# Your Phone Is Targeting You | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 11 Jun 2026, 58 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72441325/mike_yeagley_spreaker.mp3

Mike Yeagley joins me to break down how mobile devices, ad tech, commercial location data, and data brokers create major OPSEC risks for service members, case officers, and anyone working in national security. He explains how adversaries can buy or exploit pattern-of-life data, why privacy settings often don’t go far enough, and what the future of tradecraft looks like in an age of ubiquitous technical surveillance. Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Subscribe to our newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join grab Jack's new book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/ "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio 00:00 — Start / Mike Yeagley joins Eyes On Geopolitics 00:25 — Mobile devices, ad tech, and the OPSEC risk to operators 03:14 — Commercial location data and how adversaries can target U.S. personnel 04:57 — Why privacy settings don’t actually protect your data 07:12 — Ad IDs, GPS toggles, and how apps still resolve your location 10:33 — Could Iran use commercial data to target U.S. troops? 14:19 — How adversaries buy data through brokers and proxies 19:25 — Why regulating the data economy is so difficult 22:10 — How commercial data erodes tradecraft and operational ambiguity 29:24 — What case officers and operators can do to reduce digital exposure 36:17 — Ubiquitous technical surveillance and the future of human intelligence 41:45 — Russia and Iran using gaming platforms, crypto, and gig-style tasking 47:24 — Near-real-time data buys, pattern-of-life tracking, and final thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of AIS on geopolitics.
[0:03] Speaker 1: I'm here with Mike Yeaglely.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Uh.
[0:06] Speaker 1: Mike has had an extensive career, pretty interesting one, I'd say,
[0:09] Speaker 1: even a novel on when it comes to like, you know,
[0:11] Speaker 1: national security. Uh, Mike worked with a you know, a
[0:15] Speaker 1: bunch of Tier one units, JAYSOX, Soilcom and stuff like
[0:18] Speaker 1: that working on I mean, what would you say you worked,
[0:23] Speaker 1: you would be able to describe it better than I can.
[0:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, novel is is definitely a way to describe it.
[0:30] Speaker 3: I mean, the the the problem that we were focusing
[0:34] Speaker 3: on that has that has re emerged with with attention
[0:37] Speaker 3: and vigor is the risk to operational security from the
[0:43] Speaker 3: mobile devices that we all carry. And the intent and
[0:49] Speaker 3: design of these mobile devices is fundamentally to collect data
[0:55] Speaker 3: about the user and model them into a cohort that
[1:02] Speaker 3: advertisers can sell stuff to. Now, what shifted is it's
[1:09] Speaker 3: not just advertisers that are sort of monetizing the data.
[1:13] Speaker 3: The conversion metrics are different when you're talking about an adversary,
[1:17] Speaker 3: but the intent and the behavioral patterns whether you're trying
[1:22] Speaker 3: to sell or target roughly the same. And it's if
[1:28] Speaker 3: you think about this low cost way of deploying millions
[1:33] Speaker 3: of sensors into the pockets and homes and work locations
[1:40] Speaker 3: of protected populations. You know that that becomes a significant
[1:46] Speaker 3: operational security risk that we demonstrated crudely ten years ago
[1:56] Speaker 3: tracking operators, you know, without any real we weren't looking
[2:01] Speaker 3: for their forward operating base, but we had enough to
[2:05] Speaker 3: start to be able to reveal a forward operating base
[2:09] Speaker 3: and then track the operator to his home and then
[2:13] Speaker 3: start tracking what his spouse does and where his kids
[2:16] Speaker 3: go to school, and those those rhythms, those patterns of
[2:21] Speaker 3: life that transcend both what you do for work and
[2:28] Speaker 3: what you're doing personally. That removal of ambiguity that we've
[2:35] Speaker 3: decided we no longer cherish and hold true because we've
[2:40] Speaker 3: got to reveal everything about ourselves every minute of the day.
[2:45] Speaker 3: That that creates friction for the for the operational community,
[2:49] Speaker 3: whether you're a special mission unit operator, case officer, FBI agent,
[2:55] Speaker 3: ice agent, you know, the patterns of life is a
[3:02] Speaker 3: is a significant operational security risk. And and it's the
[3:06] Speaker 3: mobile device that that is that sort of uh foundational layer.
[3:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the gateway.
[3:15] Speaker 1: Uh, it's like the gateway to like all the information
[3:18] Speaker 1: about you. It's pretty scary to think about, right, because
[3:22] Speaker 1: we all kind of want our our you know, we
[3:26] Speaker 1: want our convenience, We want our phone to be able
[3:28] Speaker 1: to do everything for us and stuff like that, and
[3:30] Speaker 1: we really kind of it's kind of a trade off
[3:33] Speaker 1: that we don't think about.
[3:35] Speaker 2: And I know, like we you know, the America America.
[3:37] Speaker 1: Has been doing it in Jay sock, and CIA has
[3:39] Speaker 1: probably been doing this for a long time, right, like
[3:42] Speaker 1: using you know, commercial location data to target other enemies
[3:47] Speaker 1: of the United States and stuff like that. And you
[3:49] Speaker 1: shot me over this the press release from Senator Wyden's
[3:54] Speaker 1: office out of Oregon. I mean it's him and like
[3:57] Speaker 1: twelve other other bipartisan members of cong Uh saying, like
[4:01] Speaker 1: foreign adversaries are using commercial data to target US service
[4:06] Speaker 1: members in the Middle East, and I'm sure China is
[4:09] Speaker 1: probably using it to track them all over the world obviously.
[4:13] Speaker 1: And uh yeah, we had a great like you had
[4:16] Speaker 1: a great appearance on the Teamhouse. I please, I you know,
[4:19] Speaker 1: implore everybody to go check out your full episode on
[4:22] Speaker 1: the Team House talking about your career, what you got
[4:24] Speaker 1: into and stuff like that. It's pretty crazy because we
[4:28] Speaker 1: don't really think about the Consequencesn't sure, Like the lame
[4:32] Speaker 1: in person that's not working in national security, maybe they
[4:35] Speaker 1: don't care as much. Sure, but if you're you have
[4:39] Speaker 1: a serious job where you have a top secret or
[4:42] Speaker 1: you're out going on operations or and stuff like that,
[4:45] Speaker 1: that's something I would hope like the d O D
[4:49] Speaker 1: and CIA are bringing people in like you to like
[4:52] Speaker 1: kind of I guess, beef up their operational security.
[4:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's a complicated topic. And you're right,
[5:03] Speaker 3: we all want conveniences. We all want our smartphones to
[5:07] Speaker 3: do these amazing things, and we're not There isn't a
[5:12] Speaker 3: we're not going to return to an era where where
[5:17] Speaker 3: we're not connected like this, and and really the the
[5:23] Speaker 3: risk and the mechanics that create that risk, whether you're
[5:28] Speaker 3: an operator or just a citizen that values privacy and
[5:33] Speaker 3: agency and uh and and kind of wants to be
[5:36] Speaker 3: left alone but still be able to use a mobile
[5:38] Speaker 3: phone or a smartphone. We need to sort of look
[5:43] Speaker 3: at this from a first principles perspective, which is we
[5:48] Speaker 3: understand the fundamental issue. It's this commercial data and the
[5:52] Speaker 3: device is that foundational risk surface. So let's break it down.
[5:58] Speaker 3: You know every app you have on your phone is
[6:01] Speaker 3: a collection surface. It may do things that are helpful,
[6:05] Speaker 3: but it's privileged position on your phone enables it to
[6:11] Speaker 3: interrogate your device without any governance. And I will tell
[6:17] Speaker 3: you that privacy and the privacy policies that have come
[6:23] Speaker 3: out of state federal government, uh, and privacy settings, it's
[6:29] Speaker 3: really they're they're they're not. It's not real privacy. If
[6:36] Speaker 3: we if we think about privacy settings on on the
[6:39] Speaker 3: current sort of the two dominant platforms, they enable a
[6:46] Speaker 3: user to indicate a preference. Two and let's talk about
[6:50] Speaker 3: the two selectors that that that the Senate Armed Services Committee,
[6:56] Speaker 3: Senator Widen who's leading this charge across a variety of domains,
[7:02] Speaker 3: the risk to operators and to personnel being the latest.
[7:08] Speaker 3: If we think about the selectors that are of most concerned,
[7:14] Speaker 3: it's this thing called an ad ID, which is this
[7:17] Speaker 3: crude way of doing things that a cookie would do
[7:23] Speaker 3: on a browser but on a mobile device. And location.
[7:29] Speaker 3: So let's start with location first. You can toggle and
[7:34] Speaker 3: indicate your preference that an app not extract or access
[7:40] Speaker 3: the GPS sensor on your device. That does not mean
[7:45] Speaker 3: the app is not going to resolve your location through
[7:50] Speaker 3: other means from the data that it can inspect on
[7:54] Speaker 3: your device. So the letter is talking about location data,
[8:02] Speaker 3: and maybe everybody toggles that selector on your phone not
[8:06] Speaker 3: to track location. All that is doing is indicating your
[8:10] Speaker 3: preference that the app not access the sensor. It's going
[8:16] Speaker 3: to figure out where you are through a host of
[8:19] Speaker 3: other data features, telemetry that your device is collecting, and
[8:26] Speaker 3: in many ways it's far more probative than than than
[8:30] Speaker 3: the GPS and then the ad ID. Again, it's just
[8:33] Speaker 3: indicating your preference not for an app not to track you.
[8:37] Speaker 3: There's no governance at the at the device layer to
[8:40] Speaker 3: ensure that that's policy that's being enforced. It's you're indicating
[8:45] Speaker 3: a preference. And again, like the with location data or location,
[8:51] Speaker 3: there are a variety of different ways to assign an
[8:55] Speaker 3: identifier to you based upon the behavioral patterns that can
[9:02] Speaker 3: be resolved through the telemetry on your device that you
[9:05] Speaker 3: do not control, modeled in ways that you cannot perceive
[9:10] Speaker 3: because we're looking for these non obvious patterns. Think about
[9:15] Speaker 3: it this way, you know, developing a pattern using the gyroscope,
[9:20] Speaker 3: battery level, accelerometer, and screen orientation. Is there a pattern
[9:26] Speaker 3: in there. Maybe maybe not, but at scale across the
[9:30] Speaker 3: population of everybody that these platforms and systems are modeling,
[9:35] Speaker 3: behavioral deviation becomes easily becomes distinguishable. And that's the risk
[9:43] Speaker 3: where we are today. Senator Widen and the Armed Services Committee,
[9:49] Speaker 3: the letter and the focus is really on the way
[9:54] Speaker 3: in which we were doing it ten years ago, but
[9:57] Speaker 3: the platforms, apps, they've moved go on to different methodologies.
[10:02] Speaker 3: Uh So, my concern is that the the the intent
[10:09] Speaker 3: of the Senate sort of misses the current state of
[10:12] Speaker 3: the risk. And and we're not we're not attacking we're
[10:18] Speaker 3: not attacking them, which which just maintains exposure and gives
[10:25] Speaker 3: us the impression that, you know, there's something that I
[10:28] Speaker 3: was protecting us, and that's just not the case.
[10:31] Speaker 2: Mike.
[10:31] Speaker 1: I saw a report early on when we started bombing
[10:33] Speaker 1: Iran that the Iranians use some of that information or
[10:38] Speaker 1: some of those techniques to kind of triangulate where we
[10:42] Speaker 1: where our guys were, and it might have caused like
[10:44] Speaker 1: people like the thirteenth you know, some of the thirteen
[10:47] Speaker 1: service members that passed that got killed to get killed,
[10:50] Speaker 1: or you know, the hundreds that have been injured. Is
[10:53] Speaker 1: that is that factual, don't you know?
[10:58] Speaker 3: I don't know if if if the ad sary you know,
[11:01] Speaker 3: used commercially available location data for targeting. But I will
[11:05] Speaker 3: tell you this, if you have a variety of devices
[11:09] Speaker 3: that are clustered that you can reasonably infer our US
[11:13] Speaker 3: personnel because the location data the GPS sensor hadn't been
[11:18] Speaker 3: turned off. And this is where I kind of lose
[11:22] Speaker 3: my mind on this, because these are alleged d OD
[11:26] Speaker 3: issued devices where the ad ID is still available GPS,
[11:31] Speaker 3: you know, and GPS is highly precise. So if you
[11:34] Speaker 3: start seeing clusters of devices, you know, based somewhere, you
[11:40] Speaker 3: can infer well, that's US personnel. They will certainly look
[11:44] Speaker 3: at other targeting data and intelligence. But if you're looking
[11:50] Speaker 3: for you know, target cues about where US personnel are stationed,
[11:56] Speaker 3: of course this is possible and of course an adversary
[12:02] Speaker 3: can do it. And you know ten years ago when
[12:05] Speaker 3: I was standing in front of a room at Jaysok,
[12:09] Speaker 3: you know, I said to them, if a history major
[12:12] Speaker 3: from Saint Lawrence University can expose your forward operating base
[12:18] Speaker 3: the the far cement factory in Syria and then target
[12:22] Speaker 3: and bring and identify where where your operators live. If
[12:28] Speaker 3: I can do it, certainly an adversary can if they're
[12:32] Speaker 3: not already. We don't have, you know, dominion or a
[12:37] Speaker 3: monopoly on these things, and we we must assume that
[12:43] Speaker 3: an adversary is as equally hungry for targeting information.
[12:48] Speaker 2: As we are.
[12:50] Speaker 3: And this is perhaps, you know, a lesson learned. Unfortunately,
[12:59] Speaker 3: it required casualties in order for anybody of consequence to
[13:06] Speaker 3: take notice. And that I don't know, that's dereliction. I
[13:10] Speaker 3: don't know what the characterize that is. And I understand,
[13:13] Speaker 3: you know, I look at these things, you know, in
[13:15] Speaker 3: a perfect if I were in charge, this is how
[13:19] Speaker 3: I do things, and I know things don't work that way.
[13:22] Speaker 3: But these are easy fixes. We're you know, we need
[13:28] Speaker 3: the Senate Armed Services to get involved in the easy fix,
[13:32] Speaker 3: the fix that should have been applied to Facto full
[13:36] Speaker 3: stop ten years ago. And here we are today, still
[13:41] Speaker 3: talking about something that you know is a decade old.
[13:47] Speaker 3: But notwithstanding, we need to fix this. We have tools
[13:52] Speaker 3: and tech that can address this, and we need to
[13:57] Speaker 3: make this a priority because these are the easy ways
[14:02] Speaker 3: of right, you know, propagating OPSEC across the entire continuum
[14:10] Speaker 3: of OPSECT risk.
[14:13] Speaker 4: Hey, guys, I want to tell you tonight about my
[14:15] Speaker 4: new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June ninth.
[14:19] Speaker 4: I think, like a lot of you, I read in
[14:22] Speaker 4: high school the short story The Greatest Game, which is
[14:26] Speaker 4: almost a century old at this point, but it's the
[14:29] Speaker 4: classic premise of man hunting man for sport. This book
[14:34] Speaker 4: is based off of that a little bit, but also
[14:37] Speaker 4: on stories that I have heard over the years about
[14:40] Speaker 4: Safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people
[14:45] Speaker 4: hunting poachers in West Africa. That idea kind of cooked
[14:50] Speaker 4: off in my mind when I was asked to write
[14:53] Speaker 4: a novel and get back into writing fiction again. And
[14:56] Speaker 4: this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance Company.
[15:00] Speaker 4: He's on a mission in West Africa and gets kidnapped
[15:03] Speaker 4: and hunted for sport by a group of wealthy tech billionaires.
[15:07] Speaker 4: I had a lot of fun writ in this book,
[15:09] Speaker 4: and I think you'll have a good time reading it.
[15:11] Speaker 4: It's quick, fast and furious, fast paced action action novel,
[15:17] Speaker 4: and I hope you all check it out. It's up there.
[15:20] Speaker 4: You can find it wherever books are sold. The hard copy,
[15:23] Speaker 4: the hardback, the soft cover, and also the Kindle e
[15:27] Speaker 4: book edition and we'll have some links down in the
[15:29] Speaker 4: description for you. The book comes out June ninth, and
[15:33] Speaker 4: I hope you all let me know what you think
[15:35] Speaker 4: of it.
[15:47] Speaker 1: I'd love like an example, like, so, what would it
[15:49] Speaker 1: take for an adversary to exploit commercial data? They have
[15:53] Speaker 1: to buy data that's already been hacked and is online,
[15:57] Speaker 1: or like, do they hack an app and somebody downloads
[15:59] Speaker 1: an app?
[16:00] Speaker 2: Like, how does it? How does it work?
[16:02] Speaker 3: I think it's let's I think it's far easier than that.
[16:05] Speaker 3: I think through. I'll just this is how I did it.
[16:09] Speaker 3: You develop a sort of a cover, you know, some
[16:13] Speaker 3: commercial use case as to why you're even in the business,
[16:18] Speaker 3: uh or interested in commercial location data. Maybe you set
[16:22] Speaker 3: up a proxy easy to do outside of of Tehran,
[16:28] Speaker 3: So maybe you have a proxy based in Turkey or
[16:30] Speaker 3: Oman or you know, a country like that, and you're
[16:36] Speaker 3: buying the data. You don't have to hack. You don't
[16:39] Speaker 3: have to hack an app, you don't have to engineer anything.
[16:43] Speaker 2: You know.
[16:44] Speaker 3: Ten years ago again, you know I had to I
[16:46] Speaker 3: had to defend my methodology, uh and explain that you know,
[16:50] Speaker 3: I didn't hack intercept engineer, I didn't you know, follow anybody.
[16:56] Speaker 3: I bought it. I bought it sitting in a home office.
[17:02] Speaker 3: And ten years ago, there wasn't a lot of challenge.
[17:05] Speaker 3: It was, you know, like, if you're in the market
[17:07] Speaker 3: to buy, we're in the market to sell. Yeah, probably
[17:12] Speaker 3: a little there's maybe a little bit more friction today
[17:14] Speaker 3: because some of these companies have to provide reporting and
[17:18] Speaker 3: you know, they're on the hook if they sell to
[17:20] Speaker 3: an adversary. But if it's a proxy, if it's a
[17:24] Speaker 3: legitimate proxy and I sell to an anissy, how do
[17:27] Speaker 3: they know? Yeah, right, yep, yeah, But it's you know, buying,
[17:32] Speaker 3: Buying this stuff is you know, is AFAR requires fewer
[17:39] Speaker 3: higher risk operations. You don't need to have uh you know,
[17:45] Speaker 3: case officers. You don't need to have this sort of
[17:49] Speaker 3: bespoke unique capability. You just need to know how to
[17:55] Speaker 3: buy it, how to pocket, how to explain what it
[17:58] Speaker 3: is that you want, and and that's not hard to do.
[18:03] Speaker 2: Is it legal to buy this stuff for the most part? Yeah?
[18:06] Speaker 1: Right, like they're data brokers out there there or is
[18:08] Speaker 1: it like a gray area?
[18:10] Speaker 3: I feel like, you know the line from pulp fiction,
[18:14] Speaker 3: you know, pulp fiction, where of course, yeah, Samuel Jackson's
[18:19] Speaker 3: or not. John Travolta is like legal to sell it, it's
[18:22] Speaker 3: legal to buy it, it's legal to carry. You know
[18:25] Speaker 3: that line where he's uh and and then he says
[18:29] Speaker 3: and they and the police can't even you know, they
[18:31] Speaker 3: can't even they're not allowed to inspector or whatever that
[18:35] Speaker 3: line was. But no, the answer is, yeah, it is legal. Uh,
[18:40] Speaker 3: it is. This is a market. There are big businesses
[18:45] Speaker 3: involved in this in marketing technology or ad tech. Microsoft
[18:52] Speaker 3: has a business. Workle had a business, but they sort
[18:55] Speaker 3: of deprecated it. This is a big business. And if
[19:00] Speaker 3: you think about all of the credit bureaus, you know,
[19:03] Speaker 3: their entire business model is predicated on on these types
[19:07] Speaker 3: of data sets that.
[19:11] Speaker 1: Are are and credit bureaus can go ahead and flip them.
[19:17] Speaker 1: Say it again, Okay, so credit bureaus can just go
[19:22] Speaker 1: ahead and flip that information, no problem.
[19:24] Speaker 3: So a credit bureau is is creating credit products.
[19:28] Speaker 2: But if you if you think about the.
[19:30] Speaker 3: Modern sort of data broker industry, a few years ago,
[19:34] Speaker 3: Tim Cook sort of launched a flat against data brokers
[19:37] Speaker 3: because he kept, you know, he was sick and tired
[19:39] Speaker 3: of hearing about, uh, the the malfeasance of data brokers,
[19:45] Speaker 3: you know, tracking people, and so that triggered the the
[19:51] Speaker 3: suppression of the ad IDEA and GPS data, which is
[19:54] Speaker 3: sort of the lifeblood of a data broker. So what
[19:58] Speaker 3: a data broker is going to do now, They're going
[20:00] Speaker 3: to take all of this raw data and build products
[20:05] Speaker 3: around it. So if I'm an advertiser going to go
[20:08] Speaker 3: to an audience attribution firm which buys a lot of
[20:13] Speaker 3: data or collects a lot of data, and I'm going
[20:17] Speaker 3: to buy an audience of you know, people that are
[20:23] Speaker 3: of a certain demographic, certain income, education profession et cetera,
[20:29] Speaker 3: et cetera, in order to do targeted advertising as an
[20:32] Speaker 3: adversary and and and working with those firms to actually
[20:40] Speaker 3: acquire the raw data behind those products is just the
[20:44] Speaker 3: matter of negotiation.
[20:46] Speaker 1: I mean, are there are there any steps that like
[20:50] Speaker 1: the US government could take to like reel that in
[20:53] Speaker 1: or it's just like it's a free market.
[20:56] Speaker 2: You know, go ahead, you gave up your data.
[20:58] Speaker 1: It's it's now product and can be marketed and sold
[21:02] Speaker 1: to whoever wants it.
[21:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is this is where policy, like you're
[21:08] Speaker 3: trying to regulate these businesses is hard because methods tech change,
[21:17] Speaker 3: so rapidly. So you regulate one element and six months
[21:21] Speaker 3: later the market has has has developed a new technique.
[21:26] Speaker 3: Whether they developed that new technique because of regulation or
[21:30] Speaker 3: because of optimization, who knows. But policy it's difficult for
[21:36] Speaker 3: policy to keep up with this with the state of
[21:40] Speaker 3: change because the incentives are just are so massive. I mean,
[21:46] Speaker 3: a ten trillion we're trying to regulate ten trillion dollars
[21:50] Speaker 3: economy that is opaque. It's not like trying to regulate
[21:55] Speaker 3: the banks. There is no FINRA or there's no bank regulation.
[22:01] Speaker 3: There's no data regulation that everybody plays by a certain rule.
[22:07] Speaker 3: And we've got you know, a m L policies and KYC.
[22:13] Speaker 3: So from a policy perspective, you know, they're they're they're
[22:17] Speaker 3: moving in the right direction. They recognize that the risk
[22:23] Speaker 3: is acute, but recognizing the acute risk and actually applying
[22:30] Speaker 3: uh techniques or technologies that we're not trying to put
[22:35] Speaker 3: a ten trillion dollar economy out of business, but to
[22:39] Speaker 3: give the user, the operator, the case officer, the special agent,
[22:44] Speaker 3: the ice agent, capability to inject on their own some
[22:49] Speaker 3: friction in that commercial data economy as a means of
[22:54] Speaker 3: foundational op SEC. You know, we think about trade craft,
[23:01] Speaker 3: and we have all sorts of techniques and approaches, and
[23:07] Speaker 3: you spend a lot of time learning trade craft, which
[23:11] Speaker 3: is absolutely foundational to to operational you know objectives. Where
[23:21] Speaker 3: the modern economy has disrupted. That is this loss of
[23:25] Speaker 3: ambiguity that we all used to enjoy. We just sort
[23:29] Speaker 3: of took for granted. Maybe you knew somebody was a
[23:33] Speaker 3: special mission unit operator, but you didn't really know. And nowadays,
[23:38] Speaker 3: now I know what unit he is in. I know
[23:41] Speaker 3: that he's a you know, I know that he's a
[23:42] Speaker 3: case officer that is spends a lot of his time
[23:45] Speaker 3: or is focused on Africa or Western hemisphere. That ambiguity
[23:51] Speaker 3: was a substrate for tradecraft because we started at a
[23:56] Speaker 3: baseline and now that baseline has been eroded, has collapsed,
[24:03] Speaker 3: and so you're starting, you're starting the mission, and your
[24:07] Speaker 3: pattern of life, your behavior is already out there, and
[24:12] Speaker 3: so it's a it's it's a disadvantage. But for for
[24:17] Speaker 3: a long time, now you know, I would I would
[24:20] Speaker 3: sit in front of the operational community and explain to
[24:23] Speaker 3: them what they're up against. And the question, the fundamental
[24:28] Speaker 3: question always came back was how do I get how
[24:32] Speaker 3: do I get out of commercial data. Well, it's that
[24:37] Speaker 3: there's not a there's not a maximalist approach to fix that. However,
[24:42] Speaker 3: if commercial data is imposing this operational risk, we need
[24:46] Speaker 3: to we need to inject some friction into that business
[24:49] Speaker 3: model and and restore some of that user choice in
[24:57] Speaker 3: what they're sharing, what an app can and collect what
[25:01] Speaker 3: it and what it can extract. Now, apps have to
[25:05] Speaker 3: collect and understand device diagnostics in order to function. That
[25:11] Speaker 3: is certainly a reasonable expectation, but when you look at
[25:17] Speaker 3: the the delta between what they're collecting that's essential to
[25:22] Speaker 3: function and everything else. It's like, I have this flashlight app.
[25:27] Speaker 3: Why does it need to know my network configuration? It
[25:32] Speaker 3: doesn't I need light, Yeah, show me fucking light. I
[25:35] Speaker 3: don't need you to, you know, improve my user experience,
[25:40] Speaker 3: like give me a break. But when you look at
[25:42] Speaker 3: and you're able to see what an app is doing
[25:45] Speaker 3: on your device, which you cannot do now because they're
[25:49] Speaker 3: the platforms are are you know, they're sort of they
[25:52] Speaker 3: want to provide privacy, but their their business depends upon
[25:57] Speaker 3: an app thriving, you know, like there's only so much
[26:01] Speaker 3: they can do, and and that governance layer built into
[26:05] Speaker 3: the operating system on an iPhone or an Android just
[26:08] Speaker 3: does not exist.
[26:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, why do they want to throw a
[26:11] Speaker 1: wrench into their money making operation?
[26:14] Speaker 2: Right without?
[26:14] Speaker 1: They're not going to do something like that unless they're
[26:17] Speaker 1: legally forced to. They're not going to just give it up.
[26:21] Speaker 1: It's interesting too, Like when I download an app, particularly
[26:24] Speaker 1: on iPhone, it's so it always gives me the like
[26:28] Speaker 1: the creeps a little bit because it says at it
[26:31] Speaker 1: gives you, like a notification ask app to not like
[26:34] Speaker 1: track your location.
[26:36] Speaker 2: Why do I have to ask the app?
[26:37] Speaker 1: Why didn't I just say nope, don't track my location,
[26:40] Speaker 1: any permission from the app to not track my location.
[26:43] Speaker 1: Just the way that they phrase the prompt that they
[26:46] Speaker 1: give you is super like. It gives me the creeps
[26:49] Speaker 1: for some reason. And I always like the second thing, like,
[26:51] Speaker 1: oh maybe I should delete this fucking app.
[26:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, And isn't that interesting. It's it's ask app not
[26:58] Speaker 3: to track. The linguistics of it is very you know. Uh,
[27:03] Speaker 3: And and like I said before that that is you
[27:06] Speaker 3: are indicating a preference. Whether the app respects your preference,
[27:13] Speaker 3: that's up to the app. There, that's not a policy
[27:16] Speaker 3: that you're invoking. That's up to the app, you have
[27:19] Speaker 3: indicated a preference not to reveal your ad ID in
[27:23] Speaker 3: that in that selector for app asked not to track,
[27:27] Speaker 3: or your your GPS sensor. Those are user preferences that
[27:31] Speaker 3: you're indicating and not necessarily enforced by policy. You're just
[27:36] Speaker 3: you know, when when the app sees your your your
[27:40] Speaker 3: user session, it's you know, there's a little field that says,
[27:44] Speaker 3: you know, user has indicated preference for you to not
[27:47] Speaker 3: to track. Okay, I'll respect that, or tuck that I'm
[27:52] Speaker 3: going to track.
[27:55] Speaker 2: Right.
[27:55] Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's literally every app, and you know, a
[27:58] Speaker 1: developer to developer who knows, like if you had TikTok
[28:02] Speaker 1: and I like, I have a cap cut on my
[28:05] Speaker 1: phone right cap cut? Is the same developer or it's
[28:09] Speaker 1: a Chinese developer that's a no, like that is I
[28:12] Speaker 1: guess been pinged as a possibly Chinese intelligence or whatever
[28:18] Speaker 1: it is, like connected to the CCP, and for a
[28:21] Speaker 1: while it was not, you weren't allowed to use it,
[28:23] Speaker 1: like when the whole TikTok thing was going on. I
[28:25] Speaker 1: don't know if it's the same developer, I don't know exactly,
[28:28] Speaker 1: but you're asking developer to developer, app developer to maybe
[28:33] Speaker 1: please if you don't mind not track my location and
[28:36] Speaker 1: all my data? Like what are they gonna do? You're
[28:39] Speaker 1: gonna think, you know, you can't give everybody the benefit
[28:41] Speaker 1: of the doubt, even American developers, you know, Like it's.
[28:44] Speaker 3: I mean, look at the so when Apple invoked app
[28:49] Speaker 3: tracking transparency, this privacy panel that suppressed the ad ID
[28:54] Speaker 3: and location services, I mean that really throttled Meta's business
[28:59] Speaker 3: for a couple of quarters. I mean, like that was
[29:01] Speaker 3: a big that was a big quarter revenue myths. Because
[29:06] Speaker 3: the gig was up, Meta could no longer claim that
[29:10] Speaker 3: cat videos you know, sell sneakers. They were dependent upon
[29:17] Speaker 3: attributing behavior through these stable identifiers. But if you look
[29:22] Speaker 3: at Meta's recovery in this post privacy environment, they're doing
[29:27] Speaker 3: just fine. And how are they doing just because they
[29:32] Speaker 3: are not They're not you know, laying awake at night
[29:37] Speaker 3: worried about user privacy. They've just gone deeper into the
[29:40] Speaker 3: device and they've developed you know, different cross app partnerships
[29:44] Speaker 3: where if if you're not if you're not a Meta user,
[29:49] Speaker 3: there's a Meta SDK on that app, and Meta is
[29:53] Speaker 3: monetizing you that way.
[29:56] Speaker 2: I mean, it's what's a meta SDK.
[30:00] Speaker 3: This is a little it's it's think about an SDK
[30:03] Speaker 3: like when you build a house, you've got a general
[30:06] Speaker 3: contractor that's the app. The app is going to have
[30:10] Speaker 3: a bunch of SDKs that provide functionality, and a lot
[30:13] Speaker 3: of functionality. Is you know, like I'm going to just
[30:15] Speaker 3: use an SDK. I'm not going to build my own
[30:17] Speaker 3: proprietary you know, payment capability, right, I'm going to use
[30:21] Speaker 3: an SDK. I see that that you know in the
[30:24] Speaker 3: SDK is the plumber, the electrician, the carpenter, right to
[30:27] Speaker 3: build your app? Contraunctionality and so some of these DKs
[30:32] Speaker 3: are only there to collect data and monetize data for.
[30:37] Speaker 1: For a question, how does a guy or a girl
[30:41] Speaker 1: who's working overseas, whether it's a case officer or an
[30:44] Speaker 1: SMU person, how do they, you know, go about their jobs?
[30:51] Speaker 1: I guess it's I guess the question doesn't even apply
[30:53] Speaker 1: for just overseas, but let's just talk about overseas. How
[30:55] Speaker 1: do they avoid things like that outside of getting an
[30:58] Speaker 1: unplugged phone?
[30:59] Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so, uh you know that I'm on the
[31:03] Speaker 3: board of advisors of Unplugged So whether so it goes
[31:08] Speaker 3: down goes back to this how do we how do
[31:12] Speaker 3: we inject some friction into the flow of our personal
[31:17] Speaker 3: data to these opaque networks and the current configuration of
[31:23] Speaker 3: all of the devices. You know, the two major platform
[31:26] Speaker 3: doopoly they are they are part of that cartel.
[31:34] Speaker 2: Which is Apple and Android, right.
[31:36] Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, just for the folks listening, yep. And they
[31:41] Speaker 3: are fundamentally incentivized to make their devices easy for an
[31:49] Speaker 3: app to collect, extract and monetize.
[31:53] Speaker 2: As a as a.
[31:54] Speaker 3: User, we have to go how we have to think
[31:58] Speaker 3: about how do I supervisor?
[32:01] Speaker 2: How do I.
[32:05] Speaker 3: Almost like an intervention before all of that data flows
[32:10] Speaker 3: from my device to this opaque network, how do I
[32:13] Speaker 3: intervene and mitigate some of that? And until we start
[32:18] Speaker 3: thinking about privacy as an integration of hardware and software,
[32:25] Speaker 3: where privacy is built into the into the is engineered
[32:29] Speaker 3: into the device, we're going to be susceptible to this. So,
[32:35] Speaker 3: you know, use a VPN, it's it's it's there's nothing
[32:40] Speaker 3: wrong with using a VPN, But all VPN is doing
[32:43] Speaker 3: is mediating your traffic. Everything that's going over that pipe
[32:47] Speaker 3: has already been extracted, so VPN is not offering you
[32:51] Speaker 3: any privacy at that identifier layer or at that telemetry
[32:57] Speaker 3: layer from your device privacy settings have already blasted that.
[33:01] Speaker 3: It's it's really theater makes you feel good. But the
[33:05] Speaker 3: app is gonna is gonna figure out a way to
[33:09] Speaker 3: either resolve your location or attribute you through the behavior
[33:14] Speaker 3: of your device. So until we mediate what an app
[33:19] Speaker 3: is collecting on your device and and give the user
[33:24] Speaker 3: options to suppress that flow of telemetry, we're gonna be
[33:31] Speaker 3: We're gonna be chasing this problem, uh, indefinitely.
[33:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I'll give a free plugged Unplugged. Uh
[33:40] Speaker 1: you know, we're in the middle of talking about Unplugged
[33:43] Speaker 1: becoming a sponsor of the show Full Disclosure. But you know,
[33:47] Speaker 1: I got a phone from Unplugged and I did the orientation.
[33:52] Speaker 1: First off, the orientation is like opens your mind up
[33:54] Speaker 1: to what the phone can actually do. It's pretty incredible, honestly.
[33:59] Speaker 1: So if you are worried about your location or you know,
[34:04] Speaker 1: just all the kinds of stuff that could get sucked
[34:06] Speaker 1: out from all these apps that we all get we
[34:10] Speaker 1: all have, Unplugged does seem like the right fit. And
[34:15] Speaker 1: I'm not like we're not getting paid, not yet anyway.
[34:18] Speaker 1: So and I had the orientation and frankly I was.
[34:21] Speaker 1: I was extremely impressed by it, like especially the new
[34:24] Speaker 1: operating system. And Jacob one of the people that like,
[34:28] Speaker 1: you know, I guess the customer success one of the
[34:30] Speaker 1: customer success guys was like, you know, super dialed into
[34:35] Speaker 1: it and uh, And I remember texting Jack Murphy afterwards,
[34:40] Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, this phone is pretty fucking impressive.
[34:43] Speaker 1: Like what you can and can't do. It's like and
[34:47] Speaker 1: I hate to sound like I'm selling it, because I'm
[34:48] Speaker 1: really not. Like it's just a fact. Like from what
[34:51] Speaker 1: I've gathered from just the orientation and playing around with
[34:54] Speaker 1: the phone is uh, it feels like a James Bond
[34:57] Speaker 1: phone because you could like reset it like super quick
[35:00] Speaker 1: if you needed to. So outside of that, I don't
[35:04] Speaker 1: really think there's like another company doing that.
[35:09] Speaker 3: So it's a good point.
[35:11] Speaker 2: Really worried about yep.
[35:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, and and the white glove onboarding experience. You know,
[35:19] Speaker 3: it's not just because you're super handsome.
[35:21] Speaker 2: D we do that for everybody. I thought that was
[35:24] Speaker 2: just for me. God damn it.
[35:26] Speaker 3: That's part of the that's part of the that's part
[35:28] Speaker 3: of the deal. But you know, the the community is
[35:33] Speaker 3: not has has spent a lot of time and a
[35:35] Speaker 3: lot of money developing. You know, special phones OP phones
[35:39] Speaker 3: unplugged is built for a consumer. So if we think
[35:44] Speaker 3: about what we need to do for operators, we don't
[35:49] Speaker 3: want to create new signatures that are revealing because it's
[35:54] Speaker 3: a phone that has special egress points and you know,
[35:59] Speaker 3: acts differently and looks different than a consumer device, whereas
[36:07] Speaker 3: the unplugged phone or a privacy a privacy phone built
[36:10] Speaker 3: for a consumer is meant to not create new signatures
[36:15] Speaker 3: that this is a special operator, case officer. It's this
[36:20] Speaker 3: is an individual who values privacy and carries a device
[36:24] Speaker 3: that enables that without without it looking like, you know,
[36:30] Speaker 3: one of these OP phones that are concerning considering the
[36:37] Speaker 3: amount of data that an adversary can collect and discover. Okay,
[36:42] Speaker 3: this is what an OP phone looks like. Show me
[36:44] Speaker 3: all of the other OP phones that are in my
[36:46] Speaker 3: country or phones that look like that. That's the that's
[36:50] Speaker 3: the math. A lookalike model is is really how advertising
[36:54] Speaker 3: targeting is built. Show me this person just bought a
[36:58] Speaker 3: you know, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars g wagon.
[37:00] Speaker 3: Show me other people like him or her right to
[37:05] Speaker 3: target And that's the math behind this. So you know,
[37:10] Speaker 3: we don't want to build new technology that is specific
[37:14] Speaker 3: to a community. This is this is privacy, But the
[37:19] Speaker 3: new substrate of tradecraft or opsec UH starts with privacy
[37:24] Speaker 3: and all that ambiguity that.
[37:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, how you know, I've heard
[37:30] Speaker 1: a couple of CIA guys talk about like how it's
[37:34] Speaker 1: going to be very difficult to do, like the the
[37:38] Speaker 1: what do you how do you would you describe it
[37:40] Speaker 1: like the.
[37:42] Speaker 2: UH legacy style of human.
[37:47] Speaker 1: Collection because you know, ubiquitous tele technical surveillances everywhere and
[37:53] Speaker 1: specifically if you're liaison in an embassy somewhere, like you're
[37:58] Speaker 1: going to be, you know, the cyclops I will be
[38:02] Speaker 1: pointed at you specifically, any like tips or tricks that
[38:07] Speaker 1: you would give. Obviously, I guess you can't really say
[38:09] Speaker 1: it a lot if you do have like real, real insight,
[38:12] Speaker 1: But like what can somebody like that you or what
[38:16] Speaker 1: will human intelligence really look like in the next ten,
[38:20] Speaker 1: twenty thirty years.
[38:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, you all have had people that have worked this
[38:26] Speaker 3: this problem. You know, ubiquitous technical surveillance almost became this
[38:33] Speaker 3: living breathing thing that constrained. It is constraining, but it
[38:41] Speaker 3: is going to require that we think about tradecraft or
[38:49] Speaker 3: the operation differently. And we've seen this before. We have
[38:55] Speaker 3: historical references. The agency is infamous for something called Moscow
[39:01] Speaker 3: Rules where they needed to figure out a different way
[39:04] Speaker 3: to operate in a really hostile, aggressive environment, and they did,
[39:08] Speaker 3: and they some of the things they came up with
[39:11] Speaker 3: were crude but creative as hell to enable to be
[39:15] Speaker 3: able to operate and create those windows, those gaps where
[39:19] Speaker 3: they could have a meeting without physical surveillance. And and
[39:27] Speaker 3: this environment is is really is no different this this
[39:32] Speaker 3: new environment uh and ubiquitous technical surveillance where uh, you know,
[39:38] Speaker 3: there is no neutral ground anymore because who knows in
[39:42] Speaker 3: some of these countries, all of their telecom is has
[39:46] Speaker 3: been you know, gifted by China as part of their
[39:50] Speaker 3: Belt and Road initiative, So there's no neutral ground in
[39:55] Speaker 3: it safely, like everywhere is a is a hostile environment
[39:59] Speaker 3: or could potentially be hostile environment because you pick what
[40:01] Speaker 3: it is technical surveillance. And so this just is it's
[40:06] Speaker 3: going to require a more holistic approach to operational readiness.
[40:12] Speaker 3: If if you are making that left turn into CIA
[40:16] Speaker 3: headquarters every day with your phone on, and you think
[40:20] Speaker 3: you're going to go black anywhere forget it. It's not
[40:24] Speaker 3: not possible, or it's possible, but with significant risks. So
[40:29] Speaker 3: how do we how do we mitigate this and how
[40:32] Speaker 3: do we how do we create how do we refabricate
[40:37] Speaker 3: some some ambiguity so that we have this operational range.
[40:41] Speaker 3: And I think the first step is really looking at
[40:48] Speaker 3: this commercial data problem and applying solutions that add some
[40:56] Speaker 3: friction to that, to that the velocity of that data
[41:00] Speaker 3: it's flowing.
[41:00] Speaker 2: So you know you've been working in the space for
[41:03] Speaker 2: a long time, do you think that now?
[41:08] Speaker 1: I mean, it's I feel like it's been trending this
[41:11] Speaker 1: way for a while, like technical surveillance and singant is
[41:15] Speaker 1: becoming the dominating intelligence right compared to like, you know,
[41:20] Speaker 1: giving a guy ten grand a month for information about
[41:24] Speaker 1: the Chinese military or whatever. Do you think like humans
[41:28] Speaker 1: kind of taking the backseat to now singan because you know,
[41:31] Speaker 1: everyone's on their phones and trying to find a way
[41:33] Speaker 1: to penetrate them or you know what do you think?
[41:37] Speaker 3: So I think that in terms of uh, you know,
[41:41] Speaker 3: targeting an asset, developing that asset, validating that asset, I
[41:45] Speaker 3: think there are a lot of things that all of
[41:48] Speaker 3: this commercial data enables us to do you know, below
[41:53] Speaker 3: the threshold of risk and before we even begin that
[41:57] Speaker 3: recruitment process, to understand who we're dealing with and what
[42:01] Speaker 3: their value is. Almost no differently than uh, you know,
[42:06] Speaker 3: a company that's trying to determine the value of a
[42:10] Speaker 3: customer based upon who they are, what they've bought, where
[42:14] Speaker 3: we can apply those same techniques. I think that human
[42:20] Speaker 3: relationships will always always be critical when you're when you're
[42:25] Speaker 3: in these types of transactions. But I think that you know,
[42:32] Speaker 3: the technical, open source, publicly available information, commercially available information
[42:39] Speaker 3: will help us target with more precision, with lower risk.
[42:44] Speaker 1: It's interesting there was an article we spoke about it
[42:46] Speaker 1: a little bit on the episode before this one, where
[42:52] Speaker 1: Russia and Iran like have hit up kids on like
[42:57] Speaker 1: video game servers, essentially giving them like a couple hundred
[43:00] Speaker 1: bucks maybe a grand to go like do some bda
[43:04] Speaker 1: or even sabotage like place bombs and stuff like that.
[43:07] Speaker 1: It's interesting, like you mentioned like that it's relatively crude, right,
[43:12] Speaker 1: Like this is a crude way of doing it. It's
[43:13] Speaker 1: like maybe the guys the kid that's going to take
[43:16] Speaker 1: a picture of a bomb site or plant the bomb,
[43:19] Speaker 1: like that's like a one off kind of He's like
[43:21] Speaker 1: a one off, one use case, and then the kid's
[43:23] Speaker 1: fucking life is ruined. It's interesting the ways that different
[43:28] Speaker 1: intelligence agencies are trying to get things done. Right, it
[43:35] Speaker 1: seems way more cost cost efficient.
[43:37] Speaker 2: And stuff like that. So it's an interesting world.
[43:41] Speaker 3: I don't say a question, but that's that use cases
[43:44] Speaker 3: is one of those. Look if if you can sort
[43:50] Speaker 3: of activate the gig economy through these methods, so long
[43:57] Speaker 3: as that gig is doing legitimate commercial work and not
[44:06] Speaker 3: something that's been stood up on behalf of you know,
[44:11] Speaker 3: if if these if these third party collection platforms, and
[44:16] Speaker 3: there are companies that do this, if they are able
[44:20] Speaker 3: to develop uh situational awareness through either you know, photographs
[44:26] Speaker 3: or or whatever whatever the assignment is, but if they're
[44:30] Speaker 3: doing that for legitimate commercial purposes, and then they can
[44:36] Speaker 3: sell that data to the government, it's a much safer
[44:40] Speaker 3: approach as versus standing up a contract and having you know,
[44:47] Speaker 3: this contract be specific to a US government entity. That
[44:52] Speaker 3: just that's where that's where you know, people who are
[44:55] Speaker 3: trying to make some make some coin or tokens or
[44:59] Speaker 3: however the pain and stream is that's how they get in.
[45:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting, uh ever evolving world this stuff.
[45:11] Speaker 1: But yeah, again, I'm not trying to plug unplugged, but
[45:16] Speaker 1: I was, and I'm a cynical fucker, like you know,
[45:19] Speaker 1: I think people know that about me. That watch eyes on.
[45:23] Speaker 1: I was very impressed by the phone, like extremely impressed
[45:26] Speaker 1: by it because I don't really know what to expect
[45:29] Speaker 1: until we did that, uh you know that or white
[45:30] Speaker 1: glove orientation, and uh, it really opens your eyes. So
[45:35] Speaker 1: like if it was incredible, and I you know, I'm
[45:37] Speaker 1: really looking forward, like they're gonna likely be sponsored or
[45:41] Speaker 1: working with us, So I'm excited about that because it's
[45:45] Speaker 1: actually a product that that.
[45:49] Speaker 2: Works. You know, it's a good thing.
[45:52] Speaker 3: So it's you're gonna it's gonna be a high performance,
[45:56] Speaker 3: you're gonna all the everything that you expect from a smartphone.
[46:00] Speaker 3: Apps that you're using will function just as you normally
[46:03] Speaker 3: expect them to function, but that disintermediating that data flow
[46:09] Speaker 3: does not encroach or interfere with the functionality of the apps.
[46:13] Speaker 3: So as a user, you're not sacrificing or trading off
[46:18] Speaker 3: anything in terms of functionality to have engineered privacy into
[46:24] Speaker 3: the device.
[46:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting too, Like the sketchiest apps are not the sketchiest,
[46:30] Speaker 1: but they're the ones that track the most, or like
[46:32] Speaker 1: the ones you wouldn't even think of, you know, like
[46:35] Speaker 1: the state Farm app or something, and I know, like
[46:39] Speaker 1: people use the apps like test the monitor they're driving
[46:42] Speaker 1: and you know, maybe lower their rates, but they go
[46:46] Speaker 1: at it pretty fucking pretty aggressively, honestly.
[46:50] Speaker 3: Or an app that you know, the scrap bookers use,
[46:56] Speaker 3: or you know, people who are selling their art or
[46:59] Speaker 3: crafts out of their garage. You know that app begins
[47:03] Speaker 3: with a P. They really understand the behavior of their users.
[47:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, I could see. I could totally see that. I
[47:13] Speaker 1: was thinking Etsy once you said that, But I'm trying
[47:15] Speaker 1: to think I can't really come.
[47:17] Speaker 3: Up with pinterest sing.
[47:20] Speaker 2: Ye. Yeah.
[47:21] Speaker 3: But when you when you understand what's going on and
[47:23] Speaker 3: you can see it, and what's even what's even more
[47:29] Speaker 3: compelling is when you take that telemetry, which to a
[47:32] Speaker 3: normal person like you and me, means nothing, right, it
[47:36] Speaker 3: looks like telemetry, and you dump that into you know,
[47:41] Speaker 3: chatz ept or Claude and give it an instruction like
[47:45] Speaker 3: find me some patterns that are unique, or tell me
[47:49] Speaker 3: about this user in a you know develop the pattern
[47:52] Speaker 3: of life based upon this data, and it just it
[47:56] Speaker 3: unravels your story big time. And if we think about
[48:01] Speaker 3: it at scale, like okay, do this over the course
[48:04] Speaker 3: of a year and tell me how this person is
[48:08] Speaker 3: different from everybody else. That's that's where it becomes, you know,
[48:15] Speaker 3: a state sponsored approach becomes operationally significant.
[48:23] Speaker 1: One question I like about the data sets that people
[48:26] Speaker 1: buy are like you know, you know, adversarial countries buy
[48:30] Speaker 1: or whoever buys. Are those data sets like up till
[48:33] Speaker 1: this date or is it like continuous, like you're continuously
[48:37] Speaker 1: getting the same data based on like the whoever the
[48:40] Speaker 1: cohort of people that you bought. Is it like a
[48:43] Speaker 1: subscription or you pay like a lumsum, Like how does
[48:46] Speaker 1: it work?
[48:48] Speaker 3: You can do a you can do a big data buy,
[48:51] Speaker 3: you can do a subscription. It's it's near real time
[48:56] Speaker 3: based upon you know, the processing and when they're doing
[48:59] Speaker 3: the extraction. You know, if you think about people have
[49:05] Speaker 3: talked about you know, all of a sudden that you know,
[49:08] Speaker 3: two am, my device just started firing off and processing.
[49:14] Speaker 2: So this is.
[49:17] Speaker 3: The extraction you know, happens on a sort of a
[49:22] Speaker 3: scheduled basis. It's not pure real time, but it's near
[49:26] Speaker 3: real time and I got you up to date within easily,
[49:31] Speaker 3: you know, twelve hours.
[49:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty that's insane.
[49:36] Speaker 3: Which if you're trying to target, you know, you're trying
[49:39] Speaker 3: and whittle down or you're targeting and you go from
[49:41] Speaker 3: one hundred thousand people who have top secret clearances in
[49:45] Speaker 3: the DC area too, you know, the fifty that are
[49:49] Speaker 3: doing things with their device that indicate an operational posture
[49:53] Speaker 3: like powering down your phone in the middle of the
[49:56] Speaker 3: work day, against the population that never does that. You
[50:01] Speaker 3: are the anomaly and you've got a clearance and you're
[50:03] Speaker 3: powering down, and who else is powering down around the
[50:05] Speaker 3: same times, et cetera, et cetera. And when your phone
[50:09] Speaker 3: powers back up, all of that backfill shoots off to
[50:14] Speaker 3: the to the various apps. So you know, this is
[50:18] Speaker 3: this is how it works, and it's not that complicated,
[50:24] Speaker 3: but it's something that that people who are dealing in
[50:28] Speaker 3: life and death, not just advertisers, but they're dealing with
[50:34] Speaker 3: an adversary that's going to target them in way that
[50:38] Speaker 3: is uh, you know, the metrics are are far more acute.
[50:44] Speaker 3: This is something we need to fix.
[50:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, you brought up a great point, like you know, uh,
[50:50] Speaker 1: in a city where you know, everyone's on their phones
[50:53] Speaker 1: all day, and like there's a specific amount of folks
[50:56] Speaker 1: that just shut their phones down and that would stick
[51:00] Speaker 1: out like a sore thumb and would not be hard
[51:02] Speaker 1: to kind of sift through specifically too if you had like,
[51:05] Speaker 1: you know, large language models to it too, Like you know,
[51:07] Speaker 1: I could see it being as easy as fucking pie
[51:10] Speaker 1: to figure out.
[51:11] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you power down your phone. There isn't
[51:14] Speaker 3: some parameter that says you're a drug dealer, you're a spy,
[51:18] Speaker 3: you're committing crimes. You know that it doesn't. But again,
[51:22] Speaker 3: it is a behavioral indicator that is anomalous compared to
[51:27] Speaker 3: the rest of the population that never does any of
[51:31] Speaker 3: those things. Faraday bags toggling between airplane mode when you're
[51:35] Speaker 3: nowhere near an airport and you know, you're trying to
[51:40] Speaker 3: provide some some obsucation to what you're doing, but all
[51:44] Speaker 3: you're really doing is nominating yourself for inspection.
[51:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I hope that like at least
[51:53] Speaker 1: like you know, case officers, analysts, whoever, whoever's working in
[51:56] Speaker 1: an intel or jaysack, you know, National Secure Prey professionals
[52:00] Speaker 1: for the top secret clearance. I hope there's like some
[52:03] Speaker 1: ways of like spoofing that too, you know what I mean,
[52:06] Speaker 1: Like there's got I'm assuming there is, like, for the
[52:09] Speaker 1: love of God, but I could see where people, you know,
[52:13] Speaker 1: don't think it's a big deal, even even somebody with
[52:15] Speaker 1: a top secret clearance. Right, It's It's a wild world
[52:20] Speaker 1: we live in, man, It's like this whole second like
[52:22] Speaker 1: uh dimension of where we live.
[52:25] Speaker 2: You know, my.
[52:28] Speaker 3: Space only wished they were around today, right.
[52:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, one hundred percent they'd be making tons
[52:34] Speaker 1: of money off selling data, just targeting ads absolutely, Mike,
[52:40] Speaker 1: anything else, Man, you tell me the floor is yours?
[52:43] Speaker 3: No, man, I think we got it. Look, there are
[52:45] Speaker 3: there are solutions out there. I joined the board of
[52:51] Speaker 3: Unplugged because frankly, I got sick and tired of standing
[52:56] Speaker 3: in front of these people who are desperate for a
[52:59] Speaker 3: solution and not really having anything for them that that
[53:04] Speaker 3: wasn't some fancy op pham. So this convergence of privacy
[53:11] Speaker 3: as that substrate tradecraft makes a lot of sense to me,
[53:15] Speaker 3: having spent over a decade talking about this and educating
[53:21] Speaker 3: this community about this, and look, we don't have the
[53:26] Speaker 3: cognitive capacity to be monitoring and toggling and thinking through
[53:31] Speaker 3: all thinking through all of these risk surfaces layered on
[53:35] Speaker 3: top of we are, you know, in a denied area,
[53:39] Speaker 3: we're on the X, We're we got people shooting at us.
[53:41] Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit there and worry about my
[53:44] Speaker 3: stupid device. So we need something that just is a
[53:50] Speaker 3: permanent state to remove that that cognitive burden from from
[53:56] Speaker 3: people who are you know, already in a high risk situation.
[54:00] Speaker 3: We don't need to add more to that. And that's
[54:03] Speaker 3: that's where I see this as a variable in that,
[54:07] Speaker 3: in that solution space.
[54:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike a pleasure, dude. I want everybody to know that. Like,
[54:16] Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Mike's career and
[54:18] Speaker 1: the kind of shenanigans he got up to, Uh, there's
[54:22] Speaker 1: we have a long form interview with him on the
[54:24] Speaker 1: Team House.
[54:25] Speaker 2: I'll put the link in the description for that.
[54:29] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's kind of like when you sit and
[54:32] Speaker 1: think about it for a little bit, especially like a
[54:33] Speaker 1: layman like myself, it's it's kind of don't think to
[54:36] Speaker 1: think about and like it feels like an impossibility, Like
[54:39] Speaker 1: you can't avoid being on the phone and.
[54:42] Speaker 2: Stuff like that.
[54:43] Speaker 1: And I think we really like the normal, like the masses,
[54:48] Speaker 1: we really give up information about ourselves. We trade it
[54:53] Speaker 1: off for like convenience, right, And I think if everyone's
[54:56] Speaker 1: a little bit more cognizant of it, I think it
[54:58] Speaker 1: would be beneficial for them.
[55:00] Speaker 2: Uh, just as a whole. And forget it.
[55:03] Speaker 3: If you're in the operational community and you're you're struggling
[55:07] Speaker 3: and you know that you need to do something, contact me.
[55:10] Speaker 3: I will help you.
[55:13] Speaker 1: Cool you want me to put, I'll put your LinkedIn
[55:15] Speaker 1: and stuff like that is anywhere else you want people.
[55:17] Speaker 2: To follow you.
[55:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's about it, all.
[55:20] Speaker 1: Right, So the LinkedIn, I'll put it down in the
[55:22] Speaker 1: description and grab it, Dre And if you're listening on audio,
[55:25] Speaker 1: down in the show notes as well. Uh, Mike, awesome
[55:29] Speaker 1: as always, Thanks day, appreciate it.
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