Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Cyber Security With Winn Schwartau | The Christian Reeve Podcast #240

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Cyber Security With Winn Schwartau | The Christian Reeve Podcast #240 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
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Podcast. Thank you so much for listening
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guys. It's been brilliant seeing the
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I'm doing this all by myself, trying to put this all together.
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They're doing it 3 1/2 years now and yeah, ain't stopping anytime
0:48
soon. Today's guest is a computer
0:51
security analyst who focuses on Internet security, Internet
0:55
privacy, cyber terrorism, so much more.
0:59
His name is Wynne Schwartel. Welcome to the show.
1:02
How you doing? I'm.
1:03
Glad to be here. Thank you.
1:05
It's a, it's a pleasure to to have you on, man.
1:08
There's there's so much we can delve into, but I want to kind
1:11
of jump into, I want to get this out of the way and then we can
1:15
get to the good stuff. But I have to mention this
1:18
because it's like it's nothing bad.
1:21
Don't worry, don't worry. Obviously, you're well known for
1:24
in 1991 having coined the term electronic Pearl Harbour during
1:30
testimony in front of U.S. Congress.
1:35
What I wanted to ask you about that is, do you think that the
1:38
US government actually fully took that on over the subsequent
1:43
years? Because when you spoke about it
1:45
originally, it kind of seemed like they scoffed at it.
1:48
And in fairness, people, you know, back then people didn't
1:52
really know what the Internet was going to become.
1:54
And it was kind of, it was something that was on the side
1:59
of society. It was like an interesting
2:01
thing. People were kind of poking at it
2:03
and going, oh, this is interesting, but it hadn't sort
2:05
of taken over just yet. So it's Fast forward to now.
2:10
Obviously that's very different, but your initial kind of
2:12
feelings about it because you kind of predicted this, really.
2:19
The. Yeah, it's been a long, long
2:23
fall. Absolutely.
2:26
That testimony, Yes, I I was became a human dartboard for a
2:33
while and a pincushion because you got to remember that this is
2:39
91 and like Ted Koppel, the news media is going what is the
2:44
Internet? And I'm kind of going off into
2:47
this future thing and. A couple of things to keep in
2:52
mind. The congressman wanted to know
2:54
Mr. Schwartel, why would the bad guys ever want to use the
2:59
Internet? And it was kind of one of those
3:05
stuttering moments, because it was so early.
3:08
And then afterwards I was called by NIST and National Institute
3:13
of Standards and Technology, associated with NSA.
3:16
Schwartel was a chicken little. And I went on for the next
3:23
number of years with info work on and doing a lot of training,
3:27
what training, such as it was in those days of the military and
3:32
governments around mostly Western Europe, a little in Asia
3:37
and the US, trying to get them to understand where the
3:40
technology was going. And then I burned out on it
3:45
because it became a big government.
3:48
Get rich, Washington. Make money from the government
3:51
scheme. And it was It was no longer fun,
3:54
no longer compelling or interesting.
3:56
So I got out looking throughout the years to this point where we
4:01
are now. Do you think that they really
4:05
took on what you'd said with the kind of adequate amount of like,
4:12
yeah, they did they time it right?
4:13
Were they ahead of the curve? Did they take on board what you
4:15
said or was it something that was delayed for a significant
4:18
amount of time and then they finally patented?
4:20
We're like, right, We have to take him seriously though.
4:23
There was what I did not realise is the time, and it took a long
4:27
time to figure it out. One of the reasons.
4:30
That I was. They attempted to dismiss me or
4:34
cancel me or whatever term I would want to use, Was that I
4:38
had unintentionally exposed a lot of national security
4:43
programs going on that I had no idea existed.
4:49
I did not know that the term information warfare was a
4:53
classified term. No clue.
4:57
And so when I. It was doing all this.
5:01
It was who is this guy out of where?
5:04
He's an ex music producer. What's he talking about?
5:08
And so you had the that area of the government that want to keep
5:12
everything secret and then you had the other end of the
5:15
government who was going, wait a minute, tell me more, tell me
5:18
more. And nobody knowing really what
5:22
it was so early. And even I was making all this
5:26
stuff up. It's like, yeah, that'll happen.
5:28
That'll happen, that'll happen. So you have these two competing
5:31
forces going on. And I wasn't smart enough to
5:35
realize that was happening for a long time.
5:38
Was there ever, any times when maybe U.S. government or let's
5:44
say some like official forces kind of approach you and said,
5:48
hey listen man, you need to quiet and you need to stop
5:51
talking about this because obviously you've done a lot of
5:53
like public speaking over the years.
5:55
Throughout the years you mentioned doing public trainings
5:57
and stuff. You've also done public
5:58
speaking. You've spoken frequently right
6:00
up till modern day about, you know cyber threats and and like
6:05
because that's the thing. It's never changed.
6:06
It's just it's sorry, it's never stopped.
6:09
It's changed and developed and obviously it's even more
6:12
important now than it ever was. But was there ever any moments
6:15
when maybe this people were? Yeah, right.
6:23
It was fairly quiet until Information Warfare the book
6:30
came out and that is when all of the agencies started showing up
6:35
at our house wanting to talk to me about.
6:40
They have a copy of the book and it has hundreds of sticky notes
6:44
in it. At least they read the book, I
6:46
suppose. Where did you learn about this?
6:50
Oh, I made that up. Well, you couldn't have made it
6:52
up. No, I made it up.
6:55
And and I was learning at that point that I had somehow
6:58
infringed on something. And and and who told you all of
7:02
this? We need the names of everybody
7:03
that told you all of this stuff. Well, it's either open source or
7:08
I made it up. And it was very difficult for
7:13
the three letter agencies to really understand that.
7:16
What was that? It was an open source guy and
7:19
not a journalist. But you know, the same sort of I
7:22
did some research and made a lot of crap that ended up being
7:28
right because of what I took an engineering viewpoint and they
7:31
didn't understand that it wasn't, I didn't do have a
7:34
geopolitical agenda. It was.
7:37
I was just looking at the tech. They try and arrest you or they
7:41
just. No, no, I I ended up on a list a
7:48
couple of times. I can watch this, yeah.
7:52
And the the the first time, Well, I wrote an article on it
7:55
and it's called An American Alien Comes Home.
8:00
And I had been in Poland doing some work with a government guy,
8:05
with somebody from the DoD, in fact.
8:08
And when I came back, they were not happy with me at customs
8:13
because, well, you can't have stuff on information Warfare
8:16
said I wrote it. Yeah, but that's classified.
8:18
And it was just some of this crazy inanity.
8:21
And then I ended up on a list. I was doing a lot of commuting
8:26
because we had a ski house up in Canada to our back and forth an
8:29
awful lot and I was being put through absolute hell at the
8:34
border coming back every time. And after a while, you kind of
8:39
get to know the customs guys. They go, all right, come on
8:42
over, hey babe, what did? And hypothetically speaking
8:49
after having gone off in the customs area so many times, this
8:53
really nice customs guy said it's the room with the computers
8:58
and the aluminum or steel bovine autopsy tables where they take
9:04
all your shit apart, right? And.
9:08
He says I will I have to go to the bathroom.
9:11
I will be back in exactly 5 minutes.
9:17
And he left me alone in this room with a computer.
9:24
I never had a problem again. Interesting.
9:34
What do you think the US government and citizens in
9:38
general can do to improve their security and prevent the threat
9:42
of cyber attacks? You know, my opinion on that has
9:46
changed so much over the years. This is the fault of the IT
9:55
industry. When things get more complex,
10:01
it's more knobs. People don't like complexity.
10:04
They want simplicity. Give me one button and but give
10:09
me one button that'll allow me to do a million different things
10:13
on a really tiny operating system that shouldn't be doing a
10:17
million things. But make it really simple.
10:20
And while you're at it, make it secure.
10:23
All of those are contrary that these are competing forces, so.
10:29
The way that I'm approaching it now after doing this for like 40
10:33
years is we have done a really poor job in the IT industry and
10:38
in the psychological industry of learning how to coexist with
10:43
that which we have created. And we have made some tremendous
10:50
mistakes, in my opinion, by never really examining until the
10:55
last few years. The interaction of silicon
10:58
computer systems and carbon systems together and how should
11:03
they work together? And is it a parasitic
11:06
relationship? Is it a symbiotic relationship?
11:10
And who should really be in control and how do you make it
11:14
super simple and all of these thoughts?
11:17
Don't give you a really simple answer you would like to say.
11:22
I'll train people better. OK, maybe make the text simpler.
11:27
Yeah, well then they're going to bitch more.
11:31
Ultimately, the IT industry is going to be responsible.
11:36
Should be responsible. Just like the auto.
11:40
Industry supposed to be responsible to provide a driver
11:44
with something simple. Give somebody today a car from
11:48
1920, they're not going to be able to drive it because there's
11:54
42 different things you have to do and not get your arm knocked
11:57
off after you're cranking it. Plus 12 pedals and all
12:02
everything else. They simplified it.
12:05
Well, we're not there yet. If you tell us on something
12:09
really interesting there as well, which I think is a really,
12:12
really sound point because it's something I've noticed as well.
12:15
Like if we just take general Internet security, you know,
12:18
you've got about a million different VPN websites.
12:23
You've got, for example, there's a new platform I found which I
12:27
think it's called Aura. I I could be wrong.
12:29
It's it's something something to do with protecting your phone
12:34
number on online because obviously nowadays you have to
12:38
just attach your phone number, address, etcetera, everything.
12:41
So all your information is out there and available.
12:43
This essentially masks it in essence and it gives like fake
12:48
numbers or whatever, well not fake but like something in place
12:51
of your actual number. So it protects your ads.
12:53
A layer point is you've got all of these different companies
12:57
who've commoditized it make making money out of it, right.
12:59
But they are at least offering some level of protection, right.
13:03
But what you said there, I think is brilliant about how how it's
13:06
like people generally expect and want the most simplistic option
13:12
possible. And I wonder then, and I guess
13:16
my question to you is, do you think that really is possible or
13:21
or even indeed plausible? Or do you think that people need
13:25
to just actually make a leap and and Start learning more about
13:28
computers and understanding it's just more about how to protect
13:34
themselves? You know, do they need to take
13:35
that leap? Because sometimes in life you do
13:37
have to do that. People say to me what do I need
13:43
to do to protect myself on whether my laptop, my desktop,
13:47
my phone doesn't matter. And I say OK, you need AVPN, you
13:51
need some antivirus, malware detection and you got to do this
13:54
and you got to end. This list is a litany of 45
13:58
things, yeah. And the IT industry created this
14:06
and that is not looking at your customer.
14:11
Your customer wants to go to Walmart.
14:13
Walmart, you guys have something like Tesla, not Tesla, Tesco.
14:20
And I don't know if it happened over here Walmart a number of
14:23
years ago, Pre COVID would have like 11 brands of peanut butter.
14:28
A number of years ago they went through this major change and
14:32
suddenly and my wife was telling me, oh, I can't get this.
14:35
I can't get that because they reduced everything to three.
14:38
They do that because brains can't handle 11.
14:43
It's too many choices, and when there's too many choices for a
14:47
human being, they end up getting confused and not making a
14:52
decision. And in Walmart's mind, that
14:55
means not buying. When you only have choices of
14:59
two or three, All right, I'll take this one, that's fine.
15:01
Move on. But you've filled your basket
15:03
with it. And when we look at technology
15:06
and what we have been putting people through, really have to,
15:10
in order to use technology, you need to have the be able to know
15:14
all of this stuff. I'm not sure that we've been
15:18
doing that right at all. We have the tech now.
15:21
We understand enough of this stuff to Yeah, you've got to.
15:25
Take things away we we cannot be giving away this much
15:29
functionality #2 The amount of security that could be built
15:36
into an awful lot of applications is a lot better.
15:39
I will say it's a lot better and two factor authentically.
15:42
Yeah, it's a pain in the ass, but So what?
15:47
You got to being safe? Nobody ever said being safe is
15:51
easy if it's raining out building a house.
15:54
Yeah, OK, then you got to prep yourself.
15:56
So nothing said this is easy. The other thing people got to
16:00
keep in mind is by and large, the attacks that are going to
16:05
come after Joe and Sydney and Alicia, they're going to be
16:11
random. They're part of a huge database
16:14
attack and defending against those is really not that
16:19
difficult, with a little bit of awareness, if you will.
16:22
If you are being targeted, game over.
16:26
You lose. That's it.
16:27
If somebody wants you, they're going to get you no matter what,
16:31
because there's not enough defenses in the world to be able
16:34
to protect your entire digital footprint.
16:38
So if unless you fit into that category, you're just going to
16:42
be some random string of bits somewhere and all you have to do
16:48
is don't do stupid shit. Is that even the case, For
16:53
example, like with like huge, it's like a worldwide bank,
16:57
something like that. Obviously we do hear about them
16:59
getting hacked and stuff like that, but like to the point that
17:02
you're illustrating where they could be completely, if there
17:05
was a group out there that wanted to do it, they could
17:08
completely just tear them apart and there's nothing they can do.
17:11
Ultimately, there is no such thing as perfect security.
17:15
It's never going to happen. It has never existed, never will
17:18
exist. Security is probabilistic.
17:23
There is no binary condition. There is no zero.
17:26
There is no one. It's everything is in the
17:29
middle. I'm approaching one.
17:32
I'm approaching perfect security, but I'm never going to
17:34
reach it and I'm approaching 0 security.
17:38
Well, the only way to get 0 security is to have nothing.
17:44
Absolutely nothing and nothing doesn't exist.
17:47
So. It's all in the middle,
17:50
somewhere in between, and people need to start being able to
17:53
realize that we don't live in a binary world.
17:57
You said something interesting though as well.
17:58
You said, like if you don't do anything silly, then you're less
18:00
likely to be targeted. And of course we do.
18:03
Understand the target. You mean you could be part of a
18:06
database over which you have no control?
18:08
Sure, Absolutely. The worst individual targeting
18:13
that. Joe or Alicia would get would be
18:16
saying something on Reddit or some forum really ticking
18:20
somebody off. And if they're going to come
18:23
after you, the most likely thing, unless they're really
18:25
sophisticated, is they're going to troll you to death.
18:29
Yeah, it's unfortunate. I I get a tiny bit of that
18:32
online and it's frustrating. You have a choice.
18:34
Engage or don't engage. Never engage.
18:37
Just block. That's it.
18:39
Do not do not engage or send out.
18:44
Little signals to them and take them down.
18:48
I just never understand why people let that get to them.
18:51
I mean, it's, I suppose it really depends on what they're
18:54
doing. Do you know what I mean?
18:56
Especially if it's on a with your computer and it's, you
18:59
know, harassing you to an extent where you can't sort of just use
19:04
your everyday things in the way you normally would.
19:07
That can obviously be distressing, I suppose, moving
19:12
it forward. OK, now you're into forensics
19:14
and figuring out who, what, where, why and what do I do.
19:19
And there is no simple answer. And folks that this happens to,
19:24
and it's happened to some folks in my wife's family where they
19:28
have been unrelentlessly targeted, and it's it's it takes
19:35
some skills to get out of that mess and it's not easy.
19:42
What do you consider to be the biggest threats to computer
19:46
security in this current time? Apathy, ignorance and arrogance.
19:54
OK. Next question, we're going kind
19:56
of you want to get into that. No, no, no, no, no.
20:00
I mean that kind of sums it up really.
20:02
Essentially, if we break it apart a little bit, you're
20:05
talking about the individual either not bothering at all to
20:09
take this seriously, or indeed. You know they either don't have
20:15
any idea about the dangers and they and they ignore them like
20:19
OK, really, really quick example.
20:21
So I saw in my e-mail the other day there was an attempt to
20:25
change my password, right. And obviously you always get a
20:28
alert on via Instagram when that's the case.
20:32
So immediately I changed my password, you know, I said it's
20:35
not me and made that report and then I changed my password.
20:37
So I'm completely different right now.
20:40
Like you said before, that's not a complete foolproof way of of,
20:43
you know, saving yourself. But if I'd have just ignored
20:46
that, that's represents that apathy and ignorance that you're
20:50
talking about there. Because someone has actively
20:52
tried to hack me there, they've been unsuccessful and I've not
20:58
bothered to act to that. So that would be like the most
21:01
Stevens. It's not only at the end user.
21:05
Look at the same 3 criteria at the corporate level.
21:09
Look at the same 3 from the government level.
21:11
Look at the same three from the people who build this stuff.
21:17
You're as hilarious. Go on.
21:19
Sorry. The arrogance and ignorance,
21:21
They cross all components of humanity.
21:25
In this case, we just happen to be looking at it from a tech
21:28
standpoint, whether you're the builders or the user or anybody
21:32
in the middle. And I mean customer service.
21:35
We've all been on customer service.
21:36
Is that apathy, ignorance or arrogance?
21:38
We've seen them all that point. It always kind of blows my mind
21:43
as well when a major force in in society is using something
21:48
really rudimentary, like a good example.
21:50
This is not really to do with safety, but more to do with just
21:54
computer programs. So during the pandemic, the UK
21:58
government quite infamously used Microsoft Excel, which is not a
22:05
bad programme by any means, but they were using that.
22:07
It's quite outdated at this point.
22:09
And they were using that as like an official database for
22:12
tracking COVID data or something like that.
22:15
And everyone was just astounded because it's like, seriously,
22:18
you're using a programme that's like so many years out of date
22:21
and this is how you're tracking this information.
22:23
I think it was the one that was connected to the NHS app that we
22:28
hear that we had here, which was I.
22:30
Would hope that NHS has a better database back in than Microsoft
22:34
Excel. I don't think that's the case.
22:38
I don't know, but I honestly, I mean I'm sure this is the case
22:43
in the States as well. Like think about how many places
22:45
businesses are still running on like you know Windows Vista or
22:49
something Like you know it's is that old if it ain't broke don't
22:53
fits it mentality which I understand, but sooner or later
22:56
you do just have to update stuff a little bit.
22:59
Yes, you do. Just a little bit, you know.
23:02
At least you use like Google Sheets, I don't know.
23:05
But anyway, moving it forward, you wrote a book called Analogue
23:09
Network Security which offers mathematical based approaches to
23:13
online security, various different tools and approaches
23:17
to basically help fix security in the Internet.
23:21
And I kind of wanted to just explore how you used this
23:24
mathematical approach to achieving this.
23:26
You know, is it through like an algorithm or an automatic
23:29
approach Like walk us through this.
23:31
No algorithms, no algorithms. OK.
23:34
Algorithms are biased. The original work was written on
23:42
a napkin in a Polish bar in 1996.
23:49
And we were waiting for our Polish hosts.
23:52
We were on jet lag from the US. So we decided, yeah, let's go
23:55
have one beer, right? And what about?
23:59
And what about? So we began this napkin thing,
24:02
and it was based upon this concept, very simple, that there
24:08
is no such thing as perfect security.
24:11
There are no zeros, there are no ones.
24:13
If it's a one, it's Infinity, and if it's zero, it doesn't
24:16
exist. So everything's got to be in the
24:18
middle. So we looked at the world of
24:20
security from the time domain and let's look at it from the
24:26
physical world because we're, it's really easy.
24:29
So you've got a jewelry store and in the jewelry store they
24:34
got that plate glass window and all the jewelry sitting there
24:38
and it's how much protection does that piece of glass offer.
24:47
Well, a rocks worth whether it's a brick, a big rock, Little
24:51
Rock, whatever. From a times standpoint, it
24:55
offers not zero because it takes a few milliseconds for it to go
25:00
through the rock, but it offers minimal approaching 0
25:04
protection. Oh my God, I have no defenses.
25:08
What do I do? Well, in the physical world, you
25:12
have on that window probably a tape sensor saying I'm broken,
25:17
Maybe you've got a microphone saying, Oh my God, loud noise.
25:22
You motioned them. You have some detector
25:25
mechanisms. Look how long should that in the
25:30
time domain should those detectors take to work?
25:36
Instantaneous, really. Well, there is no such thing as
25:39
instantaneous unless you're going to play with quantum
25:41
entanglement. So be careful.
25:43
Well. Really fast approaching 0 but
25:48
milliseconds, right? So now my protection mechanism
25:53
is close to 0. Cool, but my detection mechanism
25:58
is also close to 0. So my detection mechanism should
26:02
call the cops or get some reaction, right?
26:05
So how long does it take? Do get a reaction, Well, that
26:11
could be 90 seconds, it could be 5 minutes, it could be some
26:17
period. It's some period of time that it
26:20
takes to fix things or mitigate the theft of this jewelry store.
26:25
So what do we have? We have three time components,
26:28
protection, almost none detection, really really fast
26:32
reaction somewhere between here and here.
26:37
The bad guys only care about one number.
26:40
They care about exposure time. You add detection, you add
26:45
reaction together and that gives you your exposure time.
26:49
OK, we have two minutes to steal as much as we can because by
26:54
then, best case the cops will show up, Worst case 9 minutes.
26:58
But we can't take that risk. So they're doing 2 minutes
27:01
exposure time. How much damage can be done in 2
27:06
minutes? X whatever X happens to be, take
27:11
the same thing for your network. Your network.
27:14
Assume you have zero protection. Look at detection and reaction.
27:20
That gives you how much exposure, what is your risk and
27:23
trust factor with the user. With a partner network
27:27
connecting with anything and you then have the basis of being
27:32
able to analyze. What your downside is in a risk
27:36
way by looking at your detection and reaction mechanisms.
27:39
Because there is no guarantee that firewall is going to work.
27:42
There is no guarantee that somebody hasn't misconfigured
27:46
it. There is no guarantee that the
27:48
password 1234 won't be fish farmed out.
27:51
You don't know. So unless there is a number that
27:54
you can give to protection, it's meaningless.
27:58
The only way we can give numbers to protection is like in a safe.
28:03
This safe will hold up against a 9600 degree oxyacetylene torch
28:10
for four hours before it breaks through.
28:13
We know how to measure that in the world of ICS.
28:17
We can do physical measurements in order to figure out the min,
28:22
minimum and maximum amount of time that is required to make
28:25
things happen if you put your detection reaction time in them
28:31
in that formula. You have an answer, and that is
28:35
what generated it. That work was that original work
28:38
was done in the late 90s and then with doctor Mark Carney.
28:45
That's really a funny story. I was giving a talk in Paris and
28:49
a lot of my talks I begin with, hi, my name is Wynn.
28:52
My job is to give you a lot of my bullshit.
28:55
Your job is to call out my bullshit.
28:58
And if you're right, I'll buy the beer.
29:02
So I was given this talk on analogue network security, an
29:07
early version of it, as I was kind of massaging the ideas and
29:12
guy in the back stands, stands up and goes, you're full of shit
29:16
when and I good, good. Well, I'll meet you at the bar
29:19
later and we'll see who's buying.
29:22
And it ended up being Doctor Mark Carney.
29:24
We spent four hours with a bunch of people with papers and all
29:28
this and he goes, shit, you're right.
29:33
And so he formalized all of the mathematics and we built in
29:38
Bayesian probabilities. And there's a whole mathematical
29:42
chapter that I don't understand because I just built the theory,
29:46
not the mathematical formalization that he did.
29:49
So yeah, we do the math for security is known whether it is
29:54
in the physical world. The human world has exactly the
29:58
same set of criteria. You're walking out in the middle
30:01
of the street, somebody honks. Do you react?
30:04
Detect that sound, assuming you're not deaf.
30:08
No offense, you know, just saying, and then react.
30:11
Can you get out of the way fast enough?
30:13
That is your only protection. So when you look at detection
30:17
and reaction as a survival mechanism in nature.
30:22
That also shows how it works in the cyber world, the physical
30:26
world, anthrocyber kinetics and the numbers.
30:31
The formulas are the same everywhere.
30:32
It's all about survival. Given that AI is rapidly
30:39
evolving in regards to its sort of capabilities across the
30:42
board, what do you think of the main concerns for AI in relation
30:47
to its, you know, inevitable impact upon cybersecurity and
30:52
what it will be used for? You know, I I spent years
30:57
arguing that AI doesn't exist and I lost the battle just
31:00
because it came. Technically it doesn't exist,
31:03
but it's become the word I begin when I talk about AIII begin
31:10
with a couple of thoughts. We built AI in our own image.
31:19
We don't like what we see. Let's begin with that.
31:24
So the other hand I love AII think AI is great as long as the
31:34
answers you don't care about accuracy, if close is good
31:40
enough, and if you can be assured that the answers cause
31:47
no harm. It's an ozymoth way of looking
31:50
at it. Inside of that structure that
31:55
says AI is a great suggestion machine, but to put absolute
32:02
life and death decision making within that OODA loop if you
32:07
will, any decision making loop without a human intervention is
32:12
a disaster waiting to happen. We saw the car in San Francisco
32:17
two days ago dragging a guy a few blocks.
32:20
And I'm not criticizing the This is hard stuff that they're
32:23
doing, but it's not ready for prime time yet.
32:28
And I don't know if I ever want AI to make life and death
32:34
decisions or make decisions where harm is.
32:38
If you screw up, harm is 1 of what will happen.
32:41
And so I have really That's kind of where I've got my line right
32:44
now. Yeah, I've, I've been speaking a
32:47
lot about AI over the course of the last year and my concerns
32:52
for it. I mean obviously principally I
32:55
come at it from the perspective of creative and what it's doing
32:58
to that industry and obviously that's concerns for me moving
33:01
forward with work, right. But elsewhere the, the theme
33:06
that I found with AI seems to be replacement.
33:09
Replacement is going to replace this, it's going to replace that
33:12
and it's. Like, that's the initial gut
33:15
fear reaction population. Absolutely no, you're you're
33:19
100% spot on with that. But it's more coming at it from
33:24
the perspective of it makes things obsolete.
33:27
So like, a really good example is it's completely taken away.
33:31
Translation as a job. You don't need translators
33:35
anymore because you can just have AI to do it.
33:40
I love, I love AI for translating because my front
33:44
glaze again, translation close is good enough.
33:50
Nobody's really going to die unless you're calling the
33:53
president of China a shithead, which happened with one of the
33:56
translations a while back. Very funny and in the I don't
34:02
know if he had a sense of humor that it was an A, you know, it
34:04
was a translation thing. Translations are are great, but
34:10
they're not going to be perfect, and they also don't
34:12
contextualize and localize with full idiomatic understanding.
34:19
So is it a replacement? No, it's it's.
34:23
And I'm not a translator. But all right, take that first
34:26
pass. And now, are you going to let AI
34:29
translate Harry Potter into Swahili?
34:32
No, probably not. You may give it the first go,
34:35
but you still need a human. This has been every technical
34:39
generation ever, ever, of no matter what development has
34:43
been, The gut reaction is a primal fear of replacement.
34:48
And it's and it's a reaction to survival.
34:51
Again, I'll lose my job, I think.
34:54
But the primal reaction is fear. It's fear of change, and it's
34:59
fear of how it will impact you individually.
35:02
And when you really look at what we're doing with AI, you know,
35:05
the promises are insane. I mean, it's just, and when you
35:09
really look at it and dig down into it, yes can do amazing
35:14
things. When it first came, Dolly came
35:17
out, I was playing around with it.
35:19
Well, I'm stick figure challenged and I said I'm going
35:24
to become an artist. Yeah, I am.
35:27
And all I was able to create was massive amounts of really crappy
35:32
art. And I have a lot of artists that
35:36
I work with in many different projects and we got to talking
35:40
about it. And they go, you know, it's a
35:43
useful tool here and there, but by and large, I'm better off
35:48
doing it myself and using tools to tweak.
35:53
It's like with audio, and I grew up an audio engineer.
35:57
Is the sound perfect? No.
35:59
But I can use a compressor. I can use a tool, Yeah, but if
36:01
you're using the tools, it's not natural music.
36:04
Well, that depends. How you're using That's why
36:07
music in the 90s sucks so bad. It's because they were over
36:11
using digital tools and it sounded like crap.
36:15
At least in my analog years from working in the 70s, same thing.
36:19
It's new tools learning how to merge them and find out how to
36:23
optimize that synergy. What again is it between silicon
36:28
and carbon based systems? Is it parasitic?
36:33
Or is it symbiotic? And in the case of art, I would
36:36
certainly hope that people find the symbiosis 1st instead of
36:40
just gut fear. Yeah.
36:42
Again, I've said this on previous shows where we've sort
36:44
of discussed AII think at its best it's used as an option
36:50
rather than the replacement, You know, like.
36:52
So for example, there's a lot of people in the art industry
36:54
saying like, Oh no, this is terrible.
36:55
It's going to replace jobs as far as like making art is
36:59
concerned. And it's like well no, I mean
37:03
it, it depends on the decision makers and and ultimately So
37:08
what we mean by that is you know people choosing for example to
37:12
have human art versus AIRI actually think it's going to a
37:16
more positive. I think it's going to lead to
37:18
like a splitting of both. So you'll you'll have the option
37:23
of both. But I think the only time where
37:25
it's problematic, and I've already seen it has been like
37:29
advertisements where companies particularly like in YouTube,
37:33
I've seen this a lot. They'll put like a 30 second ad
37:36
placement where they've used AI but they've not given any time
37:40
or effort to actually try to make it sound convincing.
37:45
So like, I know they they even have like spelling mistakes and
37:47
stuff. They just, you can tell they
37:48
just, you know, whatever will save money will do this and it
37:51
just sounds terrible and you can see right through it and it
37:54
doesn't achieve its goal and you've just wasted your time and
37:56
effort and money there. Is good good enough?
38:00
Exactly. And in that case, well, maybe
38:03
the creators thought it was good enough.
38:05
But you as a consumer saw right through it and this really
38:10
brings up a technical issue that ties to the social issue and
38:14
will tie to government legislation issues.
38:19
I have been a proponent since the late 80s of provenance and
38:24
it becomes more important now. Is that original piece of art
38:27
original or did Bob create it the other day on his machine
38:32
and? There are some efforts going on
38:35
finally to be able to do digital tagging of all of certain types
38:40
of video and photographic source material with the equivalent of
38:45
a cryptographic hash, so that if it is with all the metadata in
38:49
it and if it is altered, you can tell so that will help with
38:57
detection of what. Is real or not real.
39:00
Not today, because it's easier. Just not believe anything.
39:04
You got to prove it to me. I just don't believe it anymore.
39:07
And the effort from a lot of college students is actually
39:11
this is where it became is AI detection.
39:14
Can I tell if the art is fake, the video is fake, the voice is
39:18
fake, the script is fake and I know that when I read AI
39:24
generated stuff. It reads like a pedantic old
39:28
version of Wikipedia. Hello.
39:30
Yeah, I get it. AI thinks I am the captain of
39:34
the Starship Enterprise. You know, go figure.
39:39
When you have the videos of the fake people, you still have the
39:43
uncanny valley effects. We're not all there yet.
39:46
We don't have retinal quality, generation of content.
39:50
And at the same time when as we approach that, we.
39:55
Really have to have Providence and integrity mechanisms built
40:01
into the actual content itself to be able to be able to declare
40:05
is this bullshit or not. And that is Lee.
40:10
I find there are some efforts finally going on and there are
40:13
some of the camera companies that are actually starting to
40:16
build some of this tech in. The only hope, I mean, I just
40:21
feel like right now it's very much the Wild West, you know,
40:25
there's not been, yeah. We said that about the Internet
40:27
30 years ago. True.
40:30
It's it's just the Wild West is just now.
40:33
We're into the meta Immersion. All that stuff it's and it's all
40:40
about reality distortion. Let's move it forward.
40:46
Several times throughout the conversation you you've
40:48
mentioned obviously your your background and music, so let's
40:50
explore that. Yeah, audio engineer.
40:54
You worked studios including The Mirror, Social Studios, A&R
40:59
Recording, The Brief, Hit Factory, Electric Lady Studios,
41:02
and the Lone Love Star Cafe or The Lone Star Cafe.
41:06
So we had a studio at the Lone Star Cafe.
41:08
We did live concerts, broadcast the 600 radio stations a couple
41:14
nights a week. What would you say were your
41:17
most kind of memorable experiences from that time?
41:21
The good ones or the bad ones? Let's start with the good.
41:26
One of the I still absolutely adore this experience.
41:31
It was absolute hell. But it's given great stories.
41:35
Was working with Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley and Arthur Ashe
41:39
and Bill Cosby at A in Kingston, Jamaica.
41:45
And there were political issues. The Brits, the money from China,
41:49
and then the Independence. Uprising from the Jamaicans.
41:53
And this was all happening in the summer of 77 while we were
41:57
there, and it was just an amazing concert.
42:02
It was like a six hour concert for 120,000 people and what
42:08
really made it so memorable is about I forget what who was
42:12
singing at the time was playing. But we lost power to the entire
42:16
stadium. All the lights went out, all the
42:19
sound went out. We have 120,000 really not happy
42:23
people, and we're not exactly happy either.
42:27
And one of the roadies came up with a bright idea, which I
42:31
ultimately got him arrested. And he had brought a can of CO2
42:35
over to the pole transformer because it was overheating to
42:38
cool it down because we had tapped all of this stuff off 1.
42:43
Toll transfer. And so that blew all the power.
42:47
And so then all the Jamaican police are coming over trying to
42:50
arrest him for terrorism and we're going, wait a minute, no,
42:54
he's saving the show, he's saying.
42:56
And it was 9 days of chaos like that.
43:01
So that was one of my great memories.
43:05
Well let's go the the biggest challenge then the the, the
43:09
toughest challenge that you overcame.
43:14
Oh boy. Well, technically it was Charlie
43:18
Daniels at Madison Square Garden.
43:20
I had flown in from New York. I was supposed to just engineer
43:24
the show with the rest of my team was there because in New
43:30
York and in many places you have to use union crews.
43:35
We were not allowed to touch. Our own equipment, we had to
43:40
make a Long story short, we had 40 some microphones out there
43:46
and because of technical issues with Madison Square Garden, that
43:50
we were not allowed to fix every microphone signal.
43:56
Mixed together and combined on every single channel of the
44:00
recording console. So all 16 tracks of the machine
44:05
got the same mix. That's gonna be so frustrating.
44:09
Did you find that out immediately afterwards or how?
44:13
How I? Found out when I arrived there.
44:16
Oh no. And I was like, OK, let's set up
44:19
and do. Ready.
44:20
And it was WTF mate? And we were like 2 hours before
44:25
the show, which to solve a problem that complex with unions
44:30
that weren't helpful was. We'll fix it later, but you
44:36
can't though if. If that's the input, you can't.
44:40
You know, with today's technology, with a lot of AI
44:44
behind it, I could have taken it all apart and glued it back
44:47
together, so. We used the technology of the
44:52
day to try to create a bass channel and a dry and we tried
44:57
and at least the voices could be heard clearly.
45:04
And it was one of those. We ran with it when what kind of
45:09
a choice do you have? But I loved doing live music
45:13
because it was absolute total. Planning to the last little
45:20
detail until the concert or event begins and then all chaos
45:25
be starts raining. And I loved it.
45:29
I loved it. I got to ask, man, what's what's
45:31
like the biggest fuck up you've ever seen?
45:33
Like with an artist where maybe it was entirely there for like,
45:37
where they something they did cause problems with the sound
45:40
and everything. Like, what's the craziest stuff
45:42
you ever saw? Oh boy.
45:48
Those two were pretty awful. We were we were doing the the
45:54
biggest issues that were really problems were the artists.
45:57
We were doing Hank Williams Junior Live and again we were
46:01
doing these 1 1/2 hour live radio shows out of the Lone Star
46:05
Cafe. It was new country rock kind of
46:09
urban cowboy stuff back in those days.
46:12
And Hank Williams Junior was up there.
46:15
And really tiny little bar, you know, 18 feet wide, 80 feet
46:21
long. One of those.
46:23
And there were some gay guys dancing in front of him and
46:29
somehow they spilled one of their drinks partially on him.
46:32
We're halfway through the concert and he walks off stage.
46:38
Is that annoyed? What do you do?
46:43
How do you save live to 600 radio stations?
46:47
What do you do? A commercial?
46:54
I don't know. I don't know.
46:55
I mean. You played the first half of the
46:57
show again? No.
46:59
Come on. Oh.
47:02
Phil We filled the air. Yeah, we played nothing else.
47:08
We had the safety recording. Rewind, press play, feed it out.
47:16
It was it was human issues that ended up causing more.
47:20
We had we had we were in Texas on a tour with Paul Simon and
47:27
and the bar and we were in a dry county.
47:29
Wherever we were it was a dry county and this is like 75 and
47:33
so the band says we want our booze.
47:36
Of course you do. Again, it was the mid 70s, right
47:40
and. Chaos on the road.
47:41
So I found a kid and he had to drive to another county.
47:44
Here's a few 100 bucks, bring some booze back.
47:48
So I had the booze up on stage and I was the stage mixer.
47:53
I was doing all that, that end of it versus the the house and
47:57
the band found it and decided that getting thoroughly tanked
48:03
and having to be carried onto stage was a good decision.
48:11
I don't think Paul Simon had ever yelled at me that much ever
48:16
in the years I worked with him. And it was they did the
48:20
drinking, they did it. They're I'm 22 years old.
48:26
These guys are in their 30s. Come on, I would get frustrated
48:30
with that as well, especially. But I look back and it was what
48:34
a life. Oh, absolutely, man.
48:37
Yeah. I mean, I was just looking at
48:38
all these different things that you've done in your life, and
48:40
it's just like, it's incredible, man.
48:42
Like it really is. And I think that's what life is
48:45
about really, isn't it? The varieties, the spice of
48:48
life, as they say, You know, like, I get told sometimes that
48:51
I should only focus on one thing in my life.
48:53
And I'm like, absolutely not. Like I have this curious mind
48:58
that's you know do acting, podcasting, music like I do, the
49:02
things I love. I don't think that human beings
49:04
should have to be 1 dimensional. I think we are multi
49:07
dimensional. Like we we have many things
49:09
we're able to do. We have our weaknesses, we have
49:11
our strengths. But ultimately doing a lot of
49:15
stuff in life, I mean surprise, surprise, it gives you stories,
49:18
it gives you experience and I think it helps you to grow more
49:23
as well. You know, like when I think
49:24
about periods in my life where I've done certain things and
49:28
maybe I've returned to those things, or maybe that's just a
49:31
closed chapter forever, you will always have those experiences
49:34
and lessons from that time. Oh, I've I have been very
49:38
fortunate to be able to experience a boatload of stuff.
49:42
Turn a few chapters completely off, Look back.
49:47
One of my talks is called I Survived Rock'n'roll and and how
49:51
it prepared me, how live concerts prepared me for
49:54
information security and it was all about contingency planning
50:00
and you know, having backups and what do you do?
50:03
Oh yeah, I did. Let's say it was another one we
50:05
we were doing, we had 40 musicians in the studio.
50:10
Jesus for for doing a commercial, you know, old
50:15
advertising and stuff. And Ed Rice, 7 foot 11, kind of
50:20
engineering says when come in here, all right, if I go in the
50:25
studio because I'm in the maintenance shop and he goes,
50:28
see that smoke coming out of the console.
50:31
Oh, I go, yeah. And he goes, is that good?
50:38
And then? The power capacitors blew up and
50:41
then a big puff of smoke came out.
50:44
The client was not there yet, and the client was a huge
50:49
client. Everybody freaks out around her
50:51
and all of this, right? And he goes to me, What are you
50:55
going to do about it? I think I was 20 years old.
51:00
Oh my God, I'd stress so hard. And I've looked and I said, just
51:05
give me a second, I said. Got it.
51:09
I said I need 3 pairs of hands. Here's what we're going to do.
51:13
And back in those, OK, this was an 8 track recorder, an old
51:16
Scully 8 track and the board was, I don't know, A32 win I
51:21
guess. And it was OK, get every mic,
51:25
cable you can. Now somebody go get them
51:29
stealing from wherever. Ted, I need some.
51:32
Sure mixers, we had these little old 4 channel shore mixers.
51:36
I mean you need I said everyone everywhere.
51:40
And what we did is we took the microphones, ran them instead of
51:44
into the plates, ran them into a patch Bay to take the patch Bay
51:49
to plug them into the mixers, do the mixing here instead of on
51:53
the console. Take the output of the mixer
51:56
into the 8 channel machine, then take the output of the 8 channel
52:01
machine. Into two more mixers, put them
52:04
together and ran it through a set of very small speakers on
52:07
the console. And we got it done in like 1/2
52:14
an hour. And I remember that as being
52:16
that that was, we never panicked.
52:18
It was like, you know, the panic doesn't help you just you just
52:24
got to do it. But you and I, I talked to my
52:29
housemate about this because he's he's a computer programmer
52:32
and he's got that kind of like problem solving brain.
52:35
And you you also have this too. Like what age did you kind of
52:39
like realise that maybe your brain worked in a slightly
52:42
different way. It's because like you you
52:45
thought that up on the fly. You assess the situation really
52:48
quickly and you put up a solution that's.
52:50
I mean like for example that would it's not something I would
52:52
be able to do like in a million years like it's just.
52:57
I was an audio guy, and I don't know, I had already done a lot
53:03
of live concerts I had done. I started in pro audio when I
53:07
was 16, so I had already had, well, those 20.
53:11
I was like, I've been doing it pro five years and a lot of live
53:15
stuff and live stuff's worth stuff always went wrong and I
53:19
thrived on that because it was a lot more fun.
53:23
You know, you sit, sit there. I worked on some Chicago albums.
53:27
Feeling stronger. And you know those kind of
53:29
songs, some of the great hits they did.
53:31
And while I look back, Yeah, I got to work on them.
53:35
When you sit and mix for two days, one song, No, I hated it.
53:44
No, give me live. I'm the I'm the other member of
53:47
the band. Let's do it.
53:49
Let's the music. Be the music.
53:51
Let it go live. And I just hated studio mixing.
53:55
Both my parents were engineers and they super encouraged
54:02
perhaps two of the most powerful words humans could ever use.
54:07
What if? Yeah and I caused by fair amount
54:17
of damage doing that. We all do.
54:20
But if I think learning how to fail.
54:25
And treat failure as education and the learning experience
54:29
versus some personal problem of failure.
54:36
You know if you don't, if you don't try, you don't fail, and
54:39
if you don't try, you don't succeed.
54:42
But if you don't try, then you've chosen to fail.
54:46
So this is the thing that I think sometimes people like us
54:49
will take this quality for granted.
54:52
I mean, like I know when I'm talking in live streams
54:54
sometimes about this. It dawns on me when I see some
54:58
of the responses that there is this fear of failure, as you
55:02
said, and like a fear of of trying things out because what
55:06
if it goes wrong? What if this, what if that like,
55:09
and I'm not saying this to try and sound like, oh, wow, you
55:12
know, isn't he special? Like when I say what what I'm
55:16
about to say, it's more because that's just how I have always
55:20
been, right? I don't, I don't have a fear of
55:24
failure. Like the way I look at it is
55:26
just try, see what happens, learn from it.
55:29
Like it's more kind of pragmatic, right?
55:32
But some of that comes from stubbornness, Some of that comes
55:35
from the past of, you know, things kind of not having worked
55:41
out, but then they worked out later.
55:42
So it's like you just have to trust in the process, right?
55:45
It's it's it's more primal than that.
55:48
Possibly, yeah. But there's a lot of people that
55:51
are afraid, you know, to just just really just go for things,
55:54
you know, because of failure. I I have one and my only
55:58
grandson, right? And my mechanical skills.
56:04
Wow. You know, there's 13 States and
56:06
12 countries in the world that made a law.
56:09
I cannot own a screwdriver because I'm really not very good
56:13
with this. There's a lot of laws.
56:19
But when I watch my grandson, kids like making towers, and
56:28
they learn how to make towers through failure.
56:34
That's it. And so now my job and my
56:37
daughter, you know, the parental units are supposed to.
56:42
That was great. Wow, that really tumbled down.
56:46
Let's try it again. And.
56:48
It's how you find the young mind into give it a go, give it a go,
56:56
learn some risk parameters, you know, some guardrails,
56:59
obviously, but give it a go and that's back to the AI thing.
57:04
As long as it doesn't do harm. Couple of final questions for
57:10
you, completely unrelated to today's topics.
57:13
Oh cool. What's the biggest mistake
57:17
you've made that you learned a valuable life lesson from?
57:25
Oh my God, I wish I had an immediate answer for the big
57:29
mistake. Yeah, I wish I'd.
57:35
And I'm not trying to deviate because I just something just
57:37
doesn't, doesn't really pop up because I look back in my life
57:42
and it's like, yeah, I screwed up a whole lot.
57:47
But for me to tell you where they all are, that would kind of
57:50
mean. I'm focusing on the negatives
57:51
and dwelling on it. So if I don't really have it,
57:56
regrets, you know, people say, well, what do you regret?
57:58
And I go, what do you regret? Not finishing high school?
58:02
No, no. I knew how to read.
58:05
I knew how to learn. I knew I had mentors and no, no.
58:11
Could I have made different choices?
58:12
Yes. But then I wouldn't be here now
58:15
talking to you. Because they another universal
58:19
line and path. So they have regress kind of
58:23
change. If you change something, want to
58:26
change it, you're changing your entire life's vector and that
58:28
says you're not happy where you are.
58:32
So yeah, I have screwed up a lot.
58:35
I've what made a lot of mistakes, but I would really
58:37
have to think about them because they're.
58:39
I will just say there are so many, but I just don't.
58:45
Think about them that much because I just got to keep
58:47
moving forward and so I'm not trying to, if I could think of
58:53
what I would tell you immediately because I but I
58:55
there's so Many thanks so much, man.
58:57
I really appreciate it. What's the best advice you've
59:01
ever received? Began when I was five.
59:12
Look it up. Yeah, yeah.
59:20
We grew up in Manhattan, so obviously we had access to a lot
59:23
of stuff. And our Public Library was five
59:27
blocks away, which in Manhattan is right around the corner, You
59:31
know, that's no difference distance at all.
59:34
And so I kind of sunk all the concrete from our house, our
59:39
apartment, to the library. I lived at the library.
59:43
And we the original look it up from my mother was she bought me
59:50
the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was 6.
59:54
Go figure. Right.
59:56
Look it up. Well, if it's not here, we'll go
59:59
to the library and it was. There are answers learn how to
1:00:03
do it, and I think that may be that's certainly one of the top
1:00:09
ones ever. And then the other one my mother
1:00:12
used was THIMMK, simk, simk. And that's kind of the stuff
1:00:26
that really guided me growing up was think about stuff and don't
1:00:35
take everybody's word for everything.
1:00:37
It was think look it up. If my mother had the Internet,
1:00:43
that would have been great. What's the biggest life lesson
1:00:48
you've learned so far? Oh geez.
1:00:55
I didn't expect all of this personal shit coming.
1:00:58
Sorry man, I asked every guest. This like foolish.
1:01:01
Oh, that's fine. The biggest life lesson?
1:01:08
Humans only have one asset time. Now, ain't that the truth?
1:01:22
It's. And it's funny as well, like
1:01:24
with how sometimes we choose to waste it, other times not.
1:01:28
Like, I was thinking about this the other day, right?
1:01:30
So I just turned 30 and I was kind of reflecting on the past
1:01:36
10 years of my life. And, you know, there were
1:01:39
periods. That work very hard and not
1:01:42
good. And then I look at the last like
1:01:44
three or four years of my life and how much I've done in such a
1:01:47
short space of time. And one can make the argument,
1:01:50
yeah, you know, you're making up for lost time, life has begun
1:01:53
again, etcetera, etcetera. But it's amazing, like when you
1:01:55
get caught in a rut, stuck in a rut sometimes in life and you're
1:01:59
really not living and time you are wasting time and it's and
1:02:03
it's becomes frustrating or whatever, right.
1:02:06
But then other times. Like right now, my life, I'm
1:02:09
like, wow, there just there just isn't enough time.
1:02:12
Like when you like and I take I, I know it's really annoying to
1:02:16
hear the expression, but it's true.
1:02:18
I live in the moment every single day.
1:02:20
Whatever it is, good or bad, I live in the moment.
1:02:22
I embrace it because it all just flies by.
1:02:25
Like this year has just flown by.
1:02:28
So much has happened and I'm so excited.
1:02:31
I love it. I love life.
1:02:32
And yeah, so guys, if you're going to take anything away from
1:02:34
that, it just stop wasting time. And make something of your time
1:02:40
probably. I mean down to I have a personal
1:02:42
problem in that I don't know how to, according to my wife and
1:02:45
other people, I don't know how to relax.
1:02:50
And I sort of argue that because, well, you're always
1:02:53
reading these science books and always doing that and I'm
1:02:57
typically reading five or six books of different genres at the
1:03:01
same time. They go, you're always, that's
1:03:03
not what I said. It's relaxing to me.
1:03:06
I'm compelled to do it. I and if I didn't want to do it,
1:03:11
I wouldn't do it. And if I want to watch a Murdoch
1:03:15
mystery or or or A Midsummer murder, I'm going to go do that
1:03:20
too. But I I do like brain stimulus,
1:03:26
but I also like it really quiet. But those are all personal
1:03:29
choices. And I just kind of, well, you
1:03:32
said live at the moment. It's like, all right if I if my
1:03:35
body, brain, my entity says go chill out and do nothing, I'll
1:03:42
go do it. But then my brain will say,
1:03:45
damn, I'm hungry for more of alien conspiracy theory on
1:03:51
YouTube. I'll go do that for a while.
1:03:54
And the other thing I do is I keep notes on every YouTube.
1:03:59
Everything I do, my entire I keep notes all the time because
1:04:02
you never know where are you going to find a potential
1:04:07
relationship between ideas. And so you know, what do UFOs
1:04:15
and Uaps have to do with the metaverse and cybersecurity?
1:04:20
Well, that's Chapter 37 of my new book.
1:04:22
I do actually get into the UAP issues of Metaverse reality
1:04:30
distortion technologies. OK, I'm not giving you any
1:04:36
answer. I'm not giving you any answer.
1:04:39
What do you mean? I mean, can't you just reveal
1:04:42
all of your book? And I can just It actually was
1:04:47
very, very funny. It because I've been a UFO
1:04:51
follower since I was forever, you know, because it's always
1:04:55
like, wow, back to the what if. And my parents really instilled
1:05:01
them to me, even though they didn't call it that when I was
1:05:03
eight years, 10 years old, falsifiability and provability
1:05:07
of things. So I took it, I guess in high
1:05:11
school if I went for a couple of years.
1:05:13
But later on, unless there is an explicit reason to remove
1:05:18
something from consideration, the equivalent of scientific
1:05:21
faults of viability, it's got to stay on the table.
1:05:25
Otherwise you're back to your arrogance of apathy, ignorance
1:05:29
and arrogance. Because arrogance is arrogance.
1:05:34
Is assumptive or assumptiveness is an area, is a facet of
1:05:38
arrogance. And so when I started looking at
1:05:41
uaps, especially in the last 3-4 years when all this stuff's
1:05:45
starting to happen and I have books, I probably have 400 books
1:05:50
going back to the 50s on my show.
1:05:53
It's like I said, I just want to do a pure technical look at what
1:05:58
the Hell's going on. And so I sat doing that while I
1:06:02
was working on the Met, the Metal war book, and it was no
1:06:07
shit, really. Is that really what I think is
1:06:18
that really? And so I know some interesting
1:06:22
people, and I ran some ideas by them and they.
1:06:27
Go. You're really going to publish
1:06:28
that? And I go, why?
1:06:31
How wrong am I? And they go, I mean, yeah, I'm
1:06:37
publishing government people, interesting people.
1:06:49
I would never, never out. No, I know I'm.
1:06:52
I'm pushing my laps. No, no, no, you would.
1:06:54
But no, you don't. That's a matter of trust.
1:06:58
You know you you earn trust over years.
1:07:00
Of course, it takes one second to lose it.
1:07:04
I mean it's it's it's kind of crazy about that line, but it's
1:07:08
it's back to time. You notice how much of
1:07:11
everything, if you really relate it to time, you end up with an
1:07:15
entirely new world view. Do it every for the next few
1:07:22
hours or the next couple days. Every conversation you have with
1:07:26
people. Just interject the concept of
1:07:30
time and the question and or the answer.
1:07:34
How long are you going to waste my time now?
1:07:37
That's a fair question. What do you mean exactly by
1:07:41
that? Can I extrapolate a little bit?
1:07:42
Do you mean like how much time you invest in certain
1:07:48
conversations or or what do you mean?
1:07:50
It's purely conceptual. You know, I I used to be a
1:07:57
really good record engineer. Oh, when was that?
1:08:00
How many years ago? How long did you do that for?
1:08:03
A contextual time gives you contextualization, time gives
1:08:07
you boundaries. Otherwise you've got this
1:08:09
infinite thing. And in order for humans to
1:08:12
understand stuff, we need to make it simpler and putting
1:08:15
things in frameworks of something that is smaller and
1:08:18
relatable. Somebody says are you secure?
1:08:24
Well, we were for a couple 100 microseconds.
1:08:28
I don't know what is going on now because everything has
1:08:31
changed. When you look at the world, all
1:08:36
functions, whether they're bio, whether they're natural
1:08:41
universe, cosmological physics, everything operates in time
1:08:45
based OODA loops, everything. And that is the nature of
1:08:49
survival mechanisms for physics and US and biological systems as
1:08:55
well. It's all Luda loops.
1:08:57
Luda loops are time. And the faster your OODA loop,
1:09:00
the higher the odds of your survival.
1:09:03
Everything goes back to survival, whether it's a
1:09:06
mechanical or a biological system.
1:09:09
So that's why when people in security say you know, we, we
1:09:15
are really, really secure. Yeah, well, for how long and how
1:09:20
are you measuring that? And you start bringing these
1:09:23
questions in and it gives you a different view.
1:09:27
So for the next day, just add time into your question and time
1:09:32
into your answer and you'll see where they start fitting.
1:09:36
It'll become, it's like my wife says to me, because are you
1:09:40
going to, are you going to take out the garbage?
1:09:43
When you mean now? I think it's implied again.
1:09:54
Yeah, again, but maybe it's not needed for two or three hours.
1:09:59
We really need to talk when. Well, just in general.
1:10:03
No, that's OK. Yeah, we'll talk in general.
1:10:06
That means we're never going to talk when.
1:10:11
Other question for you, do you have any upcoming projects or
1:10:14
final thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners
1:10:18
upcoming, I mean the current book that I'm going to plug or
1:10:20
other stuff? Everything.
1:10:22
What in the world of of when plug or plug away?
1:10:26
Tell us what's coming up. What's next for you?
1:10:28
My new book, It's. It's called Metawar is going to
1:10:35
be. It's available for pre sale on
1:10:37
Amazon Kindle right now, not on the paperback, because the
1:10:42
Ingram Spark Amazon systems aren't talking to each other
1:10:47
correctly. Metawar is the art and science
1:10:53
of creating addictive reality distortion, and whether it's
1:10:59
through social media or immersive technologies, we're
1:11:02
expanding and we're building this whole new world that's not
1:11:06
real and have to start dealing with the concepts of what is
1:11:11
reality, What is subjective, objective reality, How are we
1:11:14
going to deal with it? And do we really want big tech
1:11:17
with the media and politicians around the world dictating what
1:11:22
reality is? And that is so the book gets
1:11:25
into the neuroscience of what creates reality for us and how
1:11:34
we as metal warriors can amplify the effects.
1:11:38
And then ultimately, what are we going to do?
1:11:40
How can we defend against this? And it comes down to three
1:11:45
fundamental areas and then some very unexpected stuff that I
1:11:51
have had a lot of trouble going. I'm probably going to fix this.
1:11:54
And I came across some work from some Dutch folks out of
1:12:00
University of Cambridge and they were doing some experimental
1:12:05
psychology and it was like, wow, that's really interesting.
1:12:10
I wonder if, you know, what if? And I started calling people,
1:12:16
it's like, here's what I do, here's what you do.
1:12:19
I'm seeing this. And they're going, oh jeez, we
1:12:22
need to talk. And I started finding these
1:12:24
interdisciplinarian folks inside of academia that were really
1:12:28
open to the cybersecurity approach on cognitive immune
1:12:33
structure and how we're going to defend ourselves mentally
1:12:37
against all of this crap. And so as a result, we think we
1:12:43
have found, I'm going to use the word paths, answers, no paths,
1:12:48
experiments, stuff that seems to work really well.
1:12:51
Yeah, but that's their job. I I'm just trying to put it all
1:12:55
into this a box so we can all have a conversation and invite
1:13:00
in a lot of other disciplines. Because it's not cybersecurity,
1:13:03
it's not just psych. It's just not neuroscience is
1:13:07
philosophy. It's religion.
1:13:09
It's fundamental belief systems and how they impact us, and it's
1:13:14
all about human survival. So it I thought it was going to
1:13:19
be a technical exercise when I began writing it.
1:13:23
Ah, let's look at the Metaverse. And then it became aw, shit.
1:13:27
This is really about what it means to be a human being.
1:13:32
Amazing stuff I cannot wish you. But just best of luck with with
1:13:38
all of this. It's been absolutely incredible
1:13:41
having you on the show. I was super stoked when your
1:13:45
your people reached out to me about potentially having you on
1:13:48
my show. And I I remember just looking
1:13:50
into you and for instance, my, my uncle is is really big into
1:13:54
computers. And when I told him I was having
1:13:55
you on the show, he was like wow, that's huge, you know, so
1:13:59
just just a massive factor. I'm not that well known.
1:14:02
It's it's listen to for me. Every time I get to do this it's
1:14:07
an absolute joy. And to have people like yourself
1:14:10
sit down, take the time out of the day to like talk with me
1:14:13
about these things. Like you know, I I know next to
1:14:16
nothing about these things and and you're an expert on this
1:14:18
field and you're patient with me and you've gone through it and
1:14:21
stuff and we've had a good conversation and and to me that
1:14:24
means everything. So I'm always stoked and it
1:14:30
helps me. Every time I have a
1:14:31
conversation, I learn something. Same here.
1:14:34
That's why I do the show. Thank you so much for appearing
1:14:37
on the show. You've been great.
1:14:39
And wishing you the very best of luck.
1:14:41
And to all the listeners of the show, I hope you enjoyed it as
1:14:43
much as I did. Make sure you go and leave us a
1:14:46
review on Pod Chaser. I'm not going to drop this.
1:14:49
It's you're going to hear this all the time.
1:14:50
You're going to get sick of me until you relieve those reviews.
1:14:52
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1:14:58
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1:15:02
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1:15:08
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1:15:19
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1:15:22
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1:15:25
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1:15:29
I'll see you all in the next one.