Techstrong Gang – April 17, 2025

Hey, everyone, well meta and the, uh, FTC are going at it, and video might be building chips in the USA. Well Pigs Fly. You're watching Textron Gang.

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. Welcome to another edition of Textron Gang.

We've got a great gang line up here for you today. What a good looking bunch of gang members, I must say. Looking at my monitor, I see these smiling faces, it's great.

Let me introduce you to, to our gang members today. First of all, joining us from out west where she hosts all kinds of radio stuff and a marketing guru. And we'll be at RSA live in, in broadcast alley, holding down the, uh, the anchor spot for Tech Drunk tv.

It's our very own Lisa Martin. Hey Lisa, how are you? Hey, Alan.

I'm great. It's great to be here. I'm excited for the show.

I'm excited to have you on moving west to East, I guess, right? Oh, no. Still out west.

We have another silicon. How can I forget that? Sitting right.

Just, oh, we're not gonna fly over Silicon Valley. I he's at his office, his Lex Luther office. Higher top right.

A top, the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah, It's, it's our Across the Golden Gate Bridge Marathon, yeah. John Swartz.

Yes. John, welcome back. I know you were out at Atlassian.

I've seen some of the videos. What a great job. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, we were in Anaheim then I went from Anaheim to San Diego to see my son. And I saw, I think, arguably the best and worst teams in baseball. I saw the Rockies play.

The Padres Easy on the Rockies. We've got a Colorado, even though she's Yankee Fan. I'm sorry, Kimberly.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Colorado contingent. But they looked like they just gave up already.

Anyway, I've been giving up for quite some time. Yeah, I think they need, Yeah. And it was, it was kind of, I felt badly.

I loved The black. They are the Pittsburgh Pirates of the West Giant. Ooh, that was a low blow.

Yeah. Hockey team's doing well. The hockey team is at the avalanche.

The abs do well. Anyway, speaking of Colorado, she is our Boulder person on the streets of Pearl Street Mall there. Kimberly Bates.

Hey Kimberly. How are you? Good morning.

How's the weather? It's spring today. You know, we had snow on Monday.

It's spring today, Saturday Fri we, we had snow on Friday and, uh, Saturday, so there we go. Yeah, It's Colorado. Nothing unusual there.

Um, next up all the way, I guess to Florida, though, he has that Wall Street thing going on. How jp a name like JP and Wall Street go together pretty well. It's our own JP Morganthal.

Jp, how are you man? I'm doing well. How are you man?

Good to see you. Good. It's good to see you.

And thanks for coming on today. Always add a nice element. I I, I, you know, you watch all the, the CNBC and M-S-N-B-C shows, right?

And they, and they always have a couple of different backdrops, and I'm like, I like that backdrop better than my red wall. So I, I'm gonna go with one of those backdrops today. Good, good.

Well, I, on my text drunk tv, I like to do my Fort Lauderdale, you know, see, I, I always feel bad. I like that the cruise ship picture or the palm tree picture, it, it just sends the wrong message for business. It's like, this guy's lazy, this, this guy's a peak goer.

No, he's doing right. So one of the, one of the things they used to do so long, long time ago, I used to do these really early morning hits for CNBC. And one of the things that they would take us to a studio called, uh, beyond Picks, and they had the Golden Gate Bridge behind us.

And sometimes it would have, there's a little inside thing they would show it, and it was always a clear day except days when it was raining, except when it days when it was raining. And so you see this clear backdrop and anyway, uh, they, they never, always, It's always clear in Studio six Yeah. Thing.

Exactly. There's no fog. There's no fog in San Francisco in Studio Six.

I Guarantee it's a fog free zone. Alright, um, so let's jump off into our first block for today. A meta mess, right?

The, the, uh, antitrust trial, the FTC had brought against the matter, of course, this was, I believe it was b brought by the previous administration, though It, it was brought by the Trump administration. 16, 20 20, 20 20. The, the Trump won administration.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, yes, yes, you're right. You're right.

That's what I meant. Right? And then worked this way.

Well, no, the first Trump administration ended in 2020, and that's when the action was actually, initially started. But I I, I'm sorry. They, they started it.

Right. Well, John, take us into it here. What's the story?

It, yeah, I mean, MES is a good way of putting it. Um, so the FTC claims that meta has cemented its social media monopoly by acquiring WhatsApp and Instagram. Now, remember, those acquisitions took place God, more than a decade ago, and were approved by the FTC in the entering intermittent years.

Um, uh, they let Lena Kahn came along, but before even Lena Kahn came along, the Trump administration and, and his kind of animus towards Mark Zuckerberg resulted in an action. So, if you remember the war between Trump and Zuckerberg, uh, he, uh, he got kicked off. Trump was kicked off of Facebook.

It led to a lawsuit. This is a very convoluted story, but in the event, a federal trial court trial started in Washington DC this week, Zuckerberg was the first witness. And he, in a sense, is kind of fighting off these allegations that he has a monopoly.

Um, the Ft c claims that the purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram, which amounted to $20 billion, were part of this buyer Barry strategy. And they, they come across and they, they, they came across emails from 2012 were, and Zuckerberg is worried about the competition from these startups, and they decide to buy them that the argument from the FTC is that they basically kept these things independent of Facebook and built this monopoly. Zuckerberg is saying, no, we have this, this wide varied business.

Um, it's not polluted by this monopoly charge. And in a sense, he claims that their acquisitions created this broad discovery and entertainment space. It's not just a social media empire.

So this is going back and forth. And again, for some context, going back to this weird relationship between Trump and Zuckerberg in the last few months, Zuckerberg and Meta in general have gone out of their way to try to persuade Trump's administration from dropping the suit or easing off in their pursuit. It didn't really work.

So we find ourselves now, in this case, you know, the one thing, the consequence that Zuckerberg faces if in the event they lose, is some sort of divestiture. I'm not sure if it will go that far, but DOJ beat Google and federal court over a search search engine Monopoly case, and a judge's gonna be hearing remedies, which include divestiture or some sort of breakup of the company in that case. So there is a precedent and meta should be worried.

And I think Zuckerberg is very worried given his, you know, uh, charm campaign to try to dissuade this. Well, can he just write a bigger check? Yes.

Yeah, yeah. That's the other, right. They, they contributed to the inauguration.

They settled as part of this lawsuit that Trump set up against, or filed against Facebook for, with another check that they wrote. Zuckerberg moved into the neighborhood of Trump to be near him. I mean, they threw a ton of money at, at the administration, and, um, this is where we are.

So I'm confused, um, really confused because couldn't Lena and FCC have resolved this the last four years? I mean, this is like you're saying right now. Yes.

We just had a new administration that came in, you know, whatever the name is. The old administration had oversight of this entire process to bring it to No, I, I think Lena would pursue this. I, I think, I think the Biden administration was, you know, anti-monopoly warriors.

They, they agreed With it. That's not a Trump, it's not this thing. It's not a Trump versus Zuckerberg kind of thing.

No. Well, so this, this, it started, started, that's how it started. It started, started there.

But it's Phil Lena Conn pursued this to, well, Lena Con. Lena Conn did pursue it. She spent the better part of a couple of years pursuing not only this action, but multiple actions, including the Google action that the Department of Justice did.

It's just that she didn't gain a lot of traction. There's, you can, we can go down a rabbit hole talking about why she wasn't more successful in certain aspects, especially around tech and Amazon, which was her main targets. It it came down to, um, kind of resistance from the FTC and the, the body of people who worked for her.

It was a lot of political action, but she really wanted this to happen. Oh, no doubt. So, you know, the thing is, the date that got here to legal, this was, this date was placed way beyond Trump taking, or the current administration taking control of Presidents.

Yeah, no, but, but the fact is, several other anti-monopoly, uh, investigations and actions, the Trump administration had, the, the second Trump administration, the president administration has kaboshed, right? Because they're, they're not, they're not gonna be bringing many anti-monopoly actions here. That's not who they No, they're not.

Where the Biden administration certainly was a, you know, anti-Monopoly warriors, Lena Khan specifically. So this is more in her speed. But when you look at the genesis of this, it was a Zuckerberg Trump thing with all those lawsuits involved.

It's Very, it's very confusing because the, the tech bros and before the tech bros, the tech companies were darlings of the Obama administration, right? Maybe too much. So they got too powerful.

And then Trump ran into, into resistance from these companies when he was running, or when he was, when he was president, which led initially, originally this 2019, it was June, 2019 when they announced the Trump administration announced they were looking into four companies, Amazon Meta, um, Google, and I believe probably Twitter. My, yeah. Um, uh, Amazon.

So, so this goes back and forth. It's very confusing, you know, so, So yeah. But John, take, let's take the politics out of it.

Okay. Let's take that out and say, is there, within this FCC suit, is there legitimacy in what is being said about Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and their domination of the social media place? Yeah.

So, you know, like, like, so when I was in law school, Kimberly, my constitutional law professor who had come from Stanford, where he had two star students. One was named Rehnquist, one was named, uh, O'Connor, you might have heard of them. His attitude towards these kinds of technology based suits is, they're a moment in time and given enough time, they become irrelevant.

Yes. I think when this suit was brought, brought, or when the investigation was started, there was an argument to be made that meta, you know, was a dominant force, a more than dominant, a monopolistic force in social media. But that was six years ago.

And I think when you look at social media today, including things like TikTok and YouTube shorts and LinkedIn and everything, and X, well, X isn't what Twitter was, but it's still out there, right? I, I would, I would posit that Twitter was a bigger social media player in 2019 than X is today. Well, you, the, the, the meta argument is that right, there are a lot of choices now, right?

That there Weren't before. But, but here's the bottom line. As we sit here today, I don't think anyone's going to say Meta has a monopoly on social media.

Facebook is Boomer book for people like me, right? Uh, TikTok is a younger demographic, Okay? I mean, Instagram might, my kids still use Instagram, so I'm assuming Instagram's still a power and WhatsApp.

Look, if you're, I'll be honest, WhatsApp for me is when I'm international and people gotta get ahold of me. Um, and, and there are options for WhatsApp as well. There's Signal and all of these other ones that some of our DOD, uh, secretaries use for communication.

Well, Yeah. Well, the thing about the FTC, it's so highly politicized. That's, that's the, I mean, that's just the, that's the, But I, you know, again, taking the politics out of it from a pure lawsuit legal, I, I don't see how this wins.

Like, I, I don't see how they, I don't, as we sit here today, I don't see meta being a monopoly now, but law's a funny thing. They may say that at the time this was done in 2019, meadow was a monopoly, and should we punish them? Or should there be some sort of, uh, retribution compensation because of what happened then, even though, as it often does, the market has taken care of this itself, and that, that's gonna be a legal question for a judge to decide.

Do you, do you say that as of 2019, they were a monopoly, and therefore this is the penalty? Or do you say, Hey, as we sit here, who's today the market, the market has rectified the situation? Who, who's the, that's what needs, if that's the case, who's the injured?

Right? The party, the party that wa if there's a party that was, had their business limited or hindered based upon the fact that Facebook, uh, had such a dominance in the marketplace, that organization has the ability to then sue, they Could sue. Right?

Once, once, once Matt is labeled the monopolous, That's where, that's where this would go, is it would open up the door for lawsuits. So who are we talking about? What was it?

My page? What? What's, Oh, MySpace.

MySpace. They did a good job. They did job, good job of killing themselves off, but they did Yellow.

Actually, Ello would be one of the ones that I think, Yes, Yelp. Yelp was one that, that, that was highly, uh, too about what was happening. Yeah.

In a weird way. Yeah. Interesting.

So there are, John, to your point, sorry, the narrative perspective, and I look at this through the marketing lens, you know, they're saying that, as we said a minute ago, hey, Facebook's saying there's plenty of competition with TikTok for sure. We know tiktoks key demographics. We know the influence in the election, uh, YouTube X, Snapchat, and others.

So Facebook is very clearly saying, Hey, this isn't just a friend's platform. This is this platform for, uh, entertainment and, um, discovery. And of course, the demographics vary based on platform, but they, they're clearly holding firm to that point of there's plenty of competition out there.

We are not a monopoly. And that the de okay, so the injured party would be a direct competitor of the social and social media. Is there an injured party all within the advertisers because of a, so if you look at saying, okay, Google the cost of the advertising, there's a, you know, semi price fixing or whatever because of their ownership of that market and being able to hold that there, There are all kinds of things, but those are sort of secondary suits, right?

The FTC represents the people, theoretically, the government. Yeah. You know, the, the DOJ on a side note is gonna be going after Google on the online advertising side after they, after they reach a, a, a settlement or a remedy.

They're Never gonna, this stuff's never gonna see the light of day. I, I know, I know. I Agree with you.

Not under this administration. I agree. We're not doing that.

Anyway, let's take a break. Let's come back and talk about some good news. Nvidia USA says they're making chips here.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. So, in another, in an article, also another article up on Textron, it, our newest site for infrastructure semiconductors and all that good stuff. We have an a report that NVIDIA is embracing US chip production.

I don't know, I've heard this song before. Is this an empty hug, jp, or will they really be making chips here in the United States of America? Well, they're certainly jumping on the bandwagon and the opportunity.

Um, we're talking about an organization that was riding high as, as the king in a trillion dollar market at, as taken a rule beating based upon, um, the effect of the, uh, the geopolitical factors that are driving, uh, the impact of where they're sourcing their chips from. So, uh, from a shareholder perspective, from a, uh, future perspective, uh, it, it's a good play. It's an easy thing to say, will they break ground?

Uh, you know, or are they putting forth an opportunity to, you know, wait out this administration and then see how things go? Um, so I can put the message out there, and they talked about three factories in Texas. Here's the thing that I, ime.

So the first thing I did when I heard this was to go and identify the, um, top five areas where we source, uh, silicon for fabrication, right? And, uh, Japan, 60% of global capacity comes outta Japan, then Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany, where United States does, is not a leading sourcer of, uh, silicon for wafer fabrication. So what does that immediately tell you?

We're still stuck in some form of import requirement in order to fabricate chips here in the us. And, uh, and for anybody who, who's fabricating chips here in the US is gonna struggle with that. So the first thing you need to look for to see if this even makes a difference, is what will be the impact of those on, on, you know, on tariffs to those countries who are sourcing, uh, the wafers.

And, and so, because that's gonna affect the price. Then you get to creating chips in America, which is a very high quality process. I mean, beyond high quality.

And it think takes me back to watching gung ho and the thought of Americans creating Japanese cars and the, and the battle they went through, uh, learning how to do quality control, right? With the guy in the 10000th cars sticking his head out, right? And it's easy for Ron Howard to have made a joke out of, but the truth of the matter is, uh, you know, am American manufacturing doesn't have the same level of quality production as we find abroad.

So you have a skills issue here. You have a cultural and attitude issue here. So who, so who are you getting to work in these factories, uh, to produce these chips?

Oh, by the way, the people who probably really wanted, well, they just got shipped out to El Salvador, Perhaps the, Uh, the NVIDIA stuff that it's, it seems like it's more of a real thing. Alan, when you say is, or is this a just kind of like a, like a lot of other companies just saying, let's do it. It's because like the first piece of that is TSMC in Phoenix, which there's already, when we say what's happening here, there's already a manufacturing facility and they're shifting, Wait, wait, no, no, no, no.

Hold on. There is a sh there will be a manufacturing facility, right? Thank you.

And they've been saying there will be for a long time, and currently it's in Phoenix. Before that, was it Minnesota or Illinois or Ohio? This, this ain't the first time TSMC has said they're building a facility here.

And, but you make a valid point, which is Nvidia designs chips. They don't build chips. They basically fa you know, they go to fabs for that stuff.

So you need fabs to, to, to build these chips. Now, TSMC would be a fab to do it. And they have spoken about building one in Phoenix.

Have they broken ground yet? I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, here, here's the bottom line. Whether they broke ground or not to build the fab train the workers, look, it is a three to five year Project. The only reason why I say that is because in their blog, they make the statement and Blackwell chips have started production at T SMCs chip, right?

Phoenix started. Yes, I saw that too, that it was already happening. That was what they, That message.

So that means they probably broken ground and, and you know, they're doing it. But I think the last reports I saw, as you would, assuming there is a TMC and we don't have a war over Taiwan or what, whatever craziness goes on in this world, um, we're three to five years out from actually seeing, I don't know if Blackwell will be the chips that'll get produced there when it's all said and done. It might be the next gen even, who knows?

Okay. It wasn't some of this funding coming from CHIPS Act, uh, the CHIPS Act, which is probably gonna be undone by this administration, like everything else that came out of the Biden administration. So let me just, here, I just did a quick pull up.

T SMCs first chip factory in Phoenix started a commercial production of four nanometer in 2025, in the first half of 2025. Factory is part of a larger investment with a second fab two nanometer in 2028. So you looked, so if I'm not mistaken, the black, uh, black water, the, the new chips are too.

So you're looking at 2020. So you're looking at three years be before that. But, but here's, let me just say a couple things.

First of all, jp, to your point about where silicon comes from, it has always been the way of the world that the leader nations import raw resources and export manufactured goods. England used to take wool and timber and put back out clothes and ships, right? That's how England, you know, rule Britannia.

Um, so that's not a bad business model for the us. Import raw material, export processed goods. You know, I saw an interview with Tom Friedman from the Times a couple days ago on social media, and then I dug in and listened to it, and he had a re And whether you liked Thomas Friedman or not, I know he's an opinionated guy.

I, I personally love reading his books. I think he makes a lot of sense. But he had an interesting, uh, viewpoint on this kind of stuff.

He said, we need to take a book, a page outta the China book. What China did is they, did it raise their tariffs to the level they're at overnight. They gradually raised the tariffs to close that market off to us and other providers.

What they did initially was said, please, please come in here. And they carefully studied what the US did well and what the US didn't do. Well, jp, to your point, we don't, whether it's cars or chips, there's some high quality stuff that perhaps we don't do well, and then they put maximum effort into doing well what we didn't.

And it took in the case of China 25 years. But you're seeing the, you're seeing the reality of it now, right? They have 25 years of practicing to do well, what we don't.

And during that 25 years, they kept raising their barriers to outside products. We need that. We need that kind of focus.

We need that kind of true north to say, what, what's it gonna take for us to be a chip power here? Do we have to import the island of Taiwan? I don't know what we have to do, but we need to have, it's not a six month, it's not a 2028, it may be 10, 20 years, but we need to study what they don't do well, that we can do well, that we can put maximum effort into learning to do well.

Because this isn't the, the problem, you know, having done, you have your Wall Street thing, having helped put together a public company as you live quarter to quarter, right? And, and you don't have a chance to really have a true north. Many, most companies don't have a true north.

We need, as a country, a true north with a real plan. And I know it sounds socialistic to say five year plan, 10 year plan, but we need a true north plan that transcends administrations, that transcends politics of who we want to be in this world, because this, this battle for supremacy, and I don't necessarily mean a war with guns, but this battle for supremacy, for the world economy and and prosperity is not something that's going to be won every four years. It's gonna be one with a, a real str, a a, an us economic strategy for the 21st century.

We're 25 years late. It's time. Well, yeah.

So I, I give kudos to Nvidia for, for doing this. And, and I, I, I don't, I don't doubt they're going to eventually do it, but what the one thing that jumps out at me is they want to create, quote, hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming dec coming decade then, uh, so, but, but I mean, here's my point. Here's my point.

This, these things take time. And as you said, you know, we, we are a very impatient, we have a short supply of patients in our society, and plus our government is set up. So every four years we have a new change of plan or change, of course.

And in China, they can, they can work around that. Um, and I, and I think that's, that's the one thing I, I look at app, what Apple and Intel say they want to do what they intend to do. And I just, I, I just, my eyes glaze over because these are just talking points.

These are not realistic goals. It not even close. I mean, another example is our space program.

I think, uh, all of us, well, maybe not you, Lisa, but all of us were here in 1968 when we saw Neil Armstrong land on the moon. Yeah. Why haven't, why what happened to our space for, you know, what happened?

We were supposed to go back to the moon, we're going to Mars. No, we're not going to Mars first. We're going to the moon first, then we'll go to Mars, we'll stop at the moon.

Maybe we'll go to Mars and then go to Jupiter. Don't go to Europa. That planet is for that moon is forbidden.

Two, you according to Arthur Clark. We, we can't, we can't have, we don't have a space program with a coherent, we, we can't formulate, you Know, the the irony is that the Trump administration is, is putting irony that Trump administrations putting an emphasis on the space program. Now, believe it or not, guess a must influence, but Whatcha we doing?

Are we going in or we go Mars? In the meantime, China's landing on the dark side of the moon. They found Pink Floyd playing money there, but you know, they're putting a new space station up.

They, they have a plan that they, that was the whole point of Freedman's thing is that we need, we need plans. That's what, that's what makes Springs sex very interesting, is that they have in, in a sense, I, I don't know if you could say that they leap progged space force, but feel, I mean, when you got chopsticks, you know, taking back the, you know, the rocket or whatever, you're kind of like going, okay, that, that's a big advancement. That's really cool.

Yeah. And, um, Yeah, our, our, our, the, the space program 90%, and trust me, I watch 'em as they launch here, right from, uh, my backyard. And, uh, 70 to 80% of what goes up is satellites, uh, feeding into, uh, the network.

Uh, uh, you know, the SpaceX network, uh, the thinking that we've never accomplished is, uh, identifying something like the moon and being able to mine it for minerals. Now, if you, you know, we, we destroy our planet to suck out minerals, right? And, and, and it affects our planet when we don't really know all the minerals that are available to us on the moon.

And we certainly haven't completed a process whereby we can go extract those minerals from that planet without affecting our own and be able to transport them back to the, to the, to this planet. It seems to me that that really should have been the focus of the space program, right? Let's go figure out what's up There.

Well, it's not the moon asteroids, right? Bring a metal asteroid into, and, and mine the heck out of it, they have asteroids that are worth trillions of dollars in iron or nickel or whatever, right? Why, why are we still pull?

Yeah. 'cause it's expensive. It's peak.

It's still peak. And, and, you know, But, but we're missing that, you know, SpaceX has done some cool things, no doubt. Chopsticks catching the rockets and everything.

And, and at least Elon Musk, and I'm no Elon Musk fan, if you know me on here, at least, at least he has a goal of getting to Mars. That's his thing. They wanna get to Mars.

I used to work for the space program, and I can tell you I did space shuttle projects with biology back in the 20 something years ago. And the, the focus problem was huge. I mean, launch is constantly getting delayed, but what I, what I pulled from that was before I was in marketing, so kind of like not, not thinking about what's the message they're putting out there?

I thought NVIDIA's message here. Then the press release didn't specifically call out. This is a response to tariffs.

They, I thought they were aggressive. They said, you know, we're gonna build more than a million square feet of US space manufacturing space. We're gonna launch productions of two supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas.

And they forecasted, and this is Alan, when you were talking about years, they said 12 to 15 months, these plants will be ramping up to mass production. That's a bit of a vague statement, but are we seeing here kind of the key elements starting to become available on shore? Are the, are they beginning to fall in place?

Is that signal that, is that Nvidia leading that key elements? Right? So Foxconn has been on shore for many, many years.

They are an assembler of systems, as is the other company west or whatever it was. So those Foxconn is like the major assembler for a lot of server companies, hardware on, um, um, storage devices. So what they're doing that, so there's a big difference here.

JB was, we were talking about the silicon groan. So that's, it's PSMC in Phoenix that takes a five years to develop and bring online a new lab, um, or a new f you know, new, new factory there. The Foxcon thing is saying, okay, I'm taking all the parts and pieces and I'm assembling that piece of it, much like we see the manufacture, you know, auto manufacturing being done as the final manufacturing being done in the United States.

So I think that's why they can come up within 12 to 15 months. Um, and then you ask the labor, you guys prod out the labor is, you know, I haven't heard that. Um, and they're talking about doing a lot of robotics, so they're gonna use the AI capability to really implement those factories and bring that up to speed.

So we're gonna see similar factories, I think as I read it, as we probably see with what Tesla has done, and kind of similar kind of job job descriptions, if you will, from a Tesla standpoint. But it's, this is not like it's brand new breaking ground. No, No, but I thought wasn't the Foxcon facility in Wisconsin and they kind of mothballed it.

There's a bunch of foxcon. Because if I look at, if I go down a bunch of the data storage companies, one of them, you know, they're, they're using foxcon to put their stuff together, Perhaps. Let's hope So.

Anyway, time for a break here on Textron gang. We're gonna come back and talk about, hey has, have the bunch of companies found the political will to do something about spyware? We hope so.

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Hey everyone, we're back here on Textron Gang and, uh, our third segment today, spyware spoilers, uh, 21 countries have signed on to a voluntary pact. That means it may not be that enforceable, like sort of the Paris Treaty, uh, but we're gonna do something about stemming the proliferation of spyware. Lisa, what, what's this one about?

Yeah, this is interesting, Alan. You said nearly two dozen countries signed onto this voluntary accord to address this rising threat that just keeps going up and up and up of commercial spyware that's used by some governments to track everything from journalists to activists and lawyers. Similar targets by hacking in tech devices.

This meeting occurred in Paris last week. Um, a number of countries, including the uk, France, Germany, et cetera, the US was not one of them, but they had this two day meeting where they came together and said, we're gonna sign this pal mal process as code of practices for states. And it was launched in England and France last year in 2024, um, with the objective of really looking at concerns for national security as well as respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, international peace, and a much more secure cyberspace.

So what I kind of took out of this, even though it isn't legally binding the US is not a signatory. The US did do similar, tried to do similar things back in 2023, but is this a big step in the right direction? Um, it lays out expectations for addressing the growing use of these intrusive tools that, uh, are used to do harm.

And also, could this lay out a framework by which then legal action could fall into place? I think one of the challenges they had now, 21 countries is convincing other nations to, who might be active users of cyber to signing on, because the dangers are real. The, uh, the, the data show that as many as a hundred countries are using spyware, Google has data that demonstrates that as well.

But is this a step in the right direction to come together internationally to start dialing down the cyber space in insecurity issues? Yeah, you know, this is a real, a real problem, if I'm not mistaken. The reason why the UK is sort of a leading role on this, and you mentioned the journalist angle of it, is there was a very high profile case in the UK where spyware was used to, to, to spy on some journalists about what they were doing and in an amount, you know, and the UK has different libel laws and so forth than we do.

And, and there was some serious, serious, both criminal and civil, uh, uh, uh, investigations and trials and tribulations over, uh, I wanna say it was the Murdoch, one of the Murdoch, uh, newspapers there. Was it the sun, I, I forget which one right now, but there was, there was spyware used and, and the, the edit, I mean, people lost their jobs over it and were disgraced and everything else. It, it was, it was a mess.

Um, look, I, I I'm all for all for it, but if the US isn't a signature signatory to it, China's not. Russia's not, I don't, I doubt Israel is Great points. North Korea, Iran, you know, the usual of evil.

Yeah. Um, they Were not on the list. So I took a, a quick glance at it.

One of the, the only thing that I saw that very quick glance this morning on the letter that, or the, it was a 10 page document that was put out, so I didn't do it in detail. A lot of it seems like the, you know, very kind of soft commitments, but the major piece in there was the, um, uh, ship that was, um, being selling spyware to other nations. So part of it is putting some, um, you know, laws around who you can sell to, who can, who you're gonna sell your software to that's produced in your country.

So similar to, you know what we're saying with, you know, Nvidia selling to China, it's like the, the government is saying, no, you can't do that. Um, so limiting who can get ahold of some of these things, you know, for, you know, I, I don't think that this spyware is, I don't know, spyware doesn't seem to be like this's gonna be that super advanced technology to develop, so I should, oh, It's pretty cool because one, one version of it, cam Kimberly is um, you know, the Israeli company who pro who has the software that'll, uh, get, let you get into an iPhone and that, I mean, that's something the US has used and it's been controversial, right? Uh, do you have the ability, you know, because you don't, you know, they don't wait for a warrant, so to speak.

They do. Um, and, and that might be something that this is keyed against, because I thought at least, I think under the Biden administration, there was some sort of, uh, and that might be what you're referring to, Lisa, back in 23, there was some sort of agreement over who you're going to use this, who can use that software, you know? 'cause theoretically if you're a journalist or some other protected class or just a citizen, right?

We have, we still, I think we still have a constitution amendment about illegal search and seizure, I hope. Um, and, and, and that's your property. And you, you know, and if you've encrypted your phone, you are, they cannot force you to unencrypt it to, to give them the password.

And, you know, using that software, they, they don't really need your permission. They just do it. And that, that was the whole genesis of that.

That was the 2023 story. Again, Israel's not a signatory to this, so I don't, I don't know how much teeth this has. It's, as they say in Las Vegas, it's a fine beginning, but I, I don't, I don't think it does anything at this point.

But we can hope. We can hope. All right, John, you have a look on your face, like the, the cat who swallowed the canary?

No. Do you wanna say something? Oh, no, I just, I, I, I'll, I'll throw something out that's, it's not really related, but it involves data and personal data.

So in California, I think, I don't know if you did this, Lisa, but the real id, I had to go to the DMV to renew my driver's license. Yes. It's Friday.

So you, you if in order to travel, unless you have a passport, you're gonna have to use a real ID as part of your driver's license. So I had to go back in to renew anyway, and they asked me if I would like to join the real id. And it's, it's, I don't know if you did, Lisa, but there are so many documents and personal information, Passover, I refuse to do it.

I'll use my passport instead. And this, when I'm looking, I copied, chewed my passport, so I can't use mine. So I have to get a real id.

I'm going in this week, and you're right, all the documentation that you have to prove birth certificates, I mean, it's crazy. You know, the, the crazy thing is like every other day I get a card in the mail for about a data breach, and I'm waiting for that one to, to, you know, if I join to become a real idea, you're gonna hear about some sort of data breach. So I'm just become extremely paranoid by all this.

I don't know, sorry, I don't mean to be too dark, but it, it's just something That No, it's okay. Is it more so than global entry? Well, global entry Entry more so what You more in, are they asking more questions about you than a global entry would do?

Well, global entry, you have to do an in-person interview. Well, Yeah, yeah. Which you have to do for the real id.

So We don't have this in Florida. Our driver's license is a real id, Right? Yeah.

Okay. Well, they, yeah, they, I almost think of this as a monetization pl play plus there's also, there was lots of total, it's a total shakedown, I think. But also the other thing that was weird, weird to me, um, sorry, Lisa is Larry Ellis and for years has been pushy for something like this and was always, there was always pushback.

And now we're seeing, I'm not saying he has anything to do with it, but just, I just kind of resent the idea of, of, of my driver's license being useless is personal identification now in the state. Hey there, I got it off my chest. Sorry.

I'm glad you were able to get that off your chest. It feels much better now. Hey, I can, there a, there's A lot of policy right now that is benefiting the ideas and concepts of some of the key people who have been investing in, uh, the tech sector outta Silicon Valley since 2000.

Are you thinking like Palantir or just Others? Te No, I'm talking about like Teal and the people like that. Well, He's Walden.

Palantir, yeah. Yeah. He's a Palantir guy.

Yep. All right. Hey, we're going to, we're gonna wrap.

This is a great text on gang. We've got a full day of text on, or at least a few full few, couple hours, more of text on TV to follow. Check it out.

Some of it is John at that Atlassian conference, I believe. But, uh, until tomorrow, we hope you've enjoyed this. Allen Hummel.

We're out.