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John McAfee on U.S. Cybersecurity: We Are Not Number One(Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Well, you know, taking a look at the world of
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  Speaker 1: cyber security as well as online safety brings to mind
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  Speaker 1: at least one very important name. And I know that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: here are taking Stock, Kathleen Hayes. You know I'm talking
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  Speaker 1: about McAfee, John McAfee, who created the first commercial anti
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  Speaker 1: cyber theft, anti sort of security UM program. And I'd
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  Speaker 1: like to welcome all of our Bloomberg Television audience. We're
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  Speaker 1: here with a special guest. First, I'm Pim Fox. This
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  Speaker 1: is taking Stock, my co host Kathleen Hayes. And joining
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  Speaker 1: us is David Garrity. He is the principal at g
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  Speaker 1: v A Research. He is also a columnist for Investor PDA.
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  Speaker 1: And joining us now is that John McAfee. John McAfee,
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  Speaker 1: as I said, first commercial program for computer security. He's
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  Speaker 1: worked for NASA, Lockheed, uh, and he I want to
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  Speaker 1: welcome him now. He is the incoming chairman and incoming
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  Speaker 1: chief executive of m g T Capital. John McAfee, thank
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  Speaker 1: you very much for being with us. Well, thanks for
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  Speaker 1: having me to him. Yeah, I gotta I gotta first
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  Speaker 1: say that, um. You know when I mentioned the people
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  Speaker 1: that you would be coming in and we'd be speaking
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  Speaker 1: to you. Uh, there was this kind of blurring of
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  Speaker 1: the line between your personal life and your business life.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if you can clarify any of the issues.
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  Speaker 1: And I know we only have about nine minutes, so
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  Speaker 1: that's not going to take is not gonna be that long,
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  Speaker 1: but can you clarify some of the issues that related
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  Speaker 1: to your time and I guess believe Guatemala and and
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  Speaker 1: also what you're currently doing, what you're up to. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: the clarify my time, my time and belife, I'm afraid
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  Speaker 1: we'll never get clarified. A share Time is coming out
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  Speaker 1: with a movie, a ninety minute movie on the twenty
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  Speaker 1: four this month. Um and it's it's actually it was
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  Speaker 1: co produced by a general named Jeff Wise, who is
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  Speaker 1: one of the people who was made a life career
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  Speaker 1: out of trashing me so and and in this movie,
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  Speaker 1: apparently not only am I linked to the murder that
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  Speaker 1: they wanted to link me to in police, but I
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  Speaker 1: think multiple more in police. So it's it's liable to
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  Speaker 1: get very interesting. Um but but polices, it's the third
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  Speaker 1: world Banana Republic, and um uh, you can go down
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  Speaker 1: there and make any story you want if you if
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  Speaker 1: you pay your interviews, which have time did so. They
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  Speaker 1: had a story in mind and created a fiction my
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  Speaker 1: business life. I've been in cybersecurity forever. Um, not forever,
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  Speaker 1: I mean for forty eight years, um, before it was
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  Speaker 1: even called cybersecurity. It's it's the one thing I love. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I love my personal freedom and my privacy, and um,
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  Speaker 1: cybersecurity is the is the rock on which all that
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  Speaker 1: rests in this today and age. So um mgt uh.
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  Speaker 1: When I when I became the CEO, uh, we throughout
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  Speaker 1: all the existing products and projects and became a pure
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  Speaker 1: cybersecurity farm. And I think we have some of the best,
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  Speaker 1: um certainly the most up to date and avant garde
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  Speaker 1: cybersecurity products on the planet. Just as google, google became
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  Speaker 1: a verb that means to search, McAfee is a name,
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  Speaker 1: a word like that. It's what you associate with computer security,
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  Speaker 1: online security. What about What is the technology though, that
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  Speaker 1: is going to set this new venture you've joined apart? Okay, Well,
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  Speaker 1: here's the thing. I invented the current technology it's based.
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  Speaker 1: It started with anti virus technology and branched out into
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  Speaker 1: a whole system of programs involved in finding malware. But
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  Speaker 1: by the time you find malware, it's too late. It's
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  Speaker 1: already in your system. As an example, the Office of
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  Speaker 1: Personnel Management for the federal government was hacked in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and thirteen. Twenty one million records were taken. They
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  Speaker 1: didn't find out until two thousand and fifteen. So all
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  Speaker 1: of our products today are are reactive. Um I am
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  Speaker 1: developing an entire line of proactive products. All of my
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  Speaker 1: friends are hackers. It kind of odd. I started off
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  Speaker 1: fighting hackers, but as I got older, I guess I
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  Speaker 1: got some sort of grudging respect, and they asked me
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  Speaker 1: to actually keynote def Con two years ago, which is
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  Speaker 1: the Worldwide Hacking Convention. Uh. And I've actually hired a
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  Speaker 1: bunch of hackers to help me. Why because they're the
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  Speaker 1: ones doing the hacking. I mean, if if you're going
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  Speaker 1: to build the best bank fault, you're gonna hire the
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  Speaker 1: best bank vault cracker, aren't you, because otherwise you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: miss something. So the proactive products are actually catching hackers
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  Speaker 1: within the first few seconds as I start sniffing your systems.
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  Speaker 1: It takes hackers months to get what they want, and
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  Speaker 1: for the first few days they're just probing around. Well,
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  Speaker 1: since I know how hackers work, and since the people
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  Speaker 1: I've hired to know how hackers work. Within ten seconds
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  Speaker 1: of a hackers sniffing your system, we've identified him, we
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  Speaker 1: found out where he lives, we found out what technique
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  Speaker 1: he's using, and we send an instant message to the
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  Speaker 1: I T managers saying you've got a hacker on Poart
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  Speaker 1: eighties in Russia. Do something. Now, we don't do anything,
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  Speaker 1: it's up to that. But but what we're doing, we
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  Speaker 1: are the alarm company hacker in your system. So this
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  Speaker 1: is infinitely preferable to waiting until the mail work gets in,
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  Speaker 1: destroys your database or shuts everything down and demands a
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  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars to bring it back up before they
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  Speaker 1: can even plant the mail where we say they're here,
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  Speaker 1: shut them down. John. In terms of some of the
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  Speaker 1: people that you brought on, Chris Anderson Agia, your your
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  Speaker 1: chief technology officer at MGT S talks about trying to
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  Speaker 1: leverage social networks in terms of the security products that
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  Speaker 1: you're bringing out. Is there anything that you would care
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  Speaker 1: to discuss about how social networks are figuring cominently in
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  Speaker 1: terms of these preventative products that you're putting out well, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: I know it mostly is Egypt. When you mentioned his
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  Speaker 1: named Eric Anderson, I go, who is he? Because I've
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  Speaker 1: known him as Egypt for years. That's his hacker name.
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  Speaker 1: He's one of those brilliant programmers I've ever met. He
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  Speaker 1: was He was responsible for all of the artificial intelligence
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  Speaker 1: for Grand Theft Auto five, for example, one of the
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  Speaker 1: most successful games of all time. Brilliant. Um. What he
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  Speaker 1: has developed is is a platform using social encryption, which
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  Speaker 1: is a brand new concept and it will eventually replace
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  Speaker 1: the Internet, I'm sure of it. Uh, but social networks
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  Speaker 1: that good heavens, what can you say about it? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: for example, Facebook, Um, kids are going to Facebook to
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  Speaker 1: get news. Now, well, half the news on Facebook is
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  Speaker 1: written by satire sites, which it's really not satire when
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  Speaker 1: you when you when you say, you know, zombies just
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  Speaker 1: invaded at Walmart in Lexington, Tennessee and eight three people
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  Speaker 1: and it all sounds legit, right. So, um, I think
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  Speaker 1: young kids are getting smarter because they're recognizing that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people trying to fool me out there. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and old people are getting dumber by putting information on
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  Speaker 1: social media, which is going to come back and bite
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  Speaker 1: you and you go, how did that happen? Well, you
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  Speaker 1: told the world basically, so um where it's going I
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  Speaker 1: do not know, but I know that Facebook and Twitter
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  Speaker 1: are just the beginning. And as we as we get
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  Speaker 1: into the virtual reality systems that are being built by
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  Speaker 1: Japan and China, and I've tried many of them, unbelievable,
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  Speaker 1: the world is gonna change radically. I mean, we're gonna
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  Speaker 1: be having remote relationships with you know, bodily contact, you know,
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  Speaker 1: when one person's halfway around the planet. I wonder if
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  Speaker 1: you could speak a little bit about Intel, because talking
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  Speaker 1: about securing your identity, you're trying to secure your name.
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  Speaker 1: Intel purchased McAfee. You had already left the company by
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  Speaker 1: that time. What is going on between you and Intel?
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  Speaker 1: Right now? There is only one piece of paper signed
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  Speaker 1: by John McAfee the individual, and John McAfee associates the company,
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  Speaker 1: and I signed both of them where I only gave
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  Speaker 1: rights to McAfee anti virus, that one name, that one thing.
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  Speaker 1: Intel has rolled it out into every product in the world.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm not mad, and I would never have sued
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  Speaker 1: them over that. But when they told me I couldn't
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  Speaker 1: use my name. Well, I'm thinking, well, maybe I can
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  Speaker 1: make you not choose not use my name either, because
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  Speaker 1: you don't have the right so and I didn't. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't want to call it McAfee, John McAfee. It's my identity.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, some people know me um as John McAfee.
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  Speaker 1: So who knows what the courts will make up at
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  Speaker 1: the courts are mysterious affairs, John mc You are pushing
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  Speaker 1: for the government to create a cyber security defense strategy.
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  Speaker 1: What's the number one thing that the US government that
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  Speaker 1: the next presidented States should do? Okay, well, this is
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  Speaker 1: very very topical. I went on RT yesterday and called
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  Speaker 1: President Obama clueless because at the G twenty summit the
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  Speaker 1: day before, he said America is the most advanced nation
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  Speaker 1: in the world for cybersecurity, way ahead of China and Russia.
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  Speaker 1: And he said that the Nation States must work together
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  Speaker 1: to restrict the growth of cyber weaponry. Okay, so the
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  Speaker 1: first thing I said was, if we are in fact
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  Speaker 1: the most advanced nation in the world, then we're all doomed.
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  Speaker 1: For example, a fifteen year old boy four months ago
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  Speaker 1: hacked into the FBI and walked off with every undercover
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  Speaker 1: agents photo fingerprints, name, social Security number and address UM
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  Speaker 1: and and so yes we are we are not number one.
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  Speaker 1: And secondly, this is not a nation stage issues. John McAfee,
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  Speaker 1: we thank you so much for joining us. You're gonna
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  Speaker 1: have to come back and continue this conversation. I'll forget
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  Speaker 1: it by them, but thank you very much. Like John McAfee,
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  Speaker 1: Executive Chairman and CEO mg T Capital Investments, we also
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  Speaker 1: thank Dave Garrity from g b A Research. We thank
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  Speaker 1: our Bloomberg television audience as well for joining us