Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to get into the vast hack of computer systems belonging to agencies across the US Government, as well as the computer systems of a large number of powerful private companies that was recently discovered, but appears to have been going on for at least many months.
And later on, we'll weigh in on all this chatter from government officials who appear to be serious people that are talking about the existence of UFOs and contacts with aliens.
Joining me today is a man whose oral illustrations are like a special kind of stimulation to the female gender. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde. Is it time to throw our hands in the air?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Wave them like you just don't care?
All right, all right, all right.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Now we're recording this on December 21, 2020.
And we start today by diving into this computer hacking story that has sent shockwaves throughout the US government and American industry.
For some background reports started coming out earlier this month that hackers who appeared to be state sponsored had infiltrated the computer systems of many US Government agencies and also of many American and multinational companies.
This started coming to light when FireEye, a US cybersecurity company that works to help companies improve their cybersecurity or investigate breaches, reported that they were hacked.
Since then, many more government agencies and private companies have confirmed that their systems were breached.
Breached. And the breach appears to have originated at least as early as March of 2020, but again, nobody knows yet for sure when it started. And it happened through an infiltration of a network management software from a company called SolarWinds, whose customer base includes most of the Fortune 500 and the top 10 US telecom providers and all five military branches, the State Department, the NSA, the President's office, and I mean, you get the picture. So because all these people use the same networking software, infiltrating them gave the hackers a backdoor into everybody's system, or apparently that's what happened. Now, there's still much unknown about the hack, but Secretary of State Pompeo stated recently that this appears to be a Russian sponsored operation and there has been much news and reporting that go into that angle. So Tunde, what is your take on what happened here?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Man, I just think that number one, there's several things. One is there continues to seem to be some sort of footsie game between Russia and us for years, this kind of espionage and poking at each other. And this is just another example of that, as you mentioned, the Russians appear to be behind this, as per the State Department.
And then the second thing is just again, this is a new era, or I shouldn't say new so much, but this is another example of the information age and just this changing landscape of what the definition of an attack is.
Because had they sent cruise missiles to hit our utilities and our energy infrastructure and our banks, for example, or the U.S. treasury Department per se, and we saw big fireballs in the sky like we saw with the.
Of the taking out of the Iraqi infrastructure by the US military in 2003, I think we would feel like we were attacked.
But when there's a cyber attack which could cripple the system just the same, you know, I mean, the whole point of sending a missile into a utility or a communications tower is so that it can't operate.
And so, I mean, you know, so whether you're. It's a fireball that does that, or just internally taking down the network through binary code and malware, the result is the same, which is you're disrupting a country's ability to function so well.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I wanted to get into actually that discussion later, but let me jump in, since you did it, just in terms of whether this was an act of aggression, is this attack or is this espionage? Is this.
And then also whether that the distinction between those two matter, I view this a little differently than a fire ball or something like that. It seems to me more so that this was a trespass. Like they have a spy walking along in the power plant and he plants bombs, but he doesn't blow them up. You know, so it's like, okay, so you put those bombs there, and those bombs still, he could still detonate them at any moment, but he hasn't actually blown them up yet. From what the information that's out there so far is that they were in there looking at everything, but they haven't dismantled things yet, but they have the ability to potentially. And so with that, I still think, though, I mean, we, like you kind of reframe, like this is kind of just some like James Bond type stuff.
And so they had accessed us, they had been reading emails or looking at this and looking at that.
Now apparently it's not believed yet that they were in classified systems, but nonetheless they're still in these systems. And so what level of crime or what level of, of aggression is just breaching all this stuff, not necessarily attacking it yet, but opening up the ability to attack it, putting the pieces in place to attack it, but just not necessarily pushing the button yet and doing so in your own system. It's not like they're doing that in the open sea or something like that.
They're infiltrating systems and then going in and doing it. And so we can get into that. And I'll circle back around to just my overall take after you respond to me.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, you make a great analogy with suppose some spy had infiltrated a building and planted bombs. I think that's a great analogy for what's happened here, which is that they penetrated systems and they have.
I think none of us know. And seems like our intelligence agencies probably don't know yet really the extent of all this. So, like you said, do we know if they've gotten into classified stuff or not? Who knows?
And I think it's very troubling with the idea that the government was penetrated, but also just as troubling as our large corporations. Remember, these are things that we've accused China for many years of, things like espionage on intellectual property, on information from companies and all that. And so again, the Russians are taking advantage of these backdoor, I guess, loopholes and how to get into these. These otherwise, I guess, what we thought were impenetrable systems. And so, you know, that's why it's just, it's a great analogy. You may, because I thought about it as you're saying it is, what if they didn't plant bombs? What if we caught a spy just installing listening devices in a government building? Like, seriously, like, what if a guy was just caught on camera, you know, trying to put listening devices in the corner of a room where he knew that our political officers were going to go have a conversation.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Right.
To our understanding, that's what spies do all the time.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's normal spy game. But the traditional thing, right, the person to be arrested, they put in jail on trial for all the espionage laws that I'm sure they violated. And then at some point it'd be like that movie Bridges Spies, where we'd probably do some spy exchange. I think that happened in 20.
No, but there's recent history of that under the Obama administration with the first Russian young lady that was caught being a spy here. So not Maria Butina that they caught under the Trump administration at the NRA. But if you remember, it was like 2012 or 2013, and she was part of this whole, what appears to be this kind of infiltrating of that NRA kind of thing that was happening. And I remember that we did a trade where we exchanged some of her plus maybe three or four Russian spies. And we got back some American spies. And so, you know, I guess that's the world that we've grown up in and the world that we're used to seeing in terms of, I guess. And we've talked about this in other shows, right? The norms.
And even in the world of espionage and spying and kind of stabbing each other in the back as countries, there have been traditional norms that have been established, let's say post World War II. And I think this cyber game, just like we've talked about with other conversations, as relates to society and dealing with social media and other things, it's just interesting that from what we're being told, this is a massive attack. But because I don't see a fireball in the sky, it's. It doesn't feel that way. Right. And that's why it's just, I don't know, interesting. How do we, how do we proceed from here? Yeah, I mean, and what does retaliation look like in deterrence from here? That's. That's.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, I think we'll, you know, like, we'll definitely touch on that. But I mean, I think that, you know, you raise an interesting point. As far as just my take on what this. What just happened is kind of just. We are. The curtain is pulled back as far as these games that are going on all the time. Like, they didn't just wake up one morning and say, hey, let's try this. Like, my understanding is that this kind of stuff happens all the time with us do it, you know, the US does it, other countries do it. Like that's the point of they have all these cybersecurity people, because people are always trying to access stuff, include some, you know, individual actors or unaffiliated groups and then some state sponsored groups. So it seems to me that this is kind of the norm.
I had a couple of reactions that were, I guess, a little different.
One was, well, they did all this, but they didn't actually attack. So why didn't they, at least to what we can tell so far, why didn't they push the button and dismantle something or something like that? Was the ongoing access something that they deemed to be valuable enough to not to our knowledge at least actually do something that was directly and disruptive, that we would feel it.
And then second piece, well, hold on. In the second piece that was my reaction was when they got caught, when it was revealed when FireEye says, hey, somebody. Because what happened with the FireEye people? Apparently they have all these tools that they use to when they go in and try to test people's systems or try to investigate intrusions. And those tools were taken and then deleted.
And so like that, you know, you're going to get caught at that point. So what happened to where they do this stealthily for months or who knows, it could have been longer than that. And then they all, all of a sudden they do something where they know, okay, well tomorrow the people who we're doing this with, who are sophisticated cybersecurity people are going to know we were here.
So what happened there to where they decided to pull the pin here is that, is pulling the pin as far as letting people know that they were there part of the plan as well? Because it seemed like it was, it was something that could be anticipated. So, you know, take either one of those.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I don't know, I mean, they're both separate. But starting. Let me start at the last point you made. I mean, who knows, right? We're in the realm of speculation. So I'll acknowledge that this is all espionage so far.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: That's what we got to do.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of things, I mean, that's why this is so fascinating because, because the fact that is cyber related, again, it's not like that, that other example of just putting a listening device and that's it. Because a listening device, if you just had a listening device sitting in a room, really that's your, you're limited to listening, which is, well, I guess can be very combined.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Well, look, if you combine our two analogies, that's probably the best analogy. You put a listening device and you put a bomb and so you can listen, listen, listen. And then if you decide later on, time bomb. Yeah, you're a remote control type of thing.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: That's where I think the cyber aspect makes it potentially very dangerous. Because you could have that type of ticking time bomb in there potentially for years.
Because like you said, our cyber side doesn't know what it's looking for yet in full. And so that's the danger. I mean, and those are things, I mean, look, it could be, like you said, it could be as simple as let's just show them we can do this and show the world more importantly too, because remember, Russia's not only doing this to maybe poke at us and do the traditional Russian, American kind of microaggressions that we've had for 75 years with each other, but they're also, remember, they're vying for world position. They want to get Respected. They want to have more of, let's say, the up and coming nations like the Turkeys and some of the Asian nations doing more trade with them and kind of avoiding the United States and Western Europe in terms of trading partners. So there's a lot of reasons that Russia benefits from this marketing, let's just put it that way, whether intentional or unintentional, from global media, because they could go and intimidate maybe a lesser country. Right. A country that doesn't have the resources of the United States.
So that's an important thing to look at too.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: That. Yeah, that's a good point.
I wonder also. And then to my first point was just more so if this is the new norm where people are doing this cyber stuff all the time and you're trying to defend, you're doing attacks, stuff like that. Like apparently US does this to Iran, you know, does this to North Korea. Is the noteworthiness of this primarily the scale, or is it that it's the US that was the target and that it was done in a way now that's so public, meaning after they revealed themselves to FireEye? Because I think you're onto something where this is a flex. This is like, hey, not only to everyone else, but even to you, you can't trust your systems for the next. And we've seen this in reporting for the next five years. Nobody knows to what extent they can trust the security of their own computer systems. Nobody knows. State Department doesn't know, treasury doesn't know. The treasury emails have been getting read, stuff like that. And nobody knows today whether or not if they send something, if somebody's reading it or whatever. And so I think that stuff that psychological game plays as well. And so the flex and then also the psychological game that's being played and you know, so yeah, is it. So is this if we do this on a small scale or if everybody does this on a small scale now it's done on a big scale. Is that an escalation or is that just a scale? Is that just oh, well. But everybody does this. We didn't blow up anything. We didn't take any reactor offline. We just, you know, like we just went in and looked and so forth and we just pushed the limits of we got inside the walls and then we left type of thing. Or, you know, maybe we didn't leave, but you know, we left the door there. So I think that all of those things, you know, really have to come into the analysis here. And then, yes, to your point, the what happens now as far as trying to figure out how this happened, you know, after 9 11, there was a lot of thought and analysis going into. Well, the problem we had here, we did individually detect these red flags. As far as people doing the flight training or people, all these different things, individual agencies detected all these little red flags, but none of them were huge red flag. But all of them were little red flags. And then nobody put it all together. And so we needed to have more interagency coordination. Well, right now this doesn't even seem like that. Like, what is the postmortem to say, okay, well, how do we stop this from happening in the future? Is it that we, and this is a point I actually wanted to bring to you, is the problem here that all of these different companies and agencies use the same solar wind software?
If everybody's using the same software, then it seems you're putting a big target on infiltrating you. You're like, hey, if you infiltrate just one company, they're clients, 400 of the top 500 companies, all these different government agencies, like, maybe everybody shouldn't use the same all of the military branches. Maybe everybody shouldn't use the same network company as far as managing their networks.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know enough about really high level kind of cyber stuff to give an opinion on that. I'll assume.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Okay, well then let me break it down for you in a different way. Would it make sense if everybody in your neighborhood had the exact same lock and key combination?
[00:16:37] Speaker B: But that's what I'm saying. Of course it wouldn't make sense on that example. But what I'm just saying is that, look, I don't know how difficult. I mean, these are real intricate things, these high level cyber firewalls and all that. I just don't know how many companies out there are at the level of security that this one was supposed to be, obviously.
No, no, no.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Then you mistake my question. My question is, is that in itself a national security concern?
[00:17:03] Speaker B: I mean, I'm sure it is, but I just don't know if that can be addressed in a short period of time. Just because, I mean, it's one thing. I know we did the show recently on antitrust and all that, but I mean, how do you break someone up that might be an expert at what they do? Meaning if only a few handful of companies can really deal at the highest levels of this cybersecurity stuff.
You know, it's sad, but yeah, if they got breached, I mean, it's not like you're gonna give me A computer and say, okay, Tunde, go, go, go. Start protecting the U.S. treasury Cyber. I'm gonna be looking there. You might as well give, you know, two flying monkeys a keyboard.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: And so, Tunde, you sound. You sound like a monopolist. Like they're the only people that can do it. Like that's not. Well, it's not, but it's clearly, there are more people than are capable of doing it.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. I'm just saying that I recognize that, that cyber. When you're talking about these really high levels of cyber security and all that, it's not something that's a. Well, like you're saying about everybody in a neighborhood having the same lock and key is a good example. But the difference is we can manufacture locks and keys pretty easily in our society and across the board, like most anybody. Any welder or, you know, locksmith can figure that stuff out.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: This is a bias though, Tunde, because you don't understand it. You're saying that it's probably not something that we can address. You understand locks.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Well, I'm not saying we can't. I just said that I don't know if in the short, like, I don't know if what you're saying is in the. In the next. Literally, let's say in the next quarter, let's say By March of 2021, can we have 15 different companies doing the same service as Solar Winds? I don't know. That's all I'm saying.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: But that's not a realistic. When 91 1, when 911 happened, the question wasn't, well, if we can't solve this problem in three months, then we just shouldn't try.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Well, you didn't give me a timeline when you asked.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: I'm just saying shit should just be ideal.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: I'm just assuming you're telling me short term. I mean, look, if you tell me over the to 10 years, can we have this bifurcated? And of course I'm sure we could with. And that's where I think, you know, look, to me, this is where I got to segue. You know, start segueing the conversation a bit more to leadership. Because like everything else in life and society, new things happen. Just like the virus coronavirus.
Something new comes on the scene.
It can be something that throws everyone off guard. Just like you made a good analogy of 9 11, you know, getting one. A country being attacked by terrorists necessarily isn't new, but there's just the kind of, the style of which it happened. A coordinated attack, all on the same day and using the weapon, you know, the crude way they did it, you know, hijacking planes and flying them into the twin towers and all that that we hadn't seen before. And so, you know, it took, you know, it took a little time for people, you know, you get punched in a nose and it kind of, you know, you see the stars and you got to get on your feet a bit. But with the right leadership, things can be executed and done well. And with when leadership is maybe not coordinated or not on the same pages altogether, let's say then things, it's a little bit more difficult to solve these problems. And I think, well, yeah, let's see how that plays out.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's going to be. I want to end with that topic as far as this issue, but one thing I wanted to mention. Yeah. With the 911 example, you make a good point, but it's the leadership, but it's also the behavior that has to change. Like one thing I noted about 911 at the time, you know, well, you know, maybe a year or two after the fact that I realized was that the reason it worked as far as the, you know, guys with, you know, little, little shanks, little knives being able to get to take over a plane even though there were other people there and then fly it into a building or crash it or whatever is because up until that point, people who took over planes, people who hijacked planes, didn't kill everybody on board. Yeah, they changed the calculation. Once you knew once people by and large in America and all around the world knew that if somebody hijacks a plane, it's on the table for those people who have hijacked it to kill everybody. Then it's like, well, no, dude, we're not gonna just sit here. You got a knife, it's 10 of us. And that's why.
Well, let me finish the point.
But your knife isn't taking out all ten of us. So. And so that changed the calculus. So that method of having a little shank wasn't going to let you take over a plane with 100 people anymore. And so that played as big a role as any as the behavior changing, making that form of attack not viable anymore. And so in the same way here we have to identify what of our behaviors we may need to change in order to make us not vulnerable, as vulnerable. One thing with this digital stuff, this cyber stuff, is that it seems like there is no way to make it 100% secure. There's just no way. It's just A matter of how difficult it is to do something on a large scale like this. And so my point is, if you have a single point of failure for 400 of the 500 Fortune 500 companies and countless agencies of the US government, that seems to make it very easy to infiltrate. And so maybe we need to change our behavior a little bit to make it a little harder. So going into leadership, I know you've been chomping at the bit to go into this. And so like, does the way that our leadership has responded to this inspire confidence? You know, and then later we can get into, you know, how would you like to see it play out as far as the leadership and what they're, what they're doing and so forth.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: So I would say my answer is no on inspiring confidence. And it's just sad.
So I gotta take a shot. Yes, yes.
You know, because it's.
I don't even know where to start, man.
Four years ago this week is the anniversary of Michael Flynn lying to the Vice President or something about his conversation with the Russian ambassador. And it's kind of like for whatever reason, this administration and Russia have an interesting relationship. We've got seven or eight people that have been put in jail around the campaign and lying about exposure to Russians and all that.
We have the President of the United States and the President of Russia having private meetings and phone calls with only a Russian translator there and no other American in the room. So honestly, we really don't know what's going on between the United States and Russia at the top in terms of what all this means.
And then like we're talking about, you have the Secretary of State fingering Russia, saying that that's who it was, and then an hour later the President says, speculating that it was China.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Well, you know what's crazy about that by the way, is that cuz what Trump did, he didn't even directly accuse anyone, he just sowed doubt. He just said, oh well, maybe it could be China. Like, hold on.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: And that's my point and I'm just saddened more because he looks so weak and he's the President United States and I don't wanna see the president country look weak. And whether, yeah, whether I like him or not, personally or politically or whatever, doesn't matter. He's the President and he's like this whole topic of Russia is like constantly flailing. And it reminded me of his behavior during the Helsinki summit.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the analogy.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Look, yeah, it's pure speculation on my part, but I mean, his Behavior is the proof to me that he's either compromised or he's scared of something or whatever, you know, whatever the, the underlying kind of thing with him and Russia has been all these years. And look, I can appreciate that a lot of people would like to see our relationship with Russia improved.
It's no different than some people
[00:24:37] Speaker A: would
[00:24:38] Speaker B: like to have seen us have a thawing of relationships, let's say, with Iran. So we had the former president, the prior president to this one, Barack Obama, try to have a more normal relationship with Iran. Some people agree with that, some people didn't.
And the way he went about it with the Iranian nuclear deal, some people agree with it, some people don't. And so what I'm saying is, translate to this administration, this president has a right as president of the United States to try and put out an olive branch and maybe say we'd like to have better relations with Russia. I can see that, however, the behavior of the Russians up until this 2016, 2017, and then through up until 2020 have been behavior of a country that doesn't appear that it wants to kind of play ball with the rest of the world and the allies that we have had for a long time. So we can get into the poisoning of the guy in London at a British park in the middle of the open, where they also poison, unfortunately, a couple British people.
You can talk about all this other stuff. And in the end, like you mentioned about the Helsinki summit, that was a summit in, I think, 2018. Right. It's a couple of years ago now, where in front of the world, the president, United States, next to the president of Russia, said that he believes Vladimir Putin over the US Intelligence agencies as
[00:26:04] Speaker A: to whether Russia had played around in our election and gotten into our systems and so forth.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, it's just, that's what I mean. Like, one can say, let's have better relations with Russia, but it's also usually when you do that, there's a little give and take, right? Like, well, hey, if you do this, then we'll do this. And if we can trust you here, then we got to see, you know, we got to see this over here. But then we want to, you know, we'll allow this over there.
So.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Well, I mean, you said you put all that together. I mean, I think that it's interesting, man. Like, when we were growing up, you know, there was. It was a thing of whether someone was quote, unquote, soft on Russia. And that proceeds when we were going up, you know, soft Russia, soft on Russia. And that was something that missile crisis
[00:26:44] Speaker B: way before you were born.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, way before we were born.
But that, that still was going on in the, in the, in the 80s. Yeah. And so forth. And so like that was a thing like politicians didn't want to be soft on Russia. So it strikes me that Trump is soft on Russia, so to speak, by those, by that definition. And so, but which, and this is to your point, you can't ignore facts in order to try to make a better relationship.
You can look at the facts and say, okay, we'll put this to the side because we have this other objective. We'll put this issue to the side and say, okay, well don't do it anymore, whatever you're gonna be. But you can't just say, okay, well, I just don't believe my, I don't believe the US Government, me as the leader of the US Government. I don't believe the US Government, I believe the Russian government when they say self serving things. And so, yeah, that's just bizarre. And then this is just, it boggles my mind in two ways. One is the whole thing where, like the Helsinki summit where he sides with the Russian president over U.S. intelligence. And then now where, like Russia would want, right now with this going on, if our intelligence agencies, if our Secretary of State, the State Department is saying this is Russia, Russia would want people to throw out other countries that could be responsible in order to create confusion, in order to sow doubt in terms of whether Russia was doing that. So just from a discipline of message standpoint, it's not in the United States interest to try to sow a bunch of confusion as far as this goes. Now, there may be still questions that people are asking, there may be investigations still going on, but under no circumstance would you think that our government officials in our government would be giving conflicting messages about what was going on here. And so that's what really strikes me as odd here, is that Trump takes a position that is in direct contrast with the State Department, with what's coming out from media reports, from what the DOJ is saying, from what the FBI and all those things, what intelligence agencies are saying, what the corporations who've been breached and the ones the cybersecurity firms are saying, they're saying it's looking like a Russian operation. So everybody's saying one thing and then we have one guy who happens to be at the top of the government saying, well, it could be something else. And it really seems also with this that the leadership seemed, that Trump at least seems checked out.
He brought this up only because he wanted to talk about election. He didn't want to talk about the election some more. And it's like, well, hold up, man. This is a separate crisis than that. This isn't the election. You can't just keep fixating on the election. There's actually still work that needs to be done. As the chief executive of the country, we have a crisis going on here. And it seems like he's not capable of addressing these things anymore because he's just so fixated on the election. And so that in itself is another issue that is potentially why it may have been strategic to reveal yourself now as having been addressed this, because once Biden gets in office, you may not have the ability to create this confusion.
Once this happens, you would have much clearer messaging, at least from the government officials.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: It's unfortunate. It's disappointing because as you're saying, it makes me realize that the same government officials that are trying to sow confusion about this topic, let's put it that way, are the exact same ones trying to sow confusion about the United States election that happened six, seven weeks ago. So, of course a foreign kind of issue, right? That it's easier, even easier, to muddy those waters.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: No, to your point, I think you're right. Like, they seem to draw strength or power from confusion.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: So it seems to be a tactic to whatever the official explanation is. Let's say the opposite. Just so people aren't able to get on the same page.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Correct. And it goes back to birtherism and all that stuff. Right. It's just this constant. If I can just muddy the waters and make it a bit chaotic, then I'll shine, right? But. But when things are normal and there's calm and there's kind of, you know, focus, focus and all that, then I won't shine because, you know, this is me. Just my thought, right? It's almost like the incompetence would be so glaring under a normal situation. So you gotta have some sort of chaos and disruption so that people look at shiny objects all the time and can't see. Like, what you're saying is that our current leadership is checked out of governing right now because they feel they lost an election and they just don't want to have a seat at the table. And it's just interesting. I mean, I'm not.
People can like this and want it, and that's life. And that's why we have a free country, right? We had an election and a lot of 75 or 70 million people voted to have this happen for another four years and 80 million people didn't. And it was close enough that it's not.
Is still something that is very. People are passionate about. But I wanna get back to something that, as you're talking about Helsinki, this lack of being on the same page and a messaging and narrative from the leadership is frustrating and disappointing. And then.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Well, I think you just identified what that is about, though. I think that was.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: But here's what I wanted to say is when I look at the behavior of people, that tells me a lot. So I'm looking at someone like Donald Trump and he's a tough guy, right? He likes playing that. He likes the guy. I'm a macho guy. I'm a man's man. I'm an alpha of alpha males.
And again, and that's why this is just.
It's so sad to me to see a president of the United States in this position of weakness and insecurity. Because something about Russia is. He's always avoiding confronting them. When he'll confront everybody else, he'll put it in anyone's eye who he thinks has either wronged him or who he feels are wronged the country. I mean, think about what he did to Colin Kaepernick for kneeling in front of the United States flight.
And that became a national issue. I'm just saying I don't wanna go
[00:32:35] Speaker A: too far into that. But I'm not.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: I'm not bringing it up to go down that. What I'm saying is that we know that when he feels that the country or the flag or Americans have been slighted, he's very vocal and adamant about saying, we got America's first and we're strong. But every time Russia does some sort of aggression, he's very quiet. And it even reminded me of when we got the video footage of that jet, that MiG, that was harassing the U.S. bomber off the coast of Alaska. And it's just like, you know, like, I'm just. I'm an American. I'm thinking, man, like, I just emotionally wanted to see some F22 or F16 come out the sky and shoot the hell out of that MiG. And, you know, and just because it's just like we're American, you know, we're not used to seeing ourselves being harassed by some other military. And imagine if another country had done that to us, what our president would be saying, but when it was Russia, what about the Russian bounty that they didn't deny. Remember, they didn't deny. The White House did not Deny that story.
Their excuse was that it was on page eight of his presidential daily briefing. So he didn't read it. They never said that that wasn't true. And that's the thing. This is what I'm saying.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: And that was another thing, just to circle the point that he never pushed back on publicly with Russia or when
[00:33:51] Speaker B: he just ordered by tweet that we emptied out of the Syrian bases. And it was so fast. And the embarrassing thing was the Russian soldiers were posting on social media in our barracks.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: That's how fast we got out of there. And then we had to bomb. I remember they had an F16. They had to. For an F15. They flew over one of the sites, and we had to bomb our own base because we didn't have enough time to get our classified stuff out of there. I'm thinking, what is this sloppiness and this. Why are we doing this? Every time Russia. There's always something weird going on here, and it's just sad. I don't know what to say about it. I've never seen anything like this where one country seems to dominate the mind of a US President in a way that he's incapable of addressing their aggressions.
I don't know.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Happens to be a pretty important country as well. Yeah.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Like, it's not a country that's not capable of doing what they just did. Like, you're saying, putting a whole thing, you know, like, infiltrating our cyber system, and now we don't know what's. Like you said, listening devices and bombs, rhetorically or figuratively, inside of our networks. This is, you know, and this is, like, you're saying private sector. And so this could be all the way from AT&T with DirecTV, all the way to the CIA and the Treasury Department.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: I mean, to all five branches of the.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: You know, what if this ends up, you know, that they're in the stock exchange? I mean, this is serious stuff here. Yeah. You know, and for it to be. Not to address, then, you know, this is a joke or to try to
[00:35:12] Speaker A: sow confusion about it again, which is just like.
Yeah, I don't want to. That's why it's embarrassing.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: It's just embarrassing. Like, I don't know why people put up with this as half this country doesn't see this as important. And, you know.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Well, but there's a preoccupation with some people, and this is. I was gonna say, just to tie this up. Like, the machismo is only a part of the Trump experience. The Other part, remember, is the victim, like, he's always. He's the tough guy, but he's always. Some people are always plotting against him and, you know, you gotta feel sorry for him. So he has both of those going at all times. So, I mean, I think this is just consistent with all of that, you know. So the other. The last piece I wanted to get to on this, though, was like, how would you like to see this play out? You know, we've said what we don't like, and that's one thing. But you know, just in terms of. Briefly, we don't have to go too deep into this, obviously, because there's still so much we don't know. But from a big picture standpoint, you know, like, what are the things that you would like to see happen or the directions you would like to see this taken in order to try to move us to a better. A better place in the future?
[00:36:15] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, look, in all fairness, and you mentioned it, right, we're in a glass house and we're throwing stones. In a certain sense, the United States does this to other countries.
Some of it we know of. I'm sure a lot of it we will never learn of what we've done to other countries and all that. And I think one of the things that came out when Edward Snowden released all the documents and did his what I will call traitor move, going to Russia with all that secret stuff, but it did come out that the NSA was listening to our allies, the chancellor of Germany and the British listening to everybody. So we do it too. So that's what I mean. So I think that what could come out of this is some sort of, like, starting to have world agreements, just like we have nuclear agreements and treaties and things like that. Okay, well, look, here's what we're gonna consider now. In the new 21st century cybersecurity and information age, this will be considered an act of war versus maybe espionage. This will be considered an act of aggression that would be retaliated versus that. And I think just the world starting to have some rules of engagement as it relates to this whole cyber thing. I think that's one thing that at a big level should come out of this, and I think at a more direct level. I mean, I don't think this president, unfortunately, is capable of doing this, but at some point we gotta deal with Russia. And that's where. I don't know how to answer that thing. But yeah, I mean, Russia seems to be a bully. That is not being Punched in the nose. And somehow that has to be done. I don't know how. I don't know what that means.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: To be fair, that predates Trump. It's just the extreme efforts to accommodate
[00:37:51] Speaker B: the Russians started, I think, in 06 with Georgia, then in 13 with Ukraine. And you're right, the difference here is the accommodation is much different.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Yeah, the accommodation of the attempts to not even acknowledge this stuff that Russia's doing is the new piece that's come up over the last four years. And so I would think. I mean, those are both thoughts. I don't agree with you on the first one. I don't know that there's agreements that can be done here, because like I said, if we're in the glass house and if we're doing the same stuff, I don't know that we want to make this more explicitly acts of war. I think that looking more internally, I think that the. And I talked about this briefly before, so I won't go into it in depth, but redundancy has value. Like, there's always such a effort to say, hey, you know, we need efficiency. We need to streamline everything. And that has advantages, but there are disadvantages to streamline everything, and one of them is single point of failure. You know. And so I think that to have all five branches of the US Government using the same networking software is ludicrous. Like, that is just crazy to me. To have all these companies use. Like, we need more companies out there doing that stuff, and we need people to use different services so that a single point cannot be used to infiltrate all of these things. Like, that is. That's crazy to me. And I'm sure it's more efficient to do it that way. But efficiency can't be the only thing, particularly when it comes to security.
In fact, efficiency is usually a bad thing when it comes to security. And this is not a foreign concept. When we're talking about steel. Like, these debates happen a lot with American car. Do we still have American companies making steel? Do we still have American companies making this or making that? Because if we need it, we don't want to be totally reliant on someone else to do it. And then if we need it, we probably don't want just one company that's doing it that can be taken out or that if they have a problem, then we're out of luck completely. And so this goes back to. I mean, this ties into just the idea of the market that we talked about last week, and having a robust market, protecting a market, making it. So there's a couple of people doing this. It would be more efficient and our bills could all be lower if there was just one cell phone company. If it was everybody just had to do AT&T and they'd probably be the efficiencies of scale.
They would be able to do things that would make it cheaper and everything. But innovation would grind to a halt as it normally does when you don't have competition. And if anybody took them out then everybody's cell phone goes down. You know, like there was a thing a couple weeks ago where I think one of the networks went, went down or was having trouble. I think it was T mobile and I didn't even know about it because I don't have T mobile and you know, I guess so we need, we need to have some level of redundancy, particularly in areas that are very important. That'd be the big takeaway. I think that, and that's a, I think that's a lesson that needs, people need to be reminded of from time to time. And hopefully people are reminded of that through this.
You know, so getting to our second topic which is much lighter, you know, like. And a lot of times we like
[00:40:45] Speaker B: to have, we do, if we do
[00:40:46] Speaker A: two topics, we like to have a second topic that isn't all doom and gloom and you know, everybody, you know, lock your doors and close your window shades and you know, one of these, the we've seen, you know, there's always been chatter as far as UFOs or aliens and things like that. I mean I think you can date that back to probably as far as people look to the skies, you know, is what else is out there. But we've seen recently a lot of chatter amongst people who like are serious people or people that were in serious people in serious positions that have been talking about this. We saw Haim Eshed, who used to be Israel's Defense Ministry coming out with jaw dropping claims as far as galactic federations and humans in contact with aliens and so forth, like Star wars type stuff. And Harry Reid, who used to be the Senate Majority Leader here in the US talks about UFOs and government cover ups and stuff like that. Like, and these are. And Harry Reid by the way was from Nevada. Senator from Nevada. Which you know, people start Talking about Area 51 and all this other stuff. And so like Tunde, I just want to know, I mean you're a Star wars aficionado so I know you'd be inclined to want to believe this stuff, but what do you make of all these serious people, or at least people who have been in serious positions, coming out and talking about UFOs and communications with aliens, you know, and I know you're inclined to want to believe it as a Star wars guy, but I mean, where do you come down on this stuff?
[00:42:11] Speaker B: It's very interesting to me that they're having these open discussions and like you're saying people that are generally considered serious people in other parts of life. I mean, you got the former Senate Majority Leader in the United States, you've got this gentlemen, like you said, Mr. Who was the head of Israel's Defense Ministry, and John Brennan, the former CIA director, who's also made some statements about UFOs. And it's interesting. I mean, that gentleman, The Israeli gentleman, Mr. Eshed, he had the most kind of what I would consider the most direct, but also maybe outlandish claims out there. I mean, look, I don't know what to believe. I don't believe it.
I don't know. But I don't want to call somebody a liar too. That I don't know. So I don't know what the motivation would be for saying these things. Maybe, maybe with COVID and everything going on, they feel like human beings, maybe the world population needs something else to focus on. And this could be a coordinated effort, you know, through some leaders around the world. Or just say, hey, look over there.
Because, I mean, look, he's saying about, you know, humans and aliens have this joint secret base deep into Mars and all this stuff.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: And that's a shed. A shed.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. And it's just, first of all, I think there's enough cameras on Mars at this point that we'd be able to see some sort of activity which is random people. I mean, at this point you have commercial use telescopes that are pretty good that you can see the surface of Mars.
But even not even getting that far. I mean, just my nerdiness, like you said, about being a Star wars geek and what I know about quantum physics and space travel and all that, I mean, I feel like from what we know, if there was another civilization that was advanced enough to get here from outside of our solar system, or somehow has been in our solar system and totally undetectable to us because they're that good, then why would they even make agreements with us or anything? I mean, talking about they signed an agreement with us. I mean, that's a very human projection of signing a contract, right?
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Who's to say that alien species are gonna do all that? And it's no.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: And you're right. Why would they take us seriously if they can do interstellar travel?
[00:44:23] Speaker B: Exactly. And so that's why I just kind of, when I start hearing all this, it's like, I don't know. So like. And you know, and you make a good point about someone like Harry Reid from Nevada. I mean, he didn't say aliens exist. He said quotes here. The federal government all these years have covered up important information.
And that was added by the author of this article, that important information about UFOs part says, put the brake pads on everything stopped it. Well, you know, it's interesting. I just went to the air show here in Fort Lauderdale a few weeks ago and I think I was telling you I love my jet aircraft and I'm an aircraft enthusiast, but it was the first time in my life I've seen the F35, the brand new jet, fly in my own eyes in person.
And between that one and the F22, I remember coming home and telling my wife I could see how maybe 20 years ago when they were testing this thing in the middle of the night in the desert in Nevada, and if all you saw was a light off the side of a plane in the middle of the night, F35, you could have thought that was a UFO because it was doing things I've never seen a jet plane do. And I think, you know, it's probably after this jet. I think they're saying they're just probably going to start making drones because this is pushing the human body to the limit in terms of the pilots and their ability to withstand the G forces. I mean, this plane went from full speed and breaking the speed of sound right over my head to basically just a straight incline, almost a 90 degree move. I mean, it wasn't a perfect 90 degrees, but it was pretty close. And then from there, he stopped right in the sky and just came right back down. I'd never seen anything like this. And that's what I was thinking like, man, if this was the middle of the night and all I saw was a little light doing that, I would think that was a UFO. I wouldn't have thought, you know, in the year 2000 or 1995 that they were testing this thing. And my brain has only seen maybe F15s and A10s and F16s, I wouldn't have thought a jet fighter was capable of that. So what I'm saying is what Harry Reid is saying, he didn't say, I think aliens are real and the government's been hiding it from Us, he's basically saying, you know, the government has covered this stuff up and it's. The Air Force has already admitted that in the 50s they promoted UFOs propaganda because they didn't want the Russians and other countries, not just Russians, I'm sure, but finding out what we were building in those deserts.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: So they said, okay, well we're not going to admit that we're building crazy spacecraft and fighter jets and all this stuff that is experimental.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: It's a good cover story.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we're just going to let Americans believe that this is UFOs and you know, maybe that's the Frankenstein monster that 50, 60 years gets out now and now everything's a conspiracy. Maybe.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Well, you know, I think that maybe
[00:47:12] Speaker B: we shouldn't have done that back then.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Well, no, you raised a good point though. Not just the fact that it's a good cover story for things that you don't want to explain. But. And I think the distinction with Harry Reid versus the gentleman has shed, you know, from the Israeli defense, like he
[00:47:28] Speaker B: was making very outlandish galactic federation. Yeah, exactly.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Harry Reid is just saying, hey, there's stuff that's unexplained. And I think that the key thing with UFO is unidentified flying object. Unidentified doesn't necessarily mean that it's from another planet.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: And so like that is UFOs are a thing. There are things in the sky that there are no official explanation for. But you can't assume that there's no official explanation for, for it because there's not one that exists. It could be that whoever has the explanation just don't wanna give it to you. Yeah, and so like that, I think with the UFO thing is a real thing.
Oh, go ahead.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: No, I was just saying. Cause like what Director Brennan, you know, the former CIA director, he says, quote here, I've seen some of those videos from Navy pilots and I must tell you that they are quite eyebrow raising when you look at them. And I remember seeing some of those videos from the F18 pilots as well. And they are eyebrow raising. But you're right, I mean, who knows what are sitting in the sky that they're filming. It could be, you know, I would assume the CIA director would be privy to certain experiments like that, but you never know. I mean, Air Force intelligence, you've got, you know, you've got other branches of the government that certain things are so compartmentalized and so secret that they could be working on that on purpose. Yeah, and maybe Brennan does know about it, but he's. But what is he saying? He says, and I must tell you that they are quite eyebrow raising when you look at them. He's not saying that I know or didn't know about this or that. He's just acknowledging that. Yeah, I recognize that if you see these videos, they're eyebrow raising. So you're right. UFO does mean identified flying object. And I think we need to remember that it doesn't mean outer space.
And that's why I do think that.
[00:49:15] Speaker A: But let me make. Let me get.
It's the. I think it's also, to your point, it's not fair to necessarily put Reed and Brennan in with a she, you know, because, like, they're saying that official explanations can't account for everything that we've seen with our eyes. And Ashed is saying, hey, there's, you know, we're hanging out with little green guys.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: Yeah, the Wookiees and the Jedi are coming down, you know, but still, Ashed
[00:49:39] Speaker A: is not like some, you know, like, he was the head of Israel's defense Ministry previously. So it's still something like. It's still a person from a serious position making outlandish claims now. And I'm one that believes that there is zero chance, zero chance that we're the only forms of life in the universe.
I think the real issue is whether or not we could. If there's anything that is intelligent and anything that is intelligent right now, like, if you take that the universe is 13 billion years old, then things could have come and gone over that time period. And so whether or not. And then whether or not more important than that is whether or not there's anything that would be reasonably within our reach to be able to communicate with. Because just communicating in our galaxy would be something, I don't know, that our technology could get.
Could really get us, bring us to right now. And there's a lot of galaxies, so I think that there's definitely life in other planets. Life is formed of some of the most common elements. So if those are the most common elements or, you know, in general the most common elements, then to think it only happened here is kind of naive in my opinion. But I think it's unlikely with the scale, with the size of the universe, with the size of the galaxy, that we're in contact with anyone, because, I mean, that is. Then you start playing out if there is. If there's billions and billions and billions of stars, to say that the one neck, the closest one to us, is where the other stuff is. Again, it's presumptuous it's naive, it's like, well, no, probably all over the place. But when you're talking on that scale, on that number, it's probably dispersed at least far enough away that we can't reasonably communicate with it. But the concept of the Galactic Federation and bases on Mars, that's too outlandish for me to really like. That's like this guy hit his head.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: That's what I'm wondering. Because he's like, you're saying he's a top. He ran Israel's Defense Ministry. One thing I know is the Israelis, along with the British, Russians and Americans are probably the top in the world that, you know, the intelligence game, espionage, all that. So I'm just wondering like, is there another angle here this guy's going at with just putting information out there? And you know, because again, like I said, my armchair quarterback, layman nerdiness. And I say that with all respect to people who actually have degrees in physics and quantum physics and all that. Cause I don't. Let me be very upfront about that.
And I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, but I'm not that smart.
But I enjoy this stuff and I consume it as a layman in terms of the documentaries and all that. And I just understand certain basic things. Like the temperature on Mars, for example, can swing within an hour or 2 from positive 70 degrees Fahrenheit to negative 250 degrees. So it's just the radiation because Mars doesn't have an atmosphere that hits Mars. So that's why I'm one of those guys that says I don't think we're going to be putting humans on Mars in 10 years. It's going to take a lot longer because I just don't think we, our bodies can sustain that and we don't have the technology yet to protect people, then you've got issues like it takes three years, I think 10 months at the shortest angle to three years, potentially depending on when the orbit, depending on where we are in relation to the orbit with Mars.
And it takes for a human in current space travel to get there. Right. And maybe the aliens have some wormholes or something we don't know about.
But what I do know is that from those who have been on the space station for like a year, they've. They experienced like 30% loss in bone density because the lack of gravity. Yeah, our human bodies need a certain amount of gravity. So that means that Mars has a different gravitational pull than the Earth. So if you've got, even if it's a base Underground that maybe can escape all the radiation. You still have the issue of human beings in a different gravitational space for extended periods of time, which isn't healthy for humans. So that means that then we got to assume that the aliens have some kind of, you know, centrifuge thing or something where they make fake gravity. I mean, you got to start twisting yourself in some kind of knots to accept some of this reality. And then you go back to the question we had, which is, well, if aliens already got this stuff figured out, what do they need us for? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so it's just, that's why it just, it doesn't jive to me. And, and it's funny because I thought, I thought about this. So, you know, we have dogs and you know, one of our dogs is a chocolate lab.
And he's pretty smart, right. I remember one day I was walking, I'm thinking about the dog and I thought, I thought about all this UFO stuff and I thought it's fascinating that to go from like an amoeba, you know, or single celled organism of life, because I agree with you. I think that the ability for life to form in various ways out there. If you're talking about the potentially trillion planets out there in our galaxy and how many have, you know, rotate around a star and blah, blah, blah, I think the possibility for life is potentially endless actually. Yeah, but that's, there's a difference between, you know, fungus or some slime that has bacterial, you know, and is alive than you and I doing calculus, right? And that's what I was thinking. I was walking my dog. That's why I bring it up. I thought, man, to get from like a single celled organism to this chocolate lab and just that basic level of intelligence is such a. Takes like you said, takes so much time and monumental effort of evolution over millions of years.
To then say that then something gets to as intelligent as humans that's out there would take a long time. And then to say something.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: Well, but there's plenty of time though. That's the thing. I think that, that, that's. It's just that time as a construct doesn't mean that everything is happening right now. Correct. That's kind of thing like I think you can make a credible case that there used to be life on Mars a billion years ago.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: And so, but that's not helping us now.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: I got something for you though. Remember, Nas did say time is illmatic. So that.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: Well, when you figure that, and this is, I Would say, like, one thing I'd push back on you a little bit is just because we, you and I don't understand that the nature of technology that would allow us to do something. I think we should be careful foreclosing that it's either possible or that even that higher implementations of technology than we're aware of may be able to account for it. But one of the things that, for me, along that line is like, what we're aware of right now, as long as we're using propulsion based on combustion, it just doesn't seem like we can travel far enough to really make a difference in these things, like whether people are using wormholes or whatever. There's other ways that things move, you know, like. And so, like, until we are able to do things other than just burning something in order to. Blowing something up in order to move, it seems like we're constrained as far as how far we can go and so forth. So that in itself is going to limit what we can learn. And that's something that people are wrestling with now as far as how to use other. How to come up with other ways to prepare.
[00:56:45] Speaker B: Well, there's interesting ideas of harnessing energy from a big star we have in our neighborhood.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like using that.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: I mean, blowing stuff up, that would
[00:56:56] Speaker A: be smart, you know, because that stuff travels very fast. So, I mean, ultimately though, I mean, we can rap from there, man, because, you know, the question of what we don't know always is something that fascinates humans. And so. And there is a tendency, as we know, you know, then we've talked about in other shows, there's a tendency when we don't know something to fill in the gaps with something that oftentimes is either a projection or it makes us feel good or both. And so with these, what we do have is an unknown for sure. And what we do have is a lot of explanations, a lot of things, a lot of theories and so forth. And so, as we always say, maintain skepticism for everything and look for some evidence. Look for things that actually substantiate what people are talking about. And right now we don't see anything there. We. But you also can. Can decide or learn to be more comfortable with the unknown. And so. And that's something we'll have to do with a lot of these things as far as outer space, you know, and aliens and so forth for the time being. So, yeah, we appreciate everybody for joining us as we chomped on both of those topics and, you know, definitely subscribe to the podcast rate us, review us, tell us what you think, and until next time, I'm James.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: Ken. Lana.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: All right, everybody, have a happy holidays, merry Christmas, and. And we'll talk to you soon.
