Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. Just gonna walk down the street
Speaker 3: real quick for this one. Money's kind of weird, right,
Speaker 3: are you guys into money?
Speaker 4: It's not real.
Speaker 2: It is a requirement, at least to some extent, a
Speaker 2: necessary evil.
Speaker 3: And you guys will recall several years ago put out
Speaker 3: a standing challenge to all of our fellow conspiracy realists
Speaker 3: in the crowd. We said, can you delineate or determine
Speaker 3: any meaningful difference between the concept of economy or money
Speaker 3: and the trappings of religion? And just an accountability check here,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure no one can prove a difference.
Speaker 4: Thanks for being our accountability buddy.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 2: I keep trying to think of like, Nope, it's just
Speaker 2: it's kind of makes them up, make them up seats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's articles of faith at some point, after
Speaker 3: some certain threshold. I mean, look at the stock market.
Speaker 3: Not to get too topical, uh, but the thing is,
Speaker 3: despite being all kinds of malarchy, the human world does
Speaker 3: move at the whims of money and of those who
Speaker 3: control it. So money can make you powerful, but you
Speaker 3: also get a disadvantage. It can make you a target.
Speaker 3: That's tonight's conspiracy. It's a twisting thing we barely touch
Speaker 3: in a strange news segment. We didn't have time to
Speaker 3: get to it. But the nation of China has hacked
Speaker 3: the US Treasury, which is crazy because that's one of
Speaker 3: the most important financial institutions across the planet.
Speaker 4: But it was fine, right, Everything's okay, everything's great. No
Speaker 4: question is great question for you guys. Do you think
Speaker 4: it's possible to manipulate the stock market by announcing tariffs
Speaker 4: and then pulling them back at the last minute. Do
Speaker 4: you think that's intentional? That's what I told him to do,
Speaker 4: so yeah, you know, you guys.
Speaker 3: Are tight, just wondering.
Speaker 4: We were talking about manipulation of currency, of this idea
Speaker 4: of wealth and of value, and I just think, you know,
Speaker 4: that's sort of an interesting thing to point to how easily,
Speaker 4: given enough power, these things are changeable.
Speaker 3: M H.
Speaker 2: And today we are talking about specifically a time that
Speaker 2: some people hacked into the US Treasury Department last year,
Speaker 2: in early December of last year. But it is not
Speaker 2: something that just occurred, you know, that one time. It
Speaker 2: is an ongoing situation.
Speaker 3: Yes, well said, And that brings us to our question
Speaker 3: what happens next? To learn more will have to start
Speaker 3: from the beginning, not like the beginning beginning, but you know,
Speaker 3: a mid beginning.
Speaker 4: First, let's take a quick word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 4: then we'll jump right in.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. Let's be honest, most people across
Speaker 3: the planet, including residents of these United States, we have
Speaker 3: some understandable misconceptions about the United States Treasury, the provenance
Speaker 3: of it, the function, the mission, you could say it.
Speaker 3: We even a few years back, I remember when we
Speaker 3: were all collectively surprised to learn that the Secret Service
Speaker 3: functions under the Treasury. That was that was kind of creepy, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, until they got moved into Homeland Security.
Speaker 3: Cool, which is totally not a weird.
Speaker 2: Amorphous thing that's different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I appreciate you saying arms instead
Speaker 3: of tentacles. That is accurate. The maybe we do like
Speaker 3: an origin story of the US Treasury because one thing
Speaker 3: that might surprise a lot of our American conspiracy realists
Speaker 3: tonight in Canada, Mexico, the US, and the Caribbean is
Speaker 3: that the Treasury is actually super old. It's like one
Speaker 3: of the first things the founding fathers put in their
Speaker 3: paperwork or in their pitch, in their look book for
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: How are you going to do capitalism without a really
Speaker 4: tight US Treasury?
Speaker 3: And this was wars need funding also true.
Speaker 4: And this was established in seventeen eighty nine as an
Speaker 4: executive division of the federal government. Its jobs to advise
Speaker 4: the president on financial physical matters, and perform certain.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement activities.
Speaker 4: Manufacturing currency as well as stamp which I believe it
Speaker 4: wasn't more stamps at one point I'll referred to as
Speaker 4: legal tender in some way. Yeah, I guess that's right.
Speaker 3: Anyhow, I mean, that's that money in religion. Everything's money
Speaker 3: if you believe in it hard enough, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Just on stamps because they hold a certain value, right,
Speaker 2: And it is a bit amorphous, a bit strange when
Speaker 2: they changed over to forever stamps, and right, that's kind
Speaker 2: of I don't know. I still don't fully get that
Speaker 2: because I used to watch as the price of stamps
Speaker 2: would kind of incrementally increase.
Speaker 4: Maybe that is the move or the reason I was
Speaker 4: thinking about that, because it's that change certainly made that
Speaker 4: not be as much of a thing anymore. You know,
Speaker 4: the idea of the value of stamps, there's got to
Speaker 4: be some index that can be observed, you know, for
Speaker 4: like what the value of forever stamps in general. Arm No,
Speaker 4: but that that you pay once and then they're good forever.
Speaker 4: It's not the whole deal.
Speaker 3: That's Yeah, that's the idea increasingly uh increasing for the government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe, I don't know, maybe a bad deal for us.
Speaker 3: Well, they also run treasury bonds, so treasury bonds are
Speaker 3: another example of something kind of like a forever stamp. Uh,
Speaker 3: you got a limited time window and Uncle Sam says,
Speaker 3: you know, I'll gladly pay you back for a Hamburger
Speaker 3: on Wednesday if you give me the money for it
Speaker 3: on Monday.
Speaker 4: I've heard that they're a pretty good investment right now.
Speaker 3: They were they were for sure for a minute. Well, okay, god, yeah,
Speaker 3: true though true though they're in trouble. But in theory
Speaker 3: it makes sense for the Treasury to do this sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. They're the money guys, the money boffins. They
Speaker 3: also supervised national banks, and a lot of the agencies
Speaker 3: you hear about in the United States are under the
Speaker 3: Treasury Department. The greatest hits like the Bureau of Engraving
Speaker 3: and Printing, the blas Q, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau.
Speaker 3: The US meant and of course are good friends at
Speaker 3: the IRS, see you guys in April.
Speaker 4: So there's an Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
Speaker 4: But also what is it alcohol, tobacco and firearms?
Speaker 3: Is that? Are they related? No?
Speaker 2: No, that one is for taxing and the other one
Speaker 2: is for getting you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the other one's forgetting you and these guys. This
Speaker 3: is a common misconception everything we're describing. As far as
Speaker 3: the US Treasury goes. It is not the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 3: That is a different branch of bureaucracy and conspiracy. They
Speaker 3: do hang out, though they kick it pretty hard.
Speaker 4: And the Reserve are the ones of the officials there
Speaker 4: who adjust interest rates and things like that, right, and
Speaker 4: make vague speeches about that make it easy. They can
Speaker 4: also instantly affect the markets just by talking about your set,
Speaker 4: just by a whiff of a change.
Speaker 2: Coming go back and watch our videos on the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 2: and I believe we've.
Speaker 3: Covered it in a full episode at least once.
Speaker 4: That's no, it was about the National Bank, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: And we did.
Speaker 4: We definitely did a live show about the establishment of
Speaker 4: the National Bank.
Speaker 3: Look, as long as these folks keep doing shenanigans, it
Speaker 3: is our remit to cover those shenanigans.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I believe it's the creature from Jekyl Island. Yes,
Speaker 2: a good search term if you wish to go down
Speaker 2: that rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: Shout out to nineteen thirteen. Uh so in short for
Speaker 3: well over two centuries now, which is, you know, a
Speaker 3: big amount of time for the US. The Treasury has
Speaker 3: been the main institution for Uncle Sam's money. Big big
Speaker 3: tip of the tricorn hat to Alexander Hamillon, most famous
Speaker 3: now for a musical based on loosely on his life,
Speaker 3: but before that he was he was one of the
Speaker 3: big financial movers of the Founding Fathers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is that situation. If you are going to
Speaker 2: fight a major war, you have to get funding, and
Speaker 2: all of this is I mean, this isn't directly tied
Speaker 2: back to the funding that those revolutionary fellows secured in
Speaker 2: order to fight back against the British, but it is
Speaker 2: an interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it isn't.
Speaker 2: Let's say, it's a it's a curious thread to follow,
Speaker 2: just the funding, the outside funding that comes into a
Speaker 2: country as it's attempting to fight some major war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the funding that the or the debt
Speaker 3: that the individual states racked up. And without getting two
Speaker 3: into the weeds. That was one of the things that
Speaker 3: Hamilton went ten toes down on, you know, was saying
Speaker 3: that the federal government, if a United States exist as
Speaker 3: an entity, then at some point it has to bear
Speaker 3: the costs that say, your Virginia's or your Delawar's rack up.
Speaker 4: I guess what I get kind of my mind blown
Speaker 4: about when we're talking about the reality of money or
Speaker 4: like the value of money or money as a religion.
Speaker 4: Like you were saying, Ben, is the amount of debt
Speaker 4: that countries carry and like, at what point does that
Speaker 4: become a real thing. A note that is called in
Speaker 4: and which never seems to really happen. It all just
Speaker 4: seems kind of like soft diplomacy and threats to like
Speaker 4: have countries kind of do what you want, but the
Speaker 4: money never really changes hands or the debts are never
Speaker 4: really repaid. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's wild to me in my mind the way it functions,
Speaker 2: and I may be way off base here, but as
Speaker 2: long as everybody is paying their debts, you know, those
Speaker 2: little payments, right, the interest in all that stuff. As
Speaker 2: long as everybody is paying everybody else, then money continues
Speaker 2: to flow, and everybody can kind of do their thing
Speaker 2: that they want to do. And people who are getting
Speaker 2: paid most by others who owe them, right, they can
Speaker 2: do the most things that they want to do. It.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, it does, and I think that's well put.
Speaker 3: They can Also, those people are entities and power. They
Speaker 3: can wield great influence beyond just a spreadsheet. And that's
Speaker 3: where that's where we get to some of the big
Speaker 3: controversies of the Treasury Department. Given given its position, it's
Speaker 3: its high functionality, right, and given the length of time
Speaker 3: this institution has existed, it's not a surprise that they have,
Speaker 3: you know, stepped a little off the hedge path or
Speaker 3: the hedgerow every so often, and uh two, great consequence
Speaker 3: and a great detriment to the average person. But again,
Speaker 3: the average person, and I want to be very honest here,
Speaker 3: is not involved in these conversations. You can vote all
Speaker 3: the live long day, but you do not have direct
Speaker 3: influence on the US Treasury. It's sort of like if
Speaker 3: you're a second grader, you don't get to determine who
Speaker 3: becomes principal next year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you got to pay extra for that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Two, you can vote for the people or person who
Speaker 2: has the people around them who will appoint the person.
Speaker 3: You can vote for a person who will tell you,
Speaker 3: if you catch them on a good day, that they
Speaker 3: will do what you believe will make the United States better. Yes, spoiler,
Speaker 3: they're probably not going to call you every three PM.
Speaker 4: Are not going to check in and check in.
Speaker 3: You have to get above a certain threshold. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's no arguing this though. It's It's like so many
Speaker 3: other The US Treasury is a fundamental part of the
Speaker 3: United States. Whatever kind of treasury or financial overseer system
Speaker 3: exists in any nation, it is a fundamental piece of
Speaker 3: the overall organism in the US. All of the institutions
Speaker 3: we have are both imperfect and necessary. And it's funny
Speaker 3: we talk about this all the time. All sorts of
Speaker 3: people have all kinds of ideas about how to improve
Speaker 3: the treasury. You ask people, especially in DC, and you're
Speaker 3: going to encounter some pretty hard sell pitches, and you'll
Speaker 3: encounter people who are not even being insincere, they're being
Speaker 3: quite genuine when they say, we know how to fix this, right,
Speaker 3: here's what you do step A through Z. But the
Speaker 3: issue is these ideas are often contradictory. There are ulterior
Speaker 3: motives at play. If you took everybody's ideas, you put
Speaker 3: them all together and rolled them out at once, the
Speaker 3: immediate result would be chaos. And that's why the US overall,
Speaker 3: especially in the world of finance, it has a surprisingly
Speaker 3: like ad hoc patch together sort of jazz approach to infrastructure.
Speaker 2: The only thing everybody agrees on is more military spending.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The people who are allowed to speak in Congress
Speaker 3: the one thing they agree on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just some people say more military spending and
Speaker 2: others say more.
Speaker 3: Military spending, and then another guy goes, I completely disagree.
Speaker 3: What we need to do is spend more on the military. Also,
Speaker 3: well said sir, Yeah, it's crucial to remember when we
Speaker 3: talk about the US Treasury in particular, this money makes you,
Speaker 3: makes you powerful. It also makes you a target for
Speaker 3: high level espionage and high level politicians. Domestically, this is
Speaker 3: a golden goose. This single entity has vast influence over
Speaker 3: the way US money moves, which means it has vast
Speaker 3: influence over the way money moves throughout the world.
Speaker 4: And I mean, if there's one thing that I think
Speaker 4: we've learned from the Doge situation, whatever you think about
Speaker 4: what they're ultimately doing, is that a lot of these
Speaker 4: systems are pretty antiquated and potentially vulnerable to this kind
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also remember just the number of government grants,
Speaker 2: the number of payments that the US government makes. When
Speaker 2: a deal is made, especially with a foreign entity, with
Speaker 2: either a corporation and a state, anything like that, there
Speaker 2: are usually press releases or you know, some big announcement
Speaker 2: in the press when money is moving, especially across borders
Speaker 2: of the United States to another country. But the specifics
Speaker 2: of anything to do with that, you know, the drilled
Speaker 2: down specifics of where that money is moving, is often
Speaker 2: not discussed. That is like highly controlled information by design.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it has to. It's opseche at that point like,
Speaker 3: that's I love that point because that gets us to
Speaker 3: I would say one of the axioms that is fundamental
Speaker 3: to this episode. At least in my opinion, it's not
Speaker 3: so much what the money is or what the money does.
Speaker 3: I think it's more what kind of tea leaves you
Speaker 3: can read, what sort of actions one can predict and
Speaker 3: then if necessary prevent right. It gives you a little
Speaker 3: heads up, a little bit of prognostication ability. And that's
Speaker 3: why that's why we see the real danger of compromising
Speaker 3: the US Treasury Department. It has a wait for it,
Speaker 3: treasure trove. Thank you, Dylan, I appreciate the drummer. If
Speaker 3: they're of data, yes, a wealth of knowledge, wealth of
Speaker 3: knowledge that could, if compromised, easily make things go south
Speaker 3: in a serious way. As we record this evening, folks,
Speaker 3: true story don't be full. Twenty four was just a
Speaker 3: few months ago, not too long ago. The US Treasury
Speaker 3: got hacked hard, arguably twice.
Speaker 4: You'll one two punch.
Speaker 2: Yep, and then we're gonna tell you all about that
Speaker 2: hard hacking.
Speaker 3: Right after this hard hack's.
Speaker 4: Gonna come, y'all.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. All right, let's be honest.
Speaker 3: All right, we're talking about like the first hack? What
Speaker 3: was the real first hack? For decades, we talked like
Speaker 3: even before we started doing this strange show, the United
Speaker 3: States has repeatedly, often consistently accused rival powers, especially our
Speaker 3: pals in China and in Russia, of trying to hack
Speaker 3: into their stuff.
Speaker 2: Yep, and lest we forget North Korea, we've heard that
Speaker 2: many a time.
Speaker 4: And you know, there's a certain amount of kind of
Speaker 4: chef's chest puffing, you know, saber rattling here when it
Speaker 4: comes to politicians trying to seem like they're kind of
Speaker 4: keyed into what's going on, trying to earn points with
Speaker 4: their constituency or with other politicians. But it is important
Speaker 4: to realize that this stuff isn't coming from thin air
Speaker 4: at all. This is a very real threat and has
Speaker 4: been for a very long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that, because, look, folks, we know politics
Speaker 3: can be sensitive, as as can any other sort of
Speaker 3: religious ideology. But this is not an episode about politics.
Speaker 3: This is an episode about espionage. This is an episode
Speaker 3: about trade craft, and it's one that we all need
Speaker 3: to be aware of, right, And this is where we
Speaker 3: go to journalists like David D. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes,
Speaker 3: Singer is going to show up a couple of times
Speaker 3: because he just did some kick ass work for the
Speaker 3: New York Times. He's going to show up a couple
Speaker 3: of New York Times in tonight's episode. In November of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, Singer and Barnes described the mission creep
Speaker 3: of Chinese espionage in specific applied to the United States.
Speaker 2: The quote is, at first, the biggest worry was the
Speaker 2: theft of intellectual property such as chip designs and plans
Speaker 2: for military equipment. Yummy, And just coming out of the quote,
Speaker 2: we've talked about that many times.
Speaker 3: What do they call it? Corporate espionage or industrial espionage?
Speaker 3: And that's it. Hey, hang it out. We just can't
Speaker 3: hang it out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I think I mentioned like the synthesizer that I have,
Speaker 4: there's these chips inside of it that are when they
Speaker 4: were made, they had a defect basically because they were
Speaker 4: covered with this like polyurethane material and it was literally
Speaker 4: a process that made the chips more vulnerable to moisture
Speaker 4: and stuff, but was designed to protect against people being
Speaker 4: able to scope out what the chip design looked like.
Speaker 4: You know, and take a photo of it from the
Speaker 4: factory floor or whatever to prevent industrial espionage.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so chis chips are one thing. Some things
Speaker 2: like nuclear power generation way back in the day. All
Speaker 2: kinds of things like that were just new technologies, right,
Speaker 2: were always and have always been ripe fruit to be
Speaker 2: picked from anybody who was good at this type of
Speaker 2: espionage propriety stuff. Yes, so let's jump back to the quote.
Speaker 2: We're talking about military equipment, chip designs, intellectual property quote.
Speaker 2: Those included the F thirty five, America's most advanced fighter jet,
Speaker 2: whose blueprints China stole from American military contractors.
Speaker 3: True story. Oh dear.
Speaker 2: Then during the Bush and Obama administrations, China's focus turned
Speaker 2: to understanding American government officials, including the theft of the
Speaker 2: security clearance files of more than twenty two million Americans.
Speaker 3: WHOA, this was not ideal. Just by the way, I'm
Speaker 3: being very bep or Dylan, I am being extremely fucking diplomatic,
Speaker 3: And everybody who heard that line, well, please please please.
Speaker 2: I believe it. It was not ideal.
Speaker 3: Recognize the diplomacy there, because now we're getting past like, okay,
Speaker 3: for anybody who's ever been in a weird personal relationship,
Speaker 3: sometimes somewhat toxic or somewhat just curious. Cats will will
Speaker 3: do deep internet you know, searching. We'll we'll joke and
Speaker 3: call it internet stalking on other people to figure out
Speaker 3: what their aims are, what their providence is, what their
Speaker 3: mission is. China now is doing this on a macro level,
Speaker 3: as a a with all the powers of one of
Speaker 3: the most important nations and one of the most dangerous
Speaker 3: nations on the planet. They might be looking at you
Speaker 3: and saying like, oh, what did you what did you
Speaker 3: do Tuesday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these are in individuals with security clearance, which
Speaker 2: means they have access to those files that not all
Speaker 2: of us have access to.
Speaker 3: And then extrapolate that toward the larger web, right leveraging
Speaker 3: five eyes, which is clearly compromised at this point. And
Speaker 3: then you can now construct a model or a decision
Speaker 3: tree where you say something like, Hey, I'm thinking of
Speaker 3: an innocuous name. Hey, Tiffany, Tiffany Blue Jens or whatever
Speaker 3: has a security clearance, right, and we know she hangs
Speaker 3: out here, and she knows she has an interest in
Speaker 3: this thing, and so maybe we can have a accidental
Speaker 3: meeting where a conversation ensues and we can learn a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 4: More or even potentially compromise somebody like that.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: But I mean, like compromisation, well not not just eavesdropping
Speaker 4: or like you know, probing for information, but even making
Speaker 4: them an asset POTENTI ting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's where.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you have twenty two million of them,
Speaker 2: you can maybe see somebody who's like third down the
Speaker 2: line of who's gonna get notified when action X occurs?
Speaker 3: Right, feeling a little.
Speaker 4: Underappreciated, maybe you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Leverage the weaknesses, right, find the gaps in the armor.
Speaker 3: So we already see like that excellent quote describes, we
Speaker 3: see an expansion of scope mission creep, earlier hacks, earlier
Speaker 3: compromise attempts, espionage, tradecraft attempts, relatively constrained. Let me get
Speaker 3: the blueprints, let me get out. Let me see if
Speaker 3: I can leave a proverbial window open so I can
Speaker 3: break in later. Uh. And just side note, that's a
Speaker 3: reference to typical B and E strategy for anybody who
Speaker 3: knows what they're doing. You break into a house or
Speaker 3: a structure the first time. What you want to do
Speaker 3: is leave some sort of just unlatch a window or
Speaker 3: something and hope no one notices it, because it makes
Speaker 3: it easier for you to do a second round of crimes. Also,
Speaker 3: we don't do that.
Speaker 2: Well, especially when you're talking about doing some kind of
Speaker 2: espionage through a computer interface, right or through a network Leaving,
Speaker 2: leaving an escape patch open is a little easier than
Speaker 2: you know, physically unlatching a window when there's a big
Speaker 2: investigation or something, right like, sometimes not always, but it is.
Speaker 2: It is definitely the strategy.
Speaker 3: As you said, Ben, what we're saying is everybody go
Speaker 3: check your windows right now, especially ones you don't check often. Yes,
Speaker 3: those those are the ones. And that that applies to
Speaker 3: security online and electronic infrastructure as well. So the next
Speaker 3: question is like, what how do we make this bigger? Right?
Speaker 3: Hackers are asking and they're saying, if we steal access
Speaker 3: to one thing, why don't we leverage that to gain
Speaker 3: access to some other thing or place like? Ultimately, you
Speaker 3: don't want to steal just the key to the front door.
Speaker 3: You want to steal the key to the room where
Speaker 3: someone makes all the other keys.
Speaker 4: If it's a give a man a fist, teach a
Speaker 4: man to fish kind of scenario.
Speaker 3: Which is an example that comes up later. Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's weird. I feel like the treasurery
Speaker 2: Department might be the biggest get you can almost imagine.
Speaker 3: One of for sure, as especially as far as world
Speaker 3: powers go, these like we were saying, these attacks are occurring.
Speaker 3: They are occurring much more often than the average member
Speaker 3: of the public might assume, especially if you remember the
Speaker 3: public in China, because as we'll see later, they disagree
Speaker 3: with some of the allegations of conspiracy that we're going
Speaker 3: to explore. But we will tell you things that the
Speaker 3: United States and the world at large, other than the PRC,
Speaker 3: the People's Republic of China consider proven right now, and
Speaker 3: you don't have to look far. Let's just like start
Speaker 3: with July of twenty twenty four, not too long ago.
Speaker 3: We were all, I guess, easy breezy summer girls or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then China, China broke into everybody's phones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, PRC sponsored hackers broke into at least nine separate
Speaker 4: telecom systems.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is also one of those things
Speaker 3: too where we.
Speaker 4: Say PRC sponsored, but there is still kind of plausible
Speaker 4: deniability from the government. Right, it's like we didn't, you know,
Speaker 4: hire these people. They were acting on their own.
Speaker 3: Isn't that correct? Yeah, hacking for hire. It's it's a
Speaker 3: thing we'll get into later as well. And I think
Speaker 3: that's excellent foreshadowing. There's a degree of a hidden hand, right,
Speaker 3: plausible deniability, we would call it in the US when
Speaker 3: we do it, because spoiler, we super do that, oh
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 4: Well, in the hacker group that we're talking about here
Speaker 4: for hire. Otherwise they're got to really sick.
Speaker 3: Name if you ask me, salt typhoon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty cool, but is it salt typhoon food? Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did not they do not call themselves that.
Speaker 3: They were known as APT twenty seven h Advanced Persistent
Speaker 3: Threat twenty seven, and then Microsoft called them salt typhoon.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, good on you, Microsoft. That's a pretty sick nickname.
Speaker 4: It's like the way the press sort of like nicknames
Speaker 4: a serial killer or something.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now the reported purpose of this hack was
Speaker 2: specifically to spy on US government officials, including then I
Speaker 2: believe it was Donald Trump as he's running.
Speaker 3: For president for a president elect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, And there was like other just high level
Speaker 2: government officials that they wanted to just literally see what
Speaker 2: they're doing on their.
Speaker 3: Phones, compromise cabinet level stuff, and then the unelected bureaucrats
Speaker 3: that can make some power powerful decisions with global consequence.
Speaker 3: There have been other breaches and breach attempts by this
Speaker 3: group back before Microsoft called them Salt Typhoon, and they
Speaker 3: were against public entities as well as private big enough companies,
Speaker 3: especially in the defense industry, especially in certain I will
Speaker 3: say biomedicine applications. Right, So they're touching universities, they're touching healthcare,
Speaker 3: they're touching the right kind of grants, and they're doing
Speaker 3: human int as well, so they're human intelligence. So they're
Speaker 3: also you know, they found out what Miss Blue Jeans
Speaker 3: is doing later and they sent someone to have a chat.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they found the cloning facilities. They found
Speaker 3: a clone of the cloning facilities. An instance, an instance,
Speaker 3: an iteration thereof this telecom breach that Noel's mentioning there
Speaker 3: is astonishing because it teaches the the hackers, the aggressors,
Speaker 3: more about the structure than it does about the specific
Speaker 3: heistore monitoring observation attempt. At this point, they're not trying
Speaker 3: to shake the waters. They're trying to get their ears
Speaker 3: and eyes inside of people's activities and people's minds and motivations.
Speaker 3: But then they find a lot more about the structure
Speaker 3: and they say, holy spokes, this thing is terrible. This
Speaker 3: is like a roller coaster built in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: How has someone not beaaten us to this yet?
Speaker 4: They're like casing the joint at this point, you know,
Speaker 4: checking for those unlatched windows that you were talking.
Speaker 2: About, well, yeah, and figuring out the web of who
Speaker 2: to target when.
Speaker 3: And for what. Yeah, they get access to not just
Speaker 3: text communicate but also phone conversations, and they get real
Speaker 3: close to being able to do it in real time.
Speaker 4: And that would be a great way to gather that
Speaker 4: kind of compromand on these individuals. Not only are you
Speaker 4: learning potentially actionable intelligence items, but you might find someone
Speaker 4: doing something they're not supposed to, that's in a position
Speaker 4: that you might want to take advantage of, and then
Speaker 4: you've got everything you need to flip them.
Speaker 3: Check out our earlier episodes, because look, we're not spilling
Speaker 3: beans outside of the barrel here. This is known tactics,
Speaker 3: and they are deployed by all high level world powers.
Speaker 3: So initially the Biden administration. This happened while Joe Biden
Speaker 3: was the President of the US. The Biden administration acknowledged
Speaker 3: this hack from July twenty twenty four, but members of Congress,
Speaker 3: members of Joe Biden's own ostensible political party, they came
Speaker 3: forward pretty soon after and they said, look, you guys
Speaker 3: are making this sound like it's not a big deal,
Speaker 3: and it is a huge deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I remember that
Speaker 4: pr kind of line that they pushed out, and maybe
Speaker 4: just because I wanted to be blissfully ignorant to it,
Speaker 4: I sort of was like, Okay, it's probably fine. I'm
Speaker 4: sure a lot of people did the same thing, which was.
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil the lead here. We were
Speaker 2: pretty straightforward and saying the Treasury Department got hacked hard.
Speaker 2: But if you read the official, you know, statements, it
Speaker 2: was it's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that. But that was that was definitely the.
Speaker 2: Forward facing message, not a big deal, tiny, tiny, little breach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, everybody sometimes pushes a fart too
Speaker 3: hard you and can get a little juice in your paper.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's what they were saying. They had
Speaker 3: a little juice. That's what they were saying. That was
Speaker 3: actually in the official release.
Speaker 4: Yes, language they chose to go with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we do have we do have a let's say,
Speaker 2: a sentiment from Senator Mark Warner of Virginia about this
Speaker 2: specific hack under the Biden administration when they were in charge,
Speaker 2: and he at the time was the chairman of the
Speaker 2: Senate Intelligence Committee. Uh, he was pretty messed up about it,
Speaker 2: like he thought, this is way worse than we're all
Speaker 2: saying out loud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said he was stunned by the scope and
Speaker 3: depth of the breach. And again, look, politics aside, this
Speaker 3: guy is also a Democrat. For anybody outside of the US,
Speaker 3: Joe Biden was and I assume is a Democrat. So
Speaker 3: these guys are on the same, you know, political team.
Speaker 3: And this dude, Senator Warter is saying, no, it's not
Speaker 3: just some juice. These attacks are going to lead to
Speaker 3: more attacks unless there is a serious inventory of our
Speaker 3: security on the US side. And being from Virginia and
Speaker 3: being a politician, just to be fair, obviously he's going
Speaker 3: to lean into like folksy idioms because he wants to
Speaker 3: get re elected, so he says, the bound door is
Speaker 3: still wide open, mostly open.
Speaker 4: Is this not part of the mandate or mission of
Speaker 4: the whole elon musk Doge crew like to prevent stuff
Speaker 4: like I mean again, whatever they're actually up to to
Speaker 4: prevent stuff like that is to tighten up security on
Speaker 4: these antiquated computer systems.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, No, they're I think they'd be a good.
Speaker 4: Selling point though, you know, like, how are they going
Speaker 4: to help us?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Their thing is to help the America. Their stated purpose
Speaker 3: is to help the American public by eliminate wasteful government
Speaker 3: spending and fraud.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and remember these are these are private telecoms
Speaker 2: that were targeted in this specific instance, right, So that
Speaker 2: is not government at all, that's.
Speaker 4: True, but it was it did have tendrils that reached
Speaker 4: into government, which is what we're going to get further.
Speaker 3: Into long lines. Building. Yes, love it, love it. Imagine
Speaker 3: a skyscraper with no windows. If you live in Manhattan, boy,
Speaker 3: do we have news for you. Also, by the way,
Speaker 3: this is how unprepared Uncle Sam was. The federal government,
Speaker 3: the folks who run the world's most dangerous military still
Speaker 3: in all of known existence, technically, they did not discover
Speaker 3: this on their own. They were too big. They were
Speaker 3: like a They were like a blue whale that didn't
Speaker 3: know it had some parasites on its tail. They instead
Speaker 3: got word about this from Microsoft Private Company. Their cybersec
Speaker 3: team discovered the first hack, the telecom hack. Right. We
Speaker 3: say first, because that's the one they discovered first, and
Speaker 3: they're the ones who gave us that sick name salt Typhoon. Again,
Speaker 3: it does sound like one of those giant robots, a
Speaker 3: Jaeger from Pacific rim. Well done, fellow nerds. The US government,
Speaker 3: even after they knew they were trying to picture the
Speaker 3: whale trying to turn around and look at its own tail,
Speaker 3: they still didn't understand the following things. They're really dangerous. First,
Speaker 3: they didn't understand how China was able to obtain this
Speaker 3: information in the first place. Second, they didn't understand how
Speaker 3: this breach allowed them to target and monitor conversations with
Speaker 3: those high value targets. And then they also didn't understand
Speaker 3: the full ways in which this had implications for the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah. And they didn't know the specifics of
Speaker 2: what was taken. They just knew it had been happening
Speaker 2: for a certain amount of time. So you then have
Speaker 2: to just assume that anything and everything that was discussed
Speaker 2: by everybody, every one like seriously, was just swept up.
Speaker 3: M Yeah. They initially they say, okay, these hackers used
Speaker 3: stolen passwords, honestly, very easy. We don't say this with
Speaker 3: any like great pride, and we're not trying to be
Speaker 3: a dix about it. But a lot of people used
Speaker 3: really dumb passwords like one, two, three, four, five, you know,
Speaker 3: in their government jobs. And then they focused on these
Speaker 3: systems that would function under stuff like the FISA court. Right,
Speaker 3: you know, get get the warrant such that you are
Speaker 3: legally allowed to monitor phone calls text. But it looks
Speaker 3: like as soon as to your point about observation, as
Speaker 3: soon as they realized that they have been discovered, the
Speaker 3: Salt Typhoon and co. Retreated right they left the house,
Speaker 3: They left some windows unlocked, they suspended their activities because
Speaker 3: if they're not observed, that means it is incredibly difficult
Speaker 3: to gauge the amounts of damage done, to know what
Speaker 3: they touched. To keep with our like B and E comparison,
Speaker 3: I would say think of it as hearing the sirens
Speaker 3: in the distance while you're still inside the house and
Speaker 3: having enough time to wipe down as much stuff as possible.
Speaker 3: You remove your fingerprints or shredding the.
Speaker 2: Docks, putting them drills through your hard drives.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 3: That's a good one. Yeah, that's an old favorite of us.
Speaker 3: It's stuff they'll watch you to know it. Brought to
Speaker 3: you by Big Drill.
Speaker 4: But now we sit as we record on March seventh
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty five, and a little bit more information
Speaker 4: has come out about what really went down during these hacks.
Speaker 4: We're going to tell you all about that right after
Speaker 4: we take a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: We've returned fast forward December four, just a few months ago,
Speaker 3: as weird as that is to say, because a lot
Speaker 3: has happened. We are to your point, Noel, starting to
Speaker 3: learn more about what transpired. Somehow, we're still officially not
Speaker 3: sure how. The hackers of Salt Typhoon they snagged a
Speaker 3: nearly comprehensive list of phone numbers that DOJ has actively
Speaker 3: wire tapped, which means, for the purposes of the PRC,
Speaker 3: they got a list of like eighty to ninety percent
Speaker 3: of every individual the DOJ thinks might be spying. Wow
Speaker 3: again not ideal, Yeah, or a.
Speaker 2: Part of some criminal syndicate, right, that's moving money or
Speaker 2: functioning through investments through a series of front companies or
Speaker 2: something like that. I mean we're talking. So basically, they
Speaker 2: they figured out who we think the bad guys are.
Speaker 2: So now they know which bad guys that they might
Speaker 2: be associated with are under investigation. Which you've seen movies,
Speaker 2: you've seen TV shows. Once you know you're under investigation,
Speaker 2: the whole game changes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your behaviors change, right, and you can again decision
Speaker 3: tree people toward actions that are preferable to use. So
Speaker 3: we saw then diagram. Right, China has a list of assets.
Speaker 3: And to be completely fair and to exercise empathy, it
Speaker 3: is known that quite a few people who are functioning
Speaker 3: as Chinese assets abroad are not doing so of their
Speaker 3: own free will. They are being coerced with threats to
Speaker 3: their family and intimidation and extortion, you know, all the hits.
Speaker 3: And again the US does this too. I hate to
Speaker 3: say it, but it's true. So you nailed it, Matt.
Speaker 3: One of the logical primary goals of attaining this list
Speaker 3: is not to immediately people, right, the Chinese boffins don't
Speaker 3: love a third story window as much as our friends
Speaker 3: in Russia, but they do want that information. And perhaps
Speaker 3: the most important thing is when you're able to compare
Speaker 3: those two lists, right, the one we have, the one
Speaker 3: China has, or the one the US has and one
Speaker 3: we have, you can find the coolest part the real
Speaker 3: umami who do we know works for us? That has
Speaker 3: yet to be clocked? Right? Where is the gap? But
Speaker 3: where's the missing piece, the blind spot?
Speaker 2: And let's find a way to get them in on
Speaker 2: the investigation.
Speaker 3: Let's have the me Lo Jens lady. Right, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: maybe they can you know, maybe they can get at
Speaker 3: the right conference, maybe they can get assigned to the
Speaker 3: right project.
Speaker 2: Because it's not get them elected to some official office.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's never looks by movies always want you
Speaker 3: to think it's a big push. It's hardly ever a
Speaker 3: big push. It's a series of little nudges. Right. You
Speaker 3: seek to erode people, You seek to normalize very not
Speaker 3: normal stuff over time, and do it in such a
Speaker 3: way that you can never be held responsible and always
Speaker 3: at the worst say oh, I'm surprised as you are.
Speaker 3: You know, I thought everybody was being cool. Why are
Speaker 3: you not being cool about this? Yikes, yikes, big ikes.
Speaker 3: But fortunately we do have some announcements, you know, they
Speaker 3: come to us from the Treasury and the DOJ. Whatever.
Speaker 3: These hackers, it appears they didn't compromise just these high
Speaker 3: value targets. They also compromised more than one hundred US organizations,
Speaker 3: private and public. The Treasury went forward to the masses
Speaker 3: at the end of the Biden administration when there was
Speaker 3: a lot of other stuff going on, and they said, look,
Speaker 3: here's what happened. These hackers that we think are definitely
Speaker 3: based in China and definitely working for China in some capacity.
Speaker 3: To your point, nol, we think that they gained access
Speaker 3: to our employees workstations aka computers, database, and at the
Speaker 3: very least they got some documents. And someone said what
Speaker 3: kind of documents did they get? And the Treasury said, no, further,
Speaker 3: we're not taking questions. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: You may remember this. We talked about it close to
Speaker 2: around the time. I think we mentioned it in Strange
Speaker 2: News in December at some point twenty twenty four, because
Speaker 2: it was pretty shocking. So in a statement that the
Speaker 2: Department of Treasury made, they said that on December eighth,
Speaker 2: they were made known that there was some kind of
Speaker 2: hack that occurred via a third party software service they
Speaker 2: use called Beyond.
Speaker 3: Trust all one word. Yep.
Speaker 2: This is a This is a company that provides things
Speaker 2: like remote access for governmental employees there at the Department
Speaker 2: of Treasury, and Beyond Trust said some hacker group hackers
Speaker 2: gained access by obtaining a security key, and then they
Speaker 2: used that to get into specific not even not very
Speaker 2: many individuals, machines and materials, but they used that single
Speaker 2: security key to make it seem like they were trustworthy
Speaker 2: and were able to remotely access essentially desktops slash laptops.
Speaker 3: And in doing so perhaps make more keys. For about
Speaker 3: seventy two hours at least, as far as we understand,
Speaker 3: Beyond Trust was able to monitor these activities. During that time.
Speaker 3: They saw these operators create accounts, change passwords, change your passwords.
Speaker 3: Make sense. Of course you would do that, but it
Speaker 3: heightens your risk of being apprehended. Right, So ideally what
Speaker 3: you want to do is create a new account that
Speaker 3: you control, right and make it look native. Right, throw
Speaker 3: some wool over your wolf and have it run with
Speaker 3: the sheep. Yep, but hey, this should be known.
Speaker 2: According to the official statements at that time, the Department
Speaker 2: of Treasury said, Hey, the only things that were taken
Speaker 2: were unclassified files.
Speaker 3: Oh tight, they are unclassified guys. Oh they broke into
Speaker 3: my house, but don't worry. They just stole the trash.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you can find a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 4: digging around in people's trash now, uh.
Speaker 3: Well, put yeah they did. They also I love the
Speaker 3: point they did not specify the nature of these unclassified
Speaker 3: troves of information. They didn't say what kind of files
Speaker 3: were taken. They didn't say when or for how long
Speaker 3: the hack took place other than that seventy two hour
Speaker 3: monitoring window. They also didn't say how confidential or how
Speaker 3: you know, protected these systems are supposed to be. They
Speaker 3: also pulled like they also gathered ranks, and they didn't
Speaker 3: say how senior the staff was. And that last part
Speaker 3: is super important, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seems like it probably wasn't the interns.
Speaker 3: Doesn't feel like the interns. Just to be honest, it
Speaker 3: does not feel like it was the person in charge
Speaker 3: of scheduling, you know, the in office birthday party.
Speaker 2: Ooh, but you know an assistant that's oh gosh, that's
Speaker 2: an assistance.
Speaker 3: Is what you go for you never go, don't go.
Speaker 3: I mean going for the top, folks is five. It
Speaker 3: works in fiction, it's fun like Tinker Tailor's Soldier, Spy
Speaker 3: or whatever. But really what you want is the boring people.
Speaker 3: You want the people a couple steps down, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Maybe not the person who does the
Speaker 3: birthday parties, but the person who asked to know enough
Speaker 3: about what's being discussed in a meeting to figure out
Speaker 3: who goes into that meeting. Yep, the scheduler. We're putting
Speaker 3: you on game, folks. We do know there was a
Speaker 3: pickle here, a bag of badgers. Because investigators private and public,
Speaker 3: like from beyond trust and from the US, they were baffled.
Speaker 3: Whomever was doing this did not seem to be despite
Speaker 3: accessing the Treasury Department, they did not seem to be
Speaker 3: directly attempting to steal money. Again, they broke into a
Speaker 3: house with a lot of valuables. They did not take
Speaker 3: super immediately valuable stuff. That made a lot of folks
Speaker 3: assume this was straight up espionage. You know what I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's uh, what does our friend Heath Ledger say,
Speaker 3: It's not about money. It's about sending a message something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 4: I think that's right, Yeah, as the joker character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, all right, speaking about bringing into a
Speaker 2: place with the valuables. Did you see there's a recent
Speaker 2: statement from Oh I can't remember if it was directly
Speaker 2: from Elon Musk or Donald Trump, but it was something
Speaker 2: about it was questioning whether or not Fork Knox actually
Speaker 2: has gold in it still.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh, that's the big thing that does is talking
Speaker 4: about Right, they're going to do a big reveal like
Speaker 4: that Heraldo thing with the faults and it was just
Speaker 4: like a candy wrapper was in there or something. Wouldn't
Speaker 4: that be funny though, because I actually wanted to bring
Speaker 4: this up at the top of the show when we
Speaker 4: were talking about the nature of debt and the value
Speaker 4: of money and stuff like we're not on a gold
Speaker 4: standard anymore, but still matters that there's tons of gold.
Speaker 4: The idea of it matters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's a tangible representation of value. That's the
Speaker 3: only reason, like, the only reason people got into gold
Speaker 3: in the beginning was because it's ductile. I think we
Speaker 3: talked about this.
Speaker 4: In an earlier pound in or stretch it into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can you can make a little necklace
Speaker 3: and tell people, you know that you're better than that.
Speaker 4: But like to the point of like confidence or whatever,
Speaker 4: and like manipulating the markets and like, you know, people
Speaker 4: saying stuff could be enough to change the wins of finance.
Speaker 4: Like if what if we were to discover that Fort
Speaker 4: Knox was a ruse and there was nothing in there?
Speaker 3: Would it like that we would immediately republish our episode
Speaker 3: from years ago. Well we asked this question, and obviously
Speaker 3: Doge listens to this show, Well, that's what I was
Speaker 3: gonna say.
Speaker 2: The conspiracy theorists are at the helm now, which is
Speaker 2: so much was just so fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true and there are and part of the
Speaker 3: reason that exists is because there is a lack of transparency,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It would have been just objectively,
Speaker 3: it would have been easy on an operational level for
Speaker 3: some sanctioned government department to say, hey, we're going to
Speaker 3: have a you know, a quick little documentary and we're
Speaker 3: going to walk you around four knocks and stuff like
Speaker 3: that happened in the past. But then people began to
Speaker 3: question the sources, and that was aided and embedded by
Speaker 3: asymmetric foreign info war attempts, right, not an Alex Jones thing,
Speaker 3: the actual way of warging, Yes, waging war through information.
Speaker 2: Let's undermine people's belief in the power of the United
Speaker 2: States by saying things like there's no gold in fork knocks.
Speaker 3: And if you undermine the belief in an institution, then
Speaker 3: that also puts the institution itself a tremendous disadvantage. Right.
Speaker 3: It puts it on its back its back heels. I
Speaker 3: guess all heels are back heels, but you know it
Speaker 3: puts it puts you on your back foot because then
Speaker 3: you have to respond to allegations and you're just losing
Speaker 3: more more time during that great gish gallop.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like that gish gallop. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 3: Gish gallop is where you kind of just freestyle a
Speaker 3: bunch of nonsense and maybe one out of ten things
Speaker 3: is true, but you just level a bunch of a
Speaker 3: bunch of statements or accusations that the receiver rival party
Speaker 3: tries to answer in an orderly fashion, and then you
Speaker 3: just keep going and you don't listen to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh god, that sounds familiar.
Speaker 3: Hm, it's sure, it sure does it? Sure does. You
Speaker 3: could say there were several debates about it not too
Speaker 3: long ago. So look, that's the thing, though, are they
Speaker 3: if they're not automatically stealing money? Right, if they're not
Speaker 3: automatically moving funds, then what are they doing? Why? We
Speaker 3: already know China's top intelligence and security boffins, good luck
Speaker 3: to you guys. They have a deep interest in the
Speaker 3: Treasury because it oversees all those financial systems. It implements
Speaker 3: sanctions importantly. So if you can get into the Treasury
Speaker 3: and you can see what the Treasury is prioritizing, it's
Speaker 3: very close to a limited form of telepathy regarding the
Speaker 3: United States overall. Now we can predict priorities, and perhaps
Speaker 3: if we play our cards right, we can take action
Speaker 3: to prevent upcoming moves. Cough cough Taiwan, cough cough you okay,
Speaker 3: bless you.
Speaker 4: I have blessed people when they cough. If people think.
Speaker 3: It's weird, aya at you, fellongong sneeze one more time.
Speaker 3: It's great. That's real. I'm telling you, we're saying it.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is what we can say for sure.
Speaker 3: The next few months are going to be a wild ride.
Speaker 3: That's the only thing the public knows. It's an ongoing story.
Speaker 3: Like we kept saying, we can give you a few
Speaker 3: additional updates, which happened. Get this, folks, just a few
Speaker 3: days before we came to record here with you tonight
Speaker 3: on March seventh. On Thursday and Wednesday of this week,
Speaker 3: we got some full criminal charges against twelve Chinese nationals
Speaker 3: who are currently not apprehended today. But hey, bounty hunter style,
Speaker 3: if you can get one and you survive, the US
Speaker 3: government may give you as much as ten million dollars
Speaker 3: asterisk sick. Well, it's minus taxes. It's after a conviction.
Speaker 3: That's okay, and take a while.
Speaker 4: I'm cool with that.
Speaker 3: What did they say when they just released these statements
Speaker 3: hunting these dirty dozen individuals?
Speaker 2: They said that there were twelve individuals that attacked over
Speaker 2: one hundred different organizations and it was actually a strategy
Speaker 2: that went back as far as twenty thirteen. So this, oh,
Speaker 2: you just imagine, you imagine a group that's just kind
Speaker 2: of been waiting to implement the right attacks at the
Speaker 2: right time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was one of the big ones.
Speaker 4: Do in that recon lay in the groundwork all those
Speaker 4: many years.
Speaker 2: But well, the big question then, is was this attack
Speaker 2: just another little stepping stone in whatever the big operation is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if so, what is it? Right? That's the
Speaker 3: trillion dollar question. The DOJ Department of Justice here in
Speaker 3: the US says, all right, look, maybe some of these
Speaker 3: twelve people, maybe they were acting on their own. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe they said, we can prove that. I think about
Speaker 3: eight of them were ordered to do this by entities
Speaker 3: of the Chinese government, the Ministry of Public Security or
Speaker 3: MPs and the Ministry of State Security MSS. And two
Speaker 3: of the people that they specifically name in these accusations
Speaker 3: are employees, like direct high ranking employees of these ministries.
Speaker 3: But to your point, Noel, there is, as we talked
Speaker 3: about in previous episodes on the fifty cent Army or whatever,
Speaker 3: the nation of China has a complex and very clever
Speaker 3: approach to denying state involvement in these operations through the
Speaker 3: use of proxy, ostensibly private industries. And we have to
Speaker 3: be really careful when we talk about this because a
Speaker 3: lot of politicians use it to sound or to propagate
Speaker 3: very racist statements and to make people like hate more
Speaker 3: than a billion other folks just because they appen to
Speaker 3: live in China. This is why we have to acknowledge
Speaker 3: the United States does the exact same thing pretty often.
Speaker 3: Check out Blackrocks recent exciting purchases of two ports in
Speaker 3: Panama private industry. That's a good idea. Just happens to
Speaker 3: be two of the ports that the US is currently
Speaker 3: beefing with Panama about.
Speaker 2: Hmmm when private, Yeah, I wonder kind of art they
Speaker 2: keep in those points?
Speaker 3: Only the best, straight up, only original drawings of Dick butt.
Speaker 2: Oh god, do you guys remember dick But.
Speaker 3: That's the real takeaway from this episode. That's what That's
Speaker 3: what these hackers are looking for, the original drawing of
Speaker 3: dick But be amazing of those, the whole thing. It's
Speaker 3: the only thing in Fort Knox. There's no gold. There's
Speaker 3: one framed drawing of dick butt. Yep. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: Just on a scrap on a napkin, on the back
Speaker 4: of a piece of trash, just a sketch of dick butt.
Speaker 3: And it's not handwritten. It's dick written exactly. Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 3: dare to dream? Right, So how does this work? Though?
Speaker 3: We This is where we learn about an ostensibly private
Speaker 3: Chinese company called Eye Dash Soon I soon hopefully no
Speaker 3: relation to iHeart one would hope, one hopes. So what
Speaker 3: do we what do we know about IOO?
Speaker 2: Well, they can compromise Gmail and Microsoft Outlook in boxes.
Speaker 2: They can also easily compromise x slash Twitter. Uh why
Speaker 2: would they do that? Well, who knows to what ends?
Speaker 3: Shadow? The shadow shadows. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the reasons you might do this is
Speaker 2: to monitor the opinions that are not stated publicly that
Speaker 2: high level officials might have, right, the discussions that are
Speaker 2: had between you know, high level individuals that are never
Speaker 2: stated out loud.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like, imagine if you are working in a social
Speaker 3: dynamic and you wonder what other people in that dynamic
Speaker 3: might think of you, and you think, or they send
Speaker 3: them messages about me on the side, what do they say?
Speaker 3: If so, that's kind of what the Chinese government is
Speaker 3: accused of looking for through Silk Typhoon and AP twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Silk Typhoon, by the way, I canmemer if we mentioned this.
Speaker 3: It's different from another hacker group called Vault Typhoon. Vault
Speaker 3: Typhoon seeks to compromise US infrastructure.
Speaker 4: Do you think Salt Typhoon and Vault who would win
Speaker 4: in a fight between Salt Typhoon and.
Speaker 3: Vault Typhoon, you know, and Silk Typhoon.
Speaker 4: Oh fair, yeah, yes, I'm talking about it if they
Speaker 4: were the Jaegers, the Mechs, you know, Evangelians.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I don't know. Sorry, no it's not.
Speaker 3: There are no dumb questions unless you think you have one.
Speaker 3: For us, prove us wrong in this assumption conspiracydiheartradio dot com.
Speaker 3: Think about silk Iphoon is that they have a jacket,
Speaker 3: they have a track record. They've been continually accused of
Speaker 3: being behind hacks of universities. Also easy to do that.
Speaker 3: Healthcare systems also easy to do that. And the DOJ
Speaker 3: says this company I Soon, which is functioning as sort
Speaker 3: of a face for dirty things from the Chinese government.
Speaker 3: They say these guys were essentially given bounties so they
Speaker 3: would take this data and then they would sell it
Speaker 3: to folks associated with the Chinese government or certain agencies.
Speaker 3: A hacker for higher system. And that's brilliant because you know,
Speaker 3: if you're you know, Uncle Ji, and you get caught,
Speaker 3: you can say, oh my god, what the heck? You guys,
Speaker 3: we're just as surprised as you. We're all trying to
Speaker 3: find the guy who did this, you say, her hot
Speaker 3: dog costume.
Speaker 2: But let's make something really clear here, because I got
Speaker 2: a little confused even looking through my research. Here, Salt
Speaker 2: Typhoon is the group thought to be responsible for the
Speaker 2: communications intrusion. Silk Typhoon is the group thought to be
Speaker 2: responsible for the Treasury infiltration via what is the name
Speaker 2: of the thing beyond trust?
Speaker 3: Yeah, taking that API security key via beyond Trust. And
Speaker 3: then volt Typhoon is possible attacks on US infrastructure, power stations,
Speaker 3: stuff like that. So it's a multi pronged defense. We
Speaker 3: can also say the legal defense, the oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: I'm just another guy happening to wear a hot dog
Speaker 3: costume in the store. That gets pretty flimsy. If you
Speaker 3: can prove that I soon did attempt to sell stolen
Speaker 3: data on US nationals right to China. For I think
Speaker 3: it was not a bad price overall. In the Great Game,
Speaker 3: It's like they were trying to sell something like ten
Speaker 3: thousand to seventy five thousand US dollars per each email inbox,
Speaker 3: so not per message. You kind of get a price break,
Speaker 3: you know, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I feel like now
Speaker 3: I'm selling US compromised email inboxes.
Speaker 4: That should be a side hustleld.
Speaker 3: We live in a gig economy, do we not? So dude?
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, no, you got it. You got it, guys.
Speaker 2: There's this other thing that I just wanted to throw
Speaker 2: into here that was it was at least reported on
Speaker 2: in January of this year about silk typhoons infiltration and
Speaker 2: how they were potentially looking at foreign investments like companies
Speaker 2: that assess security risks for foreign investments within the United States.
Speaker 3: And I don't even.
Speaker 2: If you guys remember we talked about there was a
Speaker 2: Chinese investment group underneath a bunch of shell corporations that
Speaker 2: was trying to buy huge swaths of land that were
Speaker 2: It's not the one in California we talked about. It
Speaker 2: was right near specific base like military base, but other
Speaker 2: parts that were close to critical infrastructure in the United States.
Speaker 3: And it ended up getting.
Speaker 2: Blocked because it was found that it was a Chinese
Speaker 2: investment that came under scrutiny and then they stopped it.
Speaker 2: But then you've got these guys in December looking at
Speaker 2: the foreign investment offices within the Department of Treasury. So
Speaker 2: it does make you wonder like what in the end
Speaker 2: or is it a strategy to find the loopholes and
Speaker 2: the weak points to be able to purchase large swaths
Speaker 2: of land for specific purposes?
Speaker 3: Partially guess, to be quite honest with you, that that
Speaker 3: is part of the rubric right, part of the tactic applied.
Speaker 3: The easier way to do it, obviously, is to go
Speaker 3: through a sovereign wealth fund. Shout out to Aaron Aronson.
Speaker 3: Go through as many proxies as you can, maybe find
Speaker 3: an individual who is already US national and work through
Speaker 3: them by hook or by crook, by carrot or by stick.
Speaker 3: This is yeah, this is tricky stuff and maybe one
Speaker 3: of the no maybe's. One of the most worrying factors
Speaker 3: here is all the all the hard leg work of
Speaker 3: these investigations show us that I Soon, that company, private
Speaker 3: company isn't just selling individual espionage fish via inboxes. Instead,
Speaker 3: the company is offering to teach direct employees, official employees
Speaker 3: of the PRC, to become fishermen in their own right.
Speaker 3: Their training employees on how to hack independently of I soon,
Speaker 3: and perhaps providing a suite of software tools. And then
Speaker 3: they are also you know, just give me the day
Speaker 3: one hacking methods like this is hey, go here. The
Speaker 3: password is one, two, three, four five. Uh. Yeah, it's happening.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about more than like Treasury Department made
Speaker 3: the news, but we're also talking technology companies, think tanks,
Speaker 3: law firms, defence contractors, your local government, check in on
Speaker 3: your comptroller. It's just a reason for us to say
Speaker 3: the word comptroller again. It's I wish it was a
Speaker 3: different job. It sounds way cooler than it is. There's
Speaker 3: a comptroller against just it's an accountant.
Speaker 4: Right, it's like a treasurer almost. Yeah, oh, even better,
Speaker 4: I think, Well, I mean insane potato potata. Oh, also
Speaker 4: religious organizations and private info of journalists, right, even yes, folks,
Speaker 4: even the journalist you don't like.
Speaker 3: They want to know all of it. And none of
Speaker 3: the defendants, no, those twelve people named, none of that
Speaker 3: dirty dozen are currently in US. So at this point,
Speaker 3: before we end, I think it's we have to do it.
Speaker 3: I feel we are ethically required to. What is the
Speaker 3: official response of China to like overall and specifically.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you one.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you one.
Speaker 2: One response that they had very recently, not necessarily about this,
Speaker 2: but just a response in general. It was published in
Speaker 2: BBC on March fifth, as we record where China says, quote,
Speaker 2: it is ready for any type of war with the US,
Speaker 2: including a trade war or other.
Speaker 4: Right, but they never fully copped to doing this though right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely to that point denied anything related to yes, because
Speaker 3: it's private industry, right, Chinese officials may allude to the
Speaker 3: possibility of, say, a motivated patriot working on their own,
Speaker 3: you know, vigilante style. In this specific case, we can
Speaker 3: go to a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning,
Speaker 3: who said, look, these allegations by Uncle Sam are groundless. Further,
Speaker 3: we oppose all forms of hacking attacks, and we're even
Speaker 3: more opposed to the spread of false information against China
Speaker 3: for political purposes and true story, representatives of the US
Speaker 3: Treasury traveled to China to hang out and have like
Speaker 3: a you know, clear the air discussion what corporate America
Speaker 3: would call a healthy conversation, because hey, maybe China is
Speaker 3: telling the truth. Dylan, could you give us a sarcastic
Speaker 3: sound cue, just go wild with it perfectly. Wow.
Speaker 2: Well, of course all of this occurred before you know,
Speaker 2: the terriffs financial wars fully began between the United States
Speaker 2: and China, there's always been tensions and small things happening,
Speaker 2: but now we're officially embroiled in that, you know, along
Speaker 2: with Canada and Mexico and a lot of other countries.
Speaker 2: And just this concept of China coming out publicly and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we're ready for war, and then you think about potentially
Speaker 2: the actions that were taken, whether on behalf of China
Speaker 2: as you know, a state or not, if they've got
Speaker 2: some of that information that makes them prepared to take
Speaker 2: strategic actions against the US. It just, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to money and trade wars, it does feel like
Speaker 2: it's one big deck that's getting stacked somehow by people
Speaker 2: that we just don't know right or who are acting
Speaker 2: for what purpose besides winning at some point, right, because
Speaker 2: there's other stuff going on too.
Speaker 3: We talked about a.
Speaker 2: Sovereign wealth fund would be the way to get through
Speaker 2: that foreign investment into buying land. The United States just
Speaker 2: started a foreign a sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker 3: The what was it? Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: Want something he did in February he froze a law
Speaker 2: that banned the bribing of foreign officials. YEA, for one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty days.
Speaker 3: Why would you do that? Yes? And also thanks man,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, good job man, get it.
Speaker 2: Oh oh well, but just the.
Speaker 3: The fact that.
Speaker 2: And what was there was sorry, one other thing, and
Speaker 2: it's I don't mean this in kind of some kind
Speaker 2: of anti Trump way. I just mean it seems like
Speaker 2: these things are coming together in a specific fashion to
Speaker 2: shore up corruption at the highest levels. Because there was
Speaker 2: another move that was disbanding the Foreign Interference in Elections
Speaker 2: Group that was.
Speaker 3: Investigating that stuff.
Speaker 2: Just all it does feel like, I don't know, the
Speaker 2: intrusion thing is happening deeper than just the Treasury Department.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely. And that statement that you alluded to if
Speaker 3: war is what the US wants, be it a terriforia,
Speaker 3: trade war or any other type of war, We're ready
Speaker 3: to fight till the end does come officially from China's embassy,
Speaker 3: but was published on Twitter. So disappointing that such monumental
Speaker 3: moves will happen on social media. Those are the times
Speaker 3: of which we live. We mentioned a second hack at
Speaker 3: the top of the show this evening. The second hack
Speaker 3: that we're referring to might be controversial for some of
Speaker 3: us in the crowd. It is will give you the
Speaker 3: quick skinny. It is Doge the so called Department of
Speaker 3: Government Efficiency Governmental Efficiency Street named DOGE. Get it, it's wordplay.
Speaker 3: They came under fire for doing a lot of wild
Speaker 3: stuff recently. Specifically, an employee for DOGE named Marco Elez
Speaker 3: had the ability to alter code that controls trillions of
Speaker 3: dollars worth of federal spending, even though the White House
Speaker 3: and the US Treasury said he did not have this.
Speaker 3: They said he had read only access. People looked into that,
Speaker 3: whether through purposeful prevarication or whether through honest mistakes, that
Speaker 3: was incorrect. He did have the ability to write an
Speaker 3: altered code. A few days after these claims, that was rescinded.
Speaker 3: Critics are saying that DOGE is un American and is
Speaker 3: compromising people with due to conflicts of interest. Supporters say, yeah,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is unelected, but his organization is uncovering massive
Speaker 3: amounts of fraud.
Speaker 4: I hope that's true. I don't think it's true.
Speaker 3: The whole thing feels really weird. It's super weird, you know.
Speaker 2: The other thing that the Silk Typhoon folks targeted was
Speaker 2: the one of the offices that specifically oversees foreign sanctions
Speaker 2: against Chinese companies, and the US has been making more
Speaker 2: and more moves sanctioning Chinese private companies for doing stuff
Speaker 2: that they consider is.
Speaker 3: Wrong.
Speaker 2: Let's say, sure, so now you get eyes on specifically
Speaker 2: not only who has already been targeted, but who is
Speaker 2: potentially going to be targeted.
Speaker 3: Right again, the prognostication being able to read the tea
Speaker 3: leaves to predict and maybe prevent future actions. That's the
Speaker 3: real Like Ham and the sandwich here, and one thing
Speaker 3: is for sure. We know we've gone a little bit
Speaker 3: long on this. One thing is for sure, folks. Anybody
Speaker 3: you look at in this game, they are holding some
Speaker 3: of their cards. No one is being fully transparent. China
Speaker 3: is denying everything. Uncle Sam doesn't want to expose what
Speaker 3: we call collection means and methods because doing so would
Speaker 3: play their hand out in the future. And obviously Doge
Speaker 3: is launching contradictory statements every other every other Wednesday. So
Speaker 3: the truth of the matter is this, no matter what
Speaker 3: your individual perspective is, no matter how we look at
Speaker 3: it objectively, everybody in this case has some serious stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know, and we would love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. We try to be easy to
Speaker 3: find online, via telephone, via email, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for joining us this evening. It's right.
Speaker 4: You can find us at the handle of Conspiracy Stuff,
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