June 9, 2021 • 20 mins
The U.S. was able to recover a portion of the money paid out in the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline. The FBI was able to seize $2.3 million of the $4.4 million that was paid to the Russian hacker group DarkSide. While some details are being kept secret by the Feds, they were able to access the private key to DarkSide’s digital bitcoin wallet. Kevin Collier, reporter at NBC News, joins us for the latest twist in this ransomware attack.
Next, the FDA has approved a new drug that could help all those that suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. This is the first new Alzheimer’s drug approved in almost 20 years and targets proteins called amyloids that are thought to play a part in cognitive decline. More studies on its effectiveness will continue to be done and the treatment is very expensive, coming in at over $50,000 a year. Robert Langreth, science and health reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for more.
Finally, Amazon is currently sharing your internet connection with your neighbors and they didn’t even give you a chance to opt out. Using Amazon connected devices such as Echo smart speakers and Ring cameras, they launched a new kind of wireless network called Sidewalk. Amazon says it will improve the effectiveness of its devices, but you also have no control over the information shared on this network. Geoffrey Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington Post, joins us for how to turn off the Sidewalk network on your devices.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, June nine. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. The US was able
to recover a portion of the money paid out in
the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline. The FBI was
able to seize two point three million dollars the four
point four million that was paid to the Russian hacker
(00:22):
group dark Side. While some details are being kept secret
by the FEDS, they were able to access the private
key to dark Side's digital bitcoin wallet. Kevin Collier, reporter
at NBC News joins US for the latest twist in
this ransomware attack. Next, the FDA has approved a new
drug that could help all those that suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
(00:43):
This is the first new Alzheimer's drug approved in almost
twenty years and targets proteins called am aloids that are
thought to play a part in cognitive decline. More studies
on its effectiveness will continue to be done, and the
treatment is very expensive, coming in at over fifty dollars
a year. Robert Langrith science and health reporter at Bloomberg News,
(01:03):
joins US for more. Finally, Amazon is currently sharing your
Internet connection with your neighbors, and they didn't even give
you a chance to opt out. Using Amazon connected devices
such as Echo, smart speakers and ring cameras, they launched
a new kind of wireless network called sidewalk. Jeffrey Fowler,
tech columnists for Washington Post, joins us for how to
(01:24):
turn off the Sidewalk network on your devices. It's news
without the noise. Let's diving. I made the decision to pay,
and I made the decision to keep the information about
the payment as confidential as possible. It was the hardest
decision I made in my thirty nine years in the
energy industry, and I know how critical our pipeline is
(01:45):
to the country, and I put the interests of the
country first. Joining us now was Kevin Collier, reporter at
NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Kevin, thanks for having me.
I wanted to talk about this so ransomware attack on
the Colonial pipeline. We got some intes seeing information at
the Department of Justice and the FBI is saying they
were able to recover some of that ransom that they
(02:06):
had paid. I think it was four point four million
dollars that they paid to the dark Side ransomware gang.
They were able to recover about two point three million
of that, Kevin, how did they do this? This is
a tactic that is not something that we have been
aware of in any of the number of kind of
open and on the FBI and Secret Service have opened
(02:29):
up into ransomware gangs. So there are so many victims
that have been more than a thousand ransomware attacks this
year a loan that's just once we know about, you know,
the numbers probably three times that size. And this is
a new tactic that we're learning about and is very
specific about what it's saying. And I had a call
with a special age in charge that over solved this yesterday,
(02:50):
and they're being vague on purpose because they don't want
to tip off the hackers how exactly they were able
to see this. My understanding was that, you know, a
lot of times when these things happened, they're moving the
money instantly, so you can't keep tracking it. But this
amount of money was sitting there for some time. They
were able to find it and get in that way.
So I guess the other part of the question is,
you know, how did they get that password, that private key?
(03:12):
And that's kind of one of the big mysteries right now.
The kind of million dollar question here is did the
hackers do something incredibly stupid where they were just hosting
it on a US service and let the FBI just
really get a warrant and just take it over. Or
was it something more complicated, more technically adept to somehow
you know, hack something more fundamental to the Internet infrastructure.
(03:32):
And like I said, they're being deliberately vague. Did they
have helped from other agencies, maybe one better known for
technical prowess that we don't know either. One of the
other things that worked in their favors that a lot
of the Internet infrastructure is based in the United States,
they were able to get warrants surrounding this. I mean,
they don't know if people in the cryptocurrency companies are
(03:53):
not help the FBI, but this was kind of one
of the things that we're working in their favor. Yeah,
there's a lot of speculation early on that was coin based.
Coin based said no, no, we were not a part
of this, but it is a general rule. This is
a massive advantage the United States has over the rest
of the world in that so much of the dominant
Internet infrastructure comes from silicon Valley, you know, is in
(04:14):
physically located in the United States, and you know, the
United States government, when it wants to flex his muscles
often is able to you know, have substantial power that way.
The Colonial Pipeline CEO, his name is Joseph Blunt. He
was speaking before a Senate hearing and kind of defended
explained his actions on on why he paid the ransom. Initially,
(04:35):
you know, he said, I thought it would just be
best for the country to get this done quickly. They
paid the ransom of the key that they gave them
to recover their data was working so slow that they
ended up using their own backup systems to restore everything
to the pipeline. But what else did he say in
that Senate hearing about why he paid this ransom. Well,
you know he's framed this as you know, this is
(04:57):
a national security issue. It's true, you know, Americans, we're
freaking out the possibility of not having you know, quite
as much fuel, you know, gashut down. But he just
under this as I didn't know a ton about ransomware.
He had not planned a ransomware specific scenario for the company,
and so he took every option he could or up
(05:17):
the table. If you know, a lot of ransomware experts
will tell you that it can often be easier to
use the FBI's tools SILI Department, Poment Securities Defensive Agencies
tools where a lot of private companies have decryptor tools
that are more effective for most ransom more strains than
the ones that that there rantom more gangs will sell
(05:39):
to you. And dark Side in particular was kind of
infamous for having a very slow decryptor. So if he
hit the brakes a little bit and then talked to
some experts before paying, he would have been able to
this more quickly to begin with. You know, the FBI
obviously was making the call to hey, this is great,
we were able to do this, but they made the
plea for other companies or whoever else gets attack but
(06:00):
to come to them so they can help, you know,
work these tools. Maybe it won't work for everybody, but
at least they can help because before this, the prevailing
line was don't pay the ransom, all that jazz. But
you know, so they're they're asking for people to come
forward when they get hacked. We really are seeing a
big escalation in US response to ransomware. You know business
for several years, and it has just steadily increased or
(06:23):
have been You been so many hospitals, too many schools,
too many cities, police apartments, and manufacturing companies, so many
targets that hit, and they recently escalated or elevated the
threat to the same kind of aquival status as terrorism
has been, and we're seeing a substantially strong response from
the US government. Kevin Collier, reporter at NBC News, Thank
(06:46):
you very much for joining us. Thanks so much to care.
We're going to approve the drug because it's clearly shown
to remove plaque emloid plaque, these bad proteins look in
the brain of Alzheimer's patients, and we think that's enough
to show that it is a reasonable likelihood that this
(07:08):
will lead to delays and causes declin over time. Joining
us now is Robert langrid science and health reporter at
Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Robert, Thank you. I
wanted to talk about this new Alzheimer treatment that has
been approved by the FDA. A lot of people are
saying it's a game changer. A lot of people on
the other side of it saying maybe not so much.
(07:29):
So we have this new treatment out there. It's very expensive,
and the company that producers had had a couple of
failures in clinical trials with this, it got revived and
ended up making through the approval. So Robert tell us
a little bit about this new drug. So this is
likely to be one of the more controversial drug approvals
in recent FDA history. Drug company has been trying to
(07:50):
make drugs that we do something to spow Alzheimer's disease
for many many years. Has been failure after failure after failure,
and just a couple of years ago, this drug called
agucanaap looked like it was the latest failure. Bioogen, the
company that just got approval yesterday, they actually said early
into US a n team that were gonna shut their
trib major trials down because they've done an analysis and
it looked like, hey, it wasn't gonna work at all.
(08:11):
And then eight months later they revived the drug. They
said they two more datahood rolled in and it looked
like maybe one of the trials worked after all, and
that kind of shocked everyone, and ever since then it's
been a very controversial debate. The FDA first took a
positive stance back last November and then the FDA advisors
are reviewed the drugs the panel of independent advisors, and
(08:31):
the advisors nearly unanimously ruled that the company hadn't proven
that the drug was effective and slowing cognitive decline from
the disease. If that just hasn't been proven because of
the contradictory results, that kind of put things up at
an impass and made it very for a very complicated situation.
And what the FDA basically ended up doing wasn't They
didn't even rule on whether they drugged slowed cognitive decline,
(08:53):
but that's basically not proven, and they kind of punched
on that issue, and they said, we're going to approve
the drug because it's clearly shown to remove plaque. There's
amloid plaque, these bad proteins looking the brain of Alzheimer's patients,
and we think that's enough to show that it is
a reasonable likelihood that this will lead to delays and
causes of decline over time. But bigen, you can go
connect to another another study and try to prove it
(09:14):
in the future. So they kind of punted proving whether
it's flows cards of the decline often the future, and
that proves it for now. So in some of the
trials that they had, it might have slowed patients declined
by about two And as you mentioned that, you know,
it removes this protein called am lloyd. And that's kind
of where the other part of the discussion is is
there's people on both sides and how much that plays
(09:35):
a part in the cognitive decline. Is that the soul
caused the build up of these amyloids or is it not.
And that's kind of where the FDA said, hey, well
it helps reduce some of that. You know, it's part
of the discussion. Let's go ahead and improve it. So
basically there are two big trials. One slow that it
didn't show that it slowed cards its decline at all.
This failed, and the second one showed that maybe it
(09:56):
slows it at a high views of high dose by
twenty over key months. That's a very modest, slow length decline.
And you're you're still that the best case scenario, are
still declining steadily, just maybe not quite as much. But
what it does do, there's no debate over that. It
definitely does. It does remove this emily plaque from the brain.
That's this mechanism. They clearly showed that it did that.
The problem is that the correlation between CONN decline and
(10:18):
at emiloid levels is you know, murky at best, and
tremendous controversy and also field over you know, is this
a major emily, a major cause of disease or it's
just sort of a minor contributor and are other things
more important? So it's been a debate, it's in raising
for years. There's people on both sides. Everything is very
very polarized, and the FDA just essentially put its thumbs
on one side of the scale and said, you know, essentially,
we believe that am amaloid lowering is going to have
(10:41):
an effect. Tell me a little bit about the cost,
because it has a very high cost. But it's not
just the cost of the drug. It's also the cost
of brain scans and all sorts of other associations with
it that really drive up the price on this big
and is pricing at the cost of a list price
about fifty six thousand dollars per year per patient. Now,
really that's as much as five times as much as
(11:02):
some analysts thought it would cost, and that's because you know,
there's a lot of people with Alzheimer's millions, and usually
drugs such big populations, even expensive biotech ones, you know
that has to be injective. They haven't had such high prices,
so this came in way higher. And if you just
do the simple math, that's perhaps a million people are
more in the US it would theoretically be eligible for
this drug, and like all those people really got this drug,
(11:24):
and no one thinks they will, but if that happened,
you know, the sales would be fifty billion, And that's
just the start of the cost. Right, So this is
an infused drugs that means you have to come in
every four weeks to get your infusion. There's a cost
for the doctors are nurses. During your fusion, You'll probably
need some kind of exotic brain pet scan before you
get the drug to verify that you do have a
lot of amboy build up in your brain, because some
(11:45):
people with dementia or cordnit lost don't have that. And
then even after you started the drug, you'll need brain
m r I scans to watch your side effects. There's
all sorts of answer care little even further at the
cost is just absolutely going to be a very expensive treatment.
Are there any civic markers that people have to meet
to qualify to use this drug, because what I was
reading and says that, you know, it's it's not just
(12:06):
for early stage sufferers. But they're basically leaving it up
to the doctors to decide who can get this type
of treatment. That's exactly what it was. Another thing that
was very interesting and surprising to people is that in
the label and many kind official after prescribing instructions they
after they left the company keep it quite broad, and
it doesn't even though they mostly only studies very early
stage patients. The official indication of official label its just says,
(12:29):
you know, it's for treatment of all samsasies period, and
they're the doctors and insurance companies essentially figure out who
should qualify for this. Robert Langrid science and health reporter
at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. Amazon is building a nationwide network and getting
(12:55):
us to pay for it. I mean, we literally are
paying for We're buying these devices, installing them in our
homes and giving them access to our Internet connections. Joining
us now is Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington Post.
Thanks for joining us, Jeffrey, You bet Amazon is sharing
your Internet connection with your neighbors. They have this, uh,
if you have an Amazon Echo or ring camera, any
(13:19):
any type of Amazon connected device. They're making a new
kind of wireless network called the sidewalk, and it shares
a little portion of your Internet connection with your neighbors devices.
This helps kind of them to make sort of a
mesh network. They say it's an effort to make their
products work better for the consumers. But there was never
an opt in situation for this. They turned it on
(13:40):
on Tuesday, So if you didn't know about it, you're
already sharing that connection there. Jeff tell us a little
bit more about this, and and then eventually we'll get
to how to turn it off. This fits in a
tradition of Silicon Valley giant tech companies sort of deciding
to make changes to do things with our data or
with our technology, then only giving us the option to
(14:01):
opt out of it later, rather than getting our permission
before we go in. Now, like, the premise of Sidewalk
is a little bit kind of hard to understand, but
let me see if I can break it down. So
lots of people, more and more Americans, are getting smart
home devices. I'm talking like both smart speakers, but also
the lights or the or the thermostat or you name it,
or the security systems like the doorbells, all that kind
(14:22):
of stuff. And Amazon is one of the biggest makers
of these kinds of devices and also one of the
biggest sellers. And so it's saying like, look, a lot
of people have trouble setting up these devices because maybe
their home WiFi network doesn't stretch far enough, or you know,
their house is just too big to cover all that space.
So the idea with sidewalk is Amazon wants to cover
American cities and also suburbs with another kind of network.
(14:46):
It's not like WiFi. It's like much lower bandwidth, much
less data goes through it, but it can travel much further.
So with the sidewalk network, for example, a single Amazon
Echo device, one of those speakers can extend wireless network
up to like half a mile away. So imagine that
like a single device is going to be sharing an
Internet connection with just the whole neighborhood of people. So
(15:09):
Amazon's argument for this is like, look, by you, like
lending a hand a little bit, You're going to make
sure that everybody in your neighborhood can have a cool
smart home. One of the arguments they say too is
let's say there's a WiFi outage at your house with
your ring camera or something like that. You know, if
it's connected to this network, it'll still work, it will
still activate because it's connected to this sidewalk network. So
(15:29):
in that sense, I guess it kind of kind of
makes sense. But as you mentioned, the whole uh not
allowing you to opt out of this thing is kind
of an issue, and you may be thinking, hey, well,
I have an older device or something. The connectivity for
these things go back to at least eighteen and some
of the Amazon Echo smart speakers. That's right, So they've
(15:50):
been putting the technology to enable sidewalk into some of
these devices. Going back on those early devices, it was
just using kind of a bluetooth technology, but in the
newer ones, they've got this kind of long range wireless
that can really stretch really far. And look, there are
plenty of good uses for this technology, as we were saying,
but the problem is Amazon is once again not answering
(16:12):
important questions about how far this will go. So I
asked them, okay, so now that you're going to have
this nationwide network that you control. Are you going to
use it for your own business? Are you going to
use it to track packages? Are you going to use
it to track your drivers? You can use it for
your drones, and you've talked about that you want to
send around America. They wouldn't answer the question. Another thing
(16:34):
we know this network is probably going to be used
for is frankly, to extend surveillance into corners of cities
and communities where network just didn't reach before. Right, So
that's going to mean more surveillance, more cameras, more sensors,
more everything. And that data, of course always inevitably ends
up with the police. So there's a big reason to
(16:55):
think that if you participate in sidewalk, you're actually helping
Amazon build brother. Two questions on this now, how much
does it cost us because they're taking some of our
internet stuff that we're paying for. And then security, um
my understanding. They say that they have three layers of encryption,
which I guess would make it pretty secure, But we've
(17:15):
never dealt with this type of side network working off
of our WiFi and all that. Exactly well, let's talk
about security first. You got it exactly right. They say
they've got a triple encrypted. No one's gonna be able
to break in. Some security folks I know have looked
at it and to say they are impressed, but nothing
is fool proof. And this is a new kind of
network that has not been tested at scale before, right,
(17:37):
It's not been a high profile target, so we don't
know if someone's gonna be able to break into it.
And if they do, they would then possibly get access
to the data that's traveling over it, which could be
stuff about people's homes. So there's a reason to be
concerned about that. And yes, the other thing you pointed out,
which I think is super key here is Amazon is
building a nationwide network and getting us to pay for it.
(17:59):
I mean, we really are paying for We're buying these devices,
installing them in our homes and giving them access to
our Internet connections that we pay Comcast or Charter or
whoever sixty dollars or more a month to get. Amazon
has put a max limit on the amount of data
the sidewalk will use in a month. That's five megabytes.
That's only a portion of probably what you use at
(18:22):
home over a month, but it's still something and a
lot of people have data caps on their Internet plans.
If you go over, you have to pay that overage,
not Amazon. All right, now the good and bad news.
The bad news is by the time you heard this already,
it's been turned on. The good news is that it's
fairly easy to turn off. In most cases. You just
gotta go in your settings, go around and so you
(18:42):
find a sidewalk and then you can turn that off.
That's right. So Amazon did not ask your permission to
turn it on, but you do have the ability to
opt out. So to do that, first of all, you
need to have one of these devices that works with sidewalk.
When hear from sump folks, okay, when and I looked
at my settings, but I didn't see it, that's because
you don't have one of these devices that's new enough.
(19:03):
It really started with devices. If you've got when the
original echoes or something, it's fine. So if you have
one of these newer devices, you go into the Alexa app,
you'll find your way to settings, that account settings, and
then inside there you'll see Amazon Sidewalk. I've got a
step by step picture guide in my column in The
Washington Post. Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington post.
(19:25):
Thank you very much for joining us. You bet and
stay safe out there. That's it for today. Join us
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter
and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
(19:46):
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. This episode of the Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarentina him Oscar Ramirez,
and this was your Daily Dive would be fas
It's Wednesday, June nine. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. The US was able
to recover a portion of the money paid out in
the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline. The FBI was
able to seize two point three million dollars the four
point four million that was paid to the Russian hacker
(00:22):
group dark Side. While some details are being kept secret
by the FEDS, they were able to access the private
key to dark Side's digital bitcoin wallet. Kevin Collier, reporter
at NBC News joins US for the latest twist in
this ransomware attack. Next, the FDA has approved a new
drug that could help all those that suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
(00:43):
This is the first new Alzheimer's drug approved in almost
twenty years and targets proteins called am aloids that are
thought to play a part in cognitive decline. More studies
on its effectiveness will continue to be done, and the
treatment is very expensive, coming in at over fifty dollars
a year. Robert Langrith science and health reporter at Bloomberg News,
(01:03):
joins US for more. Finally, Amazon is currently sharing your
Internet connection with your neighbors, and they didn't even give
you a chance to opt out. Using Amazon connected devices
such as Echo, smart speakers and ring cameras, they launched
a new kind of wireless network called sidewalk. Jeffrey Fowler,
tech columnists for Washington Post, joins us for how to
(01:24):
turn off the Sidewalk network on your devices. It's news
without the noise. Let's diving. I made the decision to pay,
and I made the decision to keep the information about
the payment as confidential as possible. It was the hardest
decision I made in my thirty nine years in the
energy industry, and I know how critical our pipeline is
(01:45):
to the country, and I put the interests of the
country first. Joining us now was Kevin Collier, reporter at
NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Kevin, thanks for having me.
I wanted to talk about this so ransomware attack on
the Colonial pipeline. We got some intes seeing information at
the Department of Justice and the FBI is saying they
were able to recover some of that ransom that they
(02:06):
had paid. I think it was four point four million
dollars that they paid to the dark Side ransomware gang.
They were able to recover about two point three million
of that, Kevin, how did they do this? This is
a tactic that is not something that we have been
aware of in any of the number of kind of
open and on the FBI and Secret Service have opened
(02:29):
up into ransomware gangs. So there are so many victims
that have been more than a thousand ransomware attacks this
year a loan that's just once we know about, you know,
the numbers probably three times that size. And this is
a new tactic that we're learning about and is very
specific about what it's saying. And I had a call
with a special age in charge that over solved this yesterday,
(02:50):
and they're being vague on purpose because they don't want
to tip off the hackers how exactly they were able
to see this. My understanding was that, you know, a
lot of times when these things happened, they're moving the
money instantly, so you can't keep tracking it. But this
amount of money was sitting there for some time. They
were able to find it and get in that way.
So I guess the other part of the question is,
you know, how did they get that password, that private key?
(03:12):
And that's kind of one of the big mysteries right now.
The kind of million dollar question here is did the
hackers do something incredibly stupid where they were just hosting
it on a US service and let the FBI just
really get a warrant and just take it over. Or
was it something more complicated, more technically adept to somehow
you know, hack something more fundamental to the Internet infrastructure.
(03:32):
And like I said, they're being deliberately vague. Did they
have helped from other agencies, maybe one better known for
technical prowess that we don't know either. One of the
other things that worked in their favors that a lot
of the Internet infrastructure is based in the United States,
they were able to get warrants surrounding this. I mean,
they don't know if people in the cryptocurrency companies are
(03:53):
not help the FBI, but this was kind of one
of the things that we're working in their favor. Yeah,
there's a lot of speculation early on that was coin based.
Coin based said no, no, we were not a part
of this, but it is a general rule. This is
a massive advantage the United States has over the rest
of the world in that so much of the dominant
Internet infrastructure comes from silicon Valley, you know, is in
(04:14):
physically located in the United States, and you know, the
United States government, when it wants to flex his muscles
often is able to you know, have substantial power that way.
The Colonial Pipeline CEO, his name is Joseph Blunt. He
was speaking before a Senate hearing and kind of defended
explained his actions on on why he paid the ransom. Initially,
(04:35):
you know, he said, I thought it would just be
best for the country to get this done quickly. They
paid the ransom of the key that they gave them
to recover their data was working so slow that they
ended up using their own backup systems to restore everything
to the pipeline. But what else did he say in
that Senate hearing about why he paid this ransom. Well,
you know he's framed this as you know, this is
(04:57):
a national security issue. It's true, you know, Americans, we're
freaking out the possibility of not having you know, quite
as much fuel, you know, gashut down. But he just
under this as I didn't know a ton about ransomware.
He had not planned a ransomware specific scenario for the company,
and so he took every option he could or up
(05:17):
the table. If you know, a lot of ransomware experts
will tell you that it can often be easier to
use the FBI's tools SILI Department, Poment Securities Defensive Agencies
tools where a lot of private companies have decryptor tools
that are more effective for most ransom more strains than
the ones that that there rantom more gangs will sell
(05:39):
to you. And dark Side in particular was kind of
infamous for having a very slow decryptor. So if he
hit the brakes a little bit and then talked to
some experts before paying, he would have been able to
this more quickly to begin with. You know, the FBI
obviously was making the call to hey, this is great,
we were able to do this, but they made the
plea for other companies or whoever else gets attack but
(06:00):
to come to them so they can help, you know,
work these tools. Maybe it won't work for everybody, but
at least they can help because before this, the prevailing
line was don't pay the ransom, all that jazz. But
you know, so they're they're asking for people to come
forward when they get hacked. We really are seeing a
big escalation in US response to ransomware. You know business
for several years, and it has just steadily increased or
(06:23):
have been You been so many hospitals, too many schools,
too many cities, police apartments, and manufacturing companies, so many
targets that hit, and they recently escalated or elevated the
threat to the same kind of aquival status as terrorism
has been, and we're seeing a substantially strong response from
the US government. Kevin Collier, reporter at NBC News, Thank
(06:46):
you very much for joining us. Thanks so much to care.
We're going to approve the drug because it's clearly shown
to remove plaque emloid plaque, these bad proteins look in
the brain of Alzheimer's patients, and we think that's enough
to show that it is a reasonable likelihood that this
(07:08):
will lead to delays and causes declin over time. Joining
us now is Robert langrid science and health reporter at
Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Robert, Thank you. I
wanted to talk about this new Alzheimer treatment that has
been approved by the FDA. A lot of people are
saying it's a game changer. A lot of people on
the other side of it saying maybe not so much.
(07:29):
So we have this new treatment out there. It's very expensive,
and the company that producers had had a couple of
failures in clinical trials with this, it got revived and
ended up making through the approval. So Robert tell us
a little bit about this new drug. So this is
likely to be one of the more controversial drug approvals
in recent FDA history. Drug company has been trying to
(07:50):
make drugs that we do something to spow Alzheimer's disease
for many many years. Has been failure after failure after failure,
and just a couple of years ago, this drug called
agucanaap looked like it was the latest failure. Bioogen, the
company that just got approval yesterday, they actually said early
into US a n team that were gonna shut their
trib major trials down because they've done an analysis and
it looked like, hey, it wasn't gonna work at all.
(08:11):
And then eight months later they revived the drug. They
said they two more datahood rolled in and it looked
like maybe one of the trials worked after all, and
that kind of shocked everyone, and ever since then it's
been a very controversial debate. The FDA first took a
positive stance back last November and then the FDA advisors
are reviewed the drugs the panel of independent advisors, and
(08:31):
the advisors nearly unanimously ruled that the company hadn't proven
that the drug was effective and slowing cognitive decline from
the disease. If that just hasn't been proven because of
the contradictory results, that kind of put things up at
an impass and made it very for a very complicated situation.
And what the FDA basically ended up doing wasn't They
didn't even rule on whether they drugged slowed cognitive decline,
(08:53):
but that's basically not proven, and they kind of punched
on that issue, and they said, we're going to approve
the drug because it's clearly shown to remove plaque. There's
amloid plaque, these bad proteins looking the brain of Alzheimer's patients,
and we think that's enough to show that it is
a reasonable likelihood that this will lead to delays and
causes of decline over time. But bigen, you can go
connect to another another study and try to prove it
(09:14):
in the future. So they kind of punted proving whether
it's flows cards of the decline often the future, and
that proves it for now. So in some of the
trials that they had, it might have slowed patients declined
by about two And as you mentioned that, you know,
it removes this protein called am lloyd. And that's kind
of where the other part of the discussion is is
there's people on both sides and how much that plays
(09:35):
a part in the cognitive decline. Is that the soul
caused the build up of these amyloids or is it not.
And that's kind of where the FDA said, hey, well
it helps reduce some of that. You know, it's part
of the discussion. Let's go ahead and improve it. So
basically there are two big trials. One slow that it
didn't show that it slowed cards its decline at all.
This failed, and the second one showed that maybe it
(09:56):
slows it at a high views of high dose by
twenty over key months. That's a very modest, slow length decline.
And you're you're still that the best case scenario, are
still declining steadily, just maybe not quite as much. But
what it does do, there's no debate over that. It
definitely does. It does remove this emily plaque from the brain.
That's this mechanism. They clearly showed that it did that.
The problem is that the correlation between CONN decline and
(10:18):
at emiloid levels is you know, murky at best, and
tremendous controversy and also field over you know, is this
a major emily, a major cause of disease or it's
just sort of a minor contributor and are other things
more important? So it's been a debate, it's in raising
for years. There's people on both sides. Everything is very
very polarized, and the FDA just essentially put its thumbs
on one side of the scale and said, you know, essentially,
we believe that am amaloid lowering is going to have
(10:41):
an effect. Tell me a little bit about the cost,
because it has a very high cost. But it's not
just the cost of the drug. It's also the cost
of brain scans and all sorts of other associations with
it that really drive up the price on this big
and is pricing at the cost of a list price
about fifty six thousand dollars per year per patient. Now,
really that's as much as five times as much as
(11:02):
some analysts thought it would cost, and that's because you know,
there's a lot of people with Alzheimer's millions, and usually
drugs such big populations, even expensive biotech ones, you know
that has to be injective. They haven't had such high prices,
so this came in way higher. And if you just
do the simple math, that's perhaps a million people are
more in the US it would theoretically be eligible for
this drug, and like all those people really got this drug,
(11:24):
and no one thinks they will, but if that happened,
you know, the sales would be fifty billion, And that's
just the start of the cost. Right, So this is
an infused drugs that means you have to come in
every four weeks to get your infusion. There's a cost
for the doctors are nurses. During your fusion, You'll probably
need some kind of exotic brain pet scan before you
get the drug to verify that you do have a
lot of amboy build up in your brain, because some
(11:45):
people with dementia or cordnit lost don't have that. And
then even after you started the drug, you'll need brain
m r I scans to watch your side effects. There's
all sorts of answer care little even further at the
cost is just absolutely going to be a very expensive treatment.
Are there any civic markers that people have to meet
to qualify to use this drug, because what I was
reading and says that, you know, it's it's not just
(12:06):
for early stage sufferers. But they're basically leaving it up
to the doctors to decide who can get this type
of treatment. That's exactly what it was. Another thing that
was very interesting and surprising to people is that in
the label and many kind official after prescribing instructions they
after they left the company keep it quite broad, and
it doesn't even though they mostly only studies very early
stage patients. The official indication of official label its just says,
(12:29):
you know, it's for treatment of all samsasies period, and
they're the doctors and insurance companies essentially figure out who
should qualify for this. Robert Langrid science and health reporter
at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. Amazon is building a nationwide network and getting
(12:55):
us to pay for it. I mean, we literally are
paying for We're buying these devices, installing them in our
homes and giving them access to our Internet connections. Joining
us now is Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington Post.
Thanks for joining us, Jeffrey, You bet Amazon is sharing
your Internet connection with your neighbors. They have this, uh,
if you have an Amazon Echo or ring camera, any
(13:19):
any type of Amazon connected device. They're making a new
kind of wireless network called the sidewalk, and it shares
a little portion of your Internet connection with your neighbors devices.
This helps kind of them to make sort of a
mesh network. They say it's an effort to make their
products work better for the consumers. But there was never
an opt in situation for this. They turned it on
(13:40):
on Tuesday, So if you didn't know about it, you're
already sharing that connection there. Jeff tell us a little
bit more about this, and and then eventually we'll get
to how to turn it off. This fits in a
tradition of Silicon Valley giant tech companies sort of deciding
to make changes to do things with our data or
with our technology, then only giving us the option to
(14:01):
opt out of it later, rather than getting our permission
before we go in. Now, like, the premise of Sidewalk
is a little bit kind of hard to understand, but
let me see if I can break it down. So
lots of people, more and more Americans, are getting smart
home devices. I'm talking like both smart speakers, but also
the lights or the or the thermostat or you name it,
or the security systems like the doorbells, all that kind
(14:22):
of stuff. And Amazon is one of the biggest makers
of these kinds of devices and also one of the
biggest sellers. And so it's saying like, look, a lot
of people have trouble setting up these devices because maybe
their home WiFi network doesn't stretch far enough, or you know,
their house is just too big to cover all that space.
So the idea with sidewalk is Amazon wants to cover
American cities and also suburbs with another kind of network.
(14:46):
It's not like WiFi. It's like much lower bandwidth, much
less data goes through it, but it can travel much further.
So with the sidewalk network, for example, a single Amazon
Echo device, one of those speakers can extend wireless network
up to like half a mile away. So imagine that
like a single device is going to be sharing an
Internet connection with just the whole neighborhood of people. So
(15:09):
Amazon's argument for this is like, look, by you, like
lending a hand a little bit, You're going to make
sure that everybody in your neighborhood can have a cool
smart home. One of the arguments they say too is
let's say there's a WiFi outage at your house with
your ring camera or something like that. You know, if
it's connected to this network, it'll still work, it will
still activate because it's connected to this sidewalk network. So
(15:29):
in that sense, I guess it kind of kind of
makes sense. But as you mentioned, the whole uh not
allowing you to opt out of this thing is kind
of an issue, and you may be thinking, hey, well,
I have an older device or something. The connectivity for
these things go back to at least eighteen and some
of the Amazon Echo smart speakers. That's right, So they've
(15:50):
been putting the technology to enable sidewalk into some of
these devices. Going back on those early devices, it was
just using kind of a bluetooth technology, but in the
newer ones, they've got this kind of long range wireless
that can really stretch really far. And look, there are
plenty of good uses for this technology, as we were saying,
but the problem is Amazon is once again not answering
(16:12):
important questions about how far this will go. So I
asked them, okay, so now that you're going to have
this nationwide network that you control. Are you going to
use it for your own business? Are you going to
use it to track packages? Are you going to use
it to track your drivers? You can use it for
your drones, and you've talked about that you want to
send around America. They wouldn't answer the question. Another thing
(16:34):
we know this network is probably going to be used
for is frankly, to extend surveillance into corners of cities
and communities where network just didn't reach before. Right, So
that's going to mean more surveillance, more cameras, more sensors,
more everything. And that data, of course always inevitably ends
up with the police. So there's a big reason to
(16:55):
think that if you participate in sidewalk, you're actually helping
Amazon build brother. Two questions on this now, how much
does it cost us because they're taking some of our
internet stuff that we're paying for. And then security, um
my understanding. They say that they have three layers of encryption,
which I guess would make it pretty secure, But we've
(17:15):
never dealt with this type of side network working off
of our WiFi and all that. Exactly well, let's talk
about security first. You got it exactly right. They say
they've got a triple encrypted. No one's gonna be able
to break in. Some security folks I know have looked
at it and to say they are impressed, but nothing
is fool proof. And this is a new kind of
network that has not been tested at scale before, right,
(17:37):
It's not been a high profile target, so we don't
know if someone's gonna be able to break into it.
And if they do, they would then possibly get access
to the data that's traveling over it, which could be
stuff about people's homes. So there's a reason to be
concerned about that. And yes, the other thing you pointed out,
which I think is super key here is Amazon is
building a nationwide network and getting us to pay for it.
(17:59):
I mean, we really are paying for We're buying these devices,
installing them in our homes and giving them access to
our Internet connections that we pay Comcast or Charter or
whoever sixty dollars or more a month to get. Amazon
has put a max limit on the amount of data
the sidewalk will use in a month. That's five megabytes.
That's only a portion of probably what you use at
(18:22):
home over a month, but it's still something and a
lot of people have data caps on their Internet plans.
If you go over, you have to pay that overage,
not Amazon. All right, now the good and bad news.
The bad news is by the time you heard this already,
it's been turned on. The good news is that it's
fairly easy to turn off. In most cases. You just
gotta go in your settings, go around and so you
(18:42):
find a sidewalk and then you can turn that off.
That's right. So Amazon did not ask your permission to
turn it on, but you do have the ability to
opt out. So to do that, first of all, you
need to have one of these devices that works with sidewalk.
When hear from sump folks, okay, when and I looked
at my settings, but I didn't see it, that's because
you don't have one of these devices that's new enough.
(19:03):
It really started with devices. If you've got when the
original echoes or something, it's fine. So if you have
one of these newer devices, you go into the Alexa app,
you'll find your way to settings, that account settings, and
then inside there you'll see Amazon Sidewalk. I've got a
step by step picture guide in my column in The
Washington Post. Jeffrey Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington post.
(19:25):
Thank you very much for joining us. You bet and
stay safe out there. That's it for today. Join us
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter
and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
(19:46):
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your podcast. This episode of the Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sarentina him Oscar Ramirez,
and this was your Daily Dive would be fas
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