WEBVTT - McAfee Part 1: The Virus 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:04.840 It's torture. It torture is my mind, you know, I 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:06.960 don't know. It's just hard to move forward. It's hard 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:12.119 to think about anything else because I just won't have 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.000 him and take him and lay him to rest as 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:19.479 he asked. That's Janice Dyson McAfee. She was the last 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:23.439 woman married to John McAfee, the anti virus software pioneer, 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.840 before he died. When we spoke to her, his body 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.840 was still laying in the morgue in Spain. Even a 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.360 year later, she still clearly remembered the moment she found 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:38.520 out about his death. And then I saw the news. Um, yeah, 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:40.559 I just kind of broke down, you know, and I was, 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:46.440 you know, kind of inconsolable for a while and just um, 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:51.040 really in disbelief. John McAfee has been found dead in 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.920 a Spanish prison cell, shortly after it was announced he 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:56.880 would be extradited to the US to face charges of 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.280 financial crimes. The founder of the anti virus saw where 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.279 that bears his name, had just been ordered extradite into 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.880 the United States on tax evasion charges. He was seventy 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.160 five and a wild ride of a life. It was 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:17.720 that was June one, inside the cell of a prison 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:23.119 just outside Barcelona. Medics tried and failed to resuscitate him. 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.200 McAfee was arrested in Barcelona as he was about to 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.759 board a flight to Istanbul in October. In a tweet 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.320 posted June tenth, McAfee told his one million Twitter followers 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.480 quote there is much sorrow in prison disguised as hostility. 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.120 Janna said that McAfee was allowed to make three eight 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.200 minute phone calls a day from prison, so she talked 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.320 to him all the time, and she was stunned by 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:54.160 the news. I was trying to make arrangements to um 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.160 go and see his body, and and and get his 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:02.200 things from the prison, and just understand how it was that, 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.280 you know, the world had found out before I did, her, 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.920 before his attorney did. She was also living in Spain. 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.080 She made her way over to the prison in front 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.519 of a group of reporters. She said, he would never 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.359 have done this, but he's a fighter. He's always a fighter, 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:22.240 and anybody that knows John, that knows him even a 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.200 little bit, knows that about him. He would never quit 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:29.000 this way. He would never take his life in this way. 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.560 She didn't believe that her partner would kill himself and 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.600 that feeling only became stronger when she went to view 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.960 the body. So I came into the room and there 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.760 was um, you know, glass window in between and he 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.000 was there and on the bourney, and so I couldn't 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:50.079 see anything. He was completely completely covered. Um they had 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:52.920 a sheet and a blanket wrapped over him, over top 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:57.160 of him. Genesis suspicions seemed to add fuel to the 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.960 conspiracy theories that were already beginning to take off. He 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.120 would want his death to be a subject of great speculation. 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.480 He was a He was a wild character. He had 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:10.120 a tattoo that said whacked to remind people that if 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:12.919 he was found to commit suicide, that he didn't do it. Oh, man, 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.560 I wonder in this if the joke is actually on us. 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:22.160 The comparisons to Jeffrey Epstein came quickly. McAfee claimed that, 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.079 like Epstein, he too was the target of powerful people 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:31.800 who wanted him silenced. Maybe those comparisons were inevitable. Both 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:36.440 men died in jail awaiting trial, and McAfee stoked those 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:42.240 conspiracy theories himself. In October, he tweeted from prison, I'm 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.040 contenting here. I have friends, The food is good all 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.760 as well know that if I hang myself allah Epstein, 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.440 it will be no fault of mine. McAfee's death raised 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.280 a host of other questions. He was staying in a 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.720 hotel owned by Russians that had previously been rated by 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.160 the police. Who was he working with there? Why was 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:08.520 he even in Spain? Anyway? We went to Barcelona and 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:12.080 Cambriel's looking for answers. We thought talking to one of 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.880 the people closest to McPhee would help, but Jana's only 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:20.599 deep in the mystery. Here's contributing reporter Matthew Bremner. What 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.680 kind of things were you doing? Um, you know, how 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.880 long are you there for? Roughly? In general terms? No, 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.240 I just I just don't want to go into details about, 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:33.640 you know, the I really don't want to get into 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:38.520 dates and time period. The hotel where you were reportedly 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:43.080 staying was also a crypto mine that was owned by Russians. 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.760 Can you confirm and deny that? Okay? I can either 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.520 confirm nor deny that, okay. But what we're I mean 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.960 it's I mean, obviously on John's Twitter there are videos 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.600 with him appearing with Russians, So I mean something that's 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.240 in the public sphere, something in the public record. I'm 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.120 not trying to I'm not gonna catch out here, I understand, 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.680 but but I I enjoy breathing. Um. I don't want 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:16.600 that to to stop happening. Yeah. No matter what you believe, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.520 whether you think his death was an international conspiracy or 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.440 a desperate suicide, John McAfee's death in a Spanish jail 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:26.800 was a pitiful end to the life of a one 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:32.000 time cybersecurity pioneer, someone whose name was synonymous with network security, 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:37.600 someone who was considered a technical genius before McAfee was 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:41.200 an alleged criminal. He was an entrepreneur who helped build 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.080 an industry that's now a pillar of Silicon Valley. It's 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.960 a story that's been mostly forgotten in the deluge of 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.000 salacious news that followed. But McAfee started from nothing and 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:57.240 essentially kickstarted the modern cybersecurity business. It's hard to overstate 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.840 how ubiquitous McAfee Anti virus soft where was for decades. 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.520 Just about every time you logged onto a computer, first 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.880 you see the Windows logo, then you see McAfee anti 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.920 virus software scanning, always running in the bottom right hand 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:17.279 corner of the screen. McAfee built a piece of software 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.960 that dominated the technology industry in the eighties and nineties. 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.720 Like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, he was a leading 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.679 tech founder of his day. Unlike so many of his peers, 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:33.560 McAfee had a public personality and a profile, appearing frequently 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:38.039 on television introducing audiences to the concept of a computer virus. 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.640 John McAfee was a walking embodiment of the early Internet industry, 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:48.120 both the good and the bad. He was idealistic, brash, brilliant, 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:52.520 and wildly successful. He made moon money off of his invention, 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.800 but then his life took a sharp turn. He squandered 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:04.360 his fortune. Supposedly a hundred million dollars disappeared just like that. 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:09.240 There were aerial accidents and deaths and escaped to Belize, 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.360 and allegations of sex with miners and allegations of rape, 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:20.440 accusations of murder, multiple arrests, multiple instances of fleeing the authorities, 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:23.440 And just when it looked like McAfee was turning things 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.880 around back in America, he makes an unlikely bid for president. 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:33.200 He waged an unconventional and antagonistic campaign that in hindsight, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.280 doesn't look that different from Donald Trump's, and McAfee becomes 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:42.040 a very early evangelist of cryptocurrencies. He amassed what would 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:45.200 become a fortune in bitcoin before most people knew what 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:49.160 it was. That's when the government went after him. He 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:52.520 made one final run for his life, and it ended 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:57.320 in his death. You're listening to Foundering. I'm your host, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.800 Jamie Tara Bay. I report on side were Security for 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:05.200 Bloomberg News. I've been a foreign correspondent for over twenty years, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.679 and I spent about a decade as a conflict reporter. 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:14.680 I've met and interviewed terrorists, war criminals, and dictators. Throughout 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.640 my career. I've reported on men with God complexes, men 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.080 who didn't believe they had to be accountable for their actions, 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.520 men who may have gotten away with murder. In this 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.040 season The Foundering, we will tell the story of John McAfee, 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.480 how he walked the line between inventor and madman, how 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:38.080 despite his early good fortune, his choices led him down 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:41.800 the path towards a public and decades long self destruction. 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:45.120 Over the course of this series, you'll hear the story 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.600 of John McAfee's life and a reconstruction of his last 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:54.160 moments based on interviews with colleagues, lovers, friends, and family members. 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:58.520 Some of these people have never spoken publicly about him. 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.560 The reporting spans the glory, tracing McAfee's legacy in Silicon 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.360 Valley to his escape to Central America and his final 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.880 days on the quiet streets of Cambriel's Spain, to the 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:15.360 legacy of his death. Here's our reporter, Matthew Bremner, in Barcelona. 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:18.040 So it's quite weird to think that whilst we were 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:20.520 just in the morgue there and we had it confirmed 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:22.240 that the bodies are actually all kind of kept in 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:26.520 a basement, that McAfee was only a matter of meters 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:31.160 away from us, below our feet, in some fridge, piled 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:35.680 on top of other bodies. What we found will demystify 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:38.600 some of the lines John McAfee told throughout his life, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:43.520 reveal the secrets he kept and resolved questions surrounding his demise. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:10:00.400 We'll be right back. One of the saw says I 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.480 was talking to, asked, how do you tell the story 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:08.280 of John McAfee. There are, frankly many stories, many lives, 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.880 as it were, there was the Silicon Valley tycoon, the 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:17.760 party animal, the spiritual guru, the international fugitive, the prophet 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:22.840 of cyber security, and bitcoin, the alleged murderer and rapist, 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.800 and in his last act, the death that launched countless 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.520 new conspiracies. When mccafee tells his own life story, he 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.000 always started the same way. He talks about his father, 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:41.200 a violent alcoholic. Here he is on ABC in one 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:44.000 of the things that was not idyllic, there was your father. 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:46.800 He said that he was raging alcoholic, that he was 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:51.800 abusive to you, like your mother. Nobody has an ideal life, 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:58.480 even short dad. When you're they have shot himself. He 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.280 shot himself. People aways looked at the best to explain 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:05.720 the present doesn't work that way. McAfee's father was an 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:10.120 American soldier based in southwest England. His mother, Joan Williams, 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.040 was a bread She gave birth to John a little 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.040 over two weeks after the official end of World War Two. 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.600 The family moved to the US not long after. Here's 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.080 Fran John's first wife. She asked us not to use 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:28.560 her last name. Unfortunately, his father was a drinker and 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:31.760 he turned He was the main drug, as they say. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.800 But John and his mom really had the brunt of 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.640 the you know those ghosts in that guy's head. That 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.600 was a living hell. France says, these early years of 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.400 abuse haunted John and they kept company with him throughout 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:56.559 his life. But absolutely he was abused emotionally. John had 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:03.640 a tremendous, volatile temper, which is it comes from what 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:09.359 happened to him during those years. Up until he's fifteen, 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.000 McAfee spent most of his formative years in the town 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.520 of Salem, Virginia. People close to the family told me 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.600 he was sent to live with his aunt in England 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.080 after his father died. He returned to the US in 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:25.320 time to attend Roanoke College once he finished high school. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.760 He told ABC News that while he studied there, he 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.600 also sold cocaine. Math came easy to me. I never studied. 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:35.440 I just did what I felt like I should do 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.559 in college mc if he says, he began peddling a 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.720 product he knew he could sell, cocaine. But it's interesting 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.720 that that drug dealing was really your first foray into entrepreneurship. Yeah, 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.720 well it is. It's entrepreneurs it's it's everything, it's salesmanship. 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.480 This is such a telling interview to me on a 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.200 couple of levels. First of all, this attitude of superiority, 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.280 almost articism, I don't need to study. It comes easily 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.760 to me. Then there's the casual admission to drug dealing. 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.880 Drugs will be a major factor in McAfee's life, cocaine 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.520 in particular, and of course, his ability to spin an 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:19.600 idea into a business was something he replicated repeatedly. After 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.800 graduating from college, McAfee moved to Monroe, Louisiana, where he 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.360 taught Matt as part of a graduate program he was 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:31.240 doing at Northeast Louisiana State University. He met his first wife, Fran, 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.400 when she was an eighteen year old student in his class, 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:37.880 and he said that that very first day, right after 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:43.240 that very first class, they got together. Fran remembers it 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.679 slightly differently. I met him when I was eighteen, probably 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:52.200 he was teaching MATT and I walked into my classroom, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:58.520 and he from the get go, he made it so obvious. 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.920 I mean, it was like he latched on. He was 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:05.920 I won't say it was like a vulture by any means, 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:09.160 but he picked me out of the group to the 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:13.480 point that it was really embarrassing for me because we 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.959 had this whole classroom there. He made no bones about 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.400 it that he was attracted to me. In fact, I 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.440 went home that evening and I said, Mama, I've got 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:29.480 to get out of this classroom because I'm not going 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.200 to be able to learn maths. And of course she said, 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:36.640 old frand You'll be just fine. But I knew his 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:42.160 behavior sounded pretty aggressive, practically predatory. But he eventually wore 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:46.360 her down and they started dating. Once their relationship became known, 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.000 McAfee was fired by the university and he soon moved 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:55.000 back to Virginia. That was after the university decided that 0:14:55.760 --> 0:15:01.760 John didn't need to be teaching school, but they allowed 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:07.760 him to finish out his curriculum that semester because he 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.960 was working towards his doctorate through their program. With his 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.480 academic qualifications in hand, McAfee went on to work at 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:20.480 a couple of high profile companies Serox, UNIVAC, Siemens, Booze Allen, 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.320 and lockeed Martin. The one who seemed to have been 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.400 most proud of was his time at NASA. He went 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.040 to work at the god Art Institute for Space Studies, 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.240 which is on the campus of Columbia University in New 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:36.400 York City. He was there from night for about two years. 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.520 In six McAfee described his work at NASA. In a 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:46.040 knop ed for Business Insider, McAfee claimed that he encrypted 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.760 the image is sent by the Tyrous Weather satellite when 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:53.960 he worked at NASA in ninety I asked NASA several 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.880 times about McAfee's time there. They said, yes, he briefly 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.600 worked as a programmer, but several current and former NASA 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.240 employees I spoke to could not confirm his assertions about 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.520 what he did there, and he made other claims that 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.480 he'd worked on the Apollo programs and that he came 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:13.920 up with the solution to ten years of data coming 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.800 in from space without any system to process it. Former 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.920 NASA engineer Jim Cameron told me this was simply not plausible. 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.320 He worked at the same Godard Institute of Space Studies 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:29.320 years after McAfee left. He said McAfee's accounts was an 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:32.040 insult to the people whose names are recorded in the 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:36.040 volumes of NASA's history. As you'll hear, this is a 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.400 bit of a pattern with John McAfee. He had a 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:44.080 tendency to tell tall tales, to exaggerate, and even straight 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.600 up fabricate. That's dint a xerox. He told one biographer 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:50.960 he was based in London for the company, and was 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.440 flown first class every weekend for six months back to 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.920 New York to see his family. Not true, people close 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.560 to the family said, those were just some of the 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:04.680 many lines and exaggerations we've come across. He would later 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:08.320 brag about all the journalists he'd played with, the tails 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:12.880 he'd spun. Eventually, McAfee made his way to Palo Alto. 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.800 He landed at a company called Omex in the early eighties. 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:19.840 They were one of the first companies to build storage 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.880 devices for data on glass discs that held several gigabytes. 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.720 I spoke to Rebecca Costa, a colleague at his at Omex. 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.280 She says her first meeting with John was memorable, and 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:34.439 I remember looking out of my office window and seeing 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.639 this guy drive up in a motorcycle with a black 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.080 Michael Jackson looking leather jacket and show up at like 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:46.520 eleven o'clock in the afternoon. Now, in those days we 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.520 worked eight to five. There weren't flex hours, and he 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:55.040 didn't even have a a knapsack or a backpack or anything. 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:59.080 He just walked in and I thought somebody should call security. 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:04.840 Who is the So McAfee comes walking up the stairs, 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.480 and he came around the corner and I remember him saying, oh, 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:11.560 you must be Rebecca cost I'm John McAfee. I'm the 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.320 I had up a research and development and I was 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.160 a little taken back, and I said, well, great, um, 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.400 we were supposed to have a meeting at eight this morning. 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:23.800 Again he said yeah, but I was hungover in Rebecca 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.520 was one of a handful of women with senior executive 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:31.080 roles in Silicon Valley. She headed product development. John headed research. 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.840 His job was to design the software for the operating systems. 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:37.280 So I said, would you mind if I came over 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.720 to the lab and spent some time with you there 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.320 to try to understand the technology better? And and he 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:49.600 was very forthcoming. And it took me all of fifteen 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:54.200 minutes in the R and D lab to realize he 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.320 was brilliant. And I didn't I didn't care about the 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.239 rest of it. I didn't care if he set up 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.119 a bar in R and D and drank all day long. 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.320 If if he could solve the kinds of technical problems 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:11.280 he was solving, then he was my guy. By this point, 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.760 John McAfee's character was set. He lived and worked according 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.480 to his own rules, and he found himself in an 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.399 environment where that was okay. He was going to show 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.240 up when he was going to show up. I couldn't 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:27.560 necessarily trust him to meet deadlines or stay within budget. 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:31.440 But I did what old companies should do with brilliance, 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.560 surround them with people that aren't as brilliant. You know. 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.639 I was one of the people that was surrounding John 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.440 to make John effective so that we could harness him. 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.360 Those days that Omes were heady, just as they were 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.280 throughout the rest of Silicon Valley. There was a sense 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.880 of pioneership, that new ground was being broken in an 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.920 industry that was still coming up with names for itself. 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.840 People were creating things that had never existed before. They 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:02.760 were and no rules here. There were no checks on 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:08.800 people's behavior. Everybody was snorting coke, everybody was sleeping under 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:13.960 their desks. And by the way, OMEX wasn't that unusual 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.040 in Silicon Valley. You know, you would drive by these 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:21.720 startups and the entire parking lot would still be full. 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.120 We didn't go home. There were days where I had 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:27.880 to go in and literally tell John to go home 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.600 and take a shower. He smelled bad. Those were days 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:36.680 of wild successes and spectacular failures. The mouse was invented. 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:41.000 Around this time, Apple, Atari, and Hewlett Packard were all 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:44.399 making their products right in the valley. The people at 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:49.560 Omex were creating new technology alongside those other companies, but 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:53.639 the products they were pushing out weren't selling. Rebecca says 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.399 the writing was on the wall for Omex, and both 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.760 she and John McAfee left the free wheeling company after 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.000 a couple of years there and when John decided to 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:07.600 create his own startup, McAfee and associates that mixture of 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.159 work and play, the recklessness and the chaos would be 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:19.200 part of the company's very foundation. That's next, Let's talk 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:23.000 about technology in the eighties and early nineties. Back then, 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:27.280 technology seemed so alien to people. In movies, computers were 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.040 consistently portrayed as evil, like in the Matthew Broderick film 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:40.480 War Games, where in Hello, shall we play a game? 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:45.840 Hollywood played on people's distrust of the unfamiliar. Folks who 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:49.560 did have computers were more often programmers, people who worked 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.879 with them for a living, or yes, gamers. Here's Paul Ferguson, 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.879 who's been in cyber security for over thirty years, so 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.480 there's a lot of hackers who wanted to know how 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:02.880 things work. And when you take things apart, you put 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:04.560 them back together and you know how they work. You 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.680 become an expert, which also five lover buildings, and then 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.520 you can build a whole industry out of it. Paul 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.600 says that it was a moment where possibilities felt endless. 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.480 The basic building blocks of today's computer technology were being 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:25.320 formed with little thought for the consequences. Collectively, as an industry, 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:29.240 we didn't really think about how some of the stuff 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:31.320 that we designed and built and put into place to 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:36.040 enable all this wonderful connectivity could be used to steal 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:40.000 thousands of dollars out of your bank account or take 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:45.520 down the all the news sites in Estonia. In those 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:49.199 exhilarating days of the early Internet, McAfee was living in 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.479 Santa Clara. He was in his early forties, working at 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.560 Lockheed Martin, and he was already onto a new wife, 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.400 a woman named Judy. Here's Jim Lynch who lived next 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.080 door to the car ball for about ten years. There 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:04.000 were the kind of neighbors who had waved to each 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:06.639 other over the fence and chat about their jobs. He 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.439 had a phone line brought into his house a separate 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.840 one from his regular phone line, and he put a 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:14.800 computer there and hooked it up, and it was what 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:20.880 they called them bulletin boards, so it's basically a chat room. 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:23.560 Bullets and boards were like an early version of web 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:27.240 forums or social media. People could connect their computers through 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:31.080 phone lines and trade ideas. Jim says that McAfee was 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:35.119 a programmer. He was a gamer. He was obsessed with puzzles. 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.919 He'd upload computer programs onto those bullets and boards and 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:41.880 delve into discussions with people who had logged on from 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:46.720 around the world. McAfee could sense an opportunity surrounding the Internet. 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:51.520 He became particularly fascinated with computer viruses. Jim says the 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.840 first virus that caught McAfee's attention was one called the 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:59.960 Pakistani Brain. We had coffee together in the front yard 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:04.800 one sunny Sunday morning and he said something about, I've 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:08.119 got an interesting new problem to solve, and there's this 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:12.080 virus called the Pakistani Brain. He explained something to me 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:16.320 about it, what it did and uh, and that he 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.760 was fascinated with this. And then it was a few 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:23.200 weeks later that he said this might be the business 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:27.040 opportunity of a lifetime for me, and I might not 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:34.600 be at Lockeed any longer. The Pakistani brain virus was 0:24:34.640 --> 0:24:38.760 a self replicating virus that automatically copied onto disks. It's 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:42.840 read luck wildfire. Jim says it puzzled McAfee. He took 0:24:42.840 --> 0:24:46.119 it apart, studied it and figured out how it worked, 0:24:46.920 --> 0:24:49.400 and with the help of a programmer named Dennis Yell, 0:24:49.680 --> 0:24:52.879 who soon went to work for him, McAfee created his 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:57.160 first anti virus software program. He describes it on ABC. 0:24:57.960 --> 0:24:59.879 I was figuring out, Oh, yeah, I can stop this yere, 0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:01.800 I thought this year, I can do that. I can 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:04.399 actually removed the thing and wrote a program in a 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:07.160 day and a half. So mcfe anti virus was created 0:25:07.200 --> 0:25:09.479 in a day and a half. And how old did 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:12.160 it worked? Four million people were using it within a month. 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:17.680 Four million people within a month, and McAfee went even 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:22.000 further to drum up publicity. Here's James Spafford, a computer 0:25:22.080 --> 0:25:25.520 scientist at Purdue University who was active in the anti 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:31.080 virus community, and apparently I've seen pictures. He had gotten 0:25:31.160 --> 0:25:34.000 a truck that he had dressed up as an anti 0:25:34.119 --> 0:25:37.679 virus response unit with lights and big signs on it. Uh, 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:42.240 sort of like an amplified version of Ghostbusters doing with 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:47.720 the ambulance, And when companies would report a virus, he'd 0:25:48.080 --> 0:25:55.560 drive this to their site to eliminate the virus. The 0:25:55.600 --> 0:25:58.879 business kind of took off from there. I guess this 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:04.240 was late nineteen seven, early McAfee's business was really taking off. 0:26:04.800 --> 0:26:07.520 His house now had several phone lines leading into it. 0:26:07.960 --> 0:26:10.800 More people came into work. One person made the top 0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:14.200 of the washing machine her workspace so she could answer called. 0:26:14.760 --> 0:26:18.280 Another was working from the kitchen table. And Paul says 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:22.600 the product was legitimately good. So it was a gold standard, 0:26:22.640 --> 0:26:25.080 I mean, and pretty much if there was a detection 0:26:25.320 --> 0:26:28.960 on McAfee's you pretty much could feel confident in the 0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:32.000 fact that it was not false positive. Right, So there 0:26:32.040 --> 0:26:35.240