AI Browser Wars, DIY Robots, and the Rise of Scattered Spider | TSG Ep. 879

Hey everyone, let's talk about Browser Wars, shades of Netscape, Mozilla, internet Explorer. You're watching Textron Gang. Hey everyone, happy Monday.

I hope you had a great weekend. It was a nice weekend down here, Ms. Alan Shimel for Techstrong Gang coming at you with our Monday show.

We've got as usual some really good stuff to talk about, and we've got some great gang members to talk about it with. Let me introduce you to 'em. First of all, I'm gonna, you know, you need Jackson better to open up in here.

So we've got a pair of Jacks, Jack Gold and Jack Poller. Welcome both of you. Thank you.

Joining the Jackson is, uh, is the Dean, Mike Vizard up in, up in New York. Mike, welcome. How is everything?

Everything's great. How are You? Good.

Let's jump right into it. I teased we're having browser war, but it's not Mozilla, it's not Internet Explorer, it's not even Mark Andrews and in Netscape, it's a whole new generation of browsers and a whole new, a whole new war perhaps. What do we got here, Mike?

Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on here myself. Everybody seems to be talking about, we're having a new type of browser and it will have some sort of AI functionality drop into it, but every time I turn around and use my browser lately, some new AI functionality seems to be added to it. So it looks like Google's gotta do much of the same thing.

And I know the Firefox people are talking about similar things, and then we've got OpenAI and I think perplexity it has Comet. Um, so, you know, my question to you, Alan, is, you know, is this fight over even before it got started or what do you think is happening here? Yeah, I mean, kidding aside, browser wars just seem to be something that pops up every 10 years or so it seems, but, uh, maybe seven.

But, you know, the couple things, first of all, it's very hard to say what the perplexity and OpenAI browsers are going to do to, to challenge Chrome's dominance because you really can't get your hands on 'em, right? The, the open OpenAI version, uh, browser is, is rumored to be coming shortly. Perplexity, I'm, I'm, I've been on the waiting list for a couple days already.

I signed up, I think it was Wednesday when I first saw the news about it, but unless you're like a per perplexity max customer or whatever their highest tier is, you, you can't, you're on a waiting list. So when I get it, I'll let you know. But here's, here's the lay of the land.

Chrome is the king of browsers, Google's Chrome. You've got Microsoft's Edge, which is a chromium based browser, and you've got, uh, apple Safari, you know, that has a bit of a loyal following. I don't know how loyal in the Mac world, um, but, but Google is, is certainly king.

What's it gonna take to co topple that? Well, you probably need to reshuffle the deck, and I think we look at AI as a way to reshuffle the deck. Mike, as you pointed out, Google's been building AI into the, into Chrome, you know, whether we call, you know, Gemini and, and everything else that they've called their AI over the last couple years.

I think a real issue here though is from a consumer user point of view, what does having an AI browser mean? Well, the first thing that pops into my mind is Big Brother, right? What is it going to, you know, in order for it to work, it's gonna have to have a lot of access into how I think what I do, where I go, is this just another big, you know, that sucking sound you hear?

Is all of your information being sucked up into somebody's LLM and is that what this is gonna be about? I hope not. I hope not, but you know, I didn't even know Firefox was still out there to tell you the truth.

I, you know, there not much of a factor in market anymore. Um, but we've been through Browser Wars before. We'll see, we'll see who wins this one.

Jack Gold. What's your take on this? Because it seems to me like at least my first taste of all this stuff, user experience is kind of clunky and cumbersome, and it's just random bits of information that's related to something that I'm looking at and it's usually, uh, trivial.

Yeah. So there's a few things going on here I think that are important. Al and I certainly support everything you just said, but there's another piece to this, I think, and that is that ultimately, do you trust ai?

Are you trust? Are you going to trust AI to give you the information that you want or that you need? And, and I think there's two pieces, two parts to that.

Number one is consumers are kind of open to this, uh, at the right price, which is free, right? Businesses on the other hand, are willing to pay for a service, but they demand a lot more security and privacy capability. Uh, imagine, uh, I'll, I'll make something.

A Bank of America, right? All, all of a sudden deployed perplexity browsers to all of their users. Can you imagine the amount of information perplexity is gonna suck up from all of those users into their, into their core AI capabilities?

It's just not feasible. It's not gonna happen. So I, I think you're gonna see continued rollouts of ai.

I think you're gonna see more depth. Uh, Alan, you're right, Chrome has got the lion's share of the marketplace. I don't see that going away.

Consumers don't switch unless there's a real reason to do it. And most people are pretty happy with, with Google, even though Google is, you know, tracking us anyway, but they're, they're gonna stick with it. So unless you can find a real reason to change it over, I mean per, per, sorry, open, uh, uh, OpenAI or perplexity has to offer some real benefit, uh, that Google isn't gonna have.

And I'm not sure that's gonna happen. There is one other piece of this, by the way, and that is that, um, as, as you guys probably saw last year, uh, you know, the Feds basically told Google they had to sell off Chrome because it was a monopoly. Uh, if they do and one of these guys picks them up, then it, that it changes the whole, uh, issue, you know, changes the, the whole marketplace.

I don't see that happening anytime soon, you know, even if it ultimately happens, they're gonna drag this through the courts for years, but that could be a game changer long term. You know, to that point, Jack, what I find is by the time the courts and the government get involved in something like that, technology has a way of taking care of it. If, if these AI browsers are in fact a better mouse trap, Google will, you know, Chrome will get knocked off its perch.

If they're not, they'll go away pretty quickly, like all of the recent iterations of Microsoft browsers. Yeah, but we can't, we can't underestimate Google's capability in ai. Sorry, Jack.

Um, and, and I think a lot of the market is underestimating what Google is doing in AI because it's less transparent in these, to these big guys that are, you know, have these huge financial inputs. And, and, and I, and I argue that, that these browsers aren't going away. And I think you, we, I think we have to split up and look at consumer behavior differently than enterprise behavior.

And we had this discussion here, in fact, on the gang a couple weeks, months ago now in terms of enterprise browsers and yet another, you know, professional enterprise browser. And at the time I said, I don't understand why Google doesn't just start sucking these features into Chrome and killing that business. And part of it is 'cause they're, you know, as Jack Gold said, they're investing in AI very heavily.

Um, and so on the, on the enterprise side, there's a lot of different competition where, uh, enterprises look at very specific capabilities that they're concerned about in data security, identity security, data loss, all these other things. And that's helping them make a decision on one browser or another. If we look at the consumer side, however, what I think we're seeing, and this is a huge risk to Google, is a change in behavior.

And that is people are not going to Google as their primary search engine, but they're instead going to the AI tools, particularly complexity as a search engine and wrapping that search engine up in a customized browser that can somehow take advantage of that and make that experience better is a huge risk to Google on the consumer side, not for the browser itself, but for Google's ad revenue. The more people start using the AI engines, the less Google mine Google gets on ad placement, Right? You know, I hear that sometimes when, you know, Tracy Reagan, who's down on the show today, is an example of that where she says she always uses AI search first, but the data suggests that that's still the minority behavior.

I don't know if it'll grow, but if the AI search is built into my standard browser and search engine anyway, I don't know if I'm gonna go find a another window to go look at something outside of Google or, you know, is inertia just gonna be on Google's side? Well, there's a couple things there. Number one, I believe there is a Washington Post article talking about AI OpenAI's, uh, impact on Google search.

Now, I don't, I gave up my post subscription, so I don't have access to it, but numbers I've seen is that open, or let's call it AI search versus regular Google search is as high as 26% of the market. So still not a majority, but given how for how long it's been around 26, percent's a pretty decent number. But I think there's another reason why you're seeing people move in this case to AI searches.

Google search itself isn't the Google search that we, we grew up with here, right? You, you search Google today first you get your AI thing, right? Your, your AI summary or whatever, and it's not, it's gotten better.

Uh, I'll give it that. Then you get about three or four sponsored posts, then you get about three YouTube videos, and then somewhere down here you actually get your search results. And more often than not, they're kind of useless.

I've had Google search results now that go to malware sites. I've had Google search results that just nonsense. I, I almost get the impression that that whole Google search business not counting the AI and sponsored stuff is on autopilot and the guy's asleep at the wheel.

Um, so I think that's a bigger reason why people are looking for a new search. And that's, yeah, agreed. That's driving it.

Agreed. Yeah. I would say in my peer group, now, obviously not everybody, because you know, we're all in the high tech world, but in my peer group, most people, if they use Google search, they basically say, let's, you know, page down past the first page of results and maybe even the second page, because it's either add placement or search engine optimized results that are not, they're, they're fake results.

They're not good, they're useless. And the, the value of some of the AI engines like perplexity I used a lot, I've used a lot, you know, is that it gives you a summary of the output that you're looking for plus links to all the places it's in. It's telling you where it's getting the information from.

So I feel more confident in chasing backwards in its search how it did it and use it going and investigating further then that it, it's not hallucinating and creating something out of full cloth. And I think some, but here's the challenge do, and that's, that's the problem. But, but here's the, here's the ultimate long-term challenge.

Today people use browsers because they're free and they're free because they're ad supported and they're ad supported because Google's doing stuff to track you and know what you're interested in. Are they going to use AI systems that give them the information they're looking for, but have no way of generating revenue from that information? 'cause you're not going to see be seeing ads.

So that's the ultimate problem that that's the problem that Google has as well. With the AI summary on top, a lot of people never go beyond that AI summary. And so ultimately their ad revenues could decline.

And that's the problem with all of these guys is how do, are you gonna make me pay for using the, you know, the comment browser? Are you gonna make me pay to use some of the other, uh, AI systems, which they may, you know, maybe it's the freemium approach, but ultimately they've gotta gen generate revenue. And so if you're not somehow showing the ads, how's that gonna get paid for?

And how many consumers are actually gonna spend 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month, or whatever the number is to get that information? Well, but part part of that comes in, in the use of the interaction from the users as training data. So it's going to lower the cost of the training data for the ais.

Whether that's sufficient, I have no idea. I mean, those economics are crazy to begin with. It does trouble my soul a little bit that, you know, some sort of carbon somewhere is being kicked off every time somebody generates a free AI thing for me.

And I'm like, you know, really? Was it necessary? You could have just asked There is that, look, you know, it's browser wars, will, will, uh, I guess we'll have to see until, you know, as I mentioned, I'm, I'm on the waiting list for comment when I get my hands on it, I, I'll give, I'll give us a report of what I think.

But, um, I, I think just people don't value on the consumer side. People don't value their privacy, they don't value their information. And, and this is just a man a continuing.

And, and, and I don't wanna just blame OpenAI and perplexity here. The, the, the big, the Mag seven tech guys, the meds, the Googles, the Microsofts, the Apples, they are all just feasting like pigs at a trout on all of our personal information. And that's what makes their whole engines go round and round.

And these $4 trillion, or well only NVIDIA's 4 trillion, but you know, two so far, three so far, two, $3 trillion valuations. And I Would tell you though, I, I am careful now more, not as much as I should be to think twice about what I do enter in for a search request or anything else. 'cause I know I'm gonna get inundated with all kinds of crap.

So, you know, and you'll never see me type in Red Sox 'cause I just don't want all that kind of Red Sox information. I do just, I figure anyone who supports the Red Sox is gonna spend money trying to sell to me. Bring it on.

All right, on that note, let's take a break. We're going to come back and talk about B block here. Robots everywhere you're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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Hey folks, we're back, and I guess it was only a matter of time before somebody connected robots to 3D printers and has come up with an open source platform called from a, using Berkeley's open source humanoid light project. And they're saying that, you know, in a matter of weeks for less than maybe 5K, you can build your own robot. I'm not quite clear how well it works, but Jack Gold, are we on the cusp of like having, you know, robots that people can just go down the store and pick up for a couple of grand?

And how cheap can these things get? Well, they can get real cheap depending on what you want them to do. Look, historically le let's look back way back when.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to play around with, you know, hammer radio and build my own stuff, right? Today you couldn't possibly do that just because of the sophistication of the circuitry. But in those days you learned a lot by doing that.

We're, we're really at the same place with robotics right now. We're, we're still in the early stages. Um, and you can get some very sophisticated performance capabilities by 3D printers by, you know, going down to your local hardware store and buying gears and valves and and stuff, right?

It may not be as elegant as some people would like, but the ability to do this kind of sourcing of components and the ability to do experimentation by amateurs is actually great for the overall marketplace. 'cause what it's going to show us is that, and at the end of the day, robots don't necessarily need to cost a quarter of a million dollars. Sure you're gonna have a quarter million dollar robots running production lines at GM and Ford and Honda and Toyota.

But for the rest of us, smaller purpose-built robots are going to be the thing. And if you wanna build your own, why not go for it. Uh, the tools are there, the capabilities are there, the experimentation is there.

And I think this is, this is a great thing, uh, for, for the overall robotics marketplace. So when I can get a Darrel Hannah from Blade Runner robot dial me up. Uh, but, but seriously, you know what this reminds me of?

You guys are, we're all of an age here. You remember early in the PC computer era where you, you could build, I mean there, that, that's how many of the, you know, well not IBM obviously, but you go back to the apples and, and, and a lot of these, you know, early computer models, at first we used to have the computer user groups and you could go to the group and they tell you, oh, you could get this circuit here and, you know, you didn't have kind of the prefab motherboard that you got now and everything, but it started with tinkerers like this, right? Who was build, they were building computers and then they started building computers and, and kind of kept a recipe that they could repeat.

You know, some kid in a, in a dorm in in Texas started doing that. And he, he, he did pretty well for himself, right? It's, that's what I think we're gonna see here.

You are going to see tinkerers, but that's going to give rise to cottage industries and it gives rise in who's the, who's the Dell of computer of robots. I I think that Tinker is now a boomer playing around with robots in his basement of his mansion somewhere and is gonna go build Dell label robots and we're gonna get them from every other PC maker as well. There is, there is one final challenge though that we have to be very careful of, right?

The, the old days el and I agree, you know, the, the, the, the, the early guys, you know, the compacts of the world, the Dells of the world gateway. I mean, we can go through the whole names, right? But when you built a pc, there wasn't a whole lot and maybe other than electrical shock, a whole lot of risk to you as a person.

Robots are a little different. And we have to be very careful that when people start building robots that are gonna be wandering around the house or you want them to do stuff for you, or you know, they're, they're cleaning or, or, or whatever they're, they're doing, there is some possible risk. And so there's gotta be some level of safety security capability that, that gets built.

Are you talking about the laws of robotics? I mean, you know. Yeah, well it, I mean if it, if if it's physically moving around the house, it could do damage.

Well, You know, I, I think that's a, an interesting concern. 'cause right now you can go out and buy a, uh, you know, a, a commercial PO copter with a video camera in it for 200 bucks and that thing's got force winning, you know, four swirling death propellers on it that are, you know, they can take your head off if you're not careful, right? And some of the bigger ones.

And so, I mean, these things exist. Uh, if you look at 3D printers, which is what makes this possible, the first 3D printers were up in the same price range, right? They were three $5,000 units.

Now you can get a, you know, a hundred, $200 gets you a fully functional 3D print that can print everything that you need to build this robot. And it just doesn't have the electronic circuitry on it. Uh, so I think this is a, a great innovation.

It's follows, you know, two months ago HuggingFace announced their equivalent to this, a three to $5,000 robot. And I, I think this is brilliant innovation to open source and make all of this available. And it's really going to help, you know, raise another generation of STEM interested people rather than people who sit around and play video games.

And there's nothing wrong with playing video games, but the Yes, there is, They the educational component of trying to, you know, not even experimenting with it, but simply getting the parts together and printing your own parts and assembling this thing and getting it to do the robot equivalent of hello world, right? In this case, these are, you know, bipedal robots. The getting it to stand up on its own, that's a hell of an accomplishment.

And I think that especially for a younger generation, having the opportunity to play with this at reasonable price points is a remarkable opportunity for the world. Yeah, Jack Poller is, is somebody gonna hack into these things and I'm gonna wake up one morning and there's gonna be a robot chasing me around my house with a knife or what? Well, yes, if you give me your address, we'll make sure that happens today.

You know, a little Chucky cheese version of this. That would be great. Well, I mean, why does it have to be someone hacking in?

Maybe it just went off the, off the rails. Yeah. As I said, shades of Blade Runner A as, as a cybersecurity guy, I always think, and I appreciate Jack Gold opinion too, that we really do have to think about security and fake security, both cybersecurity and physical security into these things.

And that's really hard when it's a pre open source project. And, you know, the developers are much more, you know, they're Berkeley, you know, PhD students are much more, you know, interested in getting the thing to walk on its own than they are to make sure it doesn't get hacked. Um, so yes, it, I I think that is a concern that we do have to think about.

Yeah, no doubt they're doing an AI search to tell 'em how to do it. Well now they might still be using Google, but let me, let me, let me throw another kind of view at, at the panel here and get your thoughts. Is this is a great counterweight to what's going on in terms of robotic development at the enterprise industry level, right?

I don't know if you, how many of you watched, you know, all those videos that we always see on those bed Google searches, but you know how well they're doing now with, you know, four-legged ro four-legged robots, robots being used, you know, being used for things like bomb situations, hostage situations, war situations, right? Um, you know, the, the, the big, the big guys are building robots that really are pretty advanced, right? We're not just talking pure bipedal.

I mean, they could run faster than animals and they don't fall down. And when they do, they get up and they, you know, they have marry a little AI into it and they're autonomous, right? I think we need this sorta homegrown brew your own kind of thing, because that's going to, you know, this is that for the one percenters is that for the authoritarian governments, you know, who gets to use those, this cutting edge, you know, latest style, we, we, we, we, you need, this is the, the equivalent of a well-armed militia.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, and, and you know, the big ones are also 25, 30, 40 K, 50 k.

We're talking about big bucks, right? You're certainly not gonna buy one, or most people aren't gonna buy one for their home. Um, so we do need the lower end and we need the lower end to do specific tasks for us, which, which is, you know, highly valuable.

I agree with you, Alan. It's going to be a, uh, a, a move, I was gonna say move down, but it's not really a move down so much as just less costly. Right.

Less complex. And there will be a advantages that we'll see, uh, Jack Poller, I agree with you. You know, the, the, the kids playing with STEM on these things are gonna, some of them, you know, the 2% to 5%, whatever it's gonna be, are gonna come up with some pretty interesting technology capabilities as, as always happens in this marketplace.

And, and so I I, anything we can do to advance robotics in general, even if it's small steps, you know, today you've got the high end robotics, I don't know what the number is, 20, 30, 40,000 perhaps engineers working on them. We're talking about in this space, millions and worldwide. And so there will be some real discoveries that come out of it.

I no, no doubt. Mm-hmm. And for better and for Ill, I'm sure there's some militia folks out there playing around with homegrown too, right?

Yeah, No doubt. No doubt. But it's open source.

We're, we're moving to robotics as open source, you know, just as we did with software, just as to some extent we did with hardware. Um, and, and so I think this is a good thing long term. Yeah.

The democratization of robotics is, I might argue a little overdue. We need to like put this into the everybody's hands and let's see what happens. I agree.

Agreed. Alright, let's take a break on this one. We'll come back.

We've got sea block scattered spiders, shades of thermonuclear war. Um, I don't know, is Matthew Broderick behind this one You're watching? com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry.

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com. Home of Security Bloggers Network. Hey folks, we're back.

And if you've been tracking the cybersecurity news, a lot of folks have been following this hacker group called Scattered Spiders. And we live in this age where we think that the cyber criminals are highly organized, but maybe not. It turns out a bunch of teenagers are wrecking havoc started in the uk and then they work their way into the US check poller.

What's going on here? Are teenagers now the worst enemy in cybersecurity or what? Well, Yes, but, Uh, I think, uh, so, so let's start with with the, the, the first statement of, uh, well organized, right?

And just because you're teenagers doesn't mean you're not well organized. Uh, also scattered Spider is well organized, but not centralized. There's a difference there as well.

And it's actually taking a page from the playbook of, um, spycraft really is traditional spycraft is that a loosely associated group of people that doesn't know that not everybody knows who everybody else is in the organization, means the organization doesn't fall apart if one or a few people are compromised. In this case, what we had is an arrest of four people aged 17, 19, 19 and 20, I think in the uk, uh, being charged with various forms of, uh, cyber crime, uh, associated with the recent attacks on, uh, the Marx and Spencer Chain and a couple of other major retailers in the uk. And I think that they match what we believe is the, the motive, the, the, the, sorry, the modus operandi of Scattered Spider, which is, uh, highly focused attacks on a particular industry, retail, or, uh, the last big one that they were known for was the MGM attacks and the other, uh, uh, hotel and hospitality attacks in Las Vegas last summer.

They do this through sophisticated, uh, social engineering. And it really is highlighting that despite all of the, you know, esoteric, highly sophisticated zero day attacks, people think where they're literally, you know, hacking in through the network and confusing your computers and making something thing, what Scattered SPI is well known for is impersonating your IT staff or impersonating people calling into IT staff and social engineering access in that way. And it's really highlighting how easy it is to social engineer and, and it's amazing that 17 year olds are able to convince somebody they're, they're part of a company and convince the it pa people to, you know, give them passwords and usernames and all the other stuff to get access.

But that's always been the weak spot, right? Malware, uh, with malware, the, I don't remember the exact number, but something in the, in the 40 to 50% range of all hacks were companies or because somebody did something silly. I was gonna say stupid, that's not fair, but you know, you, you let somebody in or, or you know, it was a social engineering, right?

Right. So, so the Verizon data breach investigation reports, the DBIR says that anywhere depending on the year or anywhere between mid sixties to mid 75% of a tax originate through a human issue, whether it's a compromised account or a social engineering attack, but somebody somehow, uh, uh, a bad guy got access to somebody's username and password and, and MFA credentials and got in somehow or another. And that's where most, uh, of these data breaches occur.

And that's where the risk is. Uh, you know, so there's, there's, you know, I could go down and talk about how we defend against it, but let's get, you know, sort of think about scattered Spider. One of the other interesting things about this group is they are the ones who've been arrested, and there were a couple who arrested last year in the US have been US or UK citizens with I think one of the people in this recent arrest and, um, was not a UK citizen, but they are all native English speakers or a hundred percent fluent in US English or British English dialect ver you know, and, uh, can easily mimic it, which means that your, all of the written communications don't have your typical grammar error, grammar errors or spelling errors or, and the voice communications all sound like you're speaking to somebody who's a native speaker because they are.

And so you don't, you're, you're losing the ability to detect the traditional cues that it was a, uh, an impersonation attack or a phishing or a phishing mission attack, which is, you know, like I said, misspellings or poor grammar or, you know, those types of things. So they are much more convincing and then therefore pose a much bigger risk to organizations. So I would pause it that with the use of ai, even non-native English speakers, a pretty good writing, you know, I, It's, it's getting harder And harder, and that's what makes it harder.

What I find really fascinating here though is, you know what, I've been in security 30 years when I first got involved in security, you know, it was the script kitties, remember? That's what we called them, the script kitties. And they would do crap just be, you know, for the same reason the dog does just 'cause they cat, right?

They weren't necessarily even looking to make the money. They just wanted to prove they could break it. Then we started seeing people hack for finance, right?

They were stealing money, making money and hacking. And then, you know, of course na the rise of nation state cyber warfare and, and, and all of Hacktivism and all of these other things, and here we are full circle back to the script kitties almost what's old is new. Some things don't change.

Um, what is disheartening is as a security person, that we're still vulnerable to this crap, right? That here we are thinking we're defending the free world against the, the, the, the hugging bears or whatever the, the, you know, the Russian sponsored and Chinese and North Korea and Iran sponsored groups, right? And, and we fight toe to toe with these bad guys who have the power of their countries behind them, and a bunch of kids, a bunch of kids on creating havoc like this, Alan, but the, the, but who do you think are those nation state actors?

Those Are, well in my, in my mind, they're, they're people who work, you know, for q in MI six, and they come up with neat little things, but maybe they really are, Matthew rode, I don't know, They're not, they're not 30 to 50-year-old profess, you know, sitting at a, in an office desk. The way we think of it, you know, they're not the, the, the prototypical hacker in the hoodie. They're also 17 to 20 year olds.

And you know, the reality is that in Russia and in, in the, the former communist black countries, right? They are nation state sponsored in that the nations have told them, we won't arrest you, we'll leave you alone as long as you don't attack us. Right?

So hands, I I think there's the, You're rush criminal, right? Hands off Russia, go attack the United States. Create as much havoc as you want.

That's all Good. So Jack, that might be true for Romania or Kazaki stand or the state of Georgia. I, I think when we talk Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, they are instruments of the state.

Yes. And it's not just money, it's, it's espionage and stealing state secrets. I don't disagree.

So money Always turn out at the end because, um, these kids are relatively underage. They'll get fined and maybe they'll have to go Home. Well, the ones in the US wind up going to work for the NSA, right?

Yeah. Well that's, that's my point. I think we're gonna have to hire these kids, you know?

Well, no, that's what we've done it, we've been doing that for 30 years, 40 years. Right? Where do you think they get their recruits from?

But you, look guys, it's important to note that a lot of this is just plain human error, and you're never gonna get rid of that. You know, we put tools in place, we try to educate users not to do silly things, but at the end of the day, people are busy, they're trying to get through stuff. Somebody calls 'em up on the phone, you know, they got 14 other people on the line, and they say, sure, go for it.

That's something that, you know, even AI isn't gonna solve for us. We, it is just human error, human. We're, we're humans.

That's number one. The second piece, though, is, and I think it's important to note that malware, bad actor stuff has moved to open source. You can go on the net and buy it, you know, whatever you need for next to nothing or, or even get it for free.

And, and that didn't, that wasn't the case five or 10 years ago. And, and Alan, in the early days, it was probably the same with the script, uh, kitties, right? You know, once, once somebody discovered something, they put it out there for others.

So we're seeing a lot of that as well in the space. And that's not gonna go away anytime soon. And I think the final piece is AI is gonna make it really easy for me to call Mike, or, or not me to call Mike, but someone to call Mike and make it sound like it's Alan, right?

Alan giving me instructions. Well, Mike knows Alan never calls him. Okay, fair enough.

But it's gonna be, you know, we've already seen examples of that, right? Yeah. So it, this is really a tough problem to solve.

Well, it's, it, it's a tough time to have, you know, to, to, because, you know, as, as great as AI is, and we spend two thirds of our time every day on this show talking about it. Um, it's also that double-edged sword is it's great for them too. It's great for them too.

And we have, we have code phrases like, you know, who played third for the Yankees last night? So that, yeah. Or who was the third baseman after Cleat Boyer, Right?

It wasn't Ccle, it was Ken. We're, We're, we're going back to World War ii where GIS had all these questions for each other. You had to know if you were in America, Well have to hire Navajos, right?

They're the wind talkers. Well, no, I think we've removed all, all mentions of those on the, uh, DOD websites now, Actually, they put, they, there's a new statute going up for those guys, so there's good for Well, we'll see, I'll see when we believe it. Um, anyway, interesting stuff.

Let's, you know, I'm glad at least they, they, they're breaking this group, right? And we'll, we'll keep watching it, Guys. It's important to note that they caught them very quickly, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. In the past, right? It took months or years.

I, I don't think they caught 'em all yet. Well, you Know, I, I, but I, I'll tell you something, we're usually pretty good at identifying the, the, the, uh, the groups that are behind these things, but usually they're not anywhere in the jurisdiction where we can get 'em, you know? And so I Think that's, that's an important point, is that not only did we catch them, but they're in a jurisdiction where we can do something about it, and hopefully we will do something very, very, you know, you know, we'll make 'em pay.

So that as a deterrent for others, You know, there, there's weighing that Jack versus converting them, you know, into, uh, into the program, Right? Uh, Embrace Alan, embrace the power of an Yes. Okay.

I think Little Deley is going to school in Switzerland. See you later. All righty.

Well, guys, I think that's gonna wrap our chauffeur today. Uh, I hope you've enjoyed it. You know, we, as I said, we opened up with a pair of jacks and, and went up from there.

Um, interesting, interesting stories. As usual, we have a full text drunk TV lineup immediately following, so check that out. But until tomorrow, this is Alan Shimel.

We're out. Bye-bye.