S1: Unsupervised Learning is a podcast about trends and ideas in cybersecurity,
S1: national security, AI, technology and society, and how best to
S1: upgrade ourselves to be ready for what's coming. All right,
S1: welcome to Unsupervised Learning is Daniel and episode 471. Hope
S1: your week is going well. Updates on my side want
S1: to publicly shame myself here, so I basically hack and
S1: write for most of the day for work, and pretty
S1: much every single meal I have at some fast food restaurant,
S1: which is just unbelievable for somebody who is supposed to
S1: be smart. It is really bad for your health to
S1: do this, and it's really pure laziness and also just
S1: intimidation of like how to do this cooking thing properly
S1: and basically go and eat in the car and come
S1: back and get right back into working. Um, but I
S1: Must start cooking at home. Now, I put this in
S1: the newsletter and the newsletter went out before you're hearing this.
S1: As you probably know, and, uh, I got close to
S1: 500 email responses. It was absolutely overwhelming. It is. Hundreds
S1: of people reaching out already bought my pressure cooker or
S1: what is it? Instant pot already bought that thing because
S1: everyone pointed me to that being like the best way
S1: to do things. And, uh, got a specific one, which
S1: seemed to be like one of the most popular ones. Also,
S1: it was on Wirecutter, I think, as well. But, uh, yeah,
S1: I'm going to try to do the eggs thing. I'm
S1: going to try to do the steak thing and, uh,
S1: really appreciate all of you who responded to help me out.
S1: It sounds like a lot of us have been going
S1: through that and have figured it out to some degree.
S1: So really appreciate all the feedback. If you're into cloud security,
S1: you need to be following my buddy Rich mogul's cloud
S1: security lab a week. So cloud slaw is one of
S1: the absolute best cloud security people on Earth. And he's
S1: putting out really high quality labs for free, like every week.
S1: And he's like an EMT and he's like a really
S1: great guy. He's just fantastic. So definitely recommend you check
S1: him out. Cloud slaw. Rich Mogull and AI's ultimate use
S1: case transition from current to desired state. I'm going to
S1: do a separate video about this. So I'm not going
S1: to talk about this blog post. Cybersecurity. A lot of
S1: confusion about what's happening in the Trump administration supposedly standing
S1: down U.S. cyber operations around Russia. So stories first say
S1: it's like government wide, and then it's like, no, it's
S1: not really all the government. It's only certain departments. These
S1: things are happening so fast. You and you don't know
S1: the quality of the signal that we're getting from these
S1: different sources. So it's like I tend to like be
S1: waiting and just seeing what actually turns out to be
S1: the case because something could be hyper overblown. It's just
S1: really hard to track things right now because it's so
S1: much chaos going on. And I've got a lot to say, though,
S1: about the general vibe of the administration seeming to move
S1: towards Russia and away from trusting its own Intel people.
S1: So that is a really huge problem for me, which
S1: I'm going to talk about more below. VMware is releasing
S1: emergency patches for three actively exploited flaws in ESXi workstation
S1: and fusion new polyglot malware campaign called Suzano, targeting aviation
S1: and satellite companies in the UAE. Hirsch IoT intercoms are
S1: letting anyone with Google access unlock apartment doors due to
S1: known default credentials. So this is like somebody could use
S1: an app to, like, break into apartments who are protected
S1: by this particular type of IoT. When IoT was a
S1: big thing, like the talk about IoT was a big thing.
S1: When was that? Was that like 2012? 2015? I feel
S1: like it was around that area. And I did a
S1: lot of press at that time talking about it. And
S1: I was just like, I think this is kind of
S1: overblown because what people don't realize about this is you
S1: have to properly threat model. So you have to look
S1: at the Venn diagram of people who want to break
S1: into places and steal things and are willing to break
S1: the law in order to do that. That's one circle.
S1: The other circle is people who don't know how to
S1: do it. They are unable to get into the building.
S1: It's like too difficult. The locks are stopping them. The
S1: technology is stopping them. The security is stopping them. It's
S1: just a huge problem for them, right? They're not able
S1: to do it. Now, what does this look like for
S1: a Venn diagram? Now, to illuminate this more, think about
S1: what this particular vulnerability is actually going to do to
S1: these two, then to these two circles in the Venn.
S1: I think the answer is it's not going to add
S1: too many people to the ones who are actually willing
S1: to do the damage. And I don't think it's ultimately
S1: going to result in too many more people getting broken into. So,
S1: in other words, the people who want to break into
S1: apartment buildings, the people who want to break into, uh,
S1: people's homes, people's apartments. I don't think they are limited
S1: by not being able to get in. I think locks
S1: are too easy to pick and they can get by. Now,
S1: the question is, are there cameras that actually record them
S1: doing it? And here's a better question. The cameras aren't
S1: going away. So is the disincentive because of the cameras?
S1: Isn't that still there still stopping a person from potentially
S1: doing this. So I think people will see something like
S1: this and they're like, oh, that's game over. No, you
S1: have to threat model. This is why threat modeling is
S1: like one of the most important skill sets that you
S1: could learn for life in general. I'm very thankful for
S1: my security education and, you know, all the workshops and
S1: tabletops and everything I've done with threat modeling because it's
S1: a universal life skill, because a lot of things are
S1: emotionally charged. I'm moving to this new city. Oh, it's supposedly, uh,
S1: supposedly a dangerous area to be. Um, it's, you know,
S1: there's been x number of crimes in this area. There's
S1: X number of car crashes with this particular type of car.
S1: When you actually gather the data and throw together how
S1: you plan on using this thing, or how you plan
S1: on attackers using this thing or whatever, and you start
S1: moving through the scenarios that you're worried about. Usually you
S1: end up realizing the things you are emotionally worried about
S1: are not the ones, and oftentimes the things you're not
S1: emotionally worried about actually are the ones. So this is
S1: a big exercise in, you know, the work of Kahneman
S1: where he realized, you know, bias and mental models and
S1: perception is actually far more important to how we see
S1: the world than actual reality. And that really needs to
S1: be applied when you're thinking about things like this in,
S1: in cyber or other types of security. Brute forcing attackers
S1: are targeting thousands of ISP networks in the US and
S1: China to deploy stealers that grab crypto wallets and mine
S1: Monero on compromised systems. Meta terminated 20 employees for sharing
S1: internal info outside the company after recent stories about unannounced
S1: products and meetings. Really cool wired thing here. It's a
S1: wired video shows how Tesla vehicles record everything from driver
S1: behavior to biometric data. Ask some pretty smart privacy questions
S1: about this whole system. And yeah, it was a great video.
S1: I watched the whole thing and a lot of it
S1: is not alarming. A lot. Some of the stuff towards
S1: the end, the end is like really where the meat
S1: of this thing is basically talking about how there's been
S1: some cases of things being abused, like recordings from inside
S1: of cars and stuff like that. I don't think it's widespread.
S1: Otherwise we would have heard a lot more about it,
S1: but it's something to keep in mind. It's especially something
S1: to keep in mind when you're talking about like BYD,
S1: which is the main Tesla competitor, and they're likely to
S1: be here in the US soon, I'm guessing. And it's
S1: a pure Chinese company. Okay, so if they have the
S1: same sort of monitoring capability and infrastructure that Tesla does,
S1: but it's a Chinese company, whole different game for me.
S1: I've not been super worried about all this surveillance stuff
S1: inside of consumer tech, uh, because of how much I
S1: trust or don't trust the products, where I have cameras,
S1: where I have microphones in my house or in my car,
S1: and which companies I'm allowing to actually be part of
S1: that network. Right. So I trust Apple very highly, uh,
S1: not only because I worked there for a few years
S1: in the actual security group, but just because it's pretty
S1: clear how much importance they're putting on privacy and security.
S1: And I know that is confirmed for me personally because
S1: I've been on the inside. That's not the case for Google.
S1: For me, it's not the case for Amazon. For me,
S1: it's not the case for meta, necessarily. For me, not
S1: as much as Apple. And it's damn sure not the
S1: case for some Chinese company like TikTok or, or, uh,
S1: you know, ByteDance or whoever it is, or BYD when
S1: those cars come. So you got to think about who
S1: you're sending this stuff actually to. What are their long
S1: term goals? National security. China's research output on next gen
S1: chipmaking tech is now double that of the US, which
S1: suggests that the bands are actually forcing them to get
S1: smarter and more. Innovative. Innovative. That's a word. Innovative. So basically,
S1: I was trying to say innovative. I was trying to
S1: say like the British version of that word. Anyway, it
S1: didn't work, but we could be forcing innovation from China,
S1: where they were relying before on theft and relying before
S1: on just kind of like buying other people's good stuff.
S1: So we might be getting the exact opposite of what
S1: we planned on getting. We might be waking them up,
S1: which is which is really interesting to think about when
S1: you think about economics and like stimulus and response, but
S1: also quite concerning. Tulsi Gabbard, new director of national intelligence,
S1: is firing more than 100 intelligence officers for sharing explicit
S1: messages on an NSA internal platform. But I'm calling shenanigans
S1: on this. A number of my trans friends who know
S1: a lot about intelligence and cyber are saying this is 100%
S1: an attempt to remove trans people from government, and they're
S1: using like this explicit content thing as like the cover
S1: story for that. It looks like the messages in question
S1: were like about getting like bottom surgery. Similar topics. Kind
S1: of like women talking about post-pregnancy body issues or whatever.
S1: So it could be considered explicit or personal or gross
S1: or whatever in certain lights. But that's all part of
S1: being human, right? So the question is, were these the
S1: right forums to talk about such things? Was it like
S1: egregious or was it like partial? And I didn't see
S1: the messages. I don't know the forum they were doing
S1: this in. I actually did get a reach out from
S1: someone in the IC community, actually, kind of like on
S1: the inside around here around the topic, who actually did
S1: see all this stuff. And they said it was pretty
S1: egregious and it was pretty bad and I don't know.
S1: So first of all, they could be lying. Second of all,
S1: I don't think they were, but they could be lying.
S1: It's also a single data point. It's a single opinion.
S1: The point is, there's kind of two obvious ways to
S1: go here. Like, it was really bad, and they deserve
S1: to be punished or whatever. But I say there's two
S1: ways of looking at it. First of all, there's a
S1: bunch of trans people ignoring their work and spending their
S1: time talking about personal trans issues in an inappropriate forum
S1: in an inappropriate way when they should have been working.
S1: So they got fired. That's one way to think about it.
S1: Another way to think about it is Tulsi Gabbard is
S1: part of an extremely anti-trans administration that is looking for
S1: any excuse to fire trans people, even if it harms
S1: our ability to do intelligence work. And this is a
S1: cover story for doing so. Again, I'm not close to
S1: the sources, so I can't operate with any certainty. But giving,
S1: given what we know the administration is actually doing against
S1: trans people and how like aggressively they're going after this issue.
S1: I think it's more likely to be number two for me.
S1: That's just logical. TSMC is planning to invest $100 billion
S1: in US chip plants over the next four years, according
S1: to President Trump's announcement yesterday, which was a few days
S1: ago now. And I think this is great. Get all
S1: these companies here, Apple to spin them up in Arizona.
S1: Like we got plenty of desert. We got plenty of
S1: wide open spaces. Let's build some giant solar farms. Let's
S1: get chip production here. Let's get Apple production here. Let's
S1: get everything over here. Because the world is crazy. All right.
S1: I anthropic closed a $3.5 billion funding round that values
S1: the company at 61.5 billion. Revenue has grown 1,000% year
S1: over year. Really? Feels like they're quietly doing what OpenAI
S1: is loudly failing at. And I think this should be
S1: really encouraging for companies that enter spaces that seem like
S1: they're already won. Like you wouldn't want to go up
S1: against OpenAI in, say, early 2023. They just owned the
S1: entire AI world and there was nobody around to compete.
S1: And here we are beginning of 25, and we've got
S1: a few people competing and we've got open models competing.
S1: It's it's really encouraging, actually, as you know, if you're
S1: trying to get people excited about being creative and building,
S1: it's it's great to see somebody that was untouchable two
S1: years ago be very touchable now. OpenAI released GPT 4.5.
S1: Most people are not happy with it. It a lot
S1: of people are saying it doesn't feel smarter at all.
S1: And to me it felt like like a push, like
S1: PR release because sonnet 3.7 came out. Other models have
S1: come out recently and yeah, it just it didn't go well.
S1: They should have paused on that and waited for a
S1: bigger release that was more more baked, more proper marketing
S1: around it and everything. Chinese government is telling its AI
S1: experts to avoid US travel because they're worried they might
S1: leak Chinese secrets. Yeah. Leaking AI secrets. China's worried about it. Cool.
S1: Roger Penrose explains why Godel's theorem mathematically proves that artificial
S1: intelligence can't truly replicate human consciousness or understanding. I disagree
S1: with this, obviously, but it's Roger Penrose. I think he's
S1: a great thinker, or at least has been a great
S1: thinker on a lot of different topics. I know that
S1: there are a few areas, not counting AI, where I
S1: disagree with him, but doesn't matter. He is a top
S1: tier thinker and he disagrees with my position. Therefore I
S1: am putting it in the newsletter. Marc Benioff says Salesforce
S1: won't hire engineers in 2025 because their AI agents are
S1: doing the work so effectively. That sounds awesome and I
S1: kind of believe him. However, this is also direct marketing
S1: for Agent Force, which is their product. So hard to
S1: tell if this is marketing or real. New study shows
S1: that large language models are just echoing logical patterns without
S1: real understanding, which explains why they struggle with complex reasoning. Again,
S1: I want to see the best possible arguments against my position. Technology.
S1: Waymo now handles over 200,000 paid robotaxi rides weekly across
S1: three cities 20 times growth 20 x growth. That's how
S1: you're supposed to say that 20 x growth in just
S1: two years. BYD and DJI have created a $2,200 vehicle
S1: mounted drone launch platform that lets your BYD vehicle deploy
S1: and retrieve drones while driving up to 15mph. This is
S1: the kind of cool stuff that I'm talking about that
S1: BYD is coming out with. They also had a video
S1: recently of their electric car doing a turbo boost, like
S1: over a pothole or something. Insane stuff. Like they're doing
S1: some pretty innovative stuff. I'm worried about us carmakers competing
S1: against them, I really am. It's like, this is why
S1: I'm kind of like, I like Tesla as a foil
S1: against them, right? I'm obviously very unhappy with Elon right now.
S1: So that's that's got me a bit torn. But I
S1: do not want American car companies to fall to BYD
S1: because their cars are way cheaper, way cooler, and you know,
S1: no one else can keep up with them. It seems
S1: like Tesla's got the only chance. All right, humans, all right.
S1: The housing theory of everything argues that our catastrophically restrictive
S1: housing policies create cascading problems across society, from inequality to
S1: climate change. Many Doraiswamy Doraiswamy talks about how solopreneurs are
S1: becoming real competition to traditional companies thanks to AI coding,
S1: top MBA programs, seeing way fewer grads landing jobs quickly.
S1: With Harvard's unemployment rate jumping from 4 to 15% since 2021.
S1: Think about what a Harvard MBA with potentially not too
S1: much experience in the real world of business is able
S1: to do in a world full of very, very smart AI.
S1: What exactly are we getting from this Harvard MBA? I
S1: think so many things. This is kind of a meta
S1: analysis here. So many things that are extremely expensive and elitist.
S1: And they are those things because they are supply constrained.
S1: You can't get into Harvard. Therefore, Harvard is worth a lot.
S1: A degree from there is worth a lot, right? You
S1: it's hard to raise $200 million from a VC. Therefore,
S1: any company who makes a product that's backed by a
S1: VC and has raised $200 million. The product must be good.
S1: This is dying. This concept is dying. That's why things
S1: like Harvard are going to massively struggle, because the value
S1: of what they're actually producing is not going to be
S1: as good as if you watched a whole lot of
S1: YouTube and read a whole lot of books and did
S1: a whole lot of writing, right, and moved ideas through
S1: your mind very quickly, and actually worked with companies and
S1: had experience on the ground. The difference between that education
S1: and a Harvard education is about to be pretty vast,
S1: benefiting the YouTube side, not the Harvard side. Yet the
S1: YouTube one is available to you if you want to
S1: study right. This dynamic is going to change startups. It's
S1: going to change education. It's basically changing everything. It's like
S1: the it's not just AI, right? This is also a
S1: content explosion. This is also a YouTube trend vibe, where
S1: all the best content is coming out into blogs, coming
S1: out into YouTube. By the way, YouTube is blogging, right?
S1: It used to be that there were very few bloggers.
S1: Now there's very few YouTubers. I mean, a tiny percentage
S1: of 1% of people in the United States are actually
S1: putting out content on YouTube, just like it was with blogging.
S1: But that's where the content is, okay, both in blogging
S1: and newsletters, but also YouTube. This is the front edge
S1: of things, right? This is the front edge of things.
S1: This is where the content is. So just something to
S1: keep in mind. Researchers mapped porn titles from 2008 to
S1: 2023 and showed a disturbing migration in themes from Hot
S1: Blonde gets you know what to increasingly incestuous and violent
S1: concepts like I can't resist my stepsister. I find this
S1: really disturbing because it's like, I would love to get
S1: AI to look at this. Actually, I should go find
S1: this data set. This link here is actually the GitHub
S1: with the data in there and the data analysis. But
S1: I imagine you could take all those titles 2008 to 23.
S1: So what is this? This is like 1013 plus 215
S1: years of title data, 15 years of title data that
S1: you could put into, like whatever Google Studio. It would
S1: probably be pretty hard to actually do this on a
S1: on a pinnacle model, because it's going to be like, uh,
S1: what is this? These are all nasty words. Um, but
S1: maybe if you told it that you were doing research,
S1: maybe that would work, uh, like a prompt injection bypass technique.
S1: But anyway, the point is, you can put this into, like,
S1: Google Studio Flash 2.0 something with a large context, maybe even, like,
S1: you know, um, oh three mini oh one Pro. Uh,
S1: sonnet 37, one of the smarter ones. And just be like,
S1: I have a question. What the hell is happening to
S1: my society? Seeing these, uh, titles migrate from 2008 to 2023,
S1: what is going on? Uh, I'd be really excited to, like,
S1: see what it actually gives as an answer to that. Right. Well,
S1: I say excited. Uh, depressed. Um, yeah, I don't know.
S1: It's not quite depressed. It's more like worried. Concerned. Yeah. Anyway,
S1: number of young people not in education, employment or training.
S1: Neet has hit an 11 year high. I didn't use
S1: an Oxford comma. I'm canceling everything and getting off the internet.
S1: This is highly, highly scary. Yeah. I wonder if I
S1: copied something here from a sentence. Because this is a
S1: British story. Yeah. Did I copy and paste this Neet part?
S1: I don't know why that doesn't have an Oxford comma.
S1: It seriously disturbs me. All right. Solarpunk is a subgenre
S1: of sci fi that imagines a sustainable future where humans
S1: and nature thrive together using renewable technology. I've been a
S1: fan ever since the Chobani commercial by one of my
S1: favorite commercials ever. It is a yogurt commercial about solarpunk.
S1: It is fantastic. Go to the newsletter and click on
S1: this link. It is the best. Um, although talking to
S1: my friend who I'm hoping to have on the podcast soon,
S1: he's like, well, you know, Nazis love the solarpunk stuff.
S1: I'm like, why is it every time I tell you
S1: something's cool, you're like, yeah, there's a subgroup of like,
S1: crazy Catholics who are like super into this and they're
S1: like all very trad trad like, um, oriented, and they're
S1: trying to destroy technology or whatever. And I'm just like,
S1: oh my God. Every time I talk to it, every
S1: time I talk to him, I'm like, what is going on?
S1: But that should be a cool podcast if that happens
S1: within the next couple of weeks. We're going to talk
S1: about all the different sub political movements going on in
S1: the Bay area where we live, but also in general
S1: post liberalism ideas like that. It's going to be an
S1: insane episode. And Ellen might go on Jon Stewart's show
S1: and discuss Doge. That would be a cool debate slash discussion,
S1: hopefully a discussion. Hopefully it's good. Ellen, who shows up.
S1: All right. This is the end of the standard edition
S1: of the podcast, which includes just the news items for
S1: the week to get the rest of the episode, which
S1: includes my analysis, the discovery section that has all of
S1: the coolest tools and articles. I found this week, the
S1: recommendation of the week and the aphorism of the week.
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S1: Daniel maestro.com/upgrade. That's Daniel miessler.com/upgrade. We'll see you next time.
S1: Unsupervised learning is produced on Hindenburg Pro using an SM
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S1: Mysa.com slash newsletter. We'll see you next time.