Dr. Zero Trust goes after the "Big Cyber" and the US government telling truths about BS and mishandling sensitive and top secret data.
Join us on this episode of the Ransomware Rewind podcast as we dive deep into the world of Zero Trust and current cyber events with Dr. Chase Cunningham, also known as Dr. Zero Trust.
From his extensive background working with the government and armed forces Dr. Cunningham provides expert analysis on the complex landscape of digital security.
We also discuss the implications of AI, the future of warfare, and the critical role of encrypted messaging apps like Signal in today's environment. Additionally, he shares his thoughts on cyber insurance, the importance of operational security at all levels, and provides a sneak peek into his latest books, 'Variable' and 'Buy the Breach.'
Whether you're a cybersecurity professional or a curious listener, this episode is packed with crucial information and engaging discussion.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share!
00:00 Introduction to Dr. Zero Trust
00:33 Weekend Plans and Government Work
01:41 Signal Gate Scandal
03:40 Security Clearances and Hypocrisy
06:35 Classified Information and Signal
09:24 Social Engineering Risks
13:28 Government Backdoors in Messaging Apps
16:24 Dr. Zero Trust's Books
21:17 Discussing Favorite Actresses
21:34 Making Money from Breaches
22:57 Case Studies on Breaches
23:33 The Value of Cyber Insurance
24:56 Suspicious Investments and Breaches
25:58 Consulting and Pro Bono Work
26:54 Incident Response Stories
28:44 Future of AI and Robotics
31:24 Challenges in Quantum Computing
34:01 Final Thoughts and Sign Off
Host: Joe Erle, Cyber Group Practice Leader at C3 Insurance
Tiktok / https://www.tiktok.com/@itscyberjoe
Insta / https://www.instagram.com/itscyberjoe/
Meta / https://www.facebook.com/joeerle/
LinkedIn / https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeerle/
Questions about cyber insurance? Email joe@c3insurance.com
Get the 14 Steps to protect your data here: https://c3insurance.com/secure-your-companys-data/
Cohost: Mike Dowdy, Cloud Solutions Consultant
LinkedIn / https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedowdy/
Guest: Dr. Chase Cunningham Chief Strategy Officer, Author
LinkedIn / https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-chase-cunningham/
Email / chase@drzerotrust.com
Website / www.drzerotrust.com
Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@drzerotrust
Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/drzerotrust/id1570251081
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5YrSai2Q9UGATh8GXgzA5K
Pre-order his lates book on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/hDRcQpV
Thx for joining us. Life, Subscribe, and share to help up make an impact in protecting businesses and individuals from hackers.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(38:36):
thank you all for coming to
the Ransomware Rewind podcast
Doctor Chase thank you for being here
we loved our conversation with you
I think it's a
just a wonderful thing that you're doing there
at Doctor Zero Trust please check him out
buy his book uh
support our guests and our podcast
don't forget to like subscribe
(38:58):
share it with a friend this is a free podcast
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go ahead and and share it with your friends
we'd love to grow the audience here and uh uh
share what we're doing with more people awesome
thank you doctor
coming home alright
appreciate it bye
thank you so much y'all have a good one
enjoy your trip down south
you're listening to the Ransomware Rewind
where we break down the latest cyber threats
data breaches and security
solutions that matter to you and your business
stay secure stay informed
enjoy the show
welcome to the Ransomware Rewind podcast
we have Doctor Zero Trust with us here
or Doctor Chase Cunningham
Doctor Chase Cunningham has worked for the government
has been in the armed forces
he's authored several works including Cyber Warfare
Truth Tactics Strategies
how not to lead lessons every manager can learn
and he has his own podcast
and you can find him at doctor zerotrust.com
Chase how are you today
um it's almost Friday
so you know it's getting closer to the weekend
which would be great cause I could use a little
you know downtime
nice yeah
I'm I'm headed to Cabo tomorrow
so I'm this is my Friday nice
very nice
ready to have a Margarita on the beach one fun yeah
what are you gonna do over there
can you tell us about it
I'm gonna go over there and get my family through
a bunch of government stuff
to make sure everybody's the
covered under healthcare system
since the government's doing so many changes
and what not so it's gonna be paper shuffling galore
yeah I mean
there's a lot going on in the government right now
you you go to Capitol Hill on a regular basis
yeah I go up there
I participate in a bunch of working groups
and talk with them
a bunch of those folks
on the back channel side of things
so I mean I guess
probably misconception most people have is
you think that congressmen and senators and whoever
come up with all this stuff on their own
it's not it's their staffers
and usually their staffers are working with
folks like myself on the back channel
so it's a kind of necessary to go into the free
and uh
you were talking about Signal Gate on your last uh
podcast or YouTube
and I thought we should just jump right into that
cause I feel like it's topical
it's interesting
it's got cyber security mixed in with politics
you know
I was looking at some of the samples where like JD
Vance is saying if you think we should do it
let's go I just hate bailing out Europe again
let's just make sure our messaging is tight here
of course
their messaging is like being broadcast to everybody
yeah so let's let's just uh
uh rewind back
like what do you want to tell the
the story on how
like the editor and chief of the Atlantic got um
added to this uh select group chat
yeah so we don't have real specifics
but we can kind of make some uh
I guess educated guesses on how this played out right
so you've got the editor in chief of the Atlantic
who probably talks to these high level
muggy dee mucks pretty regular
and they do it through signal
so these folks were chatting about bombing the hooties
and you know
when you're in signal you can just see a contact
and you'll tap the button and add them to the chat
cause that happens all the time
we do it all day long so
one of these goobers just accidentally
kind of clicked the button and added in this person
and they didn't even validate who the hell it was
nobody said hey
whose number is that nobody went like
well wait a minute
they weren't here in the chat before
we should you know
pop out of this go start another chat
at least they just kept going whatever
we'll just talk about this tactical action plan um
on single and go forward and do those things so
you know nothing good
I uh
there's a thousand things that went wrong here
in my opinion
yeah that's
that's what happens though
when you're on a group chat with uh
I think there was 18 people on it
um
it's so hard to get a security clearance
sorry Joe but it's so hard to get a security clearance
but yet like
the people at the top of the food chain
can just open up signal and randomly send messages
like to get your job chase
you had to go through hell and back again
it's it's tough
it's crazy too'cause like
you know when you're at that level
the sec def has multiple phones he's got multiple aids
he's got a classified encrypted phone
there's a mobile skiff that goes with him
like there's zero reason for this
other than just being lazy
to go off and use signal
for this type of communication
and that's just not an excuse
the other side of it that bothers me too
is when you get your clearance
like I was all the way up in special access programs
and whatever else like the the
the drug testing
and the profiling and the psychological evals
Elon Musk smoked a giant blunt on Joe Rogan
and he is cleared all the way to talk to the president
like in in my day
I know people currently they're clear
if you like walk by the drug dog
you might get popped and then you're in a bad place
so the hypocrisy here is what really bothers me
cause this sets up president for all of our soldiers
sailors airmen
Marines Coast Guardmen
Space Force whatever the hell we call those people
I mean everybody that's there
like it's just this is bad leadership
and it doesn't set a precedent that we want
and I look today
so far there's an investigation going on
no one's been punished if
you know I was a chief
if I did something that violated a classified
security protocol
I'd be gone that afternoon and that day
but smoke weed on Joe Rogan
you get access to classified databases
uh share bombing plans with some dude at the Atlantic
nobody bothers you like they just ain't right
well Joe Rogan did win the election for Donald Trump
sir sexual clearance
he and Elon won it oh yeah
there's like all three of them
but like the reason why I had to ask that is um
I worked on the the data center side and like
say we have something that has to be in this compliant
we have all these
controls that have to be this compliant
if it's Fed rank I mean
Fed ranks are really hard
so when I saw the the signal thing is like
what the hell like
your everyday person
doesn't even get close to that data
after they passed all these clearances
and yet these guys just have full access
just out of the blue
and it kind of blows me away quite frankly
it's not right on a whole lot of levels
I uh
you know I'm big on
trying to lead from the example and stuff like that
and I mean all of us have flaws
everybody does dumb things and everybody
you know everybody makes mistakes
but at the very least just own up to it and say
you know what we made an error
this was not something that should have occurred
it won't happen again move forward
but so far it's just been like
shit happens yeah
I mean Mike Waltz who
who's the one that accidentally added him
he said he takes like full responsibility or whatever
and then Trump was like oh
this isn't even classified information
but maybe you can explain the difference between like
you keep more classified classified
uh unclassified but controlled um
and then um what messaging apps are legal for uh
you know unclassified controlled
um so whatever they're okay
so there's a whole bunch
of different types of classifications
inside of military systems right
and inside of government systems you've got
and there's a variety
I couldn't even name them all but there's unclass
there's secret there's classified
there's special access there's TSCI
there's read only programs
like there's a whole bunch of these things
and each one has its own
different protocols and requirements
for how that information is used and shared
and it's a gobbledy
gook mixture of a whole bunch of things
but the point is
when you get access to the information
like Mike was saying you sign copious documents
that say that you're aware of the requirements
for access to that information
and you also sign legal documents that tell you
if you violate those protocols
in some cases it's automatic prison sentence
because that information is so sensitive
now technically
nothing in the signal gate thing was classified
because these people were talking about
this stuff on an unclassified channel
so for things to be classified legally
and I'm not a lawyer
but I'm just giving you my C lawyer version here
but if you if you put it in like
if I talk to someone on the red phone at NSA
that's classified information
cause it's over the red phone at NSA
now if I pick up the phone at NSA
and I call my wife
and I start talking about what I just talked about
on the red phone that's a big time no no
we violated a leak classified information um
so there's lots of nuances to how this stuff works you
you even like human people and stuff
when I was deployed and whatever
it's just because you're talking about it
and it's high risk high profile class
you know important information
doesn't mean it's classified until it's been quote
classified now
that's the legal sort of get out of jail free card
that's playing itself out
on this thing
I was worrying about that
technically they didn't leak classified information
so they're not wrong
and also technically they didn't leak war plans
cause none of this was a war plan
it was what we would consider a tactical action plan
which is a singular engagement
a war plan is how are we going to invade Russia
makes sense and then I
I had a question for you to chase
cause this is something went through my mind
are you concerned about people using
social engineering to get into uh
classified information cause looking at that
it seems like it'd be really easy just to get in
because they didn't even check
who the hell's this guy
seems to be really easy
to just social engineer your way into some really
important information
yeah I mean
nowadays the way that we can work with deepfakes
and a lot of these technologies
I wrote about this in my cyber warfare book years ago
like kind of you know
predicting that this was gonna be a thing
I mean it's very difficult in the digital space
now to know that someone is who they say they are
and especially when you're talking about covert
or clandestine or close hold type of information
you typically don't do like
video calls with somebody about classified stuff
like there are ways to do that
but it's more involved engaged process
whereas this you know this is hey
let's get a bunch of jokers on signal
and talk about bombing
the shit out of a bunch of hoochies
but signalize the software itself is pretty safe right
like it's it's a for your average person
I just got to get your version algorithm
like I use signal I think it's fine
you know
it's it's it's a good solution is overall like there's
there's nothing that would give me a fart burn
about somebody using signal for communicating
even
to the level of some type of classified information
however there's just a big time no
no that should have occurred here in my opinion
but you know who am I I'm nobody
so only guy has the support is to make it work
I don't I don't think you're nobody you're
you're on the Ransomware Rewind podcast for one thing
I mean
we don't just let anybody on the show the only nerds
but uh
from what I understand that signal is end
end encryption but um
it does not account for user error
or the devices on each end being compromised
so yeah that means you can
there's no way to exist
currently in technology to validate that stuff
and you like you like the saying goes
you can't ever fix stupid right
like it just is what it is and you know
the FBI recently
put out something saying that we should be using
apps like WhatsApp and signal
and end to end encryption
because our text messages are being uh
read by the Chinese
um it's a little bit more yeah
it's a little more nuanced
a lot of our network telecom infrastructure is
let's just say compromise
I mean if you think about who runs all the
all the 5G towers in the US at some level
it's Huawei right
Huawei is not in Nebraska
I mean Huawei is a Chinese company
so the the likelihood
that your information is being siphoned off and used
somewhere else is pretty realistic um
for the majority of people if you're talking about
you know when you're gonna go meet Nana at dinner
like who cares but if you're talking about
anything that's important to you
or could be you know
sharing your bank information
or else I would suggest you use something like signal
or WhatsApp or something along those lines
just because it adds another level of um
obfuscation and security that could be valuable to you
and let me get this right too
um just to confirm for me
if you both have apple
and you're using Apple Messenger
then that's end to end encrypted too
as long as both of you have iPhone
from what I understand I'm not a messaging expert
what I understand they do
do end to end encryption
and it goes all the way to the device
because they're both apple and they can control that
you know
does that mean that there's not some back door in there
somewhere some way
who knows
but you know the nature of any technology is
someone can reverse engineer it
yeah absolutely
and uh I think have you have you looked into uh
some of this government's
back doors for these messaging apps
I know like Apple's uh
having a spat with the UK right now
whether they should have a back door or not
like what what are the implications
why should or shouldn't
messaging apps or platforms give access to governments
to be very careful here
cause some of my work in theoretical conversation
the the reality of what's going on is that for
for bad guys encryption is
encrypted applications are a very good thing right
if you're a terrorist and you wanna blow some stuff up
you want to communicate on an encrypted channel
so that it's less likely bad
you know
good guys can hear and listen and whatever else
but that also means that
because these apps are so ubiquitous and democratized
nowadays that we have bad guys sitting on the same
stuff that good guys are using right
every little day mom and pop and kids and whatever
so that becomes very difficult for
the government to figure out
how they're going to get access to
people that they should get access to
and including terrorists and
you know
anarchists and whatever else you want to think about
so how do they do that well
they can't do it by breaking the encryption
because that would cause
big time issues on a whole lot of levels
and it's a different way of going out
the only way that they could have
what you would want them to have
which would be legally enforceable
collection capabilities would be to have
some way of enforcing a collection capability
inside of the back end infrastructure
and that's something that's happened in World War 2
it happened in you know Vietnam
it happened in Korea as far as
collection and use of that type of information
Snowden put a bunch of stuff out about
you know whatever
but it's kind of a necessary evil in my opinion um
just because and there's a risk there
sure but I would rather
if it takes the government looking at me
text to my wife and they can save somebody's life
because terrorists weren't able to do
you know deploy a bomb
by all means go ahead
um so
you know and I also remind people all the time too
your credit card company
and Facebook know more about you than the CIA
or NSA ever will oh yeah
definitely
alright but I
I would caution that
this is all
assuming that our government is the good guys
and that they they want what's best for us
um I mean
that is entirely true and accurate
so
depending on who's in charge
the government could use these tools against us
or against their political opponents
cause in China mainly
if you look at what goes on mainly in China the
you know
they have the systems that they use there to track
track
and correlates and arrest people and whatever else
so it's not beyond the pale of imagination that
that type of thing could occur in any country
um depending on what the government says it does
you know it's a
it's a very real concern for sure
well I lured you onto our podcast by
saying that you could talk about your book
I want to make sure that we have a chance to do that
tell us about your book
what's the name of it and what's it about
yeah so um
I got two books out that came out with the same month
I don't know why I do this to myself
but the most recent one
the novel side was a book called variable
which is a part of an anthology series
kind of like cyber thriller that's about a
and an artificial intelligence system
that kind of goes bonkers
it's it's the the you know
people folks probably hearing like oh
we've heard that in the movies wherever before
the difference is
my book includes things like naval special warfare NSA
uh drug cartels
artificial intelligence
it's way more deep than just a crazy AI
bot doing weird stuff um
and it's all very technically possible
cause it was written by a computer scientist
and then the other book that I just published recently
is uh
I actually did about 6 7 years worth of analysis on
companies that get breached and their stock values
and I put together a method that you could use for
looking at publicly available breach information
and basically make money on the investing side
because those companies
stock values come back after a breach
and are these available on Amazon
yeah they're all on Amazon
one's called variable one's called by the breach got it
do you have a any any of them near you
you can show me in the in the screen
no actually I haven't got oh hang on
I think I have brand new I haven't even got the uh
I haven't even got the hard copies yet
for the by the breach but that's very oh nice
nice very cool
yeah I'm pretty
pretty stoked on that one cause uh
I watched the whole uh
Netflix 0 days thing and laughing my ass off at that
so I figured my book was better than that thing
was there anything that inspired this book or uh
came from you know what your past or
or your yeah
I was in the military No. 1 was
I didn't think anybody
had written a book about this kind of topic
that had the technical chops to actually be like
you know realistic
like usually I don't know if you ever saw the movie
blackout with Chris Hemsworth
but the good guy's code is in green
and the bad guy's code is in red and
you know stuff like that yeah
come on so
so
I wrote this book to be way more technically accurate
and how AI works and the modeling and all that stuff
and then um
the other thing too is all the
all the main characters in my books are actually women
and I wrote that specifically cause I have daughters
and I also don't think a lot of people realize
how many awesome women there are in the military
and special force
related type work that don't get credit um
so I kind of wrote this to maybe
shine a little bit of a light on those
folks doing that stellar work um
that nobody knows about
nice did you name
some of the characters after your daughters
uh so
modeled some of the characters on who
I hope my daughters grow up to be
okay okay nice
uh I
I don't know if there is a
is there any like obviously none of the characters are
you know like real people
but I like who who are the main character
what kind of is it like a
a Jack Reacher type or is it like a Sarah Connor type
uh like what
tell us about the the main character yeah
so the the main characters I would say there's
there's two main characters
there's one who's the heroine
her name's Violet um
and she's she's kind of a farm girl
but she's also a badass with firearms
and kind of Jack Reacher ish
not like giant huge person
but you know just capable and then there's the
the bad guy which is a chick named Magdalena
and she's from Puerto Rico
and she's
super violent and super smart and super dangerous
so yeah
I'm intrigued nice gonna read it maybe uh
what's her name the AMG
if she could play her who
who would you wanna uh
to play your your main characters if you
if they made a movie about your book
Salma Hayek as the bad bad person
cause she would fit that role pretty well and then uh
the other one uh
as far as the good guy side uh
gosh what is that
lady's name who does uh oh
not sure if she's there on but she's uh
she's in she's from Snow White no
oh gosh what's her name she was in the um
the Harry Potter stuff the the Hermione was her name
okay I'm not do about that shit
I think she's gonna get her young I think she
it was Emma Watson
yeah I like it I like it I'm a stone too um
cool cool that that's really exciting um
so how do you make money on on your other book
how do you make money by watching breaches
well yeah so the the
this the statistical data tells us that there's this
it's actually kind of scary how accurate it is
but basically a company that gets breached
they have a legal requirement now to file an AK
with the SEC which is a form they have to file
they have 96 hours to file it
when they've been notified of a breach
if you look at when those breach notifications hit
you can calculate out anywhere from 90
to about 120 days that
that stock's gonna bottom out and start bouncing back
so mathematically speaking
if you see an a company file an AK
wait 90 days and buy the stock at that value and watch
it's gonna come back
and you'll make money on the bounce
and I'd I
in my book
I went through a whole bunch of different companies
a whole bunch of their stock values and all that
analyze that out I was like
look here's
here's literally how this works
uh and it's
it's
all of them were very much within the same time frame
same sort of bounce I even put in the beginning of it
like if you put $1,000 in and did nothing but this
this would be your return over time
and it's pretty nice chunk of change
but this is not an investment
yeah no
I am not
I am not licensed I'm not Series 7 nothing
I'm just somebody who looks at numbers and figures out
data trends
uh what case studies did you look at
did you look at Octo did you what what
I looked at Octo I looked at Equifax
I looked at Netflix I looked at uh
Crown Strike I looked at all the major breaches
that have been out there
that have been publicly available information
so that you can you know
analyze it and unfortunately
you can't look at the private companies
cause that would really throw things into a different
sort of analysis mode
but public companies by law
they have to let you know what's up so
and what are your thoughts on that
cause your job's to sell cyber insurance
like what's your perspective by cyber insurance well
what I like about cyber insurance is
they will walk you through that
whether you're a private or public company
the first thing that the cyber insurance does is
get a breach council on your side
and they know exactly like who you have to report to
who you have to notify
um what you have to do within
you know a certain amount of days
they control the messaging
um the messaging within your company
and the messaging outside your company and uh
you know whether or not you need to involved uh
law enforcement at what level
so
having experts on your side right from the beginning
um and activating a team uh
to
to like basically
get you back on track and make sure that you're not
gonna have a bunch of fines
later on
I think that's the biggest value of in cyber insurance
well into your point
I actually did point out in one of the chapters
I looked at companies
that did a good job of being proactive
and open about what was going on and
you know
kind of defending things the right way and their
their recovery was a lot better
and a lot faster than the companies that were just like
burying their head in the sand
and hope that it blew over
so absolutely so United Healthcare
we had a
I think our last episode was on United Healthcare
and the guys that I was talking to
kind of got a little queasy
or a little ansy
you know when I started talking about the Nancy Pelosi
connection but did you hear that
she invested in Palo Alto Networks
like the day of the hack
no I didn't hear that
you know there's so many
there's so many suspicious
investments that go on with those people
you can't even keep up yeah
I can imagine I just thought what
what I thought that was interesting
got me about the United her brother
her her husband did
she doesn't actually invest
oh that's right
it was her husband
but with United Healthcare
like people that are healthcare professionals
didn't get paid
my wife is one of them
she's like hey
we have this breach
I can't get paid until they get this resolved
cause they had all the data
which is really scary
and then like when I talk to a lot of companies
I'll say hey
do you have an NVR set up
what does your sock look like
and they'll go
that's annoying but it's
it's important they should have it
so you write books
sometimes 2 at a time
uh you consult for the government
um what else does doctor uh
0 trust do like how
how can people uh
find you and what services can they hire you for
I mean I do a lot of consulting work on cyber
I also do a lot of pro Bono work with organizations
that need security like
I've helped old people's homes
set up secure networks and things like that
cause I I legitimately believe in my core
that it's a fundamental human right to be able to
operate securely in a digital world
so where I can help I do uh anything
I've worked with a whole bunch of different companies
on a variety of things
from cyber security and go to market to uh
ghost writing to with ivory work
so I mean I've if it's cyber related
I've got my dirty little fingers in the pot somewhere
have you have you worked on any uh
projects as a incident responder
I did I did
smoke jumping back in the day
when I first got out of the military
and it goes and goes and uh
every time you think you're
you know you just wrapped up one
and then you're on your way home on the plane
and they call and go hey
never mind when you land
go jump on this other plane and go to this other thing
so yeah been there
done that got the battle scars
is there any particular case that uh
stands out in your memory
uh so it wasn't a forensic one
well it was forensic and it turned into a forensic one
but we had a company that called and they had a
an issue where it looked like an executive
or two executives had been compromise
and they asked us to come do forensics
on their machines no problem
okay go
we found oodles of kitty porn on their machines
oh uh
that was there yeah
that was there before the actual date of the compromise
occurred which means that obviously they were like
that's why they got hacked
is they were looking at kitty porn
and it was more than
I think it's two individuals if I remember correctly
so you know
then we have to go through the rigamarole of
talking to the police
and the feds and all the other stuff
and um
it got really uncomfortable really quick
I've heard Jesus
hopefully they put those guys away uh yeah
they went to you know
they went to a place where I'm sure they were treated
not well
are appropriate El Salvador
they went to the new prison in El Salvador
with Chongo t shirts
it'd be a party around when they walk in the door
yeah
that would have made it to the water fountain there no
what uh
what do you think uh
I always ask this question uh
Star Trek or uh Terminator 2
what's our future gonna look like
um you know
I think what's really interesting to me is that
I think with as this growth of AI and all
I know this stuff's AI
it's all machine learning with AI branding on it
but whatever
I think that it's gonna create two sides of the coin
one side is gonna be
the people that can use this stuff
and understand how to leverage it
and can apply the values
are gonna see massive benefit from it
the other side of the coin
is the folks that don't have access
to this stuff and don't know how to use it
and don't understand what it can do for them
and in the course of their daily lives
are gonna lose massively so my concern is that the
the gap grows
exponentially between the haves and the have nots um
just because of this new invention
and this new capability
I do think it's gonna do some great things for us
on the realm of medical care
and a a variety of other things
but we're still a ways away from seeing
you know how that really plays out
I think robotics is also super interesting as well
we're staring down the barrel of a very
interesting future um
and it's you know it's more is law on crack like it
you know it's not it's not that you're growing 2 x
you're growing 10 20
30 x do you think the future of war is drones
30 x do you think the future of war is drones
and then my pay I enabled robots
I think the future of war is very much drones
I think it's very much unmanned uh
vehicles and unmanned attack systems um
if you're a fighter pilot bad news
we're not gonna need you in the next 10 years
we're just gonna send thousands of drones out
and have them do their thing
so yeah I think we're seeing a
a sea change in how we
if you look at Ukraine and and Russia
just basically up level that with the
you know the largest budget
on planet earth and that's what's coming for the DOD
over the course of the next two decades
hmm
what are people missing with
AI and robots like what
what are
what are you saying that nobody's talking about
um the stuff that is most interesting to me is
the ability to power these things
is becoming more and more controlled
and more and more minimized
so like
the days of the Boston Dynamics robot
running around doing cool stuff
but it had a backpack on you don't even see that now
especially some of the stuff coming out of China
some of the new things out of Boston Dynamics
and others I mean it's all locally self contained
uh these machines are able to run themselves for
you know a pretty good bit of time
not days but a few hours and do crazy stuff
so like that is where we're starting to
to move towards and it's the power
the only thing's holding us back
in all these cool technologies
like robotics and quantum
they're not the computer science side of it
it's the physics of powering these things
and then making them operate
like quantum's quantum we've cracked quantum
that's literally what's happened
like we figured out that the quantum
the issue we have is cooling
how do you run those machines at a temperature
cool enough to actually not burn them out
so that you can get the value out of a quantum process
we're not there yet um the cooling side
I mean we're talking about degrees Kelvin cold
we're not there yet in in that side
so until we figure out how to crack those physics
problems
these other things are gonna be kind of incrementally
uh advancing
and maybe like photonics or
glass chips chips
and different materials that we haven't even
started working started printing
you know computer chips on yet I don't know
it'll be the solution there
what do you think Mike
as a data center with a data center background
I don't know how do you guys
how would you think they would cool something like that
I wouldn't know cause I
I would think that you would like
picture like a nuclear power plant to power everything
and then how do you cool a nuclear power plant
and that could probably answer that question
and you would need a nuclear power plant
with quantum computing in order for the thing to work
it just in my mind I mean
what I understand about quantum computing is
how can a 0 and 1 be a 0 and 1 at the same time
the whole thing is just way above my head
but that's how I that's how I picture it
cause it would be the same premise
you're fighting physics
and you can't break the wall
and that's why you're seeing quantum computing to us
that's what you're seeing things like in the
Microsoft just started taking sort of
data centers for quantum and literally
sinking them in the ocean
because it's cold enough that they can run it
so I mean that type of thing is but I mean
how many data centers can you sink in the ocean
to actually do this stuff
and then you know
once you throw something in the ocean
there's a whole lot of environmental factors
that play there
plus the cost that sounds like a it
the underground layer of some kind of villain
would be operating out of a under
I mean I yeah there's
there's both of the bond
bond villain side of the equation right
where you know
somebody in their submarine does submarine stuff
or whatever
underground welder underwater welder
I got my Tig welder out I'm gonna get in there yeah
it's fun to think about though
yeah definitely
anything else you wanna say to our audience before we
just think that you know cyber
is one of those places
where you should be aware of what's going on
but you shouldn't be afraid uh
and having a a good
the level of basics
is more beneficial to you than having all of the shiny
cool stuff that you could possibly imagine um
the whole goal here is not to be the slow gazelle
so if you can not be the slow gazelle
and somebody else is you win um
you know
that's just basically the way to think about this space
you you said something earlier
sorry Joe
it's like you said that go ahead
cyber security is a humanitarian right
you could you expand on that a little bit
well I think
I mean as the world moves into this more digital space
and it's part of having kids
but I mean also for kids in
you know third world countries and whatever
that are just getting access to the internet
those things I mean if
if everyone everywhere is seems to be kind of uh
agreed upon if everyone
everywhere should have access to all this information
and everyone
everywhere should be able to benefit from it
and in my opinion everyone
everywhere should have an ability to operate
safely and securely in that space
so that's where I think
it's kind of incumbent upon
those of us that can help others
to try and help them because it's
it's a rare opportunity in all of human history
where we can make a difference at this scope and scale
especially
for something as fundamental as access to information
absolutely a good place to start there is to uh
ask your dad or mom about their to see their cell phone
be like why do you have this on your cell phone
I mean
your ask your parents
you know ask your kids
ask anybody I mean
just again like
if you have an application that has multi factor auth
turn it on
like that's simple stuff makes a big difference
uh you know
I don't I
I don't understand why people argue about that and
and try and figure out crazy cool
super amazing tech
like just don't be an idiot and you'll be probably OK
cause there's 8 billion more of them
and you're one of them yeah
some of them are in government
you said no
I was blown away when I saw that
I thought it was like a cinematic life skin like
oh shit this is real dude
I was like you gotta be kidding me
I like I saw on TV and my wife is next to me
I was like I was like
burst out like I was watching a football game
I was like what the
she's like what's going on I was like
yeah and uh
this class the classic response to them
them uh
bombing Yemen is the fist pound emoji
the American flag and then the fire emoji
so what's this okay
now I understand why the rest of the world hates us
alright you did
okay I'll just follow him
so Doctor Chase um
how can people find you um
and tell us your your social handle and where
where people should go to learn more about you
yeah easiest
just look me up on LinkedIn
I'm on their old time uh
website which I haven't finished building
looks like trash right now is doctorzerotrust.com
so if you go there it's
it's total junk but I'm working on it
I promise uh
and then the uh the podcast is on Spotify
uh under Doctor 0 Trust
and all my books are on Amazon and Kindle awesome
great great
and well thank you so much for
for joining us we really appreciate your time
and I mean good luck with the book sales
everybody that's listening to this should
should definitely go out and
and buy a copy and
thank you all for coming to
the Ransomware Rewind podcast
Doctor Chase thank you for being here
we loved our conversation with you
I think it's a
just a wonderful thing that you're doing there
at Doctor Zero Trust please check him out
buy his book uh
support our guests and our podcast
don't forget to like subscribe
(38:58):
share it with a friend this is a free podcast
no sponsors if you are a sponsor we are looking and uh
go ahead and and share it with your friends
we'd love to grow the audience here and uh uh
share what we're doing with more people awesome
thank you doctor
coming home alright
appreciate it bye
thank you so much y'all have a good one
enjoy your trip down south
you're listening to the Ransomware Rewind
where we break down the latest cyber threats
data breaches and security
solutions that matter to you and your business
stay secure stay informed
enjoy the show
welcome to the Ransomware Rewind podcast
we have Doctor Zero Trust with us here
or Doctor Chase Cunningham
Doctor Chase Cunningham has worked for the government
has been in the armed forces
he's authored several works including Cyber Warfare
Truth Tactics Strategies
how not to lead lessons every manager can learn
and he has his own podcast
and you can find him at doctor zerotrust.com
Chase how are you today
um it's almost Friday
so you know it's getting closer to the weekend
which would be great cause I could use a little
you know downtime
nice yeah
I'm I'm headed to Cabo tomorrow
so I'm this is my Friday nice
very nice
ready to have a Margarita on the beach one fun yeah
what are you gonna do over there
can you tell us about it
I'm gonna go over there and get my family through
a bunch of government stuff
to make sure everybody's the
covered under healthcare system
since the government's doing so many changes
and what not so it's gonna be paper shuffling galore
yeah I mean
there's a lot going on in the government right now
you you go to Capitol Hill on a regular basis
yeah I go up there
I participate in a bunch of working groups
and talk with them
a bunch of those folks
on the back channel side of things
so I mean I guess
probably misconception most people have is
you think that congressmen and senators and whoever
come up with all this stuff on their own
it's not it's their staffers
and usually their staffers are working with
folks like myself on the back channel
so it's a kind of necessary to go into the free
and uh
you were talking about Signal Gate on your last uh
podcast or YouTube
and I thought we should just jump right into that
cause I feel like it's topical
it's interesting
it's got cyber security mixed in with politics
you know
I was looking at some of the samples where like JD
Vance is saying if you think we should do it
let's go I just hate bailing out Europe again
let's just make sure our messaging is tight here
of course
their messaging is like being broadcast to everybody
yeah so let's let's just uh
uh rewind back
like what do you want to tell the
the story on how
like the editor and chief of the Atlantic got um
added to this uh select group chat
yeah so we don't have real specifics
but we can kind of make some uh
I guess educated guesses on how this played out right
so you've got the editor in chief of the Atlantic
who probably talks to these high level
muggy dee mucks pretty regular
and they do it through signal
so these folks were chatting about bombing the hooties
and you know
when you're in signal you can just see a contact
and you'll tap the button and add them to the chat
cause that happens all the time
we do it all day long so
one of these goobers just accidentally
kind of clicked the button and added in this person
and they didn't even validate who the hell it was
nobody said hey
whose number is that nobody went like
well wait a minute
they weren't here in the chat before
we should you know
pop out of this go start another chat
at least they just kept going whatever
we'll just talk about this tactical action plan um
on single and go forward and do those things so
you know nothing good
I uh
there's a thousand things that went wrong here
in my opinion
yeah that's
that's what happens though
when you're on a group chat with uh
I think there was 18 people on it
um
it's so hard to get a security clearance
sorry Joe but it's so hard to get a security clearance
but yet like
the people at the top of the food chain
can just open up signal and randomly send messages
like to get your job chase
you had to go through hell and back again
it's it's tough
it's crazy too'cause like
you know when you're at that level
the sec def has multiple phones he's got multiple aids
he's got a classified encrypted phone
there's a mobile skiff that goes with him
like there's zero reason for this
other than just being lazy
to go off and use signal
for this type of communication
and that's just not an excuse
the other side of it that bothers me too
is when you get your clearance
like I was all the way up in special access programs
and whatever else like the the
the drug testing
and the profiling and the psychological evals
Elon Musk smoked a giant blunt on Joe Rogan
and he is cleared all the way to talk to the president
like in in my day
I know people currently they're clear
if you like walk by the drug dog
you might get popped and then you're in a bad place
so the hypocrisy here is what really bothers me
cause this sets up president for all of our soldiers
sailors airmen
Marines Coast Guardmen
Space Force whatever the hell we call those people
I mean everybody that's there
like it's just this is bad leadership
and it doesn't set a precedent that we want
and I look today
so far there's an investigation going on
no one's been punished if
you know I was a chief
if I did something that violated a classified
security protocol
I'd be gone that afternoon and that day
but smoke weed on Joe Rogan
you get access to classified databases
uh share bombing plans with some dude at the Atlantic
nobody bothers you like they just ain't right
well Joe Rogan did win the election for Donald Trump
sir sexual clearance
he and Elon won it oh yeah
there's like all three of them
but like the reason why I had to ask that is um
I worked on the the data center side and like
say we have something that has to be in this compliant
we have all these
controls that have to be this compliant
if it's Fed rank I mean
Fed ranks are really hard
so when I saw the the signal thing is like
what the hell like
your everyday person
doesn't even get close to that data
after they passed all these clearances
and yet these guys just have full access
just out of the blue
and it kind of blows me away quite frankly
it's not right on a whole lot of levels
I uh
you know I'm big on
trying to lead from the example and stuff like that
and I mean all of us have flaws
everybody does dumb things and everybody
you know everybody makes mistakes
but at the very least just own up to it and say
you know what we made an error
this was not something that should have occurred
it won't happen again move forward
but so far it's just been like
shit happens yeah
I mean Mike Waltz who
who's the one that accidentally added him
he said he takes like full responsibility or whatever
and then Trump was like oh
this isn't even classified information
but maybe you can explain the difference between like
you keep more classified classified
uh unclassified but controlled um
and then um what messaging apps are legal for uh
you know unclassified controlled
um so whatever they're okay
so there's a whole bunch
of different types of classifications
inside of military systems right
and inside of government systems you've got
and there's a variety
I couldn't even name them all but there's unclass
there's secret there's classified
there's special access there's TSCI
there's read only programs
like there's a whole bunch of these things
and each one has its own
different protocols and requirements
for how that information is used and shared
and it's a gobbledy
gook mixture of a whole bunch of things
but the point is
when you get access to the information
like Mike was saying you sign copious documents
that say that you're aware of the requirements
for access to that information
and you also sign legal documents that tell you
if you violate those protocols
in some cases it's automatic prison sentence
because that information is so sensitive
now technically
nothing in the signal gate thing was classified
because these people were talking about
this stuff on an unclassified channel
so for things to be classified legally
and I'm not a lawyer
but I'm just giving you my C lawyer version here
but if you if you put it in like
if I talk to someone on the red phone at NSA
that's classified information
cause it's over the red phone at NSA
now if I pick up the phone at NSA
and I call my wife
and I start talking about what I just talked about
on the red phone that's a big time no no
we violated a leak classified information um
so there's lots of nuances to how this stuff works you
you even like human people and stuff
when I was deployed and whatever
it's just because you're talking about it
and it's high risk high profile class
you know important information
doesn't mean it's classified until it's been quote
classified now
that's the legal sort of get out of jail free card
that's playing itself out
on this thing
I was worrying about that
technically they didn't leak classified information
so they're not wrong
and also technically they didn't leak war plans
cause none of this was a war plan
it was what we would consider a tactical action plan
which is a singular engagement
a war plan is how are we going to invade Russia
makes sense and then I
I had a question for you to chase
cause this is something went through my mind
are you concerned about people using
social engineering to get into uh
classified information cause looking at that
it seems like it'd be really easy just to get in
because they didn't even check
who the hell's this guy
seems to be really easy
to just social engineer your way into some really
important information
yeah I mean
nowadays the way that we can work with deepfakes
and a lot of these technologies
I wrote about this in my cyber warfare book years ago
like kind of you know
predicting that this was gonna be a thing
I mean it's very difficult in the digital space
now to know that someone is who they say they are
and especially when you're talking about covert
or clandestine or close hold type of information
you typically don't do like
video calls with somebody about classified stuff
like there are ways to do that
but it's more involved engaged process
whereas this you know this is hey
let's get a bunch of jokers on signal
and talk about bombing
the shit out of a bunch of hoochies
but signalize the software itself is pretty safe right
like it's it's a for your average person
I just got to get your version algorithm
like I use signal I think it's fine
you know
it's it's it's a good solution is overall like there's
there's nothing that would give me a fart burn
about somebody using signal for communicating
even
to the level of some type of classified information
however there's just a big time no
no that should have occurred here in my opinion
but you know who am I I'm nobody
so only guy has the support is to make it work
I don't I don't think you're nobody you're
you're on the Ransomware Rewind podcast for one thing
I mean
we don't just let anybody on the show the only nerds
but uh
from what I understand that signal is end
end encryption but um
it does not account for user error
or the devices on each end being compromised
so yeah that means you can
there's no way to exist
currently in technology to validate that stuff
and you like you like the saying goes
you can't ever fix stupid right
like it just is what it is and you know
the FBI recently
put out something saying that we should be using
apps like WhatsApp and signal
and end to end encryption
because our text messages are being uh
read by the Chinese
um it's a little bit more yeah
it's a little more nuanced
a lot of our network telecom infrastructure is
let's just say compromise
I mean if you think about who runs all the
all the 5G towers in the US at some level
it's Huawei right
Huawei is not in Nebraska
I mean Huawei is a Chinese company
so the the likelihood
that your information is being siphoned off and used
somewhere else is pretty realistic um
for the majority of people if you're talking about
you know when you're gonna go meet Nana at dinner
like who cares but if you're talking about
anything that's important to you
or could be you know
sharing your bank information
or else I would suggest you use something like signal
or WhatsApp or something along those lines
just because it adds another level of um
obfuscation and security that could be valuable to you
and let me get this right too
um just to confirm for me
if you both have apple
and you're using Apple Messenger
then that's end to end encrypted too
as long as both of you have iPhone
from what I understand I'm not a messaging expert
what I understand they do
do end to end encryption
and it goes all the way to the device
because they're both apple and they can control that
you know
does that mean that there's not some back door in there
somewhere some way
who knows
but you know the nature of any technology is
someone can reverse engineer it
yeah absolutely
and uh I think have you have you looked into uh
some of this government's
back doors for these messaging apps
I know like Apple's uh
having a spat with the UK right now
whether they should have a back door or not
like what what are the implications
why should or shouldn't
messaging apps or platforms give access to governments
to be very careful here
cause some of my work in theoretical conversation
the the reality of what's going on is that for
for bad guys encryption is
encrypted applications are a very good thing right
if you're a terrorist and you wanna blow some stuff up
you want to communicate on an encrypted channel
so that it's less likely bad
you know
good guys can hear and listen and whatever else
but that also means that
because these apps are so ubiquitous and democratized
nowadays that we have bad guys sitting on the same
stuff that good guys are using right
every little day mom and pop and kids and whatever
so that becomes very difficult for
the government to figure out
how they're going to get access to
people that they should get access to
and including terrorists and
you know
anarchists and whatever else you want to think about
so how do they do that well
they can't do it by breaking the encryption
because that would cause
big time issues on a whole lot of levels
and it's a different way of going out
the only way that they could have
what you would want them to have
which would be legally enforceable
collection capabilities would be to have
some way of enforcing a collection capability
inside of the back end infrastructure
and that's something that's happened in World War 2
it happened in you know Vietnam
it happened in Korea as far as
collection and use of that type of information
Snowden put a bunch of stuff out about
you know whatever
but it's kind of a necessary evil in my opinion um
just because and there's a risk there
sure but I would rather
if it takes the government looking at me
text to my wife and they can save somebody's life
because terrorists weren't able to do
you know deploy a bomb
by all means go ahead
um so
you know and I also remind people all the time too
your credit card company
and Facebook know more about you than the CIA
or NSA ever will oh yeah
definitely
alright but I
I would caution that
this is all
assuming that our government is the good guys
and that they they want what's best for us
um I mean
that is entirely true and accurate
so
depending on who's in charge
the government could use these tools against us
or against their political opponents
cause in China mainly
if you look at what goes on mainly in China the
you know
they have the systems that they use there to track
track
and correlates and arrest people and whatever else
so it's not beyond the pale of imagination that
that type of thing could occur in any country
um depending on what the government says it does
you know it's a
it's a very real concern for sure
well I lured you onto our podcast by
saying that you could talk about your book
I want to make sure that we have a chance to do that
tell us about your book
what's the name of it and what's it about
yeah so um
I got two books out that came out with the same month
I don't know why I do this to myself
but the most recent one
the novel side was a book called variable
which is a part of an anthology series
kind of like cyber thriller that's about a
and an artificial intelligence system
that kind of goes bonkers
it's it's the the you know
people folks probably hearing like oh
we've heard that in the movies wherever before
the difference is
my book includes things like naval special warfare NSA
uh drug cartels
artificial intelligence
it's way more deep than just a crazy AI
bot doing weird stuff um
and it's all very technically possible
cause it was written by a computer scientist
and then the other book that I just published recently
is uh
I actually did about 6 7 years worth of analysis on
companies that get breached and their stock values
and I put together a method that you could use for
looking at publicly available breach information
and basically make money on the investing side
because those companies
stock values come back after a breach
and are these available on Amazon
yeah they're all on Amazon
one's called variable one's called by the breach got it
do you have a any any of them near you
you can show me in the in the screen
no actually I haven't got oh hang on
I think I have brand new I haven't even got the uh
I haven't even got the hard copies yet
for the by the breach but that's very oh nice
nice very cool
yeah I'm pretty
pretty stoked on that one cause uh
I watched the whole uh
Netflix 0 days thing and laughing my ass off at that
so I figured my book was better than that thing
was there anything that inspired this book or uh
came from you know what your past or
or your yeah
I was in the military No. 1 was
I didn't think anybody
had written a book about this kind of topic
that had the technical chops to actually be like
you know realistic
like usually I don't know if you ever saw the movie
blackout with Chris Hemsworth
but the good guy's code is in green
and the bad guy's code is in red and
you know stuff like that yeah
come on so
so
I wrote this book to be way more technically accurate
and how AI works and the modeling and all that stuff
and then um
the other thing too is all the
all the main characters in my books are actually women
and I wrote that specifically cause I have daughters
and I also don't think a lot of people realize
how many awesome women there are in the military
and special force
related type work that don't get credit um
so I kind of wrote this to maybe
shine a little bit of a light on those
folks doing that stellar work um
that nobody knows about
nice did you name
some of the characters after your daughters
uh so
modeled some of the characters on who
I hope my daughters grow up to be
okay okay nice
uh I
I don't know if there is a
is there any like obviously none of the characters are
you know like real people
but I like who who are the main character
what kind of is it like a
a Jack Reacher type or is it like a Sarah Connor type
uh like what
tell us about the the main character yeah
so the the main characters I would say there's
there's two main characters
there's one who's the heroine
her name's Violet um
and she's she's kind of a farm girl
but she's also a badass with firearms
and kind of Jack Reacher ish
not like giant huge person
but you know just capable and then there's the
the bad guy which is a chick named Magdalena
and she's from Puerto Rico
and she's
super violent and super smart and super dangerous
so yeah
I'm intrigued nice gonna read it maybe uh
what's her name the AMG
if she could play her who
who would you wanna uh
to play your your main characters if you
if they made a movie about your book
Salma Hayek as the bad bad person
cause she would fit that role pretty well and then uh
the other one uh
as far as the good guy side uh
gosh what is that
lady's name who does uh oh
not sure if she's there on but she's uh
she's in she's from Snow White no
oh gosh what's her name she was in the um
the Harry Potter stuff the the Hermione was her name
okay I'm not do about that shit
I think she's gonna get her young I think she
it was Emma Watson
yeah I like it I like it I'm a stone too um
cool cool that that's really exciting um
so how do you make money on on your other book
how do you make money by watching breaches
well yeah so the the
this the statistical data tells us that there's this
it's actually kind of scary how accurate it is
but basically a company that gets breached
they have a legal requirement now to file an AK
with the SEC which is a form they have to file
they have 96 hours to file it
when they've been notified of a breach
if you look at when those breach notifications hit
you can calculate out anywhere from 90
to about 120 days that
that stock's gonna bottom out and start bouncing back
so mathematically speaking
if you see an a company file an AK
wait 90 days and buy the stock at that value and watch
it's gonna come back
and you'll make money on the bounce
and I'd I
in my book
I went through a whole bunch of different companies
a whole bunch of their stock values and all that
analyze that out I was like
look here's
here's literally how this works
uh and it's
it's
all of them were very much within the same time frame
same sort of bounce I even put in the beginning of it
like if you put $1,000 in and did nothing but this
this would be your return over time
and it's pretty nice chunk of change
but this is not an investment
yeah no
I am not
I am not licensed I'm not Series 7 nothing
I'm just somebody who looks at numbers and figures out
data trends
uh what case studies did you look at
did you look at Octo did you what what
I looked at Octo I looked at Equifax
I looked at Netflix I looked at uh
Crown Strike I looked at all the major breaches
that have been out there
that have been publicly available information
so that you can you know
analyze it and unfortunately
you can't look at the private companies
cause that would really throw things into a different
sort of analysis mode
but public companies by law
they have to let you know what's up so
and what are your thoughts on that
cause your job's to sell cyber insurance
like what's your perspective by cyber insurance well
what I like about cyber insurance is
they will walk you through that
whether you're a private or public company
the first thing that the cyber insurance does is
get a breach council on your side
and they know exactly like who you have to report to
who you have to notify
um what you have to do within
you know a certain amount of days
they control the messaging
um the messaging within your company
and the messaging outside your company and uh
you know whether or not you need to involved uh
law enforcement at what level
so
having experts on your side right from the beginning
um and activating a team uh
to
to like basically
get you back on track and make sure that you're not
gonna have a bunch of fines
later on
I think that's the biggest value of in cyber insurance
well into your point
I actually did point out in one of the chapters
I looked at companies
that did a good job of being proactive
and open about what was going on and
you know
kind of defending things the right way and their
their recovery was a lot better
and a lot faster than the companies that were just like
burying their head in the sand
and hope that it blew over
so absolutely so United Healthcare
we had a
I think our last episode was on United Healthcare
and the guys that I was talking to
kind of got a little queasy
or a little ansy
you know when I started talking about the Nancy Pelosi
connection but did you hear that
she invested in Palo Alto Networks
like the day of the hack
no I didn't hear that
you know there's so many
there's so many suspicious
investments that go on with those people
you can't even keep up yeah
I can imagine I just thought what
what I thought that was interesting
got me about the United her brother
her her husband did
she doesn't actually invest
oh that's right
it was her husband
but with United Healthcare
like people that are healthcare professionals
didn't get paid
my wife is one of them
she's like hey
we have this breach
I can't get paid until they get this resolved
cause they had all the data
which is really scary
and then like when I talk to a lot of companies
I'll say hey
do you have an NVR set up
what does your sock look like
and they'll go
that's annoying but it's
it's important they should have it
so you write books
sometimes 2 at a time
uh you consult for the government
um what else does doctor uh
0 trust do like how
how can people uh
find you and what services can they hire you for
I mean I do a lot of consulting work on cyber
I also do a lot of pro Bono work with organizations
that need security like
I've helped old people's homes
set up secure networks and things like that
cause I I legitimately believe in my core
that it's a fundamental human right to be able to
operate securely in a digital world
so where I can help I do uh anything
I've worked with a whole bunch of different companies
on a variety of things
from cyber security and go to market to uh
ghost writing to with ivory work
so I mean I've if it's cyber related
I've got my dirty little fingers in the pot somewhere
have you have you worked on any uh
projects as a incident responder
I did I did
smoke jumping back in the day
when I first got out of the military
and it goes and goes and uh
every time you think you're
you know you just wrapped up one
and then you're on your way home on the plane
and they call and go hey
never mind when you land
go jump on this other plane and go to this other thing
so yeah been there
done that got the battle scars
is there any particular case that uh
stands out in your memory
uh so it wasn't a forensic one
well it was forensic and it turned into a forensic one
but we had a company that called and they had a
an issue where it looked like an executive
or two executives had been compromise
and they asked us to come do forensics
on their machines no problem
okay go
we found oodles of kitty porn on their machines
oh uh
that was there yeah
that was there before the actual date of the compromise
occurred which means that obviously they were like
that's why they got hacked
is they were looking at kitty porn
and it was more than
I think it's two individuals if I remember correctly
so you know
then we have to go through the rigamarole of
talking to the police
and the feds and all the other stuff
and um
it got really uncomfortable really quick
I've heard Jesus
hopefully they put those guys away uh yeah
they went to you know
they went to a place where I'm sure they were treated
not well
are appropriate El Salvador
they went to the new prison in El Salvador
with Chongo t shirts
it'd be a party around when they walk in the door
yeah
that would have made it to the water fountain there no
what uh
what do you think uh
I always ask this question uh
Star Trek or uh Terminator 2
what's our future gonna look like
um you know
I think what's really interesting to me is that
I think with as this growth of AI and all
I know this stuff's AI
it's all machine learning with AI branding on it
but whatever
I think that it's gonna create two sides of the coin
one side is gonna be
the people that can use this stuff
and understand how to leverage it
and can apply the values
are gonna see massive benefit from it
the other side of the coin
is the folks that don't have access
to this stuff and don't know how to use it
and don't understand what it can do for them
and in the course of their daily lives
are gonna lose massively so my concern is that the
the gap grows
exponentially between the haves and the have nots um
just because of this new invention
and this new capability
I do think it's gonna do some great things for us
on the realm of medical care
and a a variety of other things
but we're still a ways away from seeing
you know how that really plays out
I think robotics is also super interesting as well
we're staring down the barrel of a very
interesting future um
and it's you know it's more is law on crack like it
you know it's not it's not that you're growing 2 x
you're growing 10 20
30 x do you think the future of war is drones
30 x do you think the future of war is drones
and then my pay I enabled robots
I think the future of war is very much drones
I think it's very much unmanned uh
vehicles and unmanned attack systems um
if you're a fighter pilot bad news
we're not gonna need you in the next 10 years
we're just gonna send thousands of drones out
and have them do their thing
so yeah I think we're seeing a
a sea change in how we
if you look at Ukraine and and Russia
just basically up level that with the
you know the largest budget
on planet earth and that's what's coming for the DOD
over the course of the next two decades
hmm
what are people missing with
AI and robots like what
what are
what are you saying that nobody's talking about
um the stuff that is most interesting to me is
the ability to power these things
is becoming more and more controlled
and more and more minimized
so like
the days of the Boston Dynamics robot
running around doing cool stuff
but it had a backpack on you don't even see that now
especially some of the stuff coming out of China
some of the new things out of Boston Dynamics
and others I mean it's all locally self contained
uh these machines are able to run themselves for
you know a pretty good bit of time
not days but a few hours and do crazy stuff
so like that is where we're starting to
to move towards and it's the power
the only thing's holding us back
in all these cool technologies
like robotics and quantum
they're not the computer science side of it
it's the physics of powering these things
and then making them operate
like quantum's quantum we've cracked quantum
that's literally what's happened
like we figured out that the quantum
the issue we have is cooling
how do you run those machines at a temperature
cool enough to actually not burn them out
so that you can get the value out of a quantum process
we're not there yet um the cooling side
I mean we're talking about degrees Kelvin cold
we're not there yet in in that side
so until we figure out how to crack those physics
problems
these other things are gonna be kind of incrementally
uh advancing
and maybe like photonics or
glass chips chips
and different materials that we haven't even
started working started printing
you know computer chips on yet I don't know
it'll be the solution there
what do you think Mike
as a data center with a data center background
I don't know how do you guys
how would you think they would cool something like that
I wouldn't know cause I
I would think that you would like
picture like a nuclear power plant to power everything
and then how do you cool a nuclear power plant
and that could probably answer that question
and you would need a nuclear power plant
with quantum computing in order for the thing to work
it just in my mind I mean
what I understand about quantum computing is
how can a 0 and 1 be a 0 and 1 at the same time
the whole thing is just way above my head
but that's how I that's how I picture it
cause it would be the same premise
you're fighting physics
and you can't break the wall
and that's why you're seeing quantum computing to us
that's what you're seeing things like in the
Microsoft just started taking sort of
data centers for quantum and literally
sinking them in the ocean
because it's cold enough that they can run it
so I mean that type of thing is but I mean
how many data centers can you sink in the ocean
to actually do this stuff
and then you know
once you throw something in the ocean
there's a whole lot of environmental factors
that play there
plus the cost that sounds like a it
the underground layer of some kind of villain
would be operating out of a under
I mean I yeah there's
there's both of the bond
bond villain side of the equation right
where you know
somebody in their submarine does submarine stuff
or whatever
underground welder underwater welder
I got my Tig welder out I'm gonna get in there yeah
it's fun to think about though
yeah definitely
anything else you wanna say to our audience before we
just think that you know cyber
is one of those places
where you should be aware of what's going on
but you shouldn't be afraid uh
and having a a good
the level of basics
is more beneficial to you than having all of the shiny
cool stuff that you could possibly imagine um
the whole goal here is not to be the slow gazelle
so if you can not be the slow gazelle
and somebody else is you win um
you know
that's just basically the way to think about this space
you you said something earlier
sorry Joe
it's like you said that go ahead
cyber security is a humanitarian right
you could you expand on that a little bit
well I think
I mean as the world moves into this more digital space
and it's part of having kids
but I mean also for kids in
you know third world countries and whatever
that are just getting access to the internet
those things I mean if
if everyone everywhere is seems to be kind of uh
agreed upon if everyone
everywhere should have access to all this information
and everyone
everywhere should be able to benefit from it
and in my opinion everyone
everywhere should have an ability to operate
safely and securely in that space
so that's where I think
it's kind of incumbent upon
those of us that can help others
to try and help them because it's
it's a rare opportunity in all of human history
where we can make a difference at this scope and scale
especially
for something as fundamental as access to information
absolutely a good place to start there is to uh
ask your dad or mom about their to see their cell phone
be like why do you have this on your cell phone
I mean
your ask your parents
you know ask your kids
ask anybody I mean
just again like
if you have an application that has multi factor auth
turn it on
like that's simple stuff makes a big difference
uh you know
I don't I
I don't understand why people argue about that and
and try and figure out crazy cool
super amazing tech
like just don't be an idiot and you'll be probably OK
cause there's 8 billion more of them
and you're one of them yeah
some of them are in government
you said no
I was blown away when I saw that
I thought it was like a cinematic life skin like
oh shit this is real dude
I was like you gotta be kidding me
I like I saw on TV and my wife is next to me
I was like I was like
burst out like I was watching a football game
I was like what the
she's like what's going on I was like
yeah and uh
this class the classic response to them
them uh
bombing Yemen is the fist pound emoji
the American flag and then the fire emoji
so what's this okay
now I understand why the rest of the world hates us
alright you did
okay I'll just follow him
so Doctor Chase um
how can people find you um
and tell us your your social handle and where
where people should go to learn more about you
yeah easiest
just look me up on LinkedIn
I'm on their old time uh
website which I haven't finished building
looks like trash right now is doctorzerotrust.com
so if you go there it's
it's total junk but I'm working on it
I promise uh
and then the uh the podcast is on Spotify
uh under Doctor 0 Trust
and all my books are on Amazon and Kindle awesome
great great
and well thank you so much for
for joining us we really appreciate your time
and I mean good luck with the book sales
everybody that's listening to this should
should definitely go out and
and buy a copy and
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