatedly soak it and mechanically stretch it.
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  So you're manually breaking down the mucosal barrier of the hide
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  so those fats can penetrate the fibers.
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  I mean, it is pure, brutal, beautiful nature.
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  And that brutal nature requires immense structure.
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  In an 1840s camp, if you don't chop wood, you freeze.
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  If you don't preserve your meat, you starve.
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  There's an immediate consequence to every action.
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  Exactly. And the structure required to
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  survive in that micro society really highlights the kind of
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  structure that's completely missing in our modern macro
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  society. And this is deeply personal for
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  Thompson. Right, because of his
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  background. He grew up in a trailer park in
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  North Dakota with a single mom after his dad died when he was
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  5. Yeah, and he had severe ADHD.
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  I mean his camp name as a kid was literally talks a lot.
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  He completely lacked a central male authority figure growing
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  up. So he actually uses physics to
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  critique how we lost that societal structure, which I
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  thought was super interesting. He applies Hook's law to modern
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  culture. Right Hook's law, which
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  basically states that as you bend an object, tension builds
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  and it desperately wants to snap back to its natural resting
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  state. Yeah, so Thompson argues that
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  the rigid, inescapable family structure of the 1950s bent the
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  cultural metal way too far, building up immense tension.
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  Precisely. The 1950s model was often so
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  inflexible that people were just trapped in miserable situations.
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  But then, when the Cultural Revolution hit, that spring
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  didn't just return to normal. It snapped back violently.
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  Yes, the built up tension caused it to overcorrect into the
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  modern divorce culture of the 80s and 90s.
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  Dissolving families became the default release valve.
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  But I mean, I have to push back a little here.
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  A lot of people would say leaving a toxic 1950s marriage
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  is a good thing. Is he saying we should go back
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  to that rigidity? No, not at all.
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  He's analyzing the downstream consequence of that
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  overcorrection and the consequences an entire
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  generation of young men left without central authority
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  figures, without initiation, and without clear rites of passage.
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  He's looking at the vacuum left behind, which brings up a really
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  good point. Is the perpetual childhood of
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  modern men a failure of the individual or a failure of the
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  tribe to initiate them? Well.
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  If we connect this to the bigger picture, nature abhors a vacuum.
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  If society doesn't impose structure on young men, nature
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  imposes its own consequences. Like what?
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  Like isolation without a challenge or a rite of passage
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  that forces a boy to realize his life is about providing for
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  others, he just retreats. The consequences are obesity,
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  sitting in a basement playing video games, and ultimately a
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  total collapse of physical and mental health.
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  So the military provided that missing boundary for Thompson.
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  Exactly. It gave him an external standard
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  to hold on to until he could finally build his own internal
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  standard. It makes total sense that he
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  found his tribe in the military. But you know, the military is
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  part of a massive government apparatus, and looking at those
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  massive institutions today, that lack of local individual
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  accountability seems to have scaled all the way.
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  Up. Oh, absolutely.
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  We have a system now where looking good completely replaces
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  actually doing good. He calls this suicidal empathy.
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  Suicidal empathy. What a term.
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  It raises an important question, right What happens when empathy
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  becomes a bureaucratic weapon? Suicidal empathy is when society
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  allows people to just wallow in their own excuses and self
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  destruction. Like the tragic homelessness
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  crisis in California, for example.
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  Exactly, Thompson argues. We allow open air drug markets
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  and encampments primarily so the rule makers, the bureaucrats,
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  can feel benevolent. They get to pat themselves on
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  the back for their endless compassion.
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  Just throwing taxpayer money at a problem without ever having to
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  suffer the real world dangerous repercussions of the policies
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  they create. And the numbers validate that
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  perfectly. We're talking about $24 billion
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  spent on homelessness in California that cannot even be
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  audited. Yeah, the government literally
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  vetoed the audits. Because an audit would threaten
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  the machine. Right.
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  And Thompson shares a first hand military anecdote that perfectly
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  illustrates this madness. He watched a military Colonel
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  get dressed out at the Pentagon for an entire hour.
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  And he wasn't yelled at because he failed his mission, right?
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  No, he achieved all his objectives.
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  He was dressed down because he saved the government money.
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  He didn't spend his entire $300 million.
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  Budget. See, here's where it gets really
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  interesting. It's like a business rewarding a
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  manager for burning cash rather than making a profit.
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  But it's worse because a business ultimately has to turn
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  a profit or die. Bureaucracy operates completely
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  differently. It's more like a biological
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  Organism, like an amoeba, whose only evolutionary imperative is
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  to consume calories, in this case taxpayer budget, to ensure
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  it doesn't shrink. That is the exact mechanism.
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  If you don't spend the $300 million this year, the Organism
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  shrinks, right? They cut your budget next year.
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  The incentive isn't the mission, it's just growing the
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  bureaucracy. And this bloat artificially
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  inflates our GDP through sheer government spending and,
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  honestly, fraud. Now just to jump in here, what's
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  fascinating about diving into his notes is that he doesn't
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  spare anyone in his critique of this Organism.
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  And I want to be clear to you the listener, we are neutrally
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  exploring Thompsons perspective here.
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  We aren't endorsing any political side.
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  Right. It's important to understand his
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  independent lens. For instance, he fiercely
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  criticizes the Biden administration's woke military
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  policies. Like making officers read books
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  like White Rage or establishing diversity quotas that ignore
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  meritocracy. Yeah, and punishing soldiers for
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  using gallows humor, which he points out as a vital
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  psychological coping mechanism in war.
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  But in the very next breath, he strongly criticizes the right
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  wing's blind adherence to rigid ideologies.
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  Exactly. He notes that declaring yourself
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  hardcore right wing just turns you into a predictable tool of
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  propaganda and closes you off to learning.
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  He views all rigid ideologies as just different flavors of the
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  same bureaucratic Organism trying to control the
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  individual. And that massive, bloated
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  government Organism is exactly what funds the invisible cyber
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  war is happening all around us, which bridges the gap perfectly
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  between his critiques of government and the technology
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  sitting in our pockets right now.
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  So let's talk about the digital battlefield.
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  To understand it, you have to trace Thompson's specific path.
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  Right. He started in signals
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  intelligence, mapping radar emanations in Iraq so our pilots
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  wouldn't get shot down. Very traditional electronic
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  warfare. But then the theater shifted.
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  He found himself doing counterinsurgency in the
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  sprawling islands of the southern Philippines, hunting a
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  terrorist group called Abu Sayyaf.
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  Who had direct links to Osama bin Laden?
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  And the geography of the Philippines makes that a
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  nightmare. Thousands of tiny islands, thick
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  jungles, radio waves bouncing everywhere.
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  And then the game changed entirely with the smartphone
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  revolution. Suddenly, the military wasn't
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  just tracking radio frequencies. The iPhone forced the military
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  to completely adapt. Because now every insurgent has
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  a network supercomputer in their pocket.
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  Exactly. So the military had to develop
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  ethical hacking frameworks. They had to pivot from just
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  listening to signals to actively hunting for zero day flaws.
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  In a zero day is essentially an unpatched vulnerability and
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  software or router firmware that the manufacturer doesn't know
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  about yet, right? Spot on.
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  You exploit that flaw to gain access to the network.
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  Which brings us to a massive point he makes about foreign
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  technology. It explains why the US
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  government banned Huawei and ZTE devices.
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  It wasn't just a petty trade dispute like a lot of people
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  thought. No.
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  Thompson's forensic work revealed that these foreign made
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  devices and routers often had persistent back doors built
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  right into the code at the manufacturing level.
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  We really need to explain why that is so dangerous.
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  A backdoor and a router isn't just someone listening to your
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  phone calls. Not at all.
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  It grants hostile actors root access to the infrastructure.
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  If you have root access, you are the administrator.
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  You can reroute traffic, alter data, or just shut down
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  communication entirely. If you control the router, you
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  control the flow of all information.
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  But here's the crazy part. The threat isn't just foreign
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  spies infiltrating our hardware. The threat is the illusion of
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  free tech right here at home. The Free Trap Thompson points
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  out that if you use a free app like Google Drive to store your
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  family photos, you are not the consumer, you are the product.
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  Right, they aren't giving you server space out of benevolence.
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  They are harvesting your personal images to train their
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  artificial intelligence neural networks, even captchas like
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  when you click the traffic lights.
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  That's just you working for free to train their AI.
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  What's fascinating here is the stark distinction he makes
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  between the two major phone ecosystems, Apple and Android.
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  Most people assume Apple is the privacy champion.
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  They market themselves that way for sure.
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  But Thompson views Apple as a completely closed, walled off
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  system. To use an iPhone, you
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  essentially have to blindly trust the corporation because it
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  don't let you see the source code.
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  And given his background and offensive cyber operations,
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  blindly trusting a massive corporation is the absolute last
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  thing he will do. Right.
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  Android on the other hand, is built on AOSP, the Android Open
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  Source project. Because it's open source, a user
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  can actually dump their phones binary code.
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  Look under the hood and see exactly what the machine is
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  doing. You can verify the code
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  yourself. Now I have to play devil's
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  advocate for you, the listener here.
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  Most of us don't know how to read binary code, so how does
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  the average person protect themselves against something
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  truly terrifying like Pegasus? Pegasus being the zero click
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  exploit, right? Exactly, you don't even have to
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  click a bad link, they just need your phone number and they can
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  compromise your device. How do you stop that?
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  It's a great question, and Thompson's advice is structural.
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  If you can't read the code, you control the network pathway.
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  He suggests setting up a Raspberry Pi.
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  Just one of those tiny affordable micro computers.
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  Yeah, exactly. You put it in your home, you run
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  a Wireguard VPN server on it, and you route all your mobile
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  phones Internet traffic through that home network no matter
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  where you are in the work. Wait, if Pegasus is zero click,
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  how does routing my traffic through AVPN at home actually
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  stop it from infecting the device?
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  Because zero click exploits often rely on intercepting your
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  connection on public carrier networks to inject malicious
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  payloads, or they rely on your phone quietly reaching out to a
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  command and control server. So by using a Wireguard VPN tied
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  to a Raspberry Pi, you create a hardened encrypted tunnel.
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  You bypass the vulnerabilities of public Wi-Fi and carrier
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  networks. Plus you can run network level
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  firewalls and DNS sinkholes like Pie Hole on that Raspberry.
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  Π so if a malicious payload tries to execute and phone home,
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  your home network blocks the request before it ever reaches
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  the wider Internet. Exactly, you are drastically
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  reducing your attack surface. It's all about taking back
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  control of your own infrastructure.
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  And that centralization of our personal data by tech companies,
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  it perfectly mirrors the centralization of political
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  power by the federal government. Thompson actually traces our
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  current political dysfunction back to one specific
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  constitutional change, the 17th Amendment.
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  Right. To understand why this matters,
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  we have to look at the original design of the US Constitution.
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  The Founders explicitly designed the Senate to be appointed by
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  state legislatures, not by popular vote.
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  And there was a genius reason for this.
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  It was designed to protect the rights of the states to act as
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  independent thought experiments. They wanted a system where a
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  state like California, for example, could try a radical
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  social experiment. If it worked, great.
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  If it failed, it wouldn't force Texas or North Dakota to suffer
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  the consequences. The state legislature appointed
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  a senator specifically to go to Washington and say no to the
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  federal government encroaching on their local autonomy.
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  But then, under Woodrow Wilson, the 17th Amendment was passed,
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  changing the Senate to a popular vote.
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  And the result was that the Senate essentially lost its
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  original purpose. It just became a redundant 6
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  year version of the House of Representatives.
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  But hold on, let me push back on this 'cause I read a lot about
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  the Gilbert age. Wasn't the 17th Amendment passed
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  specifically because state legislatures back then were
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  incredibly corrupt? Like they were basically bought
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  and paid for by railroad monopolies and oil barons.
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  Isn't Thompson romanticizing A deeply flawed system?
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  He isn't denying the corruption of the Gilded Age at all.
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  What he argues is a matter of scale and escapability.
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  If a state legislature is corrupt, the damage is
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  localized. As an individual, you maintain
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  your sovereignty because you can pack up your family and move to
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  a neighboring state with a better system.
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  But by passing the 17th Amendment, we sucked all the
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  money, gravity and power up to the federal level.
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  We created a monolithic oligarchy.
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  You can't escape federal corruption by moving to a new
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  state. Precisely, and in practice,
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  Thompson uses his home state of North Dakota as the perfect
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  example. Under the popular vote, a
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  politician only needs to campaign in the two biggest
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  cities, Fargo and Grand Forks, to win the Senate seat.
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  They can mathematically completely ignore the needs of
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  the agricultural workers in the West of the state.
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  It just strips power away from the local community.
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  Exactly. When a system becomes that
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  centralized and the populist feels entirely unheard, Thompson
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  has a theory on what happens next.
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  He calls it the anti hero theory.
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  The anti hero theory. So what does this all mean?
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  Well, when institutions are perceived as rotting from the
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  inside, the public will naturally turn to an outside
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  disruptor to break the machine. He compares figures like Donald
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  Trump to General George Patton or even Wolverine from the
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  X-Men. Right.
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  It's the classic archetype of the guy you would never invite
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  to a polite Sunday dinner, but the guy you absolutely need when
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  the bad guys are at the gate and the town needs saving.
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  It's like turning a company's board of directors into a second
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  customer service department. Just total chaos until someone
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  breaks it. Exactly.
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  However, Thompson points out a very harsh historical caveat to
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  this pattern. These anti hero figures usually
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  meet a bad end once the system resets itself.
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  Because once the disruptor does The Dirty work of breaking the
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  corrupt institutions, polite society usually just discards
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  them. It's a brutal historical
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  reality. So bringing this all together,
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  whether you are mindlessly clicking agree on a 40 page
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  terms of service agreement to get a free cloud storage app, or
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  you are relying on a bloated centralized federal government
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  to solve your local problems, you are making the exact same
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  trade. You are trading your individual
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  sovereignty for convenience. Yes, and Thompson's entire life
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  is a fascinating study in rejecting that trade.
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  From building an analogue 1840s camp to Tan hides in the mud, to
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  routing his data through custom open source encrypted tunnels,
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  he is offering a literal blueprint for taking your power
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  back from the Organism. He certainly is.
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  And, you know, it leaves us with one final very provocative
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  thought to Mull over, especially regarding the technology that is
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  currently dominating our headlines right now, artificial
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  intelligence. Oh, this part is fascinating.
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  Thompson argues vehemently that AI is not achieving true
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  consciousness. He calls it projected
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  consciousness. It is nothing more than a
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  mathematical mirror reflecting the human training data it
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  absorbs. It possesses no internal values,
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  no ethics, and no soul of its own.
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  A mathematical mirror. That is such a brilliant way to
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  phrase it. It really is.
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  So here's the question we have to ask ourselves.
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  If AI is only a mirror of the humans training it, and we as a
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  society are currently losing our discipline, abandoning our rites
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  of passage, and embracing this bureaucratic suicidal empathy
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  where we refuse to hold individuals accountable, what
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  exactly is the reflection we are building into the machines that
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  will run our future? If the machine is just
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  reflecting our current cultural bloat and lack of structure, the
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  future looks incredibly unstable.
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  That is a terrifying and honestly necessary question to
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  end on. From the analog dirt of an 1840s
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  rendezvous Cam to the digital mirrors of tomorrow, it all
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  comes down to the autonomy and structure we are willing to
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  project into the world. Thanks for taking this deep dive
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  with us.