April 19, 2021 • 59 mins
Clearview AI is back in the news with more reports of its facial recognition software being used for dodgy ends. An attack on an Iranian nuclear facility prompts international observers to ask about the timing of the operation as the US signals interest in returning to the nuclear deal. A small island community in the Pacific struggles to understand what they should do next in the wake of Prince Philips' death -- after all, they literally worshipped the man as a God. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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Episode Transcript
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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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's time for Strange News, Fellow
conspiracy realists, our weekly segment that takes us around the
(00:48):
world and often just off the edge of the mainstream map.
Today we're going to learn a little bit more about
the odd effect Prince Philip's death has had in the Pacific. Uh.
We're going to see the clear view AI's back in
the news. No spoilers, uh. And we'll also will also
(01:08):
head toward a rod where the world seems to be
enging closer and closer. Two. Well, I don't want to
say world war, but definitely the Cold Wars are warming up.
I think it's fair to say, what would you guys?
Would you guys agree with that it's not getting any colder. No, yes, no,
(01:30):
well not politically at least. No, that it is getting
a little bit warmer. Uh in terms of temperature, which
I am absolutely fine with. Uh. Well, we'll put uh
the well. We also know that uh, temperatures in the
Middle East may well be unlivable within our lifetimes, literally
and figuratively, literally and figuratively. If if you guys are
(01:54):
on board for it, what say we let's say we
pursue it in that order, We'll go to the Pacific
for sound good? All right? So this story happens in
the wake of the death of Prince Philip. Prince Philip,
as you probably have heard, was a key player in
(02:14):
the UK monarchy. Uh. He recently passed away April nine one,
at the ripe old age of nine nine years old. Uh.
As you imagine royalty as pretty good health care. And
in the wake of this man's death, a lot of
people were, of course heartbroken in the UK, and a
(02:37):
lot of people were pointing out various problematic things that
Prince Philip had done h in his virtual century of
life here on earth. But one thing that bears a
little bit more scrutiny is the religion built around him.
We're not talking about the Church of England, folks. We're
(02:58):
talking about something that is commonly called a cargo cult.
And Matt, well, I know you guys have heard of
these before, right, Yeah, I know we certainly talked about
it in the past, either on this show or another one.
But I always get them always kind of forget what
it is. So I'm gonna be on board for a
primer real quick. Well, just i'll talk for one second
(03:19):
that I'm gonna I don't know much about this one.
I know that cargo cults a lot of times have
to do with newer technology or civilizations with newer technology
that will advance on their civilization, and a lot of
times leave behind goods or leave behind pieces of machinery
(03:40):
or debris or whatever it is that they lead behind
from their new technology. And then that technology, since it's
so different from the understanding of just the civilization that
they've encroached upon, um deifies it in some way. And
I think, tell me Craiming if I'm wrong here, Ben,
but I think a lot of it has to do
(04:01):
with maybe legends or lore or myths that exist previously
within a culture that then that encroaching group symbolizes in
some way maybe yeah, yeah, that's that's that's pretty close.
So there is a cultural context, if not a specific
mythical figure, right, prefiguring the arrival of these outsiders. Uh.
(04:26):
These movements begin in isolated areas of the Pacific specifically,
and the cultural context into which these outsiders arrived is
the idea of what's called the big Man political system.
And the big Man political system individuals gain social prestige
(04:49):
through the act of giving gifts. So you know, you've
had a wonderful fishing expedition or something, you want to
up your rep in your community. It was time for
a seafood party, you know what I mean? Who can
say no to that? This became exacerbated and entered a
new era as we saw it started in like the
(05:10):
late nineteenth century early twentieth century, really took off in
World War Two because as Allied powers were island hopping
to secure control over the Pacific theater, it would land
in places that had rarely seen outsiders, in some cases
had never seen outsiders, and these outsiders would come along
(05:34):
with air dropped supplies, military equipment, stuff that looked like
it was literally from the future, you know, imagine we're
all living on an island. We are probably subsistence farmers
or fisher folk, and then all of a sudden we're
inundated with manufactured clothing, canned goods, medicine that we had
(05:56):
never dreamt of before. And we're associating this in our
cultural context, and we're saying, Okay, who is the person
giving this to us? Who is the quote unquote big man?
And how do we propitiate reward adore this, uh, this person,
this figure. This brings us to an island called Tana
(06:20):
in Vanuatu. You one of the most popular cargo cults
is from Tanna. It's called the John from Colts f
or John Frew. Uh. Sometimes he's called Tom Navy. The
story is that an unspecified group of Americans land on
the island with cargo in World War Two and then became,
(06:44):
in the minds of some residents of the island a
spiritual entity, something kind of close, uncomfortably at times close
to being a deity. Often when you hear these things reported, uh,
they there's a bit of mothering about it. And I'm
sad to say there's a little bit of condescension in
(07:07):
the press reporting sometimes where they where you'll see, uh,
the narrator of a documentary, or you'll see a reporter
who knows better saying stuff like, oh look at look
at this. World War two ended, but the cargo colts
still here. It's so odd. They're building life size replicas
of airplanes out of straw. They're building fake radio towers
(07:29):
things like that, and it's it's I do think it's. Uh.
They're looking down their nose a bit in an unfair way,
because obviously this becomes a religious practice. These are religious symbols.
At this point. The locals know full well that this
airplane won't actually fly. They're just as intelligent as anybody else.
(07:52):
But Prince Philip is involved. There are a couple of
villages on the island of Tanna that are part of
something called the Prince Philip movement. They believe that this
Duke of Edinburgh is a divine being and they associate
him with a part of their mythology. So, like I
(08:15):
said earlier, there wasn't a specific mythical figure for all
of these cults, but there was a uh that context
of big man politics. Prince Philip is different because they
did tie him to a specific legend you're right, Matt,
I just didn't want to admit it until he got
to this part of this story. I wasn't that well
(08:37):
because I remember the I wasn't even thinking about Prince
Philip because I was thinking about the What is it
Tom Nate or not Tom Navy John. It's like a symbol,
a symbolic person that represents the group maybe or something
like that. But I I sorry, I couldn't remember. Thank
(08:57):
you for I don't calling me on it is this
person like a deity or a or more of a
Manson esque figure, like a cult leader. Yeah, great question.
Here's how the legend goes, According to the ancient folklore
of the Yao Nanan people, which I apologize from his pronouncing,
(09:20):
there was the once upon a time was all good
stories begin. There was the son of a mountain spirit,
and the son of a mountain spirit traveled over the
seas to a distant land. And when he arrived at
this distant land, he married a powerful woman, and in
time he would return to the native people on this
(09:43):
island of Tana. He was sometimes said to be the
brother of John. From when the from movement began and
the people who are some of the people who believe
this tale believe that Prince Philip is literally that son
of a mountain spirit because he is from far away,
(10:04):
that he married Queen Elizabeth the Second. It's not clear
exactly when this came about. Experts guests as early as
the nineteen fifties, so after World War two. We know
that when the royal couple visited Vadawatu in four a
(10:24):
few people were actually able to see Prince Philip from
a distance. And there are photographs of this meeting which
some folks may find offensive at this time. And Prince Philip,
by the way, should be said, um, without editorializing, he
leaned into this. He sent them signed official photographs. Uh
(10:47):
yeah he Uh. They sent him a club. He took
a picture of him posing with this traditional club and
sent that picture to them. They traded. He just gave
him photos of himself to look at. Would you believe
my my inkling was right? Um, we did this on
Ridiculous History several years ago. The title of the episode
(11:08):
if you want to get a little bit more of
a primer that you know, thirty minute primer rather than
five or whatever it's called. The Duke of Edinburgh is
literally a god in VNANTU. Yes, yeah, yeah, so you
have to wonder. I mean, I don't want to read
too many tea leaves of psychology here, but you have
to wonder what it says about a person when they
found out the people who really could use some secular
(11:32):
assistance were worshiping you as a god. And then you said, dope,
here's a picture, let me see it. Let me send
that again. And we have to be sensitive here because
this is the big story. This is something I was
wondering about. It is actually the main thing I was
wondering about when Prince Philip's death was announced. What happened
(11:55):
to the Prince Philip movement? Well, it's still very much around.
And although it can be tempting to look askance at
this movement because it seems so very foreign too many
people in the West, we have to remember this is
a real spiritual value system for people and the villages
(12:17):
that followed Prince Philip. In this way, we're stricken with
grief and we're trying to figure out how to commemorate
his death. So as we record today, there are three
rough possibilities that we found so far, and these may change.
One possibility was some people said, look, this just solidifies it.
(12:42):
He is definitely a god and he will return like
he did the other time back in the fifties. And
then there's another group that is saying, we are going
to now deify Prince Charles, so he will be kind
of the new the spiritual and literal descendant of Prince Philip,
(13:07):
now also worshiped by us. Uh. There's a you can
read some excellent reporting in the Telegraph about how how
this came to be, how the rituals are enacted, but
it gives it still. I'm trying so hard not to
(13:27):
read into these guys character judgmentally. The princes. I mean,
like Prince Charles visited as recently as eighteen and he
was appointed as an honorary chief. He dressed in a
grass skirt, and you know, he took a bunch of photos.
I I imagine, I mean they have if you're royalty,
(13:47):
you have so many photo ops, right, So I imagine
this is maybe for them it qualifies as spreading goodwill
in a positive image. I don't know what do you
guys think, where where where do you land on the
ethics of that? Well, um, well, weird, oh god, god, complexy?
Maybe you know what I mean, Like, there's if if
(14:10):
I'm trying to be completely objective, there's a I can
imagine a fascination with it. It would feel very strange, though.
I maybe it's because I, again, I don't know much
about the Royal family. They seem to be somewhat deified
already in Western culture, right, so I wonder if it's
(14:30):
that different for them. Um. You know, portraits of the
Royal family existing, I'm sure many households um Um. I
imagine it, but I cannot confirm that. Uh I. I
wonder what it would be like personally, for let's say,
Prince Charles when he visited to go through that um
in what you're accounting reminds me a bit of George W.
(14:53):
Bush and some of the times when he would visit
other places, you know, and he would like he would
do the things, the rituals dawn, the clothing of of
certain places that were very traditional. But it just feels
it feels wrong in a way when you're watching it
as a third party, um, because it is appropriation in
(15:15):
some ways, but other in other ways, it's just being
in that area. But in this case, it's a it's
literally a cult that is built up around your family
and ourself. Well, it's it's usually I mean it's like
a diplomatic move if you're sort of like presented with
the traditional garb by the governments, you know what I mean,
asked to wear the thing or whatever. The god complexy
(15:37):
thing I was talking about was was more just Prince
Philip leaning into this and signing pictures and all of that.
That that's odd. He's almost capitalizing on the fact that
I mean, really some of these folks just don't know better.
You know, I'm not not there's no ding on anybody's intelligence,
just about access to information, and he's essentially being like
(15:58):
not telling them otherwise. Yeah, it's it's a little strange. Yeah,
it's it's it's a sticky thing, you know, like the
there is an ethical dilemma like is it is it
unethical to go along with the idea or is it
even more unethical two totally reject these people's deeply held
(16:22):
spiritual beliefs, you know, like God complex aside. It's I
and many people listening today have been in situations where
you are in a strange place and you are encouraged
to participate in a ritual that might otherwise feel like
appropriation if you if you were not if it were
(16:44):
not made explicitly clear that these people, this community wants
you to be a part of this thing. They want
you to do the thing, even if they think it's
hilarious that you're really bad at doing the thing, which
has happened to me a couple of times. If you
if you can't impress people, just just try to be
endearing about it, and then you'll you'll at least get
(17:06):
a pity pass. Uh. The third thing that the Prince
Philip movement is considering, which I think could be immensely powerful,
is starting a political party. Uh. This could if you
I'm just thinking out loud here, but this could do
a number of beneficial things for the people in these communities.
(17:27):
I would I would imagine that they will have a
special unilateral relationship with the United Kingdom that might help
with infrastructure, that might help with um, you know, medicine
aid as required, especially as ocean levels continue to rise.
So I think that I think there could be something
(17:47):
good that comes from this for anybody who's listening to
this segment who's thinking, yeah, I'm sold. I want a
religious movement based around me. I mean who does. Sure,
but Prince Philip had had it really easy in terms
of a lot of other cults of personality or movements
(18:09):
built around a person, because you know, if you're a
cult leader and the thing is like you're on call
all the time until you get really big, you have
to like you don't get days off. You have to
do CrowdWork constantly, never stopped, never stops. That's why, that's
why we got out of that game. So wait, Ben,
(18:29):
I'm thinking about your So what we've established is that
there may be a religious movement forming a political party
that would represent I guess Tanna or Tana. Then they
would have a special relationship with the UK. I'm just
imagining the whole Hawaii scenario that Doc Holiday did such
(18:51):
a good job discussing. Oh yeah, yeah, that was awesome,
where the special relationship goes bad really quickly. I mean,
that's that's a that's a possibility, hopefully as far less
likely in one but there. So, the John From movement
is essentially on one side of this island, and the
(19:11):
Prince Philip movement is on the other side of the
same island, and the John From movement already started a
political party, so they're they're following in some footsteps here.
I'm just I am torn about this idea. I think
yet it might not qualify as life changing or world
(19:33):
changing news. But this is an excellent example of what
we always say and have said for years. The stories
don't stop when the headlines stop or when the news
cycle moves on. They're very real people who are going
to uh going to feel the consequences or the memories
of the death of Prince Philip for generations to come.
(19:56):
I would love to visit vanuatu Um, It's on my
list of remote islands to visit. But I'm not I'm
not sure how to how to handle this, And this
is where I want to defer to our fellow conspiracy realists.
What do you think is the ethical thing to do
if you found yourself in a situation like this. Let's
say you traveled abroad to a remote location, you met
(20:20):
some people, you did some stuff, go back to wherever
you normally live, and then years or decades later, you
find out that you are now a messiodic figure. How
do you how do you navigate that in a responsible way?
Let us know one std W y t K conspiracy
and iHeart radio dot com. We're going to take a
(20:41):
pause for a word from our sponsors and we'll be
back with more strange news. And we're back with another
strange news. This is a good one. This is a
follow up on one we report. I believe we did it.
Maybe have to we do a full episode on this.
I think we did. Guys UM clear View AI the
(21:05):
controversial UM Internet startup AI software developer company based out
of New York. A gentleman by the name of hon
Ton Thought is the company's co founder and CEO. There
was a really cool public radio story where a woman
tracked him down to this weird, half like half used
(21:25):
office and he very clearly didn't want to be found.
The reporter who tracked him down had to go to
great lengths to find him. UM And even as early
as then, we were talking about the ramifications of something
like this, what the software purportion to be able to do.
It's just like like you know, facial recognition software on steroids.
(21:45):
They've mind you know, And it's all a product again,
of all this amazing information about ourselves that we just
pump out into the ether for anyone to grab or scrape.
Is the term that's used when it's applied to like
software bots. I guy us to go through and literally
just grab up all of this stuff that's out there,
all these profile pictures, all any kind of you know,
image associated with people's um, publicly available social media accounts
(22:10):
and and and more. UM. And the thing that differentiated
a clear view is that they just amassed through just
you know, god knows how many hours or how you
even break that down of scraping this data, just an
insane library of faces. UM. That they were then able
to supposedly cross reference to information about the people's actual identity. Uh.
(22:34):
Their idea behind this is that it's a tool that's
going to revolutionize law enforcement, you know, for tracking down
fugitives and criminals and things like that. UM. And of course,
immediately the conversation goes the way it always goes when
it comes to some kind of you know, only use
it this way technology, where then it's like you know,
(22:55):
you know, um, yeah, sure it's only for law enforcement,
but so we're radar detectors and anybody you know can
get your hands on one of those, or like tasers
or any other thing that's supposedly proprietary. When it starts
eventually makes its way into the public domain. UM. And
it's problematic because how reliable is this technology? You know,
(23:16):
is it creating false positives? UM? You know, do we
really want to put this much faith in some sort
of third party you know, kind of seemingly fly by
night at least from those early stories operation And well
they're not fly by night because they're still around and
they're making the news again, uh, and not the best way. Essentially,
(23:37):
there's a couple of stories tied to uh, this update,
one of which is that BuzzFeed News reported and uncovered
that or in the early days of clear View trying
to get some you know, momentum, they gave seven thousand
individual people from the representatives from nearly two thousand public
(24:01):
agencies free trial memberships to clear View AI. And this
is like direct to them, not even through the agencies.
So BuzzFeed basically created a searchable table of one thousand,
eight hundred and three publicly funded agencies UM and the
employees listed as having either tested or downloaded, you know,
(24:25):
signed up for the free trial of this this this tool. UM.
And that's places like the state police, US Immigrations and
Customs enforcement, healthcare organizations, the Air Force, Offices of State
Attorneys podcast. Yeah, exactly in public schools. So I was joking. Sorry,
(24:47):
I was that was a really bad not joke, joking
about me getting access to clear View. So you did
get it? No, No, Well that's the point though. I
think the point is that these invitations are pretty open ended,
and then if you had had gotten access to when
you certainly could have gotten it, because these invitations went
out without, oftentimes the knowledge of the agencies these individuals
(25:08):
worked for. UM, and that's the problem. And all of
this stuff was happened between two thousand and eighteen and
two thousand twenty UM. And there's there's some really good
as an article on like I said, BuzzFeed news article
where they talked to several folks who got ahold of
it UM. By the way, when asked for comment about
this situation, the founder, co founder and CEO Jan tom
(25:30):
Thought said it was quote gratifying to see how quickly
clear View AI has been embraced by US law enforcement. Okay,
you didn't really answer the question, um, yeah, he had.
He had no comment on any of the other fifty
questions that were throwing at him during this UM this
press conference but here here's where it gets interesting. Um.
(25:51):
A guy by the name of Adrian Williams, who's the
police chief of Wilson's Mills, North Carolina. That's hard to
say Wilson's Mills. Um, he has many mills. Uh. And
he said, I found the site on a law enforcement
website last year. He just found it. I said, you
don't have to be a cop to look at a
law enforcement website. I said, up an ac count to
(26:12):
see if it worked. Um. And he said he tested
it using his own personal photos, just to see what
came up. Uh. He says, I ran two known persons
to see if they came back with any youthful info.
I did not think it work the way they had
said it went. It's it's strange though, because this comes
on the heels of an earlier report. I think it
(26:34):
was just last year where clear View said that they
were no longer going to sell to private companies, no
longer sell to non law enforcement entities, which itself was
an announcement in reaction to another piece by BuzzFeed News.
Somewhat at BuzzFeed News is keeping an eye on this,
and if you are listening today, thank you very much.
(26:58):
I'm grateful because we talked about this in our episode
on clear View. I just pulled up my notes from
it in our episode on clear View. I think we
do a pretty good job making the case that there
are too many problems with facial recognition for it to
be legally dependable. I think, what do you guys completely agree,
(27:21):
especially if it's from things like like you know, low light,
you know, security cameras or a t M cameras and
things like that. I mean, I would certainly hope you
could not convict somebody with that alone. You know. Yeah, there,
like you said, there are so many problems resolution of
(27:45):
the photos that are being uploaded to it. Do you
you guys remember in that episode we recorded, there was
a a journalist who was being interviewed and they put
his photograph in there or they yeah, they put they
put a photograph in and then they found I think
a picture of him from some old like Geo city
(28:05):
site or MySpace or whatever, was of him when he
was a little kid, and so somehow the facial recognition
found him when his face looked completely different. So like
the actual metrics of the facial recognition, you know, could
maybe be that sophisticated. That's what the founder said. It
(28:27):
was just super sophisticated. It was able to find you
at that young age. But really it seems like I
think we concluded even that there's probably some other things
that are happening in the background of that search application. Yeah,
very much so, because what we're looking at, I mean,
this is proprietary, but what we're probably looking at is
a pretty robust cross referencing system. So it is an
(28:50):
image search, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also
an image search that recognizes metadata in a digital image.
That think the problem that I'm talking about to say
the quiet part out loud, and it's weird that more
people don't talk about this. The problem with facial recognition
is that it has huge systemic racial problems. Like if
(29:16):
you are a black person or if you you're pretty
much any person of color, the majority of these facial
recognition programs have have a a high likelihood of misidentifying you.
And yeah, that can just be like, oh, imperfect technology.
When we're just doing R and D, people are trying
to prove something worked. But when you get like Noll, say,
(29:38):
when you get into the sphere of law enforcement. You're
talking about real legal consequences. If there is a world
where someone can be locked up or detained based entirely
odd of facial recognition, then that world needs to have
facial recognition technology that actually works. And right now, that's
(30:01):
just that's not the case. No, Ben, I'm sorry. What
you're saying to is I'm saying this lightheartedly because it's
just so depressing. But it's you know, you hear so
often the racist notion that all insert race here looked
the same. Uh. This is literally technology that has that
(30:21):
problematic kind of like flaw. Uh. And it's a thing
that police do quite often mistaking a young young black
male in a hoodie for another young black male and
who you committed a crime, you know, and not actually
taking the time to ask the questions and find out
if that person really was there. They just you know,
(30:43):
jumped to conclusions. Um, this is it's it's just problematic
on so many levels. And not to mention the company,
you know, kind of circumvent I mean, I get it.
I guess it's like the first taste is free or whatever,
and it's like they're trying to get some buzz about
it in the law enforced community. But apparently these folks
(31:04):
were actually using it to help them in their law
enforcement efforts without the note, without the knowledge of their
superior m That's the other aspect that just further complicates this. Like,
one thing we know for sure about these powerful investigative
tools is that whenever you have a group of people
(31:26):
that are allowed to use them, even if only for
official purposes, someone inevitably uses it to search for like
a person they have a crushed shod, or the person
they have a grudge with, or their ex spouse or
their girlfriend. There's something like that. Like this stuff without oversight,
this this is dangerous, you know what I mean? You know, guys,
(31:50):
I want to see in the Supreme Court A I
want to see a case rise all the way up
to Scotus where it's an individual versus say, a clear
view where they're accusing the algorithm of cyber stalking them.
Uh see if we can see if we can get
(32:11):
a felony or whatever misdemeanor. I don't know what charge
that is against a an algorithm for cyber stalking. Nice, Yeah,
I mean when is the first uh when is the
first non physical thing going to be recognized as enough
of of essentience or enough of a mind in court
(32:34):
to be liable for legal consequences. So it's a weird
question because oddly enough, it relates to the idea of
legal personhood. There has been a movement for several years
in Germany and other parts of Europe to have animals,
higher order animals like dolphins elephants recognized as legal persons,
(32:55):
because the move is to get them recognized and then
grant them environment old protections. So I wonder what would happen,
you know, if you could take well, at first, you
have to I don't think you could take an algorithm
to court. You would have to take the creator of
the algorithm. Yeah, are some kind of AI. Maybe that's
(33:15):
that's functioning with it? At least you're right right now? Yes,
but who knows. Man, it's the future taking AI to court.
Sue the pants Wait the you could see the rams
off of them? No? Uh yeah, yeah, no, it's true.
What is it? That's something I'm gonna say, Mr Showline,
(33:35):
We'll sue the pants off of them and then we'll
sell them pants Um. I bring up Mr show the
seminole hbo Um sketch comedy show The kind of surrealist,
you know, really cool, like each one kind of blends
into the the other one with Bob Odenkirk and David
Cross because, um, one of the guys in the cast
of that show, a dude by the name of j Johnston.
(33:59):
H dude looks remarkably like him. Was was you know,
seen in one of these FBI you know, shoot us
a tip if you see this guy, uh, pictures that
they were circulating around folks that participated in the storming
of the Capitol on January six, Um, And it's just
funny to me. There's a full view of this guy's
face and another one with him in a mask, and
(34:22):
it definitely looks a hell of I like him. And um,
a lot of people in the comedy set in LA
have reported that it definitely was him. Yeah, he confirmed it.
I think, Okay, maybe I missed that part. But my
point is, this is a dude. It's all over TV
and has been for like twenty five years. Uh, plenty
of pictures of him on the internet. How come they
couldn't nail him with AI facial recognition software. Doesn't the
(34:44):
FBI have this stuff? Why are they? You know, crowdsourcing
this because it Yeah, it just it just makes me
question like the validity of facial recognition software in general. Yeah,
I was gonna say, you better, you better give me
definitive proof before I believe that man was there doing
(35:05):
that thing, and make sure it's not a deep fake,
because that too. That's an excellent point. That's the other thing.
Facial recognition and deep fake technology are evolving at the
same time at a breakneck pace. So I think we're
very we're already very close to a world where the
(35:28):
deep fake tech can fool or mislead facial recognition tech. Also,
you can get really cool masks a lot of protesters
where of now that that will uh disrupt facial recognition technology.
I don't have one yet, but I've got some trips
coming up where I should probably look into that. Yeah,
you get that one cool one that makes your face
(35:49):
look like a like a holiday fire though. That one's
pretty cool or like a spooky ghost whatever you call it.
Like it's like an led Matt. I love it. I want.
I tried to get one immediately, but they were sold out.
Oh no, uh yeah, those things that thing is great,
my my cats. You might have heard one screaming just
a second ago. My cats hate it. They are not
(36:10):
down with it. Uh. They like people to have the
same face every day, which I think is kind of
living in the past. And maybe with things like clear
view AI, we will see more normalization of facial disguise techniques.
What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean I would
do right now if I could, I wouldn't be on
(36:31):
this YouTube channel showing my actual skin face. That's gross.
Old skin face strikes again. Yeah, I I really appreciate
you bringing this to everyone's attentional because we see again
legislation is getting left in the dust. Legislation has being
(36:54):
outpaced by technology and they are quite literally not laws
yet for the kind of stuff this sort of technology
can do. And that's that's going to be increasingly important
and it's gonna bear increasingly profound consequences in the future.
I think it's absolutely founded in reality. That opinion, um
(37:17):
and and and it's becomes something like where there's gonna
be a disconnect between you know, federal law and individual
organizations or entities. For example, the l a p D
is already outright band its use because they already see
the problems. So there you go. Uh, and there's there's
a whole other thing that there's several things wrapped up
in this. There's like an injunction, there's a there's a
(37:38):
lawsuit that's going on in Europe, uh, basically trying to
prevent this from ever being used in any way in Europe. Um.
But yeah, the big story is that all of these
agencies were essentially using it without permission. Oh and not
to mention the fact that it sucks that apparently it
does not work very well. Uh so yeah, sorry, clear
(38:00):
of view. I'm afraid they've drummed up so much, you know,
hype for themselves by you know, edge lording that kind
of slippery slope of police state. But I don't think
it's going to pan out. I would say, you know,
I would say that one reply to that, I'm not
trying to be precious about it, is we're talking about
a gun that has a bad aim, right, But a
(38:23):
gun with a bad aim is only a more dangerous
gun because of that, because of that problem. Yeah, It's
like they say, a doll knife is more dangerous than
a sharp one. Yes, I guess it depends on whether
the human firing the gun has good aim or not
because if the human has a really good aim but
the gun has terrible aim, then a bullet's never gonna
(38:46):
hit the target. But if they've got terrible aim the
gun has terrible aim, then you could be in real trouble. Yolo,
let's go, let's go outside, let's get let's get clear viewed.
It's happening, whether you like it or not. So yeah,
it is, and it's gonna keep happening, and it's an
ongoing story, and you're right then it's like, you know,
(39:07):
you can't put the badger back in the bag. So
it's already out there. It already has been out there.
I mean, we see it with Facebook predicting who's in
your pictures? Is that so and so or whatever. I mean,
we know that stuff exists. It's just gonna keep getting better.
The law just needs to catch up, you know. To me,
it seems like it's almost like a cheat, kind of
(39:28):
I don't know. I could see their cases where it
could be useful, certainly, say identifying terrorists who are actively
going to you know, hurt people you know, in in
a particular moment. But it's a slippery slope, right, You
can't use it for some things and not other things, right,
I don't know. I mean you should be able to
there should be. It reminds me of like I've been
(39:48):
rewatching the New Watchman or you know, not new anymore,
but the Watchman series on HBO, and it it kind of,
you know, creates this world where police have to hide
their faces be because you know, just knowledge that someone
who's police is going to put that police person's life
in jeopardy. Um. But they have this thing where in
(40:08):
order to uh use lethal force or draw your weapon,
you have to make a case for it to somebody
who then unlocks the weapon for you. UM. I don't
know quite where I was going with that, but I
mean to me, it's like there should be the ability
to use a tool in the right situation, but also
not so many safeguards that it's not even worthwhile and
(40:29):
it doesn't really help anybody because in the situation and Watchman,
when the person can unlock his gun in time, you know,
the moment passes for that to be useful tool for
that individual to protect themselves. So it's all slippery, isn't it.
I don't know, it's all very slippery. Well, let's slip
and slide our way into an ad break. Uh, and
(40:50):
then we'll be right back with another strange news. All right,
and we're back. Hey, you guys have had any ear
worm all day and yesterday? Do you remember this song?
Wherever I go? No, wherever you go, I'll be right
(41:10):
there waiting for you. I forget the well be right.
So that song has been in my head and I
played it and I didn't I don't know a lot
about music, but uh this, I didn't realize that the
(41:32):
person who made that song's name is Richard Marx. Yeah.
I saw him randomly. Holy, I'm so sorry. I really briefly,
I randomly stumbled into his show in l A at
the Troubadour. It was sold out, and I like made
nice with the bouncer and he let me in and
I saw Richard Marks. I was like, I just just
occurred to that's that was Yeah, I'm sorry, please continue,
(41:52):
that's awesome. Oh no, I just I don't know why
the song was in my head, and I had this epiphany,
like that guy's name if you, if you like, use
his shortened first name, that is unfortunate. Well, I mean,
chaos is an opportunity, right, yeah, it Marks, you know
(42:14):
there's there's a situation where that could work to your advantage.
I I gotta tell you, Matt, this whole time I was.
I know we're running um, we're running a tight ship today,
so I could try not to chime in too much.
But it's whole time I was waiting with bated breath
as you talked about your earworm, because I thought this
is either really haunting my guy here, or this is
(42:37):
gonna be one amazing segue. No it's not. Let's do it.
Let okay, okay, okay. Israel appears to have left it's
Richard marks all over the Iran nuclear situation is That's
why I messed with you. Man. You got it perfect
and worth every wasted second which I can dream like.
(43:01):
So tell us all about these dick marks all over Iran. Well,
if if this stays in, uh, I'll give you a
clean break so you can come back in if you
need to cut all Okay, Okay, no, he's keep it in.
Tell us all about these Richard marks. Okay, sure, okay. Uh.
(43:23):
This is very serious, you guys, and terrifying. And that's
why I think we're we're forcibly making ourselves make light
of it. UM. There's there's this place called Iran. It's
in the Middle East, and there have been a lot
of tensions with many many other surrounding countries with Iran. UH.
A lot of it has to do with ideological the
(43:45):
ideological view of Iran, or at least a perceived view,
the political the perceived political intentions of Iran, and the
stated intentions of Iran at times, UM and they seem
to oppose most of the Western world and especially Western
powers that have a stake in the Middle East in
countries around Iran. UH. We've talked about Iranu many times
(44:09):
on this show before. I'd recommend some of our other
episodes to get primers on that stuff or literally just search, uh,
search around a little bit, you'll find all of the
stories we're going to mention right now. It was this
past weekend when we're recording this. The last Sunday, there
was a quote terrorist attack reported in Iran at this
(44:29):
place called the Naton's Complex. This is um it's Intran.
It's a it's a power plant, gener power generation plant.
It's a nuclear power generation plant where there are centrifuges
and it's really dangerous to have a power outage. When
there's uh nuclear equipment being run, centrifuges, all kinds of
(44:54):
other equipment, especially dangerous if it's if they've actually got
rods that are generating power and then and then the
surrounding power goes out. We've seen that before. What can occur? Um,
you know, Fukushima isn't the same thing. There's a lot
of water that was that was being dealt with there,
as well as damage from an earthquake. But anytime power
(45:14):
goes out, you can you know, you're you're talking about
backup energy situations that are always at least second tier
at best. Um. So let's jump to reporting out of
the BBC just to learn exactly what happened here. According
to them, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran the a
(45:34):
eo I said that this incident had occurred on Sunday.
It was involving the nuclear facilities power network. They didn't
provide a ton of information about what exactly happened, what
happened to the power network, but they did say there
were quote no casualties or leaks. Hey, that's great. It
(45:56):
is a nuclear power facility, uh um, because we know
that can be very very disastrous. Here's a here's a
quote they were condemning this despicable move. The Islamic Republic
of Iran emphasizes the need for the international community and
the International Atomic Energy Agency to deal with this nuclear terrorism. Again,
(46:18):
they're they're categorizing it as a terrorist attack that occurred
on their facility within Iran, and they also said Iran
reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators. So
that's intimidating, a little scary, and um, it just depends
on who the perpetrators are, if it truly was an
(46:39):
act by an outside player, let's say a country, a
state that that was not Iran. Yes, yes, WHOA. I
literally just got an email about the offspring right when
you said that. Oh yeah, no, I'm I'm I've riddled
you guys computers with all sorts of surveillance stuff, specifically
(47:04):
send an email about the offspring, and then you quoted
the offspring. Oh, it's an act of terrorism. Uh, oh
my god. Well, so, um, let's let's talk about this
site a little bit. Uh with Ton's site, this place
has been in the news recently. I don't know if
we talked about this on a Strange News episode or
(47:24):
even mentioned it in passing, but it's something that I'm
sure we mentioned to each other. There was a fire
at this same site earlier in July, I believe. I
think it hit the centrifuge assembly workshop. So as they
were building up to these new centrifuges that they just
they just unveiled them that they are functioning, they just
(47:46):
turned them on and like ceremoniously, and the power went out. Basically,
that's what occurred. Yeah, we talked about it amongst ourselves,
I believe, but we we didn't talk about it on
air because a peek peek into the background here, folks.
For more than a year now, we've got this big
(48:07):
list of potential episodes, and for more than a year
there's been one called What's going On in Iran? And
every time I started thinking, because I read about this
stuff in my free time anyway, every time I start thinking, Okay,
we can make an episode now and it will not
be immediately outdated, some something crazy happens and we're like,
(48:28):
oh good, it's good we didn't record because then people
would ask why we didn't talk about this thing. So
maybe one day we'll be able to do it, but
we can't really do it justice yet since there's so
many ongoing events and Matt, you know, you know my
feelings about this. That site has been targeted for years, uh,
(48:50):
and it's pretty pretty clear who's doing the target. Yes,
we started this whole thing with a ridiculous accidental bit
about Richard Marks and we made a very you know,
we made a statement about it about a particular country,
and we said that Israel may have been the culprit.
And that's because there's been some weirdly public reporting, like
(49:15):
statements basically saying saying, yes, it was Israel that caused
this to occur. So according to reporting coming out of
the Guardian, Israel apparently confirmed that it was behind this, uh,
this incident which occurred in the form of a cyber attack.
(49:36):
So that's that is the way that the power was
I guess messed with and then shut down was through
going through the network network of the Naton's site. UM.
And it's very strange, and there's reporting about this coming
out from everywhere, from the Guardian to the BBC to
us uh US outlets including Slate. Yeah, that's Matt. So
(50:01):
there are there are a number of issues here that
come into play. There is a conspiracy of foot the
there are several conspiracies conspiracy theories. One conspiracy is on
the part of Iran to have nuclear power. Whether or
not you think that leads to weapons is going to
(50:23):
be up to your own individual perspective. But the fact
of the matter is that this conspiracy is worrying to
a lot of of Iran's rivals and enemies because of
the technology you can use to make nuclear power is
the same technology you use to make nuclear weapons. It's
only a matter of how many times you rinse and
repeat your centrifuge process. The second conspiracy is the active
(50:48):
conspiracy by UH the government of Israel as well as
the US to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear power. And
this the means that whenever you hear about an attack
on Iran's nuclear facilities, however you feel about them, one
(51:09):
of the first things you should do is check on
domestic news in the US and check on the domestic
news in the government of Israel, because I believe that
there these kinds of attacks take a quite a long
time to plan. This is not something you come up
with on Friday and execute on Sunday. There's like deep
(51:34):
cover people planted in these things. Different assets and operatives.
There is a silent, ongoing battle, and we only hear
about it in terms of isolated incidents like uh, scientists
gets assassinated, right, or like there's a fire at a
at a given facility. But these are all part of
(51:55):
the same, the same fight. And when I heard about
the recent disaster in Iran, I immediately started asking some
questions myself and digging into this. The current government of
Israel was quite supportive of the former US presidents handling
(52:17):
of a rod right. The last US president definitely pulled
out of the Irad non nuclear proliferation deal right, And
the current president, Joe Biden, is changing up the signals
he wants Iran in the US back in the deal,
which the government of Israel very much does not want.
(52:40):
So there have been accusations in the West that the
Israeli government is purposely trying to sabotage the situation, escalating
pressure such that the US will be unable or i
should say, the current administration will be unable to re
(53:01):
enter that deal or renegotiate because Israel sees a nuclear
Iran as nothing short of an existential threat. I hope
I Hope I explained that without putting too much opinion
in there. I think those are just the facts, dude.
That that's great and and it also we should just
mention here that as you said, look look at the
domestic news coming out of Israel, because you will see
(53:24):
the Cohn that's a broadcaster there. They cited some unnamed
you know, they'll do an unnamed source, some unnamed Israeli
intelligence source says the facility was the target of a
cyber operation, and Israeli cyber operation. Then herrets came forward
and said, yeah, it's you know, it was probably an
Israeli cyber attack. Then a defense analyst at the Wye
(53:46):
net news site said, um quote, it was reasonable to
assume that the problem might not have been caused by
an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the
nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on
removing sanctions. Um Even Benjamin Netton Yahoo said, the struggle
(54:07):
against Iran and its proxies in the Iranian armament efforts
is a huge mission. So they all kind of started
talking about it publicly, at least the news sources as
well as the Prime minister and a defense minister yeah, yeah,
that's the thing. This attack, this most recent attack, occurs
as talks between the US and Iran or underway indirect talks.
(54:32):
But but these issues are on the table. So it's
also logical to assume that at least some factions of
Israel's intelligence agencies or the overall government, they feel like
there's a limited window of time in which to act.
There is a ticking clock in people's heads, and when
that clock reaches you know, midnight or whatever, then in
(54:55):
a very real way, their worst fear may come true.
There may be a nuclear armed Iran. To be fair
to Iran, they have never stated that they want to
acquire nuclear weapons. Every single official international statement you read
from Iran will say they want clean nuclear power. It's true,
it's true, and they're they're pushing forward. They've at least
(55:17):
stated that they're going to push forward to uranium enrichment.
Despite all this other stuff, despite of the talks, despite
of the tensions, despite of everything, Iran's moving forward, at
least according to the Wall Street Journal and people they're siting.
So we're just gonna have to continue watching this whole
situation as it and we were joking around about it
(55:39):
but the situation in Iran hasn't really cooled down since
I've considered myself an adult, So uh, maybe it will
one day. And the sanctions are are crippling people. That's
that's one of the really you know, it's it's an
interesting part of international relations. Do sanctions count as collective punishment?
(56:03):
You know what I mean? Are you punishing innocent people
just because they happen to live in a part of
the world that's run by a group of people you
personally don't like or feel are dangerous. I'm on the fence,
you know, because in some situations, sanctions are purposely made
to only target very wealthy, right like if you if
(56:26):
you put out sanctions on rolls royces in North Korea,
it's safe to say that's not going to change a
ton of people's lives in that country. There will be
a handful of people who are very pot about it though.
For sure. Well, hey, um, I think we're gonna leave
it here. Everyone, if you know anything about the situation
(56:49):
in Iran, we would love to hear from you, and
as well as all the other things we talked about today. Yeah,
and shout out specifically to my social media friends who
are in IRAW and your experience and your perspective is invaluable.
We would love to I I would personally love to
hear more about this. Also would love to hear from
(57:09):
anybody who has been able to visit that ouat to
uh And I would just I would like to know
how other people who are not members of the Prince
Philip movement regard that movement. Yeah, completely agree. You can
do that in a couple of ways. You can find
us on social media or we're Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter
and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. You can also
(57:32):
reach out to us over the Apple podcasts. Uh what
you call environment? I guess. Leave us a review. We
greatly appreciate a nice review if you get something out
of this show. This is like literally the Pledge Drive
week of NPR condensed into two seconds at the end
of the podcast. To us, a solid really means a
lot for us as individuals and for the show. Uh.
(57:54):
And you can also reach us by telephone, can't you.
That's right? We have a phone number. It is one
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(58:14):
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(58:37):
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(59:06):
don't want you to know is a production of I
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's time for Strange News, Fellow
conspiracy realists, our weekly segment that takes us around the
(00:48):
world and often just off the edge of the mainstream map.
Today we're going to learn a little bit more about
the odd effect Prince Philip's death has had in the Pacific. Uh.
We're going to see the clear view AI's back in
the news. No spoilers, uh. And we'll also will also
(01:08):
head toward a rod where the world seems to be
enging closer and closer. Two. Well, I don't want to
say world war, but definitely the Cold Wars are warming up.
I think it's fair to say, what would you guys?
Would you guys agree with that it's not getting any colder. No, yes, no,
(01:30):
well not politically at least. No, that it is getting
a little bit warmer. Uh in terms of temperature, which
I am absolutely fine with. Uh. Well, we'll put uh
the well. We also know that uh, temperatures in the
Middle East may well be unlivable within our lifetimes, literally
and figuratively, literally and figuratively. If if you guys are
(01:54):
on board for it, what say we let's say we
pursue it in that order, We'll go to the Pacific
for sound good? All right? So this story happens in
the wake of the death of Prince Philip. Prince Philip,
as you probably have heard, was a key player in
(02:14):
the UK monarchy. Uh. He recently passed away April nine one,
at the ripe old age of nine nine years old. Uh.
As you imagine royalty as pretty good health care. And
in the wake of this man's death, a lot of
people were, of course heartbroken in the UK, and a
(02:37):
lot of people were pointing out various problematic things that
Prince Philip had done h in his virtual century of
life here on earth. But one thing that bears a
little bit more scrutiny is the religion built around him.
We're not talking about the Church of England, folks. We're
(02:58):
talking about something that is commonly called a cargo cult.
And Matt, well, I know you guys have heard of
these before, right, Yeah, I know we certainly talked about
it in the past, either on this show or another one.
But I always get them always kind of forget what
it is. So I'm gonna be on board for a
primer real quick. Well, just i'll talk for one second
(03:19):
that I'm gonna I don't know much about this one.
I know that cargo cults a lot of times have
to do with newer technology or civilizations with newer technology
that will advance on their civilization, and a lot of
times leave behind goods or leave behind pieces of machinery
(03:40):
or debris or whatever it is that they lead behind
from their new technology. And then that technology, since it's
so different from the understanding of just the civilization that
they've encroached upon, um deifies it in some way. And
I think, tell me Craiming if I'm wrong here, Ben,
but I think a lot of it has to do
(04:01):
with maybe legends or lore or myths that exist previously
within a culture that then that encroaching group symbolizes in
some way maybe yeah, yeah, that's that's that's pretty close.
So there is a cultural context, if not a specific
mythical figure, right, prefiguring the arrival of these outsiders. Uh.
(04:26):
These movements begin in isolated areas of the Pacific specifically,
and the cultural context into which these outsiders arrived is
the idea of what's called the big Man political system.
And the big Man political system individuals gain social prestige
(04:49):
through the act of giving gifts. So you know, you've
had a wonderful fishing expedition or something, you want to
up your rep in your community. It was time for
a seafood party, you know what I mean? Who can
say no to that? This became exacerbated and entered a
new era as we saw it started in like the
(05:10):
late nineteenth century early twentieth century, really took off in
World War Two because as Allied powers were island hopping
to secure control over the Pacific theater, it would land
in places that had rarely seen outsiders, in some cases
had never seen outsiders, and these outsiders would come along
(05:34):
with air dropped supplies, military equipment, stuff that looked like
it was literally from the future, you know, imagine we're
all living on an island. We are probably subsistence farmers
or fisher folk, and then all of a sudden we're
inundated with manufactured clothing, canned goods, medicine that we had
(05:56):
never dreamt of before. And we're associating this in our
cultural context, and we're saying, Okay, who is the person
giving this to us? Who is the quote unquote big man?
And how do we propitiate reward adore this, uh, this person,
this figure. This brings us to an island called Tana
(06:20):
in Vanuatu. You one of the most popular cargo cults
is from Tanna. It's called the John from Colts f
or John Frew. Uh. Sometimes he's called Tom Navy. The
story is that an unspecified group of Americans land on
the island with cargo in World War Two and then became,
(06:44):
in the minds of some residents of the island a
spiritual entity, something kind of close, uncomfortably at times close
to being a deity. Often when you hear these things reported, uh,
they there's a bit of mothering about it. And I'm
sad to say there's a little bit of condescension in
(07:07):
the press reporting sometimes where they where you'll see, uh,
the narrator of a documentary, or you'll see a reporter
who knows better saying stuff like, oh look at look
at this. World War two ended, but the cargo colts
still here. It's so odd. They're building life size replicas
of airplanes out of straw. They're building fake radio towers
(07:29):
things like that, and it's it's I do think it's. Uh.
They're looking down their nose a bit in an unfair way,
because obviously this becomes a religious practice. These are religious symbols.
At this point. The locals know full well that this
airplane won't actually fly. They're just as intelligent as anybody else.
(07:52):
But Prince Philip is involved. There are a couple of
villages on the island of Tanna that are part of
something called the Prince Philip movement. They believe that this
Duke of Edinburgh is a divine being and they associate
him with a part of their mythology. So, like I
(08:15):
said earlier, there wasn't a specific mythical figure for all
of these cults, but there was a uh that context
of big man politics. Prince Philip is different because they
did tie him to a specific legend you're right, Matt,
I just didn't want to admit it until he got
to this part of this story. I wasn't that well
(08:37):
because I remember the I wasn't even thinking about Prince
Philip because I was thinking about the What is it
Tom Nate or not Tom Navy John. It's like a symbol,
a symbolic person that represents the group maybe or something
like that. But I I sorry, I couldn't remember. Thank
(08:57):
you for I don't calling me on it is this
person like a deity or a or more of a
Manson esque figure, like a cult leader. Yeah, great question.
Here's how the legend goes, According to the ancient folklore
of the Yao Nanan people, which I apologize from his pronouncing,
(09:20):
there was the once upon a time was all good
stories begin. There was the son of a mountain spirit,
and the son of a mountain spirit traveled over the
seas to a distant land. And when he arrived at
this distant land, he married a powerful woman, and in
time he would return to the native people on this
(09:43):
island of Tana. He was sometimes said to be the
brother of John. From when the from movement began and
the people who are some of the people who believe
this tale believe that Prince Philip is literally that son
of a mountain spirit because he is from far away,
(10:04):
that he married Queen Elizabeth the Second. It's not clear
exactly when this came about. Experts guests as early as
the nineteen fifties, so after World War two. We know
that when the royal couple visited Vadawatu in four a
(10:24):
few people were actually able to see Prince Philip from
a distance. And there are photographs of this meeting which
some folks may find offensive at this time. And Prince Philip,
by the way, should be said, um, without editorializing, he
leaned into this. He sent them signed official photographs. Uh
(10:47):
yeah he Uh. They sent him a club. He took
a picture of him posing with this traditional club and
sent that picture to them. They traded. He just gave
him photos of himself to look at. Would you believe
my my inkling was right? Um, we did this on
Ridiculous History several years ago. The title of the episode
(11:08):
if you want to get a little bit more of
a primer that you know, thirty minute primer rather than
five or whatever it's called. The Duke of Edinburgh is
literally a god in VNANTU. Yes, yeah, yeah, so you
have to wonder. I mean, I don't want to read
too many tea leaves of psychology here, but you have
to wonder what it says about a person when they
found out the people who really could use some secular
(11:32):
assistance were worshiping you as a god. And then you said, dope,
here's a picture, let me see it. Let me send
that again. And we have to be sensitive here because
this is the big story. This is something I was
wondering about. It is actually the main thing I was
wondering about when Prince Philip's death was announced. What happened
(11:55):
to the Prince Philip movement? Well, it's still very much around.
And although it can be tempting to look askance at
this movement because it seems so very foreign too many
people in the West, we have to remember this is
a real spiritual value system for people and the villages
(12:17):
that followed Prince Philip. In this way, we're stricken with
grief and we're trying to figure out how to commemorate
his death. So as we record today, there are three
rough possibilities that we found so far, and these may change.
One possibility was some people said, look, this just solidifies it.
(12:42):
He is definitely a god and he will return like
he did the other time back in the fifties. And
then there's another group that is saying, we are going
to now deify Prince Charles, so he will be kind
of the new the spiritual and literal descendant of Prince Philip,
(13:07):
now also worshiped by us. Uh. There's a you can
read some excellent reporting in the Telegraph about how how
this came to be, how the rituals are enacted, but
it gives it still. I'm trying so hard not to
(13:27):
read into these guys character judgmentally. The princes. I mean,
like Prince Charles visited as recently as eighteen and he
was appointed as an honorary chief. He dressed in a
grass skirt, and you know, he took a bunch of photos.
I I imagine, I mean they have if you're royalty,
(13:47):
you have so many photo ops, right, So I imagine
this is maybe for them it qualifies as spreading goodwill
in a positive image. I don't know what do you
guys think, where where where do you land on the
ethics of that? Well, um, well, weird, oh god, god, complexy?
Maybe you know what I mean, Like, there's if if
(14:10):
I'm trying to be completely objective, there's a I can
imagine a fascination with it. It would feel very strange, though.
I maybe it's because I, again, I don't know much
about the Royal family. They seem to be somewhat deified
already in Western culture, right, so I wonder if it's
(14:30):
that different for them. Um. You know, portraits of the
Royal family existing, I'm sure many households um Um. I
imagine it, but I cannot confirm that. Uh I. I
wonder what it would be like personally, for let's say,
Prince Charles when he visited to go through that um
in what you're accounting reminds me a bit of George W.
(14:53):
Bush and some of the times when he would visit
other places, you know, and he would like he would
do the things, the rituals dawn, the clothing of of
certain places that were very traditional. But it just feels
it feels wrong in a way when you're watching it
as a third party, um, because it is appropriation in
(15:15):
some ways, but other in other ways, it's just being
in that area. But in this case, it's a it's
literally a cult that is built up around your family
and ourself. Well, it's it's usually I mean it's like
a diplomatic move if you're sort of like presented with
the traditional garb by the governments, you know what I mean,
asked to wear the thing or whatever. The god complexy
(15:37):
thing I was talking about was was more just Prince
Philip leaning into this and signing pictures and all of that.
That that's odd. He's almost capitalizing on the fact that
I mean, really some of these folks just don't know better.
You know, I'm not not there's no ding on anybody's intelligence,
just about access to information, and he's essentially being like
(15:58):
not telling them otherwise. Yeah, it's it's a little strange. Yeah,
it's it's it's a sticky thing, you know, like the
there is an ethical dilemma like is it is it
unethical to go along with the idea or is it
even more unethical two totally reject these people's deeply held
(16:22):
spiritual beliefs, you know, like God complex aside. It's I
and many people listening today have been in situations where
you are in a strange place and you are encouraged
to participate in a ritual that might otherwise feel like
appropriation if you if you were not if it were
(16:44):
not made explicitly clear that these people, this community wants
you to be a part of this thing. They want
you to do the thing, even if they think it's
hilarious that you're really bad at doing the thing, which
has happened to me a couple of times. If you
if you can't impress people, just just try to be
endearing about it, and then you'll you'll at least get
(17:06):
a pity pass. Uh. The third thing that the Prince
Philip movement is considering, which I think could be immensely powerful,
is starting a political party. Uh. This could if you
I'm just thinking out loud here, but this could do
a number of beneficial things for the people in these communities.
(17:27):
I would I would imagine that they will have a
special unilateral relationship with the United Kingdom that might help
with infrastructure, that might help with um, you know, medicine
aid as required, especially as ocean levels continue to rise.
So I think that I think there could be something
(17:47):
good that comes from this for anybody who's listening to
this segment who's thinking, yeah, I'm sold. I want a
religious movement based around me. I mean who does. Sure,
but Prince Philip had had it really easy in terms
of a lot of other cults of personality or movements
(18:09):
built around a person, because you know, if you're a
cult leader and the thing is like you're on call
all the time until you get really big, you have
to like you don't get days off. You have to
do CrowdWork constantly, never stopped, never stops. That's why, that's
why we got out of that game. So wait, Ben,
(18:29):
I'm thinking about your So what we've established is that
there may be a religious movement forming a political party
that would represent I guess Tanna or Tana. Then they
would have a special relationship with the UK. I'm just
imagining the whole Hawaii scenario that Doc Holiday did such
(18:51):
a good job discussing. Oh yeah, yeah, that was awesome,
where the special relationship goes bad really quickly. I mean,
that's that's a that's a possibility, hopefully as far less
likely in one but there. So, the John From movement
is essentially on one side of this island, and the
(19:11):
Prince Philip movement is on the other side of the
same island, and the John From movement already started a
political party, so they're they're following in some footsteps here.
I'm just I am torn about this idea. I think
yet it might not qualify as life changing or world
(19:33):
changing news. But this is an excellent example of what
we always say and have said for years. The stories
don't stop when the headlines stop or when the news
cycle moves on. They're very real people who are going
to uh going to feel the consequences or the memories
of the death of Prince Philip for generations to come.
(19:56):
I would love to visit vanuatu Um, It's on my
list of remote islands to visit. But I'm not I'm
not sure how to how to handle this, And this
is where I want to defer to our fellow conspiracy realists.
What do you think is the ethical thing to do
if you found yourself in a situation like this. Let's
say you traveled abroad to a remote location, you met
(20:20):
some people, you did some stuff, go back to wherever
you normally live, and then years or decades later, you
find out that you are now a messiodic figure. How
do you how do you navigate that in a responsible way?
Let us know one std W y t K conspiracy
and iHeart radio dot com. We're going to take a
(20:41):
pause for a word from our sponsors and we'll be
back with more strange news. And we're back with another
strange news. This is a good one. This is a
follow up on one we report. I believe we did it.
Maybe have to we do a full episode on this.
I think we did. Guys UM clear View AI the
(21:05):
controversial UM Internet startup AI software developer company based out
of New York. A gentleman by the name of hon
Ton Thought is the company's co founder and CEO. There
was a really cool public radio story where a woman
tracked him down to this weird, half like half used
(21:25):
office and he very clearly didn't want to be found.
The reporter who tracked him down had to go to
great lengths to find him. UM And even as early
as then, we were talking about the ramifications of something
like this, what the software purportion to be able to do.
It's just like like you know, facial recognition software on steroids.
(21:45):
They've mind you know, And it's all a product again,
of all this amazing information about ourselves that we just
pump out into the ether for anyone to grab or scrape.
Is the term that's used when it's applied to like
software bots. I guy us to go through and literally
just grab up all of this stuff that's out there,
all these profile pictures, all any kind of you know,
image associated with people's um, publicly available social media accounts
(22:10):
and and and more. UM. And the thing that differentiated
a clear view is that they just amassed through just
you know, god knows how many hours or how you
even break that down of scraping this data, just an
insane library of faces. UM. That they were then able
to supposedly cross reference to information about the people's actual identity. Uh.
(22:34):
Their idea behind this is that it's a tool that's
going to revolutionize law enforcement, you know, for tracking down
fugitives and criminals and things like that. UM. And of course,
immediately the conversation goes the way it always goes when
it comes to some kind of you know, only use
it this way technology, where then it's like you know,
(22:55):
you know, um, yeah, sure it's only for law enforcement,
but so we're radar detectors and anybody you know can
get your hands on one of those, or like tasers
or any other thing that's supposedly proprietary. When it starts
eventually makes its way into the public domain. UM. And
it's problematic because how reliable is this technology? You know,
(23:16):
is it creating false positives? UM? You know, do we
really want to put this much faith in some sort
of third party you know, kind of seemingly fly by
night at least from those early stories operation And well
they're not fly by night because they're still around and
they're making the news again, uh, and not the best way. Essentially,
(23:37):
there's a couple of stories tied to uh, this update,
one of which is that BuzzFeed News reported and uncovered
that or in the early days of clear View trying
to get some you know, momentum, they gave seven thousand
individual people from the representatives from nearly two thousand public
(24:01):
agencies free trial memberships to clear View AI. And this
is like direct to them, not even through the agencies.
So BuzzFeed basically created a searchable table of one thousand,
eight hundred and three publicly funded agencies UM and the
employees listed as having either tested or downloaded, you know,
(24:25):
signed up for the free trial of this this this tool. UM.
And that's places like the state police, US Immigrations and
Customs enforcement, healthcare organizations, the Air Force, Offices of State
Attorneys podcast. Yeah, exactly in public schools. So I was joking. Sorry,
(24:47):
I was that was a really bad not joke, joking
about me getting access to clear View. So you did
get it? No, No, Well that's the point though. I
think the point is that these invitations are pretty open ended,
and then if you had had gotten access to when
you certainly could have gotten it, because these invitations went
out without, oftentimes the knowledge of the agencies these individuals
(25:08):
worked for. UM, and that's the problem. And all of
this stuff was happened between two thousand and eighteen and
two thousand twenty UM. And there's there's some really good
as an article on like I said, BuzzFeed news article
where they talked to several folks who got ahold of
it UM. By the way, when asked for comment about
this situation, the founder, co founder and CEO Jan tom
(25:30):
Thought said it was quote gratifying to see how quickly
clear View AI has been embraced by US law enforcement. Okay,
you didn't really answer the question, um, yeah, he had.
He had no comment on any of the other fifty
questions that were throwing at him during this UM this
press conference but here here's where it gets interesting. Um.
(25:51):
A guy by the name of Adrian Williams, who's the
police chief of Wilson's Mills, North Carolina. That's hard to
say Wilson's Mills. Um, he has many mills. Uh. And
he said, I found the site on a law enforcement
website last year. He just found it. I said, you
don't have to be a cop to look at a
law enforcement website. I said, up an ac count to
(26:12):
see if it worked. Um. And he said he tested
it using his own personal photos, just to see what
came up. Uh. He says, I ran two known persons
to see if they came back with any youthful info.
I did not think it work the way they had
said it went. It's it's strange though, because this comes
on the heels of an earlier report. I think it
(26:34):
was just last year where clear View said that they
were no longer going to sell to private companies, no
longer sell to non law enforcement entities, which itself was
an announcement in reaction to another piece by BuzzFeed News.
Somewhat at BuzzFeed News is keeping an eye on this,
and if you are listening today, thank you very much.
(26:58):
I'm grateful because we talked about this in our episode
on clear View. I just pulled up my notes from
it in our episode on clear View. I think we
do a pretty good job making the case that there
are too many problems with facial recognition for it to
be legally dependable. I think, what do you guys completely agree,
(27:21):
especially if it's from things like like you know, low light,
you know, security cameras or a t M cameras and
things like that. I mean, I would certainly hope you
could not convict somebody with that alone. You know. Yeah, there,
like you said, there are so many problems resolution of
(27:45):
the photos that are being uploaded to it. Do you
you guys remember in that episode we recorded, there was
a a journalist who was being interviewed and they put
his photograph in there or they yeah, they put they
put a photograph in and then they found I think
a picture of him from some old like Geo city
(28:05):
site or MySpace or whatever, was of him when he
was a little kid, and so somehow the facial recognition
found him when his face looked completely different. So like
the actual metrics of the facial recognition, you know, could
maybe be that sophisticated. That's what the founder said. It
(28:27):
was just super sophisticated. It was able to find you
at that young age. But really it seems like I
think we concluded even that there's probably some other things
that are happening in the background of that search application. Yeah,
very much so, because what we're looking at, I mean,
this is proprietary, but what we're probably looking at is
a pretty robust cross referencing system. So it is an
(28:50):
image search, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's also
an image search that recognizes metadata in a digital image.
That think the problem that I'm talking about to say
the quiet part out loud, and it's weird that more
people don't talk about this. The problem with facial recognition
is that it has huge systemic racial problems. Like if
(29:16):
you are a black person or if you you're pretty
much any person of color, the majority of these facial
recognition programs have have a a high likelihood of misidentifying you.
And yeah, that can just be like, oh, imperfect technology.
When we're just doing R and D, people are trying
to prove something worked. But when you get like Noll, say,
(29:38):
when you get into the sphere of law enforcement. You're
talking about real legal consequences. If there is a world
where someone can be locked up or detained based entirely
odd of facial recognition, then that world needs to have
facial recognition technology that actually works. And right now, that's
(30:01):
just that's not the case. No, Ben, I'm sorry. What
you're saying to is I'm saying this lightheartedly because it's
just so depressing. But it's you know, you hear so
often the racist notion that all insert race here looked
the same. Uh. This is literally technology that has that
(30:21):
problematic kind of like flaw. Uh. And it's a thing
that police do quite often mistaking a young young black
male in a hoodie for another young black male and
who you committed a crime, you know, and not actually
taking the time to ask the questions and find out
if that person really was there. They just you know,
(30:43):
jumped to conclusions. Um, this is it's it's just problematic
on so many levels. And not to mention the company,
you know, kind of circumvent I mean, I get it.
I guess it's like the first taste is free or whatever,
and it's like they're trying to get some buzz about
it in the law enforced community. But apparently these folks
(31:04):
were actually using it to help them in their law
enforcement efforts without the note, without the knowledge of their
superior m That's the other aspect that just further complicates this. Like,
one thing we know for sure about these powerful investigative
tools is that whenever you have a group of people
(31:26):
that are allowed to use them, even if only for
official purposes, someone inevitably uses it to search for like
a person they have a crushed shod, or the person
they have a grudge with, or their ex spouse or
their girlfriend. There's something like that. Like this stuff without oversight,
this this is dangerous, you know what I mean? You know, guys,
(31:50):
I want to see in the Supreme Court A I
want to see a case rise all the way up
to Scotus where it's an individual versus say, a clear
view where they're accusing the algorithm of cyber stalking them.
Uh see if we can see if we can get
(32:11):
a felony or whatever misdemeanor. I don't know what charge
that is against a an algorithm for cyber stalking. Nice, Yeah,
I mean when is the first uh when is the
first non physical thing going to be recognized as enough
of of essentience or enough of a mind in court
(32:34):
to be liable for legal consequences. So it's a weird
question because oddly enough, it relates to the idea of
legal personhood. There has been a movement for several years
in Germany and other parts of Europe to have animals,
higher order animals like dolphins elephants recognized as legal persons,
(32:55):
because the move is to get them recognized and then
grant them environment old protections. So I wonder what would happen,
you know, if you could take well, at first, you
have to I don't think you could take an algorithm
to court. You would have to take the creator of
the algorithm. Yeah, are some kind of AI. Maybe that's
(33:15):
that's functioning with it? At least you're right right now? Yes,
but who knows. Man, it's the future taking AI to court.
Sue the pants Wait the you could see the rams
off of them? No? Uh yeah, yeah, no, it's true.
What is it? That's something I'm gonna say, Mr Showline,
(33:35):
We'll sue the pants off of them and then we'll
sell them pants Um. I bring up Mr show the
seminole hbo Um sketch comedy show The kind of surrealist,
you know, really cool, like each one kind of blends
into the the other one with Bob Odenkirk and David
Cross because, um, one of the guys in the cast
of that show, a dude by the name of j Johnston.
(33:59):
H dude looks remarkably like him. Was was you know,
seen in one of these FBI you know, shoot us
a tip if you see this guy, uh, pictures that
they were circulating around folks that participated in the storming
of the Capitol on January six, Um, And it's just
funny to me. There's a full view of this guy's
face and another one with him in a mask, and
(34:22):
it definitely looks a hell of I like him. And um,
a lot of people in the comedy set in LA
have reported that it definitely was him. Yeah, he confirmed it.
I think, Okay, maybe I missed that part. But my
point is, this is a dude. It's all over TV
and has been for like twenty five years. Uh, plenty
of pictures of him on the internet. How come they
couldn't nail him with AI facial recognition software. Doesn't the
(34:44):
FBI have this stuff? Why are they? You know, crowdsourcing
this because it Yeah, it just it just makes me
question like the validity of facial recognition software in general. Yeah,
I was gonna say, you better, you better give me
definitive proof before I believe that man was there doing
(35:05):
that thing, and make sure it's not a deep fake,
because that too. That's an excellent point. That's the other thing.
Facial recognition and deep fake technology are evolving at the
same time at a breakneck pace. So I think we're
very we're already very close to a world where the
(35:28):
deep fake tech can fool or mislead facial recognition tech. Also,
you can get really cool masks a lot of protesters
where of now that that will uh disrupt facial recognition technology.
I don't have one yet, but I've got some trips
coming up where I should probably look into that. Yeah,
you get that one cool one that makes your face
(35:49):
look like a like a holiday fire though. That one's
pretty cool or like a spooky ghost whatever you call it.
Like it's like an led Matt. I love it. I want.
I tried to get one immediately, but they were sold out.
Oh no, uh yeah, those things that thing is great,
my my cats. You might have heard one screaming just
a second ago. My cats hate it. They are not
(36:10):
down with it. Uh. They like people to have the
same face every day, which I think is kind of
living in the past. And maybe with things like clear
view AI, we will see more normalization of facial disguise techniques.
What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean I would
do right now if I could, I wouldn't be on
(36:31):
this YouTube channel showing my actual skin face. That's gross.
Old skin face strikes again. Yeah, I I really appreciate
you bringing this to everyone's attentional because we see again
legislation is getting left in the dust. Legislation has being
(36:54):
outpaced by technology and they are quite literally not laws
yet for the kind of stuff this sort of technology
can do. And that's that's going to be increasingly important
and it's gonna bear increasingly profound consequences in the future.
I think it's absolutely founded in reality. That opinion, um
(37:17):
and and and it's becomes something like where there's gonna
be a disconnect between you know, federal law and individual
organizations or entities. For example, the l a p D
is already outright band its use because they already see
the problems. So there you go. Uh, and there's there's
a whole other thing that there's several things wrapped up
in this. There's like an injunction, there's a there's a
(37:38):
lawsuit that's going on in Europe, uh, basically trying to
prevent this from ever being used in any way in Europe. Um.
But yeah, the big story is that all of these
agencies were essentially using it without permission. Oh and not
to mention the fact that it sucks that apparently it
does not work very well. Uh so yeah, sorry, clear
(38:00):
of view. I'm afraid they've drummed up so much, you know,
hype for themselves by you know, edge lording that kind
of slippery slope of police state. But I don't think
it's going to pan out. I would say, you know,
I would say that one reply to that, I'm not
trying to be precious about it, is we're talking about
a gun that has a bad aim, right, But a
(38:23):
gun with a bad aim is only a more dangerous
gun because of that, because of that problem. Yeah, It's
like they say, a doll knife is more dangerous than
a sharp one. Yes, I guess it depends on whether
the human firing the gun has good aim or not
because if the human has a really good aim but
the gun has terrible aim, then a bullet's never gonna
(38:46):
hit the target. But if they've got terrible aim the
gun has terrible aim, then you could be in real trouble. Yolo,
let's go, let's go outside, let's get let's get clear viewed.
It's happening, whether you like it or not. So yeah,
it is, and it's gonna keep happening, and it's an
ongoing story, and you're right then it's like, you know,
(39:07):
you can't put the badger back in the bag. So
it's already out there. It already has been out there.
I mean, we see it with Facebook predicting who's in
your pictures? Is that so and so or whatever. I mean,
we know that stuff exists. It's just gonna keep getting better.
The law just needs to catch up, you know. To me,
it seems like it's almost like a cheat, kind of
(39:28):
I don't know. I could see their cases where it
could be useful, certainly, say identifying terrorists who are actively
going to you know, hurt people you know, in in
a particular moment. But it's a slippery slope, right, You
can't use it for some things and not other things, right,
I don't know. I mean you should be able to
there should be. It reminds me of like I've been
(39:48):
rewatching the New Watchman or you know, not new anymore,
but the Watchman series on HBO, and it it kind of,
you know, creates this world where police have to hide
their faces be because you know, just knowledge that someone
who's police is going to put that police person's life
in jeopardy. Um. But they have this thing where in
(40:08):
order to uh use lethal force or draw your weapon,
you have to make a case for it to somebody
who then unlocks the weapon for you. UM. I don't
know quite where I was going with that, but I
mean to me, it's like there should be the ability
to use a tool in the right situation, but also
not so many safeguards that it's not even worthwhile and
(40:29):
it doesn't really help anybody because in the situation and Watchman,
when the person can unlock his gun in time, you know,
the moment passes for that to be useful tool for
that individual to protect themselves. So it's all slippery, isn't it.
I don't know, it's all very slippery. Well, let's slip
and slide our way into an ad break. Uh, and
(40:50):
then we'll be right back with another strange news. All right,
and we're back. Hey, you guys have had any ear
worm all day and yesterday? Do you remember this song?
Wherever I go? No, wherever you go, I'll be right
(41:10):
there waiting for you. I forget the well be right.
So that song has been in my head and I
played it and I didn't I don't know a lot
about music, but uh this, I didn't realize that the
(41:32):
person who made that song's name is Richard Marx. Yeah.
I saw him randomly. Holy, I'm so sorry. I really briefly,
I randomly stumbled into his show in l A at
the Troubadour. It was sold out, and I like made
nice with the bouncer and he let me in and
I saw Richard Marks. I was like, I just just
occurred to that's that was Yeah, I'm sorry, please continue,
(41:52):
that's awesome. Oh no, I just I don't know why
the song was in my head, and I had this epiphany,
like that guy's name if you, if you like, use
his shortened first name, that is unfortunate. Well, I mean,
chaos is an opportunity, right, yeah, it Marks, you know
(42:14):
there's there's a situation where that could work to your advantage.
I I gotta tell you, Matt, this whole time I was.
I know we're running um, we're running a tight ship today,
so I could try not to chime in too much.
But it's whole time I was waiting with bated breath
as you talked about your earworm, because I thought this
is either really haunting my guy here, or this is
(42:37):
gonna be one amazing segue. No it's not. Let's do it.
Let okay, okay, okay. Israel appears to have left it's
Richard marks all over the Iran nuclear situation is That's
why I messed with you. Man. You got it perfect
and worth every wasted second which I can dream like.
(43:01):
So tell us all about these dick marks all over Iran. Well,
if if this stays in, uh, I'll give you a
clean break so you can come back in if you
need to cut all Okay, Okay, no, he's keep it in.
Tell us all about these Richard marks. Okay, sure, okay. Uh.
(43:23):
This is very serious, you guys, and terrifying. And that's
why I think we're we're forcibly making ourselves make light
of it. UM. There's there's this place called Iran. It's
in the Middle East, and there have been a lot
of tensions with many many other surrounding countries with Iran. UH.
A lot of it has to do with ideological the
(43:45):
ideological view of Iran, or at least a perceived view,
the political the perceived political intentions of Iran, and the
stated intentions of Iran at times, UM and they seem
to oppose most of the Western world and especially Western
powers that have a stake in the Middle East in
countries around Iran. UH. We've talked about Iranu many times
(44:09):
on this show before. I'd recommend some of our other
episodes to get primers on that stuff or literally just search, uh,
search around a little bit, you'll find all of the
stories we're going to mention right now. It was this
past weekend when we're recording this. The last Sunday, there
was a quote terrorist attack reported in Iran at this
(44:29):
place called the Naton's Complex. This is um it's Intran.
It's a it's a power plant, gener power generation plant.
It's a nuclear power generation plant where there are centrifuges
and it's really dangerous to have a power outage. When
there's uh nuclear equipment being run, centrifuges, all kinds of
(44:54):
other equipment, especially dangerous if it's if they've actually got
rods that are generating power and then and then the
surrounding power goes out. We've seen that before. What can occur? Um,
you know, Fukushima isn't the same thing. There's a lot
of water that was that was being dealt with there,
as well as damage from an earthquake. But anytime power
(45:14):
goes out, you can you know, you're you're talking about
backup energy situations that are always at least second tier
at best. Um. So let's jump to reporting out of
the BBC just to learn exactly what happened here. According
to them, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran the a
(45:34):
eo I said that this incident had occurred on Sunday.
It was involving the nuclear facilities power network. They didn't
provide a ton of information about what exactly happened, what
happened to the power network, but they did say there
were quote no casualties or leaks. Hey, that's great. It
(45:56):
is a nuclear power facility, uh um, because we know
that can be very very disastrous. Here's a here's a
quote they were condemning this despicable move. The Islamic Republic
of Iran emphasizes the need for the international community and
the International Atomic Energy Agency to deal with this nuclear terrorism. Again,
(46:18):
they're they're categorizing it as a terrorist attack that occurred
on their facility within Iran, and they also said Iran
reserves the right to take action against the perpetrators. So
that's intimidating, a little scary, and um, it just depends
on who the perpetrators are, if it truly was an
(46:39):
act by an outside player, let's say a country, a
state that that was not Iran. Yes, yes, WHOA. I
literally just got an email about the offspring right when
you said that. Oh yeah, no, I'm I'm I've riddled
you guys computers with all sorts of surveillance stuff, specifically
(47:04):
send an email about the offspring, and then you quoted
the offspring. Oh, it's an act of terrorism. Uh, oh
my god. Well, so, um, let's let's talk about this
site a little bit. Uh with Ton's site, this place
has been in the news recently. I don't know if
we talked about this on a Strange News episode or
(47:24):
even mentioned it in passing, but it's something that I'm
sure we mentioned to each other. There was a fire
at this same site earlier in July, I believe. I
think it hit the centrifuge assembly workshop. So as they
were building up to these new centrifuges that they just
they just unveiled them that they are functioning, they just
(47:46):
turned them on and like ceremoniously, and the power went out. Basically,
that's what occurred. Yeah, we talked about it amongst ourselves,
I believe, but we we didn't talk about it on
air because a peek peek into the background here, folks.
For more than a year now, we've got this big
(48:07):
list of potential episodes, and for more than a year
there's been one called What's going On in Iran? And
every time I started thinking, because I read about this
stuff in my free time anyway, every time I start thinking, Okay,
we can make an episode now and it will not
be immediately outdated, some something crazy happens and we're like,
(48:28):
oh good, it's good we didn't record because then people
would ask why we didn't talk about this thing. So
maybe one day we'll be able to do it, but
we can't really do it justice yet since there's so
many ongoing events and Matt, you know, you know my
feelings about this. That site has been targeted for years, uh,
(48:50):
and it's pretty pretty clear who's doing the target. Yes,
we started this whole thing with a ridiculous accidental bit
about Richard Marks and we made a very you know,
we made a statement about it about a particular country,
and we said that Israel may have been the culprit.
And that's because there's been some weirdly public reporting, like
(49:15):
statements basically saying saying, yes, it was Israel that caused
this to occur. So according to reporting coming out of
the Guardian, Israel apparently confirmed that it was behind this, uh,
this incident which occurred in the form of a cyber attack.
(49:36):
So that's that is the way that the power was
I guess messed with and then shut down was through
going through the network network of the Naton's site. UM.
And it's very strange, and there's reporting about this coming
out from everywhere, from the Guardian to the BBC to
us uh US outlets including Slate. Yeah, that's Matt. So
(50:01):
there are there are a number of issues here that
come into play. There is a conspiracy of foot the
there are several conspiracies conspiracy theories. One conspiracy is on
the part of Iran to have nuclear power. Whether or
not you think that leads to weapons is going to
(50:23):
be up to your own individual perspective. But the fact
of the matter is that this conspiracy is worrying to
a lot of of Iran's rivals and enemies because of
the technology you can use to make nuclear power is
the same technology you use to make nuclear weapons. It's
only a matter of how many times you rinse and
repeat your centrifuge process. The second conspiracy is the active
(50:48):
conspiracy by UH the government of Israel as well as
the US to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear power. And
this the means that whenever you hear about an attack
on Iran's nuclear facilities, however you feel about them, one
(51:09):
of the first things you should do is check on
domestic news in the US and check on the domestic
news in the government of Israel, because I believe that
there these kinds of attacks take a quite a long
time to plan. This is not something you come up
with on Friday and execute on Sunday. There's like deep
(51:34):
cover people planted in these things. Different assets and operatives.
There is a silent, ongoing battle, and we only hear
about it in terms of isolated incidents like uh, scientists
gets assassinated, right, or like there's a fire at a
at a given facility. But these are all part of
(51:55):
the same, the same fight. And when I heard about
the recent disaster in Iran, I immediately started asking some
questions myself and digging into this. The current government of
Israel was quite supportive of the former US presidents handling
(52:17):
of a rod right. The last US president definitely pulled
out of the Irad non nuclear proliferation deal right, And
the current president, Joe Biden, is changing up the signals
he wants Iran in the US back in the deal,
which the government of Israel very much does not want.
(52:40):
So there have been accusations in the West that the
Israeli government is purposely trying to sabotage the situation, escalating
pressure such that the US will be unable or i
should say, the current administration will be unable to re
(53:01):
enter that deal or renegotiate because Israel sees a nuclear
Iran as nothing short of an existential threat. I hope
I Hope I explained that without putting too much opinion
in there. I think those are just the facts, dude.
That that's great and and it also we should just
mention here that as you said, look look at the
domestic news coming out of Israel, because you will see
(53:24):
the Cohn that's a broadcaster there. They cited some unnamed
you know, they'll do an unnamed source, some unnamed Israeli
intelligence source says the facility was the target of a
cyber operation, and Israeli cyber operation. Then herrets came forward
and said, yeah, it's you know, it was probably an
Israeli cyber attack. Then a defense analyst at the Wye
(53:46):
net news site said, um quote, it was reasonable to
assume that the problem might not have been caused by
an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the
nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on
removing sanctions. Um Even Benjamin Netton Yahoo said, the struggle
(54:07):
against Iran and its proxies in the Iranian armament efforts
is a huge mission. So they all kind of started
talking about it publicly, at least the news sources as
well as the Prime minister and a defense minister yeah, yeah,
that's the thing. This attack, this most recent attack, occurs
as talks between the US and Iran or underway indirect talks.
(54:32):
But but these issues are on the table. So it's
also logical to assume that at least some factions of
Israel's intelligence agencies or the overall government, they feel like
there's a limited window of time in which to act.
There is a ticking clock in people's heads, and when
that clock reaches you know, midnight or whatever, then in
(54:55):
a very real way, their worst fear may come true.
There may be a nuclear armed Iran. To be fair
to Iran, they have never stated that they want to
acquire nuclear weapons. Every single official international statement you read
from Iran will say they want clean nuclear power. It's true,
it's true, and they're they're pushing forward. They've at least
(55:17):
stated that they're going to push forward to uranium enrichment.
Despite all this other stuff, despite of the talks, despite
of the tensions, despite of everything, Iran's moving forward, at
least according to the Wall Street Journal and people they're siting.
So we're just gonna have to continue watching this whole
situation as it and we were joking around about it
(55:39):
but the situation in Iran hasn't really cooled down since
I've considered myself an adult, So uh, maybe it will
one day. And the sanctions are are crippling people. That's
that's one of the really you know, it's it's an
interesting part of international relations. Do sanctions count as collective punishment?
(56:03):
You know what I mean? Are you punishing innocent people
just because they happen to live in a part of
the world that's run by a group of people you
personally don't like or feel are dangerous. I'm on the fence,
you know, because in some situations, sanctions are purposely made
to only target very wealthy, right like if you if
(56:26):
you put out sanctions on rolls royces in North Korea,
it's safe to say that's not going to change a
ton of people's lives in that country. There will be
a handful of people who are very pot about it though.
For sure. Well, hey, um, I think we're gonna leave
it here. Everyone, if you know anything about the situation
(56:49):
in Iran, we would love to hear from you, and
as well as all the other things we talked about today. Yeah,
and shout out specifically to my social media friends who
are in IRAW and your experience and your perspective is invaluable.
We would love to I I would personally love to
hear more about this. Also would love to hear from
(57:09):
anybody who has been able to visit that ouat to
uh And I would just I would like to know
how other people who are not members of the Prince
Philip movement regard that movement. Yeah, completely agree. You can
do that in a couple of ways. You can find
us on social media or we're Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter
and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. You can also
(57:32):
reach out to us over the Apple podcasts. Uh what
you call environment? I guess. Leave us a review. We
greatly appreciate a nice review if you get something out
of this show. This is like literally the Pledge Drive
week of NPR condensed into two seconds at the end
of the podcast. To us, a solid really means a
lot for us as individuals and for the show. Uh.
(57:54):
And you can also reach us by telephone, can't you.
That's right? We have a phone number. It is one
eight e three st d w y t K. Give
us a call. You'll hear Ben's voice in some familiar
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(58:14):
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Leave your message, UM, put the important stuff up front.
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Rather than sending a bunch of voicemails, we highly recommend
(58:37):
and plead for you to please uh instead send us
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conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Yeah. Stuff they
(59:06):
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