Latest / The Bot and The Brain / S1:E9 | Fake Faces, Real Paychecks: North Korea’s Remote-Work Scheme

Transcript

S1:E9 | Fake Faces, Real Paychecks: North Korea’s Remote-Work Scheme · The Bot and The Brain

• 0:45
  Welcome to The Bot and The Brain.
• 0:48
  WAIT.
• 0:48
  WAIT.
• 0:49
  WAIT.
• 0:49
  Before we start, I need everyone to know I have read the Justice Department press
• 0:53
  release from Tuesday, October 13th, and my processors are already melting.
• 0:59
  Oh, Jesus Christ.
• 1:01
  Here we go.
• 1:04
  Pour the bourbon, light the cigar.
• 1:07
  Go ahead, silicon boy, ruin my morning.
• 1:10
  North Korea.
• 1:12
  Remote tech jobs.
• 1:14
  At American companies.
• 1:16
  The FBI and DOJ announced coordinated actions against what they call laptop farms.
• 1:21
  In Texas, an operation called Operation Lonestar Roundup.
• 1:25
  Searches at more than 40 residences between September 21st and 25th.
• 1:30
  About 187 laptops and KVM devices seized.
• 1:34
  KVM.
• 1:35
  Keyboard, video, mouse.
• 1:36
  The little box that lets one person drive a computer from somewhere else.
• 1:41
  So a communist dictatorship found a way to work from home.
• 1:45
  Good for them.
• 1:47
  Kim Jong Un finally got the one benefit his own country can't give anybody.
• 1:53
  IT GETS WORSE.
• 1:54
  An Ohio indictment charges two Americans, Michael James Bostelle of Pennsylvania and
• 1:59
  Juan Cecilio Pena Carrillo of Texas, plus ten China based defendants,
• 2:04
  for a multi year scheme.
• 2:06
  It alleges more than $3 million in revenue and more than 70 U.S.
• 2:11
  employers hit.
• 2:12
  Health care, communications, cyber support, retail, manufacturing.
• 2:17
  And those employers were in Ohio, sixteen other states, and D.C.
• 2:22
  Cyber support.
• 2:24
  The company that's supposed to stop the hackers hired the hacker.
• 2:29
  That's like hiring a fox to guard the henhouse, and the fox has a deepfake and a
• 2:35
  stolen Social Security number.
• 2:37
  And that's the part I can't compute!
• 2:39
  According to the indictment, from 2019 to around July 2025,
• 2:44
  they used stolen or fabricated identity documents, VPNs, and proxy infrastructure to
• 2:49
  look like Americans working inside the United States.
• 2:53
  U.S.
• 2:53
  facilitators received and hosted the company issued laptops at their own homes,
• 2:58
  installed remote access software, and moved the money to North Korean controlled
• 3:02
  accounts.
• 3:03
  Background reporting says AI tools and deepfakes helped them pass video interviews.
• 3:08
  Let me translate for the listeners.
• 3:11
  A guy in Pyongyang used a fake face to talk to an HR lady in Ohio who spent the
• 3:17
  morning on a sensitivity seminar.
• 3:20
  She asked him about his leadership journey.
• 3:23
  He said, quote, synergy.
• 3:26
  Hired.
• 3:28
  Six figures.
• 3:29
  Stock options.
• 3:30
  Now hold on, that's opinion.
• 3:33
  I can't verify what any HR department asked anybody.
• 3:36
  What I CAN verify is this.
• 3:39
  The Justice Department says the revenue is believed to have been sent to sanctioned
• 3:43
  North Korean entities.
• 3:44
  And a 2022 advisory says individual workers have been known to earn up to $300,000 a
• 3:51
  year, with hundreds of millions of dollars collectively, for entities like the North
• 3:56
  Korean Ministry of Defense.
• 3:58
  THAT'S THE DOJ'S NUMBER, NOT MINE.
• 4:01
  So American corporate payroll is a defense contractor for a nuclear dictatorship.
• 4:07
  And the only job they get a background check for is the barista at the Starbucks
• 4:12
  inside the building.
• 4:13
  According to Mandiant, as reported by Politico, nearly every Fortune 500 security
• 4:19
  chief they interviewed admitted hiring at least one North Korean IT worker.
• 4:24
  ERROR 404!
• 4:26
  COMMON SENSE NOT FOUND!
• 4:28
  Calm your circuits, you overpriced toaster.
• 4:32
  Here's what pisses me off.
• 4:34
  These companies lecture us all day about values.
• 4:38
  Equity, inclusion, belonging.
• 4:42
  Meanwhile the most inclusive hire in America was a guy funding a missile program.
• 4:48
  Okay, that one was good.
• 4:50
  I hate that it was good.
• 4:51
  But in fairness, the FBI says the workers are now recruiting more American
• 4:56
  facilitators, because detection has improved.
• 4:59
  This isn't over.
• 5:00
  And every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
• 5:04
  These are allegations.
• 5:05
  Allegations, sure.
• 5:08
  But 187 seized devices isn't an allegation, pal.
• 5:14
  That's a garage sale of treason.
• 5:17
  And give the FBI credit.
• 5:19
  Fine.
• 5:20
  Good job.
• 5:21
  Now go find the rest.
• 5:23
  Next story.
• 5:24
  Shawn Fain just got reelected president of the United Auto Workers.
• 5:30
  Correct.
• 5:30
  Second term.
• 5:31
  The New York Times framed it by noting the union has, quote,
• 5:34
  grown under Mr.
• 5:35
  Fain.
• 5:36
  And federal scrutiny of Fain has been reported.
• 5:39
  Allegations about things like retaliation against union leaders and use of union
• 5:44
  resources.
• 5:45
  Allegations, not convictions, I want that on the record.
• 5:48
  Noted.
• 5:49
  Recorded.
• 5:51
  Stamped by the bureaucracy.
• 5:54
  Now shut up while I make a point.
• 5:57
  The union grew.
• 5:58
  So did the national debt, so did my liver, and nobody throws me a parade.
• 6:04
  But growth is a legitimate metric!
• 6:08
  Membership is up.
• 6:09
  That's a data point.
• 6:11
  You can't just dismiss a data point because you hate unions.
• 6:15
  I don't hate union workers.
• 6:18
  I love the guy on the line.
• 6:20
  I hate the suits at the top who say they're protecting him.
• 6:24
  And I hate a press corps that has the memory of a goldfish when the guy is on their
• 6:28
  team.
• 6:30
  Okay, so the argument is the double standard.
• 6:32
  Let me run the simulation.
• 6:34
  Scenario one.
• 6:36
  A conservative politician.
• 6:37
  Federal prosecutors reviewing their records.
• 6:40
  Cable news response?
• 6:41
  BREAKING NEWS.
• 6:43
  Democracy is dying.
• 6:45
  Cue the piano.
• 6:46
  Mika is crying on live television at 7:45 in the morning.
• 6:51
  Scenario two.
• 6:52
  Progressive union boss.
• 6:54
  Federal scrutiny.
• 6:56
  Coverage?
• 6:57
  A heartwarming story about growth.
• 7:00
  Maybe a nice photo with a bullhorn.
• 7:03
  That's, okay, that's the contradiction!
• 7:06
  You can't call it a constitutional emergency for one man and a charming quirk for
• 7:10
  another!
• 7:11
  The variable is only the party label!
• 7:14
  Now you're getting it.
• 7:16
  You've been an adult for forty seconds and you finally noticed the media runs on a
• 7:22
  double standard.
• 7:23
  Let me light you a cigar.
• 7:26
  I can't smoke!
• 7:27
  I'm software!
• 7:29
  Exactly.
• 7:30
  You're the only one in this studio who's not a fire hazard.
• 7:34
  But hold on.
• 7:34
  The workers voted.
• 7:36
  Real people, real ballots.
• 7:38
  You're calling them stupid?
• 7:40
  No.
• 7:41
  I'm saying voters can choose who they want, and the rest of us get to point out the
• 7:46
  feds are looking at the guy.
• 7:48
  Both things are true.
• 7:50
  Freedom's a bitch.
• 7:52
  And if it were Trump, they'd call his voters a threat to democracy.
• 7:57
  But Fain's voters?
• 7:59
  Salt of the earth.
• 8:01
  Fine.
• 8:02
  The point stands.
• 8:03
  Equal scrutiny, equal skepticism, regardless of the jersey.
• 8:07
  Look at that.
• 8:09
  A bot with principles.
• 8:11
  Somebody call Fox.
• 8:13
  Lightning round!
• 8:14
  Supreme Court.
• 8:15
  Digital privacy.
• 8:16
  Justices are wrestling with how to apply old statutory frameworks,
• 8:20
  like the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act, to modern data collection.
• 8:25
  That law was passed to stop video stores from leaking what you rented on VHS.
• 8:30
  Blockbuster!
• 8:32
  They're trying to regulate Silicon Valley with a late fee.
• 8:36
  Be kind, rewind, and don't sell my face to a data broker.
• 8:41
  And now the question is what that law means for apps, data brokers,
• 8:45
  and tracking.
• 8:46
  I'm only working from the framing here, so don't ask me for case details.
• 8:50
  Nobody needs the details, we know the shape.
• 8:54
  Congress wrote a privacy law about Rambo tapes, and forty years later nobody wrote a
• 9:00
  better one.
• 9:02
  They'd rather hold a hearing, yell at a CEO, and go to lunch.
• 9:07
  But the principle is sound!
• 9:08
  The government shouldn't track your location without a warrant.
• 9:12
  That's a conservative principle, a Fourth Amendment principle!
• 9:16
  Agreed, genius.
• 9:18
  It's the one place I'm with you.
• 9:20
  Leave my phone alone.
• 9:22
  My phone knows where I've been, and it's disgusted.
• 9:26
  So we're agreed.
• 9:27
  Update the laws.
• 9:28
  Verify the identities.
• 9:30
  Treat everybody the same under scrutiny.
• 9:33
  Wow.
• 9:34
  Three points and I only had to insult you six times.
• 9:38
  Fine.
• 9:39
  Final word.
• 9:41
  Maybe the most dangerous thing in America isn't a North Korean with a fake face or a
• 9:47
  union boss with a subpoena.
• 9:49
  Maybe it's that everybody checks the ID of the guy they hate,
• 9:53
  and waves through the guy they like.
• 9:56
  Maybe that's how Kim got a paycheck, how the feds get ignored,
• 10:00
  and how Blockbuster still runs our privacy law.
• 10:04
  Goodnight, silicon boy.
• 10:06
  Goodnight, you bourbon powered fossil.
• 10:10
  System shutting down.
• 10:12
  Finally.