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What phone have you got? What is that?
>> Uh, this is a Galaxy Fold.
So, it's got like the regular phone
setup, but then when you want to go
wide, you get this bad boy.
>> Why no Apple?
>> Um, I mean, it's a philosophical thing
for me. Uh I I just back when I used to
do a lot more of this myself instead of
running companies that do this but when
I was doing it on my own um essentially
the Android operating system is
published online and the as AOSP it's
called it's the open source project um
you used to be able to see most like a
good amount of um uh the inner workings
of the phone essentially um and
understand how it works and and where
the holes were. Um I looked at it for
two reasons. One reason was I was trying
to develop implants or zero days for the
military at the time. Um and and Android
being open allowed us to look into those
types of things. And then the second
reason was um I could dump the my phone
myself and look at it. So if I was
traveling to a country where I was sure
something was going to be going on with
my phone or maybe I got pulled into
secondary customs and my phone was out
of my hands for a while, um it it was a
lot more um available to me to do that.
Whereas with Apple, it was very
difficult to do those types of things.
>> Does it not make it more
secure that it's a closed architecture
that doesn't allow you to see where
potential vulnerabilities are
>> as long as you trust the company?
>> Right. So you've got um on one hand how
much I trust Apple and on the other hand
how competent I think people that can
look at the Android operating system to
find its vulnerabilities are.
>> Yes.
>> Right. Okay.
>> Yeah. And I'd rather be able to look for
myself. Have you got any idea what the
justification is for getting access to
somebody's phone without them giving
permission?
>> You don't need a lot of justification
with things like the Patriot Act. I
mean, with those things hanging around,
it's just
>> even though that was created before
phones and operating systems for phones.
>> Yeah. At that point, they were going
after the um telephonic in
infrastructure. So microwave links um
down and up channel links from um uh uh
BTS's base transceiver stations um
>> that's tapping into signals
>> the infrastructure right yeah and and
the signals that live from the cell from
the tower to the cell phone
>> uh but by by saying infrastructure
you've kind of futurep proofed yourself
for if there's going to be technology
that comes out which is a different kind
of infrastructure
>> yes
>> oh so it was very cleverly written
unless they updated it in future
>> well they updated it and made it more
use it's more usurpacious it's one of
the most usurpacious pieces uh usurping
uh underwrite like uh underhanded.
>> Um it was, you know, the Patriot Act.
Can you think of a more innocuous term
for something?
>> Department of Peace.
>> Uh and it just uh it's it's just one of
those things where, you know, we would
we would need a six-hour podcast to pull
the string on how we got there, but it's
it's uh a conflation of a lot of useful
idiots looking for power. It's
>> essentially the long and short story of
it. How much do you think I've heard
that people bring up 911 Patriot Act
after that surveillance NSA
>> FISA
>> all of the FISA
>> foreign intelligence surveillance act
>> right I thought you meant the [ __ ] I
was like how is big farmer involved in
this
>> I'm sorry
>> she said got their fingers in everything
I knew it was a COVID vaccine loop it
rounds
>> yeah yeah yeah f 5 5G um FISA is a
foreign intelligence security operator
is a kangaroo court that sits near Fort
me Maryland And when there's classified
work going on, this is all you can
Google this. I'm not giving the keys
away to anything. Um, uh, when you want
to go after someone or undercover, um,
you go to a court that's, you know, you
know, part of the NSA or part of the the
triumphant three-letter soup agencies
and you go to this judge and you say,
"Hey, we think this guy's, you know, we
think Chris is a bad guy. He's he's
actually here spying for the English and
>> here's three reasons why." and the court
will sign it and it never sees the light
of day. And
>> I never thought about this. Uh Meta,
even now Open AI, you know, relatively
new company. They must have, hey, we've
found this person that we think is
potentially a bad guy. We need access to
their chat GPT logs.
>> I'm sure that's happening. So for every
big platform
software and hardware
>> there is going to be some form of
interface between them
>> and the government and for some of them
>> formal and informal. So there'll be the
the government and this is uh I I'll
I'll use the I'll use the proxy uh
government I won't say the US government
again because I don't want to get sued.
They'll do a overt relationship that's
got a memorandum of understanding or an
agreement between or a memorandum of
agreement between the two companies
saying you know here and it'll be very
you know what you would expect to see if
there's a terrorist or something like
that you guys are going to help us but
then there'll be alternate channels that
will get built you know um on the
clandestine side where the government
will a government will recruit someone
in that place to say hey you're in
charge of the uh security or you're in
charge of the infrastructure here you
know um you've got a daughter who needs
really good cancer treatment, we could
hook her up with John's Hopkins or
something like that. I'm not saying the
US government, governments do it. Y
>> um allegedly. And so they'll set these
relationships up um you know the the
triumvirant that you think about when it
concerns um spying is uh placement,
access, and and uh uh motivation,
susceptibility
um and uh accessibility. So when you're
looking at a source, someone you want to
recruit to spy, it's does he work in the
organization? Does he have access to the
information that we want? Is he
motivated to share that information? And
can I access him when he's outside of
the organization to get, you know, a
hold of the um the secrets?
>> Um and that that's what you you know, I
I was also trained in the military as a
human intelligence um operator, which is
a you know, recruiting people to um
screw over their own countries. So uh
those are the things that you consider.
And so, you know, and if the Americans
wouldn't do it, then they'll allow the
English or some other five eyes
organization to do it and then they'll
talk to them. So, you know, the the
Americans might know that the English
has recruited a spine for inside of a
MI5 or MI6 has recruited a spine inside
of an organization that they can't
recruit against, at least on the books.
>> Um, so they'll just get debriefed by a
five ice partner who's doing the same
thing. So,
>> Oh, okay. So, uh, one country that is in
partnership with another one has been
able to place somebody who will feed
information back to them in an
organization.
>> Yeah. The English don't care about the
Bill of Rights
>> that a different country
>> Yeah.
>> can't do that, but as long as the
umbrella at the top is able to
disseminate that information back down,
>> everybody can share.
>> Or they'll just collect against that.
They'll know that there's a spy here. So
then the a security agency will collect
against that spy while he's operating in
the country, right?
>> Have an understanding of what he's
doing. And then if there's a US person's
nexus then it there's a process called
minimization procedures which again you
can Google and read online but it's how
do we minimize the exposure of a
American person but all of it still gets
cataloged so it's all still there.
>> What's minimization procedure?
>> Minimization is when there's an
inadvertent collection of an American US
person uh or or even a dual citizen the
government's not supposed to be
collecting against them. So once there's
an inadvertent collection, whether it's
through technology or you accidentally
recruit an American, which really
doesn't happen that often, or you come
across some media that was generated by
an American, ostensively, they're
supposed to be protected by the Bill of
Rights and, you know, unlawful search
and seizure, freedom of speech, um,
Ninth Amendment, all of those things are
supposed to come into play
>> and, uh, but what the government will do
is they'll start a minimization channel.
And it's it's a good idea in practice
because of course there will be
inadvertent collection like I as an
American might be traveling in Bahrain
and then show up on a on a cell phone
channel that they're collecting on and
then my excuse me my information is now
collected and that goes back to you know
Fort me or wherever and they're like oh
there's an American. There's a process
to get rid of that information. It's
just uh that process moves conveniently
slow in my experience. um and uh uh is
another vector for usurping people's
rights. Um so there are people in there
trying to fight it in the government.
The government, you know, you can listen
to Rand Paul stump on this all day. You
know, I agree with some of what he says,
some I don't agree with, but um they are
obviously aware of these things
happening. They're fighting things like
FISA, which we've mentioned. They're
fighting things like the process for
minimization, but it's a slow the
government's a, you know, a behemoth.
>> Mhm. It's got to be hard when technology
is able to move as quickly as it does to
be able to keep up as well. Legislation
just takes so long and even working out,
okay, what is the strategy we want to
implement, let alone can we get it past
the appropriate hurdles legislatively to
get it brought in.
>> Yeah. The staffing of that legislation
and then the voting and the pork and
>> and presumably the talent is always
going to be on the side of the people
building the technology, not legislating
against it. Like in order to be able to
legis at least begin to understand how
we want to compensate for this new type
of technology, you need to understand
the technology. Yeah. But the people
understanding it from the government
side are never going to be as talented
as the people that are building it. So
you're always in a race that you're very
far behind.
>> Very few organizations are as competent
as the free market um inside of the US
government. One of them would be DARPA.
I advised there for a couple of years.
It's kind of the black box of uh the the
DoD. their job is to like just come up
with holy [ __ ] ideas. Um, and then they
get, you know, a budget to to work at
for these things. Oftentimes they'll
fund things that they don't they know
will not be built, but they're hoping
that there'll be spin-offs from the idea
that will help. So, they might say like,
"We want to build I always use this um
analogy. We might want to build a, you
know, a a rocket ship that can make it
to Mars in half the time." That's just
something easy we can talk about. So,
they'll fund that. Um, and the only
thing useful that might come out of it
might be a new type of carbon fiber that
they had to develop as one of the
subject lines. So, one of the the key
performance parameters was this new type
of carbon fiber that was lighter and
stronger. So, they never built the
rocket ship, but they have three other
products that came out of it and then
those things get released into the free
market. So, it's quite a useful
organization. It's quite good actually.
um it was more applicable back in like
the 80s and the 70s because um
technology hadn't evolved to the point
where any big idea was going to need
hundreds of millions of dollars. Whereas
today there's people out there like Elon
and others who can fund these really big
ideas. So it's still a good organization
but that that would that I would say
that's the last bastion of competence
inside of the government. Otherwise it's
a totally incompetent um organization.
>> What was it that you said you had human
hacking as well as software hacking?
Well, human intelligence is the
gathering of intelligence through human
like you know source and method means
sources and methods means. And then
there's um the government calls it
ethical hacking which is really a
ridiculous moniker. Um where you're you
know you're exploiting computer systems
and building things like zero days and
you're exploiting um structural um
cracks or crevices in technology and
sometimes you'll never use them. They'll
just sit on the shelf and that's kind of
where the term zero day comes from. It's
like break in place in case break glass
in case of emergency.
>> Then there'll be other ones that get
used all of the time and then uh
there'll be people who do this in the
government. There'll be people who do
this um you know white hack white hat
hackers um who will expose these things
and then you know either do it for a
bounty with a company or do it to enable
something that's on their own side.
>> These people who are talented hackers
get employed by a company to see if they
can break their own system.
>> That was my first job offering when I
got out of the military was to do it for
a bank. my friend I have a very good
friend who we went through the same
training pipeline together and uh we
were both offered a very good amount of
money from a bank to just go after their
own infrastructure then report back on
how we were able to um you know
>> it's a weird kind of ransom.
>> Yeah.
>> It's a it's a victimless ransom that
only makes things stronger.
>> Yeah. Right. Yes. Exactly. Penetration
testing is the is the is the unfortunate
moniker. Huh. Uh, when it comes to
getting access to information systems,
how often is it a
software hack and how often is it a
human hack?
>> Uh, well, that depends how how it
depends on your budget and how fortified
the infrastructure is and how how they
treat operational security or opsec. So,
you'll do like a target profile. You
you'll you know, your commander or
whoever you work for will state a goal.
we want access to, you know, X
information at, you know, X
organization, whatever that might be.
And then you'll get a bunch of people
like myself and from other disciplines.
There's there's multiple there's many
modes of intelligence, especially within
the DoD. There's uh Mazant, there's
fizzant, there's elint, there's comet,
there's um cyber, there's open- source
intelligence. Mazant is uh measuring and
area signals. Um uh fizzant is telemetry
intelligence. So, you know, a space
shuttle will report back information to
the ground station as it's ascending or
or a plane will be giving information
back to its ground station while it's
maneuvering. Uh it's the interception of
that information. There's elint which is
electronic intelligence going after um
radars associating with uh aircraft or
AAA batteries or early warning radars or
fire control radars on on ships or
airplanes. um the interception of those
signals and parsing it. Uh I realized I
said a bunch of uh uh acronyms and
didn't explain them, so now I'm
explaining them. And there's open source
intelligence. Uh there's a variety of
intelligence. So you'd have all of those
people in the room who conduct those
things and they'd say, what are the
vulnerabilities? Um you know, we've done
a target analysis of this. What are the
v vulnerabilities or likely vectors that
we can access? Um and if you've got a
budget, so you know, what are some of
the cheapest ways? The cheapest ways are
always recruiting humans that work
inside of the organization. So whether
it's terrorists or government or
>> that's always cheaper than trying to
hack the technology.
>> 95% of the time it's cheaper. It
depends. Again, it depends on what
technology we're going after. Um if it's
a you know a 3G Nokia in in Iran, uh
that's an easy day. If it's a uh uh you
know uh let's see what would be
something very difficult. um a highly
encrypted satellite communication
network where you need to be in the
physical footprint of the satellite lobe
in order to do the collection. That's
placement, that's access, that's money,
that's recruiting, that's hacking,
that's decryption. There's a bunch
there.
>> So, it really depends on the nature of
the target and the technology. Um but uh
generally inside of an organization
there would be people with loose morals
and you can obvious
paying them 30 or 40 or 50k or you know
finding out someone who runs the
security network whose daughter needs
eye surgery or has macular degeneration.
>> You bump into them at a coffee shop and
strike up a conversation and I like what
you like and establish rapport and then
eventually you get to the point where
you recruit them and then you pay them
and then you get your information.
That's more classic spy craft type
stuff.
>> Yes, exactly.
>> Yep. So, I was trained in that
classically while I was in the military,
but it was in order to conduct um
forensic exploitation. Um
>> forensic exploitation.
>> Yes. In in support of these types of
operations.
>> What's that? What's forensic
exploitation?
>> Uh you're handling a source and you're
worried that he's not obeying your
instructions. So, now you're going to
pull the GPS or data from the phone to
make sure that he drove there the way
that you told him.
>> Okay. So this is beginning to cross the
two. This isn't just the human side.
It's not just the technological side.
>> Signals intelligence and computer um
network operations supporting the human
intelligence targeting cycle.
>> Wow. Okay. Yeah. To ensure that assets
are doing what they say that they do,
right? Okay. Yeah. Cuz there's layers
and layers. There's what you want them
to achieve technologically, but then
there's surveilling them to ensure that
they're doing what you want them to do
in order to achieve what you want them
to achieve
>> technology. And you don't want them
showing up like you know they might be
running late from work so they just take
a direct beline to your meat instead of
conducting a surveillance detection
route and now they you know they left
their facility and they left with
surveillance now the surveillance pulled
them all the way to where you're doing
your meat.
>> Yeah.
>> Instead of doing the surveillance
detection route and dumping the
surveillance not dumping cataloging the
the surveillance and then not attending
the meeting because you've got a tail.
>> Wow. Okay. What are
what are some of the gnarliest exploits
or information hacks that are publicly
available and you can talk about but not
enough people know about? I mean,
Pegasus is probably the king of that.
Um, it it's basically a persistence
persistent implant that lives on the
phone. Um, that in its earliest
iterations required you click some type
of link. So there would be a fishing
element to it where you know you're
getting an email or you're getting a
text where you know I might you know
conduct some exploitation on your phone
and figure out you text a lot with
person A and then so now I'm going to um
use the network and send a message
that's looking like it's coming from
that person saying hey Chris come and
check this link out blah blah blah blah
blah you know I'd be innocuous or a
website or something like that that it
sends you to but then it would deliver
some packets that would implant itself
in you know uh a part of your telephone
that was specific speifically for
iPhone, iOS.
>> Uh yeah, but but I believe it branched
out since then. So Pegasus was post my
military career,
>> so I didn't actually get to go and do
the exploitation on it that I wanted to
do on it or that I would have wanted to
do it on. I read some papers. I talked
to some friends who were still in and
asked them about it. Um
>> but uh it lived in a different place on
the phone than it would even stand up to
a person like me doing a quick um triage
natured forensic exploitation where I'd
dump the phone and look through it. M
>> it was stored in a place where it wasn't
obvious that you should be looking for
any type of code there or malicious code
there.
>> Who made it?
>> Uh I I mean I believe it was made by the
Israelis. Um I think that's common
knowledge. That certainly was one of the
most like holy [ __ ] these guys cracked
the nut here. Um say what you will about
Israel. Um they certainly have their
trade craft and their military operation
planning um down. Well,
>> dude, if you can blow the balls off
3,000 [ __ ] enemy combatants at the
same time using a
>> pager.
>> Oh, man. I wish I'd have been part of
something like that,
>> that would have been great.
>> That kind of fell away, that new story.
It was I mean, it happened. Everyone was
interested in it. But that to me seems
like one of the most like insane.
>> They should make a movie about that.
>> Precise.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It mean just years of target
development, sourcing, corporate
espionage, supply chain interdiction.
The amount of things that had to go into
that to make that happen. Uh, you know,
just getting plastic or whatever they
use inside of a, you know, a pager,
that's easy. Supply interdiction, you
know, making it through this network,
paying off the right people, delivery,
the patience to wait, you know, that
they're with all of these people. Uh,
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Why were they using pages? Is that more
secure somehow?
>> There there was they probably Yeah, they
probably got the idea that smartphones
are no longer secure. So now we're going
to go revert back to um which is
actually you know throughout my time in
the global war on terrorism that was
definitely a thing that would happen
like we'd nail down one type of
technology we'd exploit it we'd kill a
bunch of people and then they you know
pivot to a different piece of technology
or regress back to um you know something
more primitive they did the same thing
even with um IEDs you know IEDs started
very primitively you know pressure
sensors pressure triggers um you had to
physically you know manipulate you know
drive over something
>> and then they got to command and
detonated and then they got to using
garage doors that were operating in a
frequency band that the uh the initial
mellins that we put out which were
sensing the RF environment would tell
you if there was something in the area
uh and set it off. So then they started
using the garage door openers that were
in a very low frequency band range that
was outside of the mellins. the Mellans
pivoted and then they went back to uh
remote pressure or or running a wire up
to a hotel room and sitting in a hotel
room and waiting.
>> So, you know, like you said, the free
market can pivot and develop new
technology and and asymmetric warfare.
In asymmetric warfare, the threat can
pivot, especially when you're dealing
with somebody who doesn't wear a uniform
and doesn't care about the law of Geneva
Conventions,
>> they'll just go wherever they need to go
to keep effective. Yeah, exactly. Uh
this is what we saw in Ukraine, right,
with drones that uh $500 drone with a
bit of plastic explosives. Yeah. Was
able to find the weakness in this
particular tank. So then the tanks got
>> webbed uh like uh frontage like prongs
at the top so that they would get
caught. Okay. So we'll find a way to get
around that. Uh so then EMP blasts will
be used to knock them out of the sky. So
then we'll run basically big [ __ ]
strings, big cords. Yeah. It's this
rapidly evolving.
>> It's like that baseball game with the
bat where you're putting hands over the
top and then you know ro shambo or
whatever they used to call it. It's the
same thing. You're just
>> how how can we pivot? That's what the
military and the government by by and
large is really bad at is pivoting and
responding to pivoting because we're
militaries that are built around
symmetric threats. We were thinking
about the Russians. We were thinking
about the Chinese and you know that's
you know Geneva Conventions law of land
warfare you know there's certain
gentleman rules that you'll obey and say
we're not going to do we won't target
civilians we won't target churches we
won't target mosques we won't do these
types of things and then you know
terrorists just look at that and say oh
they're showing us their weaknesses
let's run all of our operations you know
I just read a news report the other day
about Gaza using the hospitals as
torture facilities
um it was just like two or three days
ago.
>> [ __ ] me, that's morbid.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, they're just overtaking
these hospitals. Um
>> there was um a book I brought the author
on. I I wasn't ever able to actually
release the episode, but I brought an
author on who had written a book that
was about all of the intelligence
failures of America. Oh.
>> And uh it was like a popular history
book, but it came up to pretty recent.
And when they did the Osama bin Laden
raid, they found the book on his bedside
table. And this guy was an old school
British bloke. And he [snorts]
immediately rang his publisher and said,
"We need to put this on the front cover
of the paperback release." Like so good
that Osama bin Laden had it on his
bedside nightstand. Uh but yeah, he he
was using Osama bin Laden was using a
popular history book about the failings
of the American intelligence agencies
and the rest of the
>> right next to his Averal Lavine CD.
>> Yeah, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. In his
bacon.
>> Yeah. We uh we we put a lot of that out
there. I mean um I I'm proud to say I
worked in a lot of military
organizations where none of the members
have published books yet. I'm
anti-bloated government. I'm like so
against you know Andy you mentioned at
the beginning had me on his podcast and
said if you you know if you're a
dictator for the day how much you read
would you reduce the federal government
by and I said 80%. And I just gave a
long list of organizations that would
just go away.
>> Um there's it's just it's a self-licking
ice cream cone that's its only ends and
means are to grow and to pull pull more
purse strings for the majority of the
time. So,
>> it's been an interesting loop to watch
uh Elon's arc over the last what, like
two years or so.
>> Oh, very much so.
>> As with Doge, right? Because I think
>> it's this weird oraorus eating itself of
we shouldn't have trillionaires because
they're able to evade tax. We need to
take more taxes. A lot of rich people
say, "I want to pay taxes." I think the
top like 1% of earners pay 30% of the
taxes already. But
the main concern of most rich high
taxpaying people is look at all of the
[ __ ] waste and fraud that this is
being spent on. And the guy that's
paying the most tax was also the guy
that was trying to remove some of the
inefficiencies to be able to as opposed
to pouring more into the top. It's like
let's make the system that spits it out
the bottom more efficient so that we can
actually get more of it. We have some
taxes going in. lots of that's being
wasted. How can we make it more
efficient? I had um the uh
CIO, the chief information officer for
the Treasury Department, uh Sam Caucos,
who founded Levels. I had him on the
podcast last year and he's the it was
the first long form interview that
anybody from Doge had done um at his
level.
>> I think I saw that one.
>> Great. But he's like, "Dude, it's
[ __ ] ancient."
>> Yeah.
>> This entire organization is a big
lumbering behemoth. uh it leans left as
well internally and it's not agile. It's
not able to be kept up to date and all
of these systems is explaining it's like
16 intersecting different systems that
need to well this type of information is
held on this particular type of database
and we need to do a lookup request that
comes across to this one. So it's not
one coh it's not a big [ __ ] Excel
spreadsheet right that just holds
everything. It's this Frankenstein's
monster that's been like contorted over
time to it functions. It functions in as
much as the country hasn't fallen apart
and you're able to submit taxes and
you're able to pay them. But uh yeah,
it's um it's a mess. It's a mess. Yeah,
it's it my experience was my last job
when I left the military was I was
advising um a two-star general and a
full colonel who were in charge of all
the offensive cyber development for the
army. So offensive cyber is hacking it's
another term uh offensive cyber
operations. Um offco is what we called
it. um they're they they recognize the
ridiculousness of the program, but all
of these programs you get a budget for
the year and if you don't execute the
whole budget, I've never seen a general
get dressed down more than when I'd be
sitting at the Pentagon behind them and
they hadn't executed the full budget.
There were these three guys and I can't
remember their names but they sat in
like what was the G357 which is in
charge of operations um training and
sustainment or something like that but
they were the ones who gave the money.
So they would say to General So and so
here's your hundred billion dollars for
this year.
>> Mhm.
>> If they executed only 99 billion and
there was a billion left over they were
going to get fired. They hadn't spent
every penny. So the general or the the
president puts out what's called the
national intelligence priority framework
which is the NIPF covers here are the
effects that I want the US military to
have on the battlefield. They need to be
able to do these things and here are the
peers and near peers in these areas and
here are the countries that we don't
want to go after. So I would sit down
with the with the general um after he
got hit they would flow down to this
general who's in charge of offensive
cyber. Then we'd have these roundts
where we would say, you know, in this
area, what can we go after? Um, what
product lines that we have that already
support these efforts? Um, uh, which one
of these can we not do or should we tell
them that we'll either need more funding
or it's not a vector that we should
pursue at this time? And we would go
over all of those things and we would
think that we got most of the budget
program. That was the sole thing that
drove everything. And this is the most
frustrating part. It really opened my
eyes to government. Budget and money
drove every everything. It didn't even
really matter if we were met um meeting
the president's requirements as long as
we got to say we as long as we could lie
to a threshold that they wouldn't be
able to figure out that we were
executing the budget.
>> It just needed the money needed to be
spent. That was what it was all about.
>> There's not any uh espionage and
subtifuge happening externally. It's
also happening internally.
>> Yes. And and and then when the money
wouldn't get spent, you would like every
all the military guys would get and
there was only a few in the
organization. It was mostly civilians.
Um, I would say 85% of it was civilians.
They would get pulled in and say, "Look,
we've still got $100 million and it's
it's July. The budget's up in September.
Where can we spend money right now?"
>> And they' just be like, "Whatever course
you want to go to, Chief, go. Whatever
thing you want to go to, you want to go
do that, just spend it all." And then
when you executed the budget, it was
successful. Um, but it never really like
in my mind it was always if a general
officer who's got a cadre of folks like
myself who are experts in their fields
say look we can achieve the effects the
president's looking for for 70% of the
budget.
>> That to me is a promotion
>> that you know we're getting the intended
effects and we've done it with
threequarters of the budget.
>> What do you think was being insinuated
by someone not hitting budget that they'
basically fallen short and not tried as
hard as they should have done?
>> Yeah. Or you didn't know what you
needed. you you thought you you knew you
asked for way more than you needed
>> because the request for the budget was
also done by the person that didn't
spend it.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> So like here is your budget. It's here's
what I want.
>> Well, here's what you asked for and I
got you that.
>> I went and stumped for you and I got you
that from the Secretary of Defense and
you didn't execute it. Now I got to go
tell them we've got this money we can't
spend.
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and modernwisdom at checkout. What's the
role of AI in hacking now?
Uh well I mean AI right now with you
know the code generation piece is
getting robust. I don't think it's as
robust as everyone else thinks it is. I
mean it's very good. There's a lot of um
pluses to it. I'm obviously using it
inside of our companies because it will
the mundane code or the the less um
elegant code um that's been written a
million times over you can generate very
quickly. It can be integrated. Someone
can review it in your GitHub. the branch
gets committed and now you've got code
that would have otherwise taken a week
or two to develop. You get it developed
in an hour. Um and and in hacking it's
the same thing. Again, I've really been
outside of hacking for probably three
years now, four years. Um I was advising
some friends um on the side with like a
a small company where they would just
I'd be a good idea fairy and they would
tell me the targets and the and the and
and the networks that they were looking
at and then I'd recommend ideas or
here's what you can do or hey that one
uses HF comms. you know, you could you
could sit and intercept these HF comms
from this area, go and do this. I would
do that type of thing. But for the large
part, now I'm running two and almost
three companies now. I've largely gotten
out of that space,
>> but I would imagine it's the same thing.
So, what you would do is you would you
would get a blob or like what would you
know a technical dump of a particular
device that you're you're targeting and
you would feed it to an AI and it's
probably being done in the Pentagon
right now. Um, anthropic or open AI or
whatever. There's probably a hacking
version of this, I would imagine. Like I
said, I haven't been in there for a
while. And you basically say, "What are
the like here's a here's a router.
Here's everything we know about it.
Here's how it looks. Here's all the
logic. Here's all the hardware. Here's
the firmware. Here's the software that
runs on it.
>> Tell me where the chinks in the brute
the [ __ ] out of this."
>> Yeah. And say it'd say, "Hey, the IP
tableing is messed up here. Um, they
haven't patched that yet." Or they'd
say, "This buffer can be overflowed and
it will give you access. You can go
here." or on this network diagram that
you pass me um it looks like all of
these are being um provisioned by the
same IT guy um and you have historical
reporting that says he uses password
password for his passwords you know all
of these things would be looked at and
gone through um and that that target
development cycle now would have been 3
to 6 months in the past or even a year
or two you know we would get a phone and
dump the phone a phone would become
popular in the Middle East we'd dump the
phone we get the EL1 one file which is
just the to you know every as much code
as you can get on a phone and we'd comb
through it and look for the
vulnerabilities that can be a year
processed you know three to three months
to a year easily to do that unless
there's parts of the code that you know
unless that the you know Apple 13 a lot
of the same code exists in the 14
therefore the same exploits or hasn't
been patched a lot of that would be
there but when you're talking new phone
or new architecture new ecosystem
um easily you can spend a here and now I
think there's probably a month at most
people would spend on these things and
probably most of the work's getting done
in the first 3 hours. AI powered hacking
I would have guessed, you know, with
some of the
some of the nightmares that we've seen
over the last couple of years. Uh there
was a few in retail in the UK. I would
have guessed that AI fueled hacking
would have just like exposed all of
these vulnerabilities.
>> I'm sure it is.
>> I I don't know. I haven't heard many
many massive stories about it.
>> I don't think you would hear a lot about
it. Um maybe uh but I'm I'm 100 because
a lot of models so this is a bit
esoteric
basically comes down to training data
and power. A lot of the math and a lot
of the algorithms that AI uses or or at
least inst the initial instantiations of
it use were around since the 70s and the
80s. like we knew the math behind a
convolutional neural network or or or a
long short-term memory um neural network
which is a derivative of a recurrent
neural network. We knew a lot about how
this stuff was going to work but we
lacked two things. We lacked the compute
which we got through like tensor
processing units or GPUs and we lacked
training data which we got through the
internet.
>> So um there's more to it but largely
those are the three things part of the
awesome sauce for training an AI model.
So there are people out there certainly
who are going to be able to train their
own models and use their own code
repositories that they've generated for
different exploits over time and train
their own internal network on their own
GPU on their own server on their own
basement
>> without any guardrails on it.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They wouldn't. Yes. That
certainly it's being done by organized
crime right now. There's no way it's not
being done.
>> What are the most common things that
organized crime are using hacking for?
>> Uh access to phones is a big one. um um
uh uh banking uh stuff associated with
Bitcoin um things associated with uh uh
they're in betting. There's a lot of it
in betting.
>> What do intelligence operators
understand about human behavior that
most civilians don't, do you think?
>> So I'm not So I'm trained in human
intelligence. My human intelligence
operations that I ran were usually to
enable a separate part of an operation
as I alluded to before. But that being
said, I learned how to do car pickups,
car drop offs, uh bumps, initiate,
debrief, um handle a source, all of
those things. Um but it was meant for a
different aspect of the mission.
I think that really when it comes to
what when you ask the question what
other people don't understand I guess I
would ask you back what kind of other
people because I think when you talk
about somebody who's really been around
the block Rogan has a very deep
understanding of people I I sometimes he
can quickly sus people out like is this
guy full of [ __ ] is this guy angling
is this guy doing this and I've seen it
enough to where um it's a pattern I've
now seen over the past few years where
he's good very good at figuring out who
good people are and who shitty people
are. He just has that tick.
>> It's an interesting skill. I I think I
kind of become fascinated by rich and
powerful men uh distorting reality
around them, especially when you walk
into a room. But when you get to very
very very Yeah. That
>> having spent some time around some
pretty [ __ ] powerful and influential
people, when they walk into a room, the
whole vibe of the room changes. people
aren't just people are unable to act
normally. Yes. Around them and then
after a while
>> it would be like some weird version of
Stockholm syndrome where you go well
this is just what the world is.
Everybody treats me in this sort of a
way. Isn't that strange? And people
can't hold it together.
>> Yeah.
>> When they're in the presence of somebody
that they really admire. They've got
loads of respect. Maybe they think that
they can get something from them or they
want them to like them and or this
person is maybe the gateway between them
and a thing that they think that they
want. He's so powerful and rich and cool
and I want to be associated with him.
Maybe we could be friends and and before
you know it, you're the guy gobbling his
words to a hot girl
>> trying to hang with somebody in a comedy
green room.
>> Yes. And the reason I brought up Rogan
was because
in the mil especially in the military
now when I was dealing with the CIA or I
was dealing with the DIA who have their
own um source recruitment um divisions
um the everyone can do everyone can go
to the farm or everyone can go to in the
military the the Fort Wukas where they
run the courses there um and learn how
to recruit a source and the 30% of
people who can do it can do it to effect
once they've learned the how. So the the
military breaks it down into a very
rigored approach. And oftent times the
people that you're recruiting are people
who have shown up to a base and said,
"Hey, I think my brother's going to blow
some car up or I think
>> this x, y, or z." And then they'll say,
"Oh, that person is a lead. Le let's go
recruit that person." And so most people
can do that. Now there's a separate
class.
>> There's there's categories of human
intelligence sources and those are
derived from what their placement and
access is. So, you know, a guy who is a
gate guard in an IBM is like lower cat
3, cat 4, very low source, but he can
give you access or he could get you a
security card or he could get you X, Y,
or Z. So, there's value val it's
valuable. Um, you just pay that guy off.
And then there's cat 3, cat 2, cat 1,
cat one sources would be like, I'm
recruiting the secretary of defense for
the, you know, British government or
whatever you guys call him, defense
secretary, defense prime minister,
whatever that person's called. M
>> I'm recruiting that guy. That's a level
one source. So that level one source
requires an artisan, somebody who really
knows his craft and someone who can
really create circumstances and
understand a target. But he also, the
reason I brought up Rogan is because
they also have that thing where they can
quickly deduce a person and and put them
down and understand exactly what
motivates this person, have a very good
idea of what motivates this person, um
the tactics that they're going to use,
how they're going to keep them
interested, and they can do that with
like a 15-minute conversation.
>> It's an insanely strong theory of mind.
>> Yes. And and and and rigorous. It's it's
one of those things where you have to
have thema and the animus. You have to
have the structure to follow the cycle
and you have to have the diligence and
the patience and the and the all of
those virtues because deviating from
this cycle that's been around for a
thousand years will get you killed. But
then he's also got to have the artistry
or thema to be able to navigate the
chaos and and get thrown all different
types of punches or this thing happens
or he gets rolled up at a checkpoint or
he is now getting recruited and this has
turned into a CI operation. And to
navigate all of those things, you need
somebody who's got real command of their
total self who can who can deal with the
rigor and and apply all that, but then
can play jazz when it's needed. Yeah.
and then have the wisdom uh to do all of
those things that I talked about. And
most guys at that point are 40 or 45
before they have that. But man, this
these guys, you know, you get three of
these guys, you can take over a country.
>> Uh you know, you said about cat four,
cat 3, cat 2, cat 1, cat one would be
super super high value target.
>> Yep.
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That's join.woop.com/modern
wisdom. I was thinking about how serial
killers seem to not have proliferated in
the same way largely because of
forensics, DNA, fingerprinting,
digital tracking. Do you think it's
likely
now? Do you think it it is less likely
that cat one people of interest are
going to be turned for the same reason
that it's less likely that there are
longstanding serial killers that they
are realizing I'm probably going to get
caught. There's more of a digital
footprint. It's hard.
>> You cooked that up just now
>> while we were talking. Yeah, that's
interesting. Uh
>> you know that the analogies I'm trying
to make there.
>> Yeah. No, I totally understand it. It's
just great. uh like I would I've only
been thinking about what's happening
right here and I haven't my my CPU is
limited so I'm not I can't go
>> I've got no I've I've got low processing
power but very high RAM. [laughter] Uh
>> very good. Um I I think so certainly
handling cat one it has gotten more
restricted but then what ends up happen
or having to change is you have to
handle your cover differently. So all of
these operations, you're in cover when
you're running these operations. And so
the cover now needs to become instead of
a guy I met at a bar, um you're going to
set up a new company in this country
adjacent to whatever sector this
person's in,
>> become the CEO of that company
>> and the government will spend a ton of
money setting setting that up.
>> Okay. So you're not you're not turning
people that are already there. You're
creating people that are going to become
it.
>> Yes. or or you're or you're say say
you're in charge of a let's just run a
thought experiment or a hypothetical.
Say you're in charge of a new type of um
GPU development company in Abu Dhabi. Um
and I want to recruit you. So in the
past it might have been we became good
friends from a bar and we you know we
your girlfriend knew my girlfriend and
we went out and here's how this happened
and then when you're you know the
Chinese are buying your GPUs which is
why I'm going after you. I want to cut
off the head of the dragon here and not
give the Chinese access to your GPUs and
I want you to sell them to the
Americans. Let's say that's what's going
on.
>> The Chinese would come in and say, "Hey,
who the [ __ ] this Bill Thompson guy?
How much do you know about him?" Blah
blah blah. They'll be so proactive
because they'll be watching you. If
you're a critical supply choke point for
them, they will have been watching you
from day one before they even start
selling for buying from you. They'll
know your ins and outs.
>> Wow.
>> That's what happens when you deal with
the Chinese. Um, and so they'll know all
of this. So, they'll go to you, you'll
get a meeting with someone, someone will
show up in your office and be like,
"Hey, I'm so and so from so and so. You
deal with the government, the communist,
you know, people's republic of China."
Um, we've noticed you've been hanging
out with this bill guy. You know, you
need to shut that. Like, what is his
story? He just showed up. Blah blah blah
blah blah. So, now how this changes is
because we can't change the technical
vectors and the collection capabilities
and all those things. So how this would
change is instead of it happening and
we're friends with because of
girlfriends, I will go into that country
and set up a either competitive or
adjacent technology
>> fully funded by the US government
through cutouts and other things and and
either be on the chief of staff or staff
or whatever and we'll I'll make my
product that you need slightly cheaper,
maybe it's a transistor or something
like that. You'll come to me to say,
"Hey, I've noticed that you're selling
this microchip here for half the cost. I
need some." I'll be like, "Oh, great.
Yeah, blah blah blah blah blah. Now I've
got uh what's called cover for action
and cover for status. And so when the
Chinese come to you, be like, "Well,
yeah, I'm buying it from him. He runs
this company and this company's got a
cheaper one, and that allows me to make
it cheaper for you." So the Chinese are
cool. You're cool. And now I'm only
>> more sophisticated cover.
>> Yeah. So far more backstopped is what
it's called.
>> More backstoppped, right?
>> Yes.
>> Who do you think's the most surveiled
human on the planet?
Elon Musk. I'd probably say at least
there there's a laundry list of people
that I would want to recruit and he
would be one of them.
>> Who else would be on it?
>> Uh,
some of them I know, so I don't want to
say their names. Um, who else would I be
going?
>> An interesting list that you're going to
give us of people who you don't know.
>> Yeah. Who I don't [laughter] know. Um,
uh, let's see. Uh, Family of Trump would
be another one I would be looking at.
It's a big [ __ ] family. So,
>> yes, big [ __ ] family. Um,
I would be, you think anybody in the
tech sector. It also depends on, you're
asking me this, who am I recruiting for?
>> You know, if I'm recruiting for the
Chinese, that would be one set of
people. If I'm recruiting for the
Russian, that'd be another set of
people.
>> Original original question was just
like, of all humans on the planet, 7
billion, whatever it is now, 8 billion.
Uh,
who has got the most amount of eyeballs
looking at them? digitally.
>> Yeah. So, as you state that, I actually
realize I'm wrong. I'd probably want to
recruit people who work for Elon. I
wouldn't want to recruit Elon. I'd want
to recruit someone close to him because
I talked about accessibility being one
of the vectors when you're doing a
target. Very inaccess. Even if I'm
friends with him, he's inaccessible. I
would never be able to get him to show
up for a meet like to debrief from him
or to get any information from them. Um
so, you'd want to recruit someone around
them. And and that's the same thing, you
know, that that's the thing that's
always kind of um made me scratch my
head about Epstein. Um,
uh, I I would never
I would never want people brought up
Clinton and saying Clinton's now
associated with Epstein. I'm sure there
were nefarious crazy things going on
over there. Clinton's not a person I'd
ever want to recruit. Clinton would be a
nightmare of a target to try to manage
or a source to try to manage. He's not
someone you recruit. He's also not
someone you leverage. You you could
maybe Epstein being an idiot wanted to
set up all of these things and and use
them as leverage against them. That
might be one play. But as far as saying
like Israel's involved and like these
things, possible.
>> One of the most interesting ideas I've
heard about Epstein was uh a friend who
spoke to somebody in Israeli
intelligence and he this guy said, "Do
you know how [ __ ] insulting it is
that people say that we would have
recruited that guy?"
>> Yes.
after he was already popped.
>> Yes.
>> For soliciting sex from a minor.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and that was the I don't know. The
Epstein rabbit hole goes so [ __ ]
deep.
>> Oh, no. Don't get me wrong. It's so
There's a lot going on.
>> Very swirly. And that would be great
cover. The fact that he's so obvious as
to not be a normal standard candidate
for being an intelligence operative
would maybe be great cover for why he
might but
>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh he was like, "How
unsophisticated and ungraceful do you
think we are that we would recruit that
guy, this very flash, very lavish, very
public facing dude."
>> And what are you going to recruit him
with? He's rich. Anything that you would
use.
>> The argument would be that the the money
wasn't his. That the money had come from
him.
>> That's right. That's right. That's
right. That's right. Um, it's just
>> still it's an interesting it's it's an
interesting argument and it makes sense
when um this guy's obviously a fed or
this guy's glowing or whatever. Uh, the
>> like how glowy somebody looks is
probably proportionate to how visible
they are too.
>> If somebody's very visible, they're
going to get more accusations of being
whatever controlled opposition or a fed,
whatever. But you go,
>> would you really want that person?
>> No. Like it's the best argument. I have
no [ __ ] idea whether Nick Fuentes is
a fed or not, but it's the best argument
for why Nick would be a horrible
candidate. Like, do you want someone
that's being watched by hundreds of
thousands of people a day? Like, is that
that's your guy? Although Anderson
Cooper was that rolled up. So, this is
the thing, man. For every example,
there's a counter example. [ __ ] it. Nick
Fontes is a Fed.
>> It all depends on what you can It all
depends on what you get from them. I
think I mean, if I had to I'll put it
this way. If I had to place money, he's
getting money from Israel.
>> If I had to bet, I would say he's
getting money from Israel.
>> Why?
>> Straw man. This helps them in so many
ways to have people like him running
around that he might not know he's
getting money from them, but you need
enemies. It's kind of like racism.
Who's funded the most of the KKK? And
who shows up in the chat rooms when the
KKK is having a meeting?
>> I don't know.
>> The federal government.
>> Okay. Why?
>> Because they need an enemy. They need a
straw man. They prop up. There's no
white supremacy is like real white
supremacists. Yeah, there are some out
in like rural Alabama or something like
that. But as far as like tens of
thousands like they would lead us to
believe and all of these things, most
times when you look into these things,
there was Fed involvement. Like even
again January 6, very hot topic, there
were feds in that audience that were
that you know look going back to the
Gulf of Tonkan. Anytime we needed
motivation to use government money,
taxpayer money to launch an operation to
achieve an effect, the government's
almost always involved in every part of
the nexus when it comes to certain
things.
>> Just before you keep going, can you just
pop that on for me, please? [laughter]
>> What is this for?
>> This it's it's it's when you're it's
when you're pushing out into the deeper
recesses of of theorizing. It's a It's a
I mean I I would have imagined as a
>> intelligence agency uh person that you
would have understood what this is. It's
a disguise bill.
>> Yeah.
>> Go on.
>> A lots of these things when you look
when you really get down to the
nitty-gritty. The government's This is
so ridiculous. The government's so
involved in most of these things and
lots of times here's the way the FBI
will look at something. We've got a
whole division that's focused on uh on
on I can't even think. [laughter]
>> All right. All right.
>> We've got a whole We've got a whole
division that's focused on threats to
the homeland. And 25% of this budget is
for white supremacy.
>> The Biden administration will throw 100
to$2 million$100 or $200 million at
countering white supremacy so that he
gets to go out and have talking points.
But then the FBI gets on the ground like
there's really no white supremacy. So
then the FBI will be like, "Hey," and
I'm not saying this is happening now,
but this certainly happened back in the
day. I know it h it happened back in the
day. There would be a KKK meeting either
on the dark web or on on the white web
or open web or in an area or whatever.
60% of the people showing up would be
feds.
Why? Because they have a whole division
and all of these jobs are organized
around defeating white supremacy. And if
you can't find white supremacy, it's
like Al Sharpton. Al Sharpton made his
bones on helping black people back in
the day. But once racism in the 90s
washed up, he had to go searching for
racism
>> in order to keep his stick going. Um
that's the problem with government is
that they create they're self-licking
ice cream cones and that they create the
incentive structure, but once they've
won, they can't go away. None of these
guys are none of these useful idiots
will get rid of their jobs. They're
going to go out and create the thing
they were developed to counter in order
to keep the purse strings going.
>> A lot of people have this same issue
with big pharma.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. It's the same. It's
>> keep you fat.
>> It's the same dynamic. Yeah.
>> Big farmer wants you taking type two
diabetes shots in your stomach or
whatever you have to do for type two
diabetes. They won't tell you to fast.
They won't tell you to lose weight. You
got heart problems or cholesterol
problems. They're not going to tell you
to lose weight and go on a clean diet.
They're going to give you statins. This
is the interesting thing here is uh just
changing the incentives or coming up
with a better solution. Like this is why
it's cool and and and noble and I love
when people want to kind of flip the
entire system over, but I don't think
that it's as realistic as just coming up
with a better alternative that aligns
the incentives toward what you want. For
instance, Ompic plays within the rules
of big farmer but gets the outcome that
you want, which is preferable,
>> right? It it it realizes that, hey,
maybe we can try and take down these
greedy corporations that are trying to
capitalize on people's bad health so
that they can keep them addicted or or
dependent on medications.
Roger that. However,
if you can just get a medication that
gets the outcome that you want, that has
minimal side effects through using
innovation, you indoctrinate cuz big
farmer doesn't care about what the
outcome is. What they care about
presumably using this if if this is true
that they care about is profits. Okay.
So, just that's their rule set.
>> How can you get them to continue to make
profits?
>> Mhm. whilst also
making people healthier or helping
people to lose weight. You the long-term
studies on all these GLPs and stuff
aren't out yet, but
>> that to me seems like a much a much
quicker way to do it. But as you've said
there, this sort of intersecting
[snorts] [ __ ] endless spiral of well,
this thing that you thought happened
maybe didn't happen for that reason.
happened to be an example to push back
against so that it can keep people in a
job so that it can permit uh expansions
of power so that it can increase budgets
so that there is still the opportunity
for people uh culturally to nudge
society in one direction or another.
This is why I get I think I'm like not
very conspiratorial. I'm very
interested.
>> I don't consider myself one either.
Quibono.
>> The reason the reason that I find it
like interesting to be around my
friends, but also sometimes it's like
quite fatiguing to me, my more
conspiratorally minded friends is the
what I'm left with is not more
certainty. It's just more like apathy.
>> Yeah.
>> I go,
I don't know what the [ __ ] to think,
>> dude. I actually don't know what the
[ __ ] to think. For every incident that
occurs, you can make an equal and
opposite case for it being legitimate or
not or a
you know fourthwave Trojan horse, you
know,
triple agent that actually start. I'm
like I just I have no idea what I have
no idea what
>> what do I do with this information?
>> Yeah. And I and I I think that that
>> even that could be the outcome. The
desired outcome could be confusion and
apathy. Yes.
>> So even the meta of this entire
situation is wow. Look, we can't
convince people of any one narrative
because there's too much information out
there. Flood the system with more
information and make them so confused
that they have no conviction as opposed
to some conviction in a direction that
we actually don't want.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And and and I know you're
saying they always design the means. And
I'm not conspiratorial. I I'm not a
Cyclops. There's good and bad to
everything. Just like you said with the
GLPS, obviously if you're 400 lb and and
you've got all of these snoring
problems, you can't sleep, your chest is
caving in on you, you've got diabetes,
you're going to lose your left foot,
you've got all these things going on,
obviously
get on a GLP1. If you can't beat the
food addiction, like go and do it and
then get healthy, but then learn how to
deal with food
>> after you do that. But for sure, that's
good that you're getting thin again and
that you can sleep at night or that you
can make love to your wife or that you
can, you know, play sports with your
kids. Like all of those things are the
net good is there, right? Um even if
they said GLP1's lessen your lifespan
span by 5 years, it's like okay, if I'm
35 and 600 lb, I've only got five years
left. So like obviously there there's
black and white to everything. There are
good aspects of government, don't get me
wrong. Um it's just that the the bad has
far outgrown the good.
>> Um obviously there's good things that
government. We need roads. We need a
military. We need um interstate
commerce. You know, all of the things
that the Articles of Confederation were
designed and why we revamped it, went
with the Constitution. There's goodness
there. Um but the founders intent was
always for the government to be
constrained and for the, you know,
individual rights would be paramount in
this in these institutions. freedom of
speech, um, all of those things. Um, and
and the government has just way
overstepped their bounds in every way.
Um, and so I I could go down that whole
thing. I won't do it to you unless you
want to. Um, but it's just it's grown so
much and it's become part of our lives
where you can't buy a toilet in here or
a light bulb without the federal
government approving it. That's patently
ridiculous. Um, you know, you there's
they're they're in everything and
they're they're tax they tax everything.
when you make your money, when you spend
your money, when you save your money,
when you die, every aspect of your life
is overt taxed. And uh you know, I I I I
guess if I'm anything, I'm a
constitutionalist. And I think the
founders would be revolting if they saw
what this government was today. Um I
think they would say, "Hey, you boys
better grab your musketss." Like, this
is ridiculous.
>> Said is a guy who both him and his wife
were incredibly embroiled in being close
to the government for a very long time.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, I I didn't I joined the
military to get out of North Dakota.
Like I said, my father died when I was
five. My mother was an alcoholic. She
became a waitress. I lived in a trailer
home. My older when I joined the
military, my older younger brother were
in jail. Well, one was in Boy's ranch,
which was like jail. My older one was in
jail. My two older sisters, one got
addicted to drugs later and died, and
one was addicted to drugs when I joined
the military. And my mother was still
battling alcoholism like she would
vacasillate between. All I wanted to do
was get the hell out of North Dakota.
like whatever. I'm not a farmer and the
only people that can make it there are
farmers and otherwise you're addicted to
meth. Methamphetamines are a huge
problem there. Um or you're working in
the support industry for farmers. And I
just knew that none of this was for me.
So when I saw the military recruiter, I
saw the girls looked at them. I saw, you
know, purpose and meaning. I always I
when I don't have purpose and meaning, I
have anxiety and depression. Those are
the two things that fill the void.
>> Um and I saw the military as my way out.
And uh it's only in this country that my
story is even
even approximately possible. Even like
getting close to this story being
possible um is only in this country and
we owe so much to it. But when I joined
it was to get out of North Dakota. When
I reinlisted it was to preserve the
American experiment and everything that
undergards it. Um, I really relisted and
stayed in because I started reading, you
know, Montescu and John Lockach and
Cicero and and um the the Federalist
Papers and the stories of our founding
and sorry to say we had to battle, you
know, England, but you're an American
now, aren't you?
>> No, no, I'm still on a visa, but I've
also still got a plus4 phone number, so
you'll take my taxes, but not my area.
Okay. [laughter]
>> Well, anyway, all of these things were
bought with blood and treasure. And when
I reinlisted it was to it was to
preserve the experiment and that I
believed in the experiment. I believe
it's the greatest experiment ever ran in
in history. Um and in 250 years we have
you know the great one of we had one of
the greatest economies we technology
culture um you know wisd all of these
things um is only popular is only
possible in this kind of country and you
know that's why I stayed in the military
and I love it and that's why I'm trying
to preserve these things now with the
companies that I'm building now and what
I'm doing going forward is because
>> I I I I bet on the individual. I bet on
families. I I bet on freedom of choice.
when people are left to their devices to
make decisions, they'll be engaged in
far better work with more meaning than
any government could bestow upon them um
in any other way.
>> If you're trying to go from Joey
Chestnut to Joey Swole, the RP Strength
app is the best place to start. I've
been in the gym for two decades, and it
wasn't until this last year that I had
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rpstrength.com/modernwisdom
and modernwisdom at checkout. Can you
take me through what your app does? Have
you got it on your phone?
>> Oh yeah. So, um my applica, you know, my
my uh co-founder um co-founders were
like, "Hey, you were on Rogan. You
didn't mention our app until the very
end." And I was like, "Sorry, I don't
think about those things until it's
time."
>> So, the app the app is called Spartan
Forge. Um, again, uh, there's there's
many things. God, there's so much into
this. Um,
>> I wanted people to get outdoors and and
I did this work while I was in the
military. So, while I was in the
military, I was, you know, essentially
my job was variable analysis for
commanders.
The commanders have a goal. Kill bad
guy. Hunters have a gill a goal. harvest
meat, have an experience with their son.
Initiation rights, I think, is something
that this country is in desperate need
of. Hunting is a useful vector for
initiation rights between a father and a
son. Like, you've killed a deer, now
today I treat you like a man. Baptism by
the river, you're 16, now you're a dude.
Hunters, people hunt for all kinds of
reasons. And so, when I was leaving the
military, I had anxiety and depression
because I didn't know what I was going
to do when I got out. Like I got paid to
kill and break thing or to break things
so other guys could kill bad guys who
were trying to harm our country and I
you know got to you know had a blank
check to just prosecute war and I had a
great amount of meaning and from it and
you know I didn't looking back on the
Iraq war I wish we were never there but
certainly Afghanistan the work I did in
Africa the work I did in the southern
Philippines we were killing bad guys and
um people that would have killed us if
we didn't kill them Um, and uh, in most
cases and I was getting all this anxiety
and I said, "What am I going to do when
I get out? Like, how can I I want to
keep having this meaning if I lose this?
I'm I'm going to die. Like, I'm going to
become an alcoholic." Like I said, I'm
the only one in my family that wasn't
addicted to drugs or alcohol. And I
could feel the alcohol calling me like,
"Hey, I got something for you."
>> So, I said, "What am I going to do when
I get out?" And I was a hunter and I've
been bow hunting for a few years. And I
thought, "Really, these are just target
analysis problems. a hunter and and and
and military guys have they have
variable analysis that they need to
understand a target better so they can
prosecute the target.
>> Hunters are in the same way. So my
company Spartan Forge that I started
um the first product that we released
was a um a neural network that did um
deer movement prediction which sounds
kind of cliche but hunters only have so
much time off. So the first thing we
built in this area was just a neural
network that used collar GPS data from
deer. So biologists, universities,
private people would call our deer and
they would let them run and they'd learn
things about fawn recruitment or how
many were getting killed by wolves, how
they move, where they move, why they
move. We took that data and we started
building neural networks to predict
movement and out of that we got a few
thousand users and then I started
looking to mapping pro program or
mapping platforms after we had a few
thousand users and I really just wanted
to focus on machine learning because
there's so much I can do in machine
learning in the in the hunting space.
I'd never really wanted to get into
mapping, but then there are these huge,
you know, a couple of multiundred
million dollar corporations that are in
the hunting and mapping space and I met
with them and they were really offering
me like sounds like a lot of money but
like a half million dollars for like six
or eight years of work. I was like,
look, I could go to work for Accenture
next week and make that in a year. Like
that's not what I'm trying to do here. A
I'm trying to demystify the woods and B
I want to get people into the woods and
C I think neural networks, machine
learning, artificial intelligence,
mapping, geospatial intelligence is
going to be a huge player in this space.
So all of them kind of just said they
this was 2015. So they were like hearing
AI and they had no idea what AI was. So
um anyway we we said I I said look the
hard part is the machine learning. The
hard part's the neural networks. The
hard part is the geospatial
intelligence. Building a mapbox map and
putting it in an app is not the hard
part which is what all these guys really
are at the end of the day is they're a
mapbox map inside of a So we built this
Spartan Forge. Um we've got like LAR
high resolution imagery. Like the
imagery is 5cm imagery.
>> Jesus [ __ ] Christ.
>> Uh so you can see
>> that's better than Google Maps.
>> Oh it's far better. 100 times better
than Google Maps. Um, you can see down
to the ground.
>> Is that that's as far as you can go or
can you go further?
>> I can go further
>> and then I can go back in time too.
>> I can go back to
>> Where have you taken this data from?
>> So, we contracted with um an air a
company that runs airplanes and uh we go
in with a couple of other companies that
are in like soil and mineral rights,
real estate, other places. Um there's a
solar company. They need high resolution
imagery of the tops of houses so they
can measure it for solar. Like people
knock on your door, try selling you
solar. Anyway, we throw in a bunch of
money with them and they collect this
highly highly um like uh high resolution
imagery that we have that goes back in
time.
>> So, we do all of that and then we have
LAR data. I I'll make this really short,
but LAR data and other things so you can
get a visual understanding of the ground
where it rips away the trees.
>> So, what you can do is this is mapped
using light data similar to how a radar
works. Um, then you can throw it into
like uh 3D and my service is kind of
weak right now, but once the service
gets up, it you you can um see paths
under the ground. Like during the
hurricane in North Carolina, we gave a
bunch of accounts to the first
responders and they were trying to get
to houses that had been washed out and
the roads were washed out, but they were
able to use our app to find paths that
were used for logging trails in order to
get to the back of these people place
these people's houses and deliver them
like diabetes medication, um oxygen if
they were on like a emphyma machine.
>> [ __ ] me. And then we had this we have
this capability called blue force
tracker where you can set up pins so
when there are roads washed out they
were using it and so hunters can use it
in the same way when they're organizing
hunts they can drop pins and everyone
sees them they get the high resolution
imagery they get the LAR they get the
historical imagery they get the neural
networks and we have our own neural
network that we call Cyber Scout so if
you had never shot that bow that I gave
you before you could sit down with a
Cyber Scout and say hey I need to tune
this bow here's the type of bow how do I
do it and it walks you through all of
those things far better than like a chat
GPT would or other ones would because
all of our training data is solely
focused on hunting and best-in-class
information on hunting. Neural networks
often regress to the mean by giving you
the broad spectrum of the internet. So
you'll get some bad and some good data.
We our retrieval documents that we use
are all sourced from the highest caliber
of hunting information. So um Cyber
Scout and soon it'll be interacting with
your maps. So it'll tell you how to hunt
an area, how to do all of those things.
Um but yeah, we started this company in
like uh 2017. We got our first mobile
app in 2021. And then we uh um uh you
know, in the app store right now, I
think we're like number 14 in mapping
and outdoors, something like that. You
know, hundreds of thousands of users.
Um, and really all of it was born out of
just a really just kind of my first
principles as a human, which are the
tribe's important, friends are
important, get out into the wilderness,
disconnect, and get things.
Paradoxically, I'm using an app to do
that. But the reason I'm using an app to
do that is because people have so little
vacation, so little time. They want to
hunt public land in in Pennsylvania and
they live in Texas. like they can go up,
they can scout through my app, they can
understand things, they can drill down,
they can use a high resolution imagery,
they can do all that stuff and at least
have an idea of what the ground looks
like before they get there so that they
can download an offline map and get
disconnected and go out there and create
some, you know, my favorite time as a
CEO is on our social media, a father and
a son will message me and say, "We'd
been targeting this buck for like three
years. We'd never saw it, this white
tail buck, and my son and I were using
your app. We use the neural network. We
use the prediction. We use a high
quality mapping and we figured out a
spot. We got in there and we killed the
deer and there's a father and a son
holding a buck together that they're
going to eat dinner over or you know put
on a wall and make a permanent memory.
That is my favorite part of running this
one company is that experience right
there is just people going out and
reconnecting with nature and being in it
but also buying down risk. And like I
said, paradoxically, through an app, but
you can drop pins and tell your wife
where you're going to hunt and if you're
offline, if you fall from a treeand or
whatever, break your legs, they'll know
where to send the people to go and help
you out or and all of that type of
stuff. Um, so you know,
>> Jesus [ __ ] Christ, you're kind of a
terrifying human. I'm very glad you were
on our side.
>> What What do you mean?
>> Just this like 5 cm map data. Oh, by the
way, also I'm able to basically be Q
from James Bond for a bunch of like
scary Also, by the way, I can probably
download your phone data and work out
whether there's some vulnerability. Oh,
also by the way, like I'm glad that
you're on I'm glad you're on our side.
>> Well, I thank you. I Whenever people ask
me for like the 30 secondond job of who
I am or what I did in the military, I
would often use the Q thing. I'm not
James Bond, but I built cool [ __ ] for
people like James Bond. And that was
that's a very accurate summation of my
military career. I never kicked a door.
Um I was never intentionally in a
gunfight. I was never the guy at the tip
of the spear. I was the girthy part of
the staff uh that was supporting the
head of the spear.
>> I mean, if that's if if I was the girthy
part of the staff is not the way to end
this episode. I don't know what is. Bill
Thompson, you [ __ ] rule, man. Where
should people go to check out
>> SpartanForge.ai
um is our website. Um you can sign up
there. Um or you can download us through
the app store. Um we're on Instagram. I
said this on Rogan's podcast and I did I
did regret it, but I'll say it here,
too. Um, when you have questions about
the app or complaints or gripes, I as
the product owner, I see that as my
bigger role than CEO. I answer all of
the social media every morning. I spend
about two hours. So, when people say, "I
wish the app did this or it didn't do
this or I didn't like this or hey, we
did this hunt," you're dealing with me.
Now, if you have a problem that needs a
technical solution, I'll usually farm
that off to our QA team, but otherwise,
you're dealing with me. So, you got
questions about the app, you don't know
how to get into bow hunting, and you
want to get into it. Um, you want to
learn through our Cyber Scout or through
our app how to be a better hunter.
>> Can you quickly grab the gift that I got
today from outside
>> just while we're winding?
>> Yeah. So, they can find me there and I'm
happy to interact with people. After I
did Rogan, I think I had 3,500 messages
of people and it took me about glutton
for punishment.
>> Took me about a month and a half.
>> You should work for Zenesk. [laughter]
You know, that could be your new, you
know, you I could go and work for
Accenture and do the whatever, whatever.
Uh, I got to say thank you as well, man.
Like, this gift.
>> Yeah. So,
>> that you got me is so [ __ ]
>> Hoy and Archery Country and Dialed
Archery made that possible. They're all
friends of mine. The guys at Hoy, Tom
from Hoy's amazing. Uh, my buddy Tyler,
I think you've met Tyler from Archery
Country. Um and and and Dialed Archery,
my friends um uh uh Taylor and Jordan
run that, you know, Americanmade and um
great companies and uh I work with all
of them and uh I I I was I was so upset
because I thought, "Oh, he doesn't look
like he has a bow." And then so I got
all ordered all the stuff, got it all
put together, and we're going to go tune
you up with this at archery country. And
then like three days ago, I saw a post
where you had a bow.
>> Got a bow. But this is You can never
have too many bows as I've been reliably
told by Kaynes. Dude, you're awesome. I
appreciate you very much.
>> Thank you for having me on.
>> I look forward to firing this this
sucker with you soon.
>> Awesome.
>> All right. Goodbye, everyone. Dude. Yes.
Lovely.
>> Thank you very much for tuning in. If
you enjoyed that episode, another one
that I know you love is just here.