EXIT Podcast Episode 15: Infosec (feat. Gruntpa)

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to the exit podcast.

Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.

Speaker: I'm joined here by Grumpaw.

Speaker: He's an Iraq and Afghanistan vet.

Speaker: He's got a decade of experience as an information security consultant.

Speaker: Wanted to have him on the show to discuss sort of how to stay safe in our current threat environment and maybe some thoughts about where things are headed in the future.

Speaker: So welcome to the show, Grumpaw.

Speaker: Thank you, Doc.

Speaker: Glad to have you here.

Speaker: So I want to just go straight into it.

Speaker: You may be aware that our group of guys on sort of Latter-day Saint Twitter were doxed by an Antifa ring.

Speaker: And it seems pretty clear that the people that we were up against were not playing fair.

Speaker: Like when they dox people, they generally claim to be using OSINT, open source intelligence, meaning they're just Googling around

Speaker: paying attention to what you tweet, et cetera.

Speaker: But for one of our most high profile doxings, they claimed that like they matched the brick pattern from a picture of one of the walls in his house.

Speaker: And then they cross-referenced that against Zillow listings and that's how they got him.

Speaker: And we were all like, no, you didn't.

Speaker: That's not how you did it.

Speaker: Like you clearly had some parallel construction so that you could sort of build that case.

Speaker: Do you think that these groups have friends in big tech or even higher up potentially?

Speaker: Or do you think it's most likely just social engineering insider threats?

Speaker: I would actually be, I'd lend more credibility to the first, like to the former rather than the latter.

Speaker: Only based on other experiences I've seen with some folks like, you know,

Speaker: you have to make the assumptions that the folks that run these platforms and have that internal access have their own political leanings, have their own feelings about the metaphysical, and with those feelings, have their own prejudices.

Speaker: And of course they would say, and the organizations that they represent would say that they don't have that level of access or that they have prevention methods in place.

Speaker: But what you're talking about, you know, matching a brick pattern, like I'm not sure there's enough computing power in the world, nor some advanced algorithm that would be able to make that work.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like I've seen this in other cases, like, you know, I've got a friend who's had something very similar and his OPSEC was exceedingly good.

Speaker: And yet they were able to determine who he was, who he worked for, et cetera.

Speaker: And the evidence that was provided was very spurious like that, where it was like, oh, well, you know, and much of it is like that after the fact, like you can see that they confirmed their docs, possibly with like a brick pattern or a bracelet or a tattoo or some of these other information items, but you couldn't see the breadcrumb trail through those items that landed at the person like you're talking about.

Speaker: It's always been my assumption, especially with social media platforms, that there's no one really watching the watchers.

Speaker: And they kind of get you in a way that there's no way to prove it.

Speaker: They win that game because they just have to show the docs.

Speaker: They don't have to show how they arrived at the docs.

Speaker: And it is really an unfair game.

Speaker: But it, again, just points to the fact that these platforms are inherently unsafe.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: And there's no, yeah, I feel bad for the guys that worked so hard and like were so incredibly careful for so long because they got blown open just the same as I did.

Speaker: Like it was not, it was no different, made no difference to the outcome.

Speaker: It seems like the safest thing

Speaker: for people in our situation to do opsec wise is just never post never make friends never reveal your identity to anybody but i like i just don't want to live that way and so you know besides which it's irrelevant now for me because i've uh already been doxxed um but when i when i advise other people uh especially you know guys in my group um

Speaker: I've had guys who are getting their tweets archived and are clearly sort of on the radar.

Speaker: And every time that happens, it's hard for me to tell them like, you're safe.

Speaker: Like you've got, you know, just don't talk about this, you know, scrub this and that.

Speaker: Like, do you think that there's

Speaker: a safe way to, to operate in that space?

Speaker: Or is it like, just as soon as you're, as soon as you, the eye of Sauron's on you, like, that's it.

Speaker: It just depends on the group.

Speaker: I mean, the problem always with these is like, you know, most people think a lot of the folks that I tend to deal with, because I'm not affiliated with like your compatriots, but like the folks that I tend to talk to,

Speaker: you know, they're heavily concerned about like the federal government, like there it's, you know, the, the accusation that everyone's a fed tends to be their thing.

Speaker: And I'll tell them what I'd say to any group, even like yours is in order for you to get in that eyesore on, whether that's the, the eye of like, you know, the federal government or Antifa or, you know, the fedora tippers who just are anti-religion or,

Speaker: or whomever it might be is like, you just don't pop up on the radar because once you get onto the radar, you know, a case is open to pay me on you.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And they, a lot of them are persistent enough that they'll, you know, continually develop, um, a file on, you know, um, you know, the archiving of tweets and things, I mean, I've seen people say that like, those are indicators of, you know, impending doom or compromise and,

Speaker: You know, if your tweets are out in the open, like if you're not, if you don't, if you haven't locked up, if you're not protected, they're always out there.

Speaker: And many times if a tweet even lasts, if it's even up longer than I think a day, generally a lot of these organizations that do like this, this archiving, they're doing it automatically.

Speaker: They're going to snatch that tweet too.

Speaker: And if it's been up for longer than a day, it's almost assuredly someone.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Even if you remove it off of Twitter's platform and it's not searchable there, it's possibly searchable somewhere else.

Speaker: You know, the problem is, is, you know, of course you want to go down on social media.

Speaker: You want to like find the people.

Speaker: You want to discuss things that, you know, are important to you.

Speaker: But that same life that draws you, you know, draws bugs.

Speaker: And the distinction is, is to develop

Speaker: some way of communicating your fraternity and how close you might be without saying the controversial things that would get you kind of in that, again, to use a metaphor, but that eye of Sauron.

Speaker: Like, you know, have a light just bright enough to draw you in in a way of signaling that you are like-minded

Speaker: without bringing in the folks that you don't want brought in.

Speaker: And then that's a really tough tightrope to walk.

Speaker: You know, it's... I almost think that there are a lot of... I can think of a lot of friends who...

Speaker: you know, are, are maybe smarter than me in some ways, but like, just don't have that social perception of like how a thing is going to be interpreted.

Speaker: And, and so like, yeah, it's like for those guys, it's almost like you just can't, you either got to not post or you got to accept that you're, that you're going to be in the crosshairs.

Speaker: You know, and depending on, I would, I understand what it's,

Speaker: like for a lot of folks when this happens, like, you know, and in your case, like the kind of trouble that it can get you in.

Speaker: And I think that people, the best thing they can do is have the awareness of it up front, you know, to know, to see what happened to others, as an example, to listen to discussions like this, to know what the risks are before you get on and say something that could potentially put that on you.

Speaker: You know, it's,

Speaker: It's really, it's sad.

Speaker: I'd like to see people have the freedom to express themselves and not suffer consequences, but it's just unfortunately not the world that we live in.

Speaker: The internet is, I mean, it's a place of forever.

Speaker: Long ago, you could get up and give a speech and however many people were in the room would hear it, or you could circulate a letter

Speaker: whoever received it or read it would be the only, but you know, now you get on Twitter or you get on any of these social media platforms, you put something up, doesn't go away.

Speaker: And some of these, these folks, especially like, you know, these recent celebrities, I mean, these are 10 year old emails, you know, 15 year old posts that they made when they were, you know, 17 and stupid.

Speaker: And, you know, now it's being brought up and they're having their,

Speaker: their careers ruined, they're having, you know, their, their name smeared.

Speaker: And they, you know, they didn't know that when they were 17 or 10 years ago, when they were sending an email to their friends, that this was going to cause them a problem now.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But, you know, I would say to somebody that's just now entering these spaces, you know, to be very careful about what you say, you know, there are, there are ways to say things without saying things sometimes.

Speaker: And,

Speaker: You know, it's, it's hard to develop that like group patois, you know, and, and those signals and things.

Speaker: And, and that kind of like, that kind of coded language is, is, it was like, again, just tough to, to learn, but it is the best way of doing it because, you know, saying something explicitly that is on the list of things that must not be said it's,

Speaker: it's not the best move.

Speaker: And the worst part is, is in five years, that list is going to be bigger than it is today.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You know, the, the, the things that you could say 10 years ago, I mean, many of them now are verboten.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's not just, it's not just that you were young and dumb.

Speaker: It's even if you'd been a genius, you know, and, and very wise and mature at that time, you could not have imagined the world that we're in right now.

Speaker: Like, sure.

Speaker: I mean, and

Speaker: And you can even change.

Speaker: You know, the worst part is, is I've seen certain people dragged for opinions they had in the past that they don't even have anymore.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You know, like, you know, most people don't hold opinions lifelong.

Speaker: You know, there's opinions that I've had on Twitter.

Speaker: I mean, to be specific, like I had I had opinions about like women.

Speaker: in the infantry.

Speaker: You know, I didn't have women in the infantry when I was in, I was told that it was going to go horrible.

Speaker: And there was, you know, I had a whole lot of concerns and I still have some concerns, but many of them have been assuaged by, you know, the performance of women that have joined.

Speaker: And my opinion has changed like pretty dramatically compared with what I would say 10 years ago, but, you know, and I leave my tweets up.

Speaker: I mean, I think I have something like 140,000 or something incredible.

Speaker: It's really embarrassing actually, but,

Speaker: If someone was to look at any of those outside of the context of the more recent posts, they would find those opinions to be really dismissive of current soldiers, which I would never want to do.

Speaker: So it's – go ahead.

Speaker: I know it's a bit of a digression, but I'm interested in your take on that because that's –

Speaker: it feels like there's a lot of folks like me who don't have any experience in the military.

Speaker: But yeah, the idea of women in the infantry does just sort of seem ineffective.

Speaker: So yeah, would you mind going into like what sort of changed your mind there?

Speaker: I don't mind.

Speaker: I mean, the first item that changed my mind is just that the argument was lost, right?

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: You know, the argument was had, there were opinions shared, mine saying that they shouldn't, you know, they shouldn't be allowed entry into combat arms.

Speaker: But ultimately, I lost that.

Speaker: Like, it wasn't up to me.

Speaker: It was up to, you know, politicians and appointed officials.

Speaker: And they reversed, you know, a long-held tradition of men only in combat arms.

Speaker: And, you know, that was like kind of the first part where I was like, you know, I can have an opinion about a thing, but it's not going to change reality.

Speaker: So,

Speaker: just going to accept that women are now in combat arms and in a way to see the outcome.

Speaker: And, and then I did see the outcome.

Speaker: And, you know, I've heard some of my, some of my concerns were somewhat valid.

Speaker: Some of them weren't.

Speaker: I never really landed where most, where, you know, people talk about like the physical aspects of that work.

Speaker: You know, they really focused on that and said that, you know, women were not,

Speaker: we're not going to be able to produce the same sort of like physical effort that a man could.

Speaker: And there's still studies and such that have not really been well disputed that show that women don't perform at the highest level of male performance, but they do actually perform somewhat near, I mean, a really exceptional, I wouldn't even say exceptional, but a high performing woman will perform better than a male,

Speaker: like a, let's say like a medium rated male.

Speaker: And many of those ladies are joining the infantry now and seem to be performing great.

Speaker: And so, you know, seeing that I have a friend who actually was in a leadership type position at Ranger school.

Speaker: And, you know, I had concerns.

Speaker: He approached me privately.

Speaker: He saw some of my tweets.

Speaker: He approached me privately and said like, hey, they're actually doing pretty well.

Speaker: And yeah, it's little anecdotes like that that make me think that that prejudice is somewhat invalidated.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: You know, the last thing that like really I've held on to is just the, I believe that like resides in male, males, a more,

Speaker: it used to be called like a killer instinct.

Speaker: I think that term's probably verboten now, but I do think men are more prone to violence.

Speaker: I think that you can even look at statistics to see that, you know, men engage in violence, uh, much at a much higher rate than women.

Speaker: And I still have some concern, you know, ask, you know, ceteris paribus men are a little bit easier to just go to committing a violence than, than women.

Speaker: And so I, I,

Speaker: I still wonder about that aspect and ultimately, you know, time will tell.

Speaker: So I've, I've kind of put down the sword, um, on, on that, you know, it's, it's kind of a done deal.

Speaker: So I tend to not argue it anymore.

Speaker: And I look to see if my, you know, if my, if my predictions are coming true and really they're not, you know, really they're not like most of the folks that join the infantry, um,

Speaker: Our professionals are dedicated to the craft, do want to do well, and it seems like ladies are no different.

Speaker: And so I've just more or less put it away.

Speaker: It's not really even my problem.

Speaker: My son is nowhere near military age yet.

Speaker: I'm long since out of the game.

Speaker: That's kind of their problem to figure out now.

Speaker: Well, and that's, yeah, there's sort of two sides to that question, which is,

Speaker: um one uh does it make that institution maximally combat effective and two how much do you personally identify with the success of that institution and um and and maybe the argument has changed almost the second side of that more than the first um

Speaker: And sort of in this broader trend of the military sort of going woke, was that going on when you were in already?

Speaker: Or is that something that you've been sort of surprised by as you've been out?

Speaker: To the first, I want to touch on each one of those one last time.

Speaker: So the first is, I think the bigger issue for the Department of Defense right now is not having...

Speaker: exceptional warriors as many as as much as having many warriors so it does actually i think solve their problem which is numbers right like now they can pluck people from both genders to fulfill billets um right whether or not that and maybe like most mos's it doesn't make a difference the the uh the physical yeah yeah

Speaker: Yeah, in most it actually doesn't, I think.

Speaker: I mean, I do believe any soldier can find themselves in a situation potentially where acts of physical strength or endurance are going to be important.

Speaker: But for many MOSs, it's never actually going to occur.

Speaker: It's one of those things in risk assessment where the impact is very high, but the likelihood is very low.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: But to the other part where the military going woke, I would say that it is definitely changed, even with folks that are younger.

Speaker: You know, I do still talk to many soldiers that are currently active, and many of them that joined even after I had long since, like, I mean, we won't call it retirement.

Speaker: I just got out.

Speaker: Long since I got out, and it's changed a lot even before.

Speaker: And many of these folks are still in, you know, maybe their second enlistment.

Speaker: I saw indicators.

Speaker: I was very well insulated.

Speaker: Like, you know, the unit that I served in was a little bit of the old breed.

Speaker: The company specifically that I was assigned to most of the time that I was in, I was very much like the old breed.

Speaker: And they didn't, we just didn't have a lot of that.

Speaker: It was definitely, yeah, I mean, it was a very egalitarian group.

Speaker: I mean, I didn't see the things that I'm told that are, you know, being fixed.

Speaker: I mean, there was absolutely, it was a very male dominated job, because at that time, there were no females there.

Speaker: But, you know, it was a pretty accepting group.

Speaker: I mean, it was multiracial, multiethnic, you know, we had folks from other countries that were within my company.

Speaker: So I didn't see it.

Speaker: I mean, I didn't see it.

Speaker: Like, you know, we had the same briefings that were mandatory for any unit.

Speaker: So I didn't see it in the unit.

Speaker: But, you know, I should say that, like, I got out right as right after Obama was inaugurated.

Speaker: And I kind of thought that that's where it was heading.

Speaker: Biggest thing that made me leave was not necessarily the higher ups or any administration.

Speaker: It was the

Speaker: it was really the people that were within my own generation.

Speaker: You know, technically I'm a millennial, but I've always said that like I'm transgenerational and I'm kind of a Gen Xer.

Speaker: And the folks, like the kids that were joining after me were really different.

Speaker: They were really hard to lead and they didn't take to what my unit had taught me was soldiering.

Speaker: They didn't take to a well.

Speaker: And so that's primarily what drove me out, but they were, they were bringing in a lot of these things that I think we would say are as a part of that new culture.

Speaker: And that's what drove me out.

Speaker: Now, many of those kids.

Speaker: You can hold up a stress card to your drill sergeant, that kind of thing.

Speaker: I mean, there was assumptions that I don't know, like what kind of, you know, one station unit training, which is like the infantry version of basic.

Speaker: Like, I don't know what that experience was like for them.

Speaker: I can say that mine was very much of the old way, but they did come with those sort of expectations.

Speaker: Like they came to my unit really not getting it.

Speaker: And it was really hard for me to see because these are things that are not really taught by the military.

Speaker: And I see a lot of this now, even in my current role as a civilian,

Speaker: is that it seems like the millennial generation doesn't have the same ethics and are not raised with the same sort of character that previous generations had.

Speaker: And everybody thinks that we're on a slippery slope, right?

Speaker: And that all the young people have lost their minds.

Speaker: And so I'm falling into that role as I get older and it bothers me because I'm aware of it.

Speaker: But I do think that these younger generations were just not as mentally and physically prepared

Speaker: as they should have been for, for that, you know, well, and I had, I mean, it can't always be wrong, right?

Speaker: It can't always be wrong, you know?

Speaker: And that's the thing is, is like, it can't be, you know, it can't be a reason that you don't say the truth.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it really feels like the truth.

Speaker: You know, I had a physician's assistant, um, like, which is kind of like at a battalion level, kind of like our doctor.

Speaker: And, you know, he shared with me a statistic right before I left, because, you know, I had, um, I had a soldier, um,

Speaker: who was only in our infantry unit, I think like six months.

Speaker: And he came to me with a profile and said that he had stress fractures in his legs.

Speaker: And I just thought this was like crap.

Speaker: Like I was positive that this was crap and that he had somehow like worked the system or so I went to the PA over it and asked him like, you know, what is going on here?

Speaker: Like this kid has been here for not even six months.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: He had had, you know, he'd went to basic training.

Speaker: He had went to airborne school.

Speaker: He had done his five jumps in airborne.

Speaker: I think he had had like one or two jumps in our division.

Speaker: And I was just like, explain to me how this young man has stress fractures, like already.

Speaker: And he said that the soldiers, like they do studies on like bone density and that the soldiers that had joined in the year since I originally enlisted were seeing like something like 15%

Speaker: less bone density.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker: And that kind of shook me because like, I mean, forgetting character and, you know, mental preparedness, but like they, you can build muscle, but you're not going to build bone density in an adult.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like there are, yeah, it seems that like the younger generations are just not equipped.

Speaker: And a lot of it has to do with, they just don't go outside anymore.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people want to talk about plastics and phthalates and seed oils and all the things.

Speaker: And I think that that's, I think that that plays a role for sure.

Speaker: But yeah, there's also just like not enough stressors on the body during childhood to develop that kind of

Speaker: And not only to develop the bone density and musculature, but to develop the ability to suffer.

Speaker: And how you solve that problem is really challenging.

Speaker: I mean, to give you another side of that, I got to go to a meeting with one of the leaders of our church.

Speaker: who mentioned that the only kids who were sort of coming out of, or coming into the missionary program, you know, the two year sort of commitment that most of our young men make and a lot of our young women, the only people that were coming into that situation prepared were like rural kids.

Speaker: that pretty much, and that's not, that's not a majority of our membership.

Speaker: Like that's, that's relatively small.

Speaker: And so pretty much every, every other group in North America, the kids were just sort of fundamentally not prepared to be missionary, but also like not prepared to like, you know, live by themselves, like emotionally.

Speaker: And so it's become routine just in the last couple of years,

Speaker: like when I was out, you know, uh, if somebody went home early, uh, that was shocking.

Speaker: Like that was a, I was a big surprise.

Speaker: Um, and you kind of, you kind of heard about it happening to maybe like two kids on your mission, the whole time you were out there.

Speaker: And now it seems like six weeks or eight weeks is like the median.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: That's interesting.

Speaker: And I don't know.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: It's it seems too.

Speaker: It seems too dramatic to be like, you know, these kids are, you know, eating lunch nuked in Tupperware because like I don't you know what I mean?

Speaker: Like it doesn't seem like it's changed that dramatically from when I was a kid to kids who were like 10 years younger than me.

Speaker: But at the same time, the the.

Speaker: the cultural shift has been really dramatic.

Speaker: Like I felt like I spent a lot of time in front of the computer growing up.

Speaker: I think, you know, I don't know how old you are, but I feel like you're maybe close to my age and I grew up, um,

Speaker: in front of the computer when I was a teenager, but like when I was a kid, we were jumping bikes off of stuff.

Speaker: And I was not a particularly like physical kid, but everybody did that.

Speaker: Like everybody was outside all the time.

Speaker: And I, I, I think it's cultural.

Speaker: Like, I think the I think that the endocrine explanation for it is,

Speaker: the change is too dramatic for that to be the explanation.

Speaker: Yeah, I think, I mean, the issue is not to try to isolate, you know, a single cause, you know, there's no, it's, it's one of those where it's like both and instead of that, you know, this or that, like into the, the culture aspect, like it was like Napoleon that says that, you know, hardship, poverty, and one are the best goal of a soldier, you know, and, and,

Speaker: Rural peoples tend to have more familiarization with that, especially as things, I mean, as they get better is what we should say too.

Speaker: Like, you know, this is the most peaceful time on earth.

Speaker: This is the time, you know, even in America, poverty is a pretty, I wouldn't say comfortable because poverty is never comfortable, but it's the most comfortable time to be poor ever in history.

Speaker: And,

Speaker: that decadence that we're allowed and that we're giving our children, I mean, this includes myself, like it's not making very tough people.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And there's not a lot of the rigors, even in our childhood, which I would say, I mean, I had a great childhood personally, but it was like you say, it was filled with a lot of bike riding and walking and running and, you know, wrestling.

Speaker: And I mean,

Speaker: it was a, it was not a difficult time in my life by any means, but it wasn't as sedentary and it wasn't as like, it wasn't as bubble wrapped, right?

Speaker: Like there are a lot of activities now, like, you know, I let my son not long ago, like ride his bike without my helmet.

Speaker: And somebody said something to me and I was like, I mean, this is when he was much younger.

Speaker: He had like training wheels.

Speaker: And I was like, he is going to be fine.

Speaker: You know, like we're not talking about tall enough to fall very far.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I understand that like, you know, their point was like, well, you know, kids fall just like, you know, sometimes just fall over and, you know, suffer terrible concussions and brain bleeds and die.

Speaker: And I mean, I suppose that's true.

Speaker: You know, like, again, this is where the impact could be very severe, but the likelihood to me is low.

Speaker: Like he's not going to achieve many velocities that are going to cause this injury.

Speaker: But, but yeah, that urge and instinct that we have as parents and that our parents even had

Speaker: depending on your age, to make a comfortable and happy life for us has in many ways hamstrung our ability to deal with things later in life.

Speaker: I almost think that we never should have taught regular people statistics.

Speaker: Because if you don't have some training in that, people...

Speaker: people lose their minds over like the smallest probabilities and they don't have any.

Speaker: And that's like, it's not, it's not even like saying they're dumb.

Speaker: It's like the human brain is not really built to contemplate tiny, tiny probabilities.

Speaker: And so when you've got news that can show you every awful thing that happened in a country of 300 million people,

Speaker: it looks like those awful things are possible to you, but your brain is still built for like the medieval village where you know 150 people.

Speaker: And like, you know, your distant ancestors never encountered a rare cancer or a freak accident.

Speaker: Like everything that happened in their universe, like made statistical sense in terms of like,

Speaker: There were no like really wild surprises.

Speaker: But because we have this panopticon, we can see everything that happens all over the world.

Speaker: We get to see the freak accident and the extraordinary thing 20 times a day.

Speaker: And so it's almost impossible to tell yourself that that's not real.

Speaker: because you're looking right at it, right?

Speaker: You're seeing that it's happening, but you can't embrace, your mind can't embrace the hugeness of the environment that's happening in, if that makes sense.

Speaker: And I think that that's a huge source of anxiety for us, because they freak out about tiny things.

Speaker: Yeah, that's an entire podcast, right?

Speaker: Like talking about, like, I think that

Speaker: I mean, you know, we're talking about how to be safe online, but I mean, the truth is that just being online, regardless of what your activity is, just in, just in receiving the information online, um, is it's, is its own danger.

Speaker: You know, many of the, I've seen a lot of, there's a lot of jokes made about this.

Speaker: Like one of my favorite posts that I've ever seen, if we could take another digression, but it was on Twitter and it's, um, it's a friend of mine.

Speaker: Like he, um,

Speaker: He was quote tweeting this young woman and she said, you know, I joined Twitter to see what my favorite celebrities were doing.

Speaker: And now I'm like a rabid Democratic Socialist.

Speaker: And he quote tweeted it and said, I feel you, lady.

Speaker: I joined here to talk about hockey and now I want to throw people like you out of a helicopter.

Speaker: And like, I thought that was so funny.

Speaker: But at the same time, like it points to like, you know, a lot of this tribalism that we're all experiencing that causes us to be at odds with each other and do terrible things like doxing each other and ruining careers.

Speaker: And a lot of that is, it's an affect of the access to information.

Speaker: You know, if all you see on Twitter all day are enemies, I mean, it causes you to feel like you're at war.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And that feeling then causes more of the bifurcation that we all experience, right?

Speaker: Like the splitting up into parties and groups and tribes and, you know, the, in that Dunbar number that you referenced earlier, like, you know, I want to insulate myself with a group, with a cohesive unit and group.

Speaker: I want to find people who think like me, who represent my tribe and then everybody else is another.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's a very strong and natural instinct that a human is really used to persevere for however long we've been doing this, 120,000 plus years or something.

Speaker: And even longer before when we were more animals, but yeah, that desire and urge has caused this.

Speaker: And it actually, it makes itself more likely to happen.

Speaker: Because it turns out that when everybody's amped up and afraid of each other and angry at each other all the time, they actually do become more dangerous to each other.

Speaker: And then the threat is real.

Speaker: And it's the prison cafeteria.

Speaker: Like you don't get to not sit at a table.

Speaker: You got to pick a table.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Yeah, you have to pick a table.

Speaker: And the worst thing about these crowds is like,

Speaker: every crowd is on its way to being a riot.

Speaker: It just needs one person, right?

Speaker: Like to, to throw the first brick at the first window.

Speaker: And, and then everybody starts to act like, or, you know, they're in a riot.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I mean, that's a big, that's a big motivator behind what I'm doing with this exit group is it's, it's,

Speaker: The intent is to pull back and not in the sense of retreat, not in the sense of hiding out in the woods, but we have these points of vulnerability that are largely professional because the state is not going to send police to your house right now for things that you say online, for the most part, unless you're saying things that are legitimately stupid to say.

Speaker: And so because that's the situation, it is possible to sort of remove yourself from this environment of coercion and make yourself stronger by changing your professional situation so that you can't be threatened in that way.

Speaker: And the goal is both to strengthen, well, to build and to strengthen what I believe to be my tribe, but also to decelerate.

Speaker: that tribe and to say like you know because so much of the discourse and I want to talk to you about this when we get to like the second amendment so much of the discourse uh in our sort of area of the internet is just like either black pill like there's no hope give up it's over or like

Speaker: you know, kill a cop, blow up a federal building, like, like, like insane things to say, dangerous things to say, um, in public.

Speaker: And, um, my attitude is like, those are both terrible paths.

Speaker: Let's do neither of those.

Speaker: And, and so to, to, to build something where we can be strong and, and, um,

Speaker: fight back in a sense, fight back in the sense that we no longer allow ourselves to be coerced and intimidated without hurting anybody, without making the situation worse, without making people angrier, that seems like that would be a good thing to do.

Speaker: No, it is.

Speaker: And what you're talking about is like, I mean, that's a principle now of like cybersecurity, you know, it used to be like prevention, you know, and

Speaker: response and you know now it's just resilience right it's just surviving um that's probably the model and what you're talking about and i think like you know i don't know much about your organization it's funny that we're doing this podcast together and i'm not affiliated in any in any official way i think that we have some mutuals um but like i think that you know that model is the way to that of the future

Speaker: And the trick to really building that resilient community is first in vetting.

Speaker: One of the problems that I see in a lot of these groups is they don't know what crowd they're in.

Speaker: And the next thing you know, somebody's thrown a brick through a window and now they're in that crowd.

Speaker: And so the best way is if you can take a core group of people either that you know personally or that you have thoroughly vetted.

Speaker: bring them back into some sort of cloister, some sort of redoubt or citadel, and begin to just gatekeep on who you let in, and give them a space within that, and then continually vet them to make sure, you know, and a lot of churches do this already by principle.

Speaker: I mean, you've mentioned the LDS church.

Speaker: I think this is one of their strong points is that

Speaker: you know, they very closely monitor the behavior of the people that are within the church.

Speaker: And if they start to see patterns of behavior that are indicators of compromise, they go to that person and address the issue very formally and directly.

Speaker: And I think that that's, that's a way to make sure that that community has that resilience.

Speaker: And the thing about deacceleration, you know, I'm really big fan of this.

Speaker: I mean, I can't, I can't say that I'm a bigger fan than I, I'd,

Speaker: I don't think that most of the options that people are presented with online are usually good ones.

Speaker: Like I really hate doomerism.

Speaker: I hate black pills.

Speaker: Like, you know, I am philosophically pessimistic, but at the same time, I attempt to draw every minute of my life joy that I'm supposed to not.

Speaker: You know, I think that, you know, communities and fraternities and groups of people that can get together

Speaker: and start to build each other up.

Speaker: I mean, that's the best way.

Speaker: I mean, it's, it's better to have a, you know, 10 men that you can absolutely trust than a hundred that you're unsure of, you know, it's not just numbers.

Speaker: Numbers definitely always help, but you know, a strong community is a more resilient one than a huge community.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: And, and, um,

Speaker: So my dream in the long term is to get a group of people from this community who can achieve the sort of professional escape velocity and mobility to actually get together and build something in the real world.

Speaker: And to, because again, if you have a community, if you have a tribe and like, you know, everybody that I mentioned this with is they wanna say like, oh, you're just gonna get Waco'd by the feds.

Speaker: And it's like, well, but we're not gonna be storing stockpiles of illegal weapons.

Speaker: Like, you know, like it's, that's not to justify anything that happened to those people.

Speaker: But like, that's not our project.

Speaker: And that's not even close to who we are.

Speaker: And so, and like people in their desire to amplify the crime of what happened at Waco, which was a crime, they want to overlook everything that was sort of scary and confusing about that group to ordinary people.

Speaker: And I remember that.

Speaker: I mean, I was a little kid, but I remember what people said about that group.

Speaker: And not all of it was true, but some of it was.

Speaker: And yeah, so I think people in their...

Speaker: people want to make the bad guys sort of omnipotent and omniscient and there's no escape.

Speaker: And so, you know, you might as well just be a skinhead and say the N word online and all that stuff.

Speaker: And it's like, no, like you, you can build something that is, that is more secure than that.

Speaker: You can, you can build something that's more productive than that.

Speaker: And yeah, I, anyway, suffice to say, I totally agree.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, well, and to use the Waco metaphor, I mean, so I agree.

Speaker: I mean, everything that you said, like, I remember it.

Speaker: I remember what they said about those folks.

Speaker: I was geographically very close to that incident and aware of things that others weren't, even at the time.

Speaker: But I can say that, like, you know, even in posterity, the example that was made of those folks was not

Speaker: glorious to the federal government.

Speaker: There have been more people drawn to the cause, let's say, of reducing police militancy, reducing the span scope of the government, specifically even with BATF, or BATFE, I think is now, they're constantly trying to make their organization bigger, but more people are against them now.

Speaker: because of Waco.

Speaker: And so, you know, to your point, building a resilient community that is not engaged in all the wrong think and doing the bad things, if you do get Waco'd, I mean, it's a sad consolation if something happens to you, but at least you can provide the benefit to others of the example of your enemy.

Speaker: You know, one of the things that I'll say about Trump, who, you know, I found myself

Speaker: encouraging more near the end of his presidency, which I mean, I didn't support him at all when he initially was inaugurated.

Speaker: I thought it was all a joke.

Speaker: I kind of still do.

Speaker: But one of the things that Donald Trump showed me more than anything is who's my enemy and who hates me.

Speaker: I had no idea these people hated me.

Speaker: I'm a bumpkin from the middle of nowhere.

Speaker: And I didn't hurt anybody.

Speaker: And my culture wasn't toxic.

Speaker: And I didn't do any of the things that they accused me of doing.

Speaker: And yet every day I was told about what a terrible person I was.

Speaker: And, and that was informative.

Speaker: That really shook me awake on a lot of things and kind of like kind of woke me from my dogmatic slumber or whatever.

Speaker: Like it made me realize that there are groups of people out here who have been training.

Speaker: And I don't mean like physically training, but like have been training and are,

Speaker: are set against me.

Speaker: They're making it their lifelong goal to come after me.

Speaker: And that was a great benefit to me.

Speaker: And the same thing goes for the people maybe within your community.

Speaker: I mean, maybe the terrible things that you've had happen to you and others, like those are lessons to the rest.

Speaker: No, absolutely.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: I mean, very, very sort of ordinary conservative people have reached out to me and been like,

Speaker: you know, I read what you wrote and I read what they said about you, what you wrote.

Speaker: And I couldn't believe that those lies were like that, that a mainstream publication was able to lie like that.

Speaker: And I was like, boy, could I talk to you about some other things?

Speaker: Like, like if, if, if you think this is a crazy lie, just, just hang on a second.

Speaker: And, and yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a huge,

Speaker: wake up call.

Speaker: And so the scariest part, the thing that really kept me up after the docs was not losing the job or like, how am I going to feed my kids?

Speaker: Because I had lots of options.

Speaker: I knew I had lots of options.

Speaker: And that was sort of the genesis of the group was like, instead of me just sort of taking one of these paths, why don't I make this network sort of available to other people?

Speaker: But what was scary about it

Speaker: was knowing that I had an enemy who was more powerful than me that I couldn't strike back at.

Speaker: And I didn't know who was on their side, and I didn't know what they were capable of, and I didn't know how far they were going to take it.

Speaker: And like you mentioned sort of being an example to others in terms of if you're a totally innocent community and you get Waco'd.

Speaker: One of the scary things that you have to admit, and people talk about this all the time, but I don't think they really internalize it because they don't act as if it's true.

Speaker: they don't really act as if these enemies that they're on Twitter calling, you know, uh, uh, pedophile vampires and, and like sort of waggling their dick at these people, they don't really treat those people like they're dangerous and, and like they're powerful and they could really destroy you.

Speaker: Um, because they could, they totally could.

Speaker: And so, um, either

Speaker: like you're wrong about how important your criticism of them is to them, or maybe you're wrong about how malicious they are, like, but you're wrong about something here.

Speaker: Like there's something in your logic doesn't make sense because if they were who you say they were, are, then, you know, you'd have committed suicide with, you know, twice in the back of the head kind of a situation.

Speaker: And that hasn't happened.

Speaker: And so, you know, evaluate that.

Speaker: But, but yeah, it, it, one of the things that was liberating about it after being doxxed was I realized that I need to do what I believe is right.

Speaker: And it has to actually be what I believe is right.

Speaker: It can't be just, you know,

Speaker: sort of venting my bile and saying the saying the mean things that I feel like saying.

Speaker: It had to be I have to be doing something meaningful because the risk of it is real.

Speaker: There's real consequences to all of this.

Speaker: And so it was kind of a growing up experience.

Speaker: Like I got to quit.

Speaker: I got to quit goofing around.

Speaker: I got to do something that I got to do something that matters because like

Speaker: I'm on the chopping block either way.

Speaker: And so I, I can either get nuked for, for shit posting and, and, and goofing off and making my friends laugh or, you know, I can take the same risk to, to do something extraordinary.

Speaker: And yeah, that's, that's, that's what I want to do.

Speaker: That's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker: No, I think that, um,

Speaker: I think that's the thing, right?

Speaker: Like everybody needs, well, there's so much to say off of all that.

Speaker: That was, I'd say the first is that, yes, like the worst thing you can do to an enemy is not fight them.

Speaker: It's to underestimate them, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because that will cause you to make mistakes that they're going to exploit.

Speaker: And then the next is, is that, you know, we can either hang together or we can hang separately, right?

Speaker: And yeah.

Speaker: A lot of people get online from both sides, from all sides, and do what you're saying.

Speaker: Spill their thoughts into the void, vent their spleen, and call that activism, right?

Speaker: Or call that making a change.

Speaker: I've seen this a lot.

Speaker: Like, I'm out here, you know, preaching my

Speaker: gospel, you know, to those that would have ears to hear.

Speaker: And that's how I'm making a change.

Speaker: And I think that's so ridiculous.

Speaker: That doesn't change anything.

Speaker: And most of the people that are hearing you are doing the exact same thing.

Speaker: I mean, it's the definition of like preaching to the choir for the most part.

Speaker: Like you are changing no minds online.

Speaker: You know, there is a gradual change

Speaker: increasing of like I'd say like people's I mean we're all headed to the ends of the political spectrum it seems like the but but it's not done from one person you know it is that collective unconscious like move towards either being reactionary or radical it's it's no one person is doing that and to believe that you know as one grain of sand on a beach or moving the ocean

Speaker: It's not happening.

Speaker: Yeah, you're as much influenced by that as you are influencing it.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: More so.

Speaker: And so like, that's the issue is that people need to realize, yeah, like you're not doing anything online.

Speaker: Like you're passing time.

Speaker: Like Twitter and some of these other platforms, it's a pastime.

Speaker: It's not a force for good.

Speaker: I mean, I do think that there are good things that can come out of it.

Speaker: Again, the metaphor there or the preposition is come out of it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's not done there.

Speaker: It's done elsewhere.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You're not doing anything there.

Speaker: You can build a network.

Speaker: You can find some people that you wouldn't meet.

Speaker: I mean, I've, I've made more friends and had more opportunities in life off of social media than I have anywhere else.

Speaker: I can, I can, I mean, I can just unload my bag on how many, how many great things have come out of social media, but they weren't, they weren't because of social media, like necessarily.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I'm here talking to you.

Speaker: I'm learning all kinds of things about what you know that I would never get from just the people that I encounter personally.

Speaker: I would probably still be in my horrifying nine to five.

Speaker: And so, yeah, I think you have to build, you have to take it out.

Speaker: You have to make it something else.

Speaker: And that's part of why I was sort of like,

Speaker: yeah, the safest thing would be to just say nothing and never make any friends.

Speaker: But like this, this seemed more important than my day job, like the connections I was making.

Speaker: And I mean, fundamentally, like, uh, I, I, I read, um, uh, concrete jungle and prairie fire.

Speaker: And one of the things that really struck me about that, which I've heard from other places too, is, um,

Speaker: you know, the, the, the tactical stuff is not really that important.

Speaker: What's really important is to have like five guys that would, that you would die for and that would die for you.

Speaker: Um, and, and to be, um, to have tight, tight associations where you take care of each other.

Speaker: Um, because that's, what's going to keep you through sort of dangerous times.

Speaker: Um, go ahead.

Speaker: I made a joke about this.

Speaker: Like a lot of the country board can survive crowd hates me for it, but I've said for a long time that like a, like an urban street gang has a higher survival rate in most of the scenarios that these, like these dorks like propose about how they're going to, that the government's going to collapse or whatever, whatever it is that they're planning for, like, it's all going to happen.

Speaker: And they're going to be, you know, they're going to be shown right because all their preparations were not made in vain.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And urban street gangs got a very high survival rate almost over one of those scenarios.

Speaker: And it's because they have a dedicated core of people.

Speaker: They have bonds, sometimes made in blood, which are the tightest.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And they have rituals that define loyalty that require sacrifice.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: And they've all been very deeply intimate with each other and very stressful and terrible scenarios already.

Speaker: And so the apocalypse will just be one more.

Speaker: And, you know, the guy, you know, like, I guess another tableau is just that, like, you know, let's say you have all the gear and all the training and all the experience, but you're by yourself.

Speaker: And let's just say that, like, you and a, I don't know, a party of hippies in a van are in the same wilderness area and suffer, like, whatever catechism.

Speaker: Like, and they have to leave.

Speaker: you know that guy with all the gear and training makes one misstep steps in the pothole the wrong way twists an ankle breaks a leg whatever he's gonna die whereas like this group of hippies like let's say there's 10 of them maybe maybe only four survive but four survive right and it's because like they have the collective opportunity and experience and

Speaker: You can reap collective rewards.

Speaker: I mean, I'm not going to tell anybody to be the hippie in the story, but I'm just saying that like those kind of probabilities like are real.

Speaker: And if you think that you're going to survive anything alone, you're doomed.

Speaker: Yeah, I had a Green Beret friend that I used to love just sort of

Speaker: we worked together and we had nothing to do.

Speaker: And so I would just wander over to his cubicle and make him tell me stories.

Speaker: And he was talking about wilderness survival and like, you know, you could dip things in honey to make them more palatable.

Speaker: If they're really gross, you don't want to eat them or use various little like tips and tricks and stuff.

Speaker: But, but the bottom line, he was like, you're not built to live alone.

Speaker: Like even, even with training, even with knowing everything that I know, like,

Speaker: first order of business is fine people.

Speaker: You can't, like, you're not gonna just go survive in, you know, the wilds of Canada by yourself, like for any length of time.

Speaker: And so like, yeah, it has to be, it has to be social.

Speaker: And I think that leads into a question that I wanted to ask.

Speaker: It's been really interesting talking about the OPSEC thing because I sort of expected that we might get into like,

Speaker: you know, have a VPN, use an encrypted email, like, but, but my intuition, which it sounds like you, you agree with, is that sort of, that doesn't really matter.

Speaker: Like, it's not gonna, it's not gonna save you one way or the other, that it's mostly kind of social engineering type choices you can make, and threats you can avoid.

Speaker: Yeah,

Speaker: It's really funny too, because like, it's probably time that I tell you that like, I am a technology generalist.

Speaker: I understand a lot of the technologies that are at play for security, but my specific expertise and how I got to where I am is because I was initially a social engineer.

Speaker: So the organization that I represent, or I shouldn't say represent here at all, but I should say that I've worked for and represented

Speaker: primarily the work that I initially did for them to get into this space was social engineering.

Speaker: And so these would be organizations that have spent millions, tens of millions in some cases on securing their systems.

Speaker: And I would compromise them just by walking up and looking like I was supposed to be there and asking questions.

Speaker: And it was...

Speaker: you know, and there's this discussion within security about how, you know, attacks have climbed the OSI model, right?

Speaker: And the OSI model for folks that don't know is just like how network communications are performed, you know, from the, like the physical space all the way up to the last layer, you know, which, but the joke is, has been that like the last layer is the person.

Speaker: And that like many of these attacks now are,

Speaker: aimed at the person.

Speaker: So we've kind of come full circle.

Speaker: Like a con man is just as likely to compromise your network as some dude in the basement who studies, you know, TCIP protocols.

Speaker: And it's because these technologies are getting easier to use.

Speaker: Now, all the things that people would tell you, and there's plenty of information out there for anybody that can digest it, is there are tools to help protect your identity, protect your actions,

Speaker: And I am always going to encourage anyone to try to learn about them and to implement them in their daily lives.

Speaker: There's nothing wrong with them.

Speaker: And I don't want to be like, you know, I just talked about, I hate black pillars and I hate doomsayers and folks that just tell you that, you know, you can't do anything.

Speaker: It's inevitable.

Speaker: I mean, there are steps you can make, you know.

Speaker: The problem with a lot of that technology, though, is in order to, it's not just happiness.

Speaker: You know, it's just like we can talk about later on.

Speaker: I know we're going to talk about guns and such, but like having it isn't going to help you.

Speaker: It's being able to use it.

Speaker: And so, you know, you can have the most sophisticated OPSEC with all the tools at your disposal and something else will get you.

Speaker: Like I've seen people doxxed not even on what they did.

Speaker: Like one of their mistakes is they interact with a family member.

Speaker: and that family member drops their name.

Speaker: I've had it happen to me.

Speaker: I've had people reply to me that knew me personally and divulge information that I would have never exposed myself to.

Speaker: And so like, you know, I don't want to say that like be a doomsayer, you know, and you know, everybody's going to be compromised, but you know, the game is, it's tough game.

Speaker: And depending on your adversary,

Speaker: it's hard to not make a mistake.

Speaker: With most people, the simple protective measures that are described by others about secure messaging apps and VPNs and proxies and all that stuff is very handy.

Speaker: And if you're using it in the correct way, you're pretty well protected.

Speaker: And for most adversaries, they're going to be fine.

Speaker: But you get the wrong adversary.

Speaker: I mean, you get the real bad guy.

Speaker: And it's going to be tough for you.

Speaker: You're really going to have to have gone into the weeds and learned about the technologies that are, that are at play.

Speaker: You know, there are things that absolutely surpass my understanding.

Speaker: I mean, I, I, the offensive security that I've done in the past, again, was very much about physical security and my ability to just talk my way in the like situations.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: they were less about my ability to hack.

Speaker: I've done some pen testing in the past.

Speaker: It's really not my expertise, but, you know, I talk shop with some of these guys and I'm not sure that like, I mean, every one of them has somebody, even those guys has somebody that could dox them, hack them, break their things.

Speaker: Like, you know, it just really depends on your level of exposure to those threats.

Speaker: I almost feel like done to,

Speaker: I almost feel like the sort of cryptographic walls and the, and the, um, the sort of it defenses, like people don't get like computer viruses anymore.

Speaker: Um, at least as far as I know, like I, I haven't, I mean, my, my, my dad used to get them like all the time, uh, on his like ancient desktop.

Speaker: And I've never heard of that, uh, in like a decade.

Speaker: And I wonder if it's not the same anymore, but yeah, it's still, it still occurs.

Speaker: But, but I think to the point that you're making here is, is that many of the technologies, more places than you want to know.

Speaker: I mean, most of the active, I don't know, like you're thinking a lot of it is like the definitions here, I guess matter.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So like malware in many forms now is not what most people think is like a virus, which means like they've,

Speaker: They've got some malicious program like operating on their system.

Speaker: But that still totally does occur.

Speaker: It's just that many of the protections that are available now exceed the software of like what in my industry they would call like a script kitty, right?

Speaker: A script kitty is like someone who's just using some tools that somebody gave them and

Speaker: they don't really alter or change them in any meaningful way.

Speaker: And they just deploy them against a wide enough audience.

Speaker: And, you know, this law probability, they get someone.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: A dilettante.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Skater perpetrator.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Most, right.

Speaker: Most people don't, most people don't get attacked by those folks.

Speaker: And they're also insulated with enough information security bubble wrap, you know, like they're,

Speaker: their web browsers got protections, they're running an antivirus locally, like some endpoint detection response.

Speaker: And many of those now are not even based on the signature of attack.

Speaker: Like they're based really on just system process baselines.

Speaker: And, you know, as soon as things start spiking or asking for utilities within those system, that's how they get shut down.

Speaker: You know, if you're in an environment like Apple, where it's like that ecosystem is a little bit more curated and protected, it makes it harder.

Speaker: But

Speaker: But yeah, I mean, there's still tons of malware out there and there's exploits.

Speaker: I mean, there's more exploits today than there were yesterday.

Speaker: There's going to be more exploits tomorrow.

Speaker: It's part of why I'm still in business.

Speaker: But maybe the effort and the expertise required to exploit the vulnerabilities that exist now, since it's not the script kiddies doing it.

Speaker: they go after harder targets that have maybe more reward, like ransomware against the corporation rather than like, I'm just going to screw up grandma's computer just because.

Speaker: Well, that's it, right?

Speaker: Like in many of those, like in the past, like the point of compromising grandma's computer, right, is to really just slave her system into some sort of botnet, right?

Speaker: So that you can perform things like, you know, distributed denial of service and such.

Speaker: But you're right about,

Speaker: Like the really malicious organizations, there needs to be some sort of pecuniary reward for what they do.

Speaker: Otherwise, it's just a waste of time, like defacing a website, you know, telling somebody that they got owned.

Speaker: I don't know, like some of that stuff.

Speaker: It's it's not really it's not really productive.

Speaker: You have to do that at this point that like you have lots of better things to do.

Speaker: That's exactly it.

Speaker: The kind of scary people that are out there now that are making money at it.

Speaker: The sort of threat actors that are being tracked now.

Speaker: I mean, it's actually funny because I just gave a briefing not even three hours ago to a CIO of an organization and discussing with him what

Speaker: current threat actors are targeting his market.

Speaker: And, you know, we're talking about like what, what they're in it for, how they do it and where they're from.

Speaker: And there are now more actors.

Speaker: And this is according to like Mandiant, whom we sourced for this material.

Speaker: There are now more actors that are from an unknown source than there are from a known source.

Speaker: You know, China, like China, of course, like, you know, because they have a,

Speaker: governmental kind of umbrella in which they can fall under and they be protected.

Speaker: And also they're huge.

Speaker: I mean, there are more people from China than from anywhere.

Speaker: So there are more threat actors from China than any other country listed, but more than China are the unks, like the unknowns.

Speaker: And these folks are multinational, crime syndicates for the most part,

Speaker: and organizations that are, you know, there are some hacktivist organizations that would be listed in some of the stuff, but more often than not, it's just organized crime, and it's because it pays.

Speaker: Like, there's money in it.

Speaker: And they have all sorts of mechanisms that they're using to take your money or extort you out of your money.

Speaker: So, yeah, it's, the walls have grown high enough

Speaker: that for an ordinary person who doesn't have like a Swiss bank account to crack or, or an organization to shut down and extort the types of threats that they're going to face are pretty much going to be social because it's going to, because the, the other stuff they're not, they're not sort of worth blowing a hole in the

Speaker: Twitter or Facebook to get to.

Speaker: So it's going to come from an insider, either in your group or in Twitter or Facebook or somebody is going to know somebody and that's how they're going to get you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Or you'll just, or you'll just give it away.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Most, most hacks now are not hacking in, they're hacking out.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, you know, in the long ago we would tell people, you know, perimeter firewall defense and,

Speaker: you know, strong, you know, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention systems and services.

Speaker: And now it doesn't really, they're not hacking in, they're hacking out.

Speaker: Like they'll just compromise one of your employees in some manner.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They'll compromise their individual account on their individual system and they'll expand access and eventually get what they're wanting and then they'll work their way out.

Speaker: with whatever it is they're trying to take.

Speaker: All these defenses that we're talking about, all these high walls, lack your antivirus, lack all these systems that are made to protect you.

Speaker: A lot of the attacks that you see now, you'll get a dialogue box that says, you can't view this context, like enable macros or turn off your antivirus because it's not playing nice with this utility that you need.

Speaker: you know, and people do it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The same thing goes for like the social engineering.

Speaker: Like I would make, you know, so like not even physically, like I used to do like vision, like, which is just like, I would, I would make unsolicited phone calls to people in order to get information or access.

Speaker: And I would make myself like a call script.

Speaker: And it's just like the people that call you now to tell you that you're, you know, your credit card's compromised.

Speaker: And as soon as you say which one, they're like, uh,

Speaker: I think it's a MasterCard, you know, and like you'll, it doesn't work maybe on you, you're a savvy person, but you make a hundred phone calls, you'll get two or three of them.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And that's what keeps them in business.

Speaker: I think we've taken a very strong digression.

Speaker: I don't know if I've lost the thread yet or not.

Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, it's just to say that, yeah, it's the OPSEC that most of our people need to be worried about is social.

Speaker: And that's fair enough.

Speaker: But we were also headed in this direction that I want to explore, which is back to sort of the military and the combat side of it.

Speaker: The adage goes, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm a civilian.

Speaker: I have no formal training.

Speaker: I've got a gun and I've got a plate carrier.

Speaker: That's just basically really expensive exercise equipment.

Speaker: Um, so do you think that there's an appropriate amount of like tactical training and preparedness for civilians, or is that just sort of just fun LARP?

Speaker: It's absolutely fun LARP.

Speaker: Um, but it's, um,

Speaker: Some of it's prudent, you know, to the degree in which it's prudent, really depends on what, again, this is just like before, like it depends on what your threat is, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: If you live in some very rural place with a very strong, close-knit community of people, which you can rely on, your level of preparation probably doesn't need to be exceedingly high, right?

Speaker: Like you probably don't need this.

Speaker: If you are in a very unfriendly place with few people,

Speaker: to help support you, you need to start making these plans and for the contingencies that might affect you.

Speaker: So, you know, this is in the military.

Speaker: It's just funny because it seems like the level of civilian preparedness is absolutely the inverse.

Speaker: It's the guys who are out in the sticks that want to go buy nods and play around and all that stuff and the people in the cities who are scared of that.

Speaker: It is, and it, you know, it's a strange thing to see how most people game this out.

Speaker: And it's funny because like, and I'll use an example, it's like probably more personal, but I had a family member that's not from my family, if that's a way of saying it, but, you know, she's a very concerned lady and she has fallen into some of these,

Speaker: these traps that our groups fall into.

Speaker: Like she kind of got into some, some conspiracy stuff.

Speaker: And she came to me one day on a visit and said, said to me, like, you need to be storing food.

Speaker: And I was like, okay.

Speaker: And she was like, you need to have at least a month's supply of food.

Speaker: And I was like, I think we're good.

Speaker: And she's like, really?

Speaker: I was like, yeah, like I've probably got, you know, at least a month's worth of stored food.

Speaker: And she's like, oh, well, then, you know, I was like, what do I know?

Speaker: She was like, well, that, you know, Joe Biden's not really the president.

Speaker: And I was like, oh, I know what happened to you.

Speaker: You know, like, immediately, I could immediately detect and diagnose like what, like brain worm was affecting her.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, you know, I don't, I don't usually try to hurt anybody.

Speaker: And I was like, okay, I don't know about that part.

Speaker: But

Speaker: I do.

Speaker: I am prepared.

Speaker: And she's like, oh, what are you prepared for?

Speaker: And my response to that was, I have no idea.

Speaker: You know, I do not have a specific scenario in which I've made my preparations.

Speaker: I don't think that anybody who's honest has.

Speaker: You know, we all get caught up in these charismatic scenarios about what the end times or the revelation or

Speaker: you know, whatever, whatever it is that, you know, speaks to us and tells us that like there's a, you know, a storm coming or whatever, right?

Speaker: Like we all have that and how we prepare for it is usually like informed on that idea.

Speaker: And to me, I would prefer that people don't get too specific about the scenario in which they're attempting to endure at some later time.

Speaker: To think things like how many people had an N95 mask

Speaker: in their bug out kit before the coronavirus i'm gonna get maybe 0.01 percent um had that item in their kit for preparedness but what did we all do recently we all bought a bunch of masks and gloves and stuff so like i guess my point here is to say that like you don't know what's coming i don't know what's coming nobody exactly and so the

Speaker: what you can do is attempt to drive like some very broad conclusions about how things would go.

Speaker: You know, food is important, but at a certain point, food can be a liability.

Speaker: You know, I see, I've seen people talk to me about like, or I've seen folks post about like, oh, I have like a year's worth of stored food.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't know of a scenario in which everyone in your neighborhood starving

Speaker: and you are somehow able to hide the fact that you have so much food.

Speaker: If you read about the conflict within Poland and the Ukraine, and what, I don't remember what they call it, but the specific things that were done by Stalin to these areas.

Speaker: The Holodomor?

Speaker: I think that's the appropriate term, but like they, one of the things that they like the Russian soldiers would notice is you're the only person that doesn't look for food or you're the only person whose cheeks aren't gone.

Speaker: Like you can't hide that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's just like operational security.

Speaker: Like we talked about before, like, you know, if you have a growing mound of empty mountain house rappers in your backyard,

Speaker: eventually somebody notices when they start to blow into the other yard or again, you're not looking for food.

Speaker: You're not desperate like everyone else.

Speaker: Like your cheeks are still kind of glowing.

Speaker: Like it's going to be tough to keep that under wraps.

Speaker: So, you know, have some food, but probably better have a plan to go somewhere that's safe or to meet up with folks.

Speaker: Like again, build a resilient network.

Speaker: Like it,

Speaker: Other people have an, oh, I'm not going to store food.

Speaker: I'm going to grow it.

Speaker: And it's like, where are you going to grow it?

Speaker: I'm going to grow it in my yard.

Speaker: Like, okay, you're not going to be able to grow enough.

Speaker: Okay, well, I'm going to grow it in a farm.

Speaker: How big is the group of people that are going to be on this farm with you?

Speaker: Like if you have 15 acres, how do you?

Speaker: If there was real hunger, people would be eating rats and squirrels.

Speaker: Like they're definitely going to go into your yard.

Speaker: Well, yeah, it's going to be tough to keep that under wraps.

Speaker: And then the same thing with a farm.

Speaker: Like, let's say you had 10 or 15 acres.

Speaker: Like, how are you going to work the farm and guard it at night?

Speaker: Like, you can't do both.

Speaker: Like, at a certain point, like, you need a force to be able to perform a guard mount.

Speaker: And, you know, only have so many up on security every day to guard these crops because they're valuable.

Speaker: Everyone's starving.

Speaker: Like, these are all problems that are usually not worked out because in people's minds, they imagine that

Speaker: I've got the food, I'm covered.

Speaker: Or I've got the land and some seeds, some heirloom seeds are in like vacuum sealed containers.

Speaker: And so I'm good.

Speaker: Everybody else is going to go to hell and I'm going to be out here just living off the fat of the land.

Speaker: And then the same thing goes really for the guns and the tactical stuff.

Speaker: You know, I large.

Speaker: Like my primary interest in acquiring a lot of these arms is not the belief that I'm going to somehow maintain, you know, some kind of like, I'm not going to be doing patrols basically.

Speaker: That's not why I have it.

Speaker: I have this stuff because I like it.

Speaker: I'm just going to admit it.

Speaker: I like this stuff.

Speaker: I, you know, I developed probably some pathological urge to be prepared from the wars or something.

Speaker: And I'm just indulging it now that I have the money to do so.

Speaker: But,

Speaker: For most people, having a firearm is a great idea.

Speaker: Does it need to have all the crap on it that my guns have?

Speaker: No, it doesn't.

Speaker: Do they need to go have a training budget with thousands of rounds expended within a quarter?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Do they need to go to training to learn close quarters battle and all this stuff?

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Now, if they want to do that, of course, there's going to be a benefit to that in some scenarios where maybe those types of exigencies occur and you can exercise that capability.

Speaker: But for most of us, you're never going to be in a situation where any of that stuff's handy.

Speaker: But it's not bad to know.

Speaker: I mean, it's like changing a tire.

Speaker: If you don't drive, then it's not a really handy skill.

Speaker: But if maybe you're making a long car trip and there's not a lot of gas stations along the way,

Speaker: or triple a to call then you need to know it so it really just depends on how you work that out like i i like this stuff i just like it i don't try to make excuses about why i like it i just do yeah and if you're the kind of person that likes it like it and just say that don't say that you're doing it because you're attempting to be prepared for an apocalypse it probably won't happen and if it does happen it won't happen the way you think it will but but i you know again it's just like with the

Speaker: the tools and the techniques and everything.

Speaker: I will always encourage people to learn more about it and to, to, to get into it because, you know, and, and those scenarios where those, that type of training or equipment is, is helpful.

Speaker: You're going to be very thankful you did.

Speaker: It's just whether or not you will ever be in that situation that really matters.

Speaker: So maybe one of these maybe one of these courses, that's just sort of like,

Speaker: you know, basic shoot and move, like you're, like you're, you're sort of basic mobility, basic, like accuracy, that kind of, that kind of training.

Speaker: Do you think that's, I mean, obviously I hear what you're saying.

Speaker: Like it's, it's, it's, it's whatever you want to do because it probably doesn't matter.

Speaker: Well, and then, but see, that gets so close to doomerism that I'm again discouraged and making that like my stance, because like, I don't want to say that, like it's worthless or it just,

Speaker: you only have so much limited time on earth.

Speaker: Like is the skill that you're training for gonna be useful?

Speaker: Like clearing a house is probably not as prudent as learning to can, right?

Speaker: Right, exactly, yes.

Speaker: Now, should people have a basic familiarization with firearms?

Speaker: That is an absolute truth.

Speaker: Like I will say that every human on earth should at least know how to load, unload,

Speaker: make safe and fire a weapon accurately.

Speaker: I think that is a skill that like is universal.

Speaker: And because of the likelihood that you might be in a scenario and the impact that it would have, like it would be something to do.

Speaker: Next steps about movement, conquer movement after you've conquered familiarization and accuracy.

Speaker: And then if you graduate to movement with a gun and making it safe and firing it accurately,

Speaker: and you have a group of people that you want to work with, like on, you know, patrolling and room clearing and all these other items, you know, movement under contact and bounding overwatch and all these things, if you want to get into that, get into it.

Speaker: Like, it's not a waste of time.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And really, it's only in hindsight after nothing, you never used it that you could say it was a waste of time.

Speaker: But

Speaker: It's useful skills, but I just don't ever want to pretend that everybody has to take those extremes because for most day-to-day situations, it's not really necessary.

Speaker: And from a real survival scenario that you're more likely to encounter in terms of your cost and your time investment, it's unironically probably better to spend that time at the bowling alley, making friends.

Speaker: No, that is, I mean, it is, that's absolutely true.

Speaker: Like, you know, I, you mentioned earlier you have a plate carrier, so I don't want you to take this personally, but like, I don't own a plate carrier.

Speaker: I don't have plates.

Speaker: Like, to me, I would have to have that around when, and then I'd have to have the foreknowledge that like, I would need it.

Speaker: Oh yeah.

Speaker: Like what's the situation where I get out of bed and I go put that thing on.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I mean, my experience in,

Speaker: Well, and in my experience, like wearing these things, I can't tell you how much often I wanted to drop it.

Speaker: Like at every opportunity I wanted to take it off.

Speaker: And so, yeah.

Speaker: And then you have to have an adversary that's actually like capable of hitting that plate, right?

Speaker: Like most of the people that are going to shoot at you are probably not going to be able to hit you in the vitals on purpose.

Speaker: And so like that, there's just a whole lot of things about my type of preparation that I can tend to just discourage because I would rather people

Speaker: spend their time, money, and resources on something that, that, that would get them gator better gains.

Speaker: And, you know, bowling alley, maybe good.

Speaker: It, it, and they're big monster steel plates too.

Speaker: Like it was, it was a dumb thing to do, but they're fun to ruck in.

Speaker: Like I, I, I, I hike in them.

Speaker: And see, like, and that's a great example of a time well spent, right?

Speaker: Like, cause no, I mean, truly like, and this is talked about a lot in my own physical fitness is not near what I wish it was because of the kind of job I have and

Speaker: All those sedentary things that I talked about, you know, young America, I'm just as susceptible.

Speaker: I don't get out and exercise as much as I should.

Speaker: I do it.

Speaker: I'm capable of running at least a 5K with my equipment now and performing at a high enough level that I can place within, you know, the top five and shooting.

Speaker: But, you know, physical fitness is an often overlooked thing.

Speaker: I mean, even again, N95 masks only get you so far.

Speaker: Having a healthy body and mind is way more important than any of the other things, in my opinion.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Well...

Speaker: I saw that you posted some breakdowns of the Ranger Handbook on your website.

Speaker: And again, I hear what you're saying about what's necessary.

Speaker: And so this is more about what's fun or interesting.

Speaker: Are there any other field manual type books that you think are particularly rich for a civilian to pick up as far as interesting things to know?

Speaker: I do.

Speaker: The first one,

Speaker: It's my favorite one actually is it's a little older.

Speaker: It's called the defense of Duffers drift.

Speaker: It was written under a pseudonym.

Speaker: The pseudonym was backside forethought.

Speaker: And it's, it's kind of written almost like in, I mean, I won't say almost it's written as a narrative as a series of dreams.

Speaker: that a man has as it's like his first or second day basically as like a platoon leader in the British Army in the Boer War in Africa.

Speaker: And what happens in this book is the man gets this assignment.

Speaker: He goes out on his first patrol and he just makes every kind of mistake.

Speaker: And it goes super poorly for him and he dies.

Speaker: And then that death wakes him up and he realizes, oh, that was just a dream.

Speaker: And he goes out on the next, like on the next mission basically.

Speaker: And he, you know, fixes the things that he thought were the most important items from that first dream and gets himself into a new scenario and dies.

Speaker: And then he does basically like Groundhog Day.

Speaker: He just continues to make mistakes until he finally,

Speaker: doesn't die in the last dream and those are all lessons about how to conduct small unit operations most importantly securing a securing key to rank it is a really easy book like the ranger handbook part of the reason why i am doing this and it's really neglected and for anybody that's

Speaker: you know, enjoying that.

Speaker: I apologize to him if you're hearing this because like I neglect that.

Speaker: I took on something that I maybe shouldn't have, but I am going to continue with it until I'm finished because I won't quit.

Speaker: But the Ranger Handbook is a very dense manual and it's intended to give to a student that's in Ranger school.

Speaker: So like that's all he's doing every day.

Speaker: So that book is really handy to him because it is very concise format for how to conduct

Speaker: small unit operations and the tactics that are necessary to survive in that environment.

Speaker: But that it's super dense.

Speaker: So the reason why I'm going through it and I'm going through so slowly is I'm trying to eliminate all that.

Speaker: I'm trying to pull out of all that laconic manual, all the lessons that are intended to be taught and all the things that a person would say.

Speaker: Yeah, and it's tough.

Speaker: But the defensive Duffer's Drift is a much better like condensed soup

Speaker: version that anybody can drink.

Speaker: It doesn't require, like there's a page on my website now that is just dedicated to acronyms and abbreviations from the Ranger handbook.

Speaker: And it became necessary because I noticed that when I would write the next installment and the next installment that I would be using these abbreviations.

Speaker: And I was worried that a person would not remember what they were because there's so many.

Speaker: And, and, you know, it was endemic to my previous profession.

Speaker: So like, I know them well, but most wouldn't have that like level of, um,

Speaker: I guess like an indoctrination.

Speaker: So the defense of Duffer's Drift is a much better way of taking that in.

Speaker: It teaches you the core principles without telling you what PSG means or, you know, METTC or any of these like really, yeah.

Speaker: So like, I think that's a really great manual.

Speaker: I mean, my son is a very young man.

Speaker: He's like a young man, he's a boy.

Speaker: I've already bought him a copy and it's in his bookshelf and I've tried to get him to read it a couple of times, but he's more into, he's still into books with pictures.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: So we haven't gotten very far, but like, I think that's probably the best one.

Speaker: As far as manuals.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: As far as manuals go, I'll tell you, it's, if you're a soldier and you have like the existing, like,

Speaker: I don't know, military patois, and like, you know what the acronyms mean, and the structure, and duty positions, and such, like a lot of those manuals are really handy, but I tend to not encourage that for civilians, because of just like what I was saying, like, there's just a lot of things that are implicit in some of those statements that are hard for someone that's not gone through, not gone through that experience to really take away, so I would say that there are plenty of books, though, that talk about

Speaker: talk about these subjects without getting into it.

Speaker: Like, I really like, I believe it's called Out of the Mountains, and I'd have to think about, give me a moment, I'll look it up while we talk, but Out of the Mountains is a good explanation of where I think things are going.

Speaker: It talks about the lessons learned, mostly in like Afghanistan, but it also, it looks at other conflicts.

Speaker: It looks at like the

Speaker: the Mumbai shootings.

Speaker: Is that book about the littoralization of conflict?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yes, it is.

Speaker: My wife bought me that for Christmas and I got like a chapter in and I haven't read the rest of it.

Speaker: I'm going to go read the rest of it.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: You need to read the rest of it.

Speaker: And there's even an audio book that isn't terrible.

Speaker: I will say that, you know, like many of these folks, they don't realize that they kind of get a little repetitive.

Speaker: Like there's going to be moments that you're listening to him.

Speaker: You're like, he just said this, like I said this four times already.

Speaker: Like I got the point.

Speaker: If you're an astute reader or something, it'll get repetitive to you, but it's well worth sitting through.

Speaker: To me, like the seminal work on a lot of this stuff goes back to the very first person I followed on Twitter is John Robb.

Speaker: He wrote a book called Brave New War that has really changed.

Speaker: I mean, I don't want to say like it's changed my life, like, but it kind of has.

Speaker: um brave new war was really good it's not a field manual it's not going to give you like a you know then the platoon sergeant moves to the ORP kind of like um but but I think that it's it's a handy tool um you know we've talked about the Clay Martin books like I think those are handy yeah I think that um I think like the sling in the stone is another one by I'm looking at right now Haynes is a marine

Speaker: Those are all really good about like what the world is gonna be like, what the, you know, what types of organizations are gonna be at play, you know, how they're effective and not effective.

Speaker: Those are more broader, but you know, really the Ranger handbook outside of that defensive dover strip, if you're interested in like how a unit

Speaker: And again, it's a unit.

Speaker: There aren't a lot of books that are going to turn you into a deadly, you know, combat warrior or something like it's, it's, it's not going to work.

Speaker: You need to go and get training definitely with someone who knows what they're doing.

Speaker: That's your intent.

Speaker: But, you know, if you do have a group and you guys want to get out and LARP, or if you want to go to read those principles about how, you know, patrolling actually works and how ambushes actually work and how,

Speaker: The Ranger Handbook is probably the best.

Speaker: I mean, the old infantry manual, like I know that it's undergone a new change, but when I was in, it was FM 7-8.

Speaker: 7-8 is really good.

Speaker: I know that it's got a new one.

Speaker: Just Google it.

Speaker: You'll see what the new designation is.

Speaker: I don't remember what it is offhand.

Speaker: But those are probably all good works.

Speaker: Well, my favorite part about Clay's books was the...

Speaker: what if we were in this scenario and he like walks through the whole, like it's a story.

Speaker: And so I'm really excited about this defensive Duffer's Drift.

Speaker: That sounds really, really cool.

Speaker: Like that's gonna, it's gonna light up the right parts of my brain, I think.

Speaker: It's really great for people.

Speaker: Like I said, it just teaches you, I mean, everybody has like war in their head and the media has done a terrible job of really portraying like,

Speaker: actually works.

Speaker: That book does a great job.

Speaker: And, you know, a lot of folks would tell you that it's dated because I don't know when the World War was, but I want to say it was, I know it was pre-World War II.

Speaker: It was sometime between the Great World Wars, I believe, but I could be wrong.

Speaker: But, you know, you'd read about the technologies used there and, you know, some people would not catch the important parts, but, you know, the fundamental principles of war remained unchanged.

Speaker: Like the technologies changed somewhat, but

Speaker: For the most part, the things you'll read in Duffer's Drift are going to, you're going to be able to find lessons that you can apply to the current era.

Speaker: So, and that leads me to, because you said like the way that you think things are going, and I know you said that nobody knows where it's going.

Speaker: Fair enough.

Speaker: But what about the, what about the vision of these books strikes you as, as likely, like you're seeing, you're seeing this and you're thinking that's, that's right.

Speaker: That's where it's going to go.

Speaker: I think, yeah, so I've read, like, I already mentioned Rob, I've read Kilcullen, I've read Van Krevel.

Speaker: I believe that the formal institutions of power and control are going to be continually eroded to some sort of Goldilocks zone that exists between

Speaker: your local community and the federal government.

Speaker: I don't know where that would land.

Speaker: In some places, I think it's gonna be very different.

Speaker: In very rural places, it will be very much closer towards the local community.

Speaker: In more metropolitan areas, it will probably resemble something closer to a state government or a city state.

Speaker: Now, that isn't like the extreme long-term.

Speaker: I will never get nailed down on like what year this is gonna happen, right?

Speaker: I'm not going to tell you when Los Angeles is going to fall into the sea and the angels are going to come back.

Speaker: Like, I think those kinds of predictions are very stupid.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: But in the very longterm, I don't see how, I mean, especially within our government.

Speaker: And this really pains me because I actually, I'm kind of an old school unionist.

Speaker: I do believe that like our nation should stick together and we should have a federal, like a somewhat strong central government.

Speaker: you know, but what we're up to now and the trajectory I see us on, it's probably not only likely that we Balkanize, it's probably the better outcome.

Speaker: You know, the assumption assumes that, you know, some of the Balkan stories aren't told, right?

Speaker: Like here, or I guess I should say revisited.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I worry.

Speaker: I mean, I worry about where we're headed.

Speaker: You know, I've made the joke with Braxton a bunch of times that

Speaker: I've seen my dog go underneath the porch and I didn't know why and he didn't know why he did it.

Speaker: But then a storm came, right?

Speaker: Like a tornado blew through or something and I feel like that dog.

Speaker: I don't know why I feel the way I do about how things are going, but I do feel that sense of doom that I think it's palpable for a lot of us and that's across the aisle even.

Speaker: I see it in our adversaries.

Speaker: We all feel something's coming.

Speaker: And you see it in the adversaries.

Speaker: What do you, what do you mean?

Speaker: Oh, you mean our adversaries here, domestic adversaries.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, our greatest adversaries right now, in my opinion, are like within our own walls.

Speaker: And look at the way that they're treating us.

Speaker: Look at the way we're treating them.

Speaker: Look at what we're doing.

Speaker: I mean, we're precipitating much of the things that we're probably all fearing, but it doesn't mean that it just means it hastens its arrival.

Speaker: And so I think that

Speaker: yeah, I think that something's coming and I won't say that it's the dollar is going to collapse and I'm not going to say that there's going to be a new coronavirus variation.

Speaker: I won't say that.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I don't know what it is.

Speaker: I feel like now, if you study complex systems, and this is something that I really think John Robb got right and the reason why I really, really can't endorse it.

Speaker: I mean, besides Duffer's Drift, I'm not pulling this to the top of the list, but

Speaker: You know, he talks a lot about like John Boyd's theories, which some people are familiar with mostly just because of like the OODA loop.

Speaker: That's like his most famous thing.

Speaker: But, you know, one of the things that he talks about, like OODA loop is a very great theory in modeling like behaviors of groups and people.

Speaker: But one of the things that when he talks about like breaking a loop, many times he talks about like what's called like a cascading failure.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: A really good attacker can see

Speaker: the nodes and nexus points within a network and not only can, you know, like not attack them all, but attack the one that tips over the next one that tips over the next one.

Speaker: And, you know, our system, especially as a global system, not even just within our own country, but a global system, like they're ever increasing magnitudes of complexity.

Speaker: And the problems with that is that like any,

Speaker: broken gear seizes up the whole clock and ours is getting more and more centralized and more and more integrated.

Speaker: And so, you know, like we said earlier, like, is it, you know, is it a plastics?

Speaker: Is it the diet?

Speaker: Is it the culture?

Speaker: Is it the lack of exercise, bad parenting?

Speaker: You know, maybe the problem is, is attempting to diagnose a single cause.

Speaker: Like maybe the coming thing that causes this

Speaker: you know, vast decentralization and breakdown of what, you know, we currently enjoy.

Speaker: I mean, maybe it's not any one thing.

Speaker: Maybe one thing would be like maybe kind of a root cause, but maybe we found out that happened 20 years ago.

Speaker: We just didn't see the effects of it yet.

Speaker: And it's only with these burgeoning effects from that one thing that then caused this cascading failure, like all the way down, you know?

Speaker: it's probably not good that we have a, what is it like a 27,000 or $27 trillion debt.

Speaker: That's probably not good.

Speaker: It's probably not good that, yeah, it's probably not good that like we can't import all the things that we used to build.

Speaker: It's probably not good that we have a Southern border that is more or less entirely collapsed and is allowing, you know, a flood of people whom we, you know, we can't vet to allow in.

Speaker: Like that's probably not good.

Speaker: It's probably not good that,

Speaker: multinational corporations own every person that sits in our capital.

Speaker: It's probably not good that our kids watch too much like TikTok.

Speaker: It's probably not good for a lot of these things.

Speaker: All of these things alone wouldn't cause a problem, but maybe together it's a greater problem.

Speaker: I yeah yeah TikTok in particular so like I just like you I can tell that I'm getting old I've you know I stepped outside the current of social media in terms of like not in terms of not using social media but in terms of like I'm not going to learn this new app like I'm good with what I've got and

Speaker: it's always been sort of like, they're not interesting to me or like, they seem kind of bad for you, like Snapchat, for instance.

Speaker: But TikTok is the first one where I'm like, this seems like a psychic weapon.

Speaker: Like this seems like, this seems like the Chinese government trying to destroy a generation of children.

Speaker: And cause they're, cause they're like locking down the screen time over there.

Speaker: I don't know if you've seen this, but like they're, they're legislating.

Speaker: Like you can't, you can't play video games for more than like 30 minutes a day or something.

Speaker: and like two hours on the weekends or something.

Speaker: And so they are using our unwillingness to interfere in personal decisions to deploy weapons that they can then insulate their own population from.

Speaker: And I don't think that's just TikTok, but it's definitely TikTok.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, no, it's a...

Speaker: The problem always with the social media is like, I mean, it's a drug.

Speaker: I guess it's totally a drug.

Speaker: I've had to take even my own personal precautions with it.

Speaker: Like at a certain point, probably two and a half, three years ago, I turned off notifications.

Speaker: I'm like, I don't get notified.

Speaker: When I have time to consult social media, I do.

Speaker: When I don't, I don't want it beeping.

Speaker: I don't want it going off.

Speaker: I don't want it vibrating.

Speaker: I don't want it telling me, come back.

Speaker: Um, also the, just the audible sound of a notification can itself become an incentive to post.

Speaker: It's Pavlovian.

Speaker: You know, to, to get more of it.

Speaker: It really is.

Speaker: You salivate.

Speaker: People have to be, people have to be cognizant of that.

Speaker: Like you are an animal.

Speaker: I mean, it's, it's hard for me to understand how folks forget it, but yeah, you're an ape.

Speaker: You're covered in hair.

Speaker: You've got teeth.

Speaker: You've got other body parts that probably shouldn't be mentioned, but you are an animal and you can be, um,

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And these mechanisms and they don't always require conspiracy in order to ensnare you.

Speaker: Sometimes a person creates a thing just to make money and they make money off of you.

Speaker: You know, Facebook makes a lot of people money.

Speaker: Twitter makes a lot of, well, I don't know if actually Twitter makes much money, but so there's been a lot of money invested in it and a lot of time and TikTok too.

Speaker: And you've got to be careful with it.

Speaker: I wrote a thing a couple of weeks ago about that phenomenon across the board and how just like Doritos, your job if you're a food scientist is to make Doritos maximally delicious and to make them the exact right size so that one bite isn't too satisfying so you'll reach for the next one, but it's enough.

Speaker: and the flavor of the fats have to be, um, enjoyable, but they can't make you feel full because then you won't reach for the next one.

Speaker: And it's, it's this, um, everyone inside that organization just being good at their job, which is to sell Doritos, um, can, can create this like, um, yeah, uh, a drug, uh, a toxin, um,

Speaker: and our world is because of big data, because of the amount of information that we're able to store and collect and process, our whole world is full of these weapons.

Speaker: Because any industry that can create that kind of addictive relationship with their product then dominates that market.

Speaker: Well, it lures in the sociopaths which attempt to control

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like, yeah, creating.

Speaker: I don't know, Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker: I don't think that he's particularly manipulative.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But he created a product that every sociopath in the world wants to get their hands on.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like it's it's a it's a tropism.

Speaker: Like it's a thing that draws in that type.

Speaker: And so, yeah, Mr. Dorito probably just wanted to make a tasty chip for his grandkids.

Speaker: right but now but now the success of this product has incentivized a hundred thousand people maybe that or not a hundred thousand that'd be a huge company and make doritos but like thousands i mean frito-lay is a big big big company frito-lay frito-lay is i guess it's true like because yeah there is no like doritos doesn't even live alone but

Speaker: But the idea is like, it didn't start that way.

Speaker: And I think that's your point.

Speaker: Like Mr. Dorito started this, you know, this little company out of his like kitchen making tasty chips.

Speaker: And yeah, the next thing you know, like there probably sits on the board of Frito-Lay an entire assemblage of sociopaths dedicated to making your kid fatter.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Because, you know, your fat kid will consume so many more Doritos and they will be able to put, you know, a new yacht at their dock.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, and to, to lobby, to make sure that food stamps cover Doritos so that all those poor kids can, you know, can spend taxpayer dollars to consume Doritos and then grow up to become poor fat kids who consume Doritos.

Speaker: And it's, yeah, it's, it's unbelievably sick and there's no, um, there's no one villain.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: There's nobody that you can just drag out and shoot.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's a fascinating concept, actually.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you know, evil finds its way into everything, you know, like it's even into the making of Doritos.

Speaker: Well, you know, I don't want to end on such a grim note, but this, I mean...

Speaker: This, I mean, this is crazy fun to talk with you about all this stuff.

Speaker: And, and you're a lot of fun on Twitter and your at is very hard to say.

Speaker: But it's, it's essentially the votary in, in leet speak.

Speaker: And, or you can just, or you can just put in gruntpa, G-R-U-N-T-P-A and you can find him.

Speaker: His website is also digitaldropzone.com.

Speaker: That's where he's got his breakdown of the Ranger Handbook, a couple of things.

Speaker: If you want to learn more about what we've been doing at Exit and this community that we're building and the resources that we are providing to people, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.

Speaker: Thanks, Grandpa.

Speaker: It's been a lot of fun.

Speaker: Likewise.

Speaker: Thanks, Tom.