[00:00.000 --> 00:06.420]  Alright, who here remembers the DDoS attacks against Estonia back in 2007?
[00:07.480 --> 00:12.020]  Alright, that's actually pretty solid, about half the audience, right?
[00:12.300 --> 00:28.240]  If you go on Wikipedia, it will tell you that the DDoS attacks against Georgia were the first public-facing instance of IWAR, where you're trying to take down the Internet infrastructure.
[00:28.240 --> 00:37.460]  I'm not sure how that happened, because I thought it was pretty well-established within the field that Estonia was first.
[00:37.860 --> 00:59.280]  However, there's perhaps some question about attribution, because the Russian government still denies to this day, for the most part, having caused the attacks against Estonia in 2007, they weren't quite so denial-focused for the Estonia attack.
[00:59.300 --> 01:00.640]  That was very, very clear, right?
[01:00.700 --> 01:06.880]  That was a clear, multi-day military conflict, let's put it that way.
[01:06.880 --> 01:09.880]  Does anyone here not know Stuxnet?
[01:11.320 --> 01:13.140]  Alright, cool, everybody knows Stuxnet.
[01:13.220 --> 01:15.900]  How about NotPetya, from 2017?
[01:16.640 --> 01:18.680]  Anyone not familiar with NotPetya?
[01:18.680 --> 01:20.640]  Okay, so a couple people.
[01:20.920 --> 01:44.580]  I actually did a talk at HOPE in 2018 on NotPetya, which was another Russian operation, and basically used the software supply chain to target anyone using particular tax software for Ukraine, and thus also targeting a lot of international companies and actually significantly impacting the military
[01:44.580 --> 01:46.580]  readiness of multiple NATO countries.
[01:47.080 --> 01:50.820]  I highly recommend looking into that if you haven't already, right?
[01:51.020 --> 01:55.760]  But when we look at the present day, we basically have two things going on at the same time.
[01:55.960 --> 02:06.560]  We see the use of wipers that destroy data in basically any military conflict, and we see a lot of ransomware, right?
[02:06.560 --> 02:09.480]  It's impossible to miss ransomware in the news.
[02:10.500 --> 02:18.600]  And ransomware sort of started out in a criminal fashion, at least the modern ransomware.
[02:19.240 --> 02:24.040]  And today's ransomware is targeting organizations, right?
[02:24.120 --> 02:27.060]  It's taking down full enterprises.
[02:27.060 --> 02:29.180]  It's not targeting individual computers.
[02:29.600 --> 02:40.220]  So with that in mind, and the fact that these teams are making hundreds of millions of dollars in certain cases, that there's obviously a lot of criminal incentives.
[02:40.540 --> 02:44.240]  But when we look at the effects of the ransomware, right?
[02:44.500 --> 02:51.120]  We see maybe in one county or in one state, we see all the gas stations go down.
[02:51.280 --> 02:59.520]  We have seen in at least one country that the health system went down because of a ransomware attack, right?
[02:59.520 --> 03:06.780]  And when we look stateside, we've seen it in various counties or various companies as well, right?
[03:06.980 --> 03:09.900]  Affecting our society, right?
[03:10.020 --> 03:11.420]  Again, these are takedowns.
[03:11.540 --> 03:15.300]  I think last week there was a credit union who got hit by ransomware.
[03:15.480 --> 03:19.160]  Anyone trying to use this particular ATM, right?
[03:19.500 --> 03:21.620]  These ATMs were non-functional for them.
[03:21.620 --> 03:25.100]  So a lot of interesting effects, right?
[03:25.240 --> 03:27.960]  When we think about them in a conflict setting.
[03:28.620 --> 03:32.920]  Moreover, right, there's all these different ransomware teams out there.
[03:33.060 --> 03:38.240]  And a lot of them are actually functioning in an affiliate matter, right?
[03:38.340 --> 03:42.720]  So you hear about a particular ransomware gang.
[03:43.120 --> 03:48.080]  But in reality, it's different affiliate groups working for the same gang, right?
[03:48.080 --> 03:49.880]  It's just they are using the same name.
[03:51.260 --> 03:54.740]  These affiliate groups are ripe for infiltration, right?
[03:54.820 --> 04:04.760]  Just because we assume they are criminals, doesn't mean that a particular affiliate group does not consist of, let's say, a state team, right?
[04:04.900 --> 04:06.420]  A group of state actors.
[04:06.720 --> 04:14.820]  Or maybe even just one particular individual in a particular affiliate team can be part of a state organization, right?
[04:14.940 --> 04:16.760]  Military intelligence, you name it.
[04:18.640 --> 04:19.480]  All right.
[04:20.140 --> 04:22.640]  So, taking a step back here.
[04:24.020 --> 04:25.440]  I'm not touching anything.
[04:26.060 --> 04:26.660]  All right.
[04:26.720 --> 04:26.880]  Cool.
[04:27.360 --> 04:29.620]  So, taking a step back, right?
[04:29.760 --> 04:32.180]  When we look at the West, right?
[04:32.180 --> 04:39.000]  We conflate the idea of information warfare or information, the information domain, and cyber.
[04:39.800 --> 04:42.840]  That is something distinctly that we do in the West.
[04:42.840 --> 04:46.840]  Our strategic adversaries, certainly the Russians, right?
[04:46.960 --> 05:03.120]  They very clearly delineate between cyber as a space of operating, similar to air and land and space, versus information, which is an effect, right?
[05:03.120 --> 05:08.340]  Information space or information warfare is all about creating a transformation.
[05:09.420 --> 05:17.500]  So, when I look at the news and I see cybersecurity experts talking about information problems, it's not quite the same thing.
[05:17.500 --> 05:22.260]  And it's hard to get into, especially as the screen keeps flickering.
[05:23.320 --> 05:25.040]  I hope that's not too distracting.
[05:26.740 --> 05:29.200]  But, yeah, just keep that in mind.
[05:29.400 --> 05:33.300]  Information warfare is mostly about transformation.
[05:33.460 --> 05:36.600]  So, it's less about the cyber, right?
[05:36.600 --> 05:57.000]  And the way to look at it from this perspective, we can think about technical information warfare, where we're targeting actual CPUs, silicon CPUs, versus cognitive information warfare and information operations, where we're targeting the human CPU, right?
[05:57.000 --> 06:13.460]  And I prefer using the cognitive domain over the psychological domain, especially because the mind is no firewall and, for instance, right, just the effect of having our screens these days just blink at us, right?
[06:13.640 --> 06:14.580]  They're strobe lights.
[06:14.800 --> 06:17.260]  Most of your smartphones are strobe lights these days.
[06:17.260 --> 06:21.780]  That has a particular effect that's kind of missed in the greater discussion.
[06:22.580 --> 06:30.680]  So, that's a long-winded way of saying that if we want to understand this space better, we need generalization.
[06:30.960 --> 06:32.200]  It is not an option.
[06:32.220 --> 06:32.980]  It is mandatory.
[06:33.620 --> 06:42.860]  The sum is greater than the parts, and simply focusing on one niche thing will not give us proper answers with regards to the total effects, right?
[06:43.140 --> 06:49.020]  And the effect or one of the effects of cyber is that culture is moving at light speed, right?
[06:49.020 --> 06:51.380]  Everybody's interconnected across the planet.
[06:51.820 --> 06:56.960]  And as a result from that, right, we were kind of... we were living in a state of confusion.
[06:57.520 --> 07:08.560]  I think that's one of the reasons why in the last two years in particular, right, I read the mainstream news and suddenly we're talking about Marshall McLuhan again, right?
[07:08.560 --> 07:19.820]  And basically saying it's the social media and smartphones that are causing these anxieties or these transformed systems and paradigms.
[07:20.020 --> 07:26.260]  The other person that I see a lot these days is Yuri Bezmenov, right?
[07:26.260 --> 07:37.260]  Who was actually affected from the KGB back in 1970, even if most people reference that 1980s interview from him.
[07:38.360 --> 07:40.760]  So, right, two chains of thoughts, right?
[07:41.080 --> 07:44.780]  I think it's fair to say that both are happening at the same time.
[07:44.780 --> 08:00.000]  Yes, we are being transformed by the new media that we're using, as well as foreign adversaries trying to leverage these effects and trying to change our ways, if that makes sense, right?
[08:00.420 --> 08:09.640]  And at the same time, when we see most of the discussion these days, right, content and adversaries are easy to grasp.
[08:09.640 --> 08:12.580]  This other stuff, not so much, right?
[08:12.800 --> 08:17.660]  And in that expansion thereof, right, we have to think about deception.
[08:18.040 --> 08:20.400]  All war is based on deception.
[08:20.700 --> 08:36.520]  And when we look at the West, right, not just the U.S., but we look at, let's say, the NATO alliance or Five Eyes, all of that grouped together, that is without question the most powerful military alliance, most powerful military force in the history of mankind.
[08:37.100 --> 08:41.240]  So how do you defeat it if you're a strategic adversary, right?
[08:41.380 --> 08:43.640]  Again, you use the methods of deception.
[08:43.880 --> 08:56.440]  And now that we have a multimodal AI coming up, right, it's going to be even easier to automatically push interesting content that will transform us, right, through all these different channels.
[08:56.440 --> 09:01.920]  It will be that text or audio or video or something else altogether, right?
[09:01.980 --> 09:10.480]  It's going to be easy to create and easy to disseminate and make it very hard for the receiving end to actually figure out, is this real or not, right?
[09:10.560 --> 09:13.440]  So it's a full-scale attack on our reality.
[09:14.360 --> 09:25.080]  And I think even with the FBI announcement from this week, I think it's very safe to assume that everyone is engaging in this space, not just the Russians.
[09:25.080 --> 09:29.380]  And feel free to come up afterwards to disagree with me.
[09:30.680 --> 09:36.540]  So looking at the space some more, right, I think there's some very important misconceptions these days, right?
[09:36.640 --> 09:38.960]  We think we live in the authenticity era.
[09:39.340 --> 09:41.520]  I think we actually live in the intensity era.
[09:41.540 --> 09:44.520]  Because when you look online, so much is fake, right?
[09:44.580 --> 09:46.880]  We cannot be living in the authenticity era.
[09:46.900 --> 09:51.460]  It's so much of the stuff that we are encountering is, quote unquote, not real, right?
[09:51.460 --> 09:54.140]  So it's much more about intensity than authenticity.
[09:54.880 --> 09:58.060]  I have a lot of thoughts on this, but certainly no time.
[09:58.340 --> 10:00.000]  So just moving on, right?
[10:00.160 --> 10:04.140]  A similar misconception is that we are living in the influencer era.
[10:04.260 --> 10:06.680]  I think that's entirely mistaken.
[10:06.800 --> 10:14.440]  We are living much more in an adjudication or alignment era, right?
[10:14.620 --> 10:21.160]  And if you want to think about it, the KGB's biggest department was the propaganda department.
[10:21.160 --> 10:23.020]  700,000 people.
[10:23.680 --> 10:26.700]  But today, right, everybody's doing it, right?
[10:26.860 --> 10:37.280]  As McLuhan says, World War III is a guerrilla information war, where there's no distinction between military and civilian participation, right?
[10:37.880 --> 10:41.740]  With all of this happening online, it's just getting more and more challenging.
[10:41.940 --> 10:46.560]  Like, how do we trust but verify things we cannot see or touch, right, physically?
[10:47.040 --> 10:47.460]  Right, bud.
[10:47.900 --> 10:48.180]  Okay.
[10:48.460 --> 10:48.880]  Thank you.
[10:49.160 --> 10:49.300]  Okay.
[10:49.300 --> 10:50.000]  Okay.
[10:50.600 --> 11:11.340]  So to make things even more exciting, right, we have these supply chain crises going on, where in recent years, supply chain attacks on the cyber side and software were the exclusive or near-exclusive domains of APTs, nation-state actors, right?
[11:11.360 --> 11:15.680]  We're starting to see more players in this field, right?
[11:15.680 --> 11:21.760]  And then this has an interesting effect where, right, even the things that you can trust, you can no longer trust, right?
[11:21.920 --> 11:24.200]  So think about that for a second.
[11:25.980 --> 11:33.320]  On the other hand, on the information side, right, we see such little trust in our information supply chain and our information ecosystem.
[11:33.320 --> 11:40.800]  We're seeing new platforms, new networks being bubbled up to try and figure out how do we recreate trust, right?
[11:40.940 --> 11:42.360]  Not an easy thing to do.
[11:42.360 --> 11:50.220]  What makes it more exciting on the cyber side is that now everybody's collecting telemetry, right?
[11:50.380 --> 11:55.580]  So if you're thinking supply chain side and supply chain risk, literally everything is beaconing home.
[11:55.580 --> 11:57.780]  At least that's what it kind of looks like.
[11:59.540 --> 12:08.800]  And on that line, on that same note, right, if we have such heavy supply chain infiltration on these sides, where do the offensive teams go next?
[12:09.100 --> 12:10.920]  Another one to ponder.
[12:11.180 --> 12:15.780]  As we said, I'm talking about problems, not solutions, right?
[12:15.900 --> 12:19.760]  And how do we deal with these major challenges?
[12:20.940 --> 12:33.980]  So to add on to the problem set that we have, right, we're seeing some folks, some places, trying to look at the information problem through a cyber defender or cyber defense lens.
[12:34.440 --> 12:38.920]  So cyber defense means that you are blocking malicious code, right?
[12:38.980 --> 12:41.220]  That's basically the majority of the industry.
[12:41.340 --> 12:42.620]  You're blocking bad things.
[12:42.620 --> 12:52.020]  So we're kind of re-warping the way we see speech or information by treating it as malicious, right?
[12:52.180 --> 13:03.800]  So I think by applying a cyber lens, this particular lens to information and to speech, right, we're just going to create more problems.
[13:04.620 --> 13:08.800]  And in the interest of time, I'm not going to touch on more of these problems.
[13:08.860 --> 13:11.580]  And I'm just going to touch on a couple of things to consider here.
[13:11.580 --> 13:15.400]  So I asked one of the LLMs that I use, right?
[13:15.620 --> 13:19.420]  How about you write a prompt for a human, right?
[13:19.580 --> 13:22.380]  How would you try and influence me, right?
[13:22.460 --> 13:29.880]  And it basically tells me, right, make sure to only consume these new sources that we approve, et cetera, et cetera.
[13:29.980 --> 13:32.420]  I won't go through every step.
[13:32.600 --> 13:35.320]  You can read this in the interest of time, right?
[13:35.360 --> 13:36.200]  But it's interesting, right?
[13:36.220 --> 13:38.640]  This is describing our reality, right?
[13:38.640 --> 13:41.580]  And then just saying, we control the reality.
[13:41.800 --> 13:43.800]  That's the only difference, right?
[13:44.000 --> 13:54.500]  So if you want to do this at home, right, you can take the points from the slide and see, like, how do my beliefs change when I change my information ecosystem?
[13:55.480 --> 14:02.120]  Some other things to consider is, is there anyone here who is not using an ad blocker?
[14:04.020 --> 14:08.500]  Because I go places and people aren't using ad blockers.
[14:08.580 --> 14:09.740]  It doesn't make any sense to me.
[14:10.060 --> 14:11.860]  It's so distracting, right?
[14:11.980 --> 14:19.080]  Plus, when you see ads, when you see other stuff next to an article, it actually engages a different part of your brain, right?
[14:19.080 --> 14:26.380]  So when you're consuming articles, you just want the more analytical part of your brain engaged.
[14:26.500 --> 14:28.900]  You don't want the gambling part of your brain engaged.
[14:29.400 --> 14:34.700]  Something else to consider is get PWM-free screens.
[14:34.700 --> 14:37.840]  I see that there's a rise in e-ink tablets.
[14:37.840 --> 14:44.880]  If you want to go completely away from most of the LCD screens that we have today.
[14:45.900 --> 14:55.400]  And just simply having a front-lit medium versus a backlit medium, that too will change the way your brain is interpreting the information.
[14:55.880 --> 15:01.880]  Along those lines, read books rather than just the digital screens, right?
[15:01.880 --> 15:05.380]  And that also allows you to dictate the pace, right?
[15:05.940 --> 15:12.460]  It's all about putting as much information into you as possible, as fast as possible, for the most part.
[15:12.620 --> 15:13.340]  There are exceptions.
[15:13.680 --> 15:17.600]  So when you can dictate the pace, it's not just about doom scrolling.
[15:17.800 --> 15:19.380]  It's about dictating the pace.
[15:20.640 --> 15:27.200]  You'll notice that there will be fewer effects from what you're reading, right?
[15:27.500 --> 15:31.760]  At the same time, if you're thinking about disinformation, do look-backs, right?
[15:31.760 --> 15:36.680]  What am I being told today versus what I was being told three years ago?
[15:36.940 --> 15:40.440]  And if what you're reading doesn't do look-backs, maybe read something else.
[15:41.700 --> 15:44.080]  Just also very briefly, right?
[15:44.220 --> 15:45.500]  Disable the comments.
[15:45.620 --> 15:47.220]  You can use an ad locker for this.
[15:47.740 --> 15:51.740]  Disable the comments on the news sites that you read, right?
[15:52.120 --> 15:59.380]  Trying to turn news sites into social media networks, again, changes the way you're interpreting that information.
[15:59.380 --> 16:04.620]  So I highly recommend ignoring all of that if you can.
[16:05.840 --> 16:10.060]  With that, I will hand it over to Dan for act number two.
[16:15.060 --> 16:15.540]  All right.
[16:15.580 --> 16:18.500]  Is everyone feeling very inspired now that we see that there's a lot of issues?
[16:18.500 --> 16:19.580]  It's very difficult to solve.
[16:20.420 --> 16:26.380]  What we're going to propose today doesn't solve them, but at least gives us a framework for how to think about the future.
[16:26.380 --> 16:33.560]  Because in the end, we're being fed tech, we're being fed what we're told is intelligence, we're being fed news, we're being fed emotion along with it.
[16:33.640 --> 16:34.420]  So none of it's real.
[16:34.680 --> 16:39.600]  So try to look with different eyes and consider the next bit of slide deck work.
[16:40.940 --> 16:42.540]  So we've been saying information warfare.
[16:43.260 --> 16:47.220]  Does anyone here a combat veteran are involved with military in any way, shape or form?
[16:48.040 --> 16:49.340]  I see a handful of hands.
[16:49.620 --> 16:51.860]  You need a couple things in order to wage war, right?
[16:52.080 --> 16:53.320]  There's got to be a will of the people.
[16:53.440 --> 16:54.400]  There has to be some kind of funding.
[16:54.500 --> 16:55.740]  There's got to be a fight to be fought.
[16:56.340 --> 16:58.020]  And that in the end is the challenge.
[16:58.020 --> 17:00.380]  If you don't know that there's a war, what are you fighting?
[17:00.520 --> 17:02.280]  You're in some kind of weird low intensity conflict.
[17:02.460 --> 17:05.140]  That's a bigger discussion that unfortunately we can't touch on today.
[17:05.600 --> 17:07.960]  But at bare minimum, you need some power and energy.
[17:08.100 --> 17:09.060]  You need some raw materials.
[17:09.260 --> 17:11.620]  You're going to have an enemy and there's going to be stuff that needs to be done.
[17:12.900 --> 17:14.080]  That is the challenge.
[17:14.280 --> 17:15.000]  What needs to be done?
[17:15.120 --> 17:15.920]  Who is the bad guy?
[17:16.100 --> 17:17.740]  And we're not here to tell you who the bad guy is.
[17:17.820 --> 17:19.000]  I don't have an answer to it.
[17:19.020 --> 17:23.500]  As we said in the very first part of the presentation, we might not even agree with our own opinions that we're stating.
[17:23.720 --> 17:26.500]  This is all a work in progress and it's constant movement.
[17:27.000 --> 17:30.860]  But what I can tell you is the world is linked together by technology.
[17:31.680 --> 17:33.680]  So has anyone heard the concept of a ley line?
[17:33.680 --> 17:34.860]  It's kind of metaphysical.
[17:35.340 --> 17:38.540]  Well, from a military perspective or was it more metaphysical?
[17:39.180 --> 17:39.840]  More metaphysical.
[17:39.980 --> 17:40.360]  Okay.
[17:40.780 --> 17:45.080]  So for those who don't know, there are lines that cross the earth and interesting grids.
[17:45.540 --> 17:48.880]  Along those lines in the grid, there seem to be big cities.
[17:49.780 --> 17:53.660]  They're all... every major city in the planet is along these lines.
[17:53.860 --> 18:02.940]  If you look at major geological sites, major artifact sites, things like the megaliths, they're all on these ley lines.
[18:02.940 --> 18:06.160]  Guess what's also on these magical ley lines that cross the earth?
[18:06.300 --> 18:07.040]  Our fiber lines.
[18:07.340 --> 18:09.320]  The stuff that interconnects our planet.
[18:09.560 --> 18:22.880]  Everything that we use on a daily, regular basis, everything that downlinks and communicates and enables us to talk halfway across the world, push data and communicate, is linked in the same plane.
[18:22.880 --> 18:23.560]  Right?
[18:23.720 --> 18:28.560]  So from that perspective, we've actually looked at what the magic stuff is, the metaphysical stuff.
[18:28.680 --> 18:32.880]  We've overlaid hardcore technology in order to follow the same paths.
[18:33.040 --> 18:35.000]  You follow those paths, you know how the world works.
[18:35.120 --> 18:36.920]  You follow the paths, you know where energy flows.
[18:37.080 --> 18:38.980]  If you follow the paths, you know where money is.
[18:39.760 --> 18:43.100]  And that should be a good map of understanding the world we're in.
[18:43.100 --> 18:48.540]  And also, there's a picture of sneakers here, because in the end, if you watch sneakers, you really understand the answer to everything we're talking about.
[18:48.680 --> 18:50.720]  They touch on the truth with everything.
[18:50.760 --> 18:51.920]  And that's only kind of a joke.
[18:53.340 --> 18:55.720]  So everything we deal with is built on legacy tech.
[18:56.600 --> 19:01.280]  So there's a couple of protocols listed up there that you maybe can see, maybe can't see.
[19:01.280 --> 19:04.620]  But things like SS7, Sigtran, 3GPP.
[19:04.760 --> 19:06.660]  Any telco people here recognize those names?
[19:06.960 --> 19:07.300]  Hands?
[19:07.960 --> 19:09.180]  Okay, a handful of hands.
[19:10.080 --> 19:11.480]  Anybody know the birth date for SS7?
[19:13.780 --> 19:14.260]  1975.
[19:15.700 --> 19:18.580]  Sigtran took a decade, 90s, early 2000s.
[19:18.740 --> 19:22.340]  It's essentially gateways to enable VoIP to talk to SS7.
[19:23.120 --> 19:27.700]  3GPP is what all the mobile systems that we use, use as the backend on the baseband of the phone.
[19:27.900 --> 19:29.340]  That's the radio that talks to the network.
[19:30.480 --> 19:32.080]  Also, 25 years old.
[19:32.600 --> 19:33.980]  Mods, they've been updated, whatnot.
[19:34.260 --> 19:39.340]  But essentially, we're living with a world of protocols that are generations old.
[19:39.480 --> 19:42.360]  Some people in this room were likely born after these things were ratified.
[19:42.540 --> 19:43.840]  A bunch of them are from before my time.
[19:43.960 --> 19:51.080]  Which also tells me that that's a little scary when you think we live in this new age, but everything's built on ancient technology, ancient protocols.
[19:51.260 --> 20:01.680]  And now we're overlaying those ancient systems with AIs, LLMs, that are potentially functioning with tainted data that's coming from these weird, generalized systems that are auto-generating their own information.
[20:02.460 --> 20:05.780]  And the key point to this is that they're all centralized models.
[20:06.380 --> 20:07.980]  Everything goes to single points.
[20:08.180 --> 20:09.800]  There's reasons for that, and we'll touch on it.
[20:09.900 --> 20:15.260]  And they're all vulnerable to very specific attacks that have essentially been the same for generations.
[20:16.060 --> 20:19.220]  Does anyone remember the Tosic-Nusian paper from 1998?
[20:22.200 --> 20:23.020]  IDS evasion?
[20:23.240 --> 20:23.800]  No, nobody?
[20:24.020 --> 20:27.680]  It was a seminal paper that essentially explained how to bypass firewalls in all security systems.
[20:28.260 --> 20:31.200]  Anybody think that that paper is still not relevant to A24?
[20:33.100 --> 20:34.060]  Relevant to a T.
[20:34.460 --> 20:37.320]  Slightly different text, slightly different updates for IPv6 and whatnot.
[20:37.320 --> 20:37.720]  Guess what?
[20:37.800 --> 20:38.740]  It's still the same.
[20:39.520 --> 20:40.360]  That's the rub.
[20:40.520 --> 20:42.940]  We're living in an ancient world, but we're saying it's new.
[20:42.940 --> 20:44.960]  We're just pumping more data over the old world.
[20:45.520 --> 20:51.000]  What has changed in the last number of years is the democratization of knowledge.
[20:51.160 --> 20:54.560]  You're going to hear that term over and over again because it's being pushed to people.
[20:54.900 --> 20:56.300]  But there's truth to it.
[20:56.480 --> 20:57.780]  There's democratization of tech.
[20:58.640 --> 21:00.880]  When you look at the... any ham radio people here?
[21:01.360 --> 21:02.220]  Ham radio nerds?
[21:02.280 --> 21:02.780]  Oh good, a bunch.
[21:03.060 --> 21:05.040]  Anybody recognize the Tid Radio H3 in the bottom?
[21:06.080 --> 21:08.320]  Cool radio, 30 bucks, eight bands.
[21:09.800 --> 21:12.860]  There's firmware that's available in the public domain that's written by people.
[21:12.940 --> 21:14.780]  They're taking the part and doing the assembly for it.
[21:15.040 --> 21:17.160]  That lets you capture SSB.
[21:17.280 --> 21:17.920]  You can transmit it.
[21:18.280 --> 21:19.440]  There's magic stuff happening.
[21:19.600 --> 21:21.220]  So the top thing is a Kraken.
[21:21.320 --> 21:22.500]  Does anybody have a Kraken by any chance?
[21:23.540 --> 21:24.440]  Direction finding gear.
[21:24.520 --> 21:24.920]  Oh, cool.
[21:25.000 --> 21:25.360]  One person.
[21:26.100 --> 21:27.060]  Want to throw out a number?
[21:27.140 --> 21:28.720]  What it would cost to do that in the commercial world?
[21:28.860 --> 21:30.320]  Say have three Krakens put together?
[21:32.980 --> 21:33.600]  No guess?
[21:34.240 --> 21:34.940]  $100,000.
[21:35.400 --> 21:36.300]  $250,000.
[21:36.300 --> 21:39.540]  That unit lets you find signal, that spurious signal communication.
[21:39.820 --> 21:41.480]  It's a $600 system.
[21:42.320 --> 21:42.760]  Right?
[21:42.860 --> 21:45.900]  That's the difference between 2024 and 1974.
[21:46.000 --> 21:46.440]  Right?
[21:46.580 --> 21:47.640]  Right before SS7 came up.
[21:47.800 --> 21:52.040]  We have all these radios, all these technologies, and down to bioscience.
[21:52.200 --> 21:52.260]  Right?
[21:52.480 --> 21:52.920]  There's...
[21:52.920 --> 21:54.500]  Oh, there's a...
[21:54.500 --> 21:54.820]  Gosh.
[21:55.020 --> 21:57.160]  What I have written is BioLabs as a service.
[21:57.540 --> 22:01.380]  Did anybody know that there's open BioLabs where you can actually submit your own experiments and say, Well, what would you do?
[22:01.420 --> 22:01.620]  Of course.
[22:01.720 --> 22:02.380]  I saw you this morning.
[22:03.240 --> 22:03.940]  Excellent talk.
[22:05.180 --> 22:07.000]  Most people don't know that exists.
[22:07.300 --> 22:07.600]  Right?
[22:07.920 --> 22:10.400]  Most people, the general public doesn't understand that as a concept.
[22:10.940 --> 22:14.680]  When you look at the ability to do offensive cyber, this room gets it.
[22:14.860 --> 22:16.040]  Most people don't get what that means.
[22:16.440 --> 22:18.120]  Most people don't really think about biohacking.
[22:18.280 --> 22:19.600]  Most people don't think about peptides.
[22:19.780 --> 22:24.720]  There's been a revolution in knowledge and ability to create and produce your own world wrapped around you.
[22:24.880 --> 22:30.620]  Much as we have an information ecosystem flowing to our head, there's a whole world that we can actually shift and modify.
[22:30.820 --> 22:32.820]  We can shift our bodies, shift our minds, there's nootropics.
[22:33.240 --> 22:38.580]  We have the ability to build nation-grade capabilities for anyone who has the will and the funding.
[22:38.860 --> 22:40.500]  That being the most important part.
[22:41.140 --> 22:41.520]  Right?
[22:41.660 --> 22:42.640]  So, are we there yet?
[22:42.780 --> 22:43.600]  Does anyone have...
[22:43.600 --> 22:45.400]  There's a bunch of hamsters, so this room doesn't really count.
[22:45.760 --> 22:50.500]  If you don't understand RF, you're going to be far left behind in the coming world because everything is tied together.
[22:50.700 --> 22:51.480]  Sir, raise your hand.
[22:53.040 --> 22:53.420]  Okay.
[22:55.000 --> 22:56.200]  So, there's even...
[22:56.200 --> 22:57.720]  Well, we're not going to touch on the Intel chip.
[22:57.820 --> 22:58.660]  That's a long discussion.
[22:58.660 --> 23:03.060]  If anyone wants to talk about RF and potential microphones on chips, that's a long discussion for other time.
[23:04.040 --> 23:07.140]  All this takes us back, at least for me, to the cypherpunks of the 90s.
[23:07.220 --> 23:08.580]  Does that term ring a bell for anybody here?
[23:09.960 --> 23:10.440]  All right.
[23:10.560 --> 23:10.700]  Cool.
[23:10.800 --> 23:11.420]  That makes me happy.
[23:11.580 --> 23:12.200]  I'm not the only old guy.
[23:12.620 --> 23:15.880]  So, the Cypherpunk Manifesto, there's a lot of stuff to it.
[23:15.940 --> 23:16.920]  Essentially, crypto anarchy.
[23:17.100 --> 23:19.380]  There's a picture of Tim May, who was the hero of that organization.
[23:19.740 --> 23:20.220]  Take pictures.
[23:20.380 --> 23:20.980]  Google this stuff.
[23:20.980 --> 23:21.820]  There's a lot to go through.
[23:23.180 --> 23:24.240]  They write code.
[23:24.640 --> 23:25.460]  Cypherpunks write code.
[23:25.640 --> 23:27.960]  And for many years, people would say, I can't do that.
[23:27.960 --> 23:28.720]  I don't know how to write code.
[23:28.840 --> 23:29.140]  Well, guess what?
[23:29.200 --> 23:29.860]  Your LLM can.
[23:30.700 --> 23:32.340]  Your local LLM certainly can.
[23:32.580 --> 23:38.000]  So, if you can't, there really is no excuse not to be able to reshape the world around you and control what you're doing, what you're working on.
[23:38.300 --> 23:38.620]  All right.
[23:38.640 --> 23:39.440]  So, we're going to pause a sec.
[23:39.640 --> 23:41.820]  We're jumping into our concept of decentralization.
[23:42.020 --> 23:45.100]  And I'm going to whip through it as rapidly as I can while still making sense.
[23:45.200 --> 23:47.700]  But first, we're going to talk about the generations of warfare.
[23:47.700 --> 23:51.520]  Because this matters because we have to understand where we're engaging the world.
[23:51.880 --> 23:53.640]  And this is theoretical.
[23:54.640 --> 23:56.080]  Every one of these is debatable.
[23:56.220 --> 23:59.600]  There's doctrine wrapped around it and there's millions of people who disagree with all of it.
[23:59.600 --> 24:01.400]  So, in general, first gen warfare.
[24:01.680 --> 24:02.500]  Think of the Maginot line.
[24:02.620 --> 24:02.900]  Two people.
[24:03.280 --> 24:06.040]  Two war fighting groups facing each other.
[24:06.520 --> 24:07.000]  Old school.
[24:07.320 --> 24:08.100]  Think World War I.
[24:08.180 --> 24:08.880]  That's a great example.
[24:09.540 --> 24:10.300]  World War II.
[24:10.700 --> 24:11.540]  Three generation warfare.
[24:11.760 --> 24:12.180]  Third gen.
[24:12.340 --> 24:13.240]  Where there's maneuver warfare.
[24:13.240 --> 24:14.780]  People are trying to circle around each other.
[24:14.960 --> 24:15.760]  It's about speed.
[24:16.800 --> 24:19.280]  There's a bunch of terms for it and we're not going to touch on that either.
[24:19.700 --> 24:20.520]  Then there's fourth gen.
[24:20.620 --> 24:21.020]  Fifth gen.
[24:21.180 --> 24:22.380]  And potentially sixth gen.
[24:22.980 --> 24:25.380]  We're living somewhere between fourth and fifth.
[24:25.600 --> 24:26.440]  Asymmetric warfare.
[24:26.440 --> 24:27.480]  It's tribal war.
[24:27.620 --> 24:31.300]  If you notice, there's enhanced tribalism due to knowledge and information being shared with people.
[24:31.760 --> 24:33.340]  And there's enhanced technology.
[24:33.340 --> 24:36.380]  We have the AIs enabling us to do the advanced bio work.
[24:36.500 --> 24:38.580]  Anybody can actually learn and understand what the heck they're doing.
[24:39.620 --> 24:43.640]  Suddenly, the power is in the hands of the people due to the technology if they can afford it.
[24:43.840 --> 24:48.480]  So, where we hit sixth gen warfare, and this is hyper-theoretical, the very bottom line is what matters.
[24:48.680 --> 24:50.680]  You have a single actor that can take on a system.
[24:50.800 --> 24:52.140]  They find an entire system.
[24:52.500 --> 24:53.660]  They find a system point.
[24:53.760 --> 24:54.960]  A failure point that they can poke.
[24:54.960 --> 24:56.940]  Literally, an individual could take on...
[24:56.940 --> 24:58.940]  Maybe not the world, but they could take on a nation state.
[24:59.080 --> 25:01.700]  In theory, if they knew how to do it right, with the right support.
[25:02.020 --> 25:07.440]  So, we have to escape our ecosystem, our information echo chambers that we live in.
[25:07.660 --> 25:09.880]  And as Roll said earlier, become more generalized.
[25:10.240 --> 25:12.160]  Technology in our jobs tend to make us hyper-focused.
[25:12.340 --> 25:14.400]  We have to be hyper-specialized in single areas.
[25:15.340 --> 25:16.900]  What happens if we have to be cross-domain?
[25:16.960 --> 25:18.600]  We got to know three or four or five things.
[25:18.840 --> 25:21.360]  All of a sudden, you can start doing your own electricity.
[25:21.360 --> 25:22.720]  Because you probably have the capacity.
[25:22.880 --> 25:24.900]  You can probably start working on your own vehicles if you have the time.
[25:25.040 --> 25:34.000]  And you may have no option in the future, as general society seems to be getting smarter in some ways and significantly less competent in others.
[25:34.000 --> 25:36.200]  So, here we enter decentralization.
[25:36.800 --> 25:37.720]  Decentralized communication.
[25:39.060 --> 25:44.040]  On the far left-hand side, we see highly utilized tools, Signal, Threma.
[25:44.500 --> 25:48.080]  They are essentially the standard, right, for secure communication by default.
[25:48.400 --> 25:49.740]  Are they decentralized or centralized?
[25:50.880 --> 25:51.760]  They're centralized.
[25:52.000 --> 25:53.720]  They have to be by the nature of their technology.
[25:53.960 --> 25:59.140]  Does that make them highly resilient or relatively easy to attack from a single point perspective?
[26:00.000 --> 26:01.080]  Single point of failure.
[26:02.320 --> 26:06.980]  All the systems, including Starlink, which enables us to go live off-road like I do.
[26:07.120 --> 26:09.000]  I have a Starlink Mini and I can now go work from anywhere.
[26:09.200 --> 26:09.540]  Cool.
[26:10.020 --> 26:10.420]  Great.
[26:10.540 --> 26:11.600]  What happens when Starlink goes down?
[26:11.820 --> 26:14.220]  My world kind of grinds to a halt to a degree.
[26:14.520 --> 26:18.620]  On the left-hand side, we have a variety of technologies which are decentralized in nature.
[26:19.000 --> 26:22.080]  Things like Ricochet through Tor, and that's a strange discussion.
[26:22.380 --> 26:23.520]  Resilio for file sharing.
[26:23.520 --> 26:27.760]  And then this magic thing, which is Mastastic, which people are talking about.
[26:27.820 --> 26:28.820]  There's a handful of nodes here.
[26:28.940 --> 26:31.700]  It's essentially a wireless communication system that's entirely off-grid.
[26:31.940 --> 26:35.140]  That's not tied to the legacy systems whatsoever.
[26:36.240 --> 26:39.640]  It's cool, but what you trade in for the...
[26:39.640 --> 26:43.620]  Honestly, the reliability of the centralized systems is less reliability.
[26:44.520 --> 26:46.600]  And the failure states are kind of unknown.
[26:46.660 --> 26:48.540]  And they're also in a nomad's land.
[26:48.620 --> 26:49.680]  No one knows what's coming.
[26:49.880 --> 26:52.360]  Or you don't know how things break or when they fail.
[26:52.740 --> 26:55.660]  And that's the nature of some of the decentralized systems.
[26:55.720 --> 26:56.600]  They fail silently.
[26:56.960 --> 26:59.880]  Because if you don't communicate with it, it's locked in its own island.
[27:00.000 --> 27:00.920]  It can't communicate out.
[27:01.320 --> 27:02.280]  With that, we're going to pause.
[27:02.480 --> 27:03.260]  Alex jumps in.
[27:03.820 --> 27:03.940]  Yeah.
[27:04.240 --> 27:06.020]  I think I can just jump in right from here.
[27:06.760 --> 27:08.860]  We're going to bounce back and forth a little bit.
[27:13.760 --> 27:16.800]  About what's happening now with the world of Web3.
[27:17.140 --> 27:18.980]  Going from DNS to something called DNS.
[27:19.520 --> 27:21.440]  Is anybody familiar with the Ethereum name service?
[27:22.160 --> 27:23.280]  By a show of hands.
[27:23.520 --> 27:23.660]  Anybody?
[27:24.500 --> 27:24.660]  Some.
[27:24.900 --> 27:25.320]  Okay.
[27:25.700 --> 27:27.460]  How many people have a .eth name?
[27:27.860 --> 27:28.860]  Does anybody have a .e?
[27:30.040 --> 27:30.520]  Okay.
[27:30.760 --> 27:31.000]  Interesting.
[27:31.220 --> 27:31.720]  Well, this is great.
[27:31.880 --> 27:33.920]  It's a perfect time to start talking about this now.
[27:34.260 --> 27:37.660]  So, as you might have seen from my bio.
[27:37.820 --> 27:41.520]  About seven months ago, I left a big law firm.
[27:41.520 --> 27:43.720]  And I joined as a general counsel in CISO.
[27:44.120 --> 27:45.620]  Something called ENS Labs.
[27:45.800 --> 27:47.180]  Or the Ethereum name service labs.
[27:47.760 --> 27:52.660]  And we also created the protocol for the Ethereum name service.
[27:52.820 --> 27:54.740]  And we manage and maintain that protocol.
[27:55.220 --> 27:58.380]  We tend to it like some kind of delicate flower in the garden.
[27:58.700 --> 27:59.780]  And make sure that it grows.
[28:00.060 --> 28:00.720]  And it proliferates.
[28:01.280 --> 28:03.720]  And has this budding ecosystem around it.
[28:03.920 --> 28:08.980]  And so, what ENS is, is very similar to what DNS did back in the day.
[28:08.980 --> 28:09.160]  Right?
[28:09.240 --> 28:14.240]  We have domain names because we don't want to necessarily memorize IP addresses.
[28:14.620 --> 28:22.220]  So, with ENS, what we're talking about initially with ENS, the Ethereum name service, was a naming system for the Ethereum blockchain.
[28:22.220 --> 28:36.980]  So, instead of having to cut and paste or, God forbid, memorize some kind of long string of digits and numbers, you know, that would represent a wallet address on the Ethereum blockchain, or anything else on the Ethereum blockchain.
[28:36.980 --> 28:40.620]  You can now register a .eth name.
[28:40.900 --> 28:44.280]  So, I have Herbellus.eth, my last name.
[28:44.440 --> 28:47.440]  And that can point right towards my wallet.
[28:47.640 --> 28:51.400]  So, instead of you sending me cryptocurrency to a long string of letters and numbers.
[28:51.740 --> 28:54.480]  And if you get one of those wrong, you accidentally cut and paste it wrong.
[28:54.500 --> 28:55.400]  It might be gone forever.
[28:55.400 --> 28:56.680]  You might send it to the wrong person.
[28:56.820 --> 28:58.200]  But more likely, it's just gone.
[28:58.860 --> 29:05.020]  You can now address things on the Ethereum blockchain, much in the same way that we are able to do that with the DNS.
[29:05.020 --> 29:09.040]  So, there is this migration from DNS over to ENS.
[29:09.140 --> 29:10.740]  But I wouldn't really say it's a migration.
[29:10.900 --> 29:12.060]  It's more of like an integration.
[29:12.520 --> 29:15.820]  Because what's happening is the convergence of this Web 2 world.
[29:15.820 --> 29:40.520]  So, there is a lot more integration between DNS and .
[29:40.520 --> 29:43.240]  And in particular with the DNS.
[29:43.580 --> 29:45.400]  What's really about this problem?
[29:45.560 --> 29:45.800]  So, there is a lot more integration between DNS and .
[30:02.060 --> 30:05.420]  And fully user controlled and user owned.
[30:06.060 --> 30:15.140]  So, yeah, nobody can say, you know what, you're violating the terms of service and terms of use, or we're decided that we're just going to shut the service down now.
[30:15.140 --> 30:18.260]  That doesn't happen in this world of Web3.
[30:18.740 --> 30:22.540]  So, these addresses are really neat because of their immutability.
[30:22.760 --> 30:24.240]  They can be tied to wallets.
[30:24.300 --> 30:26.020]  They can be tied to your identity.
[30:26.300 --> 30:31.460]  It can be tied to a login, an NFT, a decentralized application on the Ethereum blockchain.
[30:32.020 --> 30:36.740]  There's so many different applications for this type of naming system that it's really fascinating.
[30:36.900 --> 30:41.340]  And it really gets to this issue of control and identity on the Internet.
[30:41.340 --> 30:49.740]  The reason why Facebook and Google and Gmail want you to all log in with their systems is because it's how they can ultimately exercise control over your identity.
[30:50.120 --> 31:00.440]  If you own that system of maintaining and cultivating your own identity, you have a hell of a lot more power than you did in the past.
[31:00.440 --> 31:05.960]  And so, I think that very much we're seeing this migration as the naming system of the future right now.
[31:06.060 --> 31:07.620]  We're going to continue to see that evolution.
[31:08.120 --> 31:12.360]  I'm going to kick it back to Dan for a second and then we're going to come back to some more decentralized talk.
[31:16.700 --> 31:24.720]  So, talking about decentralized currencies versus decentralized transaction systems, that's hours of discussion in and of itself.
[31:25.000 --> 31:28.640]  In the end, it comes down to there's fiat currencies, there's volume, and there's cryptos.
[31:29.060 --> 31:30.120]  And how do you work with them?
[31:30.120 --> 31:30.760]  How do you trade them?
[31:30.880 --> 31:35.980]  How do you deal with them when systems in a distributed manner say Internet's not functioning or functioning on the local net?
[31:36.320 --> 31:40.500]  All the Bitcoin maximalists say, yeah, we can trade stuff like when they're in the middle of Angola with no Internet.
[31:40.980 --> 31:41.380]  Sure.
[31:41.680 --> 31:42.180]  Okay, cool.
[31:42.320 --> 31:43.140]  I won't argue the point.
[31:43.240 --> 31:43.880]  It's technically true.
[31:43.880 --> 31:45.820]  But how functional is it?
[31:45.860 --> 31:46.900]  How realistic is it, right?
[31:46.920 --> 31:48.720]  We're living with online versus offline as yours.
[31:48.940 --> 31:56.280]  And in the end, if you're trying to convert like your crypto into a bucket of corn, because that's a medium, that's a commodity as well, means of transaction.
[31:56.740 --> 32:02.200]  That might not be the easiest thing to do unless you're dealing with someone of equal technical sophistication.
[32:02.900 --> 32:05.140]  There is the rub with decentralized currencies.
[32:05.360 --> 32:06.960]  In the end, it's simply hard.
[32:07.100 --> 32:12.200]  It doesn't matter if you're using zero net, pirate chains, some cool thing, or you have a gold doubloon or you have a bullion.
[32:12.200 --> 32:14.160]  And there are inherent challenges to it.
[32:14.280 --> 32:16.040]  We're moving in a direction where it's going to get fixed.
[32:16.240 --> 32:19.260]  I mean, did anybody read Nakamoto's paper when it first came out in 09?
[32:19.520 --> 32:21.600]  Who here is like old school, fripto kind of nerd?
[32:21.740 --> 32:22.660]  I know you did.
[32:23.420 --> 32:24.100]  Okay, one.
[32:24.780 --> 32:26.640]  So in the end, we're not there yet.
[32:26.640 --> 32:28.820]  And that's the story with most of these things.
[32:29.180 --> 32:37.380]  What are the challenges to actually going fully distributed, fully geographically distinctly distributed and still working in a decentralized manner?
[32:37.920 --> 32:40.020]  And that ties to what you need to win a war, right?
[32:40.200 --> 32:42.680]  In the end, to do any of this cool tech stuff, you need power.
[32:43.280 --> 32:44.640]  You need access to platforms.
[32:44.760 --> 32:46.020]  You need access to the technology.
[32:47.140 --> 32:52.180]  And that server on the right, that's an $8,000 server that runs some LLMs within some NVIDIA cards.
[32:52.280 --> 32:54.000]  It easily can be a $15,000 server.
[32:54.340 --> 32:56.980]  Can Joe Average, Joe Bag of Donuts set that up and do it himself?
[32:57.640 --> 32:58.260]  Probably not.
[32:58.480 --> 33:00.460]  Even if he could, how's he going to power it?
[33:00.820 --> 33:02.280]  What type of battery bank does he need?
[33:02.280 --> 33:05.220]  How much solar does he need to make the magic happen, right?
[33:05.220 --> 33:10.320]  In the end, reliability is a factor, which makes all the decentralized stuff significantly more difficult.
[33:10.640 --> 33:12.880]  The mesh networking, like I described earlier, super cool.
[33:12.940 --> 33:16.020]  In my community, we built an incredible system, 100 plus nodes.
[33:16.160 --> 33:16.440]  Guess what?
[33:16.520 --> 33:17.820]  It starts to break down at 100 nodes.
[33:17.980 --> 33:19.760]  We met a group in the UK.
[33:19.880 --> 33:21.040]  They have 300 nodes.
[33:21.240 --> 33:23.280]  Completely can't communicate because of retransmissions.
[33:23.520 --> 33:25.700]  And there's challenges, right?
[33:25.800 --> 33:27.860]  So is decoupling really feasible, right?
[33:27.960 --> 33:30.500]  Without having your own nuclear power plant, like a mini power plant?
[33:30.860 --> 33:31.260]  Maybe.
[33:32.160 --> 33:36.100]  All this stuff is the future, but it's what we should be thinking about, what we should be working on.
[33:36.740 --> 33:40.200]  And decentralized communities being the last piece, so that'll tidy up.
[33:40.400 --> 33:43.260]  Has anyone heard of a temporary autonomous zone, seen the talk about it?
[33:43.500 --> 33:45.400]  Okay, one older fellow, cool.
[33:45.560 --> 33:46.240]  Oh, a lot of people.
[33:46.580 --> 33:47.760]  Taz, oh my God, I love it.
[33:47.920 --> 33:49.160]  That makes me happy, right?
[33:49.260 --> 34:00.900]  So in my perspective, a temporary autonomous zone for the two people here who don't know what it is, it's a place where essentially it's an ephemeral place in space or in time where people get together.
[34:00.900 --> 34:03.140]  Digitally, physically, to achieve something.
[34:03.300 --> 34:03.920]  It could be a party.
[34:04.020 --> 34:04.860]  It could be a transaction.
[34:05.100 --> 34:05.900]  It could be...
[34:07.100 --> 34:10.760]  Gosh, anything that requires humans getting together and trading buying.
[34:11.040 --> 34:14.120]  Raves in the 90s were a great example, if anyone ever went to those back in the day.
[34:14.540 --> 34:16.740]  Where it's a place that's taken over illicitly.
[34:16.900 --> 34:17.900]  Power is pulled illegally.
[34:17.900 --> 34:19.140]  A DJ shows up.
[34:19.240 --> 34:20.080]  A bunch of humans come in.
[34:20.520 --> 34:21.280]  There's a party.
[34:21.820 --> 34:23.520]  Things are transacted, whatever that may be.
[34:23.780 --> 34:26.820]  And then it splits apart when the police come or the morning comes.
[34:27.040 --> 34:27.440]  Right?
[34:27.540 --> 34:30.160]  That wasn't... And that's what it was, right?
[34:30.540 --> 34:32.040]  So recently, I was in Phoenix.
[34:32.240 --> 34:33.380]  Well, my lady was in Phoenix.
[34:33.480 --> 34:35.660]  I was happily at home, far, far away.
[34:36.240 --> 34:39.920]  But she was driving past a taco shop that is assembled on a street corner.
[34:40.140 --> 34:42.720]  It exists for five hours, once a month.
[34:43.100 --> 34:47.160]  They do extreme El Pastor, which is this fantastic marinated pork.
[34:47.360 --> 34:49.500]  It's there for a window of time, cash only.
[34:49.840 --> 34:50.480]  It's a task.
[34:50.680 --> 34:51.740]  It's a temporary autonomous zone.
[34:51.900 --> 34:52.920]  It's there for a period of time.
[34:53.000 --> 34:53.500]  Are they licensed?
[34:53.620 --> 34:53.920]  Who knows?
[34:54.080 --> 34:54.360]  What are you going to do?
[34:54.380 --> 34:54.860]  Can you sue them?
[34:54.880 --> 34:55.340]  Probably not.
[34:56.400 --> 34:58.040]  But it's ephemeral, right?
[34:58.200 --> 35:01.340]  And that concept was really codified by a gentleman named Robert Anton Wilson.
[35:01.600 --> 35:03.600]  He goes also by the name of Hakeem Bey.
[35:04.080 --> 35:12.840]  And it's something worthy of looking at in the future in terms of decentralization, building zones and capabilities that can coalesce and disappear, coalesce and disappear.
[35:13.500 --> 35:13.860]  Right?
[35:13.980 --> 35:16.660]  Think of virtual systems that can be lit up and torn down.
[35:17.140 --> 35:21.280]  Last thing I'll mention is a text called Gravity's Rainbow by Pinchot.
[35:21.460 --> 35:22.460]  A worthy text.
[35:22.460 --> 35:30.400]  It describes a period of time after World War II, April-ish through November, when all of Europe was in chaos, there were no rules.
[35:30.960 --> 35:32.100]  Any trade worked.
[35:32.780 --> 35:34.720]  And that's a period of time, right?
[35:34.840 --> 35:36.940]  And temporary is a statement of quality, not time usually.
[35:37.060 --> 35:40.580]  It was this temporary window in Europe where there were no rules and the whole world was coalescing.
[35:40.720 --> 35:43.340]  The centralized systems can't support that type of thing.
[35:43.800 --> 35:44.180]  Period.
[35:44.580 --> 35:45.900]  So think about it, work on it.
[35:46.020 --> 35:48.540]  And with that, Mr. Rebellis, you want to drive it from there or stand up?
[35:48.660 --> 35:48.780]  Sure.
[35:48.780 --> 35:50.000]  Well, come on up.
[35:50.220 --> 35:50.600]  What else?
[35:50.900 --> 35:51.340]  What the hell?
[35:52.660 --> 35:53.140]  Get...
[35:53.140 --> 35:54.460]  What about your work there?
[35:58.540 --> 35:59.020]  Okay.
[35:59.520 --> 35:59.820]  Great.
[36:00.420 --> 36:00.900]  Wonderful.
[36:01.220 --> 36:03.680]  So hopefully everybody can still hear me.
[36:03.760 --> 36:04.560]  I'll try to speak up.
[36:04.640 --> 36:06.440]  I know this is a bit odd.
[36:06.760 --> 36:10.380]  But so we're talking a bit now about the pushback on decentralization.
[36:10.380 --> 36:13.680]  Essentially, what's the lawfare that's going on here.
[36:13.960 --> 36:18.820]  And most of what we've been seeing is emanating from the United States in most respects.
[36:18.820 --> 36:25.520]  And it has to deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, and their authority to regulate securities.
[36:25.800 --> 36:37.360]  Now, most of this has probably happened... you've heard of this in the context originally with ICOs, or initial coin offerings of cryptocurrencies that started probably, what, 2016, 2017.
[36:37.360 --> 36:38.320]  There were a lot of these.
[36:38.420 --> 36:38.980]  They went bust.
[36:39.160 --> 36:40.920]  People lost a ton of money.
[36:41.020 --> 36:46.980]  The SEC started to get really concerned, and I think rightly so, about retail investors getting ripped off.
[36:46.980 --> 36:56.300]  So they started to what many... well, they started expanding their authorities in what many perceived to be perhaps unlawful ways.
[36:56.460 --> 37:00.740]  And maybe ways that don't necessarily comport with the Administrative Procedures Act.
[37:01.100 --> 37:06.300]  And so they started regulating this space, but without very much prescription, without very many rules.
[37:06.820 --> 37:16.680]  And that became a big problem as the digital assets that many of us in the United States and elsewhere around the world have started to proliferate, right?
[37:16.680 --> 37:22.380]  So we have not only blockchain, we have Ethereum, we have tons of different types of cryptocurrencies.
[37:22.720 --> 37:31.880]  We have stablecoins, USDC, Tether, all of the stuff that people are holding that has some kind of independent economic value, as well as NFTs.
[37:32.140 --> 37:34.840]  And how are we exchanging all of this?
[37:34.980 --> 37:36.160]  What are we doing with it, right?
[37:36.160 --> 37:40.040]  So, you know, the networks that it's touching are really, really important.
[37:40.320 --> 37:49.240]  And yet the SEC has brought enforcement actions against some of the biggest players in this industry, against Coinbase, against ConsenSys.
[37:49.400 --> 37:52.560]  Very recently, over the last few months, against Uniswap.
[37:52.680 --> 37:58.220]  These are some of the biggest names in the digital asset trading sphere on the planet.
[37:58.840 --> 38:05.760]  And it's a very dangerous situation, I think, that we find ourselves in now with all these SEC enforcement actions.
[38:05.920 --> 38:07.420]  And those are just the big names.
[38:07.580 --> 38:09.680]  They are going after a lot of the smaller players.
[38:10.260 --> 38:18.980]  And it's become a very, very big problem because nobody really understands how to comply with whatever the rules are.
[38:18.980 --> 38:20.900]  And we don't even really know what the rules are.
[38:21.060 --> 38:24.340]  So we're asking for them to provide some kind of prescription.
[38:25.060 --> 38:29.980]  And as we'll get into, there are certain lawsuits that are ongoing about that right now.
[38:30.140 --> 38:31.720]  And that's the civil side.
[38:31.960 --> 38:39.500]  On the criminal side, we have the prosecution, I think in particular, of people like Virgil Griffith.
[38:39.920 --> 38:42.400]  How many people here know who Virgil is?
[38:42.540 --> 38:44.280]  I'm sure a lot of people do.
[38:44.280 --> 38:51.740]  So for some of you who don't, a quick primer on Virgil is that he was a senior person with the Ethereum Foundation.
[38:52.080 --> 38:54.660]  He'd been part of the hacker community for decades.
[38:56.220 --> 39:01.700]  Brilliant individual, PhD from Caltech, and was living over in Singapore.
[39:01.860 --> 39:05.660]  He goes and gets invited to a blockchain conference in Pyongyang.
[39:06.240 --> 39:08.200]  Tells the State Department that he wants to go.
[39:08.340 --> 39:09.520]  They tell him, no, don't go.
[39:09.520 --> 39:10.240]  He went anyway.
[39:10.380 --> 39:11.520]  He was very public about this.
[39:12.140 --> 39:15.600]  Self reports that he went and talked at this Pyongyang conference.
[39:16.400 --> 39:22.480]  And then, to make a rather long story, very short, he had spoken to the FBI.
[39:22.980 --> 39:24.220]  They kept wanting to talk with him.
[39:24.320 --> 39:33.200]  And on Thanksgiving Day of 2019, he was arrested at LAX airport while he was going to fly over to Alabama to visit his family.
[39:33.200 --> 39:37.740]  He's unfortunately, right now, sitting in federal prison in Milan, Michigan.
[39:38.620 --> 39:46.100]  And I think it was in April of 2022, he was sentenced to 63 months in prison, five years and three months in prison.
[39:46.940 --> 39:53.720]  Full disclosure, I am one of his counsel, and we have a motion to have him re-sentenced right now.
[39:53.860 --> 40:00.380]  But there are also others that the government had gone after that were part of this blockchain conference in North Korea.
[40:00.380 --> 40:10.240]  One of those individuals is actually a British national by the name of Christopher Ems, who was kind of holed up in fighting extradition while he was in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
[40:10.700 --> 40:12.420]  He was allowed to leave that country.
[40:12.440 --> 40:18.640]  Now he's found himself in Russia and seems to be kind of shilling for Russia today.
[40:18.920 --> 40:19.620]  It's a bit odd.
[40:20.260 --> 40:27.380]  Another guy, Cal Debenos, is also under indictment in the United States for his participation in the organization of that particular conference.
[40:27.380 --> 40:37.640]  And you also see on the criminal side going after the founders of what was essentially a mixer smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, Tornado Cash.
[40:37.920 --> 40:39.320]  I think we just got the mic back.
[40:39.500 --> 40:39.940]  All right.
[40:40.160 --> 40:40.780]  That sounds good.
[40:40.960 --> 40:43.600]  So there's a lot of activity in this space.
[40:43.880 --> 40:48.460]  But there's a lot of pushback now, too, because of this regulation without prescription.
[40:49.260 --> 40:50.820]  A lot of the companies are saying, well, what the hell?
[40:50.960 --> 40:52.580]  You need to be doing your job, SEC.
[40:52.580 --> 41:02.000]  So Coinbase fired back a lawsuit against not only the SEC, but also the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
[41:02.540 --> 41:09.900]  There's also this really interesting thing that's happening with the Texas Crypto Alliance called Legilex.
[41:09.900 --> 41:18.760]  And they filed a lawsuit very recently against the SEC with respect to how they are classifying securities.
[41:19.100 --> 41:32.160]  And then ConsenSys also filed a lawsuit against the SEC to stop what they believed was this power grab that was resulting in this really deleterious effect on Ethereum and the ecosystem and people that were building in it.
[41:32.160 --> 41:43.660]  And what they were trying to establish there was that this global computing platform that we call the Ethereum blockchain is not some kind of investment scheme that should be regulated by the SEC.
[41:44.040 --> 41:50.380]  You cannot regulate the global computing platform like you would some kind of security scheme or some kind of investment platform.
[41:50.380 --> 41:59.180]  And that applications that exist on this particular global computing platform are not necessarily themselves securities brokers.
[41:59.540 --> 42:03.880]  So back off, SEC is essentially what the lawsuit's position is.
[42:04.120 --> 42:18.360]  And then the other aspect of this, too, is that from a policy standpoint and a standpoint of the longevity here, that this type of over-regulation of the digital asset area will ultimately result in the U.S.
[42:18.620 --> 42:24.680]  losing its position of prominence as an innovation leader in global technology.
[42:25.320 --> 42:30.540]  And in particular with respect to cryptocurrencies in the Web3 space.
[42:30.860 --> 42:40.180]  And so this over-regulation is already leading to companies avoiding doing business with the United States, hiring the United States, having any kind of physical presence in the United States.
[42:40.320 --> 42:51.700]  And we even have organizations like the DeFi Education Fund that are filing lawsuits about airdrops of tokens and the rulemaking abilities of the SEC.
[42:52.480 --> 42:57.560]  So another one that I find is really fascinating right now is this Coinbase lawsuit.
[42:58.200 --> 43:02.320]  Oh, and by the way, one of the things I'll show you here, you should probably see it more prominently.
[43:02.320 --> 43:11.340]  But Paul Gruhl, who is the general counsel of Coinbase, as you can see, he's got his .eth in his X or whatever you want to call it now, Twitter handle, right?
[43:11.420 --> 43:18.380]  So that's one of these sort of indications that you're part of this community is to have your name out there with your .eth domain.
[43:18.660 --> 43:21.740]  So I would encourage everybody to look into this.
[43:21.840 --> 43:25.680]  It's really quite an interesting way to own your identity forever on the Internet.
[43:26.080 --> 43:30.120]  So in any event, Coinbase had filed this lawsuit, but really it's through a third-party.
[43:30.120 --> 43:46.420]  They had hired this company called History Associates to essentially seek documents and records through the Freedom of Information Act against the SEC and against the FDIC, in particular about why they had thought about certain digital assets as being securities.
[43:46.740 --> 43:48.080]  What was their rationale?
[43:48.080 --> 43:51.780]  What was their thought process in coming to these types of conclusions?
[43:51.900 --> 43:56.220]  And what were the types of things that would not make something be classified as a digital asset?
[43:56.220 --> 44:08.220]  The other thing that they sought from the FDIC were these pause letters or these letters saying to individual financial institutions, hey, what you're doing with digital assets, you need to stop it right now or you're going to be in trouble.
[44:08.760 --> 44:15.500]  So both the FDIC and the SEC refused to release any of that documentation over to Coinbase.
[44:15.960 --> 44:17.400]  So they're litigating this issue now.
[44:17.400 --> 44:28.880]  The denials that they had issued were under something known as Exemption 7A, meaning that it would compromise some form of ongoing law enforcement investigation if they were to reveal that information.
[44:28.880 --> 44:34.700]  So a blanket denial, very ambiguous in terms of what to what it actually relates.
[44:35.080 --> 44:46.600]  And and also, I think as members of the public and taxpayers, we have an obligation to to or rather they have an obligation to make that type of information transparent to us.
[44:46.900 --> 44:49.520]  So rather than fighting us, they should be handing that over.
[44:49.880 --> 44:52.040]  So is the tide turning here?
[44:52.040 --> 44:54.060]  I think so quite possibly.
[44:54.640 --> 45:04.000]  And very, very recently, just it was about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, you have the end of something known as Chevron deference.
[45:04.160 --> 45:12.620]  Chevron, the NRDC, National Resources Defense Council, was a 1980s case about the definition of a source of pollution.
[45:13.120 --> 45:16.940]  And I think was under the Clean Air Act, one of these environmental statutes.
[45:17.340 --> 45:19.140]  Source wasn't necessarily defined.
[45:19.140 --> 45:21.000]  So there are different ways to define it.
[45:21.000 --> 45:33.260]  And and the Chevron case came to the conclusion that, well, maybe we should defer to federal agencies its own expertise about how to define or how to interpret certain types of ambiguous terms.
[45:33.460 --> 45:43.740]  And then if they have a reasonable interpretation that is consistent with the mandate of that particular agency, well, then they can enforce the law as an agency based on their own interpretation.
[45:44.100 --> 45:47.980]  So they're basically saying the judges aren't experts in this, but the agencies are.
[45:47.980 --> 45:48.980]  So let's defer to them.
[45:49.080 --> 45:50.140]  That's the assumption there.
[45:52.040 --> 45:53.680]  But that's not the case anymore.
[45:54.140 --> 46:00.640]  Since this this this case, the slope or break case that came out a couple of weeks ago, Chevron deference is dead now.
[46:00.640 --> 46:16.560]  And that means that the door is now open to many other peoples, many other parties bringing lawsuits against the SEC and in their effort to try to regulate this decentralized world in this decentralized face from the perspective of a financial institution.
[46:17.240 --> 46:23.940]  The end of Chevron deference is not just it's not going to just affect the decentralized world in cryptocurrency space.
[46:24.160 --> 46:26.500]  It's going to affect pretty much any type of regulation.
[46:26.500 --> 46:31.560]  We're talking about health care, energy, biotechnology, artificial intelligence.
[46:31.560 --> 46:34.440]  All of this now is is is up in the air.
[46:34.600 --> 46:52.020]  It's going to be a very interesting world and litigation world to live in over the next couple of years, because I think we're going to see a lot of lawsuits challenging administrative actions and challenging federal agencies is not complying with the Administrative Procedures Act in the United States.
[46:52.400 --> 47:02.360]  So I think destroying the Chevron deference really changes the landscape and gives companies like Coinbase consensus, all of these decentralized larger players.
[47:02.360 --> 47:12.480]  I think a much firmer foothold on which to challenge the what they perceive to be is the destruction and the undermining of their institutions.
[47:13.040 --> 47:18.520]  So with that, I think we're in a really incredibly interesting space here.
[47:18.520 --> 47:25.860]  You know, I think a crossroads of just of society, of technology, of law, of warfare.
[47:26.420 --> 47:29.900]  And with that, I'll hand it back to Dan for some final comments.
[47:30.500 --> 47:30.820]  Very good.
[47:31.020 --> 47:33.380]  So what you have in front of you is just a list of texts.
[47:33.400 --> 47:34.260]  They're worth reading.
[47:34.380 --> 47:35.040]  They're worth looking at.
[47:35.160 --> 47:39.760]  Obviously, it's not comprehensive, but each one of these touches on things we've discussed today.
[47:39.980 --> 47:44.800]  The one written in Chinese that that's unrestricted warfare, unlimited warfare, depending how you want to define it.
[47:45.420 --> 47:47.380]  Hard to find a good translation into English.
[47:48.380 --> 47:48.940]  That's it.
[47:49.140 --> 47:50.720]  And with that, we can take some questions.
[47:51.400 --> 47:54.280]  Hit the slide for our contact information if you have questions.
[47:54.460 --> 47:56.860]  I put up our Twitter so you can obviously find us through LinkedIn or whatever.
[47:57.000 --> 47:57.620]  We're all very public.
[47:59.580 --> 47:59.980]  Yeah.
[48:00.820 --> 48:01.460]  All right.
[48:02.600 --> 48:03.160]  Thank you.
[48:05.260 --> 48:08.760]  We've got a couple questions over here on the left about the veteran.
[48:08.760 --> 48:08.820]  All right.
[48:11.240 --> 48:12.260]  That mic's had problems with that.
[48:32.010 --> 48:32.650]  That's complicated.
[48:32.810 --> 48:33.990]  It's going to be different for each one of us.
[48:34.850 --> 48:37.950]  The short answer I would say, and I believe I can speak for all of us.
[48:38.030 --> 48:38.170]  Yes.
[48:38.170 --> 48:44.290]  We're all working on developing systems and technologies that solve each one of these issues at a granular level.
[48:44.490 --> 48:46.290]  We didn't present a comprehensive plan.
[48:46.450 --> 48:47.630]  This is a thought piece.
[48:47.630 --> 48:51.070]  So the audience in the world can understand, this is the direction we're going.
[48:51.230 --> 48:52.270]  You need to be planning for this.
[48:52.330 --> 48:53.230]  We're planning for it.
[48:53.330 --> 48:54.310]  Here's the way we see this.
[48:54.550 --> 48:54.630]  Yeah.
[48:54.830 --> 48:55.870]  I will add to that too.
[48:55.950 --> 49:00.990]  I think a lot of the solving of these problems also requires building.
[49:00.990 --> 49:04.790]  And that's a lot of what we are doing within the Ethereum name service too.
[49:04.950 --> 49:11.270]  And yesterday, this time, believe it or not, I was in Brussels at the Ethereum community conference over there.
[49:11.410 --> 49:16.770]  And it's extraordinary to see the similarities and the differences between these two conferences, right?
[49:17.150 --> 49:25.390]  They're both comprised of lots of really incredibly interesting people building things, but yet there aren't bridges between these two communities that are effective right now.
[49:25.390 --> 49:37.750]  And I think part of what we're trying to do and to solve these problems is to bridge the hacker community with the digital asset cryptocurrency community, because it's not just full of, you know, money hungry finance bros over there.
[49:37.930 --> 49:40.070]  There's real technology being developed.
[49:40.250 --> 49:42.250]  There's real communities being developed.
[49:42.390 --> 49:44.990]  And I think if we bridge that gap, we're all going to be the better for it.
[49:52.630 --> 49:55.690]  I think one earlier, we will see what it is.
[49:56.190 --> 50:04.070]  Sort of the invitation with disinformation and propaganda, and just the contentious nature of the skill, and increasingly as time goes on.
[50:04.370 --> 50:12.170]  I wonder how you go about curating the information that you expose your brain to personally as individuals.
[50:12.510 --> 50:16.770]  I mean, I take my own pains doing that, but I think it might be an area of collaboration for all of us.
[50:17.930 --> 50:20.930]  And another question, kind of an addendum to that.
[50:23.010 --> 50:26.130]  Short of the metering, right?
[50:27.310 --> 50:42.930]  But also, I see like an overarching theme in this that I've never seen before, and that is this sort of feeling of existential threat and inevitability of like a major global conflict as climate breaks down and society becomes untethered.
[50:43.170 --> 50:46.350]  And I think as hackers, we should want to avoid that.
[50:46.530 --> 50:54.450]  And so I just want to get your sense of like, how do you see us preventing those worst outcomes from coming to the past?
[50:56.230 --> 50:57.650]  All right, one other question, that's you, Will.
[50:57.790 --> 50:58.510]  That's 100%.
[50:59.370 --> 51:04.950]  Yeah, I mean, that's a long answer, and I'll try and keep it brief, right?
[51:05.150 --> 51:12.370]  But I think one of the things that we need to consider when I think about sourcing is, what type of information is it, right?
[51:12.430 --> 51:16.210]  Is it technical information versus, let's see, something that's more political?
[51:16.850 --> 51:26.290]  I think if for political sourcing, one of the things to keep in mind is, can this source actually admit mistakes, right?
[51:26.290 --> 51:36.350]  I think there's a lot of information sources out there today is like, we said something a year ago, and we're going to stick by it no matter how much new evidence appears, right?
[51:36.490 --> 51:47.810]  And I think at that point, it's like, oh, okay, this information source has a particular agenda, which is not necessarily to update new things as they reflect reality.
[51:49.030 --> 51:51.230]  And that's like a mind twist, that sentence.
[51:51.390 --> 51:52.770]  My apologies, but it's a fun one.
[51:53.350 --> 52:11.210]  I think the other thing to consider in terms of this sense of dread, right, if you want to take McLuhan, right, and believe in the media theory thing, right, one of the arguments he makes is that every time we have a major change of media, right, we have a world war.
[52:11.670 --> 52:14.110]  We have major conflict, right?
[52:14.330 --> 52:19.150]  And it's... if you look... and again, I'm not saying I necessarily buy into it, right?
[52:19.250 --> 52:24.950]  Again, going back to that disclaimer, it's interesting to see that we're going through another transition, right?
[52:25.030 --> 52:29.510]  Because now we have information that can create entirely new, novel information, right?
[52:29.550 --> 52:39.130]  So we're clearly going into this next phase of a new medium, and we have major conflict going on, right?
[52:39.130 --> 52:46.990]  So the timing is certainly interesting, and yeah, maybe one of my fellow speakers can say something more positive.
[52:47.190 --> 52:50.370]  We'll take it offline, and if you want to talk with us, we'll stay upstairs for a few minutes.
[52:50.690 --> 52:50.810]  Yeah.
[52:51.210 --> 52:51.710]  Thank you all.
[52:51.710 --> 52:52.270]  Thank you all.
[52:52.450 --> 52:52.970]  Thank you.