Speaker 1: Hi, it's me again, Jamie Tarrabay, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: a bonus episode of Foundering. In April twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: we put on a live show at RSA in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: It's one of the biggest cybersecurity conferences in the world.
Speaker 1: I did a live reading of the first episode of
Speaker 1: the John McAfee story, and then we did a Q
Speaker 1: and a with one of the people who was featured
Speaker 1: in that episode. Look out for a recording of the
Speaker 1: live show on bloomberg dot com for now, though, I
Speaker 1: wanted to share the Q and a you're going to
Speaker 1: hear from Alan Lisker. He's an author and expert in
Speaker 1: cybersecurity who had some interesting things to say about the
Speaker 1: impact McAfee had on the industry. I also talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about my reporting process for this show, and
Speaker 1: the moderator you'll hear is Foundering's editor Mark Million. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to the series and I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed the discussion.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, a Mark Million. I edit Foundering.
Speaker 3: I'm also the slideshow operator.
Speaker 2: Alan.
Speaker 3: I wanted to start with you. You had this very memorable
Speaker 3: quote in the in the episode buy My Thing Instead.
Speaker 3: Can you expand on that, like, how did McAfee shape
Speaker 3: today's approach to digital security.
Speaker 4: I love that we're highlighting that quote at RSA, which
Speaker 4: is the biggest buy my thing convention for security community
Speaker 4: in the world. Please don't throw tomatoes at me. Well sure,
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 2: So think of it now.
Speaker 4: SISA now has an initiative out there to build better
Speaker 4: and more secure software, to mandate that software is more built,
Speaker 4: is more secure and built.
Speaker 2: And that is forty.
Speaker 4: Years after you know, Macale launched his antivirus program, so
Speaker 4: we're still we're.
Speaker 2: Just now catching up to that.
Speaker 4: But that has been the model in security forever, and
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways it makes us less secure.
Speaker 4: So if I walk into any company right now, they
Speaker 4: have antivirus, and they have EDRs, they have endpoint protection,
Speaker 4: they probably have three or four different agents there on
Speaker 4: each individual endpoint. Then you have your web application, firewall,
Speaker 4: your firewall, your IDs, your male security program, and so on,
Speaker 4: so you have you know, you walk into an organization
Speaker 4: and you have one hundred different security tools, one hundred
Speaker 4: different consoles, and yet things like ransomware, which is where
Speaker 4: I specialize our running rampant because we can't seem to
Speaker 4: stop it because there's too much and the one thing
Speaker 4: that caught the ransomware actor is the one console you
Speaker 4: haven't looked.
Speaker 2: At this week, and so.
Speaker 4: We've made it much more were complex to operate a
Speaker 4: secure environment.
Speaker 3: Jamie, you talk in the recorded version of this episode
Speaker 3: about your background and career a long time foreign correspondent
Speaker 3: and conflict reporter. How did that context shape have you
Speaker 3: thought about approaching a story like macafee's.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think one of the things that he
Speaker 5: not to say that he was like a dictator or
Speaker 5: a terrorist or anything, but he did have a lot
Speaker 5: of things in common with those sorts of men, which
Speaker 5: is there's a lot of ego, and there's a lot
Speaker 5: of a greater sense of unaccountability and the vanity that
Speaker 5: comes with being the leader. And what we found in
Speaker 5: our reporting is that he managed to continue to build
Speaker 5: these small worlds where he was in charge, and you know,
Speaker 5: it was just a lot of the similar kind of
Speaker 5: characteristics of that sort of behavior and personality. The cult
Speaker 5: of personality was definitely present in a lot of McAfee's
Speaker 5: life and through a lot of the people that we
Speaker 5: spoke to.
Speaker 4: I mean, I see in your reporting almost a direct
Speaker 4: through line from like John mcavee to Elon Musk. I
Speaker 4: mean that you see a lot of similarities in that
Speaker 4: kind of cult of personality, and you know, the I'm
Speaker 4: in charge and running things and so I think that.
Speaker 4: But I think that not just those two, but I
Speaker 4: think there's a lot of that in general in tech
Speaker 4: for worse often.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I think a through line of the series.
Speaker 3: As Jamie talked in the beginning, you know Adam Newman,
Speaker 3: even Jeff Bezos is there's some common traits that exist
Speaker 3: between these leaders. Alan clearly McAfee's work had an impact
Speaker 3: on security industry. Do you think his personality shape the
Speaker 3: business at all? Like his boosterism and salesmanship and antagonism
Speaker 3: and paranoia like reflected in today's companies or CEOs.
Speaker 4: I mean, and I love this company, so I'm going
Speaker 4: to pick on them, but but go downstairs and look
Speaker 4: at the crowd strike booth and the fact that they
Speaker 4: have ten foot tall action figures of adversaries.
Speaker 2: I mean that is great company.
Speaker 4: But but yeah, that that that's sort of Oh, these
Speaker 4: are really scary things that you have to fight, and
Speaker 4: they are like there.
Speaker 2: It is a real problem. It is a real threat.
Speaker 4: But but we we we we do have this almost
Speaker 4: fetishization if that's a word, of of the adversary rather
Speaker 4: than sort of taking a a more fact based look
Speaker 4: at things. So I do think that that that is
Speaker 4: absolutely the.
Speaker 2: Case, and there have been and I think this is
Speaker 2: in any.
Speaker 4: Industry, but in particular to the areas where McAfee was
Speaker 4: in technology and then cryptocurrency later, because it's areas that
Speaker 4: a lot of people don't understand.
Speaker 2: You do get some Charlotte Tens in there.
Speaker 4: You do get some companies that kind of build everything
Speaker 4: and I'm not saying mcvy did this, but are able
Speaker 4: to build their whole company on lies.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Jamie.
Speaker 3: One thing we established in the episode we just heard
Speaker 3: and made very clear throughout the series is that mcavee
Speaker 3: is a controversial figure. What were some of the most
Speaker 3: surprising things you learned about him during your reporting.
Speaker 5: I think one of one of the challenges was figuring
Speaker 5: out what was actually real, and you know, we had
Speaker 5: to go back to a time that was pre internet,
Speaker 5: and you know, a lot of those work experiences that
Speaker 5: we talked about the employment history, we couldn't verify so
Speaker 5: many of them because they went back to the sixties
Speaker 5: and beforehand, and so that was really frustrating. One of
Speaker 5: the things that I thought was really telling that we
Speaker 5: everyone that we spoke to who was close to him
Speaker 5: sort of began with this, Oh, he was so great,
Speaker 5: he was such a smart person, he was brilliant, he
Speaker 5: was the love of my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ex wives, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then it was, oh, he was horrible, and you know,
Speaker 5: he cheated on me, or he betrayed me or did this,
Speaker 5: and then by the end it was like he was
Speaker 5: the worst. So your people just kind of went through
Speaker 5: this whole journey of how they felt about him, but
Speaker 5: their immediate recollections were that he was this positive person
Speaker 5: on their lives, and then they remember, oh, no, actually
Speaker 5: he kind of you know, destroyed me. So I mean
Speaker 5: that was really surprising that it was. It wasn't just
Speaker 5: one or two people, it was nearly everyone we spoke to.
Speaker 3: I want to give people a chance to ask questions.
Speaker 3: We get a couple of microphones in the room. You're
Speaker 3: welcome to step up and asked your own questions.
Speaker 2: Alan.
Speaker 3: Something that McAfee talked about, especially leader in his life
Speaker 3: was this push and pulled between security and privacy. I
Speaker 3: think this was for him personally, often in the context
Speaker 3: of not paying taxes and a sort of creative interpretation
Speaker 3: of privacy is like a license to break the law.
Speaker 3: But this theme of safety versus privacy civil liberties is
Speaker 3: a pretty relevant.
Speaker 4: One today, right, Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean we we
Speaker 4: the the FBI and the Department of Justice is trying
Speaker 4: to figure out still trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: find back doors into encryption tools and so on, and
Speaker 4: considers that to be really important without any actual evidence
Speaker 4: that having those back doors would actually help them solve
Speaker 4: cases faster. You know, the the just a couple of
Speaker 4: years ago, the you know, the fight between Department of
Speaker 4: Justice and Apple over hey are you gonna help us
Speaker 4: jail break this phone? And know we're not, and and yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a real challenge. And you know, as somebody in
Speaker 4: the security industry, I think privacy is really important.
Speaker 2: I think we shouldn't be giving.
Speaker 4: Governments back doors to to encryption algorithms and you know,
Speaker 4: giving them access to these kind of databases because if
Speaker 4: one if country, one country has access, then essentially all
Speaker 4: countries have access to it.
Speaker 3: It's funny to bring up to SANDBERD, you know, example,
Speaker 3: because that's in our suit. Mcaveee like inserts himself into
Speaker 3: the story. Yeah, try to bring the attention back to himself.
Speaker 4: Course, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And that was a great example
Speaker 4: of he always had to kind of be front and
Speaker 4: center on the story.
Speaker 2: So yes, absolutely, But it.
Speaker 5: Is also really smart about like the zeitgeist, right, he
Speaker 5: knew where and.
Speaker 6: What and that.
Speaker 5: I mean, like I kind of felt by the end
Speaker 5: that he should have really just chosen a career in
Speaker 5: Hollywood because he was so good at figuring out how
Speaker 5: to use fear and and and sort of what it
Speaker 5: was that what that drew attention, and he was really
Speaker 5: he just knew, he understood people so well, and because
Speaker 5: you know, so much what he did was so fantastical,
Speaker 5: I really thought that Hollywood would have been his true home.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was very charismatic.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, he would have made billions producing movies and so on.
Speaker 4: Update war games only instead of you know, just a
Speaker 4: just a basic computer, it's now a government funded AI
Speaker 4: that is starting World War three, right, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: that would have been the perfect movie for him.
Speaker 3: Jamie McAfee associated with some pretty shady characters.
Speaker 2: You talked about how.
Speaker 3: Separating fact from fiction was a challenge in your reporting.
Speaker 3: What other sorts of reporting challenges? Is this great for you?
Speaker 5: I mean the shady characters, unreliable narrators, that.
Speaker 4: Was what help me.
Speaker 2: I'm not one of the shady characters.
Speaker 5: Characters you are not, but I think it was really
Speaker 5: hard to find someone who was connected in some way
Speaker 5: with him, who could be truly honest and and you know,
Speaker 5: really just sort of call it what it was. And
Speaker 5: that was always really hard. And whenever we would sort
Speaker 5: of say to someone, well, apparently there's video of you
Speaker 5: doing this, so like, no, it's not true, never happening.
Speaker 5: So that was always a challenge. And I think at
Speaker 5: least one of our interviewees had an ancle bracelet for
Speaker 5: a while, so that was also challenging.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting to prep for this. I grabbed I
Speaker 4: ordered a couple of biographies on McAfee, And when you
Speaker 4: start reading through the biographies, I guess the people that
Speaker 4: he would allow in to write biographies were also kind
Speaker 4: of self serving and shady. And I'm reading the biography
Speaker 4: and I'm like, this is more about you and how
Speaker 4: great you are as a biographer, and I'm like, all right, well,
Speaker 4: but but you know, I do think he did foster
Speaker 4: that kind of environment, especially later in life, which I
Speaker 4: thought was interesting.
Speaker 5: Really good at co opting media, really really really good
Speaker 5: at it.
Speaker 3: We have a question from the ans. Could you identify yourself?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Oh, my name is Rushmama, cybersecurity architect life. We
Speaker 7: met last month.
Speaker 5: You might remember me, but I remember you.
Speaker 7: But Jamie, you're an amazing storyteller. I'm just curious to
Speaker 7: know how did you come to the title Foundering, especially
Speaker 7: when you mentioned that so many times you came across
Speaker 7: during your interviews that he's not necessarily a leader, not
Speaker 7: necessarily somebody who would put the company together to take
Speaker 7: it to the next step. So was there any struggle
Speaker 7: about coming to this title?
Speaker 2: What solidified the title?
Speaker 5: I'm going to defer to at least one person in
Speaker 5: the room who came up with that title.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the title for a series we've been doing
Speaker 3: for a few years, where I mean it's like a
Speaker 3: double meaning ever playing off a founder because it's the
Speaker 3: founder of a company, but foundering also refers to a
Speaker 3: shift thinking. So oftentimes these entrepreneurial stories, there's some great
Speaker 3: chanceallenges in our first subject, which Ellen here, Ellen Hewitt
Speaker 3: from Bloomberg, who was the host of We focused on
Speaker 3: Adam Newman from We Work, who was definitely foundering, and
Speaker 3: then sank. Not all of our subjects sank entirely. Some
Speaker 3: got to leave on their own terms, like Jeff Bezos
Speaker 3: who Brad Stone, the host of that series, is here too.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, that was the story behind the title.
Speaker 3: Another question from the audience was.
Speaker 8: More about kind of the kernel of his brilliance. So
Speaker 8: we heard about different aspects of what made him successful,
Speaker 8: his salesmanship, the relationships he developed, but what was at
Speaker 8: the start of his success in building his company. Was
Speaker 8: there some sort of technical brilliance or was it more
Speaker 8: smoke and mirrors?
Speaker 5: I mean, according to the interviews that we did, the
Speaker 5: product was like good. There was a whole controversy about
Speaker 5: whether he even like created it himself or whether one
Speaker 5: of the programmers that he employed did it. And it's
Speaker 5: a rabbit hole like it really. I even heard from
Speaker 5: one person that I spoke to that when he was
Speaker 5: working at Lockheed Martin, one of his colleagues at Lockheed
Speaker 5: Martin had actually came up with it and John had
Speaker 5: stolen it from him. And then when it so, I mean,
Speaker 5: this is why I said it was so hard to
Speaker 5: verify exactly what was happening. But what we do know
Speaker 5: for sure is that Dennis l the computer programmer who
Speaker 5: worked with McFee, was instrumental in sort of creating that
Speaker 5: first version, and obviously it fit in need. But I
Speaker 5: don't really know much about fighting viruses back then. But
Speaker 5: they were like for specific viruses, right, so you had
Speaker 5: to constantly iterate and find new solutions, is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so what you were looking at in
Speaker 4: back in the early eighties was you had two You
Speaker 4: had McAfee and you had Norton, and then you had
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of scammy uh uh pretend anti virus
Speaker 4: programs that didn't actually do anything, just kind of like
Speaker 4: now actually, But but yeah, and you know, basically the
Speaker 4: way it worked was it was entirely a subscription model.
Speaker 4: They would identify a new virus and then they would
Speaker 4: and they would add it to the signature. So it
Speaker 4: was all signature based and that was kind of the
Speaker 4: brilliance of it. When you're only dealing with one virus
Speaker 4: a month, or one mutation of a virus a month,
Speaker 4: you can add new signatures monthly and do pretty well,
Speaker 4: and so they were able to stay ahead of it.
Speaker 4: The problem was when you moved from that one a
Speaker 4: month to you know, hundreds of variations a day, then
Speaker 4: it became much much more difficult to keep up. But yes,
Speaker 4: in the in the early eighties and mid eighties, McAfee
Speaker 4: and Norton were your options for better, for for better
Speaker 4: you know, internet security and to protect.
Speaker 2: You from these viruses that were a real problem.
Speaker 3: I think the uh, the question of who programmed it
Speaker 3: is like similar to the sort of like Steve Jobs
Speaker 3: versus Steve Wozniak like debate, which is who who was
Speaker 3: the genius? And I think they were they were both geniuses.
Speaker 3: And like mcaview's ability to market the to create the
Speaker 3: Ghostbusters Dan and drive it to the sites and like
Speaker 3: go on TV and get people interested and scare everyone
Speaker 3: about the Michelangel virus, that was an effect that you know,
Speaker 3: he created an industry that's like pretty amazing.
Speaker 4: Well, and we see that even today there are incident
Speaker 4: response companies that have like their promotional incident response truck
Speaker 4: like like you know, it looks like an ambulance or
Speaker 4: or something like that. So that again when we talk
Speaker 4: about through lines, that that continues through uh where where
Speaker 4: where they have that ability?
Speaker 3: Alan, How unique of a figure do you think McAfee was, Like,
Speaker 3: have you come across other mcafeees during the course of
Speaker 3: your time?
Speaker 2: Was or is?
Speaker 9: So?
Speaker 4: I think in in the early cybersecurity industry, I think
Speaker 4: he was fairly unique.
Speaker 2: I do think there are maybe.
Speaker 4: With less cocaine, although I'm not at the CEO level,
Speaker 4: so I could be completely wrong about that. I think
Speaker 4: there are. We still see them pop up. The type
Speaker 4: of salesman you have to especially if you're a startup,
Speaker 4: you have to be a bit of a salesman to
Speaker 4: sell your product, right, and McVie did make a good product,
Speaker 4: But I do think we have a lot of the
Speaker 4: people who are more of the salespeople without the good
Speaker 4: product behind it in in security industry, again because it
Speaker 4: is such a complex industry, but I think the best
Speaker 4: CEOs also have to be able to sell their product.
Speaker 4: I don't think that's a bad thing. You know, as
Speaker 4: a technical person, I get all queasy and uncomfortable around
Speaker 4: selling stuff, but you can't do that as a CEO.
Speaker 3: So we have a question from my boss, Brad.
Speaker 10: I would encourage everybody to listen to the podcast, it's
Speaker 10: really crazy, but in particular the last episode is wild
Speaker 10: because McAfee authors this incredible last chapter where he runs
Speaker 10: for president, he gets into crypto, and he gets arrested,
Speaker 10: and then he dies under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering, you know.
Speaker 9: Jamie, what did you end up concluding about this last
Speaker 9: chapter in his life and the mysterious, somewhat mysterious circumstances
Speaker 9: of his death.
Speaker 2: And then Alan, the one for you is.
Speaker 10: Like, why do you think we're still talking about John McAfee.
Speaker 10: Why does he continue to resonate in this industry?
Speaker 5: I mean, I was trying to. I really struggle with
Speaker 5: this because it's really hard to sort of imagine a
Speaker 5: seventy ydd year old man running around the world rather
Speaker 5: than like pay taxes. I couldn't understand why he felt
Speaker 5: he had to react sorely to something like that, And
Speaker 5: all I could think was it was his narcissism and
Speaker 5: his ego and this this idea, this belief that he
Speaker 5: had that people cared about him, you know, and that
Speaker 5: without his online audience or his fans or whenever he
Speaker 5: would go to these conferences and speak, he was you know,
Speaker 5: in Alan. You saw him speaking in a couple of
Speaker 5: places as well that you know, he had this adulation
Speaker 5: and I don't know, I was really it just seems
Speaker 5: like the most obvious thing is just go to court,
Speaker 5: but that's he's never done that. He had all of
Speaker 5: these instances where he was meant to go to court
Speaker 5: to face up to charges and he just point blank
Speaker 5: refused to. And they think that if you entrench yourself
Speaker 5: in your positions so stubbornly, I think seventy five year
Speaker 5: olds can be stubborn, then, you know. But and then
Speaker 5: I think the sort of the conspiracy around his death
Speaker 5: was just part of fo menting and making sure that
Speaker 5: he could do what he could to keep his name
Speaker 5: out there as long as possible. I mean, it's really
Speaker 5: an exercise in just like extreme narcissism. But a lot
Speaker 5: of people, you know, brought into it. We get a
Speaker 5: lot of reactions still online to the story that he's
Speaker 5: not dead, so that's always fun.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you look at the contrast between John
Speaker 4: McAfee and Peter Norton. Does anybody know what Peter Norton's
Speaker 4: doing these days? I mean, you know there's a guy
Speaker 4: who paid his taxes made his money, and you know,
Speaker 4: is off doing whatever we talked about him because he
Speaker 4: wanted to be in the public eye and he wanted
Speaker 4: to keep that public persona and that was that was
Speaker 4: important to him. And I do think that there is
Speaker 4: for a lot of the security community. I think there's
Speaker 4: a very libertarian streak in the security community. So a
Speaker 4: lot of what he said resonated with with with many
Speaker 4: people in the security community. A little overboard for for
Speaker 4: for for many, but but I do think that that
Speaker 4: that kind of resonation, you know, was important, and there
Speaker 4: were people that agreed with a lot of what he
Speaker 4: had to say. You know, I think he had a
Speaker 4: very good stance on privacy. For example, Personally, I'm not
Speaker 4: a fan of cryptocurrencies, but that's because I deal with
Speaker 4: ransomware and I only see cryptocurrency is being used for
Speaker 4: bad things. But you know, so in that way, he's
Speaker 4: managed to stay relevant because he was always chasing after
Speaker 4: the next relevant thing.
Speaker 3: We're almost out a time, but I want Jamie to
Speaker 3: ask one more question. What is the one thing you
Speaker 3: hope listeners take away from the series?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I mean, I think in a lot
Speaker 5: of ways, it's it's a really great story. Like I
Speaker 5: think what happened to John McAfee, Like he came from
Speaker 5: nothing and he built this incredible company and it helped start,
Speaker 5: you know, an industry. And I think that sort of
Speaker 5: the the good parts of what he did and what
Speaker 5: he accomplished I really worth sort of paying attention to.
Speaker 5: Like he saw an opportunity, he had an idea, and
Speaker 5: he went for it and really went for it. And
Speaker 5: I think the other part of that is, you know,
Speaker 5: it's such a slippery slope.
Speaker 6: You you you become powerful and wealthy, and you were
Speaker 6: surrounded by your neighborers and you never hear the word no,
Speaker 6: and you start to believe that you don't have to
Speaker 6: operate on the same level as everyone else.
Speaker 5: And there's a big lesson in that as well. And
Speaker 5: you know we see that every day. Actually you're right
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, thank you Alan for sitting down with
Speaker 3: us now twice if you count the podcast interview, absolutely
Speaker 3: and thanks to Jamie for doing what is a very
Speaker 3: awkward dance for a journalist of sitting up here and
Speaker 3: performing for an audio. And I hope you all give
Speaker 3: a round him applause for our executive producer Sean. When
Speaker 3: Sean came out this morning's bite having a tiny baby
Speaker 3: at home and was not letting her sleep, and Brad
Speaker 3: and Tom and Hannah, and this is the first time
Speaker 3: we've been able to get almost the entire team together.
Speaker 3: But most of all, thank you to all of you
Speaker 3: for coming today And if you like the show, find
Speaker 3: us in your podcast app, subscribe, leave a review, thank you,
Speaker 3: and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.