China Hacked The US Treasury -- And This Is Only The Beginning

With global impact and domestic dissent, the U.S. Treasury remains one of the world's most impactful institutions. What happens when this institution is compromised? In tonight's episode, the guys explore the harsh reality of successful conspiracies against the United States.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Just gonna walk down the street
real quick for this one. Money's kind of weird, right,
are you guys into money?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
It's not real.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
It is a requirement, at least to some extent, a
necessary evil.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
And you guys will recall several years ago put out
a standing challenge to all of our fellow conspiracy realists
in the crowd. We said, can you delineate or determine
any meaningful difference between the concept of economy or money
and the trappings of religion? And just an accountability check here,

(01:18):
I'm pretty sure no one can prove a difference.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
Thanks for being our accountability buddy.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Ben.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I keep trying to think of like, Nope, it's just
it's kind of makes them up, make them up seats.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, because it's articles of faith at some point, after
some certain threshold. I mean, look at the stock market.
Not to get too topical, uh, but the thing is,
despite being all kinds of malarchy, the human world does
move at the whims of money and of those who
control it. So money can make you powerful, but you

(01:52):
also get a disadvantage. It can make you a target.
That's tonight's conspiracy. It's a twisting thing we barely touch
in a strange news segment. We didn't have time to
get to it. But the nation of China has hacked
the US Treasury, which is crazy because that's one of
the most important financial institutions across the planet.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
But it was fine, right, Everything's okay, everything's great. No
question is great question for you guys. Do you think
it's possible to manipulate the stock market by announcing tariffs
and then pulling them back at the last minute. Do
you think that's intentional? That's what I told him to do,
so yeah, you know, you guys.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Are tight, just wondering.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
We were talking about manipulation of currency, of this idea
of wealth and of value, and I just think, you know,
that's sort of an interesting thing to point to how easily,
given enough power, these things are changeable.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
M H.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
And today we are talking about specifically a time that
some people hacked into the US Treasury Department last year,
in early December of last year. But it is not
something that just occurred, you know, that one time. It
is an ongoing situation.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yes, well said, And that brings us to our question
what happens next? To learn more will have to start
from the beginning, not like the beginning beginning, but you know,
a mid beginning.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
First, let's take a quick word from our sponsor, and
then we'll jump right in.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Here are the facts. Let's be honest, most people across
the planet, including residents of these United States, we have
some understandable misconceptions about the United States Treasury, the provenance
of it, the function, the mission, you could say it.
We even a few years back, I remember when we

(03:53):
were all collectively surprised to learn that the Secret Service
functions under the Treasury. That was that was kind of creepy, honestly.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, until they got moved into Homeland Security.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Cool, which is totally not a weird.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Amorphous thing that's different.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I appreciate you saying arms instead
of tentacles. That is accurate. The maybe we do like
an origin story of the US Treasury because one thing
that might surprise a lot of our American conspiracy realists
tonight in Canada, Mexico, the US, and the Caribbean is
that the Treasury is actually super old. It's like one

(04:37):
of the first things the founding fathers put in their
paperwork or in their pitch, in their look book for
I mean.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
How are you going to do capitalism without a really
tight US Treasury?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
And this was wars need funding also true.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
And this was established in seventeen eighty nine as an
executive division of the federal government. Its jobs to advise
the president on financial physical matters, and perform certain.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Law enforcement activities.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
Manufacturing currency as well as stamp which I believe it
wasn't more stamps at one point I'll referred to as
legal tender in some way. Yeah, I guess that's right.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Anyhow, I mean, that's that money in religion. Everything's money
if you believe in it hard enough, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Just on stamps because they hold a certain value, right,
And it is a bit amorphous, a bit strange when
they changed over to forever stamps, and right, that's kind
of I don't know. I still don't fully get that
because I used to watch as the price of stamps
would kind of incrementally increase.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Maybe that is the move or the reason I was
thinking about that, because it's that change certainly made that
not be as much of a thing anymore. You know,
the idea of the value of stamps, there's got to
be some index that can be observed, you know, for
like what the value of forever stamps in general. Arm No,
but that that you pay once and then they're good forever.
It's not the whole deal.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
That's Yeah, that's the idea increasingly uh increasing for the government.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, maybe, I don't know, maybe a bad deal for us.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Well, they also run treasury bonds, so treasury bonds are
another example of something kind of like a forever stamp. Uh,
you got a limited time window and Uncle Sam says,
you know, I'll gladly pay you back for a Hamburger
on Wednesday if you give me the money for it
on Monday.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
I've heard that they're a pretty good investment right now.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
They were they were for sure for a minute. Well, okay, god, yeah,
true though true though they're in trouble. But in theory
it makes sense for the Treasury to do this sort
of stuff. They're the money guys, the money boffins. They
also supervised national banks, and a lot of the agencies

(06:57):
you hear about in the United States are under the
Treasury Department. The greatest hits like the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing, the blas Q, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau.
The US meant and of course are good friends at
the IRS, see you guys in April.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
So there's an Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
But also what is it alcohol, tobacco and firearms?

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Is that? Are they related? No?

Speaker 2 (07:29):
No, that one is for taxing and the other one
is for getting you.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, the other one's forgetting you and these guys. This
is a common misconception everything we're describing. As far as
the US Treasury goes. It is not the Federal Reserve.
That is a different branch of bureaucracy and conspiracy. They
do hang out, though they kick it pretty hard.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
And the Reserve are the ones of the officials there
who adjust interest rates and things like that, right, and
make vague speeches about that make it easy. They can
also instantly affect the markets just by talking about your set,
just by a whiff of a change.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Coming go back and watch our videos on the Federal Reserve,
and I believe we've.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Covered it in a full episode at least once.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
That's no, it was about the National Bank, wasn't it.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
And we did.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
We definitely did a live show about the establishment of
the National Bank.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Look, as long as these folks keep doing shenanigans, it
is our remit to cover those shenanigans.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yes, so I believe it's the creature from Jekyl Island. Yes,
a good search term if you wish to go down
that rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Shout out to nineteen thirteen. Uh so in short for
well over two centuries now, which is, you know, a
big amount of time for the US. The Treasury has
been the main institution for Uncle Sam's money. Big big
tip of the tricorn hat to Alexander Hamillon, most famous

(09:01):
now for a musical based on loosely on his life,
but before that he was he was one of the
big financial movers of the Founding Fathers.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, it is that situation. If you are going to
fight a major war, you have to get funding, and
all of this is I mean, this isn't directly tied
back to the funding that those revolutionary fellows secured in
order to fight back against the British, but it is
an interesting.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah, yeah, it isn't.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Let's say, it's a it's a curious thread to follow,
just the funding, the outside funding that comes into a
country as it's attempting to fight some major war.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, and then the funding that the or the debt
that the individual states racked up. And without getting two
into the weeds. That was one of the things that
Hamilton went ten toes down on, you know, was saying
that the federal government, if a United States exist as
an entity, then at some point it has to bear

(10:05):
the costs that say, your Virginia's or your Delawar's rack up.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
I guess what I get kind of my mind blown
about when we're talking about the reality of money or
like the value of money or money as a religion.
Like you were saying, Ben, is the amount of debt
that countries carry and like, at what point does that
become a real thing. A note that is called in
and which never seems to really happen. It all just

(10:31):
seems kind of like soft diplomacy and threats to like
have countries kind of do what you want, but the
money never really changes hands or the debts are never
really repaid. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
It's wild to me in my mind the way it functions,
and I may be way off base here, but as
long as everybody is paying their debts, you know, those
little payments, right, the interest in all that stuff. As
long as everybody is paying everybody else, then money continues
to flow, and everybody can kind of do their thing
that they want to do. And people who are getting

(11:03):
paid most by others who owe them, right, they can
do the most things that they want to do. It.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, yes, it does, and I think that's well put.
They can Also, those people are entities and power. They
can wield great influence beyond just a spreadsheet. And that's
where that's where we get to some of the big
controversies of the Treasury Department. Given given its position, it's

(11:31):
its high functionality, right, and given the length of time
this institution has existed, it's not a surprise that they have,
you know, stepped a little off the hedge path or
the hedgerow every so often, and uh two, great consequence
and a great detriment to the average person. But again,

(11:52):
the average person, and I want to be very honest here,
is not involved in these conversations. You can vote all
the live long day, but you do not have direct
influence on the US Treasury. It's sort of like if
you're a second grader, you don't get to determine who
becomes principal next year.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Yeah, you got to pay extra for that.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Now.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Two, you can vote for the people or person who
has the people around them who will appoint the person.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
You can vote for a person who will tell you,
if you catch them on a good day, that they
will do what you believe will make the United States better. Yes, spoiler,
they're probably not going to call you every three PM.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
Are not going to check in and check in.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
You have to get above a certain threshold. I mean,
there's no arguing this though. It's It's like so many
other The US Treasury is a fundamental part of the
United States. Whatever kind of treasury or financial overseer system
exists in any nation, it is a fundamental piece of

(13:04):
the overall organism in the US. All of the institutions
we have are both imperfect and necessary. And it's funny
we talk about this all the time. All sorts of
people have all kinds of ideas about how to improve
the treasury. You ask people, especially in DC, and you're
going to encounter some pretty hard sell pitches, and you'll

(13:26):
encounter people who are not even being insincere, they're being
quite genuine when they say, we know how to fix this, right,
here's what you do step A through Z. But the
issue is these ideas are often contradictory. There are ulterior
motives at play. If you took everybody's ideas, you put

(13:47):
them all together and rolled them out at once, the
immediate result would be chaos. And that's why the US overall,
especially in the world of finance, it has a surprisingly
like ad hoc patch together sort of jazz approach to infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
The only thing everybody agrees on is more military spending.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah. The people who are allowed to speak in Congress
the one thing they agree on.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, it's just some people say more military spending and
others say more.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Military spending, and then another guy goes, I completely disagree.
What we need to do is spend more on the military. Also,
well said sir, Yeah, it's crucial to remember when we
talk about the US Treasury in particular, this money makes you,

(14:43):
makes you powerful. It also makes you a target for
high level espionage and high level politicians. Domestically, this is
a golden goose. This single entity has vast influence over
the way US money moves, which means it has vast
influence over the way money moves throughout the world.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
And I mean, if there's one thing that I think
we've learned from the Doge situation, whatever you think about
what they're ultimately doing, is that a lot of these
systems are pretty antiquated and potentially vulnerable to this kind
of thing.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, and also remember just the number of government grants,
the number of payments that the US government makes. When
a deal is made, especially with a foreign entity, with
either a corporation and a state, anything like that, there
are usually press releases or you know, some big announcement

(15:37):
in the press when money is moving, especially across borders
of the United States to another country. But the specifics
of anything to do with that, you know, the drilled
down specifics of where that money is moving, is often
not discussed. That is like highly controlled information by design.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, it has to. It's opseche at that point like,
that's I love that point because that gets us to
I would say one of the axioms that is fundamental
to this episode. At least in my opinion, it's not
so much what the money is or what the money does.
I think it's more what kind of tea leaves you

(16:21):
can read, what sort of actions one can predict and
then if necessary prevent right. It gives you a little
heads up, a little bit of prognostication ability. And that's
why that's why we see the real danger of compromising
the US Treasury Department. It has a wait for it,

(16:42):
treasure trove. Thank you, Dylan, I appreciate the drummer. If
they're of data, yes, a wealth of knowledge, wealth of
knowledge that could, if compromised, easily make things go south
in a serious way. As we record this evening, folks,
true story don't be full. Twenty four was just a
few months ago, not too long ago. The US Treasury

(17:05):
got hacked hard, arguably twice.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
You'll one two punch.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yep, and then we're gonna tell you all about that
hard hacking.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Right after this hard hack's.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
Gonna come, y'all.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, let's be honest.
All right, we're talking about like the first hack? What
was the real first hack? For decades, we talked like
even before we started doing this strange show, the United
States has repeatedly, often consistently accused rival powers, especially our

(17:48):
pals in China and in Russia, of trying to hack
into their stuff.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yep, and lest we forget North Korea, we've heard that
many a time.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
And you know, there's a certain amount of kind of
chef's chest puffing, you know, saber rattling here when it
comes to politicians trying to seem like they're kind of
keyed into what's going on, trying to earn points with
their constituency or with other politicians. But it is important
to realize that this stuff isn't coming from thin air
at all. This is a very real threat and has

(18:23):
been for a very long time.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, I love that, because, look, folks, we know politics
can be sensitive, as as can any other sort of
religious ideology. But this is not an episode about politics.
This is an episode about espionage. This is an episode
about trade craft, and it's one that we all need
to be aware of, right, And this is where we

(18:48):
go to journalists like David D. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes,
Singer is going to show up a couple of times
because he just did some kick ass work for the
New York Times. He's going to show up a couple
of New York Times in tonight's episode. In November of
twenty twenty four, Singer and Barnes described the mission creep

(19:10):
of Chinese espionage in specific applied to the United States.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
The quote is, at first, the biggest worry was the
theft of intellectual property such as chip designs and plans
for military equipment. Yummy, And just coming out of the quote,
we've talked about that many times.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
What do they call it? Corporate espionage or industrial espionage?
And that's it. Hey, hang it out. We just can't
hang it out.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Well.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
I think I mentioned like the synthesizer that I have,
there's these chips inside of it that are when they
were made, they had a defect basically because they were
covered with this like polyurethane material and it was literally
a process that made the chips more vulnerable to moisture
and stuff, but was designed to protect against people being
able to scope out what the chip design looked like.

(20:01):
You know, and take a photo of it from the
factory floor or whatever to prevent industrial espionage.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh yeah, so chis chips are one thing. Some things
like nuclear power generation way back in the day. All
kinds of things like that were just new technologies, right,
were always and have always been ripe fruit to be
picked from anybody who was good at this type of
espionage propriety stuff. Yes, so let's jump back to the quote.

(20:29):
We're talking about military equipment, chip designs, intellectual property quote.
Those included the F thirty five, America's most advanced fighter jet,
whose blueprints China stole from American military contractors.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
True story. Oh dear.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Then during the Bush and Obama administrations, China's focus turned
to understanding American government officials, including the theft of the
security clearance files of more than twenty two million Americans.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
WHOA, this was not ideal. Just by the way, I'm
being very bep or Dylan, I am being extremely fucking diplomatic,
And everybody who heard that line, well, please please please.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
I believe it. It was not ideal.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Recognize the diplomacy there, because now we're getting past like, okay,
for anybody who's ever been in a weird personal relationship,
sometimes somewhat toxic or somewhat just curious. Cats will will
do deep internet you know, searching. We'll we'll joke and
call it internet stalking on other people to figure out

(21:37):
what their aims are, what their providence is, what their
mission is. China now is doing this on a macro level,
as a a with all the powers of one of
the most important nations and one of the most dangerous
nations on the planet. They might be looking at you
and saying like, oh, what did you what did you
do Tuesday?

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, and these are in individuals with security clearance, which
means they have access to those files that not all
of us have access to.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
And then extrapolate that toward the larger web, right leveraging
five eyes, which is clearly compromised at this point. And
then you can now construct a model or a decision
tree where you say something like, Hey, I'm thinking of
an innocuous name. Hey, Tiffany, Tiffany Blue Jens or whatever

(22:29):
has a security clearance, right, and we know she hangs
out here, and she knows she has an interest in
this thing, and so maybe we can have a accidental
meeting where a conversation ensues and we can learn a
little bit.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
More or even potentially compromise somebody like that.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Right, Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
But I mean, like compromisation, well not not just eavesdropping
or like you know, probing for information, but even making
them an asset POTENTI ting.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's where.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, and when you have twenty two million of them,
you can maybe see somebody who's like third down the
line of who's gonna get notified when action X occurs?

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Right, feeling a little.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
Underappreciated, maybe you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Leverage the weaknesses, right, find the gaps in the armor.
So we already see like that excellent quote describes, we
see an expansion of scope mission creep, earlier hacks, earlier
compromise attempts, espionage, tradecraft attempts, relatively constrained. Let me get
the blueprints, let me get out. Let me see if

(23:36):
I can leave a proverbial window open so I can
break in later. Uh. And just side note, that's a
reference to typical B and E strategy for anybody who
knows what they're doing. You break into a house or
a structure the first time. What you want to do
is leave some sort of just unlatch a window or

(23:58):
something and hope no one notices it, because it makes
it easier for you to do a second round of crimes. Also,
we don't do that.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Well, especially when you're talking about doing some kind of
espionage through a computer interface, right or through a network Leaving,
leaving an escape patch open is a little easier than
you know, physically unlatching a window when there's a big
investigation or something, right like, sometimes not always, but it is.
It is definitely the strategy.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
As you said, Ben, what we're saying is everybody go
check your windows right now, especially ones you don't check often. Yes,
those those are the ones. And that that applies to
security online and electronic infrastructure as well. So the next
question is like, what how do we make this bigger? Right?

(24:51):
Hackers are asking and they're saying, if we steal access
to one thing, why don't we leverage that to gain
access to some other thing or place like? Ultimately, you
don't want to steal just the key to the front door.
You want to steal the key to the room where
someone makes all the other keys.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
If it's a give a man a fist, teach a
man to fish kind of scenario.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Which is an example that comes up later. Yes, absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
I wonder if it's weird. I feel like the treasurery
Department might be the biggest get you can almost imagine.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
One of for sure, as especially as far as world
powers go, these like we were saying, these attacks are occurring.
They are occurring much more often than the average member
of the public might assume, especially if you remember the
public in China, because as we'll see later, they disagree
with some of the allegations of conspiracy that we're going

(25:49):
to explore. But we will tell you things that the
United States and the world at large, other than the PRC,
the People's Republic of China consider proven right now, and
you don't have to look far. Let's just like start
with July of twenty twenty four, not too long ago.
We were all, I guess, easy breezy summer girls or whatever,

(26:14):
and then China, China broke into everybody's phones.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, PRC sponsored hackers broke into at least nine separate
telecom systems.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
And you know, this is also one of those things
too where we.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
Say PRC sponsored, but there is still kind of plausible
deniability from the government. Right, it's like we didn't, you know,
hire these people. They were acting on their own.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Isn't that correct? Yeah, hacking for hire. It's it's a
thing we'll get into later as well. And I think
that's excellent foreshadowing. There's a degree of a hidden hand, right,
plausible deniability, we would call it in the US when
we do it, because spoiler, we super do that, oh
all the time.

Speaker 4 (26:54):
Well, in the hacker group that we're talking about here
for hire. Otherwise they're got to really sick.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Name if you ask me, salt typhoon.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, it's pretty cool, but is it salt typhoon food? Wow?

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah, they did not they do not call themselves that.
They were known as APT twenty seven h Advanced Persistent
Threat twenty seven, and then Microsoft called them salt typhoon.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Okay, well, good on you, Microsoft. That's a pretty sick nickname.
It's like the way the press sort of like nicknames
a serial killer or something.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, and now the reported purpose of this hack was
specifically to spy on US government officials, including then I
believe it was Donald Trump as he's running.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
For president for a president elect.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, yes, And there was like other just high level
government officials that they wanted to just literally see what
they're doing on their.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Phones, compromise cabinet level stuff, and then the unelected bureaucrats
that can make some power powerful decisions with global consequence.
There have been other breaches and breach attempts by this
group back before Microsoft called them Salt Typhoon, and they
were against public entities as well as private big enough companies,

(28:14):
especially in the defense industry, especially in certain I will
say biomedicine applications. Right, So they're touching universities, they're touching healthcare,
they're touching the right kind of grants, and they're doing
human int as well, so they're human intelligence. So they're
also you know, they found out what Miss Blue Jeans

(28:38):
is doing later and they sent someone to have a chat.
I wonder if they found the cloning facilities. They found
a clone of the cloning facilities. An instance, an instance,
an iteration thereof this telecom breach that Noel's mentioning there
is astonishing because it teaches the the hackers, the aggressors,

(29:03):
more about the structure than it does about the specific
heistore monitoring observation attempt. At this point, they're not trying
to shake the waters. They're trying to get their ears
and eyes inside of people's activities and people's minds and motivations.
But then they find a lot more about the structure
and they say, holy spokes, this thing is terrible. This

(29:27):
is like a roller coaster built in the nineteen fifties.
How has someone not beaaten us to this yet?

Speaker 4 (29:32):
They're like casing the joint at this point, you know,
checking for those unlatched windows that you were talking.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
About, well, yeah, and figuring out the web of who
to target when.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
And for what. Yeah, they get access to not just
text communicate but also phone conversations, and they get real
close to being able to do it in real time.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
And that would be a great way to gather that
kind of compromand on these individuals. Not only are you
learning potentially actionable intelligence items, but you might find someone
doing something they're not supposed to, that's in a position
that you might want to take advantage of, and then
you've got everything you need to flip them.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Check out our earlier episodes, because look, we're not spilling
beans outside of the barrel here. This is known tactics,
and they are deployed by all high level world powers.
So initially the Biden administration. This happened while Joe Biden
was the President of the US. The Biden administration acknowledged

(30:31):
this hack from July twenty twenty four, but members of Congress,
members of Joe Biden's own ostensible political party, they came
forward pretty soon after and they said, look, you guys
are making this sound like it's not a big deal,
and it is a huge deal.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I remember that
pr kind of line that they pushed out, and maybe
just because I wanted to be blissfully ignorant to it,
I sort of was like, Okay, it's probably fine. I'm
sure a lot of people did the same thing, which was.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
I don't want to spoil the lead here. We were
pretty straightforward and saying the Treasury Department got hacked hard.
But if you read the official, you know, statements, it
was it's not a big deal.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
We'll talk about that. But that was that was definitely the.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Forward facing message, not a big deal, tiny, tiny, little breach.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Yeah, yeah, you know, everybody sometimes pushes a fart too
hard you and can get a little juice in your paper.
Oh my god, that's what they were saying. They had
a little juice. That's what they were saying. That was
actually in the official release.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
Yes, language they chose to go with.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah, but we do have we do have a let's say,
a sentiment from Senator Mark Warner of Virginia about this
specific hack under the Biden administration when they were in charge,
and he at the time was the chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee. Uh, he was pretty messed up about it,
like he thought, this is way worse than we're all

(32:02):
saying out loud.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, he said he was stunned by the scope and
depth of the breach. And again, look, politics aside, this
guy is also a Democrat. For anybody outside of the US,
Joe Biden was and I assume is a Democrat. So
these guys are on the same, you know, political team.
And this dude, Senator Warter is saying, no, it's not

(32:24):
just some juice. These attacks are going to lead to
more attacks unless there is a serious inventory of our
security on the US side. And being from Virginia and
being a politician, just to be fair, obviously he's going
to lean into like folksy idioms because he wants to
get re elected, so he says, the bound door is

(32:46):
still wide open, mostly open.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Is this not part of the mandate or mission of
the whole elon musk Doge crew like to prevent stuff
like I mean again, whatever they're actually up to to
prevent stuff like that is to tighten up security on
these antiquated computer systems.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Unfortunately, No, they're I think they'd be a good.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
Selling point though, you know, like, how are they going
to help us?

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Now?

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Their thing is to help the America. Their stated purpose
is to help the American public by eliminate wasteful government
spending and fraud.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, yeah, and remember these are these are private telecoms
that were targeted in this specific instance, right, So that
is not government at all, that's.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
True, but it was it did have tendrils that reached
into government, which is what we're going to get further.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Into long lines. Building. Yes, love it, love it. Imagine
a skyscraper with no windows. If you live in Manhattan, boy,
do we have news for you. Also, by the way,
this is how unprepared Uncle Sam was. The federal government,
the folks who run the world's most dangerous military still

(33:54):
in all of known existence, technically, they did not discover
this on their own. They were too big. They were
like a They were like a blue whale that didn't
know it had some parasites on its tail. They instead
got word about this from Microsoft Private Company. Their cybersec

(34:16):
team discovered the first hack, the telecom hack. Right. We
say first, because that's the one they discovered first, and
they're the ones who gave us that sick name salt Typhoon. Again,
it does sound like one of those giant robots, a
Jaeger from Pacific rim. Well done, fellow nerds. The US government,

(34:36):
even after they knew they were trying to picture the
whale trying to turn around and look at its own tail,
they still didn't understand the following things. They're really dangerous. First,
they didn't understand how China was able to obtain this
information in the first place. Second, they didn't understand how
this breach allowed them to target and monitor conversations with

(34:59):
those high value targets. And then they also didn't understand
the full ways in which this had implications for the future.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, oh yeah. And they didn't know the specifics of
what was taken. They just knew it had been happening
for a certain amount of time. So you then have
to just assume that anything and everything that was discussed
by everybody, every one like seriously, was just swept up.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
M Yeah. They initially they say, okay, these hackers used
stolen passwords, honestly, very easy. We don't say this with
any like great pride, and we're not trying to be
a dix about it. But a lot of people used
really dumb passwords like one, two, three, four, five, you know,
in their government jobs. And then they focused on these

(35:49):
systems that would function under stuff like the FISA court. Right,
you know, get get the warrant such that you are
legally allowed to monitor phone calls text. But it looks
like as soon as to your point about observation, as
soon as they realized that they have been discovered, the
Salt Typhoon and co. Retreated right they left the house,

(36:13):
They left some windows unlocked, they suspended their activities because
if they're not observed, that means it is incredibly difficult
to gauge the amounts of damage done, to know what
they touched. To keep with our like B and E comparison,
I would say think of it as hearing the sirens

(36:34):
in the distance while you're still inside the house and
having enough time to wipe down as much stuff as possible.
You remove your fingerprints or shredding the.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Docks, putting them drills through your hard drives.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
That's a good one. Yeah, that's an old favorite of us.
It's stuff they'll watch you to know it. Brought to
you by Big Drill.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
But now we sit as we record on March seventh
of twenty twenty five, and a little bit more information
has come out about what really went down during these hacks.
We're going to tell you all about that right after
we take a quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
We've returned fast forward December four, just a few months ago,
as weird as that is to say, because a lot
has happened. We are to your point, Noel, starting to
learn more about what transpired. Somehow, we're still officially not
sure how. The hackers of Salt Typhoon they snagged a

(37:44):
nearly comprehensive list of phone numbers that DOJ has actively
wire tapped, which means, for the purposes of the PRC,
they got a list of like eighty to ninety percent
of every individual the DOJ thinks might be spying. Wow

(38:05):
again not ideal, Yeah, or a.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Part of some criminal syndicate, right, that's moving money or
functioning through investments through a series of front companies or
something like that. I mean we're talking. So basically, they
they figured out who we think the bad guys are.
So now they know which bad guys that they might

(38:29):
be associated with are under investigation. Which you've seen movies,
you've seen TV shows. Once you know you're under investigation,
the whole game changes.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, your behaviors change, right, and you can again decision
tree people toward actions that are preferable to use. So
we saw then diagram. Right, China has a list of assets.
And to be completely fair and to exercise empathy, it
is known that quite a few people who are functioning

(39:01):
as Chinese assets abroad are not doing so of their
own free will. They are being coerced with threats to
their family and intimidation and extortion, you know, all the hits.
And again the US does this too. I hate to
say it, but it's true. So you nailed it, Matt.
One of the logical primary goals of attaining this list

(39:21):
is not to immediately people, right, the Chinese boffins don't
love a third story window as much as our friends
in Russia, but they do want that information. And perhaps
the most important thing is when you're able to compare
those two lists, right, the one we have, the one
China has, or the one the US has and one
we have, you can find the coolest part the real

(39:45):
umami who do we know works for us? That has
yet to be clocked? Right? Where is the gap? But
where's the missing piece, the blind spot?

Speaker 2 (39:55):
And let's find a way to get them in on
the investigation.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
Let's have the me Lo Jens lady. Right, Yeah, and
maybe they can you know, maybe they can get at
the right conference, maybe they can get assigned to the
right project.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Because it's not get them elected to some official office.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah yeah, it's never looks by movies always want you
to think it's a big push. It's hardly ever a
big push. It's a series of little nudges. Right. You
seek to erode people, You seek to normalize very not
normal stuff over time, and do it in such a

(40:33):
way that you can never be held responsible and always
at the worst say oh, I'm surprised as you are.
You know, I thought everybody was being cool. Why are
you not being cool about this? Yikes, yikes, big ikes.
But fortunately we do have some announcements, you know, they

(40:55):
come to us from the Treasury and the DOJ. Whatever.
These hackers, it appears they didn't compromise just these high
value targets. They also compromised more than one hundred US organizations,
private and public. The Treasury went forward to the masses
at the end of the Biden administration when there was

(41:16):
a lot of other stuff going on, and they said, look,
here's what happened. These hackers that we think are definitely
based in China and definitely working for China in some capacity.
To your point, nol, we think that they gained access
to our employees workstations aka computers, database, and at the

(41:37):
very least they got some documents. And someone said what
kind of documents did they get? And the Treasury said, no, further,
we're not taking questions. Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
You may remember this. We talked about it close to
around the time. I think we mentioned it in Strange
News in December at some point twenty twenty four, because
it was pretty shocking. So in a statement that the
Department of Treasury made, they said that on December eighth,
they were made known that there was some kind of

(42:14):
hack that occurred via a third party software service they
use called Beyond.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Trust all one word. Yep.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
This is a This is a company that provides things
like remote access for governmental employees there at the Department
of Treasury, and Beyond Trust said some hacker group hackers
gained access by obtaining a security key, and then they
used that to get into specific not even not very

(42:45):
many individuals, machines and materials, but they used that single
security key to make it seem like they were trustworthy
and were able to remotely access essentially desktops slash laptops.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
And in doing so perhaps make more keys. For about
seventy two hours at least, as far as we understand,
Beyond Trust was able to monitor these activities. During that time.
They saw these operators create accounts, change passwords, change your passwords.
Make sense. Of course you would do that, but it
heightens your risk of being apprehended. Right, So ideally what

(43:21):
you want to do is create a new account that
you control, right and make it look native. Right, throw
some wool over your wolf and have it run with
the sheep. Yep, but hey, this should be known.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
According to the official statements at that time, the Department
of Treasury said, Hey, the only things that were taken
were unclassified files.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Oh tight, they are unclassified guys. Oh they broke into
my house, but don't worry. They just stole the trash.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
Yeah, but you can find a lot of interesting stuff
digging around in people's trash now, uh.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Well, put yeah they did. They also I love the
point they did not specify the nature of these unclassified
troves of information. They didn't say what kind of files
were taken. They didn't say when or for how long
the hack took place other than that seventy two hour
monitoring window. They also didn't say how confidential or how

(44:23):
you know, protected these systems are supposed to be. They
also pulled like they also gathered ranks, and they didn't
say how senior the staff was. And that last part
is super important, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, seems like it probably wasn't the interns.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Doesn't feel like the interns. Just to be honest, it
does not feel like it was the person in charge
of scheduling, you know, the in office birthday party.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Ooh, but you know an assistant that's oh gosh, that's
an assistance.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Is what you go for you never go, don't go.
I mean going for the top, folks is five. It
works in fiction, it's fun like Tinker Tailor's Soldier, Spy
or whatever. But really what you want is the boring people.
You want the people a couple steps down, you know
what I mean, Maybe not the person who does the
birthday parties, but the person who asked to know enough

(45:15):
about what's being discussed in a meeting to figure out
who goes into that meeting. Yep, the scheduler. We're putting
you on game, folks. We do know there was a
pickle here, a bag of badgers. Because investigators private and public,
like from beyond trust and from the US, they were baffled.

(45:39):
Whomever was doing this did not seem to be despite
accessing the Treasury Department, they did not seem to be
directly attempting to steal money. Again, they broke into a
house with a lot of valuables. They did not take
super immediately valuable stuff. That made a lot of folks
assume this was straight up espionage. You know what I mean,

(46:00):
it's it's uh, what does our friend Heath Ledger say,
It's not about money. It's about sending a message something
like that.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
I think that's right, Yeah, as the joker character.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, all right, all right, speaking about bringing into a
place with the valuables. Did you see there's a recent
statement from Oh I can't remember if it was directly
from Elon Musk or Donald Trump, but it was something
about it was questioning whether or not Fork Knox actually
has gold in it still.

Speaker 4 (46:29):
Yeah, Oh, that's the big thing that does is talking
about Right, they're going to do a big reveal like
that Heraldo thing with the faults and it was just
like a candy wrapper was in there or something. Wouldn't
that be funny though, because I actually wanted to bring
this up at the top of the show when we
were talking about the nature of debt and the value
of money and stuff like we're not on a gold

(46:50):
standard anymore, but still matters that there's tons of gold.
The idea of it matters.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Yeah, because it's a tangible representation of value. That's the
only reason, like, the only reason people got into gold
in the beginning was because it's ductile. I think we
talked about this.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
In an earlier pound in or stretch it into.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah, yeah, you can you can make a little necklace
and tell people, you know that you're better than that.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
But like to the point of like confidence or whatever,
and like manipulating the markets and like, you know, people
saying stuff could be enough to change the wins of finance.
Like if what if we were to discover that Fort
Knox was a ruse and there was nothing in there?

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Would it like that we would immediately republish our episode
from years ago. Well we asked this question, and obviously
Doge listens to this show, Well, that's what I was
gonna say.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
The conspiracy theorists are at the helm now, which is
so much was just so fun.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, it's true and there are and part of the
reason that exists is because there is a lack of transparency,
you know what I mean. It would have been just objectively,
it would have been easy on an operational level for
some sanctioned government department to say, hey, we're going to

(48:08):
have a you know, a quick little documentary and we're
going to walk you around four knocks and stuff like
that happened in the past. But then people began to
question the sources, and that was aided and embedded by
asymmetric foreign info war attempts, right, not an Alex Jones thing,
the actual way of warging, Yes, waging war through information.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Let's undermine people's belief in the power of the United
States by saying things like there's no gold in fork knocks.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
And if you undermine the belief in an institution, then
that also puts the institution itself a tremendous disadvantage. Right.
It puts it on its back its back heels. I
guess all heels are back heels, but you know it
puts it puts you on your back foot because then

(48:56):
you have to respond to allegations and you're just losing
more more time during that great gish gallop.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Oh, I like that gish gallop. I like that a lot.
I don't even know what that is.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Gish gallop is where you kind of just freestyle a
bunch of nonsense and maybe one out of ten things
is true, but you just level a bunch of a
bunch of statements or accusations that the receiver rival party
tries to answer in an orderly fashion, and then you
just keep going and you don't listen to them.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah, oh god, that sounds familiar.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Hm, it's sure, it sure does it? Sure does. You
could say there were several debates about it not too
long ago. So look, that's the thing, though, are they
if they're not automatically stealing money? Right, if they're not
automatically moving funds, then what are they doing? Why? We

(49:52):
already know China's top intelligence and security boffins, good luck
to you guys. They have a deep interest in the
Treasury because it oversees all those financial systems. It implements
sanctions importantly. So if you can get into the Treasury
and you can see what the Treasury is prioritizing, it's

(50:14):
very close to a limited form of telepathy regarding the
United States overall. Now we can predict priorities, and perhaps
if we play our cards right, we can take action
to prevent upcoming moves. Cough cough Taiwan, cough cough you okay,

(50:35):
bless you.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
I have blessed people when they cough. If people think.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
It's weird, aya at you, fellongong sneeze one more time.
It's great. That's real. I'm telling you, we're saying it.
I mean, this is what we can say for sure.
The next few months are going to be a wild ride.
That's the only thing the public knows. It's an ongoing story.
Like we kept saying, we can give you a few

(50:59):
additional updates, which happened. Get this, folks, just a few
days before we came to record here with you tonight
on March seventh. On Thursday and Wednesday of this week,
we got some full criminal charges against twelve Chinese nationals
who are currently not apprehended today. But hey, bounty hunter style,

(51:22):
if you can get one and you survive, the US
government may give you as much as ten million dollars
asterisk sick. Well, it's minus taxes. It's after a conviction.
That's okay, and take a while.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
I'm cool with that.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
What did they say when they just released these statements
hunting these dirty dozen individuals?

Speaker 2 (51:47):
They said that there were twelve individuals that attacked over
one hundred different organizations and it was actually a strategy
that went back as far as twenty thirteen. So this, oh,
you just imagine, you imagine a group that's just kind
of been waiting to implement the right attacks at the

(52:07):
right time.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Yeah, and this was one of the big ones.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
Do in that recon lay in the groundwork all those
many years.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
But well, the big question then, is was this attack
just another little stepping stone in whatever the big operation is.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yeah, and if so, what is it? Right? That's the
trillion dollar question. The DOJ Department of Justice here in
the US says, all right, look, maybe some of these
twelve people, maybe they were acting on their own. Yeah,
maybe they said, we can prove that. I think about

(52:44):
eight of them were ordered to do this by entities
of the Chinese government, the Ministry of Public Security or
MPs and the Ministry of State Security MSS. And two
of the people that they specifically name in these accusations
are employees, like direct high ranking employees of these ministries.

(53:08):
But to your point, Noel, there is, as we talked
about in previous episodes on the fifty cent Army or whatever,
the nation of China has a complex and very clever
approach to denying state involvement in these operations through the
use of proxy, ostensibly private industries. And we have to
be really careful when we talk about this because a

(53:30):
lot of politicians use it to sound or to propagate
very racist statements and to make people like hate more
than a billion other folks just because they appen to
live in China. This is why we have to acknowledge
the United States does the exact same thing pretty often.
Check out Blackrocks recent exciting purchases of two ports in

(53:54):
Panama private industry. That's a good idea. Just happens to
be two of the ports that the US is currently
beefing with Panama about.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Hmmm when private, Yeah, I wonder kind of art they
keep in those points?

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Only the best, straight up, only original drawings of Dick butt.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Oh god, do you guys remember dick But.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
That's the real takeaway from this episode. That's what That's
what these hackers are looking for, the original drawing of
dick But be amazing of those, the whole thing. It's
the only thing in Fort Knox. There's no gold. There's
one framed drawing of dick butt. Yep. Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
Just on a scrap on a napkin, on the back
of a piece of trash, just a sketch of dick butt.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
And it's not handwritten. It's dick written exactly. Oh wow, yeah,
dare to dream? Right, So how does this work? Though?
We This is where we learn about an ostensibly private
Chinese company called Eye Dash Soon I soon hopefully no

(55:15):
relation to iHeart one would hope, one hopes. So what
do we what do we know about IOO?

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Well, they can compromise Gmail and Microsoft Outlook in boxes.
They can also easily compromise x slash Twitter. Uh why
would they do that? Well, who knows to what ends?

Speaker 3 (55:38):
Shadow? The shadow shadows. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Well, one of the reasons you might do this is
to monitor the opinions that are not stated publicly that
high level officials might have, right, the discussions that are
had between you know, high level individuals that are never
stated out loud.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah. Like, imagine if you are working in a social
dynamic and you wonder what other people in that dynamic
might think of you, and you think, or they send
them messages about me on the side, what do they say?
If so, that's kind of what the Chinese government is
accused of looking for through Silk Typhoon and AP twenty seven.

(56:23):
Silk Typhoon, by the way, I canmemer if we mentioned this.
It's different from another hacker group called Vault Typhoon. Vault
Typhoon seeks to compromise US infrastructure.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
Do you think Salt Typhoon and Vault who would win
in a fight between Salt Typhoon and.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
Vault Typhoon, you know, and Silk Typhoon.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Oh fair, yeah, yes, I'm talking about it if they
were the Jaegers, the Mechs, you know, Evangelians.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
It's a good question. I don't know. Sorry, no it's not.
There are no dumb questions unless you think you have one.
For us, prove us wrong in this assumption conspiracydiheartradio dot com.
Think about silk Iphoon is that they have a jacket,
they have a track record. They've been continually accused of
being behind hacks of universities. Also easy to do that.

(57:10):
Healthcare systems also easy to do that. And the DOJ
says this company I Soon, which is functioning as sort
of a face for dirty things from the Chinese government.
They say these guys were essentially given bounties so they
would take this data and then they would sell it

(57:33):
to folks associated with the Chinese government or certain agencies.
A hacker for higher system. And that's brilliant because you know,
if you're you know, Uncle Ji, and you get caught,
you can say, oh my god, what the heck? You guys,
we're just as surprised as you. We're all trying to
find the guy who did this, you say, her hot

(57:55):
dog costume.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
But let's make something really clear here, because I got
a little confused even looking through my research. Here, Salt
Typhoon is the group thought to be responsible for the
communications intrusion. Silk Typhoon is the group thought to be
responsible for the Treasury infiltration via what is the name

(58:17):
of the thing beyond trust?

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Yeah, taking that API security key via beyond Trust. And
then volt Typhoon is possible attacks on US infrastructure, power stations,
stuff like that. So it's a multi pronged defense. We
can also say the legal defense, the oh my gosh,
I'm just another guy happening to wear a hot dog

(58:41):
costume in the store. That gets pretty flimsy. If you
can prove that I soon did attempt to sell stolen
data on US nationals right to China. For I think
it was not a bad price overall. In the Great Game,

(59:02):
It's like they were trying to sell something like ten
thousand to seventy five thousand US dollars per each email inbox,
so not per message. You kind of get a price break,
you know, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I feel like now
I'm selling US compromised email inboxes.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
That should be a side hustleld.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
We live in a gig economy, do we not? So dude?
Oh sorry, no, you got it. You got it, guys.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
There's this other thing that I just wanted to throw
into here that was it was at least reported on
in January of this year about silk typhoons infiltration and
how they were potentially looking at foreign investments like companies
that assess security risks for foreign investments within the United States.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
And I don't even.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
If you guys remember we talked about there was a
Chinese investment group underneath a bunch of shell corporations that
was trying to buy huge swaths of land that were
It's not the one in California we talked about. It
was right near specific base like military base, but other
parts that were close to critical infrastructure in the United States.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
And it ended up getting.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Blocked because it was found that it was a Chinese
investment that came under scrutiny and then they stopped it.
But then you've got these guys in December looking at
the foreign investment offices within the Department of Treasury. So
it does make you wonder like what in the end

(01:00:40):
or is it a strategy to find the loopholes and
the weak points to be able to purchase large swaths
of land for specific purposes?

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Partially guess, to be quite honest with you, that that
is part of the rubric right, part of the tactic applied.
The easier way to do it, obviously, is to go
through a sovereign wealth fund. Shout out to Aaron Aronson.
Go through as many proxies as you can, maybe find
an individual who is already US national and work through

(01:01:16):
them by hook or by crook, by carrot or by stick.
This is yeah, this is tricky stuff and maybe one
of the no maybe's. One of the most worrying factors
here is all the all the hard leg work of
these investigations show us that I Soon, that company, private
company isn't just selling individual espionage fish via inboxes. Instead,

(01:01:42):
the company is offering to teach direct employees, official employees
of the PRC, to become fishermen in their own right.
Their training employees on how to hack independently of I soon,
and perhaps providing a suite of software tools. And then
they are also you know, just give me the day
one hacking methods like this is hey, go here. The

(01:02:06):
password is one, two, three, four five. Uh. Yeah, it's happening.
And we're talking about more than like Treasury Department made
the news, but we're also talking technology companies, think tanks,
law firms, defence contractors, your local government, check in on
your comptroller. It's just a reason for us to say

(01:02:26):
the word comptroller again. It's I wish it was a
different job. It sounds way cooler than it is. There's
a comptroller against just it's an accountant.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
Right, it's like a treasurer almost. Yeah, oh, even better,
I think, Well, I mean insane potato potata. Oh, also
religious organizations and private info of journalists, right, even yes, folks,
even the journalist you don't like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
They want to know all of it. And none of
the defendants, no, those twelve people named, none of that
dirty dozen are currently in US. So at this point,
before we end, I think it's we have to do it.
I feel we are ethically required to. What is the
official response of China to like overall and specifically.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Well, I'll tell you one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
I'll tell you one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
One response that they had very recently, not necessarily about this,
but just a response in general. It was published in
BBC on March fifth, as we record where China says, quote,
it is ready for any type of war with the US,
including a trade war or other.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Right, but they never fully copped to doing this though right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Absolutely to that point denied anything related to yes, because
it's private industry, right, Chinese officials may allude to the
possibility of, say, a motivated patriot working on their own,
you know, vigilante style. In this specific case, we can
go to a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning,

(01:04:05):
who said, look, these allegations by Uncle Sam are groundless. Further,
we oppose all forms of hacking attacks, and we're even
more opposed to the spread of false information against China
for political purposes and true story, representatives of the US
Treasury traveled to China to hang out and have like

(01:04:26):
a you know, clear the air discussion what corporate America
would call a healthy conversation, because hey, maybe China is
telling the truth. Dylan, could you give us a sarcastic
sound cue, just go wild with it perfectly. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Well, of course all of this occurred before you know,
the terriffs financial wars fully began between the United States
and China, there's always been tensions and small things happening,
but now we're officially embroiled in that, you know, along
with Canada and Mexico and a lot of other countries.
And just this concept of China coming out publicly and saying, hey,
we're ready for war, and then you think about potentially

(01:05:07):
the actions that were taken, whether on behalf of China
as you know, a state or not, if they've got
some of that information that makes them prepared to take
strategic actions against the US. It just, especially when it
comes to money and trade wars, it does feel like
it's one big deck that's getting stacked somehow by people

(01:05:30):
that we just don't know right or who are acting
for what purpose besides winning at some point, right, because
there's other stuff going on too.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
We talked about a.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Sovereign wealth fund would be the way to get through
that foreign investment into buying land. The United States just
started a foreign a sovereign wealth fund.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
The what was it? Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Want something he did in February he froze a law
that banned the bribing of foreign officials. YEA, for one
hundred and eighty days.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Why would you do that? Yes? And also thanks man,
oh yeah, yeah, good job man, get it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Oh oh well, but just the.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
The fact that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
And what was there was sorry, one other thing, and
it's I don't mean this in kind of some kind
of anti Trump way. I just mean it seems like
these things are coming together in a specific fashion to
shore up corruption at the highest levels. Because there was
another move that was disbanding the Foreign Interference in Elections

(01:06:40):
Group that was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Investigating that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Just all it does feel like, I don't know, the
intrusion thing is happening deeper than just the Treasury Department.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Absolutely absolutely. And that statement that you alluded to if
war is what the US wants, be it a terriforia,
trade war or any other type of war, We're ready
to fight till the end does come officially from China's embassy,
but was published on Twitter. So disappointing that such monumental
moves will happen on social media. Those are the times

(01:07:13):
of which we live. We mentioned a second hack at
the top of the show this evening. The second hack
that we're referring to might be controversial for some of
us in the crowd. It is will give you the
quick skinny. It is Doge the so called Department of
Government Efficiency Governmental Efficiency Street named DOGE. Get it, it's wordplay.

(01:07:34):
They came under fire for doing a lot of wild
stuff recently. Specifically, an employee for DOGE named Marco Elez
had the ability to alter code that controls trillions of
dollars worth of federal spending, even though the White House
and the US Treasury said he did not have this.
They said he had read only access. People looked into that,

(01:07:57):
whether through purposeful prevarication or whether through honest mistakes, that
was incorrect. He did have the ability to write an
altered code. A few days after these claims, that was rescinded.
Critics are saying that DOGE is un American and is

(01:08:17):
compromising people with due to conflicts of interest. Supporters say, yeah,
Elon Musk is unelected, but his organization is uncovering massive
amounts of fraud.

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
I hope that's true. I don't think it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
The whole thing feels really weird. It's super weird, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
The other thing that the Silk Typhoon folks targeted was
the one of the offices that specifically oversees foreign sanctions
against Chinese companies, and the US has been making more
and more moves sanctioning Chinese private companies for doing stuff

(01:09:01):
that they consider is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Let's say, sure, so now you get eyes on specifically
not only who has already been targeted, but who is
potentially going to be targeted.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
Right again, the prognostication being able to read the tea
leaves to predict and maybe prevent future actions. That's the
real Like Ham and the sandwich here, and one thing
is for sure. We know we've gone a little bit
long on this. One thing is for sure, folks. Anybody
you look at in this game, they are holding some

(01:09:34):
of their cards. No one is being fully transparent. China
is denying everything. Uncle Sam doesn't want to expose what
we call collection means and methods because doing so would
play their hand out in the future. And obviously Doge
is launching contradictory statements every other every other Wednesday. So

(01:09:58):
the truth of the matter is this, no matter what
your individual perspective is, no matter how we look at
it objectively, everybody in this case has some serious stuff
they don't want you to know, and we would love
to hear from you. We try to be easy to
find online, via telephone, via email, thank you so much
for joining us this evening. It's right.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
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Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
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Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
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