Podcast: Cybersecurity - On War and Politics

In this episode of Incubate This!, we talk with Nereus founder and CEO Brandon Stewart about cybersecurity, its role in global modern warfare, and what you should worry about (and not) with regard to technology.

Click here to listen to our previous episode on Security with Sam (Masiello).

Full Transcription Text

Cynthia: Hello everybody. Welcome back. We are minus our Darryl today, which is very sad. He's having a family emergency and he should be back in a few days here ready for our next episode, but we are missing him today. So keep him in your thoughts and prayers. So the last time we did a security conversation, we brought in Sam Masiello. The episode was wildly successful. Like one of the most successful ones we've ever had. No pressure, no pressure whatsoever. And so today we have with us, Mr. Brandon Stewart, he is the CEO and founder of Nereus, which is a cybersecurity company based here in Denver. He's got lots of like, deep security secret agent man, black ops background, and like government stuff that could be kind of fun to talk about. He's not the whistleblower.

Brandon: Yeah. And I'm not going to get taken out to a room that gets disappeared either.

Cynthia: So we're thrilled to have you here today. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. You're welcome. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself, your background, what you do, like maybe even what you don't do. Cause I know you said you security guys are like, you're like attorneys, I do this, but I don't do this. So don't think that I have any, you know, whatever.

Brandon: Yeah, no, no doubt like a union thing. It does. It's a CYA thing. Really?

Cynthia: I was on, we were on a call yesterday with one of our clients and their attorney was on the call with us. And at the end of the call, they had been asking a question about D&O insurance. Right. Because they had this insurance package and they thought D&O was part of it. And it turns out it really wasn't part of it. And he was like, you know, should we go and buy like a nose and tail policy now to sort of cover that and build, you know, kind of walked him through it, whatever. And so at the end he goes, okay. So we really have nothing to worry about. And he goes, hold on, hold on, hold on. I mean, you could get hit crossing the street. There's stuff to worry about. I was like, Oh my God, you sound like a lawyer right now.

Brandon: All lawyers, all lawyers, you have to start the conversation with them. Like we want to keep this simple, we want to get an answer. We're not talking about what ifs here. We're not in a big what if moment.

Cynthia: And then they say, yeah, we don't do that. We can't bill for that Brandon. 

Brandon: I need to pontificate about this from many, many moons.

Cynthia: Uh, all right. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your company and what you do.

Brandon: Yeah. So my background is within cybersecurity. You know, my education element or profile is more around business and economics. I had an East Asian studies focus and undergrad. I started a couple of companies in DC that were mainly focused on the value added reseller element. And our big focus points were dealing with new and innovative startup security solutions that we're going to be focused in the federal market space. So what those markets were, what did they really need? What were the challenges they were dealing with as opposed to kind of the commercial element? So I was pretty successful in both companies I helped start. I ended up going to graduate school for war, is really the only way to describe it. You know, they have a lot of fancy titles for it, diplomacy, law. It's really just war. You know, how, how do they start? Where do they go? How do you avoid them? What's allowed, what's not allowed the economics behind it. Just kind of all of the study around that. And that really helped me get into my second company that I helped create, which was in Maryland, which was heavily focused in the DOD in those communities, secret agent man. Yeah. It just, you know, you know, really talk about that. Maybe we could talk around it, not in the things, you know, so I was able to really help that company out. We did, we did a lot of really good work and you know, I'm pretty proud of what we were able to do. Met some super cool people that were really doing some fun stuff and having conversations of what ifs like we're going to paint a scenario and you know, we can't give you any names, but you know, it's really dry in a place

Cynthia: If we were to go to a place where there is sand and mountains and inside of a cave.

Brandon: Totally, absolutely. How would you...a lot of that. Um, so that was always fun to kind of like, listen to this. Yeah, totally. You listen to this story and kind of draw it up on the board and you're like, okay, this is our picture today. Right. And they're like, yes. I'm like, okay, if this is the picture, this is Mr X. Yeah, yeah. Right. And they're like, well, if we told you this, I'm like, I don't want to know. Don't want to tell me anymore. I've got plausible deniability. It's like, I want to know more or I'll be on that whiteboard some day. So pretend that 10 years ago we talked to this dude about some security stuff and now we need to take him out planning my own takeout plan Right. So anyway, the graduate degree was really interesting. And I got to work with some really cool people from around the globe. A lot of their governments sent them to the program. It was the Fletcher school. So it was a really awesome program. And then after a while I decided it was just kind of time to start my own gig and just see what would happen. And I was living out here in Colorado. Hopefully no one tries to track me down after that. We can edit that part out. Right. My house is armed. So anyway, what I found out here in the Colorado space is that we've got quite a few numbers of, uh, subcontractors dealing with the aerospace industry and the national defense industry. And the challenges with those groups is they are, you know, they've got a really ton of smart people trying to solve some really difficult problems. And demographically speaking, you've got a lot of people moving here from the East coast and from the West coast, just because, you know, one, it's cool to live here, two, the standard of living's a lot more reasonable and three, they can start these companies here and it isn't like this, you know, you don't have the California, we'll call it just the ridiculousness of all of what's there, the traffic, everything. Right. And you're not paying for East coast prices. So you've got just a number of companies out here that we're able to help with and, you know, do some fun stuff. And I don't have to live on a plane, which is super dope. Yeah, I've got a dog, I've got like a normal life, which is kind of cool. I didn't think I'd ever have one of those. We'll see how it goes in the future. Cause we're launching some things. So I have a feeling I'll be living on a plane again pretty soon, but as of right—

Cynthia: So talk to us about cybersecurity. It sounds, I mean, we're developers.

Grant: Yeah. I was kind of curious about the timeline when you got involved in DC, did it have anything to do with the Patriot stuff and 911, the heightened interest in?

Brandon: Yeah. I think it's easier to kind of kind of give a narrative from a high level and then it can kind of bring us into the present if that makes sense. So if you look at, they call it kind of, uh, the fifth arena, right? You've got air water, you've got land, you've got space and now you have cyber warfare. Right. And we've kind of had a, you know, NORAD was kind of handling this space issue back in, you know, when Reagan was there and the whole thing, but cyber warfare was kind of this kind of new development that happened during actually the big one was the Iraq war. So a lot of people don't know there were two, when we just marched through Saddam Hussein, right. I think he either had the second or the third largest military in the world right behind us. And we were in and out of there and like a week really from like soup to nuts with overwhelming force. And one of the things we were able to do during that was actually initiate kind of the real first element of cyber warfare. And at that point, what ended up happening, there were two very influential colonels in the Chinese military who watched this whole thing go down and they've said, what the ****? That's pretty bad ***. And there's no way we're going to be able to stop that. So they wrote a really influential paper and it essentially called for asymmetric warfare. And that is really kind of, without meaning to, I think the United States kind of kicked this element off and the Chinese were able to reply. Interesting. So if you look, I mean, man, for man, right? The Chinese military has, you know, more than we do, but in terms of kinetic force and application of kinetic force, we are still the absolute unipolarity in the world. So what they were very clever in doing was trying to figure out, okay, how do we defend ourselves asymmetrically? Sure. And just by the very nature of the internet, which we're all kind of aware of and we kind of developed it's, you know, the way American companies, the way American kind of culture is, is to connect, whereas Chinese culture and Russian culture, historically, you know, there's a wall, right? The Chinese have the wall, the Russians are kind of, if you're not Russian, get the **** out of here, Insular a lot of walls, right. A lot of walls. So yeah, it's very insular. So yeah, just by the very nature of how we've designed our own kind of historical narrative inside of the intranet, the protocols, we write, the applications, rewrite everything, open API. We want to connect, we want to share information, you know, our higher learning education systems are that way. I mean, that is essentially how the internet was built. Scientists want to share data, right. And you know, it's actually historically why you have scientists in the department of energy, who have a Q clearance. And other people have a different clearance because they want to sequester the nerds because they want to talk and everybody else is trained to listen. Right? So they, the big bomb development, we were like, we got to keep these dudes away from those dudes because these guys, absolutely. And they're just running their mouth, shut the hell up. You were to take all the nerds, put them in a room or take these guys, put them over here and we'll tell them when they can talk to that. So anyway, so after the Iraq war, you have essentially the Chinese military and certainly following the rest of the world's, you know, intelligent services really kind of considering how they're going to be able to defend themselves in this element. And, you know, asymmetric warfare became kind of the big piece kind of launching what is separate warfare. Two of the most notable hacks are obviously the Walway issue that most people were aware of. And in the joint strike fighter, the joint strike fighter was one of the most expensive development efforts ever in the history of the department of defense. We're going to come out with it's super cool plane. It's going to do all kinds of amazing stuff. It's, you know, it's, you know, basically Thai fighter, right. You know, full out, we've got, you know, the, the emperor's strike ship and the Chinese broken in the Pentagon and I've worked in the Pentagon and it's, you know, it's a big place. And, um, so that's all I'm gonna say about that. It's a big place, a lot of stuff, I think they were able to pull out something along the lines of like, I think it was like hundreds of tractor trailers of information. If you were to print all this stuff out, I mean, hundreds over the course of the time that they were creating, what was, you know, at that time called APT, advanced, persistent threat, which for a while meant just China. Right. Which then kind of morphed into this idea of advanced persistent threat, which is like, you have a nation state actor who's being funded to continually probe and look. Pulled all this information out. And you know, when Robert Gates showed up to China to have his moment with the Chinese, they said, Oh, Mr. Gates, we have this wonderful thing to show you and outcomes, their joint strike fighter that they basically copied from the United States. I mean, one of the most development efforts we've ever invested in as a country

Cynthia: And they had it because they basically stole it.

Brandon: Right. They're just stitching it together. Now. Certainly it isn't as good as ours, but like it's pretty got near close investment. Right. I mean, yeah. I mean, no investment really. I mean, you know, so well, so at that point, you know, the paradigm has kind of shifted at that point, right? Like the attack is super cheap. The defense is super expensive and you've got to have firewalls and IDP systems and logs. And you know, you've got to have, you know, an hour applying artificial intelligence machine learning to log data to try to be able to figure out like, okay, we've got an issue. We've got somebody's credentials have been popped. They're trying to move laterally inside the system. I mean, it's, you know, fast forward and we're, we're in a completely new world. And like part of my, one of my programs and we were going through and I was able to show a bunch of these them government diplomats, whatever I was able to just kind of visualize what is a typical day on the internet with what is considered known attack network traffic across the internet. And you could just see everybody's face is just like terrified. And like at the end of the president, I was like, I'm taking, I have no, I'm not gonna ever do any more banking online. I'm deleting every social media profile I have like totally. Yeah. You know, going back to gold, you know, and I'm like, all right, Hey, whatever you want to do mean, [inaudible] sure. Whatever. I mean, you and your Montana ranch. I get it. Totally. You know, I know it's a little scary out here in the big wild West, but that's where we're at. 

Cynthia: So are you, do you being in this world knowing what you know seen? So first of all, are you a hacker? No. You don't, you're not, no. Okay. How paranoid are you? This is what I'm trying to ask.

Brandon: And after this podcast, probably going to get real paranoid after we listened to the edited version of it, I see how many people really like download this thing. Like dating life is going to go through the floor. And that's for sure.

Cynthia: If you haven't ever seen a picture of Brandon that could never happen. It's a constant problem

Brandon: Now I'm embarrassed in my face. Generally speaking, is it worth the effort? Right? I think for the majority of people, like, they're just not worth the effort. Okay. Right. Like even how do I put this? Like most civilians or just people in general, it just really kind of like, like even well off people really aren't worth the effort now could they get popped? Absolutely. Sure. You know, and are people just trying to do smash and grabs like you would in a nice neighborhood? Yeah, absolutely. But really what's going on, like the thing that's really concerning to me that just drives me up the wall that, you know, we've talked about as a, as a security group, as a country is the electrical grid. That is the thing that just makes me want to crawl out of my skin and just like scream from the rooftops. Like I'm some old biblical prophet talking about how like, cause there's floods coming, it's completely vulnerable. Isn't it? I mean, like it's, it's the largest machine on earth in the United States that looks interconnected all the way connected and we've just hodgepodged together. And I think it's a mastery of just ingenuity that it runs generally speaking. Right. And to run as well as it has really, I'm just continually impressed. The whole idea of cyber warfare is, is a challenge point within kind of a context of diplomacy is always plausible deniability. Right. Like we kinda know you did it, you know, but we can't really prove you did it. So we kind of can, we kinda can't like, and if we can and we give our hand away because we're watching you, we know you're watching

Cynthia: Sure. This is, this is the whole like code breaking thing with the Nazis.

Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we won't want them to know we crack their code, you know, and they didn't know until like the mid nineties and this happened in like the forties. Right. Right. Because when they know then that gives something away. Right. So you kind of have to,

Grant: I'm hearing that when they, when they were first getting all that kind of stuff, that Churchill would not authorize a counter mission against that. Unless they could come up with something,

Brandon: There's some plausible reason why they would do it some other way, because he didn't want to give that away. Yeah. If you look, uh, I think it was Reagan when, you know, it was us first and Russia, you know, which still kind of is. But I think what he ended up doing is he found out the United States figured out the Russians were eavesdropping on a lot of our information at the time. And he gave the order to get faulty information about gas, pipeline, construction, and subsequently a massive explosion took place in Russia because they were utilizing our data that we had falsified to, to detonate and kind of say, Hey, we're watching you too. Well, that must have led to some hands rubbing together. So that's always the problem, right? We're like, if you look at a security studies framework in, you know, and you could go in a neoliberal versus neoconservative kind of mindset, the idea is that if, if I see you and what you're doing, and you kind of see me what I'm doing, then there's less of a likelihood of buildup. But when I can't see what you're doing and you can't see what I'm doing, then there's a higher likelihood of buildup because we can only assume the worst, right.

Grant: Fighting against the imagined, right. From a nation

Brandon: State perspective, we are more terrified of the unknown than if we're just kind of looking. I mean like, okay, we see what they're doing there. Right. So, you know, and this gets kind of geopolitical pretty quickly because that's essentially what we're dealing with. But like for instance, China, there's a lot of arguments that could be made like China wants to control the Southeast Asian China region. Right. They want to exert their polarity influence in that space. Right. And there are arguments to say, let them and their arguments to say, absolutely not. But you know, as a country, I think they're watching us. We're certainly watching them. Same thing with Russia. Russia wants to control its Western border; we're utilizing their Eastern or our Eastern border to kind of buttress that. And depending on your kind of school of thought, whether you're more of the, the harder we push against them, the safer we are, the lax we are, the easier it is. That's kind of how, you know, geopolitical influence is then played into this cyber warfare piece. So what it kind of becomes as you, as you watch, you know, the law, you read the wall street journal, you're watching Washington post or see whatever your MSNBC or Fox, whatever you start seeing these like isolated stories. But we were able to do is then take a step back and kind of start piecing this together. Right? Yeah.

Grant: That conspiracy stuff almost, it sounds like right. You know, like watch and way over here. And did you notice what happened over here? Follow the money

Brandon: And that's the easiest way to do it because money doesn't lie. Right. You follow the money, you follow the economics, you can be like, Oh, that's so interesting why that happened. You know, you could kind of guess what's going on. So from an electrical grid who drives me up the wall is we've had these conversations and I used to work. I still work a little bit with department energy and everybody has these, like, we need to secure the grid. We need to secure the grid and you go to these conferences and they've got this like a giant whiteboard. And you know, they're like, okay, here's what we're going to do. All right, ready? And you've got this room full of other nerds, they're all super genius. And they're like, okay, we're going to take all the telemetry data. And I'm like, okay. You know, I'm like, all right, from the biggest machine on earth, got it. Take the telemetry data. Right. You're like, okay, okay. And then basically what they do is they draw a box and then they put lightning in the box and they're like, we're going to analyze the data. And we're going to be able to secure the grid. I'm like, uh ah, and they use all kinds of great words about lightning In the box. I'm like, can we just lock the door? Can we do that? Lock the doors, how about operational technology security? How about, you know, maybe a little device to make sure the gas pump doesn’t turn on the wrong way and we get a boom?

Grant: Start with the things we know we can accomplish

Brandon: Progress. That's absolutely the case. That's what we're begging, you know? And, and obviously being in the private sector in working with them, and you're not in the federal government, you have to kind of realize that they're going to do what they want to do. And they're going to, they have their vision of how things are going to go, but you just kind of get the sense at times. You're like, dude, these people are just on a goat rope and they are chasing clouds. And I just need him to lock the door. I literally, I just want my electricity home, my toilet to flush, you know what? I don't want to have happened in New York. I don't want their sewage system to turn off. I've been in New York. I love those people. Not very calm. Sometimes

Grant: It reminded me of a boss. We had a couple jobs back that he said, your team is constantly sticking incremental improvements into your product. And I got this team over here and they're trying to feed the world. They're trying to end world hunger and they're not getting anything done. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon: And I see it. I mean, I've just kind of seen a lot. I mean, I'm working with, I think certainly, I mean, I'm working with a lot of the labs now and I think they're starting to figure that out. And I think there are some more realistic applications of things. But I think also because of just the way the machine works, they have to try to address it in a broad swath, as opposed to kind of hitting the whack-a-mole, which, you know, there's a counter argument to be made there, but from a defensive tactical position, I'd lock them like, the door. Right. Just lock the door first. And then we can come up with the magic and the lightning and the box and all the other things.

Grant: Funny, because that reminds me so much about my relationship with software products is like, yeah, if we could rewrite this from the top down and design all the details in upfront, it would cost a lot less to do and we could do it quicker, but that will never happen. We'll never get started on that. The market, by the time you get to the end of your analysis, things have already changed quite a bit. And so the only way in my experience to effectively evolve a system is those piecemeal, get this chunk, get that chunk, get that chunk. Oh, look, now that collapses this down. Right? And and in the long run, it probably costs a lot more. But like my analogy is it's like doing a complete organ transplant on the patient while you keep them alive on the table. Right. Instead of saying, no, we're gonna just going to shut him off for the next 18 months and we're going to rebuild him. Right. You know, cause you can't do it right.

Brandon: By the way, he's gotta be working while you're doing that. Right. We need him to go to work. We need him to pick his kids up from the school, all those things need to happen. My mom was a nurse. She told a story about a doctor and a mechanic. And he came to pick the car up and the mechanic charged him 300 bucks. And he said, you see doc, he goes, why do I charge you $300 to completely get your, your car comes in. It's broken, it's sick. I fix it, get it out, get it out the door, 300 bucks. I come in to you. And it's a couple thousand. The doctor says, try doing it with the engine running.

Cynthia: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.

Brandon: If that engine shuts off, it is like, you just like, Oh, well we got, let's take some time. We'll unpack it. Well where you put it together, should fire right back up. Yeah. Right.

Cynthia: All right. So, your paranoia is relative to your fear is relative to daily operational life. So, let me put this in different terms. So when we had Sam here, we asked him about Alexa. We said, do you have an Alexa? And he was like, no, I can get up and turn on the lights myself. Right.

Grant: He turns his phone off in between. Use a lot of times I'll go on, make calls, read His mail and he turns it off. Okay.

Cynthia: Yeah, totally. So are you at that? Does your paranoia and fear live just in a different realm, but it's at that same level.

Brandon: Yeah. You know, I totally understand what he's doing. Like I don't have a diesel generator. My mom does. Absolutely. And my ex wife has a battery pack in her, in her garage. Totally. I am totally in that realm. Yeah. I mean, it's more like a boy scout kind of thing. Like, uh, I heard a great comment. One of the greatest cheesy movies, which was alien vs predator, which was everything it needed to be. This woman they're getting ready to go explore the planet. And the woman's like a, this one moment pulls out a sidearm and the other woman looks at her. He goes, why do you need that? She goes, it's like a condom. I'd rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it. Yeah. That was such a great way to go about life. Right. Like I, you know, I, uh, I work out, I try to take care of myself and I like to train a little hand-to-hand combat. People are like, why do you do that? And I'm like, cause there could be a moment when you're like, Oh, this would have been a really useful knowledge. I should have taken that class when they offered it. Totally not like I'm going around at the bar picking fights, but I'm just like, you know, I'm like some girls around them, like, Hey, I got a feeling about, you know, Hey, check out my certificate. It's all about application. Right? Knowledge is about application. It shouldn't be theoretical. Oh my God. That's so awesome. So in terms of my, my paranoia, I completely get what he's doing. Like I usually make a concerted effort. Like I'll delete my Facebook messenger app on my phone. And sometimes I'll delete Facebook. Right. Certainly Instagram, because the phone is constantly, I mean, the phone knows more about you than anybody else, but there's also a kind of this, you know, I'm just at the cusp of the millennial generation. I am a Xennial with the X. Right. So I grew up with the dial in a dial up modem. I remember that. And then I can look at my younger brother's generation and I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what we are.

Cynthia: Is that what we are, what did you call it a Xennial, I was pissed for so long. I was gen X proud to be. And then all of a sudden they move the line by like six years or something. And I'm like, I am not a freaking millennial, get over yourself.

Brandon: It's the internet that did it. And we're actually Xennials because we're in between gen X, which is my older brother's generation and millennials, which is my younger brothers. Yeah. So we remember like the old rotary phones,

Cynthia: We had one on the wall. Do you remember that? The rotary phone went with the house?

Brandon: Oh, hell yeah. It was on the wall.

Grant: Mobile phone was when you got a 25 foot cord.

Cynthia: I remember talking on the phone doing this. I can't put it on your parents. I'll get off the phone. Yeah. We only have, you only have the one line. And my, my older sister, she got her own phone line and that was like, Ooh.

Brandon: Oh yeah, totally. A call waiting was like, Whoa, totally. Oh, my grandmother would call me like you get off the phone. If something happens, I need to call you and talk about a prepper. A woman will walk around with a gun. You a seventy old lady in the mountains of Virginia with a cowboy hat, walking around with a sidearm. And everybody knew her was like, stay away from Ms. Gray. And I was like, yep, you do. They stay away from her kids. So yeah. Get off that phone. Yeah. All that stuff.

Cynthia: Good. All right. So now that I know what we are, keep going,

Brandon: I am, you know, the phone knows more about you than your partner will even do at this point, given the algorithms that they're running on people and the predictive analytics that they have. So it's a little, you're always constantly, you know, I think as a person and certainly as a culture, we're always kind of balancing security and privacy versus convenience and ease of use, right? Like it's my buddy in Europe, you know, he moved there, he's got a great wife and they've got this great family and they've got two kids, little babies. And I mean, dude, he loves that Alexa. He's like, Alexa, you know, play this music, Alexa, turn this on. And he's holding his kid and he plays it. And he's like, this is amazing. You know? And then I read the reports like yeah, Alexus definitely taking your data. They're definitely storing it and running analytics on it. They can track you directly to you always on, even though they say it isn't even in your most intimate moments. 

Cynthia: We were in one of those the other day, David and I, and she started saying, I didn't understand what you said. And I was like, what just happened? It's like totally jarring,

Brandon: Ah, what's going on. Yeah, totally. Yeah. The thing is, if you can do it, you will. What did she hear? Absolutely. So yeah, no, I don't have one of those in my house. Now

Cynthia: We have like five of them. That's, what's so crazy.

Brandon: And my friends that I'll make jokes, like I got an Alexa like a conference one time I have like five or six friends of mine and we each read like, it just bounced. It's never been out of the box and we somehow leave it at each other's house. It's like, oh yeah, we were just re-gifting that. And all of a sudden, absolutely not things. I get plugged into my house. We're also the same guy with like the giant TV that we're playing PlayStation on. Who definitely, they're just like, I'm going to hack this, do that. Yeah. I mean, it's all there. You just, if it's connected, it's connected. So I think that's really a lot like where your paranoia is for me. I don't think like, as a culture it's concerning, I think from a high level, 40,000 foot view, we're all, we've got cameras everywhere. Everything's listening. I think certainly that's a bigger issue, but from a personal privacy standpoint, I just try to take my own kind of steps. You know, when I'm having an intimate moment, you know, I don't have my Alexa, my TV, I'm not broadcasting it.

Cynthia: Alexa quit listening for the next 30 minutes.

Brandon: Yeah. 30 minutes you put everything down stairs. I guess. That's cool.

Grant: What I feel like is, is that no, you know, I kind of felt like a while back that wherever I am, I'm being watched probably. But my solace was that I'm lost in a sea of data. Totally. That, unless I'm doing something notable, nobody's going to notice me. I can sit here in my car and pick my nose in the parking lot. And it's not that they're going, Hey guys, guys, come, come around and check this out. I think it really comes out somewhere, but nobody cares. Right. 

Brandon: I think it really kind of comes down to like an ethical discussion as a society. Like what are we willing to tolerate? And I think that's, that's always the legal kind of framework that we're always dealing with. Right? If you look at what they were willing to deal with in 1776 versus what we're willing to deal with now, you know, they freak out with it.

Cynthia: Oh my God.

Grant: And in fact, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this, this points out as far as like the, the proliferation of cameras everywhere else, there's that, I don't know where it is, but the stepmother and the son, the 11 year old boy and the Springs or somewhere is miss, has been missing now for five or six days. Oh really? And her story was that he went, the last time he was seen at home was about 2:30 and he went off to play with his friends. That's it? The neighbor's nest camera has her getting in the car at 11 in the morning with the boy and coming back three hours later without him. Oh yeah. All the time. That was one of the neighbors. And he just said, Oh, I'm just going to go look. And he started looking. He was like, Oh wow. So we turned it over to the police. Oh wow. And you know, things like that are now being captured by not even institutional cameras. Yeah.

Cynthia: Yes. Yeah. Your neighbors ring, doorbell, ring, doorbell picks up weird stuff in our neighborhood sometimes where I'm like, I don't know if I should keep that clip.

Brandon: Right. And that gets to the code of those things. Cause you can hack that thing pretty quickly. I have a friend of mine back East. Who's just a great dude. As life goes, you know, people get married, people get divorced. And um, his wife's ex husband is an IT guy and it's just constantly like just messing with them always just because the guy can't get over it. My buddy, such a good dude, just hilarious, he was just a solid father and the whole thing. And the guy's like hacking his nest camera and the rest of it and yeah, it's convenient. But we are also talking about software and getting things out there. Right. A lot of times as a security guy, everybody says it, no one does it. Right. We're going to bake security in from the front end, you know? And it usually doesn't happen because security is an afterthought. It always, and it's just because the time it takes to kind of bake this thing in becomes kind of difficult, you know, to get to marker,

Cynthia: Especially if you're a startup and you have all your contact points, and you have no idea when you're starting the system?

Grant: I know what a system's going to look like when it's finished when we start,

Cynthia: But we never did ever do. Right.

Grant: It draws out eight different ways by the time you get there. So there's always this argument as to what it would look like, but you know, to kind of come back to the initial point is, you know, how terrified I am of everything. I just don't think I'm that really important, to be honest, like, you know, and I've kind of made it that way. Like I have people who are very important because Darrell gets a little worked out. He does his stuff.

Cynthia: He really does. He hates Facebook, never had a Facebook profile. He's doing everything in Chrome and stuff in Cognito. Yeah.

Brandon: Facebook is a really interesting conversation to take place with because the algorithms that Facebook is employing certainly have an intention behind them. Right. And I am familiar with Facebook and in some certain ways, and it is kind of terrifying if you want to talk about terror to me, like the electrical grid is like, let's say that's like a B, and like rating, Facebook is an A++ to me of like this needs to be reviewed. This needs to be talked about this needs to be concerning to everybody. Oh, absolutely. I mean, consider, consider that you have a, a central point that so many people are getting information from and implementing information to that is then whether they agree that it's happening or not. Cause it definitely is that information is being filtered. It's being kind of massaged in a way where certain information gets out certain information isn't and we are now in this new world, where is Facebook? A media outlet is Facebook, just a social platform is Facebook. This is, is this that right? And, and this is, I think always the challenge and just generally in our industry, the legal framework is nowhere near able to keep up with the technical capabilities that we're able to create.

Cynthia: Especially when you think that a lot of this stuff is international law, which doesn't exist. Right, right.

Brandon: Agreement that may or may not be enforced in the local host country. Right. Right. So now you've got, you've got a platform that's gone worldwide. And now all of a sudden you're dealing with what is that legality in that host country? And what does that look like? I mean, you know, for all of its faults, the EU GDRP, I think actually takes a really good step forward. It puts an incredibly difficult onus on the, on the tech community specifically, right. As you're trying to develop something that may go into that country and what they're going to be able to do to interface it with it. But at least they're trying to protect their citizens in a manner that I think is what a, uh, countries, nation or its law should be trying to do.

Cynthia: How do you feel about what California just did with that regard? 

Brandon: I think California is crazy. Yeah. I think like California's challenge is that like, it's just so big and you've got so many kinds of competing legalities in that state, you know, you've got the tech sector and then you've got kind of a hyper liberal and of hyper conservative element in the state that are kind of like, there's no like middle ground anymore. Right. The thing I like about Colorado is I like to say like Republicans smoke weed and Democrats carry guns here. Right. Like you, sure we're more kind of central in our application of what we think like, of course you have your hyper, right and your hyper left everywhere. Right. Everywhere. But I think generally speaking, in terms of this, state's, you know, kind of general focus in where they are, we're kind of in the middle. Whereas I think in California, it's just so polarized on either side. And I think it's also because the money is so heavily, heavily invested there. Right. So I think trying to get any legislation around anything, when you have that much money involved is virtually impossible. Right. Um, and that gets to kind of the, you know, citizens United conversation and all the politicals around that. But it's important to try to createlegislation to protect consumers, but then also realize that it's going to be imperfect because humans are making the technology and they're making the laws that it needs to be revisited over and over again. Got it. Right. Got it. That's what I would say to that. It's something that should be done. I'm not saying, you know, California has a right. It probably doesn't, I haven't really looked too much into it. I've tried to stay out of California because of, you know, I've done some work there and I'm like, Holy. I'm not doing this again. You know, I'll take the technology, certainly having to work with what you're building, but I'm going to let you all figure it out over here. But yeah. You know, I think that's kind of one of the elements that as a society, especially as an educated society in America is we have the Xennials and the millennials who were growing up with technology for us to take a kind of a step back and take an abstract, look at this almost in a detached manner and say, what do we, as a society think is acceptable here. And you know, this always comes down to the legality of, of what's happening. We're going to make a law and they're definitely going to break it. But when the laws here they're going to go like another foot and a half past the law though, they will. But it's important to have the law. So at least we know where the line in the sand is as opposed to this just, well, whatever Facebook comes up with is good. Right? That's cool. It's a little terrifying

Cynthia: I want to talk about this sort of predictive analysis and some of this machine learning stuff that's being applied to human habits. Does this suggest we're going to get a little philosophical? Does this suggest that more than we even realize it? We are machines too, just operating at a very, very high level of consciousness or awareness or whatever that, you know, our, our analytical power is. So, I mean, it's, it's like a, it's like an ant to man capacity, right? Between computer and human. Is there a way that at some point technology evolves where we're no different than the machine? Do you see what I'm saying?

Brandon: Could be hacked, right? Yeah. Well, we can, they're starting to show that now they can look at the brainwave. I forget the exact terminology, but essentially they can look at your brain waves. And guess what? You're thinking with a pretty high degree of accuracy. You want to talk about tinfoil hat moment. it right there. The tinfoil hat work I'm going to try. I don't know. I'll be in Montana with my cowboy hat.

Cynthia: Because if you put the cowboy hat on top, then it looks cool. It just looks nerdy. I forget the magnets. Oh yeah. Put magnets inside of it. Oh yeah. Stick yourself inside of a big Faraday cage. Yeah. Is that why aliens are always wearing the silver suit? Cause it's literally like

Brandon: They're hiding the yeah. Yeah. The grays and the greens. Yeah. So philosophically speaking. Right. So there's so many, I love philosophy. I think it's such an interesting way to look at human consciousness. So, ah, man, I could talk about that for days, but I think the question is if I could narrow down how will machine learning and artificial intelligence impact human consciousness. Okay. If we get, if we boil it down to that question, what I would state is that it, it certainly already has. Right? If you look like we, there's an old adage about architecture, we shaped the buildings and the buildings and then shape us. So if you look at how we design things, generally tools of any kind, that tool then impacts us as a species and we're still evolving, right? We're not, you know, our mind is certainly, I think from a physical perspective, we, we haven't, you know, made some massive leap from where we were, you know, many, many, many, many, many moons ago. Right. So what is the tool set doing to us right now? We're looking at Instagram and Facebook and now we're starting to correlate that, you know, we're having a higher degree of teen depression and suicide and these types of things, right. We've got this biological signaling on Instagram that people like to talk about. And what does that mean? And you've got a daughter, you've got a niece and you're like, Oh my God, what do I do? And then you've got a son and you're like, Oh my God, like how many video games are you playing? Right. Doing your impact. And there's a billion dollar industry. That's there to study young adolescent male minds to see what their trigger points are going to be for dopamine and endorphin rush based around what this video game structure is going to look like. I mean, I love call of duty. Do you want to talk about a way for me to like to relax myself is to kill some things right. And at its very root that kind of comes down to, I'm a biological species on a rock floating in the big black ocean. Right. And I've got, I've got a drive in me, right? I've got to breed, I've got to drive to eat, I've got to drive to explore. So these tool sets are shorter. You can trigger certain elements inside of us and you're starting, you know, and there's an argument that, you know, the argument around EDD is, you know, ad nauseam at this point, you know, and we still don't have a real answer for it. But certainly those tools I think are already impacting us. And I think that comes back to the earlier point that we made around the legalities that we are implementing into what these tools are creating, are going to be critical for our development as a society and the people we're going to be creating, right? Like what they are, and you know, I'm not a big government guy. That's going to be like, we need to legislate everything. But as a society, we need to have a conversation around this. And as parents and as, as adults, right, we've got this tool. What is it doing to us, each other, our connectedness, our youth, all these things. 

Grant: Because it seems to me that the things that they can measure so far, we've seen mostly negative impact. And we have seen a decreased focus. Right. And young people, right? Like their attention span is short, but things like that, some of what you said, it reminded me of the food industry for decades. Right. We just need a profit, nacho cheese Doritos are very scientifically designed to trigger craving for more and more and more and more right. They're they're designed to not satisfy you to where you need another one. And you know, the manipulation through outside simulation, understanding what that stimulus does, the gambling stuff. You know? Cause I remember people talking specifically about that pull down on Facebook and watch that thing spin. Yeah. I gotta get more likes,

Brandon: Yeah, totally spin it, spin it. And so they're hitting on things, you know, they know brain manipulation. So from that point of view, we've been being hacked

Cynthia: A long time. Yeah. We've talked about product marketing and things like that before and how there are much smarter people who are much more aware of human psychology and human behavior and analysis and all that kind of stuff that had been watching us from the Dawn of trying to sell somebody something. Right.

Grant: Yeah. Food scientists. I mean that's, to me, that's creepy that there is such a thing. Yeah. Oh, science should be food. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon: I think so. Yeah. I remember having a conversation with my mom, my sister and I, we were having this like grass fed meat conversation and my mom and my dad would, you know, like we're from kind of a rural area, you know, and farmers are what were kind of from mountain people, that kind of thing. And my mom and dad looked at me like me and my sister, like we had two heads, like, what are you talking about? CrossFit meat, every cattle like, cow's eat grass. I'm like, not anymore. They don't. And my, my dad kind of had this puzzled look, my mom just in complete disbelief. She's like, you two are just out of your mind. And we're like a new feedlot. Have you driven past one? I have a super sensitive sense of smell. We were going up to an installation out in the middle of frigging. Nowhere like between New Mexico and Texas. And I was with my social security architect and we were in this car doing like 120. Cause there's nothing to do with 120. Right. You're maxing. You're maxing your ride out as one is, want to do. There's nothing between A and B and you're not even supposed to know A and B are there. We're cruising. Right. And all of a sudden, he goes, I'm going to need you to, and he knows, I can smell really well. He goes, yeah. He's like, you're going to have a hard couple of minutes here. And I was like, what's going on? He's like, we're getting ready to pass a feedlot. And I knew what they were. Right. You know, but I had never actually farms where I'm from or actual grass fed farms. This is like, you know, small, you know, kind of gentlemanly type farms. We roll by this thing at 120. And I was holding my breath as long as I could finally, I had to breathe and I've never felt such like wrenching in my stomach before. And I was like, this is what we're eating. Right. So to get back to the question, what's the impact going to be? It's certainly going to be there. Right? We are, you know, our bodies are responding. Our brains are responding. What is that looking like? So the tools we're creating are certainly influencing us artificial intelligence, machine learning the singular moment, right. Where AI really becomes self-aware like the Tia 83. Right. We're all going to, you know, [inaudible] T1000 that's all right. It's calculus. Well, you're your calculator. I'm like, I'm going to break this thing. Yeah.

Cynthia: We got legal history. Nerd, math nerd.

Brandon: And my advanced calculus teacher. I remember he was trying to teach us a class and he couldn't get the formulas across to us. And my older brother is an engineer. I took the problem home. Boom. I go, show me how to do this in five minutes. He had it fixed. I go back and I had to teach the class. Oh my God. And I love the guy, Colonel Cavell, such a great guy. And he just looked at me. I go, you're an awesome guy. I need you back in the disciplinary chair role. I need, I don't care who we get, but I'm not teaching this class. I'm definitely not the person to be teaching this. So, so anyway. Yeah, I think it's important. I think it's one of these big conversations and I think we don't have to look any further than Facebook to see how AI and ML are starting to do this and driving kind of a very aggressive narrative on a public platform. But we're seeing this, you know, Google analytics, Google, you know, I mean, it's all about SEO optimization. You got to get to that first page. Cause I mean, I'm not looking at the 20th page on Google search engine. Nope. You know, I'm going to go to the, okay.

Cynthia: It doesn't come up on the first page. I figure I searched it wrong and I go look for different words or it's not relevant. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon: All of these things are interacting with each other. And I think certainly, you know, how we, as a civilization society, as species need to evolve into this is going to be really interesting to watch.

Cynthia: How did you get interested in cyber security? And like all the, I mean, you come at it. So Sam came at it from much more of a technical viewpoint, I would say, whereas you come at it in the way you speak. Even legal law is wrapped right in there. The two are not discernible from each other. So how did, how did you get interested in this?

Brandon: So in Virginia, we are big believers in war. I guess we're very, you know, Southern state now, you know, you're going to have the South. He was like, you're not really from the South. And like, historically we definitely were. We got a whole feeling about the succession thing, talking about the civil war because we learn it every year. Can't learn anything else. But the civil war, the original colony totally relative, still say, Yankees. Oh totally. A hundred percent. So, and then I, I was in military school right from my eighth grade year to my senior year. Right. And it's because I always, I guess, have always been interested in the application of force. And as a child, I was interested in the application of force to other people. So I found myself in a place where my mom was like, we can't, you are not able to go to the little Christian school or the public school we need, we need a more structured environment for you to succeed or at least stay out of a problem. Right. A lot of arguments about that. But anyway, I made a deal, right. The deal was I'll graduate and I wouldn't get kicked out. Right. Because I had a plan. I definitely, you always gotta have a plan. My plan was to burn the place down. That was my plan. I figured that was not a fire really kind of has a finality to it. I think in an argument, I don't know. I've just always had that thought, burn it down, burn it down. It's not there. Right. She's gone to school, whatever it is, it's gone. Right. Can't bring that back. So anyway, so I've just like been, and my, my family was all in the military. My father was a much older gentleman. He was 53 when I was born, my father was actually drafted, going to world war II. All my uncles were in world war II. So like I had a much older father figure to kind of give me the rules of the road. And I had always kind of questioned why this law, why not that law? Why can't I do this? Why can't I do this? Like as a 15 year old kid? Like, why can't I get in a fight with another 15 year old kid? When it's over, we call it good. And it's done, right? Why do we need all of this other? That seems like a pretty standard issue to me. Even at 15, I was like, this is a little overboard. It's like, you got a problem with the kid. We'll figure it out. We'll call it. Good. Let this go. So I've always been around this kind of military structure and what this looks like. I remember my junior or senior year in high school and getting back to the history lessons. It was just, especially in Virginia, it was just civil war, civil war, civil war. And then all of a sudden it was like, all right, you know, of course, 1776, that kind of thing. And then we get to world war II. Right. We, and it was like a day in Vietnam, like a, like a sentence about Grenada. Like something happened in Iran. No one really wanted to talk about some other stuff that happened in South America, but we really don't want to talk about that. And then boom World's superpower. And I was like, Oh, that's a little weird, like 1940. I feel like maybe a lot of things have happened over the last, I dunno, 60 years the day you got to study that in college. Now I went to college and they're like, all right, you got to have your sociology 101. I'm like, this is terrible psychology 101. And I'm like, well, this is kind of weird. You know? Like, can we, we learned about crazy people like, Oh no, we can't do that. I'm like, Oh, this sucks, organizational behavior, you know, all the like kind of lame classes you gotta get through. Just like. Yeah. Right. And econ I've really liked econ or like business. And I was like, okay, like, I kind of have a knack for this. This makes sense. And I liked biology and genetics and things, but I was like, ah, I kind of like business a little bit more. So I ended up kind of in that space, but I kept asking what has happened in the last 60 years. How are we here? Like, I don't want to hear, like, we just happen to win this war. Now we're just top dog. Right? Like these three guys met at Potsdam and then the wall came down. And had a couple beers through a couple of high fives. We got a botta bing botta boom Brentwood system. We got our currency everywhere: oil. We got that. Oh, you got some water. We're going to give you some freedom. Right? Like that kind of thing, what has happened. So anyway, I got out of undergrad and I was going to join the military. I was like, this is my way. My dad called me. Especially after 911. Right. My dad called me. He was like, I need, and my dad was such a good dude. He's since passed because he was so ancient. Sorry. No, no. It's crazy. You were happy. I trust me. I don't think a lot of other dads would have been able to like handle this. So anyway, my dad calls me after 911 and I'm like, I'm signing up. All my buddies are doing it. And of course I came from military school, all my friends that were in high school with me all my life, except for like maybe two, we're all going. I was like, this is what I'm supposed to do. My dad calls me and he's like, I need you to promise me something. And he, and he only asked me that like twice, it was like, don't drink and drive. Please don't kill anybody. And I'm like, yeah, reasonable. Yeah, I got it. He calls me. He's like, I need you to please not join and just graduate college first, just do that for me. And he was like, we'll have this conversation. So I was like, okay, like, I love you. I'll do that for you. You've got me here through a lot of legal problems. Right? Like I'm going to listen to you. So, you know, I got out of undergrad and my family friend was starting this company in cybersecurity. And we were well into Iraq. And I was like, why are we in Iraq? I mean, every, even my friends are in the military, like, why aren't we in around what's going on? Yeah. It was like, there was just this like shenanigans scribing of what was going on. And I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. So my family friend was like, Hey, I'm starting an IT company. And he was an aeronautical aerospace engineer, these two guys and me and him had a long conversation about currency manipulation and China and just I was interested in generally. And he was like, I want you to come work for me. And I was like, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go get on a plane. I got to get an M16. I'm going to go kill bad guys. This is like my life. This is what I'm doing. And he's like, Just check this out. I think you can make a lot of money doing this. And if you don't like it, you go, always go do the MC16 they're waiting for you. But like, I'm not. So why don't you come try this? And he's like, and if you really want to support these guys, maybe use your brain, not your back. And that was one of the things my dad always told me. He's like, you know, your brain gets stronger. If you use your back it will eventually get weaker. It doesn't matter how strong it is as you age, that thing will get out. So my dad really kind of counseled. He's like, I'd really like you to go check this out. You know, my dad wasn't a big fan of me working with these two guys, but he was like it. I'd rather this other, I've seen the other thing. I've done the other thing. So let's just give that a minute. So, and they were both like, Hey, you can support this way. So I just kind of gravitated toward, okay, we're going to support the military. We're going to do these things. I'm going to do my part. I'm going to learn my part to try to kind of assist. And then I had another kind of a mentor and I had asked, I was, everybody's going to get their MBAs. And I was like, Hey. So I just was in cybersecurity all of a sudden. So the first two, three years, these guys were engineers, aerospace engineers by trade. And they just started handing me engineering textbooks. So for the first three years out of college, everybody's out drinking on Tuesday. Everybody's having a right. Like we're making money and we're out of college and life is near DC. And I'm just, not me. I was in the basement of the apartment complex, just pouring over engineering textbooks and just being like, Oh, I should've been in boot camp right now. At least I'll be shooting things. I wouldn’t be studying equations. This book over here. Yeah, totally, totally. Just getting drilled. Like I wasn't you guys. So anyway, I just kinda got taught how to think, like an engineer and these guys are really bright. They've done a really good job in their company back East. And you know, I was able to be a part of that and I was just constantly, you know, we're there. So I'm talking to the Pentagon, I'm talking to the military, I'm talking to all of these kinds of spooky agencies about what the problems look like. And we've got cool technology and they're interested in it. And that environment kind of breeds it right in the conversations that you're having at the bar with people. Aren't like, Hey, do you see the 49ers? And the chiefs? It's like, Hey, did you see, Hey, did you see what the currency manipulation issue is doing to like drug trade out of Afghanistan? Right? We've got interesting stuff, right? You've got an opium route that's coming through like Southeast Asia. That's coming up through Hawaii. And you know, we're trying to deal with this in a manner that's going to stem drug trade into South America and the United States, how do we do this? Wow. These are the types of conversations that were happening. Right. And then just everywhere. Right? That's the place for it. That's what you're in. So a mentor of mine, I was talking to him about it. I was like, you know, everybody's going to get their MBA. I was like, I think I should go get another degree of kind of feeling that element right now. And I just, I had the business degree. I was like, I don't wanna, I don't want to do another business degree. And he goes, you should go get this essentially a policy degree. And there's like four schools that have it. There's Fletcher out of Tufts. And then there was CSSE out of John Hopkins, I think it was out of Johns Hopkins. And then Georgetown had a program. And I think there's another one in which Fletcher was partnering with Harvard at the time. And I was like, Oh, I'll, there's no way they're going to take me. So I'll do this. And when they No, I'm just going to go take a trip to Europe and I'm going to go drink with my friends while they're off on leave in Germany, get hammered, and go down to Greece. Like I had the whole trip planned I was gone for like three weeks. I was like, I'm outta here.

Grant: I'm gone. Yeah. They've got their leave. I'm meeting there.

Brandon: I got the acceptance from Fletcher. And I'm like, these people have made a terrible mistake. And I can't, I can't just say no, like I've got to go now. So I went in and the whole question I really had, which I had always had from high school, which was what the hell has happened over the last sixty years. And that's kind of what the degree and the program was about. That's awesome. It was super cool. I was really grateful for that. It was one of the things where I was grateful for the knowledge and the way to look at things. Certainly no one's ever going to agree on one direct point. You're going to be able to laugh. You're going to be a little, right. But at least being able to look at the problem from an educated viewpoint and even coming from different perspectives, you can at least appreciate the thought process from the other side.

Cynthia: Right. Right.

Brandon: The one thing that I was so kind of annoyed about, I was like, I had to pay how much money to get this education, and everybody should have this everywhere just as a voting member of the population. Because like, we, you know, for better, for worse, we are an empire. So we should, you know, educate our citizens in this manner to be able to, you know, whether you like it or not, this is where we are. So know what you have. Right. So that's kind of why I've just the scholastics and the background I have is all around like policy and education in the law and what this is. Okay. Okay. Interesting. And this is why, when my lawyer talks to me on the phone, he takes two hours because he wants to have these types of philosophical conversation. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, if you want to get a beer and we can have this conversation, I need this document drafted so we can get on with this program.

Cynthia: All right. So from the layman perspective, you've talked about a lot of things that are somewhat high level intelligence kind of stuff. If you could give a piece of advice to the average, Joe, what would it be?

Brandon: I mean, man, dude, that's a lot. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I mean, that's such a, I mean, can I quote Marcus Aurelius? I mean, yeah. I mean, I would probably just do anything he said, really, I would point out I'm not that bright. I mean, I'm just hurting people. Yeah, exactly. Go to meditations and read that. I mean, that's really what you gotta be life at. Um, I, what would I give to the average Joe?

Cynthia: Like, like from a security standpoint, you know, from a, from a Sam's thing was freeze your credit. Oh yeah.

Brandon: It's definitely that everybody needs to do that. Be aware where you get your news. That's the main thing. I think we've moved from the information age to the reputation age. I heard that coined a couple of years ago and I thought that was so truthful. Right? We are now like our phone can literally go anywhere in the world immediately and everybody's putting out content. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody's I saw a great meme. It was like, don't rip on China for the Coronavirus. Wouldn't when you have a first world country that's YouTube itself, back to a measles outbreak.

Cynthia: Right. You know? Right.

Brandon: So what I would say is verify your source, be skeptical. Yeah. Trust, but verify as we say, right. Like, know your news. Get Information then form the opinion. Yeah. Right. Just because you're in an echo chamber of your own viewpoint does not mean that that source is incorrect

Cynthia: We talked about this. We talked about how people are very, they see it on Facebook and it must be true.

Grant: Well, there's people who actually say that's where I get my news. So my, my Facebook I've kind of, you know, limited my pictures and that kind of thing. Most of the things are private. And that kind of thing. What I do is I post political content typically or scientific content. And I always kind of wondered to myself, I'm a political junkie and I kind of want to be a science nerd and that kind of thing. But I always think to myself, should I keep posting those right. Or people, you know, are people really watching? And then randomly what I'll get is from somebody they're like, you know, somebody I haven't, I haven't talked to in forever, just somebody random. And I see, they're like, I appreciate what you're posting because I know you're reading it.

Brandon: And I, and that's something I do. Yeah. I really try to make sure things have gotten really hectic for me in terms of work. And I've just been working my off lately. So it isn't like I'm cruising, the article is going like, Oh, it's a geopolitical situation in Germany right now for currency. Right? Like it's not really where I'm at. But one of the things I do try to do is that if I'm going to post this, this article, I feel like it's been referenced. I feel like it's not just an opinion piece. It's got some real data behind it. And I, and a lot of times I'll read stuff. And I, even though I may agree with the content, even though I may agree with the point they may be trying to make, I can tell by the kind of salacious Lander totally. That I'm like, this is just, you're not going to propagate that. This is not to me going to further a conversation that I think is going to be valuable. This is just yelling in an echo chamber. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to do this, My point to the average Joe is very, like verify your data. Yeah. That, and that's all it yeah. Verify your data. Right. Because it maps what you hope it maps. Right. Doesn't mean it's going to be accurate. Right, right, right.

Grant: Okay. Difference between gossiping versus actually spreading information.

Cynthia: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Grant: Yeah. It was it, you've probably watched what is it? The great hack. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was even shocked at the tactics that they mentioned near the end where they said, yeah, this, this group from rush over here, started a Facebook group with this political bent and then started a Facebook group with the opposite and created a rally and got people to goat. And it's like, they're not even advocating one side or the other. They're just generating this conflict. Divisive nature, getting extremism. Yeah. It's Oh my God.

Brandon: It's interesting. So to get back to that point about people in tools, right. What I've found is you can have a very thoughtful conversation with somebody face to face. Yeah. 99% of the time. Yeah. You put these two people on Facebook where there's no face, they're not there. Right. They're really not there. They're like, like all of a sudden the rules of conduct changed dramatically, you know, and as somebody who got sent to military school for these moments of losing your temper, right. There are these kinds of ideas of like having an in-person conversation and that kind of moral fiber, all of a sudden changes. And then you just get people throwing, whatever FUD they have at each other. And they're not having a civil conversation.

Grant: As Red Foreman said if it wasn't for laws, we'd still be in the trees, flinging or feces at each other. Right. And that's what they're doing, essentially

Brandon: Exactly what it is. Are we a nation of laws or men, and that really kind of comes down to it. Know your data.

Grant: I put comments out. And then I go back and delete them 15 minutes later, five minutes later. Cause I'm like, you know, I just don't need to keep adding to that to the fire. And I do kind of think, like, I don't know that someday somebody that's important to me is going to read this right. Somebody that I,  it's like one day going to work, I was behind somebody's bad traffic move on his part and I'm laying on my horn. Right. We get to work. And I find out he's a pretty important guy at the office. And you're like, you know, cause I passed them when, when I finally got, you know, by him, I passed him and I didn't flip him off fortunately, but I, you know, I mouthed something as I went by, I get to work and he pulls in the parking lot right behind me.

Brandon: Oh. I would like to introduce myself,

Grant: You know? So it's kind of the same thing. If I'm putting it up stuff out there on the web for people to see, I do, you know, I try to remind myself that there's going to be people who see this, that might matter.

Brandon: Right. Right. So I think the one thing, the good news, I think in that element is that a lot of young people, for instance, my younger brothers are in this. I hope it's a majority. I'm fearful. It's a minority. He is acutely aware of what he's putting out there lives forever. Right. And I think, I think one of the benefits of them growing up in this world and kind of there's new rules, right. And it's unfortunate, these new rules are there, but they're learning them. Right. My mom, you know, we had a kind of a family story of my nephew did something that I kind of, you know, I think is pretty standard issue. I mean, it's not hard to extrapolate what it could have been with, you know, with, you know, technology and my mom, God bless her soul. She's like, I can't believe he would do that. And I go, I'm a near middle age, man. And I have done that. Yeah. I'm an adult. I understand the consequences. I know what this risk element looks like. I have done that because the drive is in us. Biological species does this, 16 year old.

Grant: I need to be able to comprehend it. I know

Brandon: I was like, I, I just don't get it. I go, let me, I'm going to show you something. I did this with him. I did this in front of everybody, except my nephew across from me at the table. And like, he's, he's got a heart of gold. Right. But he's just, he grew up in a really difficult time with technology and I go, I'm gonna, I'm going to show you something. And he goes, okay. And he goes, what? And I go, I put a phone on the table. I go, how dangerous is that thing? And he had already kind of been in trouble. He's like, well, it's not, you know, it's kind of dangerous. I pull out a sidearm. Of course it was unloaded and everything else. I put it on the table and go, which one of these is more dangerous to you? He's kind of fearful. And he doesn't answer. I'm like, actually answer the question. I just, we need to get from this. And he pointed the gun I go, wrong. I can tell by your demeanor around this tool, you understand the long-term effect with this. Yes, you are not able to actually ascertain what the real risk of this thing is. And this is why it's more dangerous to put you behind the wheel of a car. And you are able to ascertain the actual threat of drinking and driving and this calculation, what this could look like, like your risk analysis is actually pretty good, but you're not able to comprehend what this is doing to you. And I think it's just definitely kind of a generational issue. My mom's like not able to comprehend what I'm dealing with. And my younger, my nephew looks at me. He's like that. Now that makes sense. I'm like this, I'd rather you carry this with you. Cause I know you're not going to understand the issue right now. I wouldn't do that to every kid but knew who I was talking to, the issues we were dealing with and how he had been brought up around weapons versus a telephone. Yeah. We need phone safety training. We do. We just need warning labels, a license for a concealed carry on that thing. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe just the camera element specifically.

Cynthia: I think I've told this story before, but I remember seeing a comedian who was talking about before the digital age, if you wanted to get a pit, a naked picture of yourself to somebody you had to like take the photo, then you had to go get the film developed and then you had to like put it, put a stamp on it. And then you had to take it to a mailbox and all this time has passed and you can always take it back. And most of the time reasonable people got to the point where they couldn't stand the fact that the guy at the pharmacy was the one developing the photo. And so ended right there with this, it's gone, it's gone. You've had that thought it's done. You've had an impulse. Right. And it's done. And over and again, getting back to the conversation, how are tools shaping us? How are we interacting with these tools? Yeah, man, biological

Grant: Check out my naked selfie and my suspension for next week.

Brandon: Yeah. I saw a great article. It was like, we are going to come to a day where somebody running for president is definitely going to have a naked selfie. It's going to hit and we're all going to have to go. Yeah. We all did that. We are putting it out there. Yeah.

Grant: When you were saying that, you know, I'm not important enough to hack. That's where people who were nobodies suddenly become huge focuses of attention is politics. And that's where I see this kind of stuff coming up is something they posted on Facebook three years, before they got into office member of a group, you know? Yeah. But that's the thing is your propensities are now known. Whereas if you were a white supremacist in the past, it was all face to face interaction. Nobody knew it, except those guys. Right. And my grandfather in the South was actually a member of the KKK.

Cynthia: Right? Wow. As were most white men way back then.

Brandon: Yeah, this was way back in the twenties and thirties. And I found some of this stuff, it was packed away in a box. And my dad said, he goes, from what I know, this was an excuse to get out of the house and go drink and play cards with the buddies. You know, they didn't do anything. It was just, this was like their club. This was their moose lodge. But you know, now nowadays, you know, if you're a member of something, people know you're a member of something. Cause the only way you can become a member is to go out there and sign up.

Cynthia: Right. Right. Totally. Very interesting. Well, my friend, very good. Having you today. Brandon was so nervous. It was so adorable. He texted me last night. He's like, how do I prepare? And I was like, dude, just come be yourself. We’re super chill and laid back. And he didn't believe me. So now, you know, now we're going to edit this all out. So thank you for being here today. We have, we have totally enjoyed having you and you're welcome back anytime. Thank you. So, uh, yeah. Thanks for joining us today. You guys, and we have decided that we're going to do every other week instead of every week, this year. And we're going to do more guests on our podcast this year. And so that's partially why we're doing every other week. So we ran out of material long ago. We ran out long ago. We've been making up for, I don't know, months. Um, it's fun and everything, but yeah, our writing team is a revolting against us. So we will see you guys in two weeks. And as always, if you have questions or follow-ups or whatever, just post it all wherever you're looking. And uh, we'll get questions to Brandon and get follow ups or make introductions. You know, if you find his picture and you're like, Hey, I want to date that guy. Let me know.

Brandon: Very focused on the company.

Cynthia: I just like giving you a hard time. Cause it's funny. Get an Alexa for Christmas. You guys we'll see you next time.