Speaker 1: It's torture. It torture is my mind, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's just hard to move forward. It's hard
Speaker 1: to think about anything else because I just won't have
Speaker 1: him and take him and lay him to rest as
Speaker 1: he asked. That's Janice Dyson McAfee. She was the last
Speaker 1: woman married to John McAfee, the anti virus software pioneer,
Speaker 1: before he died. When we spoke to her, his body
Speaker 1: was still laying in the morgue in Spain. Even a
Speaker 1: year later, she still clearly remembered the moment she found
Speaker 1: out about his death. And then I saw the news. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of broke down, you know, and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of inconsolable for a while and just um,
Speaker 1: really in disbelief. John McAfee has been found dead in
Speaker 1: a Spanish prison cell, shortly after it was announced he
Speaker 1: would be extradited to the US to face charges of
Speaker 1: financial crimes. The founder of the anti virus saw where
Speaker 1: that bears his name, had just been ordered extradite into
Speaker 1: the United States on tax evasion charges. He was seventy
Speaker 1: five and a wild ride of a life. It was
Speaker 1: that was June one, inside the cell of a prison
Speaker 1: just outside Barcelona. Medics tried and failed to resuscitate him.
Speaker 1: McAfee was arrested in Barcelona as he was about to
Speaker 1: board a flight to Istanbul in October. In a tweet
Speaker 1: posted June tenth, McAfee told his one million Twitter followers
Speaker 1: quote there is much sorrow in prison disguised as hostility.
Speaker 1: Janna said that McAfee was allowed to make three eight
Speaker 1: minute phone calls a day from prison, so she talked
Speaker 1: to him all the time, and she was stunned by
Speaker 1: the news. I was trying to make arrangements to um
Speaker 1: go and see his body, and and and get his
Speaker 1: things from the prison, and just understand how it was that,
Speaker 1: you know, the world had found out before I did, her,
Speaker 1: before his attorney did. She was also living in Spain.
Speaker 1: She made her way over to the prison in front
Speaker 1: of a group of reporters. She said, he would never
Speaker 1: have done this, but he's a fighter. He's always a fighter,
Speaker 1: and anybody that knows John, that knows him even a
Speaker 1: little bit, knows that about him. He would never quit
Speaker 1: this way. He would never take his life in this way.
Speaker 1: She didn't believe that her partner would kill himself and
Speaker 1: that feeling only became stronger when she went to view
Speaker 1: the body. So I came into the room and there
Speaker 1: was um, you know, glass window in between and he
Speaker 1: was there and on the bourney, and so I couldn't
Speaker 1: see anything. He was completely completely covered. Um they had
Speaker 1: a sheet and a blanket wrapped over him, over top
Speaker 1: of him. Genesis suspicions seemed to add fuel to the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that were already beginning to take off. He
Speaker 1: would want his death to be a subject of great speculation.
Speaker 1: He was a He was a wild character. He had
Speaker 1: a tattoo that said whacked to remind people that if
Speaker 1: he was found to commit suicide, that he didn't do it. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I wonder in this if the joke is actually on us.
Speaker 1: The comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein came quickly. McAfee claimed that,
Speaker 1: like Epstein, he too was the target of powerful people
Speaker 1: who wanted him silenced. Maybe those comparisons were inevitable. Both
Speaker 1: men died in jail awaiting trial, and McAfee stoked those
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories himself. In October, he tweeted from prison, I'm
Speaker 1: contenting here. I have friends, The food is good all
Speaker 1: as well know that if I hang myself allah Epstein,
Speaker 1: it will be no fault of mine. McAfee's death raised
Speaker 1: a host of other questions. He was staying in a
Speaker 1: hotel owned by Russians that had previously been rated by
Speaker 1: the police. Who was he working with there? Why was
Speaker 1: he even in Spain? Anyway? We went to Barcelona and
Speaker 1: Cambriel's looking for answers. We thought talking to one of
Speaker 1: the people closest to McPhee would help, but Jana's only
Speaker 1: deep in the mystery. Here's contributing reporter Matthew Bremner. What
Speaker 1: kind of things were you doing? Um, you know, how
Speaker 1: long are you there for? Roughly? In general terms? No,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't want to go into details about,
Speaker 1: you know, the I really don't want to get into
Speaker 1: dates and time period. The hotel where you were reportedly
Speaker 1: staying was also a crypto mine that was owned by Russians.
Speaker 1: Can you confirm and deny that? Okay? I can either
Speaker 1: confirm nor deny that, okay. But what we're I mean
Speaker 1: it's I mean, obviously on John's Twitter there are videos
Speaker 1: with him appearing with Russians, So I mean something that's
Speaker 1: in the public sphere, something in the public record. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to I'm not gonna catch out here, I understand,
Speaker 1: but but I I enjoy breathing. Um. I don't want
Speaker 1: that to to stop happening. Yeah. No matter what you believe,
Speaker 1: whether you think his death was an international conspiracy or
Speaker 1: a desperate suicide, John McAfee's death in a Spanish jail
Speaker 1: was a pitiful end to the life of a one
Speaker 1: time cybersecurity pioneer, someone whose name was synonymous with network security,
Speaker 1: someone who was considered a technical genius before McAfee was
Speaker 1: an alleged criminal. He was an entrepreneur who helped build
Speaker 1: an industry that's now a pillar of Silicon Valley. It's
Speaker 1: a story that's been mostly forgotten in the deluge of
Speaker 1: salacious news that followed. But McAfee started from nothing and
Speaker 1: essentially kickstarted the modern cybersecurity business. It's hard to overstate
Speaker 1: how ubiquitous McAfee Anti virus soft where was for decades.
Speaker 1: Just about every time you logged onto a computer, first
Speaker 1: you see the Windows logo, then you see McAfee anti
Speaker 1: virus software scanning, always running in the bottom right hand
Speaker 1: corner of the screen. McAfee built a piece of software
Speaker 1: that dominated the technology industry in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: Like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, he was a leading
Speaker 1: tech founder of his day. Unlike so many of his peers,
Speaker 1: McAfee had a public personality and a profile, appearing frequently
Speaker 1: on television introducing audiences to the concept of a computer virus.
Speaker 1: John McAfee was a walking embodiment of the early Internet industry,
Speaker 1: both the good and the bad. He was idealistic, brash, brilliant,
Speaker 1: and wildly successful. He made moon money off of his invention,
Speaker 1: but then his life took a sharp turn. He squandered
Speaker 1: his fortune. Supposedly a hundred million dollars disappeared just like that.
Speaker 1: There were aerial accidents and deaths and escaped to Belize,
Speaker 1: and allegations of sex with miners and allegations of rape,
Speaker 1: accusations of murder, multiple arrests, multiple instances of fleeing the authorities,
Speaker 1: And just when it looked like McAfee was turning things
Speaker 1: around back in America, he makes an unlikely bid for president.
Speaker 1: He waged an unconventional and antagonistic campaign that in hindsight,
Speaker 1: doesn't look that different from Donald Trump's, and McAfee becomes
Speaker 1: a very early evangelist of cryptocurrencies. He amassed what would
Speaker 1: become a fortune in bitcoin before most people knew what
Speaker 1: it was. That's when the government went after him. He
Speaker 1: made one final run for his life, and it ended
Speaker 1: in his death. You're listening to Foundering. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jamie Tara Bay. I report on side were Security for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. I've been a foreign correspondent for over twenty years,
Speaker 1: and I spent about a decade as a conflict reporter.
Speaker 1: I've met and interviewed terrorists, war criminals, and dictators. Throughout
Speaker 1: my career. I've reported on men with God complexes, men
Speaker 1: who didn't believe they had to be accountable for their actions,
Speaker 1: men who may have gotten away with murder. In this
Speaker 1: season The Foundering, we will tell the story of John McAfee,
Speaker 1: how he walked the line between inventor and madman, how
Speaker 1: despite his early good fortune, his choices led him down
Speaker 1: the path towards a public and decades long self destruction.
Speaker 1: Over the course of this series, you'll hear the story
Speaker 1: of John McAfee's life and a reconstruction of his last
Speaker 1: moments based on interviews with colleagues, lovers, friends, and family members.
Speaker 1: Some of these people have never spoken publicly about him.
Speaker 1: The reporting spans the glory, tracing McAfee's legacy in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley to his escape to Central America and his final
Speaker 1: days on the quiet streets of Cambriel's Spain, to the
Speaker 1: legacy of his death. Here's our reporter, Matthew Bremner, in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: So it's quite weird to think that whilst we were
Speaker 1: just in the morgue there and we had it confirmed
Speaker 1: that the bodies are actually all kind of kept in
Speaker 1: a basement, that McAfee was only a matter of meters
Speaker 1: away from us, below our feet, in some fridge, piled
Speaker 1: on top of other bodies. What we found will demystify
Speaker 1: some of the lines John McAfee told throughout his life,
Speaker 1: reveal the secrets he kept and resolved questions surrounding his demise.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. One of the saw says I
Speaker 1: was talking to, asked, how do you tell the story
Speaker 1: of John McAfee. There are, frankly many stories, many lives,
Speaker 1: as it were, there was the Silicon Valley tycoon, the
Speaker 1: party animal, the spiritual guru, the international fugitive, the prophet
Speaker 1: of cyber security, and bitcoin, the alleged murderer and rapist,
Speaker 1: and in his last act, the death that launched countless
Speaker 1: new conspiracies. When mccafee tells his own life story, he
Speaker 1: always started the same way. He talks about his father,
Speaker 1: a violent alcoholic. Here he is on ABC in one
Speaker 1: of the things that was not idyllic, there was your father.
Speaker 1: He said that he was raging alcoholic, that he was
Speaker 1: abusive to you, like your mother. Nobody has an ideal life,
Speaker 1: even short dad. When you're they have shot himself. He
Speaker 1: shot himself. People aways looked at the best to explain
Speaker 1: the present doesn't work that way. McAfee's father was an
Speaker 1: American soldier based in southwest England. His mother, Joan Williams,
Speaker 1: was a bread She gave birth to John a little
Speaker 1: over two weeks after the official end of World War Two.
Speaker 1: The family moved to the US not long after. Here's
Speaker 1: Fran John's first wife. She asked us not to use
Speaker 1: her last name. Unfortunately, his father was a drinker and
Speaker 1: he turned He was the main drug, as they say.
Speaker 1: But John and his mom really had the brunt of
Speaker 1: the you know those ghosts in that guy's head. That
Speaker 1: was a living hell. France says, these early years of
Speaker 1: abuse haunted John and they kept company with him throughout
Speaker 1: his life. But absolutely he was abused emotionally. John had
Speaker 1: a tremendous, volatile temper, which is it comes from what
Speaker 1: happened to him during those years. Up until he's fifteen,
Speaker 1: McAfee spent most of his formative years in the town
Speaker 1: of Salem, Virginia. People close to the family told me
Speaker 1: he was sent to live with his aunt in England
Speaker 1: after his father died. He returned to the US in
Speaker 1: time to attend Roanoke College once he finished high school.
Speaker 1: He told ABC News that while he studied there, he
Speaker 1: also sold cocaine. Math came easy to me. I never studied.
Speaker 1: I just did what I felt like I should do
Speaker 1: in college mc if he says, he began peddling a
Speaker 1: product he knew he could sell, cocaine. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: that that drug dealing was really your first foray into entrepreneurship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it is. It's entrepreneurs it's it's everything, it's salesmanship.
Speaker 1: This is such a telling interview to me on a
Speaker 1: couple of levels. First of all, this attitude of superiority,
Speaker 1: almost articism, I don't need to study. It comes easily
Speaker 1: to me. Then there's the casual admission to drug dealing.
Speaker 1: Drugs will be a major factor in McAfee's life, cocaine
Speaker 1: in particular, and of course, his ability to spin an
Speaker 1: idea into a business was something he replicated repeatedly. After
Speaker 1: graduating from college, McAfee moved to Monroe, Louisiana, where he
Speaker 1: taught Matt as part of a graduate program he was
Speaker 1: doing at Northeast Louisiana State University. He met his first wife, Fran,
Speaker 1: when she was an eighteen year old student in his class,
Speaker 1: and he said that that very first day, right after
Speaker 1: that very first class, they got together. Fran remembers it
Speaker 1: slightly differently. I met him when I was eighteen, probably
Speaker 1: he was teaching MATT and I walked into my classroom,
Speaker 1: and he from the get go, he made it so obvious.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was like he latched on. He was
Speaker 1: I won't say it was like a vulture by any means,
Speaker 1: but he picked me out of the group to the
Speaker 1: point that it was really embarrassing for me because we
Speaker 1: had this whole classroom there. He made no bones about
Speaker 1: it that he was attracted to me. In fact, I
Speaker 1: went home that evening and I said, Mama, I've got
Speaker 1: to get out of this classroom because I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be able to learn maths. And of course she said,
Speaker 1: old frand You'll be just fine. But I knew his
Speaker 1: behavior sounded pretty aggressive, practically predatory. But he eventually wore
Speaker 1: her down and they started dating. Once their relationship became known,
Speaker 1: McAfee was fired by the university and he soon moved
Speaker 1: back to Virginia. That was after the university decided that
Speaker 1: John didn't need to be teaching school, but they allowed
Speaker 1: him to finish out his curriculum that semester because he
Speaker 1: was working towards his doctorate through their program. With his
Speaker 1: academic qualifications in hand, McAfee went on to work at
Speaker 1: a couple of high profile companies Serox, UNIVAC, Siemens, Booze Allen,
Speaker 1: and lockeed Martin. The one who seemed to have been
Speaker 1: most proud of was his time at NASA. He went
Speaker 1: to work at the god Art Institute for Space Studies,
Speaker 1: which is on the campus of Columbia University in New
Speaker 1: York City. He was there from night for about two years.
Speaker 1: In six McAfee described his work at NASA. In a
Speaker 1: knop ed for Business Insider, McAfee claimed that he encrypted
Speaker 1: the image is sent by the Tyrous Weather satellite when
Speaker 1: he worked at NASA in ninety I asked NASA several
Speaker 1: times about McAfee's time there. They said, yes, he briefly
Speaker 1: worked as a programmer, but several current and former NASA
Speaker 1: employees I spoke to could not confirm his assertions about
Speaker 1: what he did there, and he made other claims that
Speaker 1: he'd worked on the Apollo programs and that he came
Speaker 1: up with the solution to ten years of data coming
Speaker 1: in from space without any system to process it. Former
Speaker 1: NASA engineer Jim Cameron told me this was simply not plausible.
Speaker 1: He worked at the same Godard Institute of Space Studies
Speaker 1: years after McAfee left. He said McAfee's accounts was an
Speaker 1: insult to the people whose names are recorded in the
Speaker 1: volumes of NASA's history. As you'll hear, this is a
Speaker 1: bit of a pattern with John McAfee. He had a
Speaker 1: tendency to tell tall tales, to exaggerate, and even straight
Speaker 1: up fabricate. That's dint a xerox. He told one biographer
Speaker 1: he was based in London for the company, and was
Speaker 1: flown first class every weekend for six months back to
Speaker 1: New York to see his family. Not true, people close
Speaker 1: to the family said, those were just some of the
Speaker 1: many lines and exaggerations we've come across. He would later
Speaker 1: brag about all the journalists he'd played with, the tails
Speaker 1: he'd spun. Eventually, McAfee made his way to Palo Alto.
Speaker 1: He landed at a company called Omex in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: They were one of the first companies to build storage
Speaker 1: devices for data on glass discs that held several gigabytes.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Rebecca Costa, a colleague at his at Omex.
Speaker 1: She says her first meeting with John was memorable, and
Speaker 1: I remember looking out of my office window and seeing
Speaker 1: this guy drive up in a motorcycle with a black
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson looking leather jacket and show up at like
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock in the afternoon. Now, in those days we
Speaker 1: worked eight to five. There weren't flex hours, and he
Speaker 1: didn't even have a a knapsack or a backpack or anything.
Speaker 1: He just walked in and I thought somebody should call security.
Speaker 1: Who is the So McAfee comes walking up the stairs,
Speaker 1: and he came around the corner and I remember him saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you must be Rebecca cost I'm John McAfee. I'm the
Speaker 1: I had up a research and development and I was
Speaker 1: a little taken back, and I said, well, great, um,
Speaker 1: we were supposed to have a meeting at eight this morning.
Speaker 1: Again he said yeah, but I was hungover in Rebecca
Speaker 1: was one of a handful of women with senior executive
Speaker 1: roles in Silicon Valley. She headed product development. John headed research.
Speaker 1: His job was to design the software for the operating systems.
Speaker 1: So I said, would you mind if I came over
Speaker 1: to the lab and spent some time with you there
Speaker 1: to try to understand the technology better? And and he
Speaker 1: was very forthcoming. And it took me all of fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes in the R and D lab to realize he
Speaker 1: was brilliant. And I didn't I didn't care about the
Speaker 1: rest of it. I didn't care if he set up
Speaker 1: a bar in R and D and drank all day long.
Speaker 1: If if he could solve the kinds of technical problems
Speaker 1: he was solving, then he was my guy. By this point,
Speaker 1: John McAfee's character was set. He lived and worked according
Speaker 1: to his own rules, and he found himself in an
Speaker 1: environment where that was okay. He was going to show
Speaker 1: up when he was going to show up. I couldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily trust him to meet deadlines or stay within budget.
Speaker 1: But I did what old companies should do with brilliance,
Speaker 1: surround them with people that aren't as brilliant. You know.
Speaker 1: I was one of the people that was surrounding John
Speaker 1: to make John effective so that we could harness him.
Speaker 1: Those days that Omes were heady, just as they were
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of Silicon Valley. There was a sense
Speaker 1: of pioneership, that new ground was being broken in an
Speaker 1: industry that was still coming up with names for itself.
Speaker 1: People were creating things that had never existed before. They
Speaker 1: were and no rules here. There were no checks on
Speaker 1: people's behavior. Everybody was snorting coke, everybody was sleeping under
Speaker 1: their desks. And by the way, OMEX wasn't that unusual
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. You know, you would drive by these
Speaker 1: startups and the entire parking lot would still be full.
Speaker 1: We didn't go home. There were days where I had
Speaker 1: to go in and literally tell John to go home
Speaker 1: and take a shower. He smelled bad. Those were days
Speaker 1: of wild successes and spectacular failures. The mouse was invented.
Speaker 1: Around this time, Apple, Atari, and Hewlett Packard were all
Speaker 1: making their products right in the valley. The people at
Speaker 1: Omex were creating new technology alongside those other companies, but
Speaker 1: the products they were pushing out weren't selling. Rebecca says
Speaker 1: the writing was on the wall for Omex, and both
Speaker 1: she and John McAfee left the free wheeling company after
Speaker 1: a couple of years there and when John decided to
Speaker 1: create his own startup, McAfee and associates that mixture of
Speaker 1: work and play, the recklessness and the chaos would be
Speaker 1: part of the company's very foundation. That's next, Let's talk
Speaker 1: about technology in the eighties and early nineties. Back then,
Speaker 1: technology seemed so alien to people. In movies, computers were
Speaker 1: consistently portrayed as evil, like in the Matthew Broderick film
Speaker 1: War Games, where in Hello, shall we play a game?
Speaker 1: Hollywood played on people's distrust of the unfamiliar. Folks who
Speaker 1: did have computers were more often programmers, people who worked
Speaker 1: with them for a living, or yes, gamers. Here's Paul Ferguson,
Speaker 1: who's been in cyber security for over thirty years, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of hackers who wanted to know how
Speaker 1: things work. And when you take things apart, you put
Speaker 1: them back together and you know how they work. You
Speaker 1: become an expert, which also five lover buildings, and then
Speaker 1: you can build a whole industry out of it. Paul
Speaker 1: says that it was a moment where possibilities felt endless.
Speaker 1: The basic building blocks of today's computer technology were being
Speaker 1: formed with little thought for the consequences. Collectively, as an industry,
Speaker 1: we didn't really think about how some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that we designed and built and put into place to
Speaker 1: enable all this wonderful connectivity could be used to steal
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars out of your bank account or take
Speaker 1: down the all the news sites in Estonia. In those
Speaker 1: exhilarating days of the early Internet, McAfee was living in
Speaker 1: Santa Clara. He was in his early forties, working at
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin, and he was already onto a new wife,
Speaker 1: a woman named Judy. Here's Jim Lynch who lived next
Speaker 1: door to the car ball for about ten years. There
Speaker 1: were the kind of neighbors who had waved to each
Speaker 1: other over the fence and chat about their jobs. He
Speaker 1: had a phone line brought into his house a separate
Speaker 1: one from his regular phone line, and he put a
Speaker 1: computer there and hooked it up, and it was what
Speaker 1: they called them bulletin boards, so it's basically a chat room.
Speaker 1: Bullets and boards were like an early version of web
Speaker 1: forums or social media. People could connect their computers through
Speaker 1: phone lines and trade ideas. Jim says that McAfee was
Speaker 1: a programmer. He was a gamer. He was obsessed with puzzles.
Speaker 1: He'd upload computer programs onto those bullets and boards and
Speaker 1: delve into discussions with people who had logged on from
Speaker 1: around the world. McAfee could sense an opportunity surrounding the Internet.
Speaker 1: He became particularly fascinated with computer viruses. Jim says the
Speaker 1: first virus that caught McAfee's attention was one called the
Speaker 1: Pakistani Brain. We had coffee together in the front yard
Speaker 1: one sunny Sunday morning and he said something about, I've
Speaker 1: got an interesting new problem to solve, and there's this
Speaker 1: virus called the Pakistani Brain. He explained something to me
Speaker 1: about it, what it did and uh, and that he
Speaker 1: was fascinated with this. And then it was a few
Speaker 1: weeks later that he said this might be the business
Speaker 1: opportunity of a lifetime for me, and I might not
Speaker 1: be at Lockeed any longer. The Pakistani brain virus was
Speaker 1: a self replicating virus that automatically copied onto disks. It's
Speaker 1: read luck wildfire. Jim says it puzzled McAfee. He took
Speaker 1: it apart, studied it and figured out how it worked,
Speaker 1: and with the help of a programmer named Dennis Yell,
Speaker 1: who soon went to work for him, McAfee created his
Speaker 1: first anti virus software program. He describes it on ABC.
Speaker 1: I was figuring out, Oh, yeah, I can stop this yere,
Speaker 1: I thought this year, I can do that. I can
Speaker 1: actually removed the thing and wrote a program in a
Speaker 1: day and a half. So mcfe anti virus was created
Speaker 1: in a day and a half. And how old did
Speaker 1: it worked? Four million people were using it within a month.
Speaker 1: Four million people within a month, and McAfee went even
Speaker 1: further to drum up publicity. Here's James Spafford, a computer
Speaker 1: scientist at Purdue University who was active in the anti
Speaker 1: virus community, and apparently I've seen pictures. He had gotten
Speaker 1: a truck that he had dressed up as an anti
Speaker 1: virus response unit with lights and big signs on it. Uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like an amplified version of Ghostbusters doing with
Speaker 1: the ambulance, And when companies would report a virus, he'd
Speaker 1: drive this to their site to eliminate the virus. The
Speaker 1: business kind of took off from there. I guess this
Speaker 1: was late nineteen seven, early McAfee's business was really taking off.
Speaker 1: His house now had several phone lines leading into it.
Speaker 1: More people came into work. One person made the top
Speaker 1: of the washing machine her workspace so she could answer called.
Speaker 1: Another was working from the kitchen table. And Paul says
Speaker 1: the product was legitimately good. So it was a gold standard,
Speaker 1: I mean, and pretty much if there was a detection
Speaker 1: on McAfee's you pretty much could feel confident in the
Speaker 1: fact that it was not false positive. Right, So there
Speaker 1: was a general consensus that there. It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: piece of crap software scanner that it might tell you
Speaker 1: if you were in vector or not. It was actually
Speaker 1: quality in it. It had a good decent reputation. The
Speaker 1: business model was simple, and McAfee was pretty clever about it.
Speaker 1: He didn't put a price on the software he was
Speaker 1: sending out there. It was called shareware. Anyone could download
Speaker 1: the software on their personal computer for free, but when
Speaker 1: the business wanted the software, they needed a license to
Speaker 1: use it, and that's where the money was coming from.
Speaker 1: McAfee became the go to guy in the media to
Speaker 1: talk about viruses. They were slowly making their way into
Speaker 1: the public's mindset as the Internet became more and more
Speaker 1: of a thing. Here he is on PBS News Hour.
Speaker 1: I see infections of small companies where every computer has
Speaker 1: become infected and the company is near collapse from financial loss.
Speaker 1: Virus expert John McAfee, president of a newly formed computer
Speaker 1: virus association, helps companies recover from attacks. The problem is
Speaker 1: getting worse. We're seeing a new virus arrive on the
Speaker 1: scene at the rate of about one a month now.
Speaker 1: Most of the new viruses are worse than the old
Speaker 1: viruses because they are more subtle, more sophisticated, and they
Speaker 1: cause a great deal more damage. This is a simulation
Speaker 1: of an attack by a virus that infected four hundred
Speaker 1: computers in Mexico earlier this year. Its effects are obvious,
Speaker 1: but most viruses work surreptitiously, erasing data files and programs
Speaker 1: before they're detected. McAfee and others have developed new countermeasures
Speaker 1: called vaccines and anti viral programs that detect and neutralize
Speaker 1: viral infections. A few years later, the scariest virus yet
Speaker 1: came on the scene. It was called the Michelangelo virus,
Speaker 1: and what made it different was that it was said
Speaker 1: to infect a device but remain dormant until March six,
Speaker 1: the birthday of the famous Italian sculptor and painter. The
Speaker 1: virus would then override the data on that disc, destroy
Speaker 1: the disc, and make it impossible to get that data back.
Speaker 1: The alarm this caused sent purchases of antivirus software skyrocketing.
Speaker 1: Here's McAfee talking to Jim Lauer on PBS News. Our
Speaker 1: first to you, Mr McAfee, What is though, the potential
Speaker 1: for having from this thing. Well, we know that on
Speaker 1: the sixth of Mara, if you are infected with this virus,
Speaker 1: it will destroy all of the data in your hard disk.
Speaker 1: The question is how many systems are infecting. Estimates range
Speaker 1: anywhere from fifty thousand to five million, depending upon the number,
Speaker 1: and depending upon the number that is still infected by tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The habit could be substantial. But you don't have there's
Speaker 1: no way to know how many have been infected. What
Speaker 1: depends on who you believe and and who you listen to.
Speaker 1: But even the smallest estimate, so let's assume that only
Speaker 1: one in one thousand computers are infected. That's sixty thousand
Speaker 1: computers worldwide, and at an estimate of five hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for each one to recover, we're still talking
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars at the very low end in terms
Speaker 1: of global costs. But in this case, Lara brought on
Speaker 1: a second computer expert, a guying named Charles Rothstein from
Speaker 1: the National Computer Security Association, and he had a different
Speaker 1: perspective on the michael Angelo virus threattin anything you want
Speaker 1: to add or subtract to that. As far as the
Speaker 1: impact of this, yes, I think rs months are actually
Speaker 1: significantly lower than that. Current estimates for virus infections by
Speaker 1: Michelangelo in the US are currently from our group around
Speaker 1: ten to twenty tho uh. And we also say that
Speaker 1: it probably won't be as expensive as as Mr McAfee says.
Speaker 1: Under certain circumstances, when they are infected, it may not
Speaker 1: cost a million dollars to clean up, So we think
Speaker 1: there will be fewer infections costing less. We called childs
Speaker 1: up for this podcast. Apparently he was only a college
Speaker 1: student when he was invited to appear on PBS News Hour,
Speaker 1: And unlike McAfee, he wasn't selling anti virus software. I
Speaker 1: was told I was I was being brought on simply
Speaker 1: to provide an objective view of someone who didn't have
Speaker 1: any financial interest. Um. You know, it's it's been said
Speaker 1: many times in many parts of life that if you
Speaker 1: want to find the truth, follow the money. And you know,
Speaker 1: we had no vested interest. There was no money trail
Speaker 1: for us in you know, inflating or deflating, you know, expectations.
Speaker 1: But for someone who was running an anti virus company
Speaker 1: at the time, as John was, there was certainly a
Speaker 1: financial interest in making this perhaps a bigger deal than
Speaker 1: it was. In the end, the virus impacted a number
Speaker 1: of devices, closer to Charles's more conservative prediction a few thousands,
Speaker 1: but the anti virus software industry exploded and McAfee software
Speaker 1: dominated the desktop computer market. My recollection was that it
Speaker 1: was truly ubiquitous. It was fair to say that they
Speaker 1: had the leading market share at that time. Um, and
Speaker 1: it became you know, more of a household name than
Speaker 1: most of the other anti virus suites at the time.
Speaker 1: They had deals YEP that preinstalled it on many computers.
Speaker 1: By this point, venture capitalists began calling the office looking
Speaker 1: to invest and proposing to take the company public. Jim
Speaker 1: Lynch remembers taking at least one of those call, and
Speaker 1: so I went into John, I said, can you take
Speaker 1: a call? Somebody's asking about the business, And so I
Speaker 1: handed in that call and that led to him talking
Speaker 1: to the vcs them investing in the company with a
Speaker 1: plan to take the company public. Jim Lynch says they
Speaker 1: didn't need to go public the company was making so
Speaker 1: much money, but McAfee saw this as his opportunity to
Speaker 1: achieve another level of success in his career. The investors
Speaker 1: brought in new management to prepare McAfee and associates first
Speaker 1: I p O. One of the new employees, Andrea Nation,
Speaker 1: said she found herself covering for John when his wife,
Speaker 1: Judy would come to her with questions. Judy was kind
Speaker 1: of like a thorn in my side, always asking questions,
Speaker 1: questioning credit card bills, you know, company American Express bills
Speaker 1: and everything. And I don't throw anybody under the bus
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, like when it comes to stuff
Speaker 1: like that. We've reached out to Judy for comment. She
Speaker 1: has not responded to us as of this recording. The
Speaker 1: stuff like that, Andrea mentions had to do with a
Speaker 1: series of competitions that took place within the office. They
Speaker 1: kept a running tally of who had sex with witch
Speaker 1: colleague and where, and there was a name for the
Speaker 1: group of people involved with the Yeah, so they had
Speaker 1: the Little Foxes group. And you know, you would get
Speaker 1: points around the office for having sex and all this
Speaker 1: other stuff, and you know I would, I would clean
Speaker 1: Bill's desk off. And the first time he saw me
Speaker 1: doing it, he's like, you don't have to do that.
Speaker 1: What do you like? You know that's above and beyond.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yes I do. I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: the most points in the office. And I told him
Speaker 1: and he's like, why did we have to get rid
Speaker 1: of the would getting rid of these crazy people? Bill
Speaker 1: is Bill Larson, the man tasked by investors to take
Speaker 1: over the company's leadership. Andrea is saying that she was
Speaker 1: wiping down his desk because other employees had had sex
Speaker 1: on it the night before. Because in their workplace, games
Speaker 1: sex on the new Bosses desk scored the most points.
Speaker 1: Andrea says McAfee's office was truly bizarre. There was three
Speaker 1: employees and they would tell us that they were witches,
Speaker 1: and they would sit at the conference table and they
Speaker 1: do their wiccan ceremonies. We had other people that used
Speaker 1: to come to work in like renaissance clothing. Um one Halloween,
Speaker 1: a guy like actually just wore a cop piece, you know.
Speaker 1: But they were so used to just being able to
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted to do. And when when the
Speaker 1: suit and tie guy came in with Bill, you know,
Speaker 1: that was really hard for these people. You know. Bill
Speaker 1: Lawson was the chief student taie guy. He was brought
Speaker 1: in by venture capitalists to make McAfee and Associates run
Speaker 1: more like a company that could go public and meet
Speaker 1: SEC requirements. So Bill became the new CEO. McAfee was
Speaker 1: named chief technical officer of his own company, and the
Speaker 1: two never saw eye to eye. John was a amazing
Speaker 1: technical genius, but he wasn't a leader. He couldn't take
Speaker 1: the company to the next level. On what Bill Larson
Speaker 1: did was amazing. Bill Lawson was ready for McAfee to
Speaker 1: leave and McAfee was ready to cash out. She says,
Speaker 1: I think it was John's mindset, you know, number one, like,
Speaker 1: you know funck this. You know, these guys are taking
Speaker 1: this away. But you know, I think he knew in
Speaker 1: the back of his mind that he shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1: Bill always told me from day one, He's like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get a big building and everybody's going to see
Speaker 1: the name of the company, but it's not gonna be McAfee,
Speaker 1: you know. Bill Lawson eventually got rid of the entire
Speaker 1: original crew of McAfee and associates. McAfee stepped down as
Speaker 1: an employee in nine and as a board member in
Speaker 1: From our internal calculations, his cash disbursements and stock sales
Speaker 1: earned him about eighty four million dollars. I spoke to
Speaker 1: a number of cybersecurity experts who said that McAfee anti
Speaker 1: virus software shaped computer security for decades onward. Because McAfee
Speaker 1: introduced his product at just the right time, right when
Speaker 1: many of today's technologies were being developed. He sparked an
Speaker 1: entire industry built around convincing people to buy new things
Speaker 1: that would keep their systems secure. That was his genius.
Speaker 1: Here's Allan Lisca, who's an authority in cybersecurity. He's worked
Speaker 1: in the industry for nearly thirty years, both as an
Speaker 1: ethical hacker and a threat intelligence analyst. All of this
Speaker 1: and it kind of all started with John McAfee, where
Speaker 1: he convinced people, oh, no, you shouldn't make a more
Speaker 1: secure operating system. Instead, you should just buy my software
Speaker 1: and put that on the operating systems. Alan Liska says
Speaker 1: that as more and more people went online, they were
Speaker 1: told antivirus software was a must, and when that wasn't enough,
Speaker 1: they were told they had to buy more security features,
Speaker 1: firewalls and proxies and gateways, male security programs. McAfee set
Speaker 1: us on the road where instead of building safer operating systems,
Speaker 1: we buy add ons, and that hard sell continues today.
Speaker 1: So rather than pitching people to improve Microsoft security, go
Speaker 1: buy my thing instead, and then you know, my company
Speaker 1: makes lots of money. So that's kind of the genius
Speaker 1: of John McAfee, not the programming, but his ability to
Speaker 1: sell this thing that really people should need. What people
Speaker 1: should be doing is saying, please make more secure software.
Speaker 1: So what he's saying is there was a moment when
Speaker 1: software developers could have resolved to create more secure networks,
Speaker 1: but instead they relied on anti virus software for protection.
Speaker 1: So it begs the question did McAfee actually create a
Speaker 1: less secure world? In some ways, this was the beginning
Speaker 1: of the cybersecurity industry, a world we know today that
Speaker 1: is dominated by firms that are called in when companies
Speaker 1: like Colonial Pipeline get hacked and the gas stops pumping.
Speaker 1: These are the people hired to fight viruses and hackers,
Speaker 1: to deal with a tax that encrypt data and demand ransoms.
Speaker 1: And John McAfee was kind of like the midwife and
Speaker 1: he made bank out of it. Here's Charles Rudstein. It
Speaker 1: was an extraordinary amount of money in any era. Today
Speaker 1: it means you never have to work again and you
Speaker 1: can do whatever you want with the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: And back then it was worth some multiple of that.
Speaker 1: So in short strokes, you know the guy hadn't made.
Speaker 1: He had it made. But in just over a decade
Speaker 1: McAfee will say that he squandered almost all his money.
Speaker 1: In less than three decades, he would be hanging in
Speaker 1: a jail cell. How did he wind up losing it all?
Speaker 1: That's next time on foundering the John McAfee. Story Foundering
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Jamie Tara Bay. Sean Wyn is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Matthew Bremner can bitted reporting to this
Speaker 1: episode special thanks to Eilena Pang. Molly Nugent is our
Speaker 1: associate producer. Sharif Yusef is our audio engineer, Mark Million
Speaker 1: and Vander May, Andy Martin and Molly Shoots are our
Speaker 1: story editors. Be sure to subscribe and if you like
Speaker 1: our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends
Speaker 1: see you next time.