Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: mons Valashan, and I'm delighted that Cara Price is back
Speaker 1: with us. Today we'll be bringing you the emotional highs
Speaker 1: and lows of Silicon Valley, from a tech Titan's gilded
Speaker 1: nuctuals to the soulless writing of checchipt. Then, on a
Speaker 1: more serious note, we'll be looking at the conflict between
Speaker 1: Iran and Israel in cyberspace.
Speaker 2: Cyber attacks are often viewed as a much less costly
Speaker 2: in terms of funding, but also in terms of lives,
Speaker 2: way to critically wound an enemy.
Speaker 1: All of that on the weekend tech It's Friday, June
Speaker 1: twenty seventh. Welcome back, Cara.
Speaker 3: Thank you as.
Speaker 1: Back to tech Stuff, just in time to cover Jeff
Speaker 1: and Lauren's wedding out.
Speaker 3: A coincidence at all, I wouldn't have come back otherwise.
Speaker 1: You do love a Selim spectacle, and this one's going
Speaker 1: to be pretty spectacular, perhaps unsurprisingly given Jeff Bezos's fourtune
Speaker 1: or two hundred and thirty billion dollars and seems to
Speaker 1: be thirsty for a big hype bash this weekend.
Speaker 3: And what do you do when you're the world's richest man,
Speaker 3: you rent out Venice. Now, ven I think that's what
Speaker 3: you do. We don't know much more about the ceremony
Speaker 3: or the parties for that matter. I can guess that
Speaker 3: some of the guests will be Kim Kardashian, who was
Speaker 3: on Lauren Sanchez's bachelorette and then some others who were
Speaker 3: on the Blue Origin spaceflight, which was not her bachelorette party.
Speaker 1: By the way, so the Virgin spaceflight was Kim Kardashian. No, No, Katy.
Speaker 3: Perry, Katy Perry, Gail King.
Speaker 1: I remember when Katy Perry came down from space. There
Speaker 1: was a article in any Mail being like, it's confirmed
Speaker 1: Katy Perry's career is over.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought they were going to say it's confirmed
Speaker 3: Katy Perry is an alien.
Speaker 1: I wonder which of the if the tech Titans will
Speaker 1: be there, zak Elon, Tim Cook from Apple or Tim
Speaker 1: Apples he's otherwise known, Larian Serge from Google. I would
Speaker 1: guess there'll be fewer at the wedding than they were
Speaker 1: at Trump's inauguration.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: The details are murky, but there is a big banner
Speaker 1: flying in Venice at the moment saying if you can
Speaker 1: rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.
Speaker 3: You know, this wedding is so secret. I was making
Speaker 3: a joke about renting out Venice, but it is hard
Speaker 3: to tell. The party organizers of the wedding are denying it.
Speaker 3: They actually released a statement saying it's not a city
Speaker 3: takeover and the couple is committed to this is like,
Speaker 3: this is insane. The couple is committed to minimizing disruption,
Speaker 3: and Bezos donated three million dollars to various local organizations.
Speaker 3: In the face of criticism, local Venice officials chimed in
Speaker 3: and said the couple has only booked about thirty water
Speaker 3: taxis for the event. I just live for this.
Speaker 1: I do too. And you pointed me to a piece
Speaker 1: in the Wall Street Journal that was the best one.
Speaker 1: It had a headline promising to spill the secrets and
Speaker 1: another the fact, when there's a big, big wedding, make
Speaker 1: this even the Wall Street Journal will slip into the Daily.
Speaker 1: Mom My God, I spill the secrets.
Speaker 3: They were an excited to do so.
Speaker 1: I was a bit skeptical about opening the show with
Speaker 1: talking about the Sanchez Bezos wedding, perhaps because I'm a
Speaker 1: brit and we've had quite a lot of royal wedding
Speaker 1: action in the last decade. But you pointed me to
Speaker 1: something in the Wall Street Journal piece that just felt
Speaker 1: so tech stuff. I couldn't wait him more about it.
Speaker 3: And this is so me. This is where the sort
Speaker 3: of intersection between my nerdiness and my interest in celebrity
Speaker 3: gossip intersects. I was reading the piece and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is a great piece, But there was a certain
Speaker 3: thing that was mentioned. This luxury event designer said he
Speaker 3: had recently commissioned hold your Hat, a five hundred thousand,
Speaker 3: half a million dollar holograph of a bride's deceased grandfather
Speaker 3: to share well wishes to the that's the cost of
Speaker 3: like no percent of weddings is half a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Or no percent of Besos' wedding.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: You know it's funny because obviously there's this trend where
Speaker 1: rich people want to live forever. I guess the like
Speaker 1: this follow up trend to that is reanimating your your
Speaker 1: dead relatives for the for the cool sum of half
Speaker 1: a million dollars to deliver a toast at the wedding.
Speaker 1: It does remind me. You remember of that movie Mulan the
Speaker 1: Disney Words Drive when the ancestors reanimated to wish her
Speaker 1: well in her quest. Yes, this is like being if
Speaker 1: you're a billionaire, you can you can your wedding can
Speaker 1: feel like the opening sequence of Mulan.
Speaker 3: When you're a billionaire, you can watch a movie like
Speaker 3: Mulan and say I want that at my wedding.
Speaker 1: Please bring out her to us all remember that? Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, so you've now been subjected to my singing,
Speaker 1: which is appropriate. Turn to our next story, which is
Speaker 1: about the music industry and how the industry is building
Speaker 1: tech to make AI music more traceable.
Speaker 3: All right, so this is interesting because I do you
Speaker 3: think music production is one of the most evolved uses
Speaker 3: of AI. It duped me in twenty twenty three with
Speaker 3: fake Drake.
Speaker 1: Fake Drake. I was actually hoping to tell you about
Speaker 1: fake Drake and play that classic twenty twenty three banger
Speaker 1: and test you on whether or not you knew it
Speaker 1: was a fake or not. But let's play it nonetheless.
Speaker 3: Like it's fake question.
Speaker 1: But that was good. I came when my eggs like
Speaker 1: the lean.
Speaker 3: Honestly though it's very good.
Speaker 4: I love she need.
Speaker 3: Given. You know, if I hadn't known it was AI,
Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't have second guessed it at all.
Speaker 1: It really spooked people, especially the music industry, because if
Speaker 1: people didn't know, and worst of all, if people didn't
Speaker 1: care that this was a fake track, what could that
Speaker 1: mean for the whole business?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the music business has already been battered
Speaker 3: so much in reaction first to piracy and illegal downloads,
Speaker 3: and now the popularity of streaming platforms like Spotify.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is another disruption, and potentially an unmanageable one,
Speaker 1: because if AI music is uploaded to streaming platforms and
Speaker 1: it's not labeled as being made by AI, the streaming
Speaker 1: platforms themselves and of course listeners might not be any
Speaker 1: the wiser.
Speaker 3: But is this actually like a problem?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: I wonder how much AI music is actually being like
Speaker 3: dumped onto streaming platforms.
Speaker 1: You wonder, And I searched the web. According to the Verge,
Speaker 1: who spoke to the French streaming platform Deza Desa, said
Speaker 1: that as of this April, roughly twenty percent of new
Speaker 1: uploads every day were fully AI generated, so about twenty
Speaker 1: thousand tracks a day and I think the other important
Speaker 1: point here is that AI is obviously trained on what
Speaker 1: you feed it, so these tracks probably more often than
Speaker 1: not imitating musical ideas that perhaps should be licensed before
Speaker 1: the song is widely distributed.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a money problem.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, the money problem. It's also a fundamental human
Speaker 1: creativity in the age of AI problem, but the money
Speaker 1: problem makes it more urgent capitalism to the rescue of
Speaker 1: the music business. Basically, there are multiple services now being
Speaker 1: developed that can be integrated into streaming platform structures to
Speaker 1: analyze one if uploaded tracks are AI, and two if
Speaker 1: they contain so called protected elements.
Speaker 3: So how does that work.
Speaker 1: There's one product in particular I want to tell you about,
Speaker 1: which is called trace ID, and it's marketed as an
Speaker 1: AI rights management platform. Basically, the software breaks songs into
Speaker 1: stems from vocal tone to melodic phrasing in order to
Speaker 1: better detect mimicry, and that means that the rights holders
Speaker 1: or the platforms can then know if a track needs
Speaker 1: to be licensed and paid for before it's released.
Speaker 3: So that is great for the industry, But what about me, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, I care about infringement, but I'm not like
Speaker 3: obsessed with it, and the thing that I'm really concerned
Speaker 3: with is, like, I want to know if the song
Speaker 3: that I'm listening to is real.
Speaker 1: Taking a step back and not wanting to get too
Speaker 1: philosophical here, but it kind of raises these other questions
Speaker 1: about what AI music actually is because obviously you have
Speaker 1: like fully generative AI generated tracks that are basically have
Speaker 1: no human input. But then a lot of like normal
Speaker 1: musicians as part of their production workflow, use AI tools
Speaker 1: in fact, just as we do right like we use
Speaker 1: AII editing software, we sort of use it in research.
Speaker 1: So like there's a kind of philosophical conundrum about what
Speaker 1: AI music actually is. But these tools we're talking about
Speaker 1: today are really about detecting like fully synthesized full AI tracks.
Speaker 1: In addition to these externally developed products like trace id,
Speaker 1: these streaming platforms are also internally developing tools to scan
Speaker 1: uploaded music and then if they detect a concentration of
Speaker 1: synthetic elements, they can reduce the visibility of AI generated
Speaker 1: tracks in both their algorithmic and also their editorial recommendations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've actually seen people on the internet can play
Speaker 3: that their release Radar playlist on Spotify is filled with
Speaker 3: what they suspect to be AI music. This has not
Speaker 3: happened to me personally, but like, it does take a
Speaker 3: lot of work to then go to like an artist
Speaker 3: page and see that someone has no listeners or followers
Speaker 3: or only one or two tracks, you know, And I
Speaker 3: guess there's hope that the actual places that are hosting
Speaker 3: this music would would label it, label it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing is they might have an incentive
Speaker 1: to do so, because there's this emerging body of research
Speaker 1: that suggests when people feel that interacting with AI generated content,
Speaker 1: that should become less engaged. There's this marketing publication called
Speaker 1: The Drum which reported that more than fifty percent of
Speaker 1: people check out if they believe content is AI generated.
Speaker 1: So again there's another business intentive for the platforms to
Speaker 1: solve this problem.
Speaker 3: And speaking of AI generated content and interesting research, you
Speaker 3: must have seen this the recent MIT study on CHATGPT
Speaker 3: and critical thinking. I actually really liked the terminology that
Speaker 3: they used in this research. The paper was titled your
Speaker 3: Brain on Chat GPT accumulation. And this is what I
Speaker 3: love of cognitive debt. When using an AI assistant for
Speaker 3: essay writing task.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of accumulating cognitive debt. That that
Speaker 1: is such a good phrase and so familiar. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like scrolling on my phone. I mean most
Speaker 1: of what I do is accumulate cognitive debt.
Speaker 3: We are just sacks of cognitive debt that we really
Speaker 3: are right now. I mean people have to worry about,
Speaker 3: you know, student debt, They have to worry about other
Speaker 3: kinds of debt. Now we have to worry about cognitive debt.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of action about this research all
Speaker 1: over my LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: The first place I actually encountered it was in like
Speaker 3: meme format, Like it was like a slideshow.
Speaker 1: There are pictures of their brains, right do lighting up
Speaker 1: in des exactly like.
Speaker 3: I certainly did not see this on like a verified
Speaker 3: news platform. I saw it like on a meme account
Speaker 3: that was like, yeah, your brain's getting worse using chat GPT.
Speaker 3: Before I explain the experiment, there are a few caveats
Speaker 3: that the researchers themselves are eager to share. First, the
Speaker 3: study only has fifty four subjects, which is a relatively
Speaker 3: small sample. And second, and I think the least surprising,
Speaker 3: is that this study has yet to be peer reviewed
Speaker 3: by anybody other than our peers on LinkedIn and Instagram
Speaker 3: and every.
Speaker 1: The interinet had.
Speaker 3: They really did. You know, it's a very buzzy concept,
Speaker 3: this tool chat GBT that we all are using, maybe
Speaker 3: eroding our own ability to think critically. And that's especially
Speaker 3: alarming when you think of what this could mean for
Speaker 3: not my brain, but developing brains. Mine has been developed,
Speaker 3: the trade has left the station. But you know, as
Speaker 3: we've talked about many many times on this podcast, AI
Speaker 3: companies are really marketing themselves and I mean chat GBT,
Speaker 3: especially to college students, and students are using chatbots like quite.
Speaker 1: A bit, quite a bit to assist.
Speaker 3: With or even do their homework. You know. The paper's
Speaker 3: main author felt like her findings were alarming enough and
Speaker 3: people are adapting to life with AI so fast. It
Speaker 3: wasn't peer reviewed because waiting six to eight months might
Speaker 3: be too late.
Speaker 1: The paper's outh theory is a bone hype beast, that's right.
Speaker 3: This is so she's like, it's got to get out
Speaker 3: right now or it's going to be too late.
Speaker 1: But I mean, to be fair, it does sound pretty lombing.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are some silver linings. This is what happened
Speaker 3: fifty four people ages eighteen to thirty nine from the
Speaker 3: Boston area were separated into three groups. They were all
Speaker 3: asked to write sat essays while an electro encephalogram or
Speaker 3: EEG measured their brain activity or more specifically, the tiny
Speaker 3: electrical signals produced by brain cells when they communicate.
Speaker 1: And so there were three groups. What was the difference
Speaker 1: between each group?
Speaker 3: So each group was writing these twenty minute satsays using
Speaker 3: slightly different tools. One group used open AI's chat GPT,
Speaker 3: another Google search engine, and the last group didn't use.
Speaker 1: It anything at all, nothing at all, i e. Just
Speaker 1: the human brain, just their brain for them.
Speaker 3: Unsurprisingly, the group that used chat GPT all delivered. This
Speaker 3: is my favorite part similar essays. English teachers were consulted
Speaker 3: and called them largely soulless. That is a sad indictment,
Speaker 3: it is, and that's actually a good word for it.
Speaker 3: Like if you read stuff that's written by chat GPT,
Speaker 3: you're like, there's something, there's someone here, that's what the
Speaker 3: lights are up.
Speaker 1: Fifty two percent of consumers per the drum check out.
Speaker 3: That feels like a low percent. But coming back to
Speaker 3: the group we were using chat GPT, the EEG picked
Speaker 3: up low executive control and attentional engagement in that group.
Speaker 3: That's contrasted with the brain only group, which showed shocker
Speaker 3: highest neural connectivity, especially in regions associated with creativity and memory.
Speaker 1: And what about the Google Search group, of whom I
Speaker 1: count myself a member of that cohort.
Speaker 3: They're what we'd call mid Their brains were definitely more
Speaker 3: active than the chat GPT groups. So they did this
Speaker 3: experiment three times, and then the researcher switched it up
Speaker 3: a bit. Each person was asked to rewrite one of
Speaker 3: their previous essays, but the chat GPT group could only
Speaker 3: use their brains, while the initial brain only group got
Speaker 3: access to chat GPT. The people who had started with
Speaker 3: chat GPT hardly remembered their own essays.
Speaker 1: Remember that correct.
Speaker 3: This reminds me of once I cheated on a physics exam.
Speaker 3: I cheated off a friend and I just wrote the
Speaker 3: answer without showing my work on a test, and my
Speaker 3: teacher was just like, how did you get that answer?
Speaker 3: It's right, but how'd you get it? And I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know it of course, So the people who
Speaker 3: had started with chat GPT hardly remembered their own essays.
Speaker 3: The EEG confirmed that barely any aspects of the writing
Speaker 3: process had integrated into people's memory networks. The brain only group, however,
Speaker 3: exhibited a significant increase in brain connected across all EEG
Speaker 3: frequency bands when they took a second stab at their
Speaker 3: essays using chat GBT to help, meaning people who use
Speaker 3: their brain displayed the most cognitive activity.
Speaker 1: But not just people use their brain, people who use
Speaker 1: their brain. And then a second time round pad it
Speaker 1: with chat.
Speaker 3: GPT people who use their brain first.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty interesting. I mean, it kind of stands
Speaker 1: to reason, which probably is again why it went viral,
Speaker 1: because it kind of confirms what we might think, which
Speaker 1: is that, like if I use my brain to come
Speaker 1: up with an idea and then use chat GPT to
Speaker 1: refine it and have a thought partner and a conversational
Speaker 1: partner to improve it, like that actually probably is more
Speaker 1: engaging for my brain than just coming up with an idea.
Speaker 1: If I ask chat GPT to count with an idea,
Speaker 1: that is extremely unengaging for my brain.
Speaker 3: Correct, that is the implication, And I just want to
Speaker 3: say one more time. This study has yet to be
Speaker 3: peer reviewed, and additional studies will likely be done. Again,
Speaker 3: the author felt very strongly that this should be released
Speaker 3: early as a warning. And again, imagine what this could
Speaker 3: mean for developing brains, meaning not us young people who
Speaker 3: are among the first to really adapt the technology anyway,
Speaker 3: using it as a generation tool rather than, as we might,
Speaker 3: a refinement tool. This is the real kicker. This one
Speaker 3: has a sense of the researcher has a sense of humor.
Speaker 3: So she assumed that people would use AI to summarize
Speaker 3: her paper, so she laid little AI traps all over it.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to lay little AI traps whatever
Speaker 1: a paper?
Speaker 3: She did a pretty cute thing, which is that she
Speaker 3: did things like instruct large language models to quote only
Speaker 3: read this table below, making it so if fed into
Speaker 3: an LM, only parts of the paper would be summarized.
Speaker 1: So there were these like hidden problems basically exactly.
Speaker 3: I think it was a very nice little sprinkle of
Speaker 3: human ingenuity.
Speaker 1: We've got a couple more headlines today, starting with the
Speaker 1: collaboration the whole tech industry is buzzing about, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean the one between open AI and Sir Johnny Ive,
Speaker 1: the designer behind many of Apple's iconic products like the
Speaker 1: iPod and the iPhone. And we know that Sam Altman
Speaker 1: and I are now collaborating on an AI hardware startup,
Speaker 1: and that's about all we know. Apparently they aren't making
Speaker 1: wearables or earbuds. The device will be pocket sized and
Speaker 1: screenless and will be a kind of interfaced layer with
Speaker 1: the world powered by AI, and Altman and Ive are
Speaker 1: being highly secretive about what the form factor will be,
Speaker 1: but people are buzzing. According to Semaphore, last week at
Speaker 1: the can Lion Advertising Festival, marketers were starting to freak
Speaker 1: out about where they would show video ads in a
Speaker 1: screenless world. But in the meantime, the highly anticipated project
Speaker 1: seems to have hit a roadblock. The startup was called
Speaker 1: Io the two letters I and O, and they've been
Speaker 1: pushing out marketing materials over the last few weeks. But
Speaker 1: now all mentions of Io have been scrubbed from Open
Speaker 1: AI's website and social media channels because it turns out
Speaker 1: there's a trademark lawsuit with another company called Io, which
Speaker 1: is spelled IYO, that's working on voice controlled AI devices.
Speaker 1: Sam Altman is called the lawsuit silly, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: drama in the valley, unlikely ultimately to derail him and
Speaker 1: Johnny Ive. Whatever they may end up with.
Speaker 3: I would watch Drama in the Valley on Bravo. It's
Speaker 3: the pitch yep here we go if you are a
Speaker 3: sucker for post apocalyptic content like me. There's now a
Speaker 3: follow up to the two thousand and one film twenty
Speaker 3: eight Days Later, which is out this month called twenty
Speaker 3: eight Years Later. The original film used lightweight, low resolution
Speaker 3: Canon digital cameras, a cutting edge technology back in the
Speaker 3: early arts, and for the follow up, director Danny Boyle,
Speaker 3: another brit Yeah, chose to stay small and nimble with
Speaker 3: the iPhone. He told Wired that the Apple device was
Speaker 3: the principal camera for the film, with some caveats. Boyle
Speaker 3: and his team ended up overriding the user friendly camera software.
Speaker 3: The iPhone's camera automatically focuses on whatever it assumes is
Speaker 3: the focus of your photo or video, but that's not
Speaker 3: always what you want in a movie, so they essentially
Speaker 3: hacked the iPhones to remove the auto focus. Also, most
Speaker 3: of the time it wasn't just a cinematographer holding an iPhone.
Speaker 3: The production used a massive rig that supported twenty iPhone,
Speaker 3: fifteen Promax cameras my dream all with special accessories. So
Speaker 3: that's twenty different angles on the action being filmed.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, there is a tentative ceasefire between Iran and Israel,
Speaker 1: but does that include cyberwarfare? Stay with us, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. We want to spend some time talking
Speaker 1: about the conflict between Israel and Iran. Much of the
Speaker 1: battle has played out in public. Missile and drone attacks
Speaker 1: have caused mass casualties in major cities and hospitals. Military
Speaker 1: bases and nuclear sites have all been targeted. As of
Speaker 1: this taping on Wednesday morning, a ceasefire seems to be holding,
Speaker 1: but today we want to shed light on a murkier,
Speaker 1: often invisible act of warfare, and one that's likely to
Speaker 1: continue well after the missiles cease Hittelbos understand how the
Speaker 1: conflict between Israel and Iran is playing out in cyberspace
Speaker 1: and how it might ultimately affect the US is Maggie Miller,
Speaker 1: a cyber security reporter for Politico. Maggie, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me, either of.
Speaker 1: This taping or Wednesday morning. The ceasefire is an effect,
Speaker 1: but of course by Friday morning things may be different.
Speaker 1: Give US a bit of the background on both Israel
Speaker 1: and Iran, what their cyber capabilities are, and how much
Speaker 1: attention you were paying to those two countries in the
Speaker 1: cyber realm before this conflict started.
Speaker 2: So Israel has seen pretty widely as one of the
Speaker 2: most advanced in the world in terms.
Speaker 4: Of the cyber capabilities as a.
Speaker 2: Government, but also in terms of the industry experts that
Speaker 2: they have in their country. Tel Aviv is a hub
Speaker 2: of a lot of cybersecurity companies, so they have very
Speaker 2: formidable cyber capabilities. We've also seen them brought to bear.
Speaker 2: There was a cyber element involved in the explosion of
Speaker 2: the pagers used by Hesbolah operatives in Lebanon in recent
Speaker 2: months that was tied to the Israeli government. So anytime
Speaker 2: there's a conflict with Israel, especially when it's being supported
Speaker 2: by the US, which also has pretty formidable cyber attack capabilities,
Speaker 2: you're going to keep an eye on it. Iran also
Speaker 2: has had a history of integrating cyber attacks into its efforts,
Speaker 2: sometimes lower level but still quite impactful. For example, in
Speaker 2: the US, we saw in the weeks after the Hamas
Speaker 2: attack on October seventh, twenty twenty three, onto Israel, there
Speaker 2: were pro Iranian hackers. Sometimes Iran can operate also through
Speaker 2: proxy groups as well as from the government, but we
Speaker 2: saw at least one pro Iranian group hack into multiple
Speaker 2: US water treatment facilities. Target has rarely made equipment in
Speaker 2: order to basically deface it with a message against Israel
Speaker 2: and really send a message that hey, you know, this
Speaker 2: might be a small water facility in rural Pennsylvania, but
Speaker 2: we can still cause damage. And so Iran has always
Speaker 2: been one that the US has kept a close eye
Speaker 2: on in cyberspace. So I think, you know, to emphasize,
Speaker 2: all three nations involved here quite formidable and have demonstrated
Speaker 2: these cyber attack capabilities in the past.
Speaker 1: How much did this cyber conflict between Israel and Iran
Speaker 1: sort of take off after the twenty twenty three Hamas attacks.
Speaker 1: Was that a kind of a turning point or where
Speaker 1: do you trace this current phase of escalation too?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: In terms of the escalation that we've seen in the
Speaker 2: past week, there of course was a pickup after the
Speaker 2: initial I believe it was June thirteenth strikes by Israel
Speaker 2: against Iran, but there has been a heightened amount of
Speaker 2: cyber threats, cyber attacks between the two nations since October seventh.
Speaker 2: Both Hamas and Hezbula are very much affiliated, supported by
Speaker 2: the Iranian government, often have served as proxies. Both have
Speaker 2: been somewhat knocked offline due to a lot of the
Speaker 2: Israeli attacks against both groups in the last two years,
Speaker 2: but they did both carry out some cyber operations also
Speaker 2: spearhead a lot of disinformation online. That's another big effort
Speaker 2: by Iran. We've seen just in the past week, for example,
Speaker 2: messages either of trace to the Iranian government or to
Speaker 2: proxies being sent to Israeli phone saying, for example, oh
Speaker 2: you don't need to go to the shelters during this bombing,
Speaker 2: you can stay outside, or another case's messages with links
Speaker 2: to try to gain information from Israelis. So it really
Speaker 2: has escalated, i would say, in the past week, but
Speaker 2: has been a steady clip since October seven.
Speaker 1: Do you see misinformation and disinformation as a type of
Speaker 1: cyber attach or type of cyber warfare or as a
Speaker 1: separate category as far as your reporting goes.
Speaker 2: They're often linked in that. Of course, one does not
Speaker 2: involve hacking into any sort of system or operation, but
Speaker 2: it does involve changing a perception and using social media
Speaker 2: often or for example malicious texts or calls, etc. And
Speaker 2: it's an even more I would almost say, at times
Speaker 2: more effective way of changing perceptions and causing chaos and
Speaker 2: causing panic because you don't necessarily know who to trust,
Speaker 2: and especially in this day and age where I think
Speaker 2: less less people may be understanding who to trust, I
Speaker 2: think it's an even more potent avenue.
Speaker 1: How effective have Iran and Israel's cyber attacks on one another,
Speaker 1: bin I mean, how much have they changed the face
Speaker 1: of this conflict?
Speaker 4: There has been certainly some effect.
Speaker 2: So an example, and I've cited this in my reporting,
Speaker 2: is there have been multiple major cyber attacks on Iranian
Speaker 2: banks in the past week and a half that have
Speaker 2: been linked to at.
Speaker 4: The least pro Israeli groups.
Speaker 2: You know, there's often a lot of cyber criminal or
Speaker 2: activist groups in the world that may not be officially
Speaker 2: affiliated with a government, but maybe that government wouldn't mind
Speaker 2: their work. But there have been strikes against specific Iranian
Speaker 2: banks designed to make it more difficult for Iranians to
Speaker 2: access their funds, to access their accounts, and I think
Speaker 2: critically to cause chaos. But on the flip side, there's
Speaker 2: also been a tax linked to Iran and Israel. So
Speaker 2: just a few days ago, Israel's cyber security agency put
Speaker 2: out a warning that a lot of Israeli should disable
Speaker 2: some of their home surveillance cameras because it was actually
Speaker 2: being seen as a target used by Iran or pro
Speaker 2: Iranian hackers trying to gather intelligence and gather real time
Speaker 2: data on what was happening in the country. As I said,
Speaker 2: there's also been a lot a huge ramp up of
Speaker 2: phone messaging, emails, etc. From Iran targeting Israeli's designed to
Speaker 2: either spread disinformation or in some cases trying to collect
Speaker 2: information and data on Israelis or Israelis abroad.
Speaker 4: So it certainly has.
Speaker 2: Been an active campaign in cyberspace. And I think one
Speaker 2: of the main questions I have is given this tenuous
Speaker 2: ceasefire as of Wednesday while we're recording this. Often ceasefires,
Speaker 2: of course mean physical strikes, and a lot of times
Speaker 2: in the world, there isn't really a definition for what
Speaker 2: that means in cyberspace, and we'll see if there really
Speaker 2: is much of a ceasefire in the digital realm.
Speaker 1: And as I like two types of cyber attacks, but
Speaker 1: one is designed to kind of sow chaos but not
Speaker 1: be so destructive as to be an act of war.
Speaker 1: And another is like to knock out some specific radars
Speaker 1: so that like military planes can most successfully bomb without
Speaker 1: any risk of being hit back. Like how much of
Speaker 1: this is in direct coordination with military and like so
Speaker 1: called kinetic strikes, and how much of it is like
Speaker 1: more low grade social erosion chaos causing.
Speaker 4: No I think there's obviously different levels.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily going to be different vectors of how
Speaker 2: the attack is carried out, but there is. I would think,
Speaker 2: just as with physical strikes, conversations often about Okay, how
Speaker 2: far do.
Speaker 4: We want to take this?
Speaker 2: You know, disabling a major bank is going to cause confusion,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you're not going to make any friends
Speaker 2: by doing that, but ultimately you're not necessarily going to
Speaker 2: cause death, You're not necessarily going to cause widespread military impact,
Speaker 2: but you know, something like for example, in the beginning
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two, when we saw the full invasion
Speaker 2: of Ukraine, one of the first things that happened was
Speaker 2: a Russian government linked cyber attack on a major satellite company.
Speaker 4: Called Viasat, which was very a key to.
Speaker 2: Ukrainian military communications, and that was very largely disabled and
Speaker 2: taken out just before Russian troops pored over the border
Speaker 2: into Ukraine, and that was I would think very much
Speaker 2: coordinated with the government, definitely caused a lot of problems
Speaker 2: with Ukrainians being able to communicate briefly in cyber space.
Speaker 2: There isn't really an internationally regarded red line in the
Speaker 2: sand of this to go to war. However, I always
Speaker 2: point out, of course Israel and Iran are not in NATO,
Speaker 2: but within the NATO Block, Article five is an effect
Speaker 2: and that ensures that if there is a specific act
Speaker 2: of war against a member, that I'll go to war.
Speaker 2: And actually it has been revamped to include cyber attacks.
Speaker 2: Now there isn't really a definition though of what that means,
Speaker 2: and what's been explained to me is kind of of anything.
Speaker 4: That causes widespread deaths.
Speaker 2: So for example, if you saw power offline and the
Speaker 2: dead of winter for a couple of weeks and you
Speaker 2: saw people dying because they didn't have heat.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about cyber offense, what about defense?
Speaker 1: I mean I read that Iran actually took most of
Speaker 1: the Internet offline partly in response to cyber attacks, But
Speaker 1: you tell us a bit about that, and what are
Speaker 1: some of the other, maybe less dramatic defense tactics that
Speaker 1: Israel and Iran a both employing.
Speaker 2: Yes, So with Iran this is several days ago. I
Speaker 2: think it may be around a week as of this recording.
Speaker 2: Most of the country was taken offline into a semi
Speaker 2: blackout by the government and one of the reasons given
Speaker 2: was the need to defend against Israeli linked cyber attacks.
Speaker 2: Now I have spoken to experts who are a little
Speaker 2: bit skeptical of that claim. It's also a moment of
Speaker 2: a lot of fear by the administration in Iran about
Speaker 2: their future, So it also may have to do with
Speaker 2: simply controlling the messaging. But it is true that they
Speaker 2: certainly are worried about cyber attacks. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: the pager incident in Lebanon, I think has really changed
Speaker 2: the game in terms of concerns. Of course, it involved explosives,
Speaker 2: but it was triggered remotely, very kind of sophisticated attack,
Speaker 2: and as a result, another effort that Aroan is put
Speaker 2: in places. They've told basically all government cybersecurity officials any
Speaker 2: of their staff to pretty much stop using Internet connected
Speaker 2: devices as much as possible. Obviously, if you're working in
Speaker 2: hacking capabilities, there's going to be certain devices you have
Speaker 2: to use.
Speaker 4: But as I said, what.
Speaker 2: Happened in Lebanon really changed the game in terms of concerns.
Speaker 2: Of course, Israel, as I mentioned, they're very vocal. They're
Speaker 2: cyber agency warning civilians about a lot of these waves
Speaker 2: of messages about not clicking on certain links sent to them,
Speaker 2: about disabling home surveillance cameras.
Speaker 4: I do think though that Israelis.
Speaker 2: Are, in terms of digital threats, always on a bit
Speaker 2: of a higher putting hire alert. It is a very
Speaker 2: digitally interconnected society, as I mentioned, one of the most
Speaker 2: advanced in cyberspace, and there are certainly no strangers to
Speaker 2: threats like this.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the US for remote, because you wrote
Speaker 1: this story recently with the headline US critical networks are
Speaker 1: prime targets.
Speaker 4: For cyber attacks.
Speaker 1: They're preparing for Iran to strike. So as of Wednesday, again,
Speaker 1: did that happen in terms of.
Speaker 2: A major attack, No, But at moments of any sort
Speaker 2: of geopolitical tension like this, especially when the US in
Speaker 2: this case has directly.
Speaker 4: Weighted in by hitting Iranian.
Speaker 2: Nuclear sites, a lot of US critical infrastructure owners operators,
Speaker 2: and when I say that, I mean everything from those
Speaker 2: that operate the electric grid across the country, that operate
Speaker 2: water treatment facilities, hospitals, educational facilities, a lot of different sectors.
Speaker 2: Of course, they're going to be on a bit of
Speaker 2: higher alert because, as I said, you know, cyber attacks
Speaker 2: are not really clearly defined as an active war, or
Speaker 2: if they are, how far you have to go. And
Speaker 2: it's a very cheap but very effective way of getting
Speaker 2: a message across. Say, all of a sudden, the water
Speaker 2: supply is compromised in a city in America. I mean
Speaker 2: that's pretty effective in terms of messaging. Same with oh
Speaker 2: the lights went out in this major city for who
Speaker 2: knows how long. So you know, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of these organizations are simply on a higher setting in
Speaker 2: terms of what they're watching for. And a lot of
Speaker 2: times I like to emphasize whenever I talk about these
Speaker 2: types of threats, probably more than about ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of all successful cyber attacks, it's not something very sophisticated.
Speaker 2: It's not, you know, something that a government was planning
Speaker 2: for years. It can be something as small as oh,
Speaker 2: this email came through.
Speaker 4: It looked legitimate.
Speaker 2: I clicked this link all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: for example, you click that on your work email, your
Speaker 2: email is compromised. Through that, they're able to compromise other
Speaker 2: accounts and kind of move through the IT network.
Speaker 1: But I guess my final question to you, Migi is,
Speaker 1: as you look to the days ahead, what are you
Speaker 1: expecting to see, What are you watching out for. What
Speaker 1: are your sources telling you might be most interesting in
Speaker 1: the Iran Israel conflict in the realm of cyber.
Speaker 2: I think again to emphasize that while there may be
Speaker 2: a ceasefire in terms of physical missile strikes, it really
Speaker 2: doesn't say anything in the ceasefire about what.
Speaker 4: The digital space will look like.
Speaker 2: So it will be very interesting to see if we
Speaker 2: continue to see more low level I would say threats
Speaker 2: in terms of disinformation, in terms of you know, maybe
Speaker 2: targeting of Israeli or Iranian organizations that are critical to
Speaker 2: day to day life but aren't necessarily going to cause deaths,
Speaker 2: such as, you know, disabling a bank for another day,
Speaker 2: or if we see that go up as a result
Speaker 2: of kind of having their hands tied on either side
Speaker 2: being able to drop missiles, you know, kinetic attacks, and
Speaker 2: the fact that the international community seems to be a
Speaker 2: bit frozen when it comes to cyber attacks.
Speaker 4: So, you know, if we.
Speaker 2: See major threats to hospital for example in either nation,
Speaker 2: threats to the grid, threats to any of the really
Speaker 2: really critical groups.
Speaker 4: So that would certainly be extremely interesting.
Speaker 2: If I saw that, I would hope as a citizen
Speaker 2: of the world, that we would see more restraint.
Speaker 4: But we will see.
Speaker 2: And also, I think, you know it's been emphasized to me,
Speaker 2: is that when it comes to retaliation, Iran especially likes
Speaker 2: to play the longer game. So even if we don't
Speaker 2: necessarily see major cyber strikes on the US this week,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean we might not see one a year
Speaker 2: from now that has been extensively planned out. It really
Speaker 2: is something that you can never really take your eye
Speaker 2: off the ball, especially with Iran. So we will have
Speaker 2: to see what happens in the years and weeks to come.
Speaker 2: But I would be very surprised if in the coming
Speaker 2: days it was completely dead and nothing happening in the
Speaker 2: digital realm.
Speaker 1: Mate, thank you so much for joining us today, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week for tech stuff. I'm Kara
Speaker 3: Price and I'm mos Valoshin.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Topia.
Speaker 1: It was executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate
Speaker 1: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Novel for iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 1: engineer is Elvira Gutierrez at CDM Studios. Jack Insley makes
Speaker 1: this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 3: Join us next Wednesday for tex Stuff The Story when
Speaker 3: we will share an in depth conversation with author Jahini
Speaker 3: Vara about how the Internet has shaped us as individuals.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love hearing from
Speaker 1: you