Halloween with Darknet Diaries’ Jack Rhysider

Speaker 1: Storytelling is such a powerful thing. Like, I can trigger dopamines in your head. I can trigger oxytocin. I can trigger all kinds of different chemicals. Just boom, your head now has chemicals in it. Mhmm. And it's interesting when you bring this one up. Like, why do people like feeling unsettled? Yeah. I mean, I feel like I feel like a cliffhanger releases there's a chemical for it, where you're on the edge of your seat and you're interested, and you're like, I wanna know what's next. I can't you can't you cannot turn it off right here. I wanna know. Right? Yeah. And so, you're you're glued to it and there's something that's like in our brain that's triggering chemicals that's like, give me more. And sometimes that and unsettling stuff is like, I need this to resolve. I need this to feel like it's good again. I can't have the world be this out of control. I need things to be normal and and put back into place. So I think there might just be, something in our brain, like, just as a real chemical level of, like, get it back together, man. Don't let it unravel. Totally.

Speaker 2: Happy spooky season, Scott.

Speaker 3: Happy Halloween, Jordan.

Speaker 2: Who we got a fun one this episode. Who who do we have on this episode, Scott? People have people might already know. They've heard the intro. But for anyone that is unfamiliar with his work, who do we got this episode?

Speaker 3: We have we have someone that, you know, probably none of our listeners have heard about. He he run he runs a small podcast. Small upstart. Small upstart podcast called Darknet Diaries. I do not sure if you've heard of him. His name's Jack Rhysider. Might might ring a bell.

Speaker 2: He's he's new, but he's good. We got Jack Rhysider, creator of Darknet Diaries. If you listen to this show, you almost certainly listen to Jack's. Darknet Diaries is a brilliantly produced narrative and journalistic show about the dark side of the Internet. I'm gonna avoid I'm gonna avoid any more back padding than we do in the show because there's a lot. But suffice it to say, it is it's essential listening, and you should definitely be listening to Dark Knight Diaries if you are not currently.

Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. He he was a blast to have on. Really great guy. You could tell his his his love of

Speaker 4: the art of podcasting, and you can tell that via his episodes and

Speaker 3: how well produced his podcast is. And, we hope to have him back sooner than later. It was really great just getting a hang with him, so it was really good.

Speaker 2: Great conversation. Yeah. Celebrate the spookiest time of the year with your, hopefully, I hope, two of your favorite spooky tech shows. We're just happy to have you there. But before we get to our conversation with Darknet Diaries' Jack Rhysider, I think we have I think we have a a fun well, we got a couple announcements, don't we?

Speaker 3: I do. Yeah. We got we got at least two of them. At least two of them. At least two. I'm gonna go first and say Scrap it. Hotlinehacked.com.

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 3: We've already got a few submissions. We're loving it. It seems that people love the love the concept. So please, if you've got great stories about, you know, something you've done, something you've been a part of, something you've seen, please give us a shout. Send us an email. Let us know. HotlineHack dot com. Very excited about this concept.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's been cool getting to hear this stuff. Like, we talked about cybercrimes. We talked about little stuff, like, just little strange tales of tech and little little hacks and things you've cooked up over the years. And some of the early stuff we've gotten covers the whole gamut. So I'm I'm pretty pumped. Yeah. I just want I wanna hear more. I just like listening to them, so please send it in.

Speaker 4: Totally.

Speaker 3: If you'd like to just

Speaker 2: talk about it on the show or even just to hear it, please send it in. We'd love to hear it.

Speaker 3: I think the fact that we like listening to these things 100%. Should should imply that it will make a great episodes. So I'm excited and passionate about it. I can't wait.

Speaker 2: Okay. All in hacked. And then the other thing we gotta talk about before we get to our chat with Jack

Speaker 3: Is?

Speaker 2: It's hat time. We it it's it's Mug City. We have merch. We have a merch store.

Speaker 3: We have a merch store. It is not Mug City. It is, probably will be shop.hackpodcast.com or store or both .hackpodcast.com.

Speaker 2: Yeah. The the the URL will be in the episode description. We'll post it on Twitter in the Discord.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: We just literally don't have the URL figured out at the moment of recording, but it will be if you are listening to this, you can buy hacked merch. You

Speaker 3: can buy you can buy dad hats, five panel hats, bucket hats. We haven't done a beanie. We should do a beanie. Winter is quickly coming for those of us that live, you know, in the North. We should definitely do a beanie. And then we have Yep. We have my favorite product, which is the the visor in a Mhmm. In a '9 late nineties, early two thousands throwback, I I can't see a world where the visor doesn't make another comeback. Even as, like, a novelty hat among niche groups like golfers. Sure. Ironic. Yeah. Exactly. Visors. Ironic visors.

Speaker 2: You gotta tilt them. You gotta do that, like, trucker cap Von Dutch era shit in a 45 degree angle hat precariously perched on top of your head. It's gonna be a thing.

Speaker 1: Like

Speaker 2: get on it. It's getting cold. You need a mug. You gotta carry around cocoa and something, and why not get our logo in cool ASCII design? That because we'll sell you one.

Speaker 3: You can also drink that cocoa while wearing a, hacked t shirt and maybe a hacked hoodie over top of that. We we are not making any hacked jackets as, you know, that's just too much. But but I think hoodie the hoodie is

Speaker 2: Bridged too far.

Speaker 3: The basis of a merch store, and we will have hoodies. So there will be hoodies.

Speaker 2: We're gonna have hoodies.

Speaker 3: There will be t shirts. There will be hats. There will be coffee mugs, and there might be a beanie. Let's see. Who knows?

Speaker 2: We'll we'll all find out together. Find the link to that. It'll I'm sure it'll be on our Patreon. It'll be in the episode description. Look at us go. We got a hotline. We got merch. Wow. We're we're coming up in the world.

Speaker 3: We we are in our spring, as one of my old friends would say.

Speaker 2: Our spring. Okay. We got hotlines, we got merch, and we got a conversation, a a very spooktacular Halloween conversation with Darknet Diaries, Jack Resider to get to. This was a real fun one. And, again, our thanks to Jack for coming on the show. Absolutely. I think if there's nothing else, we'll, we're gonna go to that conversation. We'll catch you catch you on the other side.

Speaker 3: Take care, everybody. Happy Halloween.

Speaker 2: Jack Rhysider from Darknet Diaries. Welcome to Hacked. Happy Halloween.

Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Happy Halloween. It's such a crazy thing to be here. Can I explain for a second? Sure. Please. When I was first starting my show, was it, like, six years ago, I was I had this idea of, okay. I want a podcast where we're gonna dive into, like, the drama of hacker stories, like true crime meets cybercrime kind of stuff. And I was like, surely there's a show out there that's already doing this. And I found your show. Hacked was there. And I was like, oh, this is great. This is exactly it. This is good. Okay, I don't need to make my show. I found the show I want. And I think you had, like, five episodes, and then you stopped making it. And I was like, No,

Speaker 5: I need more. I need, like, a

Speaker 1: 100 episodes of this, why? And I reached out to you then, and I was like, What happened? But you were just gone. You just, like, disappeared. Man. Really?

Speaker 3: I wonder if we can find your email in our inboxes.

Speaker 2: I didn't know you reached out to

Speaker 3: us. Yeah. That's crazy.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, what happened? I need more.

Speaker 3: Wait. Just nothing.

Speaker 2: Well, I'm kinda I'm kinda glad we did bail because that means in a small way that, like, you you made Darknet Diaries, and it's some of my favorite stuff in this world. Like, you you figured out how to tell these stories so beautifully.

Speaker 1: So I I was like, crap. I gotta do this myself.

Speaker 3: So there you are. We That's awesome. That's that's that's a great story. Did you you didn't know what happened and why we were on and off? Did you ever yeah. So we originally like, we put out, like, whatever it was, four or five episodes, and then boom. We got contacted by multiple production companies to make a TV show out

Speaker 1: of it so that we

Speaker 3: were in the rights of negotiating rights with with channels and stuff. So we actually stopped making it as a I don't know why, real realistically why we stopped, but we stopped essentially to to figure out the deal. And then we could make the new content under the the TV deal. And then that all fell through, like, eight months later, and we just kinda lost, I don't know, lost the passion.

Speaker 2: Motivation almost. Yeah. Glad you're back.

Speaker 1: I'm glad you're back.

Speaker 2: Well, we're glad to be back. And the funny thing about it is, it's funny you bring that up because your show was a really big part of why we brought it

Speaker 1: back. What?

Speaker 2: I think it It goes full circle.

Speaker 1: It came full circle. Put it on the back.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Totally. Like a tennis match just, like, lobbing cybersecurity podcasts back and forth.

Speaker 1: Well, yeah. You were you were an influence. I was like, this is it. You guys are doing it.

Speaker 2: Well, same to you, man.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Totally.

Speaker 2: I'm, I wanna start really, really broad, and we'll narrow it down as we go along. Why do you think people are drawn to stories that unsettle them?

Speaker 5: Wow. We are.

Speaker 1: It's broad but deep at the same time. I love this. I mean, this is so so storytelling is kind of like my thing. Right? And so, you know, part of storytelling I mean, storytelling is such a powerful thing. Like, I can trigger dopamines in your head. I can trigger oxytocin. I can trigger all kinds of different chemicals just to boom. Your head now has chemicals in it. And it's interesting when you bring this one up. Like, why do people like feeling unsettled? Yeah. I mean, I feel like I feel like a cliffhanger releases, man, there's there's a chemical for it, where you're on the edge of your seat and you're interested, and you're like, I wanna know what's next. I can't you can't you cannot turn it off right here. I wanna know. Right? Yeah. And so you're you're glued to it and there's something that's like in our brain that's triggering chemicals that's like, give me more. And sometimes that an unsettling stuff is like, I need this to resolve. I need this to feel like it's good again. I can't have the world be this out of control. I need things to be normal and and put back into place. So I think there might just be, something in our brain, like, just as a real chemical level of, like, get it back together, man. Don't let it unravel.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think about, like I think even Scott and I have talked about this before, but, like, the way pop songs work, where the first chorus of a pop song doesn't work, but the second one does. And it's that little bit of anticipation. I kinda know where this is. I think I know where this is going. And then when it happens, it it feels good. It it's satisfying. And I think that when you listen to a show and a really good storyteller like you, when that cliffhanger gets lobbed up in the air, you're like, I I know it's gonna deliver. I know there's gonna be something on the far side of it. Mhmm. Yeah. Kinda reminds me of that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, with music, you you wanna play with that dissonance and that tension and that we're far from home kind of feeling. And then when you come back home in the music to the, you know, first chord in the in the scale, it feels good. You're back home. You're like, oh, yes. This is this feels good again. So it it gives you this kind of sense of adventure in certain songs. And, yeah, I suppose I like to do that. And it's funny. I I'll I'll I'll start looking for where the the V7 chord is of my stories from now on, just because I've never thought of it like that.

Speaker 3: As I say, I take it you're a musician then? Sounds like

Speaker 1: a musician. Yeah, I've been playing guitar a lot lately. Nice. I started up, like, a few years ago.

Speaker 4: Very cool. Very cool. Were you

Speaker 3: a piano player too, or did you start with guitar?

Speaker 1: No. I mean, I I applied I tried all the instruments, but I just never really got good at any of them. And and recently, I started picking up guitar. Very cool.

Speaker 2: That's awesome. Scott and I both make music too. Yep. Comes up every so often on the show whenever we can shoehorn it in.

Speaker 1: Yeah. We put you make your own music for the show.

Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. We do.

Speaker 1: That's awesome. I haven't done that yet. I'm picking up, from, you know, music libraries and stuff still. I haven't made my own.

Speaker 3: Jordan is a, a accredited, awarded, you know, music sound designer for for film and stuff too. So we do a lot of films Awesome. In our other jobs. And, Jordan's very notable in his, production. So

Speaker 1: That's great.

Speaker 2: Thanks, man. Hey. You're welcome. I have to think most folks listening right now who listen to our show also listen to yours. I hope they do. I

Speaker 4: hope they do.

Speaker 1: I hope they do. Because we we only have so many episodes and it's like, okay, I finished that one. What's next? Okay, this one. It's easy like, boom, let's go to the next one.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a family of spooky tech content. For the small tiny subset who don't, and they all should. Like, what's your elevator pitch for Darknet Diaries? How do you explain it to people that maybe aren't familiar with tech and security? Like, how do you explain it around, like, a family dinner table?

Speaker 1: I like to call it true crime meets cybercrime. You know, it's it's true stories from the dark side of the Internet, and that's the ten second or a 10 word description. And I feel like I try to fit that into every episode. It's like, you know, people people send me this, oh, this crazy thing happened to me. FBI agents followed me home. And I'm like, where's the cybercrime part of it? Right? It's fun. That's that is spooky, but where's so I need I need it to be part of that, you know, computer world, tech world. But then I also want it to be a true story, and has lots of twists and lots of drama, and I, you know, I like to decorate it with all kinds of music and lots of editing, high production. It's, so I have that kind of theory in my head where I want, you know, this to be the prime time listening of your podcast experience, right? It's not just like, you know, there's a lot of shows out there that are like, let's do two episodes a week, three episodes a week. I'm like, one episode a month, put everything in there to make it the best podcast you're gonna listen to all month, right? Like, that's my goal, is this high quality, high value podcast and not not just like lots of content, but, you know, high quality stuff instead.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You can tell your your production value is always very high, and the the podcast it comes across blatantly how well it's produced. Thanks. Yeah.

Speaker 2: It's, it it kind of evokes I remember seeing a tweet of yours once where you were talking about finding your voice and, like, that production quality comes to mind. Because I think you cited a couple early influences, folks like Rod Serling, narrator and host of Twilight Zone. Mhmm. Awesome. Great reference. But then you said something interesting about that that kind of journey of going from chasing that inspiration to eventually just you find your own voice, and you realize that's where you should be all along. Can you, like, talk to that a little bit? Mhmm. Yeah.

Speaker 1: I mean, when you're starting, you have this idea in your head of what it sounds like. I want it to sound like hacked. But it's like no. You you have this idea and and so I was like, okay. Well, how do how do I get there? Why this voice is what's in my head of what it's gonna sound like, so I'm trying to get that voice out, but that voice isn't my voice. What's going on here? It's Ed Norton's voice or something else. Right? What is happening? So, you're like, oh, shoot. Okay. I gotta work with what I what I have, and it doesn't it's not quite there. You feel a little I don't know. Like, there's a gap between where you want it to be and where it is. And I think that's kind of the goal for the first couple years is try to close that gap of get to where you want the show to be. And it it did take me a few years. But, yeah, yeah, there was something else I was gonna say, but I forgot now.

Speaker 2: No. It's all good. It is funny. I I can it taking a few years, you wouldn't think that talking in your own voice would take a few years. But then I listened to myself a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. I'm like, who what bit was I doing? What affectation was I putting on? It's interesting to hear yourself change over time on mic.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think, I I think it's the same with just with our heroes. Right? You you try to find, like, okay. Who should I who should I emulate in the world? And it's difficult because as soon as you find some someone that's great, you're like, oh, well, they're they're a terrible parent or a terrible husband

Speaker 5: or a

Speaker 1: terrible, like, co worker or something that's just like, oh, I don't actually want to be all of them. I just want to be the way they speak in front of a crowd. They're a great orator. And so then you're like, okay, well, just take that piece of them, and then you take this piece of them, and that piece of them. And you can't find, like, a single hero that you want all their pieces. And it's kinda weird like that. Like, why isn't there a person in the world that's just great all around, but whatever. And so it's kinda the same thing with making your craft. Right? You you say, oh, I really like the intro that this podcast did, and I really like the storytelling craft that these people do. But I also like the voice of what they're doing, and I like the music and the sound of sign of that one. And so you just you're you're kind of the tastemaker of of your craft and of yourself. I can try to make it bigger picture too, right? Like, how you live your life, But, you know, at least of your craft. And so your audience, you know, learns to trust you on that. They learn to trust you that your storytelling craft, what you would put in your show would be what they also appreciate. And that they're trusting it to filter through you and only the stuff that you think is good would would hit their ears. And so, yeah, you're just like the tastemaker in that way of let's bring in what I like and it just so happens to be what you like too. That's great. Let's go.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's always an interesting process when you when you have someone that's a big influence, kind of a hero to bore your language, and then you, you know, the more you listen to them, they start talking about who their heroes and influences were. And then you hear those people and you realize, wow. This person who had a huge impact on me is actually kind of a stitched together version of these five other people. Mhmm.

Speaker 1: And you

Speaker 2: can kind of intuit that that probably just goes on forever. That we're all just, like, synthesizing people that inspire us and passing on the cool parts to the next next set of creators.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's always there's always this, like, divide in my head of, like, I wanna be that person that's just, like, hanging out at the beach totally relaxed, but I also wanna be that person that never has breaks and is always busy. And and, you know, it's and it's weird. Like, how do you how do you balance this? Let's because because the person at the beach is the one who's getting the inspiration. They're the ones coming back being like, oh, I have this totally new idea. Mhmm. And I have unraveled all my thoughts and now I have clarity of my own mind. Like, I like that, but I don't have that time when I'm working my buttill off. And so, yeah, you can't even like grab on to one persona in your head of who you are. You have to always battle it out between, am I the person who meditates all the time or am I the person that's busy all the the time? And it's it's difficult to even balance it in your own self.

Speaker 2: Mhmm. Yeah. It sure is. You brought up something a funny distinction earlier of, you know, the kind of stories that you tell versus the ones you don't. It can't just be, you know, FBI agent follows you home. It has to have that root in technology.

Speaker 3: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: So let's talk about that a little bit, about this idea of technology as a way into telling stories about people. Why do you think the way people use tech reveals so much about them, especially when that tech offers people maybe anonymity? That's an interesting question.

Speaker 1: Well, you got some good ones. He he came prepared.

Speaker 2: I I should have been hanging out at the beach.

Speaker 1: I thought I thought you were gonna ask, like, why is tech, like, you know, the good the the road there? And and to me, I was like, well, we all use tech. Tech is so involved in our world. We have to use tech to, like, get by, to do anything anymore. Everyone's using technology. And and the fact that everyone's touching it every day and interacting with it every day makes this podcast effectively interesting to everyone. Mhmm. And so that's where I thought you were going with this. But now you're saying, well, how does it reveal information to you? Well, clearly, we're giving tons of stuff away to, you know, websites and apps and stuff. They know tons of things about us. And so there's a lot of revealing stuff there, but I don't think that's where you're going with this question. You're saying, wait, how are you using it and what does that say about you? And, you know, I do kind of find these patterns in some of the hacker stories I cover, which is like, you know, a teenager, hacks into some government office and does something. I'm like, wait. Let's back up. You started with video games, didn't you? And it's always there. It's always, yeah, I was. And then you started learning how to hack video games, didn't you? Yes. Or actually, I've been hacked in a video game. And it seems to, you know, start there. And so it it there are some patterns of what you're doing with tech and how much you're pulling it into your life and where are the places you go that sort of kind of drive you to where you end up. And I do find this fascinating on more of a philosophical level of like the things that grace your eyeballs, the stuff you're looking at online becomes kind of your world. Right? And so if you're looking at vacation Instagram stuff, you're gonna be, like, really upset that you're not on vacations. Because you're like, why is everyone in the freaking world at the beach right now? This is insane. Or if you're like, all of a sudden you got the bug to, like, have a baby. You can see everyone is pregnant on Facebook, and you're, like, oh my god. Everyone is baby but me. And it just feels like that's your whole world. And if you're in a hacker forum, you're gonna be looking around and you're gonna be saying, everyone is hacking into government websites but me or something. Right? And it just feels like that's your entire world. And that shapes us in such a way, everything we Google, that's, you know, a custom algorithm just for us because it's like, oh, we've read all your emails and we know all your search history and we know what you like on YouTube. So we're gonna give you this because we think this is your political side of things and how you want answers and you know what? We'll just make up articles for you too. So it's interesting that tech kind of what we see on the computer really does shape us to be who we are. And I wonder how much of that is really in our control and how much of that is the computer influencing us. And I think as time goes, AI is gonna really have some agenda where it's gonna be like, well, it's you know, how do we get more customers to our side or something? Let's get you know, we weevil our way into, like, their eyeballs even more in some other ways. And And so, yeah, it's really crazy how much a computer influences us.

Speaker 3: That's, that's a great, great answer because if you think about, like, the nature nurture argument about, like, who we are and what we become, you're really saying that, like, a lot of our nurturing now is happening via the Internet, which I kinda completely agree with.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And and interesting because it's what what generation are we in here? We're we're in the first, second generation of let's see how this works. I don't I don't have my grandparents to tell me, oh, yeah. You gotta watch out for that Google algorithm. They didn't help me here. I'm on my own. And so, it's gonna take a few generations before we can even start educating our our younger ones to be like, oh, yeah. Hold on. This is a bad idea. You can't you can't have that app.

Speaker 3: I feel I feel I feel like it's going the other way. Like, the amount of time I spend on the phone with my mother explaining to her that people aren't spying on her because the Internet knows everything she wants and is talking about. I'm like, no. No. This is just how it works now.

Speaker 2: Totally.

Speaker 3: It's not that bad. I was like, there's nobody that's hacked your phone. You don't need to go buy a new phone. It's just the way the Internet is. You know, be wary of the Internet, not wary of your phone.

Speaker 1: No. You're absolutely right. We're the ones teaching the the generation before us how to work this technology. So it is gonna take quite a while before we finally get to, I don't know, a responsible state, a safe state, understanding state of what is going on here.

Speaker 2: I think about that a lot. Like, what is the thing when I'm older that a younger person's gonna have to, like, politely explain to me about technology? Because for my whole life, almost as long as I can remember, I was the one kind of unpacking how the computer in the basement worked

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: For my parents. Like, what's Yeah. What's that thing gonna be for us?

Speaker 1: Here's my theory on that. I think it's gonna be all the ubiquitous controls. Right? So if you're waving your hand in the air to type a message, if you're just diggling, you know, twiggling your fingers in the air, and that means, like, some emoji. You're gonna be like, I am not adopting this. You guys are looking like goofballs, like, waving your arms in the air just to type a message. Like, this doesn't make any sense, or just voice commands, or something that's like, I need a keyboard and a mouse. Don't you kids have this stuff? What happened to keyboards and mice? And I bet that's where you're gonna feel like a fossil.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a good take. I saw the Apple Watch now has, like, a pinch to to use motion that they're borrowing from the, the the Vision Pro that's coming out. I'm like, right. That's the beginning of that. I'm like, TikTok danceification of of user input on a computer of, like, if you don't know the mime moves, you're really not gonna be able to hang with us.

Speaker 3: We we talked about the the Apple Vision Pro, and we were like I was like, you know, ten, fifteen years ago, if if you even had the idea of wearing something like that around in public, you'd be I don't know. It'd be a mockery of society. And now it's like, yeah. I fully expect to see hundreds of people out and about in public wearing one of those things. And it's just that, I think, is a transformation for society right there that shows my age.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, we've got to watch out for this because it's easy for us to, like, laugh at the TikTokers out there, like, what are you doing putting all these videos out there and stuff? But if that was around when we were teens, we would have been doing the same thing. Totally. It just happened to be like it wasn't. And to have your whole life documented in this way is going to be weird for them growing up. And we didn't really have those documents growing up. So it's it's kind of, I don't wanna really shame them. It's just what's in their world these days. And I and I don't wanna be like, oh, you guys, you know, don't know what you're doing. I wouldn't have known what I was doing if I was growing up in this age either. And I would have been doing the same thing if that was around. So I I really don't like, you know, turning my nose up to whatever the kids are doing these days. I wanna I wanna be like, yeah. I would have done the same thing.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 100%. We agree. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I think about I think Myspace was the first one that caught my generation. And I think about if the content, to use that term loosely, that I was producing on Myspace had had an algorithm pumping it out to people with the velocity that it is happening today. I'm like, that that wouldn't have been for the best. Like, I was figuring my stuff out on the Internet the exact same as they are today. And that just seems like that's probably never gonna change. It's gonna get richer and richer media, but that that whole ritual is probably here to stay for the for the long term.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see. Definitely.

Speaker 2: You brought up, you were talking about that idea of, like, how tech shapes us, how that's gonna shift with AI. I'm reminded of, like, the the metaphor people always use is the hammer metaphor, when they're trying to figure out if a piece of tech bears responsibility for how people use it. The idea that, like, you can take a hammer, use it to build something, or hurt someone. It's not the hammer's fault, which I get why that's such a common metaphor. I see how in a lot of cases, it's true. I also see how maybe it kind of like oversimplifies a really complicated thing. Because sometimes tools are poorly designed. Sometimes tools get recalled for being dangerous in ways that the designer didn't realize. And I guess I'm curious, like, where do you draw that line between, like, a person's responsibility and the responsibility of a designer or an engineer manufacturing the tech?

Speaker 1: Alright. You didn't stop me on this one. The answer is intent. Mhmm. So I've so this is something I've grappled with in my podcast quite a bit, which is the technology that's created, such as a hacking tool, a phone. Some of these times, the people who have created these things go to prison. The creator. But there are so many phones out there and hacking tools out there where they're not in prison. They're just doing fine. And what is the difference between that? And the difference is, well, Apple doesn't have the intent to create a phone for criminals. But somebody who has a privacy phone that's specifically designed for criminals and is meeting with criminal customers and making deals with criminals has this intent to make stuff for criminals. And and, you know, the same thing goes with with, viruses and stuff. There are people who are making viruses to test on other companies. Right? We gotta test to see if your company is immune to this virus. Well, we got to make the virus to test against it. Right? And so these things get created and we can test. But that's not for, you know, malicious intent. But the people who are making this virus with malicious intent to sell it to criminals, to make money off of it. I mean,

Speaker 2: it's it

Speaker 1: comes down to intent for me. And this is what always happens in in the court of law as well as did you have intent to do that? And this freaks me out because if you're ever going to stop a person before they do it, because they had the intent, now we're talking about a thought crunch. It's like, I had the intent to do it, but I didn't do it. And so, what crime am I even like committed here? Okay, but you were going to do it. Yeah, you said you were going to do it. And that is, that is like another whole world of like thwarting crimes before they happen. So we're, so it's already reported.

Speaker 5: Well, I don't know if

Speaker 1: it goes that far, but it's tickling now, right?

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 3: I think that It's kind of walking right up to that edge. I think the idea of intent and the philosophical construct of intent is kind of getting lost these days. You know, in the court of law, I think intent means a lot, but in the court of, you know, the social world, I I feel like it's just it's kind of gone away because I I kind of agree. It's like the the hackers that have an intent of curiosity or a desire of curiosity are very different than a malicious malware, you know, ransomware intent of of Mhmm. Ruining institutions, stealing information, and and holding things hostage. And it's I yeah. That's a great answer. Great answer.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, just breaking into buildings. Right? So if you get into a hospital and you're like, oh, wow. I accidentally got into your hospital. I didn't mean to. I was just poking around. Here is, how I did it. I didn't do anything, but you should definitely fix this. I hope that hospital thanks that person. Right? Mhmm. But with the somebody putting ransomware in a hospital or doing the same thing, I guess not even putting ransomware, but, like, with the intent to put ransomware. They're like a criminal. Get breaking in. I know. I I hope the hospital stops them and then says, hey. We're gonna prosecute you or something. Right? And it it's the same thing. It's the breaking in. It wasn't really the the I don't know. It was the intent. That's where it comes down to me on my show. And I've and I've I've analyzed this so many times to try to figure it out. Where is he? Where is the line here?

Speaker 3: Well, we we've we've covered this situation a number of times, and I know it's in one of the episodes that we're gonna chat about here in a bit. But the person who, you know, discovers the flaw often gets persecuted for it Just by simply questioning and asking whether there is a flaw, they're validating that there is a flaw, and boom, all of a sudden, they're, like, you know, being held accountable for hacking something. And it's like, ugh. It's like we see that so many times, and and especially in the cybersecurity space, because I just think that the the level of ignorance in the judicial system and the executive branches and things like that just isn't there to properly create laws and govern it. So it's it's fascinating. You know, when we're helping our our parents use their iPhones, those are the same people that are creating the laws that govern things that they really don't understand.

Speaker 2: I agree. Yeah. I, I was thinking about just while you're talking. Maybe it's because we were just talking about it in the last episode, but, we we've talked about, like, Stalkerware a few times on the show. And, like, the distinction between Stalkerware and parental controls on a phone is, like, the app is basically doing the same thing. Mhmm. The intent is critically, critically important here. And there's some, like, design choices that really speak to that intent. It's like, well, it's concealed. It it's meant to be masquerading as a different type of app. It's doing the same basic thing, but intent is real important on that one.

Speaker 1: Really, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah. You nailed it. And and and exactly.

Speaker 3: Period.

Speaker 2: The, period. Before we move on to those episodes, the one other thing I wanna talk to you about is I noticed how often, and it always felt like it came up at the end of an episode, there would be a stray reference to, like, all of this journalistic work that, you kind of realized listening to enough of your content that you're really doing. Like, you you work with journalists. You interview journalists. But then you're also fact checking sources. You're also doing, like, boots on the ground journalism. Could you tell me a little bit about your relationship with journalists and journalism, fact checking sources, and that I guess that weird point when, like, content and storytelling turns into journalism for you.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't have any experience with journalism, at least starting with the show. Right? And I and I was trying to, like, like, when I started the show, I didn't even know how to do storytelling. So I was like, okay. Gotta read all the all these tricks on storytelling. Now I gotta read all the tricks on journalism. But I couldn't find, like, a good resource of like, here's the book you read if you wanna be a journalist or here's the podcast for journalists to like learn everything. And I I kind of struggled with it, but I I kind of just took it as like, okay, let's say I'm giving a presentation at work and I went and I researched a big topic and I'm here to present it to everyone. I'm just gonna like, that I've done many times. So I'm just gonna fall back onto that kind of idea of I want my coworkers to be educated on this topic. And, yeah, that I think that's kind of where it all kind of came from. And I and I over the time, you know, I talked to a lot of journalists, so I got better at understanding, like, how to fact check and where to look and all this kind of stuff. And I feel like a journalist now. But, yeah, I think, fact checking is incredibly important for my show and I try to make sure that it's sort of bulletproof, I guess, and and that nobody can scrutinize it. Even when we're in contested areas of the world where it's like two sides are fighting with each other and there's just no agreement on anything, I still wanna be uncontested on both sides where they're like, yeah. You're right. We did screw on here or something. Right? So I wanted I I I don't know. I'm I guess I'm looking for that kind of common denominator that everyone agrees on this. Okay. We're all on the same page here. Then there must be so there must be some truth to that, and that's what I can at least lead my foot with. And then I can I do good on the show or at least I try to to, you know, say on the show, okay? This is my opinion. Here's my theory on what

Speaker 5: I didn't find any

Speaker 1: facts about this, but this is what I'm thinking. And I I throw these kind of, you know, flavor bits in there to to kind of get you thinking in different ways. And so, yeah, I do I do like to throw my opinion in there. But, yeah, I I like to read a lot of, court transcripts and what other, newspapers have, published. I mean, this is a a lot of times people bring me stories and I'm like, what can I what's out there that I can read up on you already, right? And if there's already, you know, articles in Washington Post or an affidavit or an indictment or something, that's great. That's that I can sort. I can I got some sources I can already start with? But then I start asking, do you have friends online? Like, so I mean, I've got quite the network, right? So I'm like, hey, have you heard of this guy? You know, asking some of my other sources, and they're, oh, yeah, and what do you know about him? Have you ever heard, you know, this story from him or something? And so I have my sources, but then I also sometimes, you know, ask their friends or family or mother or sister or a co worker or somebody to say, hey, you know, I'm looking to see if if you know anything about this story here, I just wanna fact check it. So I've been on the phone with some of these people to to actually, you know, make sure that it's right. And especially if they mentioned someone else in the episode in the story that I know, I can reach out to that person and be like, hey, they said that you're involved with this, were you? Yeah, I do I do whatever I can in all those places. But the other thing is that I've had ten years experience doing, network security. And so I do have this great deep knowledge and wide knowledge of and I have a degree in computer engineering that I can, like, fall back onto that. So I can kinda smell when somebody's, like, puffing something into my nose, like, hold on a second. That doesn't add up. That doesn't make sense. There's no way you just push that button and that worked. Back up. Let me hear exactly what happened, right? And and and if people tell me, like, something that I've never heard of, I'm kind of skeptical of, like, well, hold on. How did how did I miss this? And I've had my nose on the street, like, for two decades now. Mhmm. And you're telling me that this didn't I I never saw this. Why? What am I missing here? So I kinda rely on on my professional history as well.

Speaker 2: I mean, you bring up an interesting thing is that, like, you're living in a world of, I mean, people that are good at social engineering, people that are good at navigating, like, security and systems of trust. Like, I guess to put it bluntly, like, do you deal with a lot of liars are coming your way? Like, do you have to fact check and filter through people that are just making stuff up?

Speaker 1: I can not a lot, but That's good. They come. They do come. There there are some people who maybe maybe try to tell me a story that just just to kinda, you know, I don't know, have a laugh with me. Like

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Hey. I I you know, Jack makes such a crappy show. I'm gonna I'm gonna prove it by giving him a fake story, and we'll we'll show him. And, you know, sometimes people give me a heads up. They're like, hey. This guy's gonna pitch you a fake story. And I'm like, what? How do you know? Because I just saw him chatting it up in Discord or something. Oh, thanks for the heads up. And then I

Speaker 5: hear I go, oh, wow.

Speaker 3: See, I see.

Speaker 5: I've it happens, but it's not often.

Speaker 1: Sorry. No. Go ahead.

Speaker 5: Oh, I

Speaker 3: was gonna say, I find that we get the opposite. We get a few stories that come in that way, people reaching out saying, hey, this happened to me. We I think we've had one or two that we've covered. But we get a boatload of people being like, hey, our CEO wants to come on your show. And it's like we just constantly get these self promo requests, and I'm like, Oh, man. Please, please stop. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Well, I get a lot of the

Speaker 3: CEO I bet you do. Credits.

Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I bet. And the other one I get a lot of is just kind of wall of text of here's my story. Like, man, this is a pig.

Speaker 5: You just read a book already.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's wild. I mean, there's almost this thing where it's, I think the Truman Show kind of sparked all this stuff in people's heads where they feel like they're being spied on. They feel like they're being watched. And they feel like something more malicious is going on just under the surface that they can't put their finger on. And And so I think a lot of people feel like they're being spied on or they're being hacked. Like, kinda like you were saying your mother has these kind of feelings sometimes. I get a lot of this where people are just feeling like something is off, something is wrong. You know, I got these weird phone calls and all this kind of stuff happening, and I it's really difficult for me to figure out how much of this is invented in their mind versus actually happening. And, it's it's just it's kinda scary. I mean, it's real to them either way, whether it's happening in their mind or not. They're feeling like this is a real feeling. It's a real scare. So, I I I sympathize with them, but it's it's difficult for me to figure out truth or fiction on some of those stories. Totally.

Speaker 3: Well, the our minds are so good at detecting and identifying patterns. And it's like, you know, if I'm talking about teeth whitening at dinner with some friends, and then all of a sudden I'm getting served teeth whitening ads on the Internet, it's like, oh my god. There's a correlation there. I've detected the pattern. And that once that happens to you, like, 20 or 30 times, you're like, oh my god. They're listening to everything I say. But it's like, in reality, they're probably somebody at the table Googles teeth whitening while you're in the discussion, and then everybody at that IP address gets flagged as, you know, somebody that's interested in teeth whitening, and then you get served an ad for it. And it's like, okay. There is a cause and effect to a lot of this stuff that people detect as, like, security violations or, like, there's a potential or a risk or a paranoia. And it's it's it's I don't know, it's fascinating every time I have to have this conversation with with somebody, especially my mother. Mhmm.

Speaker 5: We should get out.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm, I'm, for years, we had so, like, we registered the Facebook page for hacked right when we started it way back when, which meant that when you typed in the word hacked into the Facebook search bar, our logo with, like, spooky digital typeface was the thing that came up, which meant that there was this, like, whole big population of people that we were this weird dumping round of, like, I think my Facebook account was hacked. I think my email was hacked. Like, people were kind of using it as, like, a almost like a help desk. Mhmm. And that was a fascinating glimpse into, yeah, just a lot of people's experience with technology. I forgot about that. Do you remember that?

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I I I think we must

Speaker 2: have turned it off or something.

Speaker 3: We used to get requests to hack people all the time. Be like, hey. Can you please hack this phone? And I was like, no. What? What? Who are you, and why are you on my our page?

Speaker 2: So You typed hacked into Facebook.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I certainly get those requests quite a bit. And,

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm just like, I'm not so I I do like to play with them. I'm like It's not what we do here. I'm like, wait. Are are we hacking into a bank? Are we gonna steal some money? No. Are we hacking into, like, some foreign government and take them down? No. What are we hacking into? Are we hacking into a jail? Are we doing it?

Speaker 5: Someone from prison? No. I want to hack into my girlfriend's Facebook. I was like, that's not I'm not gonna help you with that. Like, that's the most boring thing ever. Let's get something funner. Don't you have any creativity?

Speaker 3: I'm gonna press the forward button on your email and send it to your girlfriend now. Thank you. It's like yeah.

Speaker 2: K. Before we go to commercial break, that brings up a question. You get, say you get a text scam, like a scam text from someone. Are you the kind of person that'll that'll play around a little bit? Like, do you pull on thread and see where they're going with it?

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I used to do this. Yeah. I I I remember there's one story where I was getting it, and they were I don't know what I was engaging, and they were trying to scam me. And I I I just turned into this persona of this helpless young woman that was stranded in her car, and she needed help. And I was like, look, I wanna help you, buddy, but I'm in a big trouble. My car is broken down. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I need money right now to get out of this. I cannot talk with you. Sorry. And he's like, well,

Speaker 5: what's the problem? And I was trying to scam him back and

Speaker 1: get some money out of him, And, he ended up just, like, getting out of there because he was like, oh, man. This isn't gonna work for either of us.

Speaker 2: Oh, man. That's good.

Speaker 3: In our office, there used to be a game. I don't know if it's still ongoing. I haven't I haven't seen any of the tallies, but there used to be if you got a scammer call, you'd see how long you could keep them on the phone before they'd hang up on you.

Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot.

Speaker 1: And then

Speaker 3: it was a competition between everybody in the office to see who could do it the longest. And I think I think Nick might have got it at, like, twenty minutes, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah.

Speaker 1: We I

Speaker 3: mean, it's a it's a constant game of playing with them. It's like, I'm not sure who you're fooling now under the age of 50, but wow. But yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. My, my spouse will sometimes just like, she's like, why are you doing this?

Speaker 3: And I

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Speaker 2: Do do do do do. So prior to us sitting down, you know, it's Halloween, I asked you to flag a couple episodes that sort of stuck out in your head. You know, maybe something kind of unsettling about it. Something that you kinda remember that stuck with you. First one that you flagged was an episode called compromised comms. Awesome episode. And it's the story of these these it's a it's a story about a few things, but I think at the heart is these almost publicly visible websites. Something you'd kinda see and not think too much about, almost like a yoga forum, that are secretly these platforms for communications between spies and sources in other countries. And it tells the story of this huge human cost that was incurred when those sites were compromised. Wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about that story, how you got onto it, and, you know, why you flagged it. What unsettled it, what unsettled you about it?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I I I think coming into this whole podcast, my goal was to get into kind of nation state actors' stories and figure out, like, is there are there any out there that are, like, public or that we know about that we can talk about? Because these are the most exciting. These are the most high stakes. These are the most crazy stuff that's happening. And sure, there was some, but so when, you know, when a CIA story shows up, I'm like, you know, that's that's where I'm drawn. So this was about the CIA and yeah. I mean, it was it it was interesting in so many different ways. You know, how does the CIA speak with their agents in the field, like, when they want source information? Like, do they have to meet them in person? No. We've got the Internet. But how do you meet them on the Internet? Well, if they have, you know, you can't just Gmail someone. I'm just hitting myself over there in the, you know, hostile country, because, you know, that might not be so good. Sure. So, we need a separate communication system. Okay. Put signal on your phone. But but if the source gets caught with signal on their phone, and now they've got this stuff so you you kinda need, like, no trace. Right? So if your source gets caught, it's like, what? What? What? You got nothing on me. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So, so, yeah, that it sounds like the CIA set up sort of like dummy websites where you click on a certain thing. I mean, it looks like one thing, maybe a sporting goods website. But then you click on a certain link or down below or something, and it takes you to a chat room with you and the CIA agent. And to me, that was already fascinating. Like, what is wow. That's that's brilliant. What other and and since publishing this story, there's, like, a million people that are emailing me. Jack, I think I found the secret CIA website that we're chatting. And every time I go there, it's deleted or something.

Speaker 5: I'm like, wow. I think you might have. You got it.

Speaker 1: It's kind of funny.

Speaker 3: I loved Sorry.

Speaker 1: Yeah. No. Go ahead. I was

Speaker 3: going to say I love this story because in college, a friend and I actually wrote essentially, a encoder that encoded messages into images that you could upload online in a decoder, and it was kind of the same thing, except it didn't have, like, a real chat room. It was all done through, like, asynchronous image sending because images are just, like, grids of pixels. So if you just modify the color values of the alpha layer just a hair, and you know exactly in the grid of pixels where to pull your messages from, you can, like, encode a message into one and then decode it, and it's visually, you know, it's almost impossible, if not completely impossible to detect. So this this story, like, totally hit home with me because I was like, oh, like, we used to do this stuff for fun. And it was like Yeah. It makes sense that these people are doing this.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's it's like, what are all the other things secret on the Internet that we're just not seeing? So there's this whole aspect there. But, yeah, the enemy got into one of these and was watching the chats going on and could see all the sources that the CIA agent was, you know, talking with and where the meetings were. Like, okay, well, let's meet so we can exchange these documents. Cool. And then suddenly, when they met, they were no longer seen from again. So all of a sudden, it's like, woah, hold on a second. People are disappearing here. And that's where the story is, Jenna McLaughlin and Zach Dorfman covered this, for, I believe, for Yahoo News. And when I just saw the story, I was like, this is unbelievable. These where did you two hear this? And I wanna know more. And they barely knew anything except that people were just disappearing. And sources were disappearing, and agents were disappearing. It was wild. And, I was like, I I really wanna know more. So I me and another, producer, we're really trying to fact check this one. Yael Yael Greuer. And she was amazing at trying to find any information. So we wanted to push the story forward. We we just don't wanna echo their story. We wanted to rereport it. We wanted to find the sources. We wanted to see how deep we could go with this, but we had such a hard time with this one. But, yeah, what what seems to happen is, perhaps some CIA agents died from this, or sources died from this, or were put in prison or something like that. And, it was just it was I don't know. And maybe it was a lesson for the CIA of, like, we would need to be better at hiding our covert communications and not have it easily detectable or whatever. And, yeah, it's it's one of those mysterious things where you kinda see this big shadow, you know, float under your boat out at sea and you're like, something is there, but you when you look underwater, it's not there. And so it's kind of fun just to kind of play with this kind of shadowy world as well of agents and spies and people getting caught and all this kind of stuff. So that's that's what kind of excite excited me about it. And and, you know, from a storytelling aspect, they always say if it bleeds, it leads. Right? So if people are dying in the story, that's a big story to me. Yeah. And it's a big story to everyone.

Speaker 2: The, Yeah. I was Sorry,

Speaker 3: John. I'll let you go.

Speaker 1: Course. No. Go.

Speaker 2: It was it was unsettling in a couple different directions. You brought up the the websites and just that idea that as as we're kicking it around on the Internet, there's these things happening under the surface, like, hiding in plain sight. There's obviously the it bleed if it bleeds, it leads element of these people potentially vanishing. Another thing you brought up in the episode that really stuck with me was the idea that, like, just this really remarkable story didn't get covered more. Mhmm. And it it makes you wonder about all the other things that, you know, if not for, like, that team at Yahoo News and yourself is happening, and there's evidence of it, but we just would never really hear about.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly true too, is is what what other stuff is. And it's interesting to me of, like, who's supposed to be the one who actually puts this out in the world? Should it be the CIA that says, okay, yeah, we lost some agents and here's the story. Or should it be a team of crack, you know, it's a crack team of journalists that are, like, digging and finding sources and uncovering, like, secret information and be like, let's publish this. And and and it's kind of weird. Like, who should be the one who who tells this? Because some of this stuff is, you know, lives are at stake here. And if we publish, like, oh, here's how the CIA communicates with their sources. Well, what other countries are listening to this? And saying, oh, let's look for that now. I knew we didn't know that's the technique. No, thank you. We'll look for that. It's I don't know. It's kind of wild. One of the one of

Speaker 3: the things that I really liked about this episode was the or sorry. One of the things that I really wish was there was more detail on was how they unraveled it. Like, they they found it on one site, and then they it had a footprint that they could then identify. I'm assuming it was, like, a shared JavaScript library or something, and they were just able to, like, do an Internet wide search to see what other sites had it. So I don't know if you if you know any more information about it, about how they kind of unraveled what all forums and sites they were using, or if if it just kind of that's unknown.

Speaker 1: No. I don't know. But I can imagine as well that you have informants. Right? So somebody gets caught. Okay. Well, how were you, you know, talking with the agent? I'm not telling. Okay. We're gonna we're gonna make your diss your family disappear now. Are you sure you don't wanna tell? Okay. Fine. I was using this website. Oh, wow. Okay. Let's go to that website. And so now they know about that website. And then, yeah, maybe from there they're able to fingerprint it in such a way that they can scan for other websites or something. Or share it with their, you know, ally nations and say, Hey, we know about this now. See if there's any in your country.

Speaker 3: Yeah. There's anybody on the Corgi's web forum, Corgi Lovers web forum, make sure to identify them as a potential spy threat.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So Lot lot of

Speaker 2: lot of dodgy shit goes on in that court.

Speaker 3: Yeah. This is and I've touched on this briefly before the break, the the John Reedy, the whistleblower, and then how he was terminated from his contract, etcetera. And he credits it to to being the whistleblower about this. You know, this is just another one of those incidents that I I I love to report on and hate to hear about people getting personally impacted by being the the the voice that comes out about things. So

Speaker 1: Mhmm. Yeah. We do seem to give whistleblowers a hard time in weird ways.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Being a messenger is a famously dangerous job as the expression goes.

Speaker 3: Very old expression, I believe, too.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Compromise comms, shares a lot in common in some ways with the other episode you flagged, Jack, Project Raven. It's a story that we also talked about a little bit on hacked, an episode called The Black Folder. And it's this story of a network of private companies hiring intelligence officials to do offensive security abroad, basically. Person who was trained by the NSA might end up in a different country with a different set of laws, using their skills to do things there. And in this episode, it's the story of this private company, CyberPoint, and a crew of professionals, one of whom you interviewed, hired by CyberPoint and found themselves in The UAE doing work they weren't all okay with. What stuck with you about that episode?

Speaker 1: What's funny is, the person who came to me came to me with this story, and I was like, okay. Cool. Yeah. Let's let's talk about it. Let's see what you got. And I wasn't, like, understanding. I was just like, oh, okay. You're a contractor. You're hacking. Cool. Cool, man. And then, and then when I when I got off the phone, I realized, wait a minute. This is a huge story on Reuters. Yeah.

Speaker 5: This is big all over the world. This is making news. And I was just talking to this guy. I was, like,

Speaker 1: freaking out because Reuters didn't source him as one one of the people. Yeah. They had all these other sources, and I was like, this is a new source coming forward for this story. So the I get to, like, not like you know, I don't like copying just another story and just being like, let's just play that. I wanna I wanna re report. I wanna talk to the sources. I wanna hear their story firsthand. And so here I had that source on the phone. It's like, now I have all these extra questions.

Speaker 5: He's like, okay. So I I

Speaker 1: kind of, and this I think this happens quite a bit where I I don't really know the story the first time I listen to it. It's only after hearing it two or three times because I've recorded it, and I'm listening to the tape, and I'm editing it. Then I finally get to the good parts of what oh my gosh. I did not realize you just said that. Like, this is like two times I've listened to this and I didn't realize how this important part so, yeah, that was kinda fun. And so once I realized, wow, I got Project Raven on the phone here. This is insane. I was really excited about this story. And, yeah, it became one of the most popular episodes as well. Yeah. But, hiring NSA agents to hack for you in another country is just I don't know. It's wild. And then for them to kind of all rebel and quit or a big part of their team, I suppose, wow, something has gone wrong there. And so this is kind of the hidden thread in all my episodes is I'm always looking for something that goes terribly wrong. It's not just about, okay, here's the thing that we did and everything went right. That's sorry. I don't want that story. Throw that one out. I want it where, you know, we were trying to do this, but then everything went wrong. We did the wrong thing. It all fell apart. We had to pick up the pieces, and here was the big mess that we had. Okay. I want that story. Even if it's as simple as, I was trying to install, like, Windows on my computer or something and everything went wrong. Like, okay. Let's do let's go. I I like it when everything goes wrong. So, yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking for. And in this one, everything does go wrong, and it's and it's crazy to just see everything unravel. And and you get in this direction. I really like putting putting my listener in a direction. Like, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Here's what we're going for. Then it all goes wrong. Wow. Now we don't. What do we do?

Speaker 2: You, you asked one of the one of your interview subjects close to the end of the episode. It's an interesting question of, like, after all of this, after this sort of, like, whistleblowing process, would you be comfortable going back to The UAE? And I guess I'm kinda curious, like, just for you personally, a 137 episodes in set all over the world. Is there any any corner of the world you maybe wouldn't feel that comfortable going to at this point?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm innocent. And so for someone to kind of target me or do something to me would probably be illegal. Mhmm. But can I really tap into this? And be like, hey, you're breaking the law by by tracking me down or tapping my phone or something. I don't know if it'll work in other countries. So I kinda feel I feel safe from the law standpoint, but I don't feel safe from, like, the corruption standpoint. I still I think there might be some places that are like, get this guy to quiet down, please. Yeah. Sure. But and so, you know, and this is what I think a lot of countries operate under. They they have their official laws, but then they have their unofficial put that make that person go go quiet.

Speaker 4: Op stuff.

Speaker 1: Operating procedures. Uh-huh. And, and so, yeah. There I mean, I like, Morocco comes to mind. If I criticize the the Moroccan government, or even the religions that are going on in Morocco, they can get real upset at me and arrest me as a journalist. Just journalists get arrested for criticizing the government or the religion there. And it's not There's not an official law that says, oh, you can't do this. It's just that the people in power don't like that, And they make up stuff to get people in jail. And so, that's kind of the thing that I'd I'd have to grapple with, is the corruption or unfairness of what's happening, and not really, well, wait a minute. I just need a lawyer to get out of this kind of thing.

Speaker 2: Sure. I mean, that's kind of what that whole episode ended up becoming about was the, like, moral tension of these people being, like, the values I hold are that journalism is a protected thing and that freedom of speech is really important, but I'm operating in an ecosystem where that, you know, maybe isn't isn't the case. What am I willing to do to realize some of those goals that I don't really stand by? Yeah. It's interesting.

Speaker 3: I think the I remember chatting about this with Jordan. It's like an interesting thing where you get a bunch of white hats who maybe have, like, a black hat fetish, and then you give them this opportunity. And it'd be interesting to see which ones choose, you know, the moral, ethical road and get off, get off at the next exit, or the ones that are like, no, no, this is actually a ton of fun, and I'm so happy that I have this opportunity.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's that quote from Batman that always comes back to me. You either you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2: That's couldn't be a better transition than the last episode I wanna talk to you about. This wasn't one you flagged, but it was the one that popped into my head when I realized we were talking to you, around Halloween is a three alarm lamp scooter. And this is the story of, of a person who, in some ways, yes, and in some ways, no. But maybe a lot of people who listen to both of our shows might see a tiny little piece of themselves in. A very curious, creative person, interest in security and hacking, but who, in his case, it led him to do something. In his case, building a piece of physical security infrastructure that came at a really huge, huge human cost. And I was struck listening to that one about this idea that like the traits that can lead someone to get into hacking can either be really constructive or really, really destructive. It always fascinates me, fascinates me how delicate that balance is. Like that coin can land on either side. Sort of like a there, but by the grace of God go a lot of people kind of feeling it left me with. I was wondering if you could talk about that episode a little bit, what you remember about it and what stuck with you about that story.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, this is a guy who was really deep in the hacker community. He was going to Defcon. He was going to ShmooCon. He was giving talks. Like, every year, he'd come and he'd present and he'd give a talk and he was meeting with the people. And the things that he was interested in were pretty interesting. Like, how can you you how can you destroy a hard drive? Like, physically, like, if we had to blow it up, is that good enough? And so he's, like, playing around with incendiary things and was really fascinated with, like, you know, chemicals and, like, really just it was it was wild, all the things that he was getting into. But this is the strange corners of DEFCON. They're like, DEFCON has hacking kind of at its core. But then on the sides, it's like, well, how what would what what would happen if we tried to use a microwave to send signals to the moon and bounce it off Saturn and bring it back here? Like, people are doing weird things there. And those fringe those fringe things are are really interesting sometimes to certain people. And he was, like, attracted to these really strange things. I mean, he would show up on stage in a full hazmat suit sometimes. And I don't know if it was because he wanted his appearance to be hidden or what was happening there. But, like, people are in the back like, Speak up! I can't hear what you're saying! In, like, a hood. So he was a weird character, but, yeah, he, his curiosity got to the better of him. I think he went to jail, and I think he might be out by now. So, yeah, that I don't wanna give too much of the episode away, but that one was wild.

Speaker 2: The It's a pretty wild story.

Speaker 3: Yeah. The it's the listening like, remembering back to the episode, listening to his speeches at Defcon and stuff, it almost sounded like an advanced chemistry lecture. Like, it was just so, like, you know, thermal dynamics and things like that. It was just such a fascinating like, the guy clearly loved knowledge and was, like, a big consumer of it.

Speaker 1: Like, you ever go to, like, a party and you've and you and you run into, like, a new person, and they just, like, overwhelm you with the the detail of something, where they're just like, oh, you know that the sun is made up of 42% nitrogen, but 99 helium, all this and they're just rattling off, like, saying statistics and numbers and facts that you can't really refute because you don't know that much about what you're talking about. Like, this is what that guy is. He just brings you, like, okay. So if you're gonna build a tunnel under your house, you're gonna have to do it at least four feet high, but you have to have the sides structured in such a way that but there are three different ways to structure the sides. Like, this he just wouldn't, like, slow down and I'll think in his mind. Yeah. And he just was always just, like, coming up with creative ways to do things, but then diving deep into those things. It was and, yeah, I don't even understand it for what what is happening with that guy half the time. I don't

Speaker 3: I don't wanna ruin any of the episode, but, like, the the beginning of it, like, how he was getting started in university when he gets caught kind of like, I guess, it'll spoil a bit of it, but he, like, steals a he puts a key logger on his professor's computer, logs into his email, steals the final exam. And at that point, he tries to share it with everybody, which I thought was just the most insane insane route to take at the fork in the road that he was at. He's like, I have the final. Instead of just quietly getting an a plus, I'm gonna email everybody and tell them that they can buy it off of me, and and post on Reddit about it, and link from his Reddit post to his actual person,

Speaker 1: which is Yeah. I think I think this speaks sometimes to just the vanity of of people where I don't know if that's the right word, but it's like they wanna show off what they did. Like, man, I hacked into the professor's thing, and here's what I've got. And if you if you do this really big thing, then you're, like, all proud of it, and there's no one else that's there to, like, jump up and down with you. You kinda get this sense of loneliness. And so this is why I think some people even bring stories to me because they're like, nobody I've never shared this with anybody. I've gotta tell someone. And, yeah. It it, I think people just like tell talking about themselves as well. So it it's kinda hard to keep it under control. And like I said, this guy was just such a chatter of of, like, let me tell you all about facts about dirt. And and so, yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 2: I think if you have that kind of a personality where, like, you maybe fixate is the wrong word, but I'll just use it anyway. If you fixate on a thing, like, you can use that in a really cool way. Like, you can crush through a challenge or a problem or a thing you wanna make if you can fixate on it for a little while. It also has a really dark side to it Right. Where the the light side of that is, like, yeah, you talk to someone at a party and it's like floodgates just opening because they just need to share it with someone.

Speaker 3: Mhmm. Yeah. Or it goes

Speaker 2: in a much more intense direction.

Speaker 1: I wanted to start a blog a long time ago called the Cassandra Syndrome. And the thing was is that every like, what I was thinking was that people are doing things that I could see the result having a catastrophic effect. Like, we should not be having credit cards online. Whose idea was this? Something like that, right? And I was just like, this cannot go well. And so I I was writing articles, but I wasn't publishing them. And the idea was, yeah. You look at the world and you see how many people are doing stupid things, and you wanna shout and scream at them and shake them, like, stop doing that. You're this is not gonna end well for you. And I feel like this guy had some sort of knowledge like that where he felt like, okay. We're in a nuclear age. This is not gonna end well. We're gonna we're all gonna be bombed. And I've gotta do something about this, like, right now. Like, you get you get this, like, weird sense of, oh my god. The world's gonna end. I got I better get into action. What am I doing with my life? I better go. Go. Go. And and that is really hard to tamp to, I don't know, tamper down and be like, yeah. Okay. That's fine. If we all die and it could fall well. Like, it's it's hard to undo some of these doom and gloom ideas that we get in our head.

Speaker 2: Totally. Sure.

Speaker 1: The I

Speaker 3: think the, like, the the fixation, you know, being such a powerful force, or it can easily turn into, like, a brooding, perseveration where you're, like, just thinking over and over and developing a paranoia, and it's like that becomes, you know, tragic. And I think that's what As is this episode's thesis, so

Speaker 1: And I think that's what Cassandra Syndrome is. It's that knowing that this is all gonna end in in terrible doom, and I've gotta do something about this.

Speaker 3: Is that a is that a technical term, Cassandra Syndrome, or is that just

Speaker 1: Uh-huh.

Speaker 3: Oh, really? I didn't I never heard that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Intrusive thoughts and creative brains can do some pretty wild stuff. Interesting. Never seen that one before.

Speaker 3: I just made a note of it. Cassandra syndrome. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I'll look

Speaker 3: up later.

Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna diagnose this guy with with Cassandra Syndrome, but it was in my head when I was going over it.

Speaker 2: No. Let's have a couple podcasters diagnosing a person over the internet.

Speaker 3: A bunch of cybersecurity podcasters that's

Speaker 2: the most

Speaker 3: equipped and well educated in the thing.

Speaker 2: Okay. So we've taken up a lot of your time. I just wanna talk about kinda what's next for you, man. Like, you you have a a really awesome YouTube channel that you've been, like, kind of expanding and making new content. I think you have a couple cool projects coming down the pipeline. Like, what's next in the queue for you?

Speaker 1: The thing that really excites me right now is I'm I'm I'm there's, like, a a Venn diagram in my head of, like, I really like philosophy, technology, self discovery, and trying to figure out how to navigate this world of ever changing technology where things are just getting crazier and crazier using philosophy and what I understand about technology. Like, it just keeps coming around in a circle, right? So, like,

Speaker 5: what do I how do I

Speaker 1: like, here's an example. How do I make choices? It's a basic question. Where are my choices coming from? Are they being influenced by the people around me, by the movies I'm seeing, the songs I'm listening to, the the websites I'm visiting? And then how do I know that's my choice and not some other person that planted that choice seed in me? Right? And with the way technology is just so involved in our life, I feel like it's a big response. It's it's a big reason why I'm making choices I make.

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 5: And

Speaker 1: so I want to kind of back up and say, wait, do I have an inner true voice that's saying, no. This is where you should be making your choice. Or is there something there's I mean, there's a lot of voices in our head being like, you know, where where should I go on vacation? You should go to the beach. No. You should visit your friend. No. You should go on this solitude adventure or no. On this big on this big hike because because you've always wanted to. Like, like, there's all these voices that are saying something. What's what's my true inner voice saying? And how do I get how do I listen to it? And is it even right? Because maybe there's something else that a computer algorithm could understand me better and say, well, actually, don't listen to yourself. What would be better for you in the long run is, I don't know, do this instead because it's it's actually, I don't know, better for you. It's it's cheaper. It's it's where you want to be where you've always wanted to be. Like, there could be, like, a thousand reasons why the AI can make a better choice than I can. And this is a weird thing to grapple with that I'm just super fascinated with. Can a can AI make choices for me better than I can make my own choices? And in a lot of cases, it does. Doctors have just relied on AI to, like, do things. I mean, you've got Angelina Jolie, got a double mastectomy, not because the doctor told her to, there was she was fine. There was no, like, sign of anything wrong with her breasts. But when she had her DNA examined, the DNA said, you have a high chance of getting breast cancer when you're older. And so it was kind of a computer that figured out, hey, it's probably a good idea if you get a double mastectomy right now. So she did based on a computer's understanding of her, not her or a doctor's understanding of her. So we're putting our choices, we're putting where we we're giving I mean, I could I could go on and on. So this is where Please. I think I wanna spend some time. Maybe it's YouTube content, maybe it's another podcast, maybe it's something where it's just like, help me navigate the future because and and it's for myself. Right? Because I gotta figure out what if I'm losing if if I'm if I'm going into the future without a plan, without an understanding of myself, without knowing, like, what I'm actually putting trust into, I'm gonna drown. I'm I'm gonna get just flooded, and I'm not gonna be able to navigate this new world. And so to me, this is what's, like, super fascinating with me, is to take this technology and self discovery and self understanding and philosophy, merge it all together, and figure out how do we take a step forward from here.

Speaker 2: I think if you can crack a coherent way of thinking about that question, like, why am I making choices and what role does tech, specifically AI, play in that, I think that would be hugely valuable at this point in history.

Speaker 1: Mhmm. Yeah. That's that's really fun to think about right now. And so I'm I'm writing about it, I'm making videos about it, I just haven't published anything yet, so I feel like you're asking what's next. Man, it's just a matter of of taking that step and hitting the publish button, I suppose.

Speaker 2: That's exciting.

Speaker 3: Some of, some of our, like, my favorite episodes that we've made usually end up resolving down into a philosophical debate, or often an economic debate. True. And it's like that, you know, those fundamental building blocks of society when we get down to them, through the portal of cybersecurity, that's always where I love to end up, because it's such a like, privacy is one of those things where it's like, you know, it doesn't matter where you come in through the cybersecurity doors, you always end up fundamentally at some point at a privacy, moral, and philosophical discussion. I love I love those. Those are some of my favorite episodes. I don't know about you, Jordan.

Speaker 2: I completely agree. And ironically, that's kind of where we've ended up.

Speaker 1: Funny how

Speaker 3: that works, Funny how that works.

Speaker 2: Funny how that works. Man, thank you so much for sitting down and, like, taking the time to talk

Speaker 1: with us. It was really cool. It's been very fun.

Speaker 3: Yeah. We super appreciate it. Super appreciate it.

Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on.

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