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September 5, 2024 15 mins

George Noory and cybersecurity expert Julio Rivera discuss internet warfare and data protection.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on
iHeartRadio U LEO.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Do countries including ours, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, the
United States, do we have cybersecurity divisions within government that
do nothing but try to hack other countries?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Oh yeah, I mean, if you really, if you look
at it, and I happen to be of the thought
process that we are already in World War three and
it's a cyber war and it's been going on for
a long time. The first shots fired really in this
cyber war in the modern era, really was the stucksonet
attack from the United States against Iran, against their nuclear facilities.

(00:48):
And this happened I believe it was about twenty ten
or twenty eleven. But to me, we initiated it in
a sense, you know, we're going after the Iranian nuclear
program back then, and countries, yes, are going back and
forth initiating attacks against each other. It's a constant thing.
We have what's referred to as advanced persistent threat groups

(01:12):
from different countries. The four main belligerents that we find,
you know, attacking Western countries Western democracies are Russia, China,
North Korea, and Iran. Those are the names that generally
pop up whenever we talk about this sort of international hacking.

(01:34):
But within the United States, we do have agencies like
you know, sees and different agencies within the sub agencies
within the intelligence community that yeah, this is sort of
their job, you know, and and a lot of it is,
you know, not necessarily to be offensive, but you know,
kind of to be defensive. They're they're being proactive in

(01:57):
terms of trying to figure out what are the best
defenses against emerging.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Threat Give us an initial refresher on technology, Julio, if
you can specifically the Internet. It works, but how does
it work? I mean, where is the central brain? If
there is one where everything goes to around the planet,

(02:22):
I mean, how does it work?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, I mean that's kind of like a broad question.
I mean, I think that the World Wide Web was created.
I think at this point the basic idea and then
the way that it works is like that sort of
technology was developed, you know, initially back in the sixties,
and it's sort of improved and then I guess that's
the way that it's known now. It sort of existed

(02:48):
since the nineteen eighties. But I mean it basically we're
all interconnected through that internationally, and data is transferred you know,
through whatquote unquote Worldwide Web that as it exists today.
You know, I'm sorry, I just that's kind of a
really kind of a broad question. I don't want to
come off sounding like Kamala Harris or something explanation of it,

(03:13):
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
But you know, well, if somebody pulls the plug on
the Internet, can you do that? Can that be done?

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah? Theoretically a lot of things can happen. Yeah, I
mean I think it would be more or less like
let's say, if we had like an EMP attack. Let's say,
like a North Korean you know, satellite up in space
has aimed at the American power grid and hits the
American power grid. A lot of things are going to
go out, partially obviously within the United States. You know,

(03:46):
we're gonna have issues with digital communications like the Internet.
That's part of it, you know, part of what could
be affected potentially.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
As as well as other things.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
You know, and you know that that's there's a lot
of I would say right now, there's a lot of danger, uh,
in terms of the way that we can be hit
or compromised by smaller countries. The way I look at
it is that you know, I think digitally with whether
you want to call it hacking or through the Internet

(04:19):
or anything like that, it's the great equalizer of military powers.
So if you're let's say, a smaller country, you don't
have to be one of the big four, like I
pointed out before, between Russia and China, North Korea and Iran.
Let's say you're a smaller country, but you want to
you know, attack another country that's bigger and more powerful
and has like a military that that can destroy you

(04:40):
and wipe your country out. You can you can get
pretty much, you know, a strong offensive front via cybersecurity
and hacking. You know, it's I think cybersecurity and hacking
is the great equalizer between military powers in terms of
you know, smaller countries being able to go on the
offensive against larger countries. That's one way I think I

(05:01):
would kind of praise it in terms of, you know,
the dangers that exist on that quote unquote internet.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Ironically, we're talking about the power grid tomorrow night on
Coast to Coast with our friend Bill Forstin. Now, let's
talk a little bit about election hacking. What's all this
what's all this talk about Russia meddling with twenty twenty four.
What do you think they're doing.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Well, it's like twenty twenty six. I mean, they did
kind of interfere in a sense attacking. I don't know
if you remember, in the Wiki Leaks dumped a lot
of information that had been acquired via Russian hacking.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
They hit Paul.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Podesta's or ale. Yeah, John Podesta, Sorry, John Pedesta's email.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You mentioned me, You meant you mentioned the year twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
We're not there yet, I'm sorry twenty sixteen. I meant
sorry twenty six Yeah, I'm not coming from the future. Actually,
you know, not yet exactly. Yeah, no, But in twenty sixteen,
they hit the DNC emails. They hit John Podesta's emails.
If you remember, WEEKI Leaks dumped out a lot of

(06:11):
embarrassing information regarding DMC communications. They were some of the
stuff that they was in there was pretty funny, not funny,
actually unfortunate and kind of sad. But they were talking about,
like you know, from the perspective of myself as a
Hispanic voter, they were talking about how they could better
reach Hispanics, and they were referring to it as Tackle

(06:32):
Bowl engagement, which is, you know, kind of pretty racist
and offensive in a sense. But they they they were
looking for something that they can put out there that
I believe damaging to one of one of the other campaigns,
whoever it is, or just to sow discord and you know,
in anyway, just to cause confusion, spread disinformation. There's a

(06:56):
lot of things going on right now. One of the
things actually it was there's now what AI. There was
recently an AI robo call campaign that was going on,
which is another version of like let's say election interference.
You know, they the social media apps have gotten or

(07:17):
tried to get a little bit better in terms of
who they're allowing to purchase ads during the election cycle,
Like you have to go through a little bit more
stringent supposedly betting before they'll allow you to post a
political ad, whereas it was a little bit more of
the wild West and twenty up to like through twenty
sixteen and twenty twenty and in the last few cycles.

(07:40):
But I think like in this most recent case, right
you had like Iran and this was confirmed by the
FBI that they they did actually hack both campaigns, the
Trump campaign and the Harris campaign specifically, like somebody like
that that we all know the name of Roger Stone.
He had his hack, and they were trying to hit

(08:02):
other high ranking members and operatives between both campaigns. I
think it's along the lines of, you know, a country
like Iran is gonna sit there and think, all right,
from a geopolitics position, you know which campaign favors us,
you know which one would be. You know, how are
we better off we better off with Trump as president

(08:22):
or we better off with Harris's president. So they may
be looking for the same level of let's say, embarrassing
communications like what you had in like twenty sixteen emerge
and see if they're maybe that can have some sort
of an effect on who actually wins the campaign. I
don't think that, you know, based on just that alone,

(08:44):
whether it would have that much sway within a campaign.
But it's just another thing to distract it. You know,
then there's another distraction. It's another thing.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
This sort of just makes the process a little bit
more difficult for I guess the campaign they would prefer
to see lose.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Whistle blower Edward Snowden, who went public from the National
Security Agency, did he really do that badly.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
No, I mean I think he actually, I would go
so far as to probably use words like heroic in
terms of what he was doing, you know, because we
have I think that that's a direct violation of the
Fourth Amendment, going ahead and taking all this information, seizing
all these because in a sense, I mean, it's not

(09:33):
physical papers, you know, like the way that it used
to be, because we store information in a different way.
But just go ahead, and how's our information take it
without our explicit permission or knowledge that it's even going on.
All that, you know, volumes and volumes of metadata being stored,

(09:54):
being stored by the National Security Agency. I think it's
a threat. I mean, that's something that an attack against
the citizenry. And you know, as a political activist myself,
one of the points that I always make is that,
you know, we talk about parties, we talk about Republicans
versus Democrats, it's not Republicans versus Democrats. That's a sham, George.
You know, at the end of the day, both parties,

(10:16):
even though I mean I may be registered as one
and I may support the candidates generally of one party
over the other, but they're both doing sort of the
same bidding, and it's anti citizen. I mean, it's not
really Republicans versus Democrats, more or less government versus the
private citizen. And I think that Edward Snowden went a
long ways in sort of exposing that and bringing that

(10:39):
reality to the American people, whether or not a lot
of people want to accept it, whether or not it
was covered by the media in a way where it
was explained, you know, because you have to. You know,
the American people, it's a sound bite society. You know,
they read headlines, but they don't go ahead and do
critical thinking for their own private research. You know, I

(11:00):
have to explain it to people sometimes like they're a
two year old, so they can fully get it. But
I think that Edward Snowden really tried to kind of
show the American people where the government and where this
you know, data collection apparatus is at this point. And
you know this happened years ago. Think about how further
advanced we are since then. And it's not even the

(11:20):
government just collected this information anymore. We willingly give it
up when we go ahead and interact with the website.
We don't read terms in conditions when we download an app.
We don't do any of those sorts of things. We
just click go ahead, you know, we move along to
this because it's more convenient to just you know, click
all the boxes and say yep to everything, so you
can go ahead and use something. So no, I mean,

(11:43):
I would happen to think, you know, I happen to
have a I would say, a favorable opinion of Edward Snowden.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
He's stored away in Russia right now, is any still.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
I mean guys like him and the songe. I mean,
the songs is another one where it's a difficult kind
of like you know, I wrote a piece for the
Epic Times a couple of years ago. It's like, you know,
is he a hero or is he a troublemaker? You know,
and it's a little bit sort of in a sense
of both. But I mean, I think that you've got
to have balance, you know, we need the American people

(12:19):
need to know the truth of what's going on. You know,
that's the biggest issue is the governments lie to their citizens.
I mean, you know, I don't think that that's you know,
that's not something that should come as a shock to
anyone who's been actually paying attention.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
It's just a.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Matter of you know, a lot of times it's people
don't want to accept that. You know, we live in
a sense too, in a kind of a bread and
circuses board of society. You know, people are so numb
to you know, because of social media. They sit there
on their phones, staring up their phones all day, not
knowing that they're giving up all their information to all

(12:53):
these private companies, and a lot of them are you know,
foreign and collecting information from us, and we have no
there's no accountability to what they do with that information.
That's why like the issue with TikTok, you know, TikTok,
which is a Chinese application, you know, and then you
have like security applications like Kasperski, you know, they're a

(13:17):
Russian base. That's actually, as at the end of this month,
you can't buy Casperski any longer. If you have if
you're trying to do it from an American IP address,
it's not allowed anymore. But these countries like China and
Russia have laws in place that at any time, at
any moment, the whim, at the whim of the government,

(13:38):
they can go ahead and seize the data that these
these companies these applications, these websites or whatnot have collected,
you know. And I wrote a piece for Human Events
last year about how there were thirty two members of Congress,
thirty one of them happened to be Democrats that were
still on TikTok. And these are people that had really important,

(14:01):
you know, committee assignments where they were handling information regularly
that was you know, of national security interest, you know,
beyond classified you know sort of information. If they're having
any sort of communications on their cell phones. You know,
think about the permissions that we allow whenever we download
one of these apps. You know, they have access to

(14:22):
our files whatever, you know, our contact information, our text communication,
you know, all sorts of things that we keep on
our cell phones. There's so many people that operate, you know,
people that operate their business and just have all their
communications strictly limited to their cell phones. You know, China
can go ahead and go, hey, you know, let's tap
into you know, Corey Booker cell phone or somebody a

(14:44):
member of Congress that's on like an important you know,
military or national security based committee and wind up having
access to all this information. It also opens up the
door to potential blackmail. You know, if they're looking at
your text messages and they can ascertain that you're in
an affair or something, they could potentially compromise a high
ranking member of you know, the US government into giving

(15:07):
them information or into providing or in trying to influence,
you know, favorable diplomacy for them, because they're because they
have access to their information, they're able to blackmail them.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Listen to more Coast to Coast a m Every weeknight
at one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to
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George Noory

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