Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
No matter where you
are, you are being watched.
In today's world, no one is offthe grid.
Existing in the modern worldhas been forever changed.
What's out there?
Most people don't want to know,but you are about to get clued
(00:26):
in.
This is Patriot Games.
We'll explore differentintelligence techniques,
spycraft and the latestcutting-edge technology that
will blow your mind.
We'll introduce you to proswho've spent careers in the
(00:46):
Intel community With incrediblestories.
We'll expose it all.
Welcome to Patriot Games.
And now your host, gregPhillips.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Hey everybody, it's
Greg Phillips.
Welcome back to Patriot Games.
Today we're going to talk alittle bit about this TikTok
controversy.
I'll cover as much as I can, asmuch as I think about, but
there's a lot to consider here.
There are multiple sides ofthis thing.
I think what's confusing aboutit is that we're here on the one
hand Remember, president Trumptried to get them to ban it back
(01:33):
in, I think, 2020, maybe duringthe election year and then
you've got people we trustsaying do it.
People we trust saying don't doit.
But there are nuances.
I think it's a lot more thanjust do it or not do it, and it
all needs to be considered.
Let me just start with kids.
If they're going to do nothing,then what they ought to do is
(01:54):
write a bill that bans kids fromusing TikTok Period and TikTok
is responsible for ensuring thatno kids are on TikTok.
The idea that they built, theChinese are tracking them and
anybody who buys this data and,as you well know from Mule's and
some of our other work, thatanybody can buy this data at any
(02:17):
time and you can buy TikTokonly.
You can buy other social media.
You can buy these things andthe idea that they allow little
kids on there to be there and tooperate, basically do what they
want to do and look at whatthey want to look at is just not
okay.
So, straight out of the gate,let me just say that I think
(02:40):
TikTok is bad for kids.
Frankly, I think social mediais bad for kids and they ought
to do something about it if theywant to do something.
So that's number one.
Number two this whole notion ofgeo-tracking at all inside of
apps is outrageous.
Now, grant you, we make some ofour money off of this.
We do track bad guys.
We find bad guys doing badthings, but there are other ways
(03:04):
to do that.
I think that app-based trackingand these ad keys and ad
exchanges that sell this data.
They are shadowy at best.
If they want to do somethingwith all of this, then force
social media companies oreverybody to stop geotracking
(03:24):
and remember what geotrackingdoes.
Just a simple explanation.
You have four satellite signalsthat make up a GPS clean
connect.
So the three satellite signalsare required to adequately
identify geolocation.
The fourth one is simply tomark the time that that
(03:46):
geolocation was established.
And be mindful, it's not yourphone that is seeking the
geolocation.
The GPS tracking mechanismscome out of the satellite into
your phone and then it's whatyour phone does with it.
That's the problem.
So what happens is you takethat geolocation, you grab the
(04:06):
time and your app has somethingcalled an SDK, a software
development kit, in it.
It grabs that geolocation inthat time potentially elevation,
depending on what you're doingor what they want to track and
then it stamps into the apps.
The apps then take that dataand sell it, and sell it through
(04:28):
these brokers and so on and soforth.
So there's a lot of things atplay here.
Gps is not the problem.
It's how the market is usingthis.
Google and Apple are absolutelyfostering all of this, and so I
guess what I'm saying is ifyou're going to do something and
you're going to do somethingmeaningful, first thing is stop
(04:50):
kids from using the app.
I don't care if you ban it.
Where does that stop?
Right, do you ban all socialmedia apps?
Do you ban only kids from usingcertain social media apps?
How do you do it and where doesit stop?
And, as John David was sayingto me earlier, okay, so what
happens if they decide well, wedon't like TikTok today.
(05:11):
Well, what if they decide theydon't like true social, or what
if they don't like some othersocial media channel and then
they force that sale?
I think that we are treading onsome really difficult ground
here.
So young people absolutely banthem from using all social media
.
And you can get mad at me allyou want, I don't care.
Ban it, stop it, stop beingcowards and just do it.
(05:34):
The legislature needs to do itor the Congress needs to do it,
no matter what.
Whether Biden would sign it ornot, who knows but they need to
ban kids on social media.
It's just the way it is.
Second thing that they need todo is if they want to stop all
of it and the geo-tracking, thenyou have to ban the software
(05:57):
development kits and Google andApple from doing geo-tracking.
So you got those two things.
The rest of this is a littlemore complicated.
Let's take another easy onefirst, complicated but easy.
Do we want to be in thebusiness of banning this app
because of the Chineseaffiliations?
(06:19):
You know part of me that knowsthat the Chinese people are the
ones who have made me andCatherine go to jail, make me
say, yeah, let's just ban it.
But the problem with it is isyou've got all of these apps
that are transmitting data toChina and even if you didn't,
(06:41):
they're buying them from thedark exchanges.
So if you're seeking to juststop them from geo-tracking and
you're seeking them from gettingthe metadata inside of it, or
you're seeking, you know.
Whatever it is you're seeking,you know it's a national
security thing.
Whatever your issue is, banningone app is dumb If you've been
(07:07):
on the internet at all,especially on any kind of social
media channel.
This T-Mew thing that is Chinaowned, it's 100% China owned.
It is one of the most singlyinvasive apps in all of the
world and we don't say anythingabout that.
So why would we allow?
Okay, so they're paying forthat ad and that means it's okay
(07:29):
to track people.
There are so many complicationshere that it's very difficult.
The second thing is are we justgoing to ban that app?
Right, we've already bannedHuawei, supposedly from working
here, but there are Huawei-basedsolutions laced all through our
economy.
Let's see there's the ChinaUnicom that Connick ran on, and
(07:50):
China Unicom has been banned,but there are two other main
China telecom systems thataren't banned, and there are
lots of Chinese apps and lots ofChinese affiliated apps that
are out there.
So where does it stop?
And so, if you're going to banTikTok, where do you stop?
Do you stop at TikTok, becausethat's stupid.
If you're going to do it, doall of them.
(08:12):
The next piece of this is, Ithink that this notion, that and
this is the capitalist Gregcoming out yes, I believe you
ought to be able to ban thingsfor national security purposes,
but picking out one app from onecountry is dumb.
It's just dumb.
There are lots of thingshappening in Switzerland right
(08:34):
now.
There are lots of thingshappening even in Israel.
There are lots of thingshappening all over the world
where there are apps being builtand then and then flashed in
here that are gathering, thatare, that are hoovering data out
of your phone, out of your, outof your world, out of your life
.
Ericsson, huge company based inEurope, their affiliations and
ties with folks that are not ourfriends are astoundingly large.
(08:58):
They were banned from doingbusiness in the government for
some period of time and nowthat's over, so they're back
doing business again.
It goes on, and on, and on, andon, and I think that this inane
idea that we're going to take astand against all the bad people
in China by banning TikTok isdumb.
(09:19):
The Chinese are laughing at us.
I mean, they know that they'regrabbing all sorts of
information from every singleother app, and what they can't
grab they buy.
And we are already the subjectof so many of the Chinese social
credit system like scoring.
And the reason they want to dothis, of course, is so that when
(09:39):
they send enough fightingpeople over here, they'll know
where we are, they'll know whatwe're doing, they'll know who
has guns, who doesn't have gunsand they'll be able to establish
how am I going to attack thispower grid and how am I going to
do that.
But they're doing it all basedon the aggregation of scoring
systems and then the scores.
Think of it as scoringpatriotism inside of a county.
(10:01):
And how likely is it if they gointo that county and try to do
something bad to theinfrastructure, poison the water
or turn off the power or dowhatever they're going to do,
how likely is it that they'reall going to get shot and killed
?
I can tell you, if they go intoa place like, let's say, austin
County, texas which is not inAustin, by the way, for those of
you in real India If you gointo a place that's, you know,
(10:23):
extremely conservative, and it'svery conservative people that
are that are all armedeverywhere they go, and you knew
that.
But you could go, maybe, say, acouple of counties to the east
and go into Harris County, whereit's a lot more friendly and
you could do a lot more damageand a lot less likely that you
would get hit.
Wouldn't that be a good thingto do?
(10:43):
So all of this plays into thecommunist China desire to take
over America, and if you don'tbelieve it, you're crazy.
That's why I think that justdoing one app is stupid.
Banning certain types of apps isalso fraught with all kinds of
problems.
(11:03):
Just because you're going tohave massive amounts of lawsuits
, you know people are going tosay in TikToks already saying
that, well, china doesn't ownthis.
Well, right, just like theysaid about Konec.
Konec does it?
Konec's not a Chinese company,it's owned by a US national.
Turns out he's from China andturns out all the data is being
transmitted to China.
(11:24):
Why just TikTok, is my question.
Why?
And it really begs theunfortunate part of this
conversation that if they forcea sale, you know how DC worked.
Y'all have seen it all.
We don't have to educate you onthis.
If they force a sale, let's sayCongress forces a sale, and
(11:45):
they force a sale too, whateverXYZ company, and you don't think
that those politicians aregoing to make bank off of that
transaction.
They're going to take a littletiny company that they're all
going to get rich from.
The big VCs and the privateequity companies will pony up
(12:07):
all the cash.
It'll be owned by anotherleftist company who's going to
funnel all that money to AdamSchiff and everybody else in
Congress, and we've seen thisover and over and over again.
I guess my final point here isthat there's a lot to consider.
There's capitalism Can, then,should they even be able to do
this at all?
(12:27):
There's the National SecurityFront of China, but if you want
to consider that, then why justthat one?
Why not all the other Chineseaffiliated apps which I might be
able to get on board?
For You've got this other issue, the more broad issues of
allowing geo tracking at allanyway, because they don't have
(12:47):
to collect it directly.
They can just buy it from thedark web and buy it from these
dark brokers, and it just, itjust defies logic.
The one final point again, dr,beat this up.
If you're going to do something.
Congress, ban kids from socialmedia.
Stop it.
(13:08):
Stop this stuff.
We've seen it.
Why do you think that all thesekids are now beating other kids
up and it all ends up on TikTok?
Right, they know they're onthere.
I mean, these kids are addictedto the endorphins that are
created by these posts, andthere's 10 million posts and
they're like I'm a badass, youknow, and little girls walking
around half dressed on on TikTok.
(13:30):
It just, it just makes no sense.
Broadly, I think that that theanswer here is they're never
going to get it done by thisCongress and this president.
I think they're too cowardly onthe right and the left.
I think that if they want totake something on like banning
kids or banning G of trackinginside of apps, that they should
(13:53):
do it, but don't do it underthe guise of we are going to
eliminate TikTok.
Eliminating TikTok does not fixthe problem.
I know you people in Congressthat listen to this.
You know you're going to callme or you're going to write me
and say Greg, it's much morecomplicated Now.
(14:13):
You don't know what you'retalking about.
Here's what I know.
I know that I can go trackanyone anywhere on earth.
I can buy the data that I needto track anyone.
I can track them down to theirbedroom.
I know who they're sleepingwith, I know who they're not
sleeping with, I know where theywork, I know where they go, I
know what they do every singleday and that's not OK.
(14:34):
When you contemplate that thereare kids being tracked, you want
to do something to stop childtrafficking.
Stop G of tracking in theseapps.
They'll never do it.
They'll never do it.
They're too big of cowards.
They don't understand it.
They're not willing to talkabout it.
They're not willing to fightabout it.
They listen to the New YorkTimes, say, oh, you can get
(14:55):
within 70 feet of that, it's OK.
It's OK, let's let them trackthe kids.
I just have no more patiencefor any of this.
My view is they should stopright now, decide what it is
they're trying to accomplish anddo that Instead of rushing
headlong into.
Let's ban one company or forcethe sale of one company so we
(15:18):
can all get rich While thesurveillance state that is
America continues unabated.
Thanks so much for joining ustoday, y'all, and I'll talk to
you next week.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I'm Matt Kat and to
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Until next time, keep your eyesopen.