August 22, 2019 • 19 mins
Texas is the latest state to be hit with a cyberattack. Officials have confirmed that 22 municipalities were infiltrated by hackers. A mayor of one of the cities said that hackers were asking for $2.5 million in ransom to unlock files. Bobby Allyn, reporter for NPR, joins us for what we know about these cyberattacks that are increasingly targeting state and local governments.
Next, President has decided to call off a state trip to Denmark after being told that Greenland is not for sale by the prime minister. The prime minister of Denmark called the idea “absurd” and President Trump countered by saying that her statement was “nasty.” Marisa Fernandez, reporter for Axios, joins us to breakdown the latest.
Finally, scientists are finding out more about how big earthquakes get started… often times with many smaller foreshocks. Sometimes days or even weeks before most 4.0 and above earthquakes occur, scientists have found smaller quakes preceding it. Thanks to advanced computing techniques we are learning more and it could help earthquake forecasting in the future. Daniel Trugman, seismologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, joins us for what we know.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday August. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the daily dive. Texas is the latest state
to be hit with the cyber attack. Officials have confirmed
that twenty two municipalities were infiltrated by hackers. A mayor
of one of those cities said that the hackers were
(00:21):
asking for two point five million dollars in ransom to
unlock files. Bobby Allen, reporter for NPR, joins us for
what we know about the cyber attacks that are increasingly
targeting state and local governments. Next, President Trump has decided
to call off a state trip to Denmark after being
told that Greenland is not for sale by the Prime Minister.
(00:41):
The Prime Minister of Denmark called the idea absurd, and
President Trump countered by saying that her statement was nasty.
Marissa Fernandez, reporter for Axios, joins us to break down
the latest. Finally, scientists are finding out more about how
big earthquakes get started, oftentimes with many smaller forces, sometimes
(01:01):
days or even weeks before most four point oh and
above earthquakes occur. Scientists have found that smaller quakes are
preceding it thanks to advanced computing techniques. We're learning more
and it could help earthquake forecasting in the future. Daniel Trugman,
seismologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, joins us for what
we know. It's news without the knowing. Let's dive in.
(01:25):
Early Friday morning, we had got the news that the
City of Wilmer's network infrastructure had been attacked on were
resilien city. But it has candicapped us a little bit,
so we're we're not functioning like we normally would. Joining
us now is Bobby Allen, reporter for NPR. Thanks for
joining us, Bobby, Hey, thanks for having me. We're gonna
be talking about ransomware attacks. We've been hearing about these
(01:48):
for quite some time now. It tends to be you know,
an individual of business, institutions like hospitals, those are getting
hit before, but it's becoming a growing problem for city, county,
state governments. And we're just learning that twenty two towns
in Texas were hit by a coordinated ransomware attack. And
one of the cases, I don't know if it's overall
(02:08):
money that was being demanded, but these hackers were asking
for two point five million dollars to unlock the files
so that these towns going to get back to normal business.
Tell us a little bit more about this. So about
twenty two Texas towns like you mentioned, realized last week
that none of their residents could pay utility bills, none
(02:29):
of their residents could access death certificates. Every time they
would go to the page, they would get kicked out,
and they sent complaints to city officials, and city officials
kind of scratched their had and said, what's going on here?
And when they looked into it, there was a big surprise,
and it was that some of these cyber criminals who
are anonymous and nobody knows where they are, tapped into
the networks and locked up the computer systems of two
(02:51):
dozen Texas municipalities, and the people who did it are
demanding two point five million dollars. And these are tiny
little specs of towns across Texas, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle,
somewhere in some other world parts of Texas. You know,
some of them have like twenty or thirty staff members
total with tiny little budgets, So asking them to pay
two point five million dollars to them is laughable. And
(03:14):
one mayor I talked to you said, even if we
had it, we're not going to pay it because as
soon as we do, we're giving you an incentive to
do it again. You mentioned that these towns are really small,
have small staffs. They don't have on site I T
people to monitor their their systems, so they're hacking some
other central company or something like that. That's a really
critical point here, because one of the mayors I talked
(03:36):
to said, you know, there's a pretty good chance these
anonymous cyber attackers don't even know the cities that they
have paralyzed. And that's because, as you just mentioned, the
attack was targeted at this third party I T company
that provides I T services too small little towns and
little counties across Texas. It's kind of ironic, right that
(03:56):
an I T company was vulnerable to a cyber attack.
They were somebody opened up a phishing email, opened an attachment,
and that attachment launched a program, and that program basically
encrypted hundreds of thousands of municipal files across the state
of Texas. And now they're being held hostage, and the
cyber attackers say, look, we're not going to give this
(04:17):
back unless you cough up quite a bit of money.
So it's so, does this lead us to believe that
the vulnerability the person that clicked on this email or
link or whatever it was, happened at that I T
company rather than in one of these small towns. Yeah,
it's almost certain. The FBI has been looking at this,
State investors have been looking at this, and sources I've
talked to h or close the investigation say it's it's
(04:39):
actually not these small town mayors, small town I T
people in city halls and in government buildings who messed up.
It is the I T company that was providing these services.
And yeah, because these places are so small and really
remote parts of Texas, they don't have enough staff to
run I T services, so they say, hey, let's farm
it out, let's have this private company do it for us.
(05:00):
But when they have a private company provide I T services,
you know, they're basically entrusting that company with the keys
to all of their government data. So this is These
ransomware attacks have been going on for some time now.
It seems that the options are pretty limited for these
towns and businesses, hospitals, even whoever is affected. The options
(05:20):
are really limited on how to handle this one. You
either pay that ransom. Uh. Two you can restore your
data from backup files if you have those, or three
you kind of rebuild your system from scratch. This has
happened before where towns have been attacked and they have paid.
I think one study found that seventeen percent of local
agencies pay up these ransoms. Uh. And it was a
(05:42):
town in Florida that paid almost five hundred thousand in bitcoin.
Tell us a little bit about that. Sure, So this
is a central question in this new front of cyber
attacks involving local governments, and it's do we pay or
do we not pay? And like you mentioned, there was
a couple of towns in Florida that got hacked. Their
fires were encrypted, and they did pony up the money. Um.
(06:03):
But actually there was an insurance policy that covered cyber
attacks that covered basically all of it. UM. But you
know the FBI, when you talk to them, they really
encourage cities to stay away from paying the cyber criminals
because it's it's really fueling the market for more of
these attacks, they say. And you know in recent months,
you know networks in Baltimore, there's a court system in
(06:23):
Georgia that was attacked. UM. There's, you know, a Utah attack,
there's a public school system recently that was attacked, and
all of these places are faced with this question, do
we pay the ransom or don't we It's a minority
of the time you're actually seeing cities pay up the money.
But think about it. If you're a cyber cyber criminal
and seventeen percent of the time you're getting money, and
(06:43):
you can do these so easily because you're a computer whiz,
you know, working from Estonia or wherever you're working from,
it might still be worth it. You mentioned Estonia. That
leads into my next question. A lot of these attacks
aren't even coming from inside of the United States. That's right,
and I don't know too. Just to be clear, I
don't know that the atack in Texas came from Estonia.
But what we do know is when you look at
the patterns of where some of these attackers are based,
(07:05):
many of them are across Eastern Europe and in some
parts of Russia. Almost certainly, the FBI said, this particular
Texas attack is somewhere overseas, and there's a theory that
it might be someplace in eastern Europe. We don't know
for sure. These folks are anonymous, they operate by using bitcoin.
They really are sort of shrouded in the dark recesses
of the internet. So nobody exactly knows right now, or
(07:27):
at least everyone who knows is not willing to say
publicly where they're based. But they're not in the US.
There if there's some place abroad. Bobby Allen, reporter from NPR,
Thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thanks for
having me. I thought that the Prime Minute favorite that
(07:48):
it was absurd, that was that it was an absurd
idea was nasty. I thought it was an inappropriate statement.
Well you had to do is say no, we wouldn't
be addressed. Joining us now is Marissa Fernandez report for Axios.
Thanks for joining us, Marissa. Thank you. The President was
scheduled to visit Denmark on September two and third, is
(08:08):
part of a European tour, but that has been canceled now.
This is after Denmark told him basically that Greenland is
not for sale. It's kind of caused this weird back
and forth. President Trump called the new Prime Minister of
Denmark nasty, saying that, you know, I can't believe she
said that this conversation was absurd, and it's just kind
(08:30):
of turned into this big old thing. Now, Marissa, help
us get our minds around this. What is going on?
So this all began last week when the Wall Street
Journal got wind of President Trump instructing his advisors to
explore whether it was possible to purchase Greenland, and that
idea started for strategic military purposes as well as Greenland's
(08:55):
natural resources based with the trip coming up in September.
Now this whole development um that happened this week, with
the whole he said, she says storyline. It's an all
too familiar news cycle in the Trump administration, right like
X topic leaks from the White House. President Trump then
(09:15):
confirms it when asked by the press, and then a
firestorm of reactions follow And this time it just happens
to be from current and former Danish politician who for
the majority of them, had tweeted out various reactions earlier
on Tuesday and Wednesday, and not too very and not
(09:37):
too kind things about the president. Um. One politician that
said that Trump quote lives on another planet and is disrespectful.
Another politician said that his behavior reminded him of a
spoiled child. So now we see President Trump on Wednesday
kind of on defense, and so I think that was
the idea he was trying to make to turn it
(10:00):
on the Prime Minister to say he was insulted that
she said that his idea was absurd, and he really
really hung on to that term quite a bit at
the press pool he had on the top on on Wednesday.
It seems that this whole story is kind of absurd.
Even the way the Wall Street Journal had positioned it
in their and their article was that he was maybe
(10:22):
half serious, he was just kind of inquiring, and now
he's kind of let this become the discussion. I think
it was a former finance minister for Denmark had said
that this has gone from a great opportunity for strength
and dialogue between two allies to a diplomatic crisis. And
the way the President seems to be positioning it is
she's not talking to me, She's talking to the United States.
(10:42):
They can't say that about us. How absurd it is.
I guess this is been kind of floated around twice
before President Herry Truman offered a hundred million dollars for
Denmark back in forty six, and I guess even before that,
the State Department wanted to buy Greenland and Iceland in
eighteen sixty seven, and so this has kind of been
a thought process. But a lot of people say, you know,
(11:03):
the President really wanted this, yes, for the strategic military
angle and the natural resources, but also to put that
feather in his cap. He wanted this as part of
his legacy. So the whole purpose of the trip was
for two nations to talk about similar concerns like trade
and developments within the Arctic. So this was kind of
the idea he was spitballing. For those who may not know,
(11:26):
Greenland is self ruled, so it formally remains part of
the Kingdom of Denmark and relies on Denmark for capital,
but it's sixty thousand some people living there pretty much
just like handles itself on its own. My understanding is
that Denmark did invite the President initially and he was
set to meet the Queen there also, and now everything
(11:48):
kind of gets derailed because of this, and beyond that,
even the questions of you know, I guess you're just
toying with the idea, but when you're talking about realities,
how expensive would this be? England relies on Denmark for major,
major subsidies, and I guess that's also what spurred the conversation,
is that Denmark was having financial problems because they pour
(12:09):
so much money in there, so it seems like a
very expensive property for the United States to buy. Also,
but the President positions himself as a real estate guy,
and this is how he views it as a deal, right,
And you know, it didn't help even further on Sunday
when you know, White House Economic Advisor kind of chimed
in on Fox News Sunday when he was talking about
(12:30):
how the purchase was possibly you know, a developing conversation,
and he was joking around that Trump knows a thing
or two about buying real estate. So it was the
whole thing had just kind of snowballed right into this
week of people becoming confused and angry and just like
more confused regarding President Trump's comments and research into the idea.
(12:55):
But at the same time, you know, I do think
it's very interesting how one of the politicians that happened
to tweet out this week had said something about how
the United States and Denmark or two nations that are
pretty friendly with each other, and we shouldn't really shy
away from that. We should still kind of get back
(13:15):
to that. You know, yes, it's hard believe and it's
kind of shocking, but at the same time, these are
two nations that have been pretty friendly with each other,
and you know, let's try and keep it that way.
Marissa Fernandez, reporter at Axios, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. These larger earthquakes
(13:40):
are in fact preceded by these very small four shock events.
They're very difficult to detect. You wouldn't be able to
feel them if you're kind of sitting around and just
trying to listen for them. But this is kind of
an important finding in our field. At least. Joining us
now is Daniel Trugman, seismologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Thanks for joining us, Daniel, Thanks for having me. We're
(14:02):
getting some more information about earthquakes. We're finding out now
how a lot of bigger earthquakes start. Obviously there's always
a lot of concern because these things are so unpredictable,
but we're finding out that maybe we can predict them
a little bit more. A lot of bigger earthquakes that
are you know, magnitude four point oh or higher. A
(14:22):
lot of times have a lot of four shocks, smaller ones,
and some really interesting stuff for shocks that are magnitude
zero or even in negative numbers. And we'll get that
into that and limited in a little minute, but tell
us what we're learning. So the past hundred years or so,
one of the most important and one of the hardest
questions in earthquakes scemology is how earthquakes get started. But
(14:43):
that's obviously a really important question, you know, only for
our understanding of you know, the physics of how the
earth works, but also for earthquake forecasting, and so if
we really want to make progress on that problem, we
really need a better sense of how earthquakes get started.
What we're finding is that these larger earth quakes are
in fact preceded by these very small four shock events.
(15:03):
They're very difficult to detect. You wouldn't be able to
feel them if you're kind of sitting around and just
trying to listen for them. But this is kind of
an important finding in our field, at least so previously,
scientists that observed that only half of all modern earthquakes
had a smaller for shock. But in the study that
you guys conducted you found that at least seventy two
(15:25):
percent of these larger earthquakes had less powerful quakes right
before them. Yeah, and and that seventy two percent number
is really kind of a lower bound. We were trying
to be very conservative with our methodology to make sure
that all of these sequences that we said had four
shocks that really were characterized. But I think in reality,
you know, in the limit that we had you know,
(15:46):
optimal detection coverage, and we could accurately separate non four
shocks from four shocks, that seventy two percent number would
actually be much higher. We think in some cases in
the study, you guys were noticing that some of these
four shock sequences we're starting either three days to thirty
five days ahead of the main shock. That's quite a
(16:06):
big range. So this, you know, this study is purely observational.
We're able to you know, with the with these new
high performance computing resources, were able to detect very small earthquakes,
and so if we crunch a lot of data, we
can actually show that there are these four shocks, But
that's quite different from being able to apply that information
in real time to the earthquake forecasting. Problem, and so
(16:30):
there's a number of reasons for that. I mean, one,
this method that we're using doesn't work in real time
at all. It takes you know, a lot of computing
power and a lot of retrospective analyses. But the other
reason is the one you just mentioned, is that these
four shock sequences are variable in their characteristics, and so
some of them are quite short, and some of them
are days or even weeks in length. And there's nothing
(16:50):
that we could find in the data that was really
diagnostic of, you know, which type for shock sequences which,
and so we're really not at this stage where we're
able to apply this inform nation yet. So what is
the thought process? And if this stuff doesn't work in
real time, how will this help future forecasting? So what
we're hoping is that this study is kind of a
(17:11):
first look on observations of a of a new data
set and that's very high resolution. It's able to study
very small earthquakes, and we're hoping that this study helps
us improve our physical understanding of earthquake processes, so how
earthquakes gets started, and once we get a better handle
of the physics of the problem, then we're hoping that
that will improve earthquake forecasting down the line. You know,
(17:34):
the first thing when a quake hits, everybody is very
concerned with the number. That's the easiest thing to relate to,
how big is it? But how are you guys finding
flakes that are negative magnitudes. Most people think of magnitude
as you know, the way that sizemologists characterized the size
of something, and so if you think about a basketball,
you can't have like a negative size basketball, and so
(17:55):
having a negative magnitude earthquake seems like it doesn't make sense.
But in fact, how sizemology is actually measure earthquake sizes
with a parameter called seismic moment. So this is related
to the you know, the area of the fault that
ruptures and the amount that that fault slips and so on,
and so this seismic moment is a number that's always positive.
So that's kind of like the size of basketball, which
(18:16):
is always positive. The earthquake magnitude is related to the
seismic moment, but it's not quite the same. If you
remember back to it's probably algebra two or whatever in
high school. The magnitude is actually the logarithm of the moment.
And so once you take the logarithm of the number,
even if you take the logarithm of a positive number,
it can be negative as long as that number is
(18:37):
less than one. And so that's how you end up
with negative magnitude earthquakes. It's kind of a mathematical quirk. Well,
I mean it's very interesting. I've lived in southern California
my entire life, so this is the natural disaster. This
is this is the thing that I know, you know,
versus like a hurricane or tornado or something. So I've
always been curious about this just because they're so unexpected,
(18:58):
and you know, a lot of people since times asking you,
aren't you concerned about these? It's like, well, there's so unpredictable,
you know, it's it's tough to be really concerned with
it all the time. But knowing how these start, and
you know, knowing that four shocks could you know, be
a precursor or something else, I mean, it's just really interesting.
And you were the lead author on this study. So
thank you very much for joining us. Daniel Trugman, seismologist
(19:20):
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Thank you for having me.
That's it for Today. Join us on social media at
Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
(19:41):
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us on
I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Dive was produced by Victor
Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this was your Daily Dive
It's Thursday August. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles and
this is the daily dive. Texas is the latest state
to be hit with the cyber attack. Officials have confirmed
that twenty two municipalities were infiltrated by hackers. A mayor
of one of those cities said that the hackers were
(00:21):
asking for two point five million dollars in ransom to
unlock files. Bobby Allen, reporter for NPR, joins us for
what we know about the cyber attacks that are increasingly
targeting state and local governments. Next, President Trump has decided
to call off a state trip to Denmark after being
told that Greenland is not for sale by the Prime Minister.
(00:41):
The Prime Minister of Denmark called the idea absurd, and
President Trump countered by saying that her statement was nasty.
Marissa Fernandez, reporter for Axios, joins us to break down
the latest. Finally, scientists are finding out more about how
big earthquakes get started, oftentimes with many smaller forces, sometimes
(01:01):
days or even weeks before most four point oh and
above earthquakes occur. Scientists have found that smaller quakes are
preceding it thanks to advanced computing techniques. We're learning more
and it could help earthquake forecasting in the future. Daniel Trugman,
seismologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, joins us for what
we know. It's news without the knowing. Let's dive in.
(01:25):
Early Friday morning, we had got the news that the
City of Wilmer's network infrastructure had been attacked on were
resilien city. But it has candicapped us a little bit,
so we're we're not functioning like we normally would. Joining
us now is Bobby Allen, reporter for NPR. Thanks for
joining us, Bobby, Hey, thanks for having me. We're gonna
be talking about ransomware attacks. We've been hearing about these
(01:48):
for quite some time now. It tends to be you know,
an individual of business, institutions like hospitals, those are getting
hit before, but it's becoming a growing problem for city, county,
state governments. And we're just learning that twenty two towns
in Texas were hit by a coordinated ransomware attack. And
one of the cases, I don't know if it's overall
(02:08):
money that was being demanded, but these hackers were asking
for two point five million dollars to unlock the files
so that these towns going to get back to normal business.
Tell us a little bit more about this. So about
twenty two Texas towns like you mentioned, realized last week
that none of their residents could pay utility bills, none
(02:29):
of their residents could access death certificates. Every time they
would go to the page, they would get kicked out,
and they sent complaints to city officials, and city officials
kind of scratched their had and said, what's going on here?
And when they looked into it, there was a big surprise,
and it was that some of these cyber criminals who
are anonymous and nobody knows where they are, tapped into
the networks and locked up the computer systems of two
(02:51):
dozen Texas municipalities, and the people who did it are
demanding two point five million dollars. And these are tiny
little specs of towns across Texas, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle,
somewhere in some other world parts of Texas. You know,
some of them have like twenty or thirty staff members
total with tiny little budgets, So asking them to pay
two point five million dollars to them is laughable. And
(03:14):
one mayor I talked to you said, even if we
had it, we're not going to pay it because as
soon as we do, we're giving you an incentive to
do it again. You mentioned that these towns are really small,
have small staffs. They don't have on site I T
people to monitor their their systems, so they're hacking some
other central company or something like that. That's a really
critical point here, because one of the mayors I talked
(03:36):
to said, you know, there's a pretty good chance these
anonymous cyber attackers don't even know the cities that they
have paralyzed. And that's because, as you just mentioned, the
attack was targeted at this third party I T company
that provides I T services too small little towns and
little counties across Texas. It's kind of ironic, right that
(03:56):
an I T company was vulnerable to a cyber attack.
They were somebody opened up a phishing email, opened an attachment,
and that attachment launched a program, and that program basically
encrypted hundreds of thousands of municipal files across the state
of Texas. And now they're being held hostage, and the
cyber attackers say, look, we're not going to give this
(04:17):
back unless you cough up quite a bit of money.
So it's so, does this lead us to believe that
the vulnerability the person that clicked on this email or
link or whatever it was, happened at that I T
company rather than in one of these small towns. Yeah,
it's almost certain. The FBI has been looking at this,
State investors have been looking at this, and sources I've
talked to h or close the investigation say it's it's
(04:39):
actually not these small town mayors, small town I T
people in city halls and in government buildings who messed up.
It is the I T company that was providing these services.
And yeah, because these places are so small and really
remote parts of Texas, they don't have enough staff to
run I T services, so they say, hey, let's farm
it out, let's have this private company do it for us.
(05:00):
But when they have a private company provide I T services,
you know, they're basically entrusting that company with the keys
to all of their government data. So this is These
ransomware attacks have been going on for some time now.
It seems that the options are pretty limited for these
towns and businesses, hospitals, even whoever is affected. The options
(05:20):
are really limited on how to handle this one. You
either pay that ransom. Uh. Two you can restore your
data from backup files if you have those, or three
you kind of rebuild your system from scratch. This has
happened before where towns have been attacked and they have paid.
I think one study found that seventeen percent of local
agencies pay up these ransoms. Uh. And it was a
(05:42):
town in Florida that paid almost five hundred thousand in bitcoin.
Tell us a little bit about that. Sure, So this
is a central question in this new front of cyber
attacks involving local governments, and it's do we pay or
do we not pay? And like you mentioned, there was
a couple of towns in Florida that got hacked. Their
fires were encrypted, and they did pony up the money. Um.
(06:03):
But actually there was an insurance policy that covered cyber
attacks that covered basically all of it. UM. But you
know the FBI, when you talk to them, they really
encourage cities to stay away from paying the cyber criminals
because it's it's really fueling the market for more of
these attacks, they say. And you know in recent months,
you know networks in Baltimore, there's a court system in
(06:23):
Georgia that was attacked. UM. There's, you know, a Utah attack,
there's a public school system recently that was attacked, and
all of these places are faced with this question, do
we pay the ransom or don't we It's a minority
of the time you're actually seeing cities pay up the money.
But think about it. If you're a cyber cyber criminal
and seventeen percent of the time you're getting money, and
(06:43):
you can do these so easily because you're a computer whiz,
you know, working from Estonia or wherever you're working from,
it might still be worth it. You mentioned Estonia. That
leads into my next question. A lot of these attacks
aren't even coming from inside of the United States. That's right,
and I don't know too. Just to be clear, I
don't know that the atack in Texas came from Estonia.
But what we do know is when you look at
the patterns of where some of these attackers are based,
(07:05):
many of them are across Eastern Europe and in some
parts of Russia. Almost certainly, the FBI said, this particular
Texas attack is somewhere overseas, and there's a theory that
it might be someplace in eastern Europe. We don't know
for sure. These folks are anonymous, they operate by using bitcoin.
They really are sort of shrouded in the dark recesses
of the internet. So nobody exactly knows right now, or
(07:27):
at least everyone who knows is not willing to say
publicly where they're based. But they're not in the US.
There if there's some place abroad. Bobby Allen, reporter from NPR,
Thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thanks for
having me. I thought that the Prime Minute favorite that
(07:48):
it was absurd, that was that it was an absurd
idea was nasty. I thought it was an inappropriate statement.
Well you had to do is say no, we wouldn't
be addressed. Joining us now is Marissa Fernandez report for Axios.
Thanks for joining us, Marissa. Thank you. The President was
scheduled to visit Denmark on September two and third, is
(08:08):
part of a European tour, but that has been canceled now.
This is after Denmark told him basically that Greenland is
not for sale. It's kind of caused this weird back
and forth. President Trump called the new Prime Minister of
Denmark nasty, saying that, you know, I can't believe she
said that this conversation was absurd, and it's just kind
(08:30):
of turned into this big old thing. Now, Marissa, help
us get our minds around this. What is going on?
So this all began last week when the Wall Street
Journal got wind of President Trump instructing his advisors to
explore whether it was possible to purchase Greenland, and that
idea started for strategic military purposes as well as Greenland's
(08:55):
natural resources based with the trip coming up in September.
Now this whole development um that happened this week, with
the whole he said, she says storyline. It's an all
too familiar news cycle in the Trump administration, right like
X topic leaks from the White House. President Trump then
(09:15):
confirms it when asked by the press, and then a
firestorm of reactions follow And this time it just happens
to be from current and former Danish politician who for
the majority of them, had tweeted out various reactions earlier
on Tuesday and Wednesday, and not too very and not
(09:37):
too kind things about the president. Um. One politician that
said that Trump quote lives on another planet and is disrespectful.
Another politician said that his behavior reminded him of a
spoiled child. So now we see President Trump on Wednesday
kind of on defense, and so I think that was
the idea he was trying to make to turn it
(10:00):
on the Prime Minister to say he was insulted that
she said that his idea was absurd, and he really
really hung on to that term quite a bit at
the press pool he had on the top on on Wednesday.
It seems that this whole story is kind of absurd.
Even the way the Wall Street Journal had positioned it
in their and their article was that he was maybe
(10:22):
half serious, he was just kind of inquiring, and now
he's kind of let this become the discussion. I think
it was a former finance minister for Denmark had said
that this has gone from a great opportunity for strength
and dialogue between two allies to a diplomatic crisis. And
the way the President seems to be positioning it is
she's not talking to me, She's talking to the United States.
(10:42):
They can't say that about us. How absurd it is.
I guess this is been kind of floated around twice
before President Herry Truman offered a hundred million dollars for
Denmark back in forty six, and I guess even before that,
the State Department wanted to buy Greenland and Iceland in
eighteen sixty seven, and so this has kind of been
a thought process. But a lot of people say, you know,
(11:03):
the President really wanted this, yes, for the strategic military
angle and the natural resources, but also to put that
feather in his cap. He wanted this as part of
his legacy. So the whole purpose of the trip was
for two nations to talk about similar concerns like trade
and developments within the Arctic. So this was kind of
the idea he was spitballing. For those who may not know,
(11:26):
Greenland is self ruled, so it formally remains part of
the Kingdom of Denmark and relies on Denmark for capital,
but it's sixty thousand some people living there pretty much
just like handles itself on its own. My understanding is
that Denmark did invite the President initially and he was
set to meet the Queen there also, and now everything
(11:48):
kind of gets derailed because of this, and beyond that,
even the questions of you know, I guess you're just
toying with the idea, but when you're talking about realities,
how expensive would this be? England relies on Denmark for major,
major subsidies, and I guess that's also what spurred the conversation,
is that Denmark was having financial problems because they pour
(12:09):
so much money in there, so it seems like a
very expensive property for the United States to buy. Also,
but the President positions himself as a real estate guy,
and this is how he views it as a deal, right,
And you know, it didn't help even further on Sunday
when you know, White House Economic Advisor kind of chimed
in on Fox News Sunday when he was talking about
(12:30):
how the purchase was possibly you know, a developing conversation,
and he was joking around that Trump knows a thing
or two about buying real estate. So it was the
whole thing had just kind of snowballed right into this
week of people becoming confused and angry and just like
more confused regarding President Trump's comments and research into the idea.
(12:55):
But at the same time, you know, I do think
it's very interesting how one of the politicians that happened
to tweet out this week had said something about how
the United States and Denmark or two nations that are
pretty friendly with each other, and we shouldn't really shy
away from that. We should still kind of get back
(13:15):
to that. You know, yes, it's hard believe and it's
kind of shocking, but at the same time, these are
two nations that have been pretty friendly with each other,
and you know, let's try and keep it that way.
Marissa Fernandez, reporter at Axios, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. These larger earthquakes
(13:40):
are in fact preceded by these very small four shock events.
They're very difficult to detect. You wouldn't be able to
feel them if you're kind of sitting around and just
trying to listen for them. But this is kind of
an important finding in our field. At least. Joining us
now is Daniel Trugman, seismologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Thanks for joining us, Daniel, Thanks for having me. We're
(14:02):
getting some more information about earthquakes. We're finding out now
how a lot of bigger earthquakes start. Obviously there's always
a lot of concern because these things are so unpredictable,
but we're finding out that maybe we can predict them
a little bit more. A lot of bigger earthquakes that
are you know, magnitude four point oh or higher. A
(14:22):
lot of times have a lot of four shocks, smaller ones,
and some really interesting stuff for shocks that are magnitude
zero or even in negative numbers. And we'll get that
into that and limited in a little minute, but tell
us what we're learning. So the past hundred years or so,
one of the most important and one of the hardest
questions in earthquakes scemology is how earthquakes get started. But
(14:43):
that's obviously a really important question, you know, only for
our understanding of you know, the physics of how the
earth works, but also for earthquake forecasting, and so if
we really want to make progress on that problem, we
really need a better sense of how earthquakes get started.
What we're finding is that these larger earth quakes are
in fact preceded by these very small four shock events.
(15:03):
They're very difficult to detect. You wouldn't be able to
feel them if you're kind of sitting around and just
trying to listen for them. But this is kind of
an important finding in our field, at least so previously,
scientists that observed that only half of all modern earthquakes
had a smaller for shock. But in the study that
you guys conducted you found that at least seventy two
(15:25):
percent of these larger earthquakes had less powerful quakes right
before them. Yeah, and and that seventy two percent number
is really kind of a lower bound. We were trying
to be very conservative with our methodology to make sure
that all of these sequences that we said had four
shocks that really were characterized. But I think in reality,
you know, in the limit that we had you know,
(15:46):
optimal detection coverage, and we could accurately separate non four
shocks from four shocks, that seventy two percent number would
actually be much higher. We think in some cases in
the study, you guys were noticing that some of these
four shock sequences we're starting either three days to thirty
five days ahead of the main shock. That's quite a
(16:06):
big range. So this, you know, this study is purely observational.
We're able to you know, with the with these new
high performance computing resources, were able to detect very small earthquakes,
and so if we crunch a lot of data, we
can actually show that there are these four shocks, But
that's quite different from being able to apply that information
in real time to the earthquake forecasting. Problem, and so
(16:30):
there's a number of reasons for that. I mean, one,
this method that we're using doesn't work in real time
at all. It takes you know, a lot of computing
power and a lot of retrospective analyses. But the other
reason is the one you just mentioned, is that these
four shock sequences are variable in their characteristics, and so
some of them are quite short, and some of them
are days or even weeks in length. And there's nothing
(16:50):
that we could find in the data that was really
diagnostic of, you know, which type for shock sequences which,
and so we're really not at this stage where we're
able to apply this inform nation yet. So what is
the thought process? And if this stuff doesn't work in
real time, how will this help future forecasting? So what
we're hoping is that this study is kind of a
(17:11):
first look on observations of a of a new data
set and that's very high resolution. It's able to study
very small earthquakes, and we're hoping that this study helps
us improve our physical understanding of earthquake processes, so how
earthquakes gets started, and once we get a better handle
of the physics of the problem, then we're hoping that
that will improve earthquake forecasting down the line. You know,
(17:34):
the first thing when a quake hits, everybody is very
concerned with the number. That's the easiest thing to relate to,
how big is it? But how are you guys finding
flakes that are negative magnitudes. Most people think of magnitude
as you know, the way that sizemologists characterized the size
of something, and so if you think about a basketball,
you can't have like a negative size basketball, and so
(17:55):
having a negative magnitude earthquake seems like it doesn't make sense.
But in fact, how sizemology is actually measure earthquake sizes
with a parameter called seismic moment. So this is related
to the you know, the area of the fault that
ruptures and the amount that that fault slips and so on,
and so this seismic moment is a number that's always positive.
So that's kind of like the size of basketball, which
(18:16):
is always positive. The earthquake magnitude is related to the
seismic moment, but it's not quite the same. If you
remember back to it's probably algebra two or whatever in
high school. The magnitude is actually the logarithm of the moment.
And so once you take the logarithm of the number,
even if you take the logarithm of a positive number,
it can be negative as long as that number is
(18:37):
less than one. And so that's how you end up
with negative magnitude earthquakes. It's kind of a mathematical quirk. Well,
I mean it's very interesting. I've lived in southern California
my entire life, so this is the natural disaster. This
is this is the thing that I know, you know,
versus like a hurricane or tornado or something. So I've
always been curious about this just because they're so unexpected,
(18:58):
and you know, a lot of people since times asking you,
aren't you concerned about these? It's like, well, there's so unpredictable,
you know, it's it's tough to be really concerned with
it all the time. But knowing how these start, and
you know, knowing that four shocks could you know, be
a precursor or something else, I mean, it's just really interesting.
And you were the lead author on this study. So
thank you very much for joining us. Daniel Trugman, seismologist
(19:20):
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Thank you for having me.
That's it for Today. Join us on social media at
Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
(19:41):
us the stories that you're interested in. Follow us on
I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Dive was produced by Victor
Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this was your Daily Dive
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