"Futurist" on Iran Hacks, Mars Missions

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pleasure to welcome Kevin s really a futurist and Kevin,
good morning. I'll try to not wear out the hackinged
crystal ball uh introduction here, but but you do look
at things with an eye toward what might happen, and
I want to get into some of that. But you've
also been studying what the Iranians are trying to do

(00:20):
to us. They've got some pretty good hackers over there, right.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, they've been hacking this and this is not you know,
some complex major cyber attack, I want to be clear.
But in the hours that followed the US nuclear attacks
against the nuclear facilities, hackers responded and they went after

(00:45):
actually President Trump's Truth social network, and they did it
through what's known as a denial of services attack. And
what do I mean by DDoS? A denial of services?
What that means is that they just clogged the server.
They jammed it with traffic, artificial traffic that took down
the website and the platform momentarily. So it's just a

(01:08):
display of brute force, but it sends a signal that
the hackers are able to get in, these rogue hackers,
and so as we look at modern warfare, this is
going to be only more and more common, and it's
something that the Americans we have to prepare ourselves for
and to protect. We have the best innovation in the world,

(01:30):
the best cyber capabilities in the world, but all it
takes is one attack against the one cyber nine to eleven,
for example, against energy grids, against hospital systems, education systems,
to really dismantle our way of life.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
How let me put it this way, what is our
ability in the US to know who does something to us?
Because as you say, it's all it's all online. You know,
it's all digital, it's all out there on the or
in cyberspace. Do we know who attacks us when somebody
attacks us?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yes? And I would say, you know, it's complicated. But
I remember when I was a kid, my teachers would say,
the United States has the advantage of having two oceans
surrounding us to protect us from bad actors. But we
need to start thinking about the digital front here, the
cyberspace as if it is a piece of land, because

(02:26):
what happens in URL on the Internet can jump into
impacting IRL and so as our rate of innovation as
humans as a country, as that continues to accelerate and
it's only going to continue to accelerate. We have to
make sure that our defense systems are keeping pace. The
good news, and its great news, is that US leads

(02:47):
innovation worldwide, and so we just have to make sure
that our innovation and protecting ourselves is also going to
be maintained. With the advent of artificial intelligence, for example,
that's only going to raise new cut and we start
to see a shift with driverless cars. Obviously that's a
new way that we have to protect ourselves.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Kevin's early with US futurists. I said the other day, Kevin,
my assumption is this, I have no idea if I'm
right or not, but I'm interested in your view. I
believe we're in mutual assured destruction territory digitally, in terms
of the power grid, I think China has a kill
switch for our grid, and I think we have one
for theirs, which is why it hasn't happened. Do you agree, Well.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I don't know. I mean, I think that we have
an edge over China and all fields. But to your point,
where I would agree with you is that China is
the biggest threat that we face in terms of their capabilities,
and we have to make sure that we maintain an edge.
And so whether it's an outer space, whether it's an energy,
whether it's an artificial intelligence quantum, we have to make

(03:51):
sure that we stay against the Chinese communist partner.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, for sure. All right, let's look ahead about fifteen
years are we going to be living on more?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
By the European Space Agency that's the equivalent of NASA
over for the Europeans, they think that we are. And
the Royal Society which predicted, which is an establishment society
that represents scientists and technologists all the way back into
sixteen hundreds. They released a report last month that said

(04:21):
that we're going to have an answer in our lifetime.
So whether or not we're alone in the.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Universe, everything I've read indicates that anybody, at least in
the foreseeable future, would who would attempt to go to
Mars and a manned mission that would basically be a
suicide mission in terms of ever coming back to Earth.
Are we getting to the point where that may not

(04:45):
be true anymore?

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Correct? And in fact we would There's two ways to
approach Mars. It's that you would go and you would
live there on a colony and help to build new
infrastructure on the Red planet, or you would be able
to come down. And so the biggest factor in preventing
that is nuclear energy. If our technology is able to

(05:09):
get us to Mars in three months or so, then
we are able to come back. That's great news. If
we're able to create for lack of a better word,
gas stations between here and Mars or spaceships that can
get us there, that's also great news because it takes
a lot of fuel obviously to get some Mars. But
if we're able to use nuclear or even like solar

(05:31):
energy from the Sun while we're trying to get there
they talk like sales, for lack of a better analogy,
then that cuts down on the energy cost and also
are having to send so much energy up there to
get there.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Right, and AI, I assume can help with that. Okay,
modest little question here, Kevin, to close it out with
just a half a minute left, what's the next big thing?
What will Americans see that do you see that we
don't see yet? That's coming around the corner.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Ye, Quantum computing. Without question, quantum computing is going to
come after artificial intelligence, and it's going to be bigger
than AI. Bigger than the Internet. Depending on who you ask.
We're anywhere from five to thirty years out from really
implementing things, but it'll totally change the way that we
interact with our healthcare system with cures for diseases and

(06:21):
just will it will make going an outer space even easier,
and it will change everything, and it's going to be
the pre quantum era and the post quantumras.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Awesome, Kevin. Thanks appreciate the time you. Kevin's a really